o were often broken up. In Canada there is no law of
primogeniture and, at a seigneur's death, the land went to daughters as
well as to sons. Few of the old seigniorial families remained on their
original estates. In time those who held the property came to think that
a rental of about a cent an acre was not enough. In the days of French
rule they could not have increased it; but the old custom, they claimed,
did not apply under British sovereignty. So these charges were often
increased; in time instead of a penny the habitant had to pay
three-pence, six-pence, and even eight-pence, an acre; the seigneurs, as
a judge put it, showed an excellent knowledge of arithmetical
progression. Thus the _cens et rentes_ began to bring in a real income.
So did the _lods et ventes_, the tax of one-twelfth of the price of
whatever land the habitant sold. In early days land was rarely sold. But
when towns and villages had grown up on seigniorial estates, a good deal
of buying and selling took place and there stood always the seigneur
demanding in every transaction his share of the selling price. If the
land was sold two or three times in a year, as might well happen, each
time the seigneur got his share of one-twelfth. If the occupier had
built on the land a house at his own cost, none the less did the
seigneur, who had done nothing, get his large percentage on the selling
value of these improvements. This was a real grievance. To avoid paying
the seigneur's claim a price, lower than that really paid, was sometimes
named in the deed, and this led to perjury. To protect themselves the
seigneur used his _droit de retrait_ the right for forty days of himself
taking the property at the price named. This involved vexation and delay
and increased discontent. Moreover the seigneur's right to _lods et
ventes_ stood in the way of a ready transfer of property between members
of the same family.

There were other causes of discontent. The seigneur had the _droit de
banalite_, the banal rights, under which in France the habitant must use
the seigneur's wine-press, his oven and his mill. In Canada no wine was
made, so the seigneur's winepress did not exist. Some attempts were made
to force the habitant to bake his bread in the seigneur's oven but what
would do in a compact French village, where fuel was scarce, became
absurd in Canada; the picture is ludicrous of a habitant carrying a
dozen miles, over rough roads, to the seigneur's oven, unbaked do