The system of tenure introduced into New York by the Dutch, was divested of all burdensome attributes -- the nova feuda, the new fiefs, by which all the land was there held were purely allodial, with full right in the Patroons to sell in fee in whole or in part, and to devise it in whole or in part by will, free of all charges and incumbrances, except the mere political acknowledgment of the West India Company as the ultimate paramount source of all title, the State. It was the most liberal land system, introduced upon the American Continent; far more so than the English system as introduced into the English Colonies, and the full feudal system, introduced into the American Colonies of France, Spain, and Portugal. It certainly did not "scatter" in New Netherland "the seeds of servitudeslavery, and aristocracy."' There were no "serfs" in the feudal sense, either in the Dutch republic or its colony of New Netherland. Slavery was, and had been, the universal, acknowledged, source of labor, the result of conquest originally, for centuries before, and at that time -- the 17th century- -- all over the world. And equally in all countries of civilization was the division of society into classes of diverse grades, and the existence of an aristocracy, the only one known, established, and existing; and every State and government then in being was based upon it. How futile then is the idea, that to these New Netherland charters of Freedoms and Exemptions is owing the introducing of all these institutions into what is now the State of New York. Had neither of these charters ever existed the "seeds" of all three of these institutions would have found their way thither because they were simply the universal institutions of the highest human civilization at that era.