Chapter III: The Middle Colonies (1)

BY BERTHOLD FERNOW,

_Keeper of the Historical MSS., N. Y. State_.

THE thirteenth volume of the New York Colonial Manuscripts contains a document called “Rolle van t’Volck sullende met het Schip den Otter na Niēu Nederlandt overvaren,” April 24, 1660, being a list of the soldiers who were to sail in the ship “Otter” for New Netherland. Among these soldiers was one Jacob Leisler, from Frankfort, who upon arriving at New Amsterdam found himself indebted to the West India Company for passage and other advances to the amount of nearly one hundred florins.

Twenty-nine years later this same quondam soldier administered the affairs of the colony of New York as lieutenant-governor, not appointed and commissioned by the king of England, but called to the position by the people of the colony. When the first rumors of the “happy revolution” in England reached New York, Sir Edmond Andros, the governor-general of New York and New England, was absent in Boston, where the citizens forcibly detained him. Nicholson, the lieutenant-governor, and one or two other high officials belonged to the Church of Rome, and were therefore disliked and suspected by the predominant Protestant population. Rumors had found their way, meanwhile, through the northern wilderness, that the French in Canada were making preparations to invade New York, hoping, with the assistance of the Catholics in the province, to wrest it from the English. The major part of the inhabitants were still Dutch or of Dutch origin, and these were nearly all Protestants. They were easily led to believe that the papists within and without the government had concerted to seize Fort James, in New York, and to surrender that post and the province to a French fleet, which was already on the way from Europe. The prompting of the Protestant party to anticipate any such hostile movement was strengthened when they heard the result of the revolution in England. Leisler, placing himself at the head of this anticipatory movement, seized the fort, and was shortly afterwards proclaimed lieutenant-governor, in order to hold the province for William and Mary until their pleasure should be known. There was little ground for distrusting the Catholics within the province; but the danger from the French was more real, and took a shape that was not expected, in the murderous assault which was made on Schenectady.[466] Leisler’s adherents, as well as his opponents, felt that this _coup de main_ of the French might be only the precursor of greater disasters, if no precautionary steps were taken. Leisler himself believed that the English colonies would never be safe unless the French were driven from Canada. He called a congress of the colonies. Their deliberations led to the naval expedition of Phips against Quebec, and the march of Winthrop and Livingston against Montreal. Their disastrous failure has been described in an earlier volume.[467] Governor Sloughter arrived in New York a few months later, and soon put an end to the hasty revolt. Leisler and his son-in-law, Milbourne, were hanged for what seemed an untimely patriotism and still more uncalled-for religious zeal.

The cry was practically a “No Popery” cry upon which Leisler had risen to such prominence in the affairs of New York. It had appeared scarcely to attract the notice of the king, and he was prone to believe that Leisler was more influenced by a hatred of the Established Church than by zeal for the crown. It was not, however, without some effect. A few words added to the instruction of the new governor had materially changed the condition of religious toleration in the province. Earlier governors had been directed “to permit all persons, of what religion soever, quietly to inhabit within the government.” Under Governor Sloughter’s instructions papists were excepted from this toleration. Was such intolerance really needed for the safety of the English colonies? They had been so far in the main a refuge for those who in Europe had suffered because of their liberal and anti-Roman religious opinions, and had never been much sought by Catholics.[468] The conditions of life in the colonies were hardly favorable to a church which brands private reasoning as heresy; and even in Maryland—which was established, if not as a Catholic colony, yet by a nobleman of that faith—there were, after fifty years of existence, only about one hundred Romanists. Public opinion and the political situation in England had now raised this bugbear of popery. It was but the faint echo of the cry which prompted those restrictions in the instructions to King William’s governor which sought to enforce in New York the policy long in vogue in the mother country. The home government seemed ignorant of the fact that the natural enemies of the Church of Rome, the Reformed and Lutheran clergymen of New York, had not only not shared Leisler’s fears, but, supported by the better educated and wealthier classes, they had opposed him by every means in their power. When, however, with Leisler’s death the motive for their dislike of his cause had been removed, the general assembly, composed to a great extent of his former opponents, willingly enacted a law, the so-called Bill of Rights, denying “liberty to any person of the Romish religion to exercise their manner of worship, contrary to the laws of England.”[469] After the attempt on the life of King William in 1697, further laws, expelling Roman Catholic priests and Jesuits from the province, and depriving papists and popish recusants of their right to vote, were passed in 1700 and 1701. It was reserved for the Revolution of 1776 to change the legal status of the Roman Catholics of New York, and place them on an equal footing with the believers in other doctrines.

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In establishing the colony of Pennsylvania on the basis of religious freedom, Penn declared that every Christian, without distinction of sect, should be eligible to public employments. But on the accession of William and Mary it became necessary to adopt and endorse the so-called “penal laws,” in prosecuting followers of the elder church. Penn himself was unable to prevent it, although his liberal spirit revolted at such intolerance, and it seems that the authorities in Pennsylvania were quite as willing as their chief to treat Romanists with liberality, notwithstanding the “penal laws,” since in 1708 Penn was unfavorably criticised in England for the leniency with which this sect was treated by him. “It has become a reproach,” he writes to his friend Logan, “to me here with the officers of the crown, that you have suffered the scandal of the mass to be publicly celebrated.”

