By the Charter of the City of Xew-York, granted by Governor Dongan, in 1686, the Mayor and three or more of the Aldermen were authorized to make Freemen of the City from among certain specified classes, on the payment, in each instance, of Five Pounds, not an insignificant sum, at that early period.* Xo person could do busine,^« of any kind, within the City, unless he were a Freeman of the City ; and as the Freedom of the City also vested in those who held it the Right to vote for Representatives of the City in the General Assembly, it will be seen that, within the City, the unfranchised were only those Freeholders who were not Freemen and whose Real Estate was encumbered with debt ; those Freeholders whose inexpensive homes were not worth Forty Pounds-- a large sum, for that period ; those who labored for others, as Clerks, Journeymen, or Laborers ; and those of that shiftless, characterless class, who enctimbered the City of Xew York, during the Colonial Period, as similar cla-sses continue to encumber every City, especially every Seaport, holding itself in constant readiness to join in any act of violence into which such as Alexander McDougal and Isaac Sears, of the period under consideration, shall incline to lead them.

In Westchester-county, the heirs and assigns of Stephanus Van Cortlandt having failed to exercise the privilege which had been given to the latter, as the Lord of the Manor of Cortlandt, of electing a Representative for that Manor in the General Assembly, that privilege was transferred, by the Act of June 22, 1734, to the body of the Freeholders resi-