ABSTRACT
Under French Old Regime law, servants were regarded as suspects, on the margins of moral and social norms, and also as minors. The servant was in an extremely weak position vis-à-vis the legal system, which assigned extremely severe penalties for delinquency. In France and in Canada, the attitude of the authorities to servants was basically the same. However, it is clear that Canadian magistrates were less arbitrary and less interested in protecting the interests of the master than were their French counterparts. This chapter aims to understand this colonial particularism and what it reveals of Canadian legal and social values during the French regime.
