vigorous sense, were essentially democratic. In the absence of class privileges—the spirit to refer all questions to the supreme consideration of the general welfare; to subordinate individual claims to the rights and advantage of the public—Breuckelen and Vliessingen (Flushing) compared favorably in civic life with contemporary villages in New England. As Holland had been dyked against the sea by close, unremitting, and intimate co-operation—a spirit further developed in the protracted struggle for independence—so the smaller Dutch colonies in New York, while they kept their agricultural character, retained a collective rather than an individual ideal, which tended to exclude none from equal social opportunities. They never had to struggle with the incubus of a modified feudalism, which, though inevitably breaking up, was leaving its impress of regard for rank and class privilege in the American colonies of British origin.
Colonial life under British rule was marked by more rigid laws as the communities grew. The careful protection of common-lands was strictly attended to, especially the town forests of Brooklyn against the encroachment of those who would surreptitiously cut away the
