If the substantial nature of the Canadian economy derives from the nature of its initial institutions of land tenure, then it does not derive from its initial and continuing relatively heavy reliance on primary product exports. Harold Innis, in his attempt to refute Adam Smith's interpretation of the growth of the North American economy, a refutation undertaken to further Innis' elaboration of economic factors underlying the unity of Canada, failed to account for the substantial character of economic growth and development in Canada.
The institutions of land tenure in New France were implanted directly from France. The initial institutions of land tenure in much of English speaking Canada were of English origin, but drawn from the systems of the New England Colonies and of the United States at different points in their histories. In any consideration of Canadian economic history, the notion of Europe in America has to be supplemented by the notion of New England and the United States in Canada, and the differences between the systems of France, on the one hand, and of New England and the United States, on the other, have to be taken into account.
Settlement was only formally controlled by these systems. Under every system there was `squatting'. In significant measure the frontier moved forward out of control. For example, abuse of `land script' seems to have interfered with almost all regulations concerning alienation of Crown or public lands, from Virginia in the early seventeenth century to Northern Ontario in the early twentieth. Land script may be defined, in general, as documents conferring a right to land, or a right to purchase land, under certain conditions. Innumerable small grants, promises of grants, or location tickets in anticipation of grants were given to discharged soldiers. Not infrequently these documents were purchased at very low prices by officers or other speculators who thereby acquired large holdings, sometimes for purposes other than settlement. Small holdings granted to supposed grain farmers in the Far West of the United States were bought up and converted into large cattle ranches. In Northern Ontario small holdings intended to be farms were consolidated into extensive pulp wood operations. In other instances large holdings were broken down into family farms. There were forces shaping the nature of land tenure despite the formal systems in place. Still, it was the formal systems that had the sanction of law. They were of great consequence. It was the formal systems of land tenure, reforming under changing circumstances, that shaped the growth and development of North America.
Similarities between the different systems at the level of administrative practice and malpractice were matched by similarities in the general nature of all Euro-American systems. They all grew out of mediaeval feudalism. All were forms of a progression from personal homage and transfers in labour and kind to monetary payments due on parcels of land. In the case of English feudalism, by the time of North American settlement, the array of transfers had been monetized and further reduced to one, annual quit-rent. In every case, the return of payments in kind or money to those who administered the economic systems were initially justified as support for common (public) works. Feudal dues and quit-rents were a form of taxation that evolved into fees, reserves, sales, tariffs, sales taxes and income taxes. Feudalism gave way to market capitalism in the economic sphere and to the nation state in the political sphere. Distribution of wealth, private and public, changed accordingly. This was true everywhere in Europe and America. What differed from place to place and time to time was the form and extent of the change.
French feudalism in America was quite different from English feudalism in America. French feudalism was more centrally controlled under mercantilist policies, and it was markedly less evolved towards capitalistic and individualistic property arrangements than was English feudalism. Its transfer to America re-enforced the role of the Crown as protector of the serfs. Its evolution slowed in the conditions of America, whereas English feudalism experienced an accelerated attenuation in America. Feudalism was formally abolished in France and in the United States during their respective, late eighteenth century revolutions. The Canadian economy, a product of one of those revolutions and isolated from the other, was born divided into the most advanced form of English feudalism and the least advanced for of French feudalism.
In Virginia and Maryland, grants were generally proprietorial, entailing a quit-rent of 2 shillings per acre per year. The quit-rent discharged feudal obligations to the Crown, and provided revenue for government of the colony. Grants generally included a `head right', that is, an additional 50 acres per person settled on the grant. Individuals could acquire small grants of this sort, but they had to provide their own passage to America. Perhaps as a consequence of this, large holdings worked by indentured labour became the norm, but the suitability of soil and climate for production of tobacco, is usually given as the cause of the prevalence of large plantations. Tobacco could be produced economically with an operation of any size, so that vestigially feudal institutions favouring large estates with numerous tenants and workers found a favourable environment in that trade. Abuses of head right also contributed to the prevalence of large holdings.
