In its intense aim to settle New Netherlands and make use of its resources, Holland, through the States General, offered extraordinary inducements to promoters of colonization. The prospect of immense estates, with feudal rights and privileges, was held out as the alluring incentive. The bill of Freedoms and Exemptions of 1629 made easy the possibility of becoming a lord of the soil with comprehensive possessions and powers. Any man who should succeed in planting a colony of fifty "souls," each of whom was to be more than fifteen years old, was to become at once a patroon with all the rights of lordship. He was permitted to own sixteen miles along shore or on one side of a navigable river. An alternative was given of the ownership of eight miles on one side of a river and as far into the interior "as the situation of the occupiers will permit." The title was vested in the patroon forever, and he was presented with a monopoly of the resources of his domain except furs and pelts. No patroon or other colonist was allowed to make woolen, linen, cotton or cloth of any material under pain of banishment.[1] These restrictions were in the interest of the Dutch West India Company, a commercial corporation which had well-nigh dictatorial powers. A complete monopoly throughout the whole of its subject territory, it was armed with sweeping powers, a formidable equipment, and had a great prestige. It was somewhat of a cross between legalized piracy and a body of adroit colonization promoters. Pillage and butchery were often its auxiliaries, although in these respects it in nowise equalled its twin corporation, the Dutch East India Company, whose exploitation of Holland's Asiatic possessions was a long record of horrors. THE DUTCH WEST INDIA COMPANY.