Chapter III: The Middle Colonies (2)

In the mean time James II. of England had been forced to give up his crown to his son-in-law, and this event brought unexpected results to the proprietary of Pennsylvania. Penn’s intimacy with the dethroned Stuart, unmarred by their different religious views, made him at once a suspicious person in the eyes of the new rulers of England. He had been arrested three times on the charges of disaffection to the existing government, of corresponding with the late king, and of adhering to the enemies of the kingdom, but had up to 1690 always succeeded in clearing himself before the Lords of the Council or the Court of King’s Bench. At last he was allowed to make preparations for another visit to his province “with a great company of adventurers,” when another order for his arrest necessitated his retirement into the country, where he lived quietly for two or three years. This blow came at a most critical time for his province, distracted as it was by political and religious disturbances, which his presence might have done much to prevent. The necessity of keeping remote from observation did not give him opportunity to answer the complaints which became current in England, that a schism among the Quakers had inaugurated a system of religious intolerance in a province founded on the principles of liberty of conscience. The result of this inopportune but enforced inactivity on Penn’s part was to deprive him of his province and its dependency (Delaware), and a commission was issued to Benjamin Fletcher, then governor of New York, to take them under his government, October 21, 1692. Fletcher made a visit to his new territory, hoping, perhaps, that his appearance might bring the opposing sections into something like harmony. Quickly disabused of his fond fancy, and disappointed in luring money from the Quakers, he returned to New York, leaving a deputy in charge. About the same time, 1694, Penn had obtained a hearing before competent authority in England, and having cleared himself successfully of all charges, he was reinvested with his proprietary rights. Not able to return to Pennsylvania immediately, he transferred his authority to Markham, who continued to act as ruler of the colony until 1699, when Penn visited his domain once more.

One of Penn’s first acts was to impress the assembly with the necessity of discouraging illicit trade and suppressing piracy. He did it with so much success that the assembly not only passed two laws to this effect, but also took a further step to clear the government of Pennsylvania from all imputations by expelling one of its members, James Brown, a son-in-law of Governor Markham, who was more or less justly accused of piracy. He was equally successful with his recommendations to the assembly concerning a new charter, the slave-trade, and the treatment and education of the negroes already in the province. But when, in 1701, he asked in the king’s name for a contribution of £350 towards the fortifications on the frontiers of New York, the assembly decided to refer the consideration of this matter to another meeting, or “until more emergent occasions shall require our further proceedings therein.”

The evident intention of the ministry in England to reduce the proprietary governments in the English colonies to royal ones, “under pretence of advancing the prerogatives of the crown,” compelled Penn to return to England in the latter part of 1701. But before he could leave a quarrel broke out in the assembly between the deputies from the Lower Counties, now Delaware, and those of the province. The former were accused of having obtained some exclusive powers or rights for themselves which the others would not allow them, and in consequence the men of the Lower Counties withdrew from the assembly in high dudgeon. After long discussions, and by giving promises to agree to a separation of that district from the province under certain conditions, Penn at last managed to patch up a peace between the two factions. He then went to England.

The new charter for the province and territories, signed by Penn, October 25, 1701, was more republican in character than those of the neighboring colonies. It not only provided for an assembly of the people with great powers, including those of creating courts, but to a certain extent it submitted to the choice of the people the nomination of some of the county officers. The section concerning liberty of conscience did not discriminate against the members of the Church of Rome. The closing section fulfilled the promise already made by Penn, that in case the representatives of the two territorial districts could not agree within three years to join in legislative business, the Lower Counties should be separated from Pennsylvania. On the same day Penn established by letters-patent a council of state for the province, “to consult and assist the proprietary himself or his deputy with the best of their advice and council in public affairs and matters relating to the government and the peace and well-being of the people; and in the absence of the proprietary, or upon the deputy’s absence out of the province, his death, or other incapacity, to exercise all and singular the powers of government.” The original town and borough of Philadelphia, having by this time “become near equal to the city of New York in trade and riches,”[481] was raised, by patent of the 25th of October, 1701, to the rank of a city, and, like the province, could boast of having a more liberal charter than her neighbors; for the municipal officers were to be elected by the representatives of the people of the city, and not appointed by the governor, as in New York.

