fact, composed of great landowners, of a quota of merchants who were
subservient to the landowners, and a sprinkling of farmers. In Virginia
this state was long-continuing, while in New York province it became
such an intolerable abuse and resulted in such oppressions to the body
of the people, that on Sept. 20, 1764, Lieutenant-Governor Cadwallader
Colden, writing from New York to the Lords of Trade at London, strongly
expostulated. He described how the land magnates had devised to set
themselves up as the law-making class. Three of the large land grants
contained provisions guaranteeing to each owner the privilege of sending
a representative to the General Assembly. These landed proprietors,
therefore, became hereditary legislators. "The owners of other great
Patents," Colden continued, "being men of the greatest opulence in the
several American counties where these Tracts are, have sufficient
influence to be perpetually elected for those counties. The General
Assembly, then, of this Province consists of the owners of these
extravagant Grants, the merchants of New York, the principal of them
strongly connected with the owners of these Great Tracts by Family
interest, and of Common Farmers, which last are men easily deluded and
led away with popular arguments of Liberty and Privileges. The
Proprietors of the great tracts are not only freed from the quit rents
which the other landholders in the Provinces pay, but by their
influences in the Assembly are freed from every other public Tax on
their lands."[10]

What Colden wrote of the landed class of New York was substantially true
of all the other provinces. The small, powerful clique of great
landowners had cunningly taken over to themselves the functions of
government and diverted them to their own ends. First the land was
seized and then it was declared exempt of taxation.

Inevitably there was but one sequel. Everywhere, but especially so in
New York and Virginia, the landed proprietors became richer and more
arrogant, while poverty, even in new country with extraordinary
resources, took root and continued to grow. The burden of taxation fell
entirely upon the farming and laboring classes; although the merchants
were nominally taxed they easily shifted their obligations upon those
two classes by indirect means of trade. Usurious loans and mortgages
became prevalent.

It was now seen what meaningless tinsel the unrestricted right to trade
in furs was. To get the fur