Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/725

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Transition from Dutch to English Rule
715

The most interesting of all these changes is to be seen in the determination of the suffrage. Since the principle of town and provincial freemanship was set aside by Nicholls, of necessity some other test of the citizen's "evident interest" in the government must be found; and naturally, at that time, the test required was the holding of land. Land was cheap ; it was easily attainable ; and its possession served better than any twentieth-century qualification, to mark off the socially upright man from the criminal and the vagrant. Nicholls had already proposed one principle in his letter providing for the election of delegates to the Hempstead meeting of 1665, " by the major part of the freemen only, which is to be understood, of all Persons rated according to their Estates, whether English or Dutch;"[1] thus making the payment of taxes on property (not poll-taxes alone), the qualification of voters.

In the Laws, four expressions are used in describing the voting class: "householders," "inhabitants housholders," " freeholders," and " Inhabitants freeholders, Housholders." It is believed that all these phrases refer to the same class of citizens;[2] and that the words "inhabitants" and "householders" are to be taken not in a substantive, but an adjective sense, qualifying the word "freeholders ;" and thus the real definition of the voting class would be inhabiting and householding freeholders.[3] No statement is made in the Laws of the size of freehold necessary to obtain the suffrage privilege, and perhaps the differences in town settlement and ordinances prevented such a general suffrage qualification. While the practice of the gov- ernment was not uniform, it usually opposed small freeholds. In

  1. ↑ N. Y. Col. Doc., XIV. 564.
  2. ↑ The evidence for this belief is drawn from two sources: (a) the internal evidence of the Laws; and (b) the practice of the towns.(a) From the Laws. In one place the Laws speak of the election of overseers by the "Housholders," and in another place, by the "freeholders;" and similarly the election of the minister is said to be by "the Inhabitants housholders," and by the "Inhabitants freeholders housholders."(b) From the town practice. The town records use the words as loosely as do the Laws. For instance in Southampton the phrases occur, "inhabitants or freeholders;" "freeholders;" "freeholders; and Inhabitants" (Records, II. 279,295,305; also I. 135-138 note). In 1672 an election in Hempstead was contested because persons had voted who were freeholders indeed, but held only small tracts, and it was maintained that a man must be not only a freeholder, but a freeholder of a certain number of acres, in order to possess the suffrage (N. Y. Col. Doc., XIV. 667). In 1676, Andros granted a patent to the town officers of Soulhold, for themselves and "their associats, the free-holders and Inhabitants of the sd Town "and subsequently these officers state, "All which freeholders we doe fully own ... to be our onely associats" (Town Records, II. 8-12). The last case shows that the town officers believed inhabitants to be a qualification of the word free-holders; a man must be an inhabitant and a. freeholder to be qualified to vote.
  3. ↑ He who hath a house in his hands in a town, may be said to be an Inhabitant." Jacob's Law Dictionary, London, 1797.
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