As this system evolved, with the use of slaves after 1700, into the production of rice, indigo, and cotton, settlers with smaller holdings on the interior frontier sold out to migrating large plantations. In the beginning the large plantations, following the practice of aboriginals, exhausted the soil in one area by growing tobacco, and then moved to new land. Small holders capitalized on this, institutionalizing the advance of the frontier west towards the Mississippi and north into the area south of the Great Lakes.
In the middle colonies, New York and Pennsylvania, large, proprietorial grants were the rule in the beginning. New York had been a Dutch colony in which large grants were made to `patroons' (proprietors) who claimed much of the land along the Hudson River. The system was continued under the British. Quit-rents were collected in New York almost as systematically as in Maryland and Virginia, until `up state' or western New York was settled under the influence of the system developed in Massachusetts. Large proprietorships also characterized Pennsylvania where the usual quit-rent of 2 to 3 shillings per acre per year was generally enforced. There, however, many of the large holdings were subdivided, and the phenomenon of `squatting', that is, the practice of individuals taking up ungranted land in advance of the frontier, became an important element in the settlement process.
Massachusetts was not an entirely different case. Grants were made by the Crown, but during the Puritan Protectorate conditions were different. Feudal rights, insofar as they served the King, were not protected. Indeed, the Puritans, a small `p' Protestant faction of the Church of England, refused to admit any distinction between what they considered to be erstwhile feudal classes. They contrived to receive their grants, without reference to quit-rents. Grants were made to an association of individual proprietors, each of whom had a share, a few shares being set aside as free: one for the first settler, two for a minister of religion, and three to support a school. Grantees undertook mixed farming organized in townships of thirty six square miles. In the first few years of a new settlement town centers were established, a commons was delineated, and immediately adjacent land was cleared and made productive. Later, but as soon as possible, individual holdings were taken up in the surrounding township. The main difference in the case of these settlements was their religious purpose and their deliberate deviance from established institutions of land tenure.
As the Massachusetts form of settlement spread west, the `associates' of the `leader' frequently were fictitious. Still, the substance of this general procedure for setting up a new settlement remained. It was carried into the Eastern Townships of Lower Canada by the United Empire Loyalists. Having been abused by speculators, the leaders and associates system and township sized grants were given only a small place in the alienation of land in Upper Canada, but the force of the Massachussets precedent can be seen in the absence of any mention of quit-rents in clauses 43 and 44 of the Constitutional Act establishing the province, and in the provision that all future grants were to be made in free and common soccage.
Almost a century later, formally capitalistic and evolved into free homestead grants, the Massachusetts system passed onto the Canadian Prairies. The shock of its imposition on the structure of land tenure about Fort Gary, the old Selkirk settlement peopled largely by Metis, is alleged to have caused the Riel Rebellion. Much had changed in the system, but there were still identifying characteristics: a township, six by six miles, divided into 36 square sections, with reserves for the support of a school, and to finance the building of a railway. All grants were freehold.
There is a theory about the rise and decline of feudal or feudal-like institutions, consideration of which can throw light on the role of the open frontier in the evolution of feudalism in America. According to this theory an open frontier should deepen, not attenuate feudalism. The theory is shared, in one aspect or another, by E.G. Wakefield, who set out the conditions of successful colonization in the early 19th century , by Evsey Domar, who sought to explain the deepening of feudalism in eighteenth century Russia, and by R.W. Fogel and S.L. Engerman, who attempted to explain the economic success of slavery in the United States.
The theory is simple. Where land is abundant and labour is scarce, the return to labour is greater than the return to land, and it is more profitable to own labour than to own land. In Russia and the Southern English colonies in America, where land was relatively abundant, feudalism deepened and slavery succeeded. In western Europe, where land was relatively scarce, or became so, capitalistic ownership of land and a free labour market emerged.
