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LABOR CONDITIONS; LAND SYSTEM.

when it was gradually displaced by the old system of free contract labor. In New York, however, it was long held in high esteem and retained both legally and in practice. It was in effect in Massachusetts until after the opening of the Eighteenth century. One of the earliest pronouncements against it in the colony was a pamphlet by Judge Samuel Sewall in 1700. Later, in the Boston News Letter June 10, 1706, is a quaint argument that, in view of the negro slave mortality in Boston that year, it would be cheaper and better for the

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slave owners and for the community if they were sold, and white slaves or redemptioners" held instead.*

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In the South, on the contrary, natural conditions were well met by this system, where it finally came about that industry was altogether based on slave labor. Before the end of the Eighteenth century, slavery in the South had developed into an institution that economically and politically shaped the whole future of the South and affected as no other single force has ever done the history of the entire country.†

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CHAPTER V.
1609-1764.

THE COLONIAL LAND SYSTEM: REAL AND PERSONAL PROPERTY VALUES.

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The force impelling migration - Grants of land by king - The question of title The basis in New England in founding towns The freehold-land system in New Netherland - Changed by English The patroonships The manors Penn follows prevailing methods - The land system in Virginia and other Southern colonies Scarcity of material on economic conditions - Valuation of property in New York in 1631 and 1913 — Value of various estates in New York — Comfortable circumstances of Massachusetts people — Value of houses and lands-Estate of John Haynes, Governor of Connecticut - Other appraisals — Valuations in the Southern colonies.

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Land-hunger was not the primed impelling force in the navigation during the Seventeenth century from Europe to the Western continent. Although there was then an impending congestion of population in the Old World, land had not yet become seriously scarce or costly for homes or tillage. In fact, taking into consideration the expense of the voyage across the Atlantic and other expenses attendant upon settlement in the new country, land-cost to the

pioneers was, in the end, quite as much relatively as in the countries whence they had come. Other influences were paramount in persuading them to follow fortune into this wilderness and to begin new lives here.

* Lyman Horace Weeks and Edwin M. Bacon, An Historical Digest of the Provincial Press, vol. i., p. 338 (Boston, 1911).

† W. B. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, 1620-1789, vol. i. (2 vols., Boston, 1899); G. H. Moore, Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts (New York, 1866); T. D. Woolsey (ed.), The First Century of the

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A modern historian has aptly and concisely put the case in these words: "Adventure brought men to Virginia politics and religion to New England; philanthropy to Georgia; but New York was founded by trade and for trade, and for nothing else. The settlement on the island of Manhattan was due to the active spirit of Dutch commerce."*

Neverthless the promoters of the

first

American colonization knew that the financial success of their commercial enterprises depended upon their ownership or control of vast tracts of land. Hence the first grants to various companies and individuals. And no sooner had the founders of future commonwealths safely arrived than they fully realized that the individual possession of landed property in permanence was the only firm foundation from which they could build with any assurance of the enduring welfare of themselves and their children. There was field for adventure a-plenty; in ocean, river, and forests there was food in abun

Republic (New York, 1876); Carroll D. Wright, The Industrial Evolution of the United States (New York, 1895); J. J. Lalor (ed.), Cyclopedia of Political Science, Political Economy and of the Political History of the United States (3 vols.,

dance, in quantity if not in variety; the expected gold and silver was not to be found, but there were furs, lumber and fish to be sent back to England and Holland in trade. But this was far from satisfying the aspirations of those who had come, not merely to be adventurers, traders, or seekers for wealth, but to make new homes and to unite themselves into stable communities and commonwealths. So it was that almost the first thing that the colonists attended to was the setting off of land to themselves.

In the beginning France, Spain, Holland and England acquired territory in the New World by discovery and conquest. Three of these nations secured only a small and weak hold upon the continent and did not long retain their possessions. Ultimately England engaged in colonization more vigorously than its rivals and, basing its claims upon initial discovery of the coasts of America by the Cabots in 1497-1498 and the subsequent possession by Sir Humphrey Gilbert under letters patent in 1583, asserted and maintained its right to nearly all the Atlantic front of North America, and the interior as far back as the

Chicago and New York, 1881-84); P. A. Bruce, Mississippi River. Only the French

Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century (2 vols., New York, 1896); J. A. Doyle,

The English Colonies in America (New York, 1882). For white servitude and slavery in the South see Johns Hopkins University Studies, series xiii., nos. vi.-vii., series xiv., nos iv.-v., series xvii., nos. vi.-vii., and series xxii., nos. iii.-iv. (Baltimore, 1895-96-99-1904).

*Henry Cabot Lodge: A Short History of the English Colonies in America, p. 285.

in Canada and the French and the Spaniards along the Gulf of Mexico were able long to withstand their more powerful rival.

Thus this vast empire became an appanage of the English crown. Under the English law the king in

LAND SYSTEM.

person and not as the head of the state was the owner of this soil, and had the unquestioned right to dispose of it as he wished. He made grants according to the law, to companies or individuals, and, when he so elected, even outside the law, as in the case of the erection of manors in Maryland and other colonies.* After several futile attempts at exploration and colonization in the closing years of the Sixteenth century, King James I. in 1606 made grants for the establishment of two American colonies, which, it was hoped, would be enduring. To the London Company, which consisted of merchants of London, he granted a strip of sea coast 150 miles broad, extending from the 34th to the 41st parallel, with all the islands within 100 miles of the shore. To the other corporation, citizens of Plymouth, and called the Plymouth Company, he granted the land between the 38th and 45th parallels. In years immediately following other grants of the same general character were made to various companies of merchants or adventurers, or to individuals. In all these grants the tenure of land was expressed as of the manor of East Greenwich, in free and common socage, and not in capite or by knight service, the consideration being fealty and quit-rent.