The government of the province had been entrusted by Penn to Andrew Hamilton, also governor for the proprietors in New Jersey, with James Logan as provincial secretary, to whom was likewise confided the management of the proprietary estates, thus making him in reality the representative of Penn and the leader of his party. Hamilton died in December, 1702; but before his death he had endeavored in vain to bring the representatives of the two sections of his government together again. The Delaware members remained obstinate, and finally, while Edward Shippen, a member of the council and first mayor of Philadelphia, was acting as president, it was settled that they should have separate assemblies, entirely independent of each other.

The first separate assembly for Pennsylvania proper met at Philadelphia, in October, 1703, and by its first resolution showed that the Quakers, so dominant in the province, were beginning to acquire a taste for authority, and meant to color their religion with the hue of political power. According to the new charter, the assembly, elected annually, was to consist of four members for each county, and was to meet at Philadelphia on the 14th of October of each year, sitting upon their own adjournments. Upon the separation of the legislative bodies of the two sections, Pennsylvania claimed to be entitled to eight members for each county, which, being duly elected and met, reasserted the powers granted by the charter; but when the governor and council desired to confer with them they would adjourn without conference. Upon the objection from the governor that they could not sit wholly upon their own adjournment, they immediately decided not to sit again until the following March, and thus deprive the governor and council of every chance to come to an understanding on the matter.

Before President Shippen could take any step toward settling this question, John Evans, a young Welshman, lately appointed deputy-governor by Penn, arrived in Philadelphia (December, 1703). The new-comer at once called both assemblies together, directing them to sit in Philadelphia in April, 1704, in utter disregard of the agreement of separation. He renewed Hamilton’s efforts to effect again a legislative union, and also failed, not because the Delaware members were opposed to it, but because now the Pennsylvania representatives, probably disgusted with the obstinacy of the former, absolutely refused to have anything to do with them. Governor Evans took this refusal very ill and resented it in various ways, by which the state of affairs was brought to such a pass that neither this nor the next assembly, under the speakership of David Lloyd, accomplished anything of importance, but complained bitterly to Penn of his deputy. In the latter part of the same year the first assembly for the Lower Counties met in the old town of New Castle, and was called upon by Governor Evans to raise a militia out of that class of the population who were not prevented by religious scruples from bearing arms,—soldiers being then needed for the war against France and Spain. About a year later, having become reconciled with the Pennsylvania assembly of 1706, Evans persuaded the Delaware representatives to pass a law “for erecting and maintaining a fort for her Majesty’s service at the Town of New Castle upon Delaware.” This law exacted a toll in gunpowder from every vessel coming from the sea up the river.[482]

These quarrels between the governor and the assemblies were repeated every year. At one time they had for ground the refusal of the Quakers to support the war which was waging against the French and Indians on the frontiers. At another they disagreed upon the establishment of a judiciary. These disturbances produced financial disruptions, and Penn himself suffered therefrom to such an extent that he was thrown into a London prison, and had finally to mortgage his province for £6,600. The recall of Evans, in 1709, and the appointment of Charles Gookin in his stead, did not mend matters. Logan, Penn’s intimate friend and representative, was finally compelled to leave the country; and, going to England (1710), he induced Penn to write a letter to the Pennsylvania assembly, in which he threatened to sell the province to the crown, a surrender by which he was to receive £12,000. The transfer was in fact prevented by an attack of apoplexy from which Penn suffered in 1712. The epistle, however, brought the refractory assembly to terms. After exacting a concession of their right to sit on their own adjournment, they consented to the establishment of a judiciary, without, however, a court of appeal, and finally yielded to passing votes to defray the expenses of government. They even gave £2,000 to the crown in aid of the war. Affairs went smoothly under Gookin’s administration until, in 1714, the governor, whose mind is supposed to have been impaired, began the quarrel again by complaining about his scanty salary and the irregularity of payments. He also insisted foolishly upon the illegality of affirmation; foolishly, because the Quakers, who would not allow any other kind of oath, were the dominant party in the province.[483] Not satisfied with the commotion he had stirred up, he suddenly turned upon his friend Logan, and had now not only the anti-Penn faction, but also Penn’s adherents, to contend with. The last ill-advised step resulted in his recall (1717) and the appointment of Sir William Keith, the last governor commissioned by Penn himself; for the great founder of Pennsylvania died in 1718.