Despite all laws, Pennsylvania became of all the colonies the most favorable and the safest field for the priests and missionaries of the Church of Rome. It is true, they had to travel about the country in disguise, but it was known everywhere that Romanists from other provinces came to Philadelphia or Lancaster at regular intervals to receive the sacraments according to the rites of their faith. Before the Revolution, Pennsylvania harbored five Catholic churches, with about double the number of priests and several thousand communicants, mostly Irish and Germans.

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The attempt upon the life of the king in 1697 had much the same effect in East New Jersey as in New York. The law of 1698, “declaring what are the rights and privileges of his majesty’s subjects in East New Jersey,” directed “that no person or persons that profess faith in God by Jesus Christ, his only Son, shall at any time be molested, punished, disturbed, or be called in question for difference in religious opinion, &c., &c., provided this shall not extend to any of the Romish religion the right to exercise their manner of worship contrary to the laws and statutes of England.”[470]

When Lord Cornbury assumed the government of New Jersey in 1701, his instructions directed him to permit liberty of conscience to all persons except papists. Matters remained thus with the Romish Church in New Jersey until the end of British rule.

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Another incident of Leisler’s brief administration was of greater importance and farther-reaching consequences than his proscription of persons differing from his religious opinions. It will be remembered[471] that a general assembly of the province had been elected in 1683, holding two sessions that year and another in 1684; also that it had been dissolved in 1687, pursuant to the instructions of King James II. to Sir Edmond Andros, directing him “to observe in the passing of lawes that the Stile of enacting the same by the Governor and Council be henceforth used and no other.” The laws enacted by the first assembly, and not repealed by the king, remained in force, and the government was carried on with the revenues derived from the excise on beer, wine, and liquors, from the customs duties on exported and imported goods, and from tax levies; but the people had no voice in the ordering of this revenue, as they had had none during the Dutch period and before 1683. Leisler and his party, however, firmly believed in the Aryan principle of “no taxation without representation,” and when a necessity for money arose out of the French invasion and the subsequent plan to reduce Canada, Leisler issued writs of election for a general assembly, which in the first session, in April, 1690, enacted a law for raising money by a general tax. Adjourned to the following autumn, it again ordered another tax levy, and passed an act obliging persons to serve in civil or military office.

In calling together this general assembly, notwithstanding the repeal by James II. of the Charter of Liberties of 1683, Leisler assumed for the colony of New York a right which the laws and customs of Great Britain did not concede to her as a “conquered or crown” province. The terms on which New York had been surrendered to the English, both in 1664 and in 1674, ignored a participation by the people in the administration of the government, and the king in council could therefore, without infringing upon any law of England or breaking any treaty stipulation, deal with the conquered province as he pleased; while all the other colonies in America were “settled or discovered” countries, which, because taken possession of as unoccupied lands or under special charters and settled by English subjects, had thereby inherited the common law of England and all the rights and liberties of Englishmen, subject only to certain conditions imposed by their respective charters, as against the prerogatives of the crown. The action of Leisler showed to the English ministry the injustice with which New York had been treated so long, and the instructions given to Governor Sloughter in November, 1690, directed him “to summon and call general Assemblies of the Inhabitants, being Freeholders within your Government, according to the usage of our other Plantations in America.” This general assembly was to be the popular branch of the government, while the council, appointed by the king upon the governor’s recommendation, took the place of the English House of Lords. The governor had a negative voice in the making of all laws, the final veto remaining with the king, to whom every act had to be sent for confirmation. Three coördinate factors of the government—the assembly, the council, and the governor—were now established in theory; in reality there were only two, for the governor always presided at the sessions of the council, voting as a member, and in case of a tie gave also a casting vote. This state of affairs, by which the executive branch possessed two votes on every legislative measure, as well as the final approval, continued until 1733, when, Governor Cosby having quarrelled with the chief justice and other members of the council, the question was submitted to the home government. The law officers now declared that it was inconsistent with the nature of the English government, the governor’s commission, and his majesty’s instructions for the governor in any case whatsoever to sit and vote as a member of the council. Governor Cosby was therefore informed by the Lords of Trade and Plantations that he could sit and advise with the council on executive business, but not when the council met as a legislative body.

The first assembly called by Governor Sloughter enacted, in 1691, the Bill of Rights, which was the Charter of Liberties of 1683, with some modifications relative to churches. It met with the same fate as before, as the Lords of Trade could not recommend it to the king for approval, because it gave “great and unreasonable privileges” to the members of the general assembly, and “contained also several large and doubtful expressions.” The king accordingly vetoed it in 1697, after the ministry had required six years to discover the objections against it. They could not very well give the real reason, which was that this Bill of Rights vested supreme power and authority, under the king, in the governor, council, and the _people by their representatives_, while it was as yet undecided whether in New York, a “conquered” province, the people had any right to demand representation in the legislative bodies.

From a plate in Valentine’s _N. Y. City Manual_, 1851.]

