IMPEDIMENTS TO COLONIAL GROWTH. 85 international claims. Still her ideas of civil liberty were limited chiefly to the rights of municipalities,--to the freedom and franchises of cities. They, as well as her institutions, were derived from the old Roman Law. The great body of agricultural classes in the Low Countries had nothing to do with the soil but to live on it, and till it on such terms as its lord might dictate. They had no political franchises; they did not dream of holding fee-simple in the solid earth. The Lordships of the Netherlands were transferred to the New Netherland, and the settlers were ruled by a Director-General. His authority was modified it is true, by the infusion of the Democratic sentiment here; and his arbitrary power was restrained by the supreme authority at home. But the only way the men of those times could see to promote colonization in New Netherland, was to carry out the home system. Consequently large grants of land were made to all enterprising capitalists who chose to comply with the prescribed conditions. Whoever would within four years take out and settle upon the soil fifty persons, became the patroon in absolute fee of all the lands he colonized at his own expense. They were restricted only to sixteen miles in length, or eight miles on each side of a river, limits being seldom assigned to the interior. They were only required to comply with the conditions of settlement, and to recognize the rights of the Indians, and complete their titles by purchase. The institutions and government of these estates were vested in the patroons. There was no provision made for maintaining education or religion. These depended upon the will of the master of the soil, or upon the tenants who worked it. A further guarantee was given by the Holland Company that the patroons were to be furnished with negro slaves, as long--they were wise enough to addas the Company found it profitable. But the most onerous restrictions were laid upon manufacturers and commerce: neither of these could be enter tained.' I shall have occasion hereafter to show how blind and fatal a policy this was, and how cruelly it operated in the colonies. It was these oppressive restrictions laid upon the Thirteen Colonies when they came under the exclu sive control of Great Britain, that began to alienate them from the mother country. The policy of the governments of Europe, and of its chartered companies, was, all through, not only to discourage and depress, but absolutely to prohibit anything in the shape of freedom of manufactures or commerce here. Without regard to the laws of nature, the indications of Providence, or the exigencies of human wants and conditions, regulations were enforced which accumulated wrong upon wrong, until at last the whole moun 'ain was heaved off in a revolution. By the hardest indeed, did these poo. colonies become strong enough to do it-slowly enough did their European masters learn that they had undertaken a job they could never carry out. It was the destiny of America ultimately to change all this. In Europe, The colonists were forbidden to manufacture any impair the monopoly of the Dutch weavers was punishwoolen, or linen, or cotton fabrics: not a web might be able as a perjury.-Bancroft, vol. ii. p. 281. woven, not a shuttle thrown, on penalty of exile. To 86 THE DUTCH ON THE HUDSON AND DELAWARE. the individual was nothing; here, he was all. From the start, he was supreme in New England; for there the golden-souled thought of the sacredness of man himself as an individual—as a child of God, and an equal brother of his fellows-had its full birth. There was nothing new in this as a principle laid down; it was only new in action. It had all been said before by the wondrous Being of Palestine, 'Over whose acres walk'd those blessed feet, But what had the world cared for that?-except the neglected millions who had thought of it enough in the gloom of their desertion and suffering. But as for Kings, Barons, Lords, Popes, Priests, and Patroons,-what mattered all this to them? With an assumption which now seems infinite in its blasphemy, from immemorial time the anointed King had been 'the fountain of justice, of mercy, and of honor.' Even in England, the cradle of the liberty of all nations, Macaulay tells us all about it in the striking picture he draws. of Royal Power.' The settlements of the Dutch on the Delaware were extended. In 1629 two Directors of the Amsterdam Chamber-Samuel Goden and Samuel Blommaert-purchased from the Indians a tract more than thirty miles long, from Cape Henlopen to the mouth of the Delaware, and this Indian title is the oldest deed for land in Delaware. Kiliaen van Rensselaer, another of the Amsterdam Directors, became lord of much larger tracts on the Hudson, extending north and south of Fort Orange, these purchases having been made from the Mohawk and Mohigan chiefs. To these, other additions were made, until his manor extended twentyfour miles on the east side of the Hudson river, and forty-eight miles into the interior. This tract he immediately began to colonize-sending out his first emigrants to the settlement of Renssalaerwyck-one of the fairest and most