ugh
which might be hard frozen _en route_. Moreover new inventions made
ovens common and cheap so that the habitant could afford to have his
own. The seigneur's oven thus caused no grievance. Not so however the
seigneur's mill. In the early days when the seigneur had the sole right
to build a mill this became for him, in truth, a duty sometimes
burdensome; for, whether it would pay or not, the government forced him
to build a mill or else abandon the right. But in time the mill proved
profitable and to it the peasant must bring his wheat. There might be a
good mill near his house, while the seigneur's mill might be a dozen
miles away and even then might give poor service; yet to the seigneur's
mill he must go. If it was a wind-mill, nature, by denying wind, might
cause a long delay before the flour should be ready. As time went on,
some seigneurs claimed or reserved a monopoly in regard to all mills;
grist mills, saw mills, carding mills, factories of every kind. Canada
in time exported flour, but the seigneur's rights stood in the way of
the free grinding of the wheat for this trade. The habitant might have
on his land an excellent mill site with water power convenient, but he
could not use it without the seigneur's consent. More than this the
seigneur often reserved the right to take such a site to the extent of
six arpents for his own use without any compensation to the habitant.

In many cases the seigneur might freely cut timber on the habitant's
land to erect buildings for public use,--church, presbytery, mill, and
even a manor house. The rights to base metals on the property he also
retained. The eleventh fish caught in the rivers was his. He might
change the course of streams or rivers for manufacturing purposes; he
alone could establish a ferry; his will determined where roads should be
opened. Some seigneurs were even able to force villages and towns to pay
a bonus for the right to carry on the ordinary business of buying and
selling. So it turned out that if the habitant's crop failed he had
little chance to do anything else without the seigneur's consent; he is,
says the report of a Commission of Enquiry in 1843, "kept in a perpetual
state of feebleness and dependence. He can never escape from the tie
that forever binds to the soil him and his progeny; a cultivator he is
born, a mere cultivator he is doomed to die." No doubt this plaint is
pitched in a rather high key. But in time the burden of grievances was