underfed labourers of the field cringed and cowered before every lordly whim. Most readers seem to get their notions of chivalry from Scott's Talisman, and their ideas on feudalism from the same author's immortal Ivanhoe. While scholars keep up a merry disputation as to the historical origin of the feudal system, the public imagination goes steadily on with its own curious picture of how that system lived and moved and had its being. A prolix tale of origins would be out of place in this chronicle; but even the mind of the man in the street ought to be set right as regards what feudalism was designed to do, and what in fact it did, for mankind, while civilization battled its way down the ages.

Feudalism was a system of social relations based upon land. It grew out of the chaos which came upon Europe in the centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire. The fall of Roman power flattened the whole political structure of Western Europe, and nothing arose to take its place. Every lord or princeling was left to depend for defence upon the strength of his own arm; so he gathered around him as many vassals as he could. He gave them land; they gave him what he most wanted,—a promise to serve and aid in time of war. The lord gave and promised to guard; the vassal took and promised to serve. Thus there was created a personal relation, a bond of mutual loyalty, wardship, and service, which bound liegeman to lord with hoops of steel. No one can read Carlyle's trenchant Past and Present without bearing away some vivid and altogether wholesome impressions concerning the essential humanity of this great mediaeval institution. It shares with the Christian Church the honour of having made life worth living in days when all else combined to make it intolerable. It brought at least a semblance of social, economic, and political order out of helpless and hopeless disorganization. It helped Europe slowly to recover from the greatest catastrophe in all her history.

But our little systems have their day, as the poet assures us. They have their day and cease to be. Feudalism had its day, from dawn to twilight a day of picturesque memory. But it did not cease to exist when its day of service was done. Long after the necessity for mutual service and protection had passed away; long after the growth of firm monarchies with powerful standing armies had established the reign of law, the feudal system kept its hold upon the social order in France and elsewhere. The obligation of military service, when no longer needed, was replaced by dues and payments. The modern cash nexus replaced the old personal bond between vassal and lord. The feudal system became the seigneurial system. The lord became the seigneur; the vassal became the censitaire or peasant cultivator whose chief function was to yield revenue for his seigneur's purse. These were great changes which sapped the spirit of the ancient institution. No longer bound to their dependants by any personal tie, the seigneurs usually turned affairs over to their bailiffs, men with hearts of adamant, who squeezed from the seigneuries every sou the hapless peasantry could yield. These publicans of the old regime have much to answer for. They and their work were not least among the causes which brought upon the crown and upon the privileged orders that terrible retribution of the Red Terror. Not with the mediaeval institution of feudalism, but with its emaciated descendant, the seigneurial system of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ought men to associate, if they must, their notions of grinding oppression and class hatred.

Out to his new colony on the St Lawrence the king sent this seigneurial system. A gross and gratuitous outrage, a characteristic manifestation of Bourbon stupidity—that is a common verdict upon the royal action. But it may well be asked: What else was there to do? The seigneurial system was still the basis of land tenure in France. The nobility and even the throne rested upon it. The Church sanctioned and supported it. The people in general, whatever their attitude towards seigneurialism, were familiar with no other system of landholding. It was not, like the encomienda system which Spain planted in Mexico, an arrangement cut out of new cloth for the more ruthless exploitation of a fruitful domain. The Puritan who went to Massachusetts Bay took his system of socage tenure along with him. The common law went with the flag of England. It was quite as natural that the Custom of Paris should follow the fleurs-de-lis.

There was every reason to expect, moreover, that in the New World the seigneurial system would soon free itself from those barnacles of privilege and oppression which were encrusted on its sides at home. Here was a small settlement of pioneers surrounded by hostile aborigines. The royal arm, strong as it was at home, could not well afford protection a thousand leagues away. The colony must organize and learn to protect itself. In other words, the colonial environment was very much like that in which the yeomen of the Dark Ages had found themselves. And might not its dangers be faced in the old feudal way? They were faced in this way. In the history of French Canada we find the seigneurial system forced back towards its old feudal plane. We see it gain in vitality; we see the old personal bond between lord and vassal restored to some of its pristine strength; we see the military aspects of the system revived, and its more sordid phases thrust aside. It turned New France into a huge armed camp; it gave the colony a closely knit military organization; and, in a day when Canada needed every ounce of her strength to ward off encircling enemies both white and red, it did for her what no other system could be expected to do.

But to return to the little cradle of empire at the foot of Cape Diamond. Champlain for a score of years worked himself to premature old age in overcoming those many obstacles which always meet the pioneer. More settlers were brought; a few seigneuries were granted; priests were summoned from France; a new fort was built; and by sheer perseverance a settlement of about three hundred souls had been established by 1627. But no single individual, however untiring in his efforts, could do all that needed to be done. It was consequently arranged, with the entire approval of Champlain, that the task of building up the colony should be entrusted to a great colonizing company formed for the purpose under royal auspices. In this project the moving spirit was no less a personage than Cardinal Richelieu, the great minister of Louis XIII. Official France was now really interested. Hitherto its interest, while profusely enough expressed, had been little more than perfunctory. With Richelieu as its sponsor a company was easily organized. Though by royal decree it was chartered as the Company of New France, it became more commonly known as the Company of One Hundred Associates; for it was a co-operative organization with one hundred members, some of them traders and merchants, but more of them courtiers. Colonizing companies were the fashion of Richelieu's day. Holland and England were exploiting new lands by the use of companies; there was no good reason why France should not do likewise.

This system of company exploitation was particularly popular with the monarchs of all these European countries. It made no demands on the royal purse. If failure attended the company's ventures the king bore no financial loss. But if the company succeeded, if its profits were large and its achievements great, the king might easily step in and claim his share of it all as the price of royal protection and patronage. In both England and Holland the scheme worked out in that way. An English stock company began and developed the work which finally placed India in the possession of the British crown; a similar Dutch organization in due course handed over Java as a rich patrimony to the king of the Netherlands. France, however, was not so fortunate. True enough, the