At the dawn of the nineteenth century and until about 1850, survivals of the old patroon estates were to be met with. But these gradually disintegrated. Everywhere in the North the tendency was toward the partition of the land into small farms, while in the South the condition was the reverse. The main fact which stood out was that the rich men of the country were no longer those who owned vast tracts of rural land. That powerful kind of landowner had well-nigh vanished.
THE MANORIAL LORDS PASS AWAY.
For more than two centuries the manorial lords had been conspicuous functionaries. Shorn of much power by the alterations of the Revolution they still retained a part of their state and estate. But changing laws and economic conditions drove them down and down in the scale until the very names of many of them were gradually lost sight of. As they descended in the swirl, other classes of rich men jutted into strong view. Chief among these nascent classes were the landowners of the cities, at first grabbling tradesmen and land speculators and finally rising to the crowning position of multimillionaires. Originally, as we have seen, the manorial magnate himself made the laws and decreed justice; but in two centuries great changes had taken place. He now had to fight for his very existence.
Thus, to give one example, the manorial men in New York were confronted in 1839 by a portentous movement. Their tenants were in a state of unrest. On the Van Rensselaer, the Livingston and other of the old feudal estates they rose in revolt. They objected to the continuing system which gave the lords of these manors much the same rights over them as a lord in England exercised over his tenants. Under the leases that the manorial lords compelled their tenants to sign, there were oppressive anachronisms. If he desired to entertain a stranger in his house for twenty-four hours, the tenant was required to get permission in writing. He was forced to obligate himself not to trade in any Commodities except the produce of the manor. He could not get his flour ground anywhere else than at the mill of the manor without violating his lease and facing ejectment, nor could he buy anything at any place except at the store of the manorial magnate. These were the rights reserved to the manorial lords after the Revolution, because theirs were the rights of private property; and as has often been set forth, property absolutely dominated the laws and greatly nullified the spirit of a movement made successful by the blood and lives of the masses in the Revolutionary Army. Tardily, subsequent legislatures had abolished all feudal tenures, but these laws were neither effective nor were enforced by the authorities who reflected and represented the interests of the proprietors of the manors.
On their part the manorial men believed that self-interest, pride and adherence to ancient traditions called for the perpetuation of their arbitrary power of running their domains as they pleased. They refused to acknowledge that law had any right to interfere in the managing of what they considered their private affairs. Eager to avail themselves of the police power of the law in dispossessing any fractious or impecunious tenant and in suppressing protest meetings, they, at the same time, denounced law as tyrannical when it sought to inject more modern and humane conditions in the managing of their estates. They stubbornly insisted upon a tenantry, and as obstinately contested any forfeiture of what they deemed their property rights.
FEUDAL TENURES ABOLISHED.
A long series of reprisals and an intense agitation developed. The Anti-Renters mustered such sympathetic political strength and threw the whole state into such a vortex of radical discussion, that the politicians of the day, fearing the effects of such a movement, practically forced the manorial magnates to compromise by selling their land in small farms,[68] which they did at exorbitant prices. They made large profits on the strength of the very movement which they had so bitterly opposed. Affrighted at the ominous unrest of a large part of the people and hoping to stem it, the New York Constitutional Convention in 1846 adopted a Constitutional inhibition on all feudal tenures, an inhibition so drafted that no legislature could pass a law contravening it.[69]
So, in this final struggle, passed away the last vestiges of the sway of the all-powerful patroons of old. They had become archaic. It was impossible for them to survive in the face of newer conditions, for they represented a bygone economic and social era. Their power was one accruing purely from the extent of their possessions and discriminative laws. When these were wrenched from their grasp, their importance as wielders of wealth and influence ceased. They might still boast of their lineage, their aristocratic enclosure and culture and their social altitude, but these were about the only remnants of consolation left.
The time was unpropitious for the continuation of great wealth based upon rural or small-town land. Many influences conspired to make this land a variable property, while these same influences, or a part of them, fixed upon city land an enhancing and graduating permanency of value. The growth of the shipping trade built up the cities and attracted workers and population generally. The establishment of the factory system in 1790 had a two-fold effect. It began to drain country sections of many of the younger generations and it immediately enlarged the trading activities of the cities. Another and much more considerable part of the farming population in the East was constantly migrating to the West and Southwest with their promising opportunities. Some country districts thinned out; others remained stationary. But whether the rural census increased or not, there were other factors which sent up or down the value of farming lands. The building of a canal would augment the value of land in section and cause stimulation, and depress conditions in another section not so favored. Even this stimulation, however, was often transient. With each fresh settlement of the West and with the construction of each pioneer railroad, new and complex factors turned up which generally had a depreciating effect upon Eastern lands. A country estate worth a large sum in one generation might very well succumb to a mortgage in the next.