Although the ultimate title was thus vested absolutely in the sovereign, it was conceded that this

* Hazard, State Papers, vol. i., pp. 160, 327, 442 et seq.

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title was subject to the prior right of occupancy of the Indians. But this right of the aborigines was recognized with the important limitation that the native occupants could dispose of it to none except the crown or the grantees of the crown. Among those who have not read history closely, the belief that the first settlers were land squatters and generally stole the land from the Indians or cheated them in knavish trading for it is as common as it is erroneous. In all the colonies the land rights of the Indians were admitted and generally respected. Alike in New England, in New York, in Pennsylvania and in the southern colonies, Indian land deeds were a sine qua non to legal ownership by the new comers. Colonial annals abound in records of these transactions, and American jurisprudence has always recognized the legality of these titles and their importance in determining ownership. It was the rule that these purchases should be made only with the consent of the government, but there were instances where some of the pioneers regarded the rights of the Indians as paramount even to that of the crown. Apparently insignificant amounts were paid in these purchases, in wampum, beads, blankets and so on, but it must be remembered that the wild land was of no value whatsoever to the Indian while a

*

* Melville Egleston, Land System of the New England Colonies, in Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, 4th series, nos. xi.-xii., pp. 552–553.

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blanket, a string of beads or an axe was priceless.

In New England the basic principle upon which the communities or towns were founded was that of freehold land as that system had gradually developed in the usages of centuries. Feudal land grants were tried but in every instance they failed, as, for example the Popham colony of Sir Ferdinando Gorges on the coast of Maine in 1607; the Laconia settlement of John Mason between the Merrimac and the Kennebec rivers in 1622, and the attempt of Lords Say and Brooke at the mouth of the Connecticut in 1635. The spirit of the New England founders was altogether opposed to grants of this character, nor were climatic and other natural conditions favorable to the profitable development of large plantations with a dependent tenantry. Therefore these tracts were never maintained in their original integrity, as were the manors of New York and and the the South, but were quickly absorbed into the more democratic institutions in their neighborhood. In Plymouth land was first held in common, jointly with the settlers and the Company of Adventurers which sent them over, and in Rowley, Mass., the settlers labored in common upon land which was owned jointly. Before the middle Before the middle of the century these experiments, feudal and communistic, had been abandoned, and thenceforth only the freehold system was permitted to exist.

Grants were first made to the bands of colonists by the promoting companies in England who had derived title from the king. After the Great and General Courts came into existence, the power of making grants to the communities in their several jurisdictions rested in those legislative bodies. In turn the communities granted land to the individual inhabitants or to groups of inhabitants who desired to found new villages independent of the original town, although carved out of its territory. The grants were made with the direct purpose in view of establishing communities and building up a compact state of free holders. Home lots were granted to individuals, in accord with a plan to make a village in which should centre the communal life of the place. Then larger tracts were granted for agricultural purposes. In making these grants care was taken not to serve favorites of fortune, but to establish as freeholders those who were most likely to be helpful in building and protecting the communities and in carrying on the pioneer work necessary in church and commonwealth. The home lots were not large, varying in different places, but rarely more than 20 or less than 5 acres in extent. A few larger grants were made for prominent service, of 600 to 1000 acres, to such men as Governor Winthrop, Governor Joseph Dudley and Richard Saltonstall. But there were not many in number, and eventually the large holdings. were split up.

LAND SYSTEM.

In New Netherland during the first half of the Seventeenth century, the Dutch were more interested in trading than in agriculture or other use and improvement of land. Title was derived from the States-General of Holland through its grant to the West India Company. Generally the holdings were not large and were confined to the cities and towns, New Amsterdam, Brueckelen, Fort Orange (Albany), and others and their immediate neighborhood. Ground briefs or transports, which correspond to English deeds, were the common mode of conveying titles. The transports were passed and executed before the schepens of the place where the realty was situated and thus became judicial acts of record. When the English took New Netherland from the Dutch in 1664, the English law pertaining to real property was introduced, and thenceforth prevailed as in the other English colonies. The Dutch estates were converted into freehold estates.

In the main, the lands of the province in the early years of the English rule

under James as Duke of York and as

King were held in fee simple absolute, subject sometimes to small quit-rents. With the view of making New Netherland something more than a mere trading post and securing the settlement and development of the land, the States-General granted extensive tracts to patroons who should establish colonies. These patroons were invested with the feudal privileges of manorial lords. But this attempt to But this attempt to

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introduce the feudal system of Europe into the New World was a dire failure. Several colonies or patroonships were established, but only one of them, that of Van Rensselaer on the banks of the upper Hudson, endured beyond the life of the original patentee.

Again in the next century, under English rule, another and for a time more successful effort was made to establish feudal manors in New York. There were nine of these great original proprietorships, covering nearly all of Westchester County, the Cortlandt, the Phillipsburgh, the Fordham, the Morrisania, the Pelham, the Scarsdale and the three great patents of Caleb Heathcote, all together embracing about 225,000 of the 300,000 acres belonging to the old country. Each of these manors was an independent political entity, the proprietors having not only full ownership of the land but complete governmental authority, civil and judicial. The disintegration of these manors and the substitution of small landed proprietorships for tenantry was a slow process, and several of them were not extinguished until after the Revolution. It has been estimated that as late as 1770 more than one-half the population of Westchester County were manorial tenants.

In Pennsylvania William Penn was empowered by his charter to erect manors and to alien or grant parts of the land to purchasers to be held of

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