There is also a theory that explains the relatively high return to labour in the United States to the past existence of an open frontier. Having the alternative of life on the frontier, labour was in a position to receive a greater return. In this theory the abundance of land is used to explain the improvement of the position of the non landowner. The theory has general support insofar as it was in America, where there was an open frontier that the most advanced form of capitalism emerged.
There is something to be said for both theories, but neither takes into account all the factors involved. In the English colonies, specifically, in the northern colonies, there was a strongly institutionalized value judgement that society ought not to be made up of classes, but of individuals, all owning, or having the right to own property. So it was that in America, where capitalism, in this sense, was entrenched, an open frontier was the occasion of further strengthening of capitalism. In Russia, where feudalism was entrenched, an open frontier was the occasion of the deepening of feudalism. This latter, in some sense, seems to have been true also of the southern colonies and of New France.
This, of course, was the position taken by Adam Smith. Not just agriculture, but capitalistic agriculture, in the face of relatively less productive though abundant land, was the economic substance of the most successful colonies in America. In line with this assertion it is part of the Distinctive Regional Economies Hypothesis of Canadian Economic Development that Nova Scotia fell behind because it was weak in agriculture; that francophone Lower Canada fell behind because it was weak in capitalism; that Upper Canada, growing from capitalistic agriculture, was the most successful of these three colonies; and that all three were substantially different economies because they differed in this way.
The Distinctive Regional Economies Hypothesis is in line with the Adam Smith position, but does not rely on it. Whatever the relative merits of these theories, they do not call into question the story told here. Success in agriculture with capitalistic, market oriented institutions is unquestioned as the foundation of relatively rapid, balanced economic growth, in both theories. The sequence of cause and effect is all that is in dispute. These conditions were achieved in the middle and northern colonies of New England, and in Upper Canada. It was not achieved in the southern colonies, in the Maritimes, or in what has become francophone Quebec. For this reason, there were at least five distinct economies in British North America, between 1763 and 1776. The disintegrating force of this regionalization was reduced by the Civil War in the United States. It was increased by Confederation in Canada.
Nor was Virginia a wilderness in 1607 when the first white settlers arrived. At least two hundred villages could be found in tidewater Virginia and Maryland, and wide Indian highways connected tidewater with piedmont, and the Potomac River with the James River, located eighty to one hundred miles to the south. Indians created hundreds of meadows out of the thick woodland that covered the area when they slashed trees and burned forests to prepare new fields for cultivation. Since Indians used a field only as long as yields stayed high and then let it lie fallow until fertility was restored, they steadily created new fields and yet more clearings from the forests.
English settlers relied upon Indians for food and instruction in the use of the land during their first few years in the region. The first Virginians lusted for instant riches or a profitable staple, and were too busy with these concerns to pay much attention to their own subsistence. They therefore turned to Indians for food, exhausting the Indian surpluses and cutting into their subsistence. Once the English started to grow their own food and tobacco, they adopted Indian methods of cultivation, including the system of field rotation the natives had perfected.
Whites believed that Indians were savage heathens who held no real title to the lands they used, and therefore took up land near Indian settlements, disrupting their ability to hunt and collect wild fruit and herbs. Whenever a dispute erupted between the English and Indians, settlers resorted to violence and pillage of crops and villages. Finally, in 1622, the Indians revolted and killed 347 white settlers.. English retribution for this attack, and for a similar uprising in 1644, was both swift and vicious. The English massacred many Indians and sent most of the rest into exile far beyond the limits of white settlement. By 1669, about two thousand Indians lived in tidewater Virginia, only a third the number found there in 1607 (Kulikoff, pp.~28--29.).
The Pilgrims appeared to have been completely ignorant of the geographic characteristics of the area in which they found themselves. After the initial landing at Provincetown, three exploring expeditions were sent ashore to assess the environs and to find a satisfactory site for the colony. The Pilgrims did not know that the coastal tribes had been almost completely decimated only three to four years before their arrival. As the newcomers roamed the Cape, they frequently encountered evidence of recent human occupancy -- fields with plant stubble, wigwams, caches, burial sites, European goods -- all deserted, abandoned, unused. While they were fearful of attacks from the natives, they were also amazed and perplexed that they did not see them, except for a few fleeting forms at a distance. Among other things, the Pilgrims wanted to interview the natives to get more information about the area. once an exploring party was attacked, but its members defended themselves without loss. So the task of exploring proceeded without the benefit of native advice. In selecting the colony's site, the Pilgrims put a high premium on the location of abandoned Indian fields and other evidence of indigenous land use as guides in the critical decisions that led to the selection of the colony's site.