Governor Sloughter died within a few months after his arrival in New York (June, 1691), and was succeeded by Colonel Benjamin Fletcher, “a soldier, a man of strong passions and inconsiderable talent, very active and equally avaricious,” who, as his successor Bellomont said, allowed the introduction into the province of a debased coinage (the so-called dog dollars); protected pirates, and took a share of their booty as a reward for his protection; misapplied and embezzled the king’s revenue and other moneys appropriated for special and public uses; gave away and took for himself, for nominal quit-rents, extensive tracts of land; and used improper influence in securing the election of his friends to the general assembly.

A man of such a character could hardly be a satisfactory governor of a province, the inhabitants of which were still divided between the bitterly antagonistic factions of Leislerians and anti-Leislerians, without in a short time gaining the ill-will and enmity of one of them. The men whose official position, as members of the council, gave them the first opportunity of influencing the new governor were anti-Leislerians. Fletcher therefore joined this party, without perhaps fully understanding the cause of the dissensions. His lack of administrative abilities, coupled with his affiliation with one party, gave sufficient cause to the other to make grave charges against him, which resulted in his recall in 1697.

In the mean time the assembly had begun the struggle for legislative supremacy which characterizes the inner political life of New York during the whole period of British dominion.

It enacted two laws which were the principal source of all the party disputes during the following decades. One of these laws established a revenue, and thereby created a precedent which succeeding assemblies did not always consider necessary to acknowledge, while the executive would insist upon its being followed. The other erected courts of justice as a temporary measure, and when they expired by limitation, and a later governor attempted to erect a court without the assent of the assembly, this law, too, was quoted as precedent, but was likewise ignored.

In 1694 the assembly discovered that, during the last three years, a revenue of £40,000 had been provided for, which had generally been misapplied. Governor Fletcher refused to account for it, as, according to his ideas of government, the assembly’s business was only to raise money for the governor and council to spend. This resulted in a dissolution of the assembly, as in the council’s judgment “there was no good to be expected from this assembly,” and very little was done by its successor, elected in 1695. But not satisfied with vetoing the Bill of Rights, the home authorities tried further to repress the growing liberal movement in New York by giving to Fletcher’s successor, the Earl of Bellomont, an absolute negative on the acts of the provincial legislature, so that no infringement upon the prerogatives of the crown might become a law. He was further empowered to prorogue the assembly, to institute courts, appoint judges, and disburse the revenues. The Bishop of London was made the head of all ecclesiastical and educational matters in the province, and no printing-press was allowed to be put up without the governor’s license.

Bellomont, in addressing the first assembly under his administration, made a bid for popular favor by finding fault with the doings of his predecessor, who had left him as a legacy “difficulties to struggle with, a divided people, an empty treasury, a few miserable, naked, half-starved soldiers, being not half the number the king allowed pay for, the fortifications, and even the governor’s house, very much out of repairs, and, in a word, gentlemen (he said), the whole government out of frame.” The assembly was to find remedies, that is, money wherewith to repair all these evils. How they did it is shown by a speech made to them by Bellomont a month later: “You have now sat a whole month ... and have done nothing, either for the service of his Majestie or the good of y^e country.... Your proceedings have been so unwarrantable, wholy tending to strife and division, and indeed disloyal to his Majestie and his laws, and destructive to the rights and libertys of the people, that I do think fit to _dissolve_ this present assembly, and it is _dissolved_ accordingly.”

Having come with the best intentions of curing the evils of Fletcher’s rule, and being instructed to break up piracy, of which New York had been represented in England as the very hot-bed, Bellomont soon became popular, and no doubt grew in favor with the people, both by persuading the assembly to enact a law of indemnity for Leisler, whose body, with that of Milbourne, was now granted the honors of a public reinterment, and by bringing Kidd, the celebrated sea-rover, to justice. To-day that which was meted out to Kidd might hardly be called justice; for it seems questionable if he had ever been guilty of piracy.

Bellomont was not allowed to carry out his plans for the internal improvement of the province, for death put an end to his work at the end of the third year of his administration, in 1701. His successor, Lord Cornbury, who entered upon his duties early in 1702 (Lieutenant-Governor Nanfan having had meanwhile a successful contest with the leaders of the still vigorous anti-Leisler party), was sent out as governor by his cousin, Queen Anne, in order to retrieve his shattered fortune. The necessitous condition in which he arrived in New York and his profligate mode of life soon led him to several misappropriations of public funds, which resulted in a law, passed by the disgusted assembly of 1705, taking into their own hands the appointment of a provincial treasurer for the receipt and disbursement of all public moneys. The whole of Cornbury’s administration was occupied with a contest between the assembly and the crown: the former claiming all the privileges of Englishmen under Magna Charta; the latter, through its governor, maintaining its prerogatives, and saying that the assembly had no other rights and privileges “but such as the queen is pleased to allow.” Lord Cornbury’s recall did not mend matters.[472] The assembly of 1708, the last under Cornbury’s administration, had been dissolved, because in its tenacity of the people’s right it had declared that to levy money in the colony without consent of the general assembly was a grievance and a violation of the people’s property; that the erecting of a court of equity without consent of the general assembly was contrary to law, both without precedent and of dangerous consequences to the liberty and properties of the subjects.

