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Daily Archives: April 28, 2012

Nouvelle-France’s Seigneurial System

28 Saturday Apr 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in Canadian History, History

≈ 76 Comments

Tags

a Reponsible Government, Canadien, Company of One Hundred Associates, Louis-Joseph Papineau, New France, The Seigneurial System

de_gaspe_manoir_1900

Aubert de Gaspé’s Manoir, Saint-Jean-Port-Joli (south shore of the St Lawrence River)

In an earlier post, I suggested that a responsible government could rectify the problems that had led to the Rebellions of 1837-38. In other words, the Parliamentary system could bring about responsible government.

The British Constitution had been a blessing to Canadiens. Let me quote, once again, my anonymous Canadien praising Britain in Le Canadien, a newspaper created on 22 November 1806. On 4 November 1809 or anonymous Canadien, i.e. French-speaking Canadian, wrote:

“Depuis cette époque le règne des lois a graduellement établi son Empire, et nous jouissons maintenant d’une Constitution où tout le monde est à sa place, et dans laquelle un homme est quelque chose.”[i]

(Since that time when the rule of laws has gradually established its empire, and we now enjoy the benefits of a constitution where everyone has a place and where a man is something.)

Consider, for instance, what might have happened to Nouvelle-France, New France, if New France had still been under French rule during the French Revolution. Many French priests had sought refuge in England to escape the guillotine, but there was not much for them to do in England where Catholicism was not the only religion. That problem was resolved when England offered to send them to ‘its’ French colony in North America where they could be Good Shepherds, as priests, educators and organizers, not to mention that they felt validated by their work. (See Related Articles, at the foot of this post.)

Le Bon Pasteur by François Baillairgé, circa 1775, guilded and painted wood sculpture. (photo by Patrick Altman/courtesy Musée du Québec and The Canadian Encyclopedia).     

Remember Thomas Chandler Haliburton and l’abbé Sigogne (father Jean-Mandé Sigogne) organizing Nova Scotia. L’abbé Sigogne had learned English during the years he had spent in England and he and Haliburton were both refined and well-educated gentlemen. (See Related Articles, at the foot of this post.)

But what of the seigneurs?  Louis-Joseph Papineau was a seigneur. Would he have been guillotined? However, let us examine the Seigneurial System.

The Seigneurial System

We are acquainted with one seigneur: Louis-Joseph Papineau, but we know that Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé, the author of Les Anciens Canadiens, 1862, had been a seigneur.  However, the Seigneurial System had been abolished, when Aubert de Gaspé published his novel, perhaps the most popular work written by a Canadien whose purpose was to prove that Lord Durham wrong in his assessment of French-speaking Canadians. They had a literature and a history, which they did not have in Lord Durham’s opinion.

The Seigneurial System (Wikipedia) or Seigneurial System was abolished in 1854 by the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada and was assented to by Governor Lord Elgin, on 22 June 1854, in An Act for the Abolition of Feudal Rights and Duties in Lower Canada which was brought into effect on 18 December of that year.

Back to the Early Days of Nouvelle-France

You might remember from earlier posts (See Related Articles) that, in 1628, Cardinal Richelieu of France had founded the Compagnie de Cent-Associés (The Company of One Hundred Associates [Wikipedia]), and had the land divided into narrow but deep lots on the shores of the St Lawrence River which was Nouvelle-France’s highway. The following is copied from the Company of One Hundred Associates entry in Wikipedia:

“From 1629 to 1635 Champlain was the company’s commander in New France. Under the Ancien Regime in France, every community was governed by a lord and a priest plus a magistrate appointed only with the lord and priest’s concurrence. As such, a component of the charter given the company provided for Roman Catholic priests to be part of all settlements and explorations and priests were given governing authority in conjunction with any appointed intendants. The charter also required the company to bring an average of 160 settlers to New France over the next twenty five years and to support their settlement for the first three years.”

