power of assembling for
such purposes.

The civil law of French Canada relating to "property," inheritance,
marriage, and the personal or civil rights of the community generally,
had its origin, like all similar systems, in the Roman law, on which
were engrafted, in the course of centuries, those customs and usages
which were adapted to the social conditions of France. The customary law
of Paris became the fundamental law of French Canada, and despite the
changes that it has necessarily undergone in the course of many years,
its principles can still be traced throughout the present system as it
has been modified under the influences of the British regime. The
superior council of Canada gave judgment in civil and criminal cases
according to the _coutume de Paris_, and below it there were inferior
courts for the judicial districts of Quebec, Three Rivers and Montreal.
The bishop had also special jurisdiction over ecclesiastical matters.
The intendant had authority to deal with cases involving royal, or
seigniorial, rights, and to call before him any case whatever for final
review and judgment. In all cases appeals were allowable to the king
himself, but the difficulty of communication with Europe in those days
practically confined such references to a few special causes. The
seigniors had also certain judicial or magisterial powers, but they
never acted except in very trivial cases. Torture was sometimes applied
to condemned felons as in France and other parts of the old world. On
the whole justice appears to have been honestly and fairly administered.

Parkman, in a terse sentence, sums up the conditions which fettered all
Canadian trade and industry, "A system of authority, monopoly and
exclusion in which the government, and not the individual, acted always
the foremost part." Whether it was a question of ship-building, of a
brewery or a tannery, of iron works or a new fishery, appeals must be
made in the first instance to the king for aid; and the people were
never taught to depend exclusively on their individual or associated
enterprise. At the time of the conquest, and in fact for many years
previously, the principal products of the country were beaver skins,
timber, agricultural products, fish, fish oil, ginseng (for some years
only), beer, cider, rug carpets, homespun cloths--made chiefly by the
inmates of the religious houses--soap, potash, leather, stoves, tools
and other iron manufactures--made in the St. Maur