They built a small, compact village with houses of sawed timbers facing a single pathway. The thatched roofs of the buildings were to be the cause of many fires. Later a palisade was erected on the hilltop. A meetinghouse that served for both civil and religious functions was the only other public building. In the spring an Indian wandered into their midst. He spoke a few words of English and informed them that he was the sole survivor of the Paxtet tribe upon whose land the Pilgrims had settled. He showed them the Indian methods of planting maize -- hilling with sticks and placing fish in the hills for fertilizer. The settlers continued to use Indian cropping methods until they were able to prepare the fields for English methods of agriculture; they were but the first of many emigrants to adopt temporarily Indian agricultural methods in a frontier situation. Originally the Pilgrims numbered a hundred persons, but more than half of them died during the first winter. The survivors persisted in their decision, and natural increase and immigration slowly increased the population (McManis, pp.~27 \& 29.).
In the seventeenth century, Nova Scotia was little more than an ill-defined military frontier. Most grants were `gratuitous', going to officers and soldiers in return for military service. Before and after the American Revolution, grants were frequently located with a view to defence, and some form of military service was entailed. Quit-rents were stipulated, but usually forgiven for the first ten years. When colonial governments attempted to collect them, after delays well beyond ten years, the costs of so doing exceeded anything that could be taken in. Except on Prince Edward Island, quit-rents, a defining element of attenuated feudalism in the Maritimes, died without legal formality.
Small holdings were the rule in post Revolutionary Nova Scotia. In 1783, some eminent Loyalists petitioned for grants of 5,000 acres, alleging that a strong (feudal) aristocracy would prevent a revolution in the colonies remaining loyal to the Crown. Protests of other Loyalists, who could not pretend to such grants, caused hesitation on the part of the mother country. In the end the usual grant for civilians was set at 100 acres for the head of a family, and an additional 50 acres for each additional member.
In 1790, following the example of the United States, Britain suspended grants in Nova Scotia, proposing to sell land at one dollar (U.S.) per acre. The scheme was never implemented, with the result that, for seventeen years, no grants were made and settlement proceeded though licenced squatting based on location tickets. From this unsatisfactory state of affairs, driven by the need for revenue and the poverty of the settlers, what remained of the feudal system evolved into freehold under colonial (provincial) control of resources.
In 1807, to generate revenue and to facilitate security of title, the Colonial Office removed the suspension of grants, and attempted to collect the quit-rents. Unable to pay, the settlers continued to hold their land as squatters. Again, in 1827, an attempt to collect quit-rents failed to generate an acceptable level of revenue. The Colonial Office inaugurated sale of ungranted lands, but there were few buyers. In 1832, there was some success in New Brunswick with large land sales to a developing capitalist, but timber interests were opposed because it threatened their access to forests. Pressed by the British government to carry a larger share of the costs of government, in 1835, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick bought the right to the quit-rents for one thousand, five hundred pounds, and one thousand pounds, respectively. In 1837, the provinces assumed the civil list in return for control over crown lands. With responsible government, after 1848, under this arrangement, the colonies paid all of their own expenses, except defence. Revenue was generated largely by fees associated with settlement, and by tariffs.
Prince Edward Island was a special case of the New York sort of proprietorial colony. St. John's Island, as it was then called, was divided into 67 lots (townships), each of which was granted to someone to whom the Crown felt indebted or, simply, generous. The townships were called lots because the grantees were chosen by a lottery from a larger set of possible recipients. A letter written to Viscount George Townsend on July 4, 1767, informing him that he was a grantee, says much about the procedure of alienation and about the state of the colony.
