Nominations in Colonial New York 263 Schuyler' families, and more or less closely, therefore, with the connections of these." Under such circumstances it is clear that any man of ability who had extended his " interest " judiciously might easily come to have a controlling influence within a faction or a party. A kind of feudal hierarchy would be formed. Having attached to his " inter- est " a number of the most important families, he would secure through each of them a number of others perhaps less important, and so on down. He would have his machine organized on a personal family basis, rather than on an impersonal " spoils " basis, though the spoils element might not be entirely wanting. Practically this is what happened in New York in the eighteenth century. After some fifty years of intermarriage and political control, two families emerged, each with its following, as the leaders in the struggle which was, though political in some degree, after all very largely personal in its nature. These were the Livingston and De Lancey families ; ' and that the struggle was personal rather than political is indicated by the fact that the parties were known by the names of their respective So much for a landed and commercial aristocracy and its close personal organization ; what were some of the conditions in New York which made easy the political control which it exercised ? These were : a limited suffrage ; infrequent and irregular elections ; a small voting population, the relation of a portion of it to the aris- tocracy, and the manner of voting ; general political indifference among the lower classes. The franchise was limited to freeholders, and to freemen of the ' Memorial History of New York, IV. 522, 523. 2 This far-reaching and complex network of family relationships among the aristoc- racy has often been noted. " For more than a century these families retained their posi- tion, and directed the infant colony. They formed a coterie of their own, and generation after generation married among themselves." Kip, Oldcn Time, 14, 15 ; Memorial History of Ne-M York, II. 604 ff ; De Lancey, Origin and History of Manors, in Scharf's History of Westchester County, I. 130. The best notion of the political significance of these intermarriages may be gathered from the letters of Cadwallader Colden. See Colden Letter-Book, I. 362, 363, 459, 468, 11. 68, 167, 168, 223, 224, 398, 399 : in New York Historiial Society Collections, Fund Series, IX., X. 3 Dawson, Westchester County during the American Revolution, 89. Memorial History of New York, II. 223, 570. Colden Letter-Book, II. 223, 224. No single man in New York had greater influence, perhaps, than Sir William Johnson ; but his influence was due rather to other causes, and he seems to have held somewhat aloof from the partisan strife of the Livingstons and the De Lanceys.
- " It may gratify the reader to know that of the members of the Assembly (1752),
Mr. Chief Justice De Lancey was nephew to Colonel Beekman, brother to Peter De Lancey, brother-in-law to John Watts, cousin to Philip Verplanck and John Baptist Van Rensselaer ; ... of the whole house the only member neither connected with Mr. De Lancey nor within the sphere of his influence was Mr. Livingston." Smith, His- tory of New York, II. 142, 143.
