20 HISTORY OF BROOKLYN.

peculiar privileges, carefully confined, however, to those who were members of the company. Any member who should plant a colony of fifty adults, in any part of New Netherland (except Manhattan Island, which the Company reserved to itself), should be acknowledged as the “patroon,” or feudal chief of such colony or territory, with the high and low jurisdictions, the exclusive rights of fishing, hunting, and grinding, etc., within his own domain; to which, also, he was to have a full title of inheritance, with right of disposing of it by will, at death. Freedom of trade and of the fisheries, subject to certain limits, restrictions, and duties, were also granted to the patroons. For the space of ten years the colonists under these patroonships were to be entirely free from taxation, but were bound to the service of the patroon in an almost absolute servitude. The company, on its part, reserved to itself the far and peltry trade, and the right of manufactures; promising, moreover, to the colonists protection and defence against all enemies; the prompt completion of the defences of Manhattan Island, and furnishing the colony with a supply of black servants. The colonists were required “to satisfy the Indians for the land they shall settle upon” to make immediate provision for the support of a minister and schoolmaster; and each colony was to make an anuual return of its condition to the local authorities at Manhattan, for transmission to the company at home. In all its provisions, the Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions carefully recognized the commercial monopoly and the political supremacy of the West India Company; and was, in fact, a transplanting to the New World of the “feudal” system so prevalent in Europe. While it cared for the rights of the aboriginal owners, and promised labor, capital, religion, and education to the young colony, it “scattered the seeds of servitude, slavery, and aristocracy.” Its plan and spirit were selfish; its results most unfortunate. As might have been expected, cupidity induced some of the company's directors, even before the charter had been sanctioned, to reap the benefit of certain of its provisions, at the expense of their comrades, by appropriating to themselves some of the choicest portions of the province. Availing themselves of the privileges which it accorded to directors, patroonships were purchased, through their agents in