Fate has allotted your Lordship the Township No. 56 on the Island of St. John's. The surveyor describes it in his report to be, in general, of a very fertile soil, has 150 acres cleared and 7 homes, lyes [sic] very convenient for fishing and cultivation and has great advantages from the road, from St. Peter's Bay and Bay Fortune, passing through it (Bolger).Within ten years a quarter of the lots granted had been sold to new owners. Records of the sales were ill kept, leaving ownership in doubt, and adding to the problems of tenure that plagued Island settlement for a century.
There were conditions attached to the grants. Quit-rents, at the rate of 2, 4 or 6 shillings per acre, depending on the lot, were to be paid by tenants. One third of the land was to be settled in four years, and all of it in ten years, one person for every 200 acres. Only Protestants were to be allowed as settlers.
Some proprietors attempted settlement, most did not. A cross section of settling and non-settling proprietors attempted to collect quit-rents. The settlers themselves, some of whom had cleared land before the lottery, attempted to avoid the rents by having the land escheated for want of fulfillment of the conditions of the grant. When indeterminable ownership and the absence of a court of escheats blocked them, many turned their attention to fishing or lumbering, rather than pour their energy into land to which they had dubious title. In 1808, legislation provided secure title to those who actually worked the land, but did not solve the problem of quit-rents and escheats. On entering the Canadian federation in 1873, the Island secured Dominion money to buy out the proprietors. In all it received a loan of $782,403.33. The loan was never repaid, though over $600,000 was received from subsequent resale. Until Confederation, then, vestiges of feudalism weighed heavily on Island agriculture.
Feudal institutions were not a factor in the economic development of Newfoundland. The island was a product of Mercantilist commercial policy alone, as want of arable land sealed the fate of agriculture from the start. Attempts at settlement occurred in the first decade of the seventeenth century. Companies initiating settlement in Newfoundland were based in London, rather than in the west coast areas from which the Newfoundland seasonal (migratory) fishery was organized. Some of the London based capital originated in iron and coal ventures, and it was organized to cope with longer time horizons than was the annually reorganized capital in the fishery. The London interests intended to exploit their organizational advantage by establishing a resident population dependent on agriculture and, they hoped, iron mining. Whatever the conditions of land tenure that were entailed, the venture was unsuccessful, leaving nothing on the island but a remnant of fisherfolk who practiced auxiliary gardening.
Agricultural settlement was technically impossible, and no iron ore was found at that time. West Country interests, fearing that permanent settlement would give London a monopoly of the fish trade to southern Europe, worked against the settlers in Parliament. They secured laws to prohibit the settlers from entering the fishery, and, in the mid 1660s, to require their removal from the island altogether. It is as reasonable to assert that the settlers were expelled to prevent their starving as to prevent their pilfering and vandalizing the shore establishments of the fishing enterprises. Both assertions were used to justify expulsion, though control of the Newfoundland trade was the operative motive.
Without overseas support, and legislated off the Island, many of the settlers migrated to New England. Some remained. In 1675, a year before the American Revolution, there were approximately 1600 residents on the Avalon Peninsula. Legally there were no property rights on the island, as far as the English were concerned, except the rights to fish drying areas established by the first captain out each season.
Newfoundland was not the only place in which settlers failed. At least one colony was completely swallowed up by the frontier in Virginia, the fate of the settlers forever lost to history. Many in New England and New France were victims of Indian raids. They had no choice but to fight back. Some were reduced to barbarism and starvation. Many gave up. Some Europeans turned to life among the native North Americans, and, as we read in the land registers of the Acadians, `{\itl Ulysse Comeau et sa femme sauvage\/}', many native North Americans joined the Europeans. The frontier of European expansion was an ill defined and messy thing. Still, on the whole, European expansion was a success, and certainly by the time of the American Revolution it was evident that that was the case. Perhaps its success was thought to be evident from the beginning, because then, as now, the debauched, the depraved, the brutalized, and the dead were not counted.
