disputants, so that appeals to the royal courts were not common.  These latter tribunals, each with a judge of its own, sat at Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal.  Their procedure, like that of the seigneurial courts, was simple, free from chicane, and inexpensive.  A lawsuit in New France did not bring ruinous costs.  “I will not say,” remarks the facetious La Hontan, “that the Goddess of Justice is more chaste here than in France, but at any rate, if she is sold, she is sold more cheaply.  In Canada we do not pass through the clutches of advocates, the talons of attorneys, and the claws of clerks.  These vermin do not as yet infest the land.  Every one here pleads his own cause.  Our Themis is prompt, and she does not bristle with fees, costs, and charges.”

Throughout the French period there was no complaint from the habitants concerning the burdens of the seigneurial tenure.  Here and there disputes arose as to the exact scope and nature of various obligations, but these the intendant adjusted with a firm hand and an eye to the general interest.  On the whole, the system rendered a highly useful service, by bringing the entire rural population into close and neighborly contact, by affording a firm foundation for the colony’s social structure, and by contributing greatly to the defensive unity of New France.  So long as the land was weak and depended for its very existence upon the solidarity of its people, so long as the intendant was there to guide the system with a praetorian hand and to prevent abuses, so long as strength was more to be desired than opulence, the seigneurial system served New France better than any other scheme of landholding would have done.  It was only when the administration of the country came into new and alien hands that Canadian seigneurialism became a barrier to economic progress and an obsolete system which had to be abolished.

CHAPTER IX

THE COUREURS-DE-BOIS

The center and soul of the economic system in New France was the traffic in furs.  Even before the colony contained more than a handful of settlers, the profit-making possibilities of this trade were recognized.  It grew rapidly even in the early days, and for more than a hundred and fifty years furnished New France with its sinews of war and peace.  Beginning on the St. Lawrence, this trade moved westward along the Great Lakes, until toward the end of the seventeenth century it passed to the headwaters of the Mississippi.  During the two administrations of Frontenac the fur traffic grew to large proportions, nor did it show much sign of shrinking for a generation thereafter.  With the ebb-tide of French military power, however, the trader’s hold on these western lands began to relax, and before the final overthrow of New France it had become greatly weakened.