What a crude method of dealing with a problem which had
its roots deep down in the very law and geography of the
colony! But this royal remedy for the ills of New France
went the way of many others. The authorities saw that it
would work no cure, and only one attempt was ever made
to punish those habitants who showed defiance. The
intendant Bigot, in 1748, ordered that some houses which
various habitants had erected at L'Ange-Gardien should
be pulled down, but there was a great hue and cry from
the owners, and the order remained unenforced. The practice
of parcelling lands in the old way continued, and in time
these cotes, as the habitants termed each line of houses
along the river, stretched all the way from Quebec to
Montreal. From the St Lawrence the whole colony looked
like one unending, straggling village-street.

But let us outline the dues and services which the
habitant, by the terms of his title-deed, must render to
his seigneur. First among these were the annual payments
commonly known as the cens et rentes. To the habitant
this was a sort of annual rental, although it was really
made up of two separate dues, each of which had a different
origin and nature. The cens was a money payment and merely
nominal in amount. Back in the early days of feudalism
it was very probably a greater burden; in Canada it never
exceeded a few sous for a whole farm. The rate of cens
was not uniform: each seigneur was entitled to what he
and the habitant might agree upon, but it never amounted
to more than the merest pittance, nor could it ever by
any stretch of the imagination be deemed a burden. With