Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/12

2 Naturally the government established by such a trading company was one which served the ends of immediate commercial necessity, while the ultimate benefit to be derived from increased population and permanent settlement was lost from sight. In 1624, Peter Minuit, the first Director under the Company, arrived, and called together his council of five persons, which, with himself, was to have supreme executive, legislative and judicial powers. For several years the Company offered few inducements to emigrants and as a consequence the colony grew slowly in numbers, although its trade prospered. In 1629 a step toward the encouragement of emigration from the Netherlands was taken by the publication of thirty-one articles of "Freedoms and Exemptions granted by the Assembly of the XIX. of the Privileged West India Company, to all such as shall plant any colonies in New Netherland."

The familiar provisions of these "patroon" concessions need no analysis here, but reference may be made to some of the minor articles concerning individual colonies, which interest us, in the study of the origins of popular government, much more deeply than the elaborate feudal provisions of the patroon system. The articles, in addition to granting to patroons extensive commercial and political privileges, also provided that individual settlers might take up as much land as "they shall be able properly to improve," giving them also the right of fishing and hunting near their settlements, and promising them the protection of the Company against internal and external disturbances. Further, the colonies lying along each river, or on each island, were to appoint deputies to give information of the condition of their colonies to the Commander and Council. These reports were to be made annually and the deputies were to be newly appointed every two years. Thus imbedded in the mass of feudalism of the patroon concessions were two elements which in course of time might have overthrown both the patroon system and the arbitrary government of the Company—the encouragement of the small independent landowners, and the development of representative government. But neither of these results followed immediately. A few of the directors of the West India Company hoped to use the patroon concessions in building up their private fortunes, and establishing for themselves princely estates upon the Company's lands. Thus for a time little encouragement was given to individual settlers.

For nine years the Company continued its narrow policy, and the growth of the colony was retarded by the feudal patroon govern-