of North America affords of the successful effort of
European nations to reproduce on this continent the ancient
aristocratic institutions of the old world. In the days when the Dutch
owned the Netherlands, vast estates were partitioned out to certain
"patroons," who held their property on _quasi_ feudal conditions, and
bore a resemblance to the _seigneurs_ of French Canada. This manorial
system was perpetuated under English forms when the territory was
conquered by the English and transformed into the colony of New York,
where it had a chequered existence, and was eventually abolished as
inconsistent with the free conditions of American settlement. In the
proprietary colony of Maryland the Calverts also attempted to
establish a landed aristocracy, and give to the manorial lords certain
rights of jurisdiction over their tenants drawn from the feudal system
of Europe. For Carolina, Shaftesbury and Locke devised a constitution
which provided a territorial nobility, called _landgraves_ and
_caciques_, but it soon became a mere historical curiosity. Even in
the early days of Prince Edward Island, when it was necessary to
mature a plan of colonization, it was gravely proposed to the British
government that the whole island should be divided into "hundreds," as
in England, or into "baronies," as in Ireland, with courts-baron,
lords of manors, courts-leet, all under the direction of a lord
paramount; but while this ambitious aristocratic scheme was not
favourably entertained, the imperial authorities chose one which was
most injurious in its effects on the settlement of this fertile
island.

It was Richelieu who introduced this modified form of the feudal
system into Canada, when he constituted, in 1627, the whole of the
colony as a fief of the great fur-trading company of the Hundred
Associates on the sole condition of its paying fealty and homage to
the Crown. It had the right of establishing seigniories as a part of
its undertaking to bring four thousand colonists to the province and
furnish them with subsistence for three years. Both this company and
its successor, the Company of the West Indies, created a number of
seigniories, but for the most part they were never occupied, and the
king revoked the grants on the ground of non-settlement, when he
resumed possession of the country and made it a royal province. From
that time the system was regulated by the _Coutume de Paris_, by royal
edicts, or by ordinances of the inten