He says:

It is a right which must be suppressed, because the inhabitants can derive no benefit from it, and the seigniors have established or wish to establish it only to oblige them to redeem themselves from it by condescending to pay in future some heavy charge. It is not so with the banal mills, the latter being always a benefit to the inhabitants who have not the means of erecting mills themselves, whereas the banal oven is a disadvantage, there being not one of them who has not an oven in his own house and as much wood as he wants to heat it.1

This correspondence is interesting as showing the valuable services rendered by the colonial intendants in the way of affording protection against unjust seigniorial exactions, a feature which was often sadly lacking in the conduct of the provincial intendants at home. Itserves, further, to show that in the colony seigniorial rights were viewed by the authorities as resting upon a much more nearly utilitarian basis than in France.

The forebodings of the zealous intendant were, however, not well founded, for, with the exception of the single case given, the seigniors do not appear to have exacted either the right of oven banality or a money payment in its stead.

In France the seignior enjoyed the right to compel his censitaires to have their grapes pressed in the seigniorial wine press, and this privilege, especially in the southern part of France, was a very remunerative one. But in the colony there were no grapes and consequently no wine presses, seigniorial or otherwise.

2

It has been the practice of almost all writers on the history of Canada during the French régime to look upon the seigniorial system as one of the chief causes of tardy colonial development, and the action of the French Government in regard to the establishment of seigniorial mills has come in for especial criticism. One writer goes to the other extreme, declaring that the banal right remained "almost a dead letter;" but the fact is, as I have endeavored to show, that the French Government and its colonial representatives sought to develop the system of banal mills in the interests of the poorer habitants and not in the interests of the seigniorial proprietors. From the fact that royal edicts were found necessary to force the seigniors to avail themselves of their privilege it is very probable that during the greater part of the French régime there would have been no mills at all had the milling interest been left to private enterprise. Profit was to be found not in agriculture nor the manufacture of the products of agriculture, but in the fur trade, and the French Government must, in all justice, be given the credit of having realized that, so long as that was the case, the habitants must be given all possible facilities for turning their agricultural products to account with the least possible expense to themselves. So long as the population was sparse the system of banal grinding was, to the habitants, convenient and inexpensive. The burden fell upon the seigniors and they, though by no means opulent as a class, were after all best able to bear it.

De Tocqueville has aptly remarked that the physiognomy of a government may be best judged in its colonies:

When I wish to study the spirit and faults of the administration of Louis XIV, I must go to Canada. Its deformity is there seen as through a microscope.

As regards many features of the administration of Canada during the old régime this remark is undoubtedly true, but as regards the respective attitudes of the Government toward the exercise of the droit de banalité in Old and in New France, a striking exception to De Tocqueville's generalization makes itself apparent.

VIII. THE RESTORATION OF THE PROPRIETARY OF MARYLAND
AND THE LEGISLATION AGAINST THE ROMAN CАТНО-
LICS DURING THE GOVERNORSHIP OF CAPT.
JOHN HART (1714-1720).

By BERNARD C. STEINER, Ph. D.,

LIBRARIAN, ENOCH PRATT FREE LIBRARY, BALTIMORE, MD.

THE RESTORATION OF THE PROPRIETARY OF MARYLAND AND THE LEGISLATION AGAINST THE ROMAN CATHOLICS DURING THE GOVERNORSHIP OF CAPT. JOHN HART (1714-1720).

By BERNARD C. STEINER.

The Crown of England had governed the province of Maryland for over twenty years when Benedict Leonard Calvert, eldest son and heir of Charles, the third Lord Baltimore, "publicly renounced the Romish errors." Seizing upon the fact of a Protestant revolution in Maryland, which followed hard upon the Protestant revolution in England, King William had deprived the proprietary of his political rights over his palatinate. The change had undoubtedly been for the benefit of the province. It is true the old religious freedom had been succeeded by the establishment of the Church of England; but justice was probably better administered, education for the first time received attention, and the nepotism which was the inevitable consequence of regarding the province as the proprietary's private property had passed away with the change of government. The Roman Catholics chafed at their deprivation from the control of government, and even threatened to remove to the domains of His Most Christian Majesty of France, but the Protestants were the majority and the heads of the great Protestant families formed the council.

The Church of England was established by law, but its adherents were like the squires of England-caring more for it as a national faith than as a rule of life. Scattered on their plantations, there were many planters whose adherence to the Church was merely nominal, and as the livings were in the presentation of the Government, the character of the clergy was often far from immaculate. Good men there were in both laity and clergy of the established church. Many good

Scharf, 1,390.