The term of Cornbury’s successor, Lord Lovelace, was very short, death calling him off within six months, while the lieutenant-governor, Ingoldsby, was a man too much like his friends, Sloughter, Fletcher, and Cornbury, to improve the state of affairs. With Governor Robert Hunter’s commission there came, in 1710, the answer to the declaration of the assembly of 1708. He received thereby “full power and authority to erect, constitute, and establish courts of judicature, with the advice and consent of the council.” The assembly’s remonstrance had been met by ignoring its author, and this treatment naturally incensed the representatives of the people so much that all the efforts of Governor Hunter, a man of excellent qualities, the friend of Addison and Swift, availed nothing in the way of settling the existing differences.

Follows an engraving in Valentine’s _N. Y. City Manual_, 1851, p. 420. Cf. on the seals of the colonial governors, _Hist. Mag._, ix. p. 176.]

After two years’ administration, Governor Hunter had to confess to the Lords of Trade that he could not expect any support of the government from the assembly, “unless her Majesty will be pleased to put it entirely into their own hands;” and in 1715 he appointed Lewis Morris, a wealthy man, as successor to the deceased Chief Justice Mompesson, “because he is able to live without salary, which they [the assembly] will most certainly never grant to any in that station.” He found that he could not carry on the government without yielding, and thereby acting contrary to his instructions, and during the summer of 1715 came to an understanding with the assembly. “I asked,” he says, in a letter to the Lords of Trade, “what they would do for the Government if I should pass it (the Naturalization Bill) in their way, since they did not like mine; I asked nothing for myself, tho’ they well knew that I had offers of several thousands of pounds for my assent; they at last agreed that they would settle a sufficient Revenue for the space of five years on that condition; many rubs I met with, but at last with difficulty carry’d through both parts of the Legislature and assented to both at the same time. If I have done amiss, I am sorry for’t, but what was there left for me to do? I have been struggling hard for bread itself for five years to no effect and for four of them unpitty’d, I hope I have now laid a foundation for a lasting settlement on this hitherto unsettled and ungovernable Province.”

In asserting their rights as representatives of the _people_ and compelling the executive finally to acknowledge them, the assembly had followed the course which has been shown to be effective in the English Parliament since the days of William III. But the legislative supremacy over the executive established by this victory was greater than that obtained by Parliament. In New York the executive could only collect taxes when first authorized by the legislature, while the people, through their representatives, kept the control of the sums collected in their own hands by appointing the receiving and disbursing officers.

Hunter’s wise course in yielding on several points had a better effect on the province than at first he was willing to confess. Fletcher had found the people of New York “generally very poor and the government much in debt, occasioned by the mismanagement of those who have exercised the King’s power.” The revenues of the province were in such deplorable condition that several sums of money had to be borrowed on the personal credit of members of the council to pay the most pressing debts of government; the burden of war, unjustly placed on the shoulders of New York, had impoverished the inhabitants and almost destroyed their usefulness as taxpayers; while the neighboring colonies, either refusing to assist in the defence of the frontiers against the French or being dilatory in sending their quota of money and men, reaped the advantage of New York’s patriotism by receiving within their boundaries the bulk of the foreign trade, and by adding to their population the majority of emigrants. When Hunter left the province, after ten years’ service as its governor, he could congratulate the assembly on increased prosperity and on a better state of public affairs.

His successor was the comptroller of customs at London, William Burnet, the son of the celebrated bishop, who exchanged places with Hunter. Smith, the historian, describes him as “a man of sense and polite breeding, a well-read scholar, sprightly and of social disposition.... He used to say of himself, ‘I act first and think afterwards.’” The good reports which preceded Burnet made a favorable impression on the colonial assembly, and the whole period of his administration was undisturbed by constitutional disputes, even though people opposed to him tried to create trouble by asserting that the appointment of a new governor of the province required, like the accession of a new king, the election of a new assembly, and by representing the continuance of an assembly under two governors as unconstitutional.

Burnet’s distrust of the neighboring French caused some stir in mercantile circles. He had an act passed forbidding all trade in Indian goods with Canada,—an act which would have benefited the province in general by securing all the Indian trade, a large part of which now found its way to Canada; but the merchants of New York and Albany, who disposed of their surplus to Canada traders, would have made less profits. They consequently opposed Burnet’s plans until the end of his administration (1728).

During the three years of John Montgomerie’s rule, which was ended by his death, in 1731, New York enjoyed some rest, to be violently disturbed, however, by the claims of his successor. It had been usual in the royal instructions of the governor to fix the salary of the president of the council at half the amount allowed to the executive, and it was customary to provide that in the absence, resignation, or death of the governor or lieutenant-governor he should assume the reins of the government. Upon Montgomerie’s death, Rip van Dam, as eldest member of the council, became president, and then claimed the full salary of the governor, which the council, after five months’ deliberation, finally allowed. It was upon this decision that the famous Zenger libel suit of a few years later hinged. Soon after the arrival of the new governor, William Cosby, Rip van Dam was called upon (November, 1732) to restore to the treasury a moiety of the full salary, which, under the decision of the council, he had been receiving in contravention, as was claimed, of the royal instructions. On the refusal of the president to comply, the attorney-general of the province was directed to begin an action in the king’s name “to the enforcing a Due Complyance with the said Order [to refund] according to the true Intent thereof and of his Majestie’s Additional Instruction.”

