ement increased, immigration pressed over, and more and more ships
carried cargo to and fro, these estates became consecutively more
valuable.

To encourage colonization to its colonies still further, the States
General in 1635 passed a new decree. It repeated the feudal nature of
the rights granted and made strong additions.

Did any aspiring adventurer seek to leap at a bound to the exalted
position of patroonship? The terms were easy. All that he had to do was
to found a colony of forty-eight adults and he had a liberal six years
in which to do it. For his efforts he was allowed even more extensive
grants of land than under the act of 1629. So complete were his powers
of proprietorship that no one could approach within seven or eight miles
of his jurisdiction without his express permission. His was really a
principality. Over its bays, rivers, and islands, had it any, as well as
over the mainland, he was given command forever. The dispensation of
justice was his exclusive right. He and he only was the court with
summary powers of "high, low and middle jurisdiction," which were
harshly or capriciously exercised. Not only did he impose sentence for
violation of laws, but he, himself, ordained those laws and they were
laws which were always framed to coincide with his interests and
personality. He had full authority to appoint officers and magistrates
and enact laws. And finally he had the power of policing his domain and
of making use of the titles and arms of his colonies. All these things
he could do "according to his will and pleasure." These absolute rights
were to descend to his heirs and assigns.[2]

OLD WORLD TRADERS BECOME FEUDAL LORDS.

Thus, at the beginning of settlement times, the basis was laid in law
and custom of a landed aristocracy, or rather a group of intrenched
autocrats, along the banks of the Hudson, the shores of the ocean and
far inland. The theory then prevailed that the territory of the colonies
extended westward to the Pacific.

From these patroons and their lineal or collateral descendants issued
many of the landed generations of families which, by reason of their
wealth and power, proved themselves powerful factors in the economic and
political history of the country. The sinister effects of this first
great grasping of the land long permeated the whole fabric of society
and were prominently seen before and after the Revolution, and
especially in the third and fourth decades of the e