While after Penn’s death his heirs went to law among themselves about the government and proprietary rights in Pennsylvania, Governor Keith, who as surveyor of customs in the southern provinces had become sufficiently familiar with Penn’s affairs, entered on the performance of his duties under the most favorable conditions. The assembly had become weary to disgust with the continuous disputes and altercations forced upon them by the last two governors, and it was therefore easily influenced by Sir William’s good address and evident effort to please. Without hesitation it voted a salary of £500 for the governor, and acted upon his suggestion to examine the state of the laws, some of which were obsolete or had expired by their own limitations. The province was somewhat disturbed by the lawsuit of the family for the succession, finally settled in favor of Penn’s children by his second wife, and by a war of the southern Indians with the Susquehanna and New York tribes; but nothing marred the relations between governor and legislature. Under the speakership of James Trent, later chief justice of New Jersey (where the city of Trenton was named after him),[484] an act for the advancement of justice and more certain administration thereof, a measure of great importance to the province, passed the previous year (1718), became a law by receiving the royal assent. Governor Keith’s proposal in 1720 to establish a Court of Chancery met with unqualified approval by the assembly. Under the next governor this court “came to be considered as so great a nuisance” that after a while it fell into disuse.

In 1721 the first great council which the Five Nations ever held with the white people outside of the province of New York and at any other place than Albany, N. Y., took place at Conestoga, and the disputes which had threatened the outlying settlements with the horrors of Indian war were amicably settled. The treaty of friendship made here was confirmed the next year at a council held at Albany, as in the mean time the wanton murder of an Iroquois by some Pennsylvania traders had somewhat strained the mutual relations.

The commercial and agricultural interests of the province began to suffer about this time for want of a sufficient quantity of a circulating medium. Divers means of relief were proposed, among them the issue of bills of credit. Governor Keith and the majority of the traders, merchants, and farmers were enchanted with the notion of fiat money, and overlooked or were unwilling to profit by the experiences of other provinces which had already suffered from the mischievous consequences of such a measure. The result was that, after considerable discussion, turning not so much upon the bills of credit themselves as upon the mode of issuing them and the method of guarding against their depreciation, the emission of £15,000 was authorized, despite the order of the king in council of May 19, 1720, which forbade all the governors of the colonies in America to pass any laws sanctioning the issue of bills of credit. It would lead us too far beyond the limits of this chapter to inquire whether, as Dr. Douglass, of Boston, suggested in 1749, the assembly ordering this emission of £15,000 bills of credit, and another of £30,000 in the same year, was “a legislature of debtors, the representatives of people who, from incogitancy, idleness, and profuseness, have been under a necessity of mortgaging their lands.” All the safeguards thrown around such a currency to prevent its depreciation proved in the end futile. The acts creating this debt of £45,000[485] provided for its redemption a pledge of real estate in fee simple of double the value, recorded in an office created for that purpose. The money so lent out was to be repaid into the office annually, in such instalments as would make it possible to sink the whole original issue within a certain number of years. In the first three years the sinking and destruction of the redeemed bills went on as directed by law; but under its operation the community found itself suffering from the contraction, although only about one seventh of the debt had been paid. The legislature, therefore, passed a law (1726) directing that the bills should not be destroyed, as the former acts required, but that, during the following eight years, they should be reissued. The population of the province, growing by natural increase and by immigration, seeming to require a larger volume of currency, a new emission of £30,000 was ordered in 1729 under the provisions of the laws of 1723. In 1731 the law of 1726 was reënacted, to prevent disasters which threatened the farmer as well as the merchant, and to avoid making new acts for emitting more bills. In 1739 the amount of bills in circulation, £68,890, was increased to £80,000, equal to £50,000 sterling, because the legislature had discovered that the former sum fell “short of a proper medium for negotiating the commerce and for the support of the government.” They justified this step, and tried to explain why a pound of Pennsylvania currency was of so much less value than a pound sterling by asserting that the difference arose only from the balance of Pennsylvania’s trade with Great Britain, which was in favor of the former, since more English goods found their way here now that bills of credit had become the fashion. The act of 1739 had made the bills then in circulation irredeemable for a short term of years, which in 1745 was extended to sixteen years more under the following modifications: the first ten years, up to 1755, no bill was to be redeemed, or, if redeemed, was to be reissued; after 1755 one sixth of the whole amount was to be paid in yearly and the bills were to be destroyed. In 1746 a further issue of £5,000 for the king’s use was ordered, to be sunk in ten yearly instalments of £500 each, and in 1749 Pennsylvania currency, valued in 1723 at thirteen shillings sterling per pound, had, like all other colonial money, so far depreciated that a pound was equal to eleven shillings and one and one third pence.[486]