At the trial, the chief justice, Lewis Morris, surprised the governor, the attorney-general, and the whole aristocratic party (Van Dam and his friends representing the popular party) by informing the king’s counsel, in the first place, that the question to be discussed was one of jurisdiction, involving the right of the court to decide cases of equity; and in the second place, that he denied such jurisdiction, and in general the right of the king to establish courts of equity.[473] Jealous to maintain the royal prerogatives, Cosby removed Morris from the chief-justiceship, and put De Lancey, the second justice, in his place. Finding his efforts to be reinstated without result, and having no other means to avenge himself, Morris had recourse to the press, and in _Zenger’s New York Weekly Journal_ he attacked the governor with extreme rancor, and attempted to influence the general assembly, to which he had been elected, against the king’s authority to erect courts. Even Cosby’s death, in 1736, could not conciliate him. The attacks upon his administration continued, and Morris’s vindictiveness finally even disturbed the council and the assembly. President Clarke, who had temporarily succeeded Cosby, was deterred from arresting Van Dam, the younger Morris, Smith the historian, and Zenger the printer, to be sent to England to be tried for treason, only because the forty-fifth paragraph of the instructions required positive proof of the crime in such cases.

The trial of Zenger had, however, already shown that it was not safe to accuse a man of a crime when a jury had already acquitted him. The first number of the _Weekly Journal_ appeared on the 5th of November, 1733; and its editor had from the beginning made war upon the administration with so much vigor that in January following the chief justice, De Lancey, “was pleased to animadvert upon the doctrine of libel in a long charge given in that term to the grand jury,”[474] hoping to obtain an indictment against Zenger. The jury did not share the opinions of the chief justice, and failed to indict Zenger. Nor was the general assembly willing to concur in a subsequent resolution of the council that certain numbers of the _Journal_ should be publicly burnt by the hangman, “as containing in them many things derogatory of the dignity of his majesty’s government, reflecting upon the legislature and tending to raise seditions and tumults in the province,” and that the printer should be prosecuted. The burning of the papers (November 2, 1734), carried out by special order of the council alone, was in appearance far from the solemn judicial act which it was meant to be. The sheriff and the recorder of New York, with a few friends, stood around the pile, while the sheriff’s negro, not the official hangman, set fire to it. The municipal authorities, who usually have to attend such ceremonies _ex officio_, and were ordered to do so in this case, had refused to come, and would not even allow the order to be entered in the proper records, because they considered it to be neither a royal mandatory writ nor an order authorized by law. Zenger’s trial began on the 4th of August, and resulted in a verdict of “Not guilty.”

The publishing of the alleged libel had been admitted, but it was claimed to be neither false, nor scandalous, nor malicious. When the New York lawyers who had been engaged in the defence were disbarred, Andrew Hamilton, a prominent pleader from Philadelphia, took the case. He managed it so adroitly, met the browbeating of De Lancey so courageously, and pleaded the cause of his client so eloquently that he at once achieved a more conspicuous fame than belonged to any other practitioner at the bar of that day. The corporation of New York fell in with the popular applause in conferring upon him the freedom of their city, enclosing their seal in a box of gold, while they added the “assurances of the great esteem that the corporation had for his person and merits.”[475]

The result of Zenger’s trial established the freedom of the press in the colonies,[476] for it settled here the right of juries to find a general verdict in libel cases, as was done in England by a law of Parliament passed many years later, and it took out of the hands of judges appointed to serve during the king’s pleasure, and not during good behavior, as in England, the power to do mischief.[477] It also gave a finishing blow to the Court of Exchequer, which, after the case of Cosby _versus_ Van Dam, never again exercised an equity jurisdiction, and it suppressed the royal prerogative in an assumed right to establish courts without consulting the legislature. The jurisdiction hitherto exercised by the Supreme Court as a Court of Exchequer—that is, in all matters relating to his majesty’s lands, rights, rents, profits, and revenues—had always been called in question by colonial lawyers, because no act of the general assembly countenanced it. It was, therefore, a relief to everybody in the province when the legislature, in 1742, passed an “Act for regulating the payment of the Quit-Rents,” which in effect, though not in name, established on a firm basis a branch of the Supreme Court as a Court of Exchequer. As then instituted, it passed into the courts of the state, and was only abolished in December, 1828.

