ommunity". The land in New
England was taken over boldly and arbitrarily by the directors of the
Plymouth Company, the most powerful of all the companies which exploited
New England. The handful of men who participated in this division,
sustained with a high hand their claims and pretensions, and augmented
and fortified them by every device. Quite regardless of who the changing
monarch was, or what country ruled, these colonial magnates generally
contrived to keep the power strong in their own hands. There might be a
superficial show of changed conditions, an apparent infusion of
democracy, but, in reality, the substance remained the same.

This was nowhere more lucidly or strikingly illustrated than after New
Netherlands passed into the control of the English and was renamed New
York. Laws were decreed which seemed to bear the impress of justice and
democracy. Monopoly was abolished, every man was given the much-prized
right of trading in furs and pelts, and the burgher right was extended
and its acquisition made easier.

However well-intentioned these altered laws were, they turned out to be
shallow delusions. Under English rule, the gifts of vast estates in New
York were even greater than under Dutch rule and beyond doubt were
granted corruptly or by favoritism. Miles upon miles of land in New York
which had not been preempted were brazenly given away by the royal
Governor Fletcher for bribes; and it was suspected, although not clearly
proved, that he trafficked in estates in Pennsylvania during the time
when, by royal order, he supplanted William Penn in the government of
that province. From the evidence which has come down it would appear
that any one who offered Fletcher his price could be transformed into a
great vested land owner. But still the people imagined that they had a
real democratic government. Had not England established representative
assemblies? These, with certain restrictions, alone had the power of
law-making for the provinces. These representative bodies were supposed
to rest upon the vote of the people, which vote, however, was determined
by a strict property qualification.

THE LANDED PROPRIETORS THE POLITICAL RULERS.

What really happened was that, apparently deprived of direct feudal
power, the landed interests had no difficulty in retaining their
law-making ascendancy by getting control of the various provincial
assemblies. Bodies supposedly representative of the whole people were,
in