When the limit of the year 1755 was reached many of the bills of credit had become so torn and defaced that the assembly ordered £10,000 in new bills to be exchanged for the old ones. In the mean time the French war had begun, and to support the troops sent over from England £60,000 were issued in bills to be given to the king’s use.

By this time Pennsylvania had become so largely in debt as to make her taxes burdensome. Notwithstanding a hesitation to increase the volume of indebtedness, her assembly felt called upon by reason of the war to contribute her share of the cost of it, and in September, 1756, a further issue of £30,000 was authorized under a law which provided for the redemption of the bills in ten years by an excise on wine, liquor, etc. If this excise should bring in more than was necessary, the “overplus” was to go into the hands of the king.[487]

Governor Keith took care to increase his popularity with the assembly, and thereby to advance his own personal interest in a greater degree than was compatible with his allegiance to the proprietary’s family. Having managed to free himself from the control of the council, who were men respecting their oaths and friends of the Penn family, he incurred the displeasure of the widow of the great Quaker, and in 1726 was superseded by Patrick Gordon. Keith and his friend David Lloyd had vainly endeavored to persuade Hannah Penn that her views concerning the council’s participation in legislative matters were erroneous, and that the council was in fact created for ornamental purposes and to be spectators of the governor’s actions. This opinion of Keith was of course in opposition to the instructions which he had received. Fully to understand the condition of affairs, we must remember that the government of this colony was as much the private property of the proprietary as the soil; and that in giving instructions to his deputy and establishing a council to assist the deputy by their advice, the proprietary did no more than a careful business man would do when compelled to absent himself from his place of business,—or at least such were the views of the Penns.

The even tenor of political life in Pennsylvania, the greater part of whose inhabitants were either Quakers, religiously opposed to any kind of strife, or Germans, totally ignorant of the modes of constitutional government, was somewhat disturbed during the first two or three years of Gordon’s administration by Keith’s intrigue as a member of the assembly, to which he was soon chosen. We are told that he endeavored by “all means in his power to divide the inhabitants, embarrass the administration, and distress the proprietary family.” He grew, however, as unpopular as he had been popular; and when he finally returned to England, where he died about 1749, the colony again enjoyed quiet for several years.

Governor Gordon had in his earlier life been bred to arms, and he had served in the army with considerable repute until the end of Queen Anne’s reign. As a soldier he had learned the value of moderation; and not forgetting it in civil life, his administration was distinguished by prudence and a regard for the interests of the province, while his peaceful Indian policy secured for the colony a period of almost unprecedented prosperity. Planted in 1682, nearly fifty years later than her neighbors, Pennsylvania could boast in 1735 that her chief city, Philadelphia, was the second in size in the colonies, and her white population larger than that of Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas.