The excitement over the Zenger trial had hardly had time to subside when Rip van Dam again disturbed the public mind by claiming, after Cosby’s death, that he as eldest councillor was entitled to be president of the council, and as such to be acting governor, although he had been removed from the council by Cosby. Before the quarrel could attain too threatening dimensions, Clarke’s commission as lieutenant-governor happily arrived, and Van Dam’s claim was set at rest. Clarke’s administration of the province was in the main a satisfactory one. He had lived nearly half a century in New York,[478] and was thoroughly conversant with its resources and its needs, and, assisted by a good education as a lawyer, he found little difficulty in managing the refractory assembly and in gaining most of his important legislative points. His greatest victory was that by certain concessions he induced the assembly of 1739 to grant again a revenue to the king equivalent to the civil list in England, which had been refused since 1736, but was continued during the whole of Clarke’s administration. Although perhaps never unmindful of his own interests, he had also the good of the province at heart, and it must be regretted that a plan, drawn up while he was yet secretary, for colonizing the Indian country was not fully carried out and bore no fruits. He proposed to buy from the Iroquois about 100,000 acres of land, the purchase money to be raised either by subscription or by the issue of bills of credit. Every Protestant family made acquainted with the conditions and wishing to settle was to have 200 acres at nominal quit-rents. All the officials who were entitled to fees from the issue of land patents agreed to surrender the same, so that it would have imposed upon the settlers only the cost of improvements. The neighboring colonies had industriously spread the report that there were few or no lands ungranted in the province of New York, and that the expense of purchasing the remainder from the Indians or obtaining a grant from the crown was greater than the price of land in Pennsylvania and other colonies. Advertisements were therefore to be scattered over Europe, giving intending emigrants a clear view of the advantages of settling in the backwoods of New York. The plan reads very much like a modern land-scheme. If it could, however, have been carried out in those days, with all the governmental machinery to help it, the country from the upper Mohawk to the Genesee would have been settled before the Revolution, and Sullivan’s expedition might have become unnecessary and a Cherry Valley massacre impossible.

The only great event of Clarke’s administration was the negro plot of 1741, which for a while cast the city of New York into a state of fear and attendant precautions, and these conditions were felt even throughout the colonies. A close examination of the testimony given at the trial of the alleged negro conspirators fails to convince the modern investigator that the slaves, who had been misled by the counsels of Roman Catholics, had really arranged a plan to murder all the whites and burn the city. Fires had occurred rather frequently, suspiciously so, during the spring of 1741, the negro riot of the earlier years of the century was remembered, reports of negro insurrections in the West Indies made slave-owners look askance at their ebony chattels, an invasion of the British colonies in America by France and Spain seemed imminent, and a rancorous hatred of the Church of Rome and its adherents prevailed among the English and Dutch inhabitants of New York, while tradition and the journal of the proceedings against the conspirators assure us that some sort of a plot existed; but we must still wonder at the panic occasioned among the ten or twelve thousand white inhabitants by what, after all, may have been only the revengeful acts of a few of the 20 whites and 154 negroes who were indicted on the most insufficient evidence. It is doubtful whether all who were indicted had anything to do with the fires or the intended murder, but the judicial proceedings were of a nature to implicate every one of the two thousand colored people in the county of New York, and two thirds of the accused were found guilty, and were either hanged, burnt at the stake, or transported.

Political astuteness, or perhaps a desire to enjoy in quiet his advancing years, had led Clarke to yield to the popular party on all important points. He had confined himself to wordy remonstrances in surrendering several of his prerogatives. His successor, Admiral George Clinton,—the second son of the Earl of Lincoln, and, as he acknowledged himself, a friend and cousin of Charles Clinton, father of Governor George Clinton of a later date,—found that the position of governor had ceased to be financially desirable. New Jersey had been again placed under a separate governor, thus reducing the income of the governor of New York by £1,000. “Former governors,” it is reported, “had the advantage of one of the four companies, besides the paying of all the four companies, which made at least £2,000 per annum;” but now the assembly had placed this in other hands.

From a plate in Valentine’s _N. Y. City Manual_, 1851.]

They had also interfered with a former custom, according to which the governors drew one half of their salary from the date of their commissions; but under the new arrangement for raising and paying the salary he could only draw it from the date of his arrival. Clinton brought with him a prejudice against his lieutenant-governor which was perhaps justified, for he knew him to have led Cosby into all the errors which characterized the latter’s administration. But instead of maintaining an independent position apart from the two political parties, he threw himself into the arms of the cunning Chief Justice De Lancey, the leader of the popular faction. Acting under his advice, Clinton at first was as ready to yield every point to the assembly as Clarke had done, until he discovered that all the powers of a governor were gradually slipping into De Lancey’s hand, who hoped to tire out Clinton’s patience and induce him to resign, thus leaving the field free to him with a commission of lieutenant-governor.

Clinton, upon his arrival at New York, had found, as Clarke predicted, the province “in great tranquillity and in a flourishing condition, able to support the government in an ample and honorable manner.” He perhaps would have had no difficulty with the general assembly about money grants, if he had been less distrustful of Clarke and more willing to acknowledge the rights of the people in such matters. His first measures of dissolving the old assembly, calling a new one, and, perhaps for the first time in America, introducing a kind of civil service reform by continuing in place all officers who had been appointed by his predecessors, were received with great satisfaction throughout the province, but they failed to loosen the strings of the public purse, while the new assembly sought other measures to declare their independence. Clarke’s advice, given before Clinton’s arrival, that henceforth the assembly should allow the government a revenue for a term of years, was not acted upon; but instead they voted the usual appropriations for one year only. In voting salaries for officers, they did not recognize the incumbents by name, and the council pronounced this a device of the assembly to usurp the appointing power, and to change the stipends of the officers at any time.

