But it was never contemplated that New York or any of the other provinces in America should develop a characteristically democratic organization of government or basis of society. Titled persons were sent to rule over them, and, particularly in New York, there was a manifest tendency to render the general aspect of administration and social life as congenial as possible to people of high birth and elegant breeding. Moreover, there being no provision for the creation of an American titled aristocracy, it was deemed expedient to offer some encouragement to men of aristocratic desires, and the institu-

OBSERVATIONS

ON THE

MANORS

tion of the manor was selected as the most practicable concession to the aristocratic instinct -- a concession which, while carrying with it no title of nobility, did carry a certain weighty dignity, based upon the one universally recognized foundation for all true original aristocracy -- large landed proprietorship, coupled with formally constituted authority. The establishment of new manors in England was discontinued by the statute of 1290 for the sole reason that at that period no crown lands remained out of which such additional manors could be formed, the essential preliminary to a manor being a land grant by the sovereign to a subject. But in the American provinces, where extensive unacquired lands were still awaiting tenure, the manor system was capable of wide application at discretion; and in New York and some of the other provinces it was the policy of the English government from the beginning to encourage the organization of manors. " The charter of Pennsylvania," said the learned Chief Judge Denio of the New York Court of Appeals, in his opinion in the Rensselaerswyck case, " empowered Penn, the patentee, to erect manors and to alien and grant parts of the lands to such purchasers as might wish to purchase, ' their heirs and assigns, to he held of tlu. said William Pain, his heirs and assigns, by such services, customs, and rents as should seem tit to said William Penn, etc., and not immediately of the said King Charles, his heirs or successors,' notwithstanding the statute of quia emptores" Similarly in New York, the manor grants issued during the time that it remained a proprietary province (namely, those to Thomas Pell in 1666 and to John Archer in 1671) were made by the authority and in the name of the Duke of York as proprietor, and not of the king.