Social Condition of Holland in the Seventeenth Century

WHEN industry was made honorable in Holland, the feudal system began to decay. It was a system embracing large land-owners, whose tenants were military men who controlled all labor and bore allegiance to the lordly proprietor. In the new era which had gradually dawned in Holland, the owner of the soil was no longer the head of a band of armed depredators who were his dependants, but the careful proprietor of broad acres, and devoted to industry and thrift. The nobles who composed the landlord class gradually came down from the stilts of exclusiveness, and in habits and even costume imitated the working people. The latter became elevated in the social scale. Their rights were respected, and their value in the state was duly estimated. Ceaseless toil in Holland was necessary to preserve the hollow land from the invasion of the sea, and the common needs assimilated all classes in a country where all must work or drown.

It was this state of society in Holland which stimulated agricultural interests in New Netherland, and changed trading into farming communities. This impulse was much accelerated by a charter of "Privileges and Exemptions" given by the Dutch West India Company in 1629, for the purpose of encouraging agricultural settlements on their American domain. They reserved the lands on and around the island of Manhattan, which they called the commercial emporium of the province, and required that all products for exportation should first be brought there. To persons who were disposed to settle in any other part of the province, the Company offered as much land as each emigrant might be able to improve, with "free liberty of hunting and fowling," under the direction of the provincial governor. They also offered to every person who should "discover any shores, bays, or other fit places for erecting fisheries, or the making of salt-ponds," an absolute property in such discovery.

The rural tenantry of Holland were not rich enough to avail themselves of this privilege, so the Company offered inducements for wealthy citizens to promote emigration, by transplanting into America the modified feudal system of the Netherlands. They offered to grant lands and manorial privileges and exemptions to any member of the Company who should, within four years, plant a colony of fifty adults in any part of New Netherland outside of Manhattan Island; such proprietor being constituted feudal chief of the domain which he might thus colonize. The lands of each colony were limited to sixteen miles along one shore of a navigable stream, or to eight miles if they occupied both shores, but they might extend into the interior indefinitely. It was also provided that if any proportionably greater number of emigrants should be settled by a proprietor, the area of his domain should be extended in the same ratio. He was to be absolutely lord of the manor, political and otherwise. He might hold inferior courts for the adjudication of petty civil cases; and if cities should grow up on his domain he was to have power to appoint the magistrates and other officers of such municipalities, and have a deputy to confer with the governor.

The settlers under the "patroons," as these manorial proprietors were called, were to be exempted from all taxation and tribute for the support of the provincial government for ten years; and for the same period every man, woman and child was bound not to leave the service of the patroon without his written consent. The colonists were forbidden to manufacture cloth of any kind, on pain of banishment; and the Company agreed to furnish them with as many African slaves "as they conveniently could;" also to protect them against foes. Each colony was bound to support a minister of the Gospel and a schoolmaster, and so provide a comforter for the sick and a teacher of the illiterate. It was also provided that every colonist, whether patroon or an independent settler, should first make a satisfactory arrangement with the Indians for the lands they should occupy.

Such is a brief outline of the charter of "Privileges and Exemptions" under which several large manorial estates were acquired in New Netherland, one of which (the Van Rensselaer Manor on the Hudson) existed, with some of its privileges, until late in the present century. It recognized the right of the Indians to the soil; invited independent farmers to whom a homestead should be secured; promised protection to all in case of war, and encouraged religion and learning. Yet this system of colonization was not so favorable to the development and growth of popular liberty as was that in New England.

While this charter was under consideration in the meetings of the Company at Amsterdam, two of the directors (Samuel Godyn and Samuel Bloemmaert) purchased of the Indians a tract of land on Delaware Bay, extending from Cape Henlopen (the southern boundary of New Netherland) northward, full thirty miles, and two miles in the interior. This purchase was ratified by the Company when the charter was issued. Very soon afterward Killian Van Rensselaer purchased a large tract of the natives on the upper navigable waters of the Hudson River; and Michael Pauw, another director, secured by the same means a large tract in New Jersey at the mouth of the river, opposite Manhattan, and all of Staten Island. This adroit management of wide-awake directors, in securing the best lands in the province, as to situation--who "helped themselves by the cunning trick of merchants"--provoked jealousy and ill-will among their fellow-directors, which was finally allayed by admitting others into partnership with them.