I wish to write briefly of
the character and importance of the quit-rent, without
trespassing more than can be helped upon the subject of
Professor Bond's volume. His volume deals with the
quit-rent system in all fhe British colonies in America
before the Revolution and discloses the long-continued
and wide-spread influence of this seemingly trivial detail
of the colonial land system. It gives to the quit-rent for
the first time its proper place not only as a feature of
colonial land tenure and legislation, but as a contributory
cause also to the discontent which brought on the Revo-
lution. This little incident of men 's daily lives, probably
unfamiliar to a majority of those to-day who are versed
in colonial history, involved a principle quite as funda-
mental as that of no taxation without representation and
one that probably had more actual influence in bringing
about independence than had some of the widely heralded
political and constitutional doctrines of the pre-Revo-
lutionary period. It is, therefore, of the meaning and
significance of this somewhat obscure payment, badge of
an inferior title to the soil and relic of feudalism and the
past, that I would say something here. The subject in-
volves more than an incident of land tenure, it raises the
question of the treatment of 'history as well.
When we consider the liking which every American has
for his " heritage of freedom," it is not surprising that
the aristocratic and feudal characteristics of our colonial
beginnings should have been either overlooked entirely
by writers on our early history, or if discussed at all