A seigneur received his land as a vassal of the Company. He did not buy the land or pay rent in a capitalistic sense. He was expected to perform certain duties and to be the recipient of certain dues from of those to whom he, in turn, subfeifed. Title to the land, as in France, remained with the King.
Under the Coutume de Paris, the first duty of the seigneur, and, indeed, of his vassals, was to declare foi et hommage to the King. They were bondsmen. The seigneur, among other duties, was to settle his grant by having the land cleared for agricultural purposes. He was required to reside on the land, as was the custom in France at the time, to set up the requisite mills, and to maintain a court for the settling of minor disputes. He was allowed to charge a banalite of one fourteenth of the grain ground at his mill. He was to allow the censitaires the right to graze their stock on the seigneurial common. Disputes between the censitaires and the seigneurs were to be settled in the courts of the King's provincial agent, the Intendant.
The habitant, who actually worked the land, was bound to pay cens et rentes, a return in kind or money, to the seigneur. He gave military service to the King, on an occasional basis. In some cases he was bound to a corvee, that is, a specified labour service, both to the seigneur and to the King, usually for communal (public) works such as the building of roads and bridges. He was bound to render lods et vente, that is, on selling his land to someone other than a direct heir, that is to another censitaire, for example, one twelfth of the sale price was to be returned to the seigneur, who had the right to buy the land at the sale price within forty days of the sale. The non-capitalistic, feudal nature of such transactions was evident in the stipulation that the price was not for ownership of the land, but for use of the land under the improvements made by the previous tenant.
If the system of land tenure used by France in America was changed by the circumstances of the frontier, the changes were not substantial. It was possible to escape the system in New France by moving into commercial activity, in the fur trade in particular, and there was land available that was not being cultivated under a designated, local seigneur; but this was hardly different from conditions in Europe. Escape from feudal agriculture into commercial pursuits or labour in the villages and cities was common in France, and the feudal system had been adapted to the existence of uncultivated, arable `wastes' from its earliest times, and had been re-adapted following the devastations of the fourteenth century.
Division of the land into long strips running back from the rivers was not a consequence of special frontier conditions in New France. It was a carbon copy of the pattern of cultivation in the north and west of France, from which most of the habitants had migrated. It reflected the use of the charrue, the wheeled plough, characteristic of certain parts of France and England, where the soil and landscape called for and permitted the use of such a heavy, cumbersome instrument.
Records of New France indicate that in some instances land was divided into trapezoidal portions, centering on a small circle. According to speculation, the intention was to facilitate concentration of the habitants in the event of Indian attack. As the threat of attack became more remote, so the speculation runs, the aversion of the habitants to the mean and swindling character of villagers, an aversion developed before leaving France, led them back to the more customary parallel strip pattern. Such speculation is not without merit, feeding, as it does, on the assumption of feudal, rather than commercial, values in the population. It would seem, however, that, in the absence of any reason for doing otherwise, the forces that dictated the long strip pattern in the first place would re-assert themselves, whether or not there was any aversion to village life.
The `aversion of the habitants to village life' has received much attention from students of the seigneurial system. There were relatively few villages in New France. The explanations are legion. It is alleged that a prohibition on the establishment of villages, without the king's permission, was the cause. Land was set aside for villages, however, from the beginning. There were no requests to establish them. Royal regulation was not an effective constraint. It is alleged that the long narrow shape of the holdings (rotures) made it difficult to establish villages after the land was granted, but, if land was set aside from the beginning, that should not have been a problem. It is also alleged that the habitants preferred to live far from any concentration of population in the hope of evading supervision. One seigneur alleged that the censitaires had `vicious habits', and preferred distant locations on distant seigneuries `to keep these covered up' (Harris, p. 180.). Another allegation is that the habitants lived on small, self sufficient holdings, so they produced little surplus for sale and did not need service centers.