Walpole had meanwhile turned over the government in England to his friend Pelham, a family connection of Governor Clinton. Macaulay describes Pelham as a man with an understanding like that of Walpole, “on a somewhat smaller scale.” During Pelham’s administration, a bill was considered in the House of Commons in 1744, news of which, upon reaching the colonies, did not fail to arouse their indignation. It forbade the American colonies to issue bills of credit or paper money. As these colonies had but little trade, and had to draw upon Europe for the tools and necessaries of life in the newly opened wilderness, the small amount of coin which they received from the West Indies and the Spanish main in exchange for bread-stuffs and lumber, their only articles of exportation, went across the ocean in part payment of their debts, leaving no “instrument of association,” no circulating medium, in their hands. To replace the coin, they had to have recourse to the issue of paper money, without which all intercolonial and internal trade would have been impossible. The parliamentary intention of depriving the colonies of these means of exchange led the New York assembly to declare that the bill was contrary to the constitution of Great Britain, inconsistent with the liberties and privileges of Englishmen, and subjected the British colonies in America to the absolute will of the crown and its officers.

The efforts of Governor Clinton to reconcile the assembly by giving his assent to all the bills passed by them in their first session did not prevent their assuming greater powers than the House of Commons. He could not obtain from them either money or men for the Cape Breton expedition, set on foot by Governor Shirley of Massachusetts. Trying to regain control of colonial politics, he stirred up a bitter feeling among the popular party men; and after years of struggle, during which the home government afforded him little comfort and support, Clinton was willing to throw up his commission as governor of New York in 1751, and return to England and resume his station as admiral.

The French of Canada had used many artifices and had been indefatigable in their endeavors to gain over the Six Nations. They had cajoled many of them to desert their own tribes and remove to Canada, and had instigated others, whom they could induce to desert, to go to war with the Catawba Indians, friends of South Carolina, thereby endangering and weakening the allegiance of the Southern Indians to the British interest. Commissioners had arrived, or were to come, from all the other colonies, to meet the Six Nations at Albany and renew the covenant chain. If Quidor (the Indian name for the governor of New York) were to be absent on such an occasion, especially a Quidor who already had made an excellent impression on the king’s red allies, the council conceived that the meeting would not only be without result, but that the Indians, considering themselves slighted, would turn a more willing ear to the French, and thus endanger the existence of the colonies. Clinton was luckily a man who considered duty higher than any personal comfort, and on the 1st of July, 1751, opened the conference with the Indians which may be said to have been one of the most important in the history of the English colonies. Colonel William Johnson was induced to withdraw his resignation as Indian agent, which had made the Six Nations very uneasy, and a peace was made between the Iroquois, of New York, and the Catawbas, which also included their friends among the Southern Indians. There is not space to say much of the Indian policy pursued by Governor Clinton and other royal governors of New York. To use the Indian explanation, “they took example from the sun, which has its regular course; and as the sun is certain in its motion, New York was certain to the Indians in the course of their mutual affairs, and deviated not in the least.” New York alone had to bear the expenses (£1,150) of this conference, since Massachusetts, Connecticut, and South Carolina refused to contribute, while New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia were not represented. The other colonies also refused to help New York in keeping the Iroquois in good humor by supplying smiths to live in the Indian territory and repair the savages’ guns and hatchets. New York has the benefit of the Indian trade, they said; let her bear the burden. Pennsylvania, most interested of all the middle colonies in keeping the Indians friendly, had soon learned the evils of neglecting them. Armed parties of French and savages came down into the valley of the Ohio in 1753, creating great confusion among the Indians of Pennsylvania, and inducing nearly all, the Delawares alone excepted, to join the French, as their best recourse in the indifference of the English. At the same time the New York Indians became dissatisfied at their treatment by the general assembly, which would not allow the forts in the Indian country, at Oswego and at Albany, to be maintained, preferring to trust to the activity of the Indians for keeping the French and their savage allies from devastating the northern frontier. Disgusted with the constant struggle which the jealousy of the assembly and their encroachments upon the royal prerogatives always kept alive, Clinton finally resigned in October of 1753; astonishing the council, and especially his political enemy De Lancey, the chief justice, before he surrendered the office to his newly arrived successor, Sir Danvers Osborn, by the production of a letter from the Duke of Newcastle, secretary of state, dated October 27, 1747, which gave Clinton a leave of absence to come to England, and covered De Lancey’s commission as lieutenant-governor. This stroke of Clinton’s did not succeed very well. It is true, Sir Danvers’ presence deprived the new lieutenant-governor of the pleasure of showing himself as chief magistrate of the province, but it was to be only for a few days. Sir Danvers, perceiving that the assembly of New York was not a body easily led by royal commands, exclaimed, “What have I come here for?” and hanged himself two days after taking the necessary oath; and thus the lieutenant-governor, De Lancey, came into power.

From a plate in Valentine’s _N. Y. City Manual_, 1851. Cf. Lamb’s _New York_, i. 543.]

