Libertarian_Guard
10th May 2010, 02:17 PM
History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I by Myers Gustavus
CHAPTER II
THE SWAY OF THE LANDGRAVES
While this seizure of land was going on in New Netherlands, vast areas
in New England were passing suddenly into the hands of a few men. These
areas sometimes comprised what are now entire States, and were often
palpably obtained by fraud, collusion, trickery or favoritism. The
Puritan influx into Massachusetts was an admixture of different
occupations. Some were traders or merchants; others were mechanics. By
far the largest portion were cultivators of the soil whom economic
pressure not less than religious persecution had driven from England. To
these land was a paramount consideration.
Describing how the English tiller had been expropriated from the soil
Wallace says: "The ingenuity of lawyers and direct landlord legislation
steadily increased the powers of great landowners and encroached upon
the rights of the people, till at length the monstrous doctrine arose
that a landless Englishman has no right whatever to enjoyment even of
the unenclosed commons and heaths and the mountain and forest wastes of
his native country, but is everywhere in the eye of the law a trespasser
whenever he ventures off a public road or pathway."[9] By the sixteenth
century the English peasantry had been evicted even from the commons,
which were turned into sheep walks by the impoverished barons to make
money from the Flemish wool market. The land at home wrenched from them,
the poor English immigrants ardently expected that in America land would
be plentiful. They were bitterly disappointed. The various English
companies, chartered by royal command with all-inclusive powers, despite
the frequent opposition of Parliament, held the trade and land of the
greater part of the colonies as a rigid monopoly. In the case of the New
England Company severe punishment was threatened to all who should
encroach upon its rights. It also was freed from payment for twenty-one
years and was relieved from taxes forever.
THE COLONIES CARVED INTO GREAT ESTATES.
The New England colonies were carved out into a few colossal private
estates. The example of the British nobility was emulated; but the
chartered companies did not have to resort to the adroit, disingenuous,
subterranean methods which the English land magnates used in
perpetuating their seizure, as so graphically described by S. W.
Thackery in his work, "The Land and the Community". 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.
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=1424575&pageno=12
CHAPTER II
THE SWAY OF THE LANDGRAVES
While this seizure of land was going on in New Netherlands, vast areas
in New England were passing suddenly into the hands of a few men. These
areas sometimes comprised what are now entire States, and were often
palpably obtained by fraud, collusion, trickery or favoritism. The
Puritan influx into Massachusetts was an admixture of different
occupations. Some were traders or merchants; others were mechanics. By
far the largest portion were cultivators of the soil whom economic
pressure not less than religious persecution had driven from England. To
these land was a paramount consideration.
Describing how the English tiller had been expropriated from the soil
Wallace says: "The ingenuity of lawyers and direct landlord legislation
steadily increased the powers of great landowners and encroached upon
the rights of the people, till at length the monstrous doctrine arose
that a landless Englishman has no right whatever to enjoyment even of
the unenclosed commons and heaths and the mountain and forest wastes of
his native country, but is everywhere in the eye of the law a trespasser
whenever he ventures off a public road or pathway."[9] By the sixteenth
century the English peasantry had been evicted even from the commons,
which were turned into sheep walks by the impoverished barons to make
money from the Flemish wool market. The land at home wrenched from them,
the poor English immigrants ardently expected that in America land would
be plentiful. They were bitterly disappointed. The various English
companies, chartered by royal command with all-inclusive powers, despite
the frequent opposition of Parliament, held the trade and land of the
greater part of the colonies as a rigid monopoly. In the case of the New
England Company severe punishment was threatened to all who should
encroach upon its rights. It also was freed from payment for twenty-one
years and was relieved from taxes forever.
THE COLONIES CARVED INTO GREAT ESTATES.
The New England colonies were carved out into a few colossal private
estates. The example of the British nobility was emulated; but the
chartered companies did not have to resort to the adroit, disingenuous,
subterranean methods which the English land magnates used in
perpetuating their seizure, as so graphically described by S. W.
Thackery in his work, "The Land and the Community". 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.
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=1424575&pageno=12