All of these speculations are offered in the context of explaining the slow, relatively uncommercialized advance of agriculture in New France. They parallel the plethora of explanations allegedly accounting for the absence of a bourgeoisie in post Conquest francophone Quebec (Durocher.). Whether before or after the Conquest, it would seem that some explanation must be given for `le ``retard'' du Quebec et l'inferiorite economique des Canadiens Francais'. Munro alleged that the seigneurial system was better suited for defense than settlement, and that `so long as defence was more important than opulence, the institution could fully justify its existence' (the Seigneurs of Old Canada, p.~88.). Still others allege that the relatively slow growth of France itself, in the eighteenth century, is the reason for New France's lagging advance. Most frequently, in recent texts, in line with the staple export explanation of Canadian development [or underdevelopment], it is alleged that the fur trade drained the energies of agriculture in New France by drawing off labour and enterprise.
The Great Central Plain First Penetrated in New France
Rarely does one find an assertion that it was in the feudal nature of the seigneurial system to be uncommercialized and slow growing. The system itself explains the absence of villages. Never does one find an assertion, following Wakefield, Domar, and Fogel and Engerman, with respect to feudalism elsewhere, that French feudalism deepened in contact with the abundant land of the new world, but there is every reason to believe that that was the case. There are accounts, however, such as that of Doris Heneker, that assert that on contact with the capitalistic system of their English-speaking neighbours, as early as 1788, the habitants appreciated its economic superiority, and petitioned for its adoption among themselves.
Long Open Fields in New France
The usage according to which the seigneuries were governed, la Coutume de Paris, was legally established in 1640. Several Ordinances modifying the usage in the course of the ancienne regime in Quebec made no substantial changes. The system was protested, subjected to legal contests, and legislatively reformulated. But that is true of all systems of property rights. The first substantive change came after the Conquest, in 1763, when, for a time, la Coutume de Paris was declared not enforceable. It was subsequently re-established, by the Quebec Act of 1774, outside the protective jurisdiction of the French monarchy. English (Scottish and Yankee) seigneurs, and some French seigneurs, then raised the level of dues. The censitaires, for their part, took the same opportunity to ignore regulations on inheritance. In 1791, the Constitution Act, accommodating Loyalists emigrating from the United States, declared Upper Canada and all those parts of Lower Canada not included under the seigneurial system in 1763, to be under the British system of grants in fee simple. The Coutume de Paris survived in its so-appointed territory, formally unchanged, until it was abolished by the legislature of Canada in 1854.
The land tenure system, and, in consequence, the economic and social structure of New France was quite different from that of English North America. During the High Middle Ages, the south east of England and the north west of France had been conquered and re- conquered by French and English monarchs, and, no doubt, there is a sense in which a serf was affected little by, and cared not, which title, France or England, his king claimed. So, one might make a case that the French in Quebec were indifferent between a French or an English monarch. And one might go on from there to assert that French and English speaking Canadians were equally British under the Crown, whereas the United States was not under any Crown, and it was American. But, however indifferent a serf might be to which monarch his hommage was due, he was not indifferent to the usage by which it was due, or, indeed, to the language and mentality of those enforcing it. The fact was that English usage in Canada came from the New England Colonies. It was American. French usage came from France. Both systems were successful. The former was capitalistic and commercial, in comparison, and produced a surplus that went into commerce and manufacturing, and into geographical expansion and an increase in population. The latter produced a surplus that went into limited geographical expansion of agriculture and an increase in population. The former, supplemented by migration of capital and labour from Europe, expanded more rapidly. The latter expanded, more slowly, but it did expand, and on that expansion la survivance des Quebecois was assured.
Apart from Spanish settlements, New France was the most feudal of the North American colonies. The northern English colonies were the least feudal, though they remained under an attenuated English feudalism. Following the American Revolution, the attenuated feudal institutions of New England were transferred to Upper Canada where, despite the hopes of the First Governor, John Graves Simcoe, they became even more attenuated. The result was the incorporation into post Revolutionary British North America of two very different forms of land tenure. A most important very long run factor in the disintegration of Canada was thereby set in place.
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