De Lancey soon discovered himself in a dilemma. The oaths which he had taken when entering upon his new office, and which he must have had self-respect enough to consider binding, compelled him to maintain the royal prerogatives and several obnoxious laws made for the colonies by Parliament. On the other side, his political career and his bearing of past years forced him to work for the continuation of the popularity which his opposition to the very things he had sworn to do had gained him. De Lancey was skilful enough to avoid both horns of this dilemma. The assembly, rejoicing to see a man of their own thinking at the head of affairs, passed money and other laws in accordance with the lieutenant-governor’s suggestions, and quietly pocketed his rebukes, when he saw fit to administer any. The two most important events during his term were of such a nature that he could do nothing, or only very little, to prevent or further action.

On the 11th of January, 1754, a great number of people assembled in the city of New York, on account of a late agreement of the merchants and others not to receive or pass copper half-pence in payment at any other rate than fourteen to the shilling. The crowd kept increasing until two o’clock in the afternoon, when the arrest of the man beating the drum and of two others throwing half-pence into the mass quieted them.

_From a plate in Valentine’s N. Y. City Manual, 1851, p. 420._]

Later there was the conference of commissioners of all the colonies at Albany in July, 1754, convened to treat anew with the Iroquois, and also to consider, in obedience to orders from England, a plan of confederation for all the colonies. The deliberations and conclusions of the congress in this last respect are made the subject of inquiry in a later chapter of the present volume.[479] De Lancey was accused of opposing this plan of union by his machinations. We may say that such accusation was unjust. The general assembly of the province, to whom the “representation of the state and plan for union” was referred, that they might make observations thereupon, said in their report or address to the lieutenant-governor, on the 22d of August, 1754: “We are _of opinion with your Honor_, that nothing is more natural and salutary than a union of the colonies for their own defence.” While he transmitted the minutes of the congress at Albany to the Lords of Trade without a word of comment, he may have used his private influence to defeat the union; but there is no reason to believe that he acted even in that wise from other than upright motives, and he had already shown, in the New Jersey boundary question, how personal associations had restrained him from interfering or giving an opinion. His sense of duty in office was perhaps exaggerated, and he could not brook censure by the home authorities. The receiver-general and other officers entrusted with the collection of the king’s revenue desired the passage of an act “for the more easy collecting his majesty’s quit-rents, and for protection of land in order thereto.” The assembly and council having passed such a bill, it came before the governor for his assent, which he readily gave, supposing that an act favored by the king’s officers could not meet with the disapproval of the government in England. The Lords of Trade, however, rebuked him, and he sent in his resignation.

From a plate in Valentine’s _N. Y. City Manual_, 1851.]

In the mean time, the appointment of Admiral Sir Charles Hardy as governor had relieved De Lancey for a time (1755-57) from the cares of the administration. Sir Charles allowed himself to be led by his lieutenant-governor, and therefore the affairs of government went on as smoothly as of late, excepting that the assembly made occasional issues upon money bills, though that body was little inclined to press their levelling principles too strongly against their old friend, the lieutenant-governor, now that he was the adviser of the executive. Sir Charles proved less fond of the cares of office than of the sea, and after two years’ service resigned, to hoist his blue admiral’s flag under Rear Admiral Holbourn at Halifax. De Lancey had therefore to assume once more the government on the 3d of June, 1757, which he administered, with little to disturb the relations between the crown and the assembly, down to the time of his death, on July 30, 1760. This event placed his lifelong adversary, Cadwallader Colden, in the executive chair, first as president of the council, and a year later as lieutenant-governor.

The policy of the royal representative was now very quickly changed. The acquiescent bearing of De Lancey in his methods with the assembly gave place to the more peremptory manner which had been used by Clinton, whose friend Colden had always been. The records of the next few years, during which Monckton, who was connected with the Acadian deportation, was governor, show but the beginning of that struggle between prerogative and the people which resulted in the American Revolution, and a consideration of the immediate causes of that contest belongs to another volume.

* * * * *

The history of Pennsylvania, down to the appointment of Governor Blackwell in 1688, has been told in a previous chapter.[480] The selection of John Blackwell for the governorship was an unfortunate one. A son-in-law of the Cromwellian General Lambert and a resident of puritanical New England, he must have shared more or less in the hatred of the Friends’ religion, so that his appointment to govern a colony settled principally by this sect most likely arose from Penn’s respect and friendship for the man and from his inability to find a suitable Quaker willing to accept the office. Within two months after his arrival, he had quarrelled with his predecessor, Thomas Lloyd, then keeper of the broad seal, and the rest of the council. Shortly after this he succeeded in breaking up the assembly, and before he had been in the province one year he became convinced that his ideas of governing did not meet with the approbation of the people, and returned to England, leaving the administration in the hands of his opponent, Lloyd.

After having acquired from the Duke of York the Delaware territory, Penn endeavored to bring his province and the older settlements under one form of government; but he could not prevent the jealousies, caused often by difference of religious opinion and by desire for offices, from raising a conflict which soon after Blackwell’s departure threatened a dissolution of the nominal union. Lloyd remained president of Pennsylvania, while Penn’s cousin, Markham, was made lieutenant-governor of Delaware, under certain restrictions, as detailed in a letter from Penn, which still left the supremacy to Lloyd in matters of governing for the proprietary.