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'AN ACCOUNT

OF THE

NOBLESSE, OR GENTRY, IN CANADA,

IN THE YEAR 1775.

THERE are only twenty-two names of noble families in all Canada; therefore, if we allow five perfons to a name, there are about one hundred noble perfons in Canada, men, women, and children.

This Noblefe has nothing to do with the landed property of the country in confequence of their nobility. Some of them, indeed, have feigniories; but others of them are exceeding poor, not having col. fterling, fome not 30l. ayear, to maintain themfelves and their families, either in land or other property.

Those of them who are tolerably rich, live in the towns of Quebeck and Montreal all the year, except, perhaps, a month, or lefs, when they vifit their feigniorics to collect their rents and dues. They were ufed to pay court to the Governour and Intendant, and other officers of the Crown, in the time of the French Government, and never to try to make an intereft with the people. And, accordingly, they have very little intereft with the people, by whom they are rather hated, (and formerly were feared,) than loved or refpected.

The nobles hitherto fpoken-of are the hereditary nobility. There were in old France, in the year 1740, no lefs than fifty thousand of thofe noble families, according to the account given of them by that most faithful of all French writers of history, the Abbé de Saint Pierre, in his Political Annals. It is eafy to fee that many of thefe noble perfons must be totally without

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without property. This nobility defcends to all the male pofterity of the perfons ennobled, from generation to generation, ad infinitum, to younger fons of younger fons of younger fons. This caufes the number of these noble persons to be fo enormously great.

Perfons become noble in this complete, or hereditary, manner, either by letters patent of the King of France creating them fo, though without a title, (for a title is not neceffary to make a man noble,) or by exercifing certain honourable offices in the ftate. For example, the family of every member of a parliament in France, or of any other sovereign court of justice, (that is, court of juftice to which appeals lie from inferiour courts, and from which no appeals lie to any higher court, except to the King himself in his council of ftate,) who dies in his office, or who holds it for twenty years, and then refigns it, is thereby ennobled. So is the family of every General Officer of the army who dies in his employment, or holds it for a certain number of years. So is the family of a Captain in the army who has ferved ten years in it, and whose father and grand-father have alfo ferved, each of them, ten years in it in the fame rank.

Befides this hereditary nobility, there are many nobles for life A Captain in the army who has ferved in that commiffion, (or, I believe, in that commiffion together with the inferiour commiffions of Enfign and Lieutenant,) for the fpace of twenty years, is thereby ennobled for his life, though his father was not an officer, nor noble in any degree.

Of this latter fort of nobles there are feveral in Canada. General Carleton, in a letter to Lord Shelburne in the year 1767, reckons-up about one hundred and twenty persons, who had commands either in the French army or the militia of Canada, or civil employments, or grants from the French king of exclufive rights to trade with the Indians in particular

trading

trading-posts, or fome other advantages under the French government, which they had loft by the change of government. But this lofs did not follow from their being Romancatholicks; for, if they had been proteftants, they must have loft these advantages equally, as most of the places they held have no existence under the English government, and the few places, or offices, that continue under the new government, are fuch as they are not perfonally qualified to discharge, though they should be proteftan ts, fuch as the offices of judges, collector and comptroller of the customs, receivergeneral of the revenue, &c.

These people, therefore, cannot be gratified by only taking-away the difabilities arifing from their being Romancatholicks, nor without creating new places, or employments, civil and military, to bestow upon them; which would be not only unreasonably expensive to Great-Britain, but also dangerous; and all their complaints against the English laws, on account of the difabilities they impofe on Roman-catholicks, are at the bottom only begging letters. Among these one hundred and twenty difcontented perfons, there are some who are of noble families, fo as to transmit the nobility totheir children; but the greater part of them are only noble for life by their employments, and fome of them not noble at all, either because they have not held their employ ments long enough to make them fo, or becaufe their employments were not of such a nature as to confer nobility, of any kind, on the perfons who held them. Yet thefe one hundred and twenty perfons are the principal perfons who have complained of the English laws, and been the caufe of the late act of parliament. The reft of the one

This act was passed on the 10th of June, 1774, and is entitled "An Act for making more effectual Provision for the Government of the Province of Quebec in North America.”

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hundred and twenty thoufand, or, according to General Carleton's eftimation of them, one hundred and fifty thoufand, inhabitants of Canada, were very well pleafed with the change of government, and have often acknowledged that they were happier under the English government than they had ever been before.

In France it is a privilege of the nobility to be exempted from paying a certain land-tax, which is called the taille personnelle: but there was no fuch tax in Canada under the French government.

It is another privilege of the nobles, that they alone can enjoy the rights of Judicature, (les droits de baute, moyenne, et baffe juftice.) which may have been annexed, by the French king's grants, to any feigniories, or large tracts of land, held of the crown by the tenure of doing fealty and homage, (foi et hommage,) of which they may happen to be poffeffed. If a man that was not noble purchased one of thefe feigniories, he might enjoy all the pecuniary rights belonging to it, fuch as the mill-tolls due from the freehold tenants, and the fines for alienation; but he could not, without the French king's licence, exercife the rights of judicature belonging to it. However, this was a matter of fmall confequence with respect to Canada, because, in that country, scarce any of the owners of feigniories exercised these rights of judicature in the time of the French government, though they were usually mentioned in the grants of their feigniories. But the expenfe attending the exercife of these rights of judicature, (fuch as keeping a prison, with a steward, or judge of the court, a feigniorial, or fifcal, attorney, and a register of the court,) was too great for them. And further, their right of holding these courts was fo checked and controuled by the king of France's edicts, and the provincial regulations upon that fubject, that it would have been but a sort of ornamen

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tal right, or feather in the cap, of thofe who fhould have held them, rather than a real and fubftantial degree of power in them. I believe there was not one fingle lay feignior in all Canada before the late conqueft, that exercised these rights of judicature; but certainly, if there were any, they were exceeding few and none of them have been exercised fince the conqueft.

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The French owners of feigniories fometimes talk of the hardship of not being permitted to exercise their feigniorial jurifdictions under the English government. There may, perhaps, be fome little injuftice in it, because it is a fort of appendage to their landed property, which has been granted to them without referve by the capitulation and the treaty of peace; yet this is doubtful. But it is certain there is no bard bip in it at all; for, if they could exercise them, they would not do fo, for the reafons above-mentioned. Their view in making thefe complaints is to induce the Government to buy these jurifdictions up, as they have heard the parliament did in the year 1747, with refpect to the Scotch heritable jurifdictions. But thefe complaints come with an ill grace from fuch of the French feigniors as are not noble, (which is the cafe with many of them,) fince they had no right to exercise these jurifdictions under the French government.

Many of the nobles have no feigniories at all, nor any other landed property. There are scarce any people in Canada that have patrimonial fortunes to any confiderable amount. The few rich men amongst the French there have acquired their own fortunes in the service of the king of France, that is, most probably, by cheating the king and oppreffing the people for the pay of the French military officers is but about a third part of the pay of our officers, and the pay of their judges and other civil officers is low in proportion; se

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