rsified by feast and fast
days; and all his social vices flourish in shelter of this seignorial
system--this--this upas-tree which England is pledged to perpetuate:'
and Mr. Holt struck his hand violently on the gunwale of the boat,
awakening a responsive grin of triumph from Andy.

The captain was spared a reply by the boat just then touching the wharf;
and while they were landing, and lodging the luggage in Pat M'Donagh's
house till the starting of the Montreal boat next afternoon, we may say
a few words concerning the feudal system extant in Lower Canada at the
period when this story begins.

Henri Quatre was the monarch under whose sway the colony was originated.
Champlain and De Levi knew no better than to reproduce the landed
organization of France, with its most objectionable feature of the forced
partition of estates, in the transatlantic province, for defensive
purposes, against the numerous and powerful Indian tribes. Military
tenure was superadded. Every farmer was perforce also a soldier, liable
at any time to be called away from his husbandry to fight against the
savage Iroquois or the aggressive British. Long after these combative
days had passed away the military tenure remained, with its laws of
serfdom, a canker at the roots of property; and thinking men dreaded to
touch a matter so inwound with the very foundations of the social fabric
in Lower Canada. But in 1854 and 1859 legislative acts were passed which
have finally abolished the obnoxious tenure; each landholder, receiving
his estate in freehold, has paid a certain sum, and the Province in
general contributed L650,000 as indemnity to those whose old-established
rights were surrendered for the public weal. Eight millions of inhabited
acres were freed from the incubus, and Lower Canada has removed one
great obstacle in the way of her prosperity.

At the period when Hiram Holt expressed himself so strongly on the
subject, a grinding vassalage repressed the industry of the _habitans_.
Though their annual rent, as _censitaires_ or tenants, was not large,
a variety of burdensome obligations was attached. When a man sold his
tenure, the seigneur could demand a fine, sometimes one-twelfth of the
purchase money; heavy duties were charged on successions. The ties of
the Roman Catholic Church were oppressive. Various monopolies were
possessed by the seigneurs. The whole system of social government was a
reproduction, in the nineteenth century, of the Franc