7i6 A. E. Mc Kinky 1666 the court of assizes ordered, " Dividing of Towne Lotts, thereby multiplying poor freemen and votes to be rectified by the Sessions :" ^ and in 1680 the governor and council decided that none should have a vote in Flushing unless he possessed a quantity of land equal to that given out in the first town-lot distribution. This decision limited the suffrage to those possessing sixty acres or more in the town.^ But this policy was not strictly adhered to, and in another case the decision is in favor of the small freeholder.^ Ex- cept in militia elections, where all the soldiers could vote, the pos- session of land in freehold thus appears to have been required of the voter on local matters, although there was no definite statement of the size of freehold required. ^ Attention has now been called to the codes from which NichoUs copied, and the changes which he introduced. The code which he framed was drawn from New England, Dutch and English prece- dents, with some adaptions to the peculiar conditions of Long Island. In political organization, it was much narrower than the New Eng- land codes ; since it permitted no popular participation in provincial government, and sought to deprive the town-meetings of their authority. In religious toleration it far outstripped the Puritanic legislation. On the other hand, even the small measure of popular government which the code granted was an advance upon the Dutch local government with its systems of double and triple nomi- nation and close corporations. And thus while the Laws brought increased freedom for the Dutch inhabitants, they diminished the privileges of the English. The Dutch appear contented, but for a ' Report of State Historian, 1S96, 341. 2 " Whereas the former Constitution of the si^ Towne, at their first settlement, in Ihe year 1654, was in dividing their home Lotts, into 4 acres a piece, then addicon of si.x acres, and after that 50 more to each Inhabitant, Xone for the future shall be esteemed a Freeman of s'^ Towne that hath not sixty acres of land within its limitts, besides meadows, . . . and such as shall have the like proporcon of land and no other to be esteemed Freemen for votes in publick or other town matters." — N. V. Col. Doc, XIV. 751- ^iV. y. Co!. Doc, XIV. 667.
- Attention has been directed in some detail to the word " inhabitant " as used in
the Laws, because its use here is similar to the common acceptance of the word in New York local legislation for over a hundred years. During the eighteenth century, the phrase ' ' freeholder and inhabitant ' ' occurs continuously in the provincial laws with regard to local affairs ; and although the word ' ' freeholder ' ' is verj- carefully defined by statute ( i. Y. Col. Laws, I. 112, 244, 405, 453 ; IV. 1094) no definition in all that time has been found for the word "inhabitant." The custom under the Duke's Laws shows that it was there regarded as qualifying the word " freeholder, and it is believed that the same meaning is to be put upon the word through the whole colonial period. If this inference were true, the suffrage for the colonial assembly was based on freeholdership, and a man might vote for representative wherever his land Jay ; in local matters, on the other hand, freeholdership and inhabitancy of the locality were both required of the voter.
