way. This way, of course, was by the issue of royal edicts.
Two of these decrees reached the colony in the due course
of events. They are commonly known as the Arrets of Marly,
and bear date July 11, 1711. Both were carefully prepared
and their provisions show that the royal authorities
understood just where the entire trouble lay.

The first arret went direct to the point. 'The king has
been informed,' it recites, 'that there are some seigneurs
who refuse under various pretexts to grant lands to
settlers who apply for them, preferring rather the hope
that they may later sell these lands.' Such attitude,
the decree went on to declare, was absolutely repugnant
to His Majesty's intentions, and especially 'unfair to
incoming settlers who thus find land less open to free
settlement in situations best adapted for agriculture.'
It was, therefore, ordered that if any applicant for
lands should be by any seigneur denied a reasonable grant
on the customary terms, the intendant should forthwith
step in and issue a deed on his own authority. In this
case the annual payments were to go to the colonial
treasury, and not to the seigneur. This decree simplified
matters considerably. After it became the law of the
colony no one desiring land from a seigneur's ungranted
domain was expected to offer anything above the customary
annual dues and services. The seigneur had no legal right
to demand more. By one stroke of the royal pen the Canadian
seigneur had lost all right of ownership in his seigneury;
he became from this time on a trustee holding lands in
trust for the future immigrant and for the sons of the