interesting regions in the whole country. It afterwards held the capital of the State. It was at the head waters of navigation on the Hudson river; near the mouth of the Mohawk, which drained the waters of the great water-shed stretching from Central New York towards the Atlantic; near Lake Champlain, and the upper sources of the Hudson; and being in a direct line from 1 First Part of King Henry IV., Act i. Scene 1. The prerogatives of the sovereign were undoubtedly extensive. The spirit of religion and the spirit of chivalry concurred to exalt his diguity. The sacred oil had been poured on his head. It was no disparagement to the bravest and noblest knights to kneel at his feet. His person was inviolable. He alone was entitled to convoke the estates of the realm; he could at his pleasure dismiss them; and his assent was necessary to all their legislative acts. He was the chief of the executive administration, the sole organ of communication with foreign powers, the captain of the military and naval forces of the State, the fountain of justice, of mercy, and of honor. He had large powers for the regulation of trade. It was by him that money was coined, that weights and measures were fixed, that marts and havens were appointed. His ecclesiastical patronage was immense. His hereditary revenus, economically administered, sufficed to meet the ordi nary charges of government. His own domains were of vast extent. He was also feudal lord paramount of the whole soil of his kingdom, and, in that capacity. possessed many lucrative and many formidable rights, which enabled him to annoy and depress those who thwarted him, and to enrich and aggrandize, without any cost to himself, those who enjoyed his favor.Macaulay's History of England, vol. i. p. 14-15.. In the middle ages the state of society was widely different. Rarely, and with great difficulty did the wrongs of individuals come to the knowledge of the public. A man might be illegally confined during many months in the Castle of Carlisle or Norwich, and no whisper of the transaction might reach London. It is highly probable that the rack had been many years in use before the great majority of the nation had the least suspicion that it was so employed.-Id., 16-17. CAUSES OF THE DECLINE OF THE DUTCH. 81 Boston through to the great west; a territory which became the theatre of some of the bloodiest scenes in the French war, embracing the battle-ground of Saratoga, where the tide first began to turn against England in the war for Independence. This great manor grew into vast importance under the guardianship and culture of Kiliaen van Rensselaer and his descendants—a family which, by intermarriages with many others of the early settlers on the shores of the Hudson, has left a brilliant record in the history of our agriculture, literature, statesmanship, jurisprudence, and arms; embellishing our annals with many of its noblest achievements in government and civilization. The enterprise of the Dutch settlers, and their friendly relations with the Indians, gave them a monopoly of the fur trade of this whole region. As they brought with them among their emigrants all classes of mechanics and working men, cattle, agricultural implements, and seeds of every variety, whenever they planted a settlement, prosperity and plenty bloomed around it. Their first settlement on the Delaware was older than any other in Pennsylvania. It was established by a company of which Van Rensselaer, Goden, Blommaert, and other enterprising men were members; and soon the shores of Delaware Bay showed fields of wheat and tobacco, and waving Indian corn. In 1631 another colony was planted on Lewes Creek, jus inside of Cape Henlopen, where a fort with strong palisades was thrown up, promising to afford protection to the thirty or forty souls constituting the colony, the name of Swanandel being given to the place. But these fair prospects of Dutch settlement were speedily overcast by an act of folly and crime committed by Hasset, the agent in charge of the settlement. He had wickedly caused the death of an Indian chief. The foul play was to be fully avenged. On the first visit of De Veries, who had been absent on an expedition with the ship, he found nothing but the ruins of the fort and palisades, and the charred bones of the last of his colonists. This act permanently impaired the power and prosperity of the Dutch in that region; for before they could recover the soil of Delaware, three other events occurred to cripple their authority and restrain their spreading :— First, The patent to Maryland had been granted to Lord Baltimore, and he was not only a competitor, but an Englishman, a name that the Dutch were fast learning to regard as another title for formidable rival in commerce, however friendly they might be as allies in arms. Second, The Patroons had already grown powerful enough to dispute the valuable fur trade with the agents of the West India Company. Third, Quarrels had grown up between Minuit and the inhabitants of New Amsterdam, ending in his recall and the appointment of the feeble and despicable Wouter van Twiller. The English had no intentions of allowing the Dutch to keep the Island |