Seigneurial System: land division (please click to enlarge the picture)

The Seigneurial System

According to the Canadian Encyclopedia’s entry on the Seigneurial System,[ii] the system was established in 1627, and abolished in 1854. The seigneur, usually leased his land from a member of the Company of One Hundred Associates founded by Richelieu) and, in turn, the tenants called censitaires, but also referred to as habitants, leased his thirty acres from the seigneur on the basis of duly notarized contracts. The land therefore belonged to the King of France.

A seigneurie measured 5 x 15 km in size. Land was allocated as the member of the Compagnie des Cent Associés pleased and was usually leased, not sold, to influential colonists:

  • the nobility,
  • religious institutions (in return for educational and hospital services),
  • military officers, etc.

Seigneurs and Censitaires

Normally, the Seigneurie was farmland divided into

  • river lots (rangs, or rows), linked by
  • montées, roads going from one rang to another. 

Censitaires or habitants paid rent (cens) and banalités. According to Wikipedia, banalités were “taxes levied on grain, which the tenant had to grind at his seigneur’s mill. He [the seigneur] also usually granted hunting, fishing and woodcutting licences.” The seigneur used that money to run the mill, the Church, keep roads open, etc.

In the eighteenth century, it was also customary for habitants to contribute a certain numbers of hours of work to his seigneur. This was called la corvée, the chore. Each habitant cultivated about thirty acres of land, which he leased. As for the seigneur,

  • he could establish a court of law,
  • he usually managed the commune,
  • he provided a church to his censitaires, and
  • he was under the obligation of providing a common mill.

Some Canadiens settled in cities and many engaged in the fur trade. These Canadiens usually belonged to a parish, but 75-80% of Canadiens were habitants. So Canadiens belonged to 1) seigneuries or 2) parishes, and communities were usually closely knit.

Seigneuries and Parishes

There were roughly 200 seigneuries and they covered virtually all the inhabited areas on both banks of the St Lawrence River between Montréal and Québec and beyond on the north side. On the south side, they extended to the Gaspé area. By and large, that land was arable and having sons helping on the farm was beneficial. However, to what extent can one divide up thirty acres of land?  But that is another story.

In short, for the time being, we have, as noted above, two leaders. They are, on the one hand, the seigneur and his censitaires, farming communities and, on the other hand, the curé, the parish priest, and his parishioners. When the seigneurial system was abolished, the habitant  remained on his thirty acres, but Canadiens also lived in townships or cantons grouped into parishes. In other words, with the abolition of seigneuries, the Canadiens were grouped into parishes. The parish became the main organizational element.

Let us read the Canadian Encyclopedia [iii] on the subject of the seigneurial system:

“The system of land tenure, which placed rural inhabitants close to one another, and in the early 19th century the village, were the foundation upon which the family, neighbour relations and community spirit developed. The closeness of this agricultural society to the soil led naturally to a feeling that land was included in one’s patrimony, to be passed from generation to generation.”

The Conquest and the Abolition of the Seigneurial System

After the conquest of Quebec, or the Treaty of Paris (1763), the system became an obstacle to colonization by British settlers as the Quebec Act of 1774 left the Canadiens undisturbed. Under the terms of the Quebec Act, French civil law was retained and so was the seigneurial system. The seigneuries were arable land and, therefore, prime land. Some seigneuries were bought by English-speaking Canadians.

According to Wikipedia, “[t]he system was finally abolished when the last residual rents were repurchased through a system of Quebec provincial bonds.” By the way, some seigneuries belonged to women.

It could well be that the seigneurial system was abolished as it dissolved. As noted above, to what extent can land be divided? The fact is that the Canadiens ran out of land. That story is told in Ringuet’s (Philippe Panneton) Trente Arpents (1938). Some tried to make arable land of land that was not arable. Louis Hémon’s Maria Chapdelaine (1914), a French author who spent a winter in the Lac Saint-Jean area and provided a lasting account of what was called colonisation.

