CHAPTER VI 



THE REVOLUTION TO SEPTEMBER, 1 776 



FROM what has already been written, it will be seen 

 that the population of the Borough was a farming 

 one, being either gentlemen farmers, occupiers of 

 leaseholds as tenants of the wealthy landowners, or as owners 

 of small farms of their own. The franchise was limited to 

 those who possessed unencumbered property to the value of 

 forty pounds, a considerable sum in those days; and these 

 were the freeholders of the county. It was not until the 

 adoption of the second Constitution of the State in 1821 that 

 the suffrage was made universal. Farmers, as a class, are 

 conservative; and when to this conservatism is added the fact 

 that many of them in colonial days did not have the right 

 to vote, we may surmise that so long as they found a ready 

 market for their produce they did not bother their heads 

 very much about political matters, but left such affairs to 

 their betters. The differences between the Morris and De 

 Lancey families might, and did, arouse a feeling of parti- 

 sanship; but, in general, they were satisfied to return to 

 the Provincial Assembly some prominent gentleman of the 

 neighborhood for whom they felt it an honor to vote, or of 

 whom they might be tenants. This feeling of political neu- 

 trality, or apathy, was particularly marked in the aristocratic 

 Province of New York, which not only furnished its quota of 



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