Page:History of Delaware County (1856).djvu/271

DELAWARE COUNTY. 247 The Walton patent, was also granted to Wm, Walton and his associates. In 1775^ John Rappalja and others, obtained a patent of thirty thousand acres of land, situate in the towns of Sidney, Masonville, and Tompkins. The vast compass of the Hardenhurgh patent, when its limits had been surveyed and located — a grant of something less than two millions of acres to a single individual, — was a species of monopoly, which, even the British government, with her aristocratic notions, failed to relish, and an order was issued preventing grants of more than a thousand acres to single individuals, or when associated together, of a number of thou- sand equal to the number of associates. This act, although beyond dispute it put a restraining check upon land monopoly, yet it did not entirely attain the desired object of preventing them "in toto. It was cunningly eluded by scheming speculators, by substituting cither ficti- tious names, or privileged to use those of their friends, who upon the granting of the patent, executed their respective assignments to the individual for whom the grant was obtained. It was under these modified restrictions that the public domain became the easy prey of the consummate land specu- lator, up to the period of the dismemberment of the colonial government. But when the jurisdiction of territory passed from the yoke of a foreign prince to the direct control of the people themselves, it was then made subservient to the pro- motion of the best interests of the State, by more stringent modifications. The attention of the legislature, was directed at an early day to the theory and results growing out of these land mono- plies. Their eventual tendency seemed too much toward the laying a foundation of a future aristocracy, to comport with the republican spirit of the fearless and energetic statesmen of those times — its results could hardly harmonize with the end