Address at the Bar of the Legislative Assembly of Canada Delivered on the 11th and 14th March, 1853, on Behalf of Certain Proprietors of Seigniories An Act to Define Seigniorial Rights

Excerpt from Address at the Bar of the Legislative Assembly of Canada: Delivered on the 11th and 14th March, 1853, on Behalf of Certain Proprietors of Seigniories in Lower Canada, Against the Second Reading of the Bill Intitutled; "An Act to Define Seigniorial Rights in Lower Canada, and to Facilitate the Redemption Thereof"

It would be a singular thi considering what we know of France, if in the seventeenth and earl part of fie eighteenth centuries, any idea should have been entertained by the reach Crown, of creating a body of aristocratic land-holders, as mere land-granting trustees for the public, especially for a portion of the public then considered so low as to be unworthy of attention. For ages, indeed down to the great revolution in the 18th century, the doctrine which prevailed in France, was a doctrine which made public trusts a property not one which made of pro pert a public trust. The Seignior who was a Justicier, was the absolute owner of all e man and onerous dues, which he collected from the people subject to his control. 0 functionaries, sien, whom he em loyed to distribute the justice such as it was - which he executed, held their 0 cos for their own benefit - bought them and sold them. Trusts were then so truly property, that the majority of the functionaries of the very Crown itself possessed their offices as real estate, which might be seized at law, sold, and the roceeds of the sale dealt with 'ust as though the ofiices had been so much land. E whole system regarded t e Throne as worthy of the very highest respec t; the Aristocracy as worthy of a degree of respect only something below that accorded to the Crown the country popu ation, as wor thy of no respect at all. Was it at a time when public trusts were pro rty when the masses were only not slaves when we must suppose that the ranch King, about to settle a new and great country, would naturally seek to introduce there something like the state of things which prevailed in the old country was it too, when the King was here creating Sci niore with the prerogatives of Harm justi er'ers, and raising some of them to hi rank in the peerage that he gave to these his grantees, what only (purported to proport but was really a ublic trust, and this trust to be execute in behalf of a class or whose welfare e esmd next to nothing The idea is natural to us because we associate the power of the Crown with the happiness and welfare of the people governed. We are so sensitive, that we shrink, when speaking of the classes of old called the lower orders, from calling them by that name but this was not so then. Then the masses were emphatically the lower orders or rather they were hardly an order at all. This was the state of things here, at the time of the making of these grants.

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