But, this is where we must pause as a whole chapter of Canada’s history is over. Other stories begin.

Much of the above information is based on the contents of my lectures on French-Canadian literature. But I wish to acknowledge that I have also used the Canadian Encyclopedia and, to a certain extent, Wikipedia.

The_young_student_by_Ozias_Leduc,_1894

Le Jeune Étudiant, Ozias Leduc, 1894 (Photo credit: FR Wikipedia)

https://youtu.be/i2r2naec3rw
   
Related Articles
Évangéline & the Literary Homeland (cont’d)
Évangéline & the Literary Homeland
Richelieu & Nouvelle-France
Une Éminence grise: Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu et de Fonsac
 
Wikipedia Entries
Samuel de Champlain (13 August 1574 – 25 December 1635)
Pierre Du Gua de Monts (Du Gua de Monts; c. 1558 – 1628)
Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully (1560–1641)
_________________________
 
[i] René Dionne, Les Origines canadiennes (1763-1836), in Gilles Marcotte, dir. vol. 2, Anthologie de la littérature québécoise (Montréal: L’Hexagone, 1994), p. 324.
[ii] Jacques Mathieu, “The Seigneurial System,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/seigneurial-system
[iii] Ibid.
 
© Micheline Walker
28 April 2012
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Parliament to the Rescue: the Hidden Resource

28 Saturday Apr 2012

Posted by michelinewalker in Canada, History, Quebec

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Canada, Canadien, Company of One Hundred Associates, Constitutional Act 1791, Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, New France, Quebec, Quebec Act

L’Enfant au pain (Boy with Bread) by Ozias Leduc 1892-99, National Gallery of Canada

Until the Act of Union, 1840-1841, the former citizens of New France were surprisingly happy with their new masters.  They enjoyed the fact that they no longer had to bend their head before an intendant or a gouverneur and, although the Seigneurial system was maintained, British Rule brought a Parliament. Moreover, Canadiens could also express themselves in newspapers and their priests occupied a privileged position.

Here are testimonials:

Le Canadien: a newspaper

« Vous avez peut-être vécu dans ces tems malheureux qui on précédé la conquête de ce pays, où un Gouverneur étoit une Idole devant laquelle il n’étoit pas permis de lever la tête. »[i]
Translation
“You may have lived during these unfortunate days that preceded the conquest of this country, when a governor was an idol in whose presence one was not allowed to raise one’s head.”

The above quotation is taken from the 4 November 1809 issue of Le Canadien, a newspaper founded on 22 November 1806.  Earlier in the same article, the anonymous Canadien had also praised freedom of the press, which had not been allowed the citizens of New France.  Later, in the same article, our anonymous writer would praise the British Constitution.

The Oraison Funèbre (the funeral oration) of Mgr Jean-Olivier Brian

More eloquent, however, is Father Joseph-Octave Plessis‘s (1763-1825) Oraison Funèbre. In his funeral oration, Oraison Funèbre, on the death of Mgr Jean-Olivier Brian, Bishop of Quebec from 1764 to 1784, Plessis apologized on behalf of his people, the Canadiens, for having feared British rule.  He said that the people of New France had been rather apprehensive because they could not be persuaded that foreign men, unaccustomed to New France’s land, laws, customs and religion, would be able “to give back to Canada what it had just lost by changing masters:”

« On ne pouvait se persuader que des hommes étrangers à notre sol, à notre langage, à nos lois (laws), à nos usages (customs) et à notre  culte (religion), fussent jamais  capables de rendre au Canada ce qu’il venait de perdre en changeant de maîtres. »[ii]
Translation
“We could not persuade ourselves that men who knew little about our land, our language, or laws, our customs and our religion could ever return to Canada what it had just lost by changing masters.”

Back to the Quebec Act and Lord Dorchester

There can be doubt that the Canadiens had much to gain when Sir Guy Carleton, Lord Dorchester made them full-fledged British citizens under the Quebec Act.[III] Nothing had been taken away from Britain’s French subject and they had now gained the right to have newspapers and be members of Parliament.

Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris (1763), it had been negotiated that the Canadiens were to be left undisturbed.  But, ironically, the citizens of the Province de Québec (1774) and of the two Canadas, born of the Constitutional Act of 1791, had been provided with the tools that would allow them to regain what they lost when the Act of Union was signed into law: Parliament, as the word suggests.

The Rebellions and the Act of Union

The events of 1837-1838 and the ensuing decision to unite the two Canadas and to prohibit the use of French were regrettable.  However, once order was restored, the new United Province of Canada was again enjoying the benefits of the British Constitution.

When first appointed Joint Prime Minister of the United Province of Canada, in 1842, Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, or LaFontaine, was not heading a responsible government, which would cause him to resign, but the United Province of Canada had a Canadien voice and it so happened that this Canadien, Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, spoke English.  You may recall that Lafontaine had travelled to Britain in an effort to avert a call to arms in 1837.

A Bilingual Household

Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine was married first to Lynzee Rickard (1813–1859) who became his wife on 9 July 1831.  When Lynzee died (in 1859), Louis-Hippolyte married the widowed Jane Élisabeth Geneviève Morrison (1822-1905) daughter of Charles Morrison.  They were married on 30 January 1861 and lived on rue Saint-Denis in Montreal.  It was a bilingual household.

As joint Prime Minister of the United Province of Canada, Louis-Hippolyte first addressed the assembly in French and then he and his political partner Robert Baldwin set about returning to Canadiens the right to speak their own language.

In fact, assimilation would have been difficult due to the land tenure system, the   seigneurial system.  As for those Canadiens who were not farmers they gathered  around a priest, in a parish.  That was what I like to call the “parochial” system.

Conclusion

So let me close this blog on an optimistic note. In the 1840s, we have fine men in Parliament and their goal, responsible government, had been attained between 1842 and 1848, when Baldwin and Lafontaine became Joint Prime Ministers.

In my next post, we will examine the Seigneurial System which was not abolished until 1854.  In fact, Louis-Joseph Papineau was a seigneur and, from 1774 (the Quebec Act) until 1854, French-speaking Canadians had both seigneuries and a Parliament.

Ravel: 10 Jeux d’eau 

 

Nature morte by Cornelius Krieghoff

© Micheline Walker
28 April 2012
WordPress

 

 

 

_________________________

[I] René Dionne, Les Origines canadiennes (1763-1836), in Gilles Marcotte, dir. vol. 2, Anthologie de la littérature québécoise (Montréal: L’Hexagone, 1994), p. 324. 

[II] Op. Cit., p. 331.

[III] The Quebec Act: 1774 

The Quebec Act of 1774 was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain (citation 14 Geo. III c. 83) setting procedures of governance in the Province of Quebec. The principal components of the Act were:

  • The province’s territory was expanded to take over part of the Indian Reserve, including much of what is now southern Ontario, plus Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota.
  • The oath of allegiance was replaced with one that no longer made reference to the Protestant faith.
  • It guaranteed free practice of the Catholic faith.
  • It restored the use of the French civil law for private matters while maintaining the use of the English common law for public administration, including criminal prosecution.
  • The province’s territory was expanded to take over part of the Indian Reserve, including much of what is now southern Ontario, plus Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota.
  • The oath of allegiance was replaced with one that no longer made reference to the Protestant faith.
  • It guaranteed free practice of the Catholic faith.
  • It restored the use of the French civil law for private matters while maintaining the use of the English common law for public administration, including criminal prosecution.
  • The province’s territory was expanded to take over part of the Indian Reserve, including much of what is now southern Ontario, plus Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota.
  • The oath of allegiance was replaced with one that no longer made reference to the Protestant faith.
  • It guaranteed free practice of the Catholic faith.
  • It restored the use of the French civil law for private matters while maintaining the use of the English common law for public administration, including criminal prosecution.
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