The death of Hannah Penn, the widow of the first proprietor, in 1733, threatened to put a sudden stop to Gordon’s rule, since the assembly, deeming his authority to be derived from Hannah Penn, and to end with her death, refused him obedience. The arrival of a new commission, executed by John, Thomas, and Richard Penn, quickly settled this question, as well as another point. The king’s approval of it reserved specially to the crown the government of the Lower Counties, if it chose to claim it. Of the progress in Gordon’s time towards the settlement of the disputed boundary with Maryland, the recital is given in another chapter.[488]

Upon Gordon’s death, in 1736, James Logan, the lifelong friend of Penn, succeeded as president of the council, but gave place, after two uneventful years, to the new governor, George Thomas, who had been formerly a planter in the island of Antigua.

A promise of continued quiet was harshly disturbed when the governor authorized the enrolment of bought or indented servants in the militia. Opposed to the use of military arms under all conditions, the Quakers who owned these enrolled servants, of whom 276 had been taken, were still more aggrieved by having their own property appropriated to such uses. The assembly finally voted the sum of £2,588 to compensate the owners for the loss of their chattels, but the feeling engendered by the governor’s action was not soothed. The relations between governor and assembly became strained; the governor refusing to give his assent to acts passed by the assembly, and the latter neglecting to vote a salary for the governor. This condition of affairs may have led to the serious election riots which disturbed Philadelphia in 1742. The governor, who had only received £500 of his salary, began to be embarrassed, and was in the end induced by his straits to assent to bills beyond the pale of his instructions, while the assembly soothed him by no longer withholding his salary. In this way good feeling and quiet were restored, and when, in 1747, he decided to resign, the regret of the assembly was unfeigned.

After a short interregnum, during which Anthony Palmer, as president of the council, ruled the province, James Hamilton was appointed deputy-governor by the proprietors, Richard and Thomas Penn. He entered upon his duties with good omens. He was born in the country, and his father had somewhat earlier enjoyed an eminence from the result of the Zenger trial such as no lawyer in America had enjoyed before. For a while the assembly and Hamilton were mutually pleased; but as, in time, he withheld his assent to bills that infringed the proprietary’s right to the interest of loans, the assembly was arrayed against him, and rendered his position so unpleasant that in 1753 he sent to England his resignation, to take effect in a year. His place was taken by Robert Hunter Morris, son of the chief justice of New Jersey, who was, like Hamilton, a man thoroughly conscientious and conversant with the political life in the colonies. Very early in his term he came in conflict with the assembly on a money bill, which his instructions would not allow him to sign. Hampered by these orders, he was unable to rely upon his judgment or feelings and to act independently; hence very soon, in 1756, he resigned, and retired to New Jersey, where he died in 1764.

The state of affairs under the next governor, William Denny, is shown by a passage in one of his early messages. “Though moderation is most agreeable to me,” he says to the assembly, “there might have been a governor who would have told you, the whole tenor of your message was indecent, frivolous, and evasive.” Again the instructions were the cause of all trouble. The governor was in duty bound to withhold his assent from every act for the emission of bills of credit that did not subject the money to the joint disposal of the governor and assembly, and from every act increasing the amount of bills of credit or confirming existing issues, unless a provision directed that the rents of proprietary lands were to be paid in sterling money, while the taxes on these lands could not become a lien on the same. The treasury of the province was on the verge of complete bankruptcy, when the governor rejected a bill levying £100,000 on all real and personal property, including the proprietary lands. Seeing no other way out of the dilemma, the assembly amended their bill by exempting the proprietary interests from taxation, but they sought their revenge by sending an agent, Benjamin Franklin, to England to represent their grievances to the crown. Franklin reached London in July, 1757, and entered immediately upon a quarrel with the proprietors respecting their rights, from which he issued as victor. Denny, tired of the struggle, and in need of money, finally disobeyed his instructions, gave his assent to obnoxious bills, and was recalled, to give way to Hamilton, who in 1759 was again installed.

Hamilton went through his second term without strife. There were too many external dangers to engage the assembly’s attention. Parliament, in anticipation of a Spanish war, had appropriated £200,000 for fortifying the colony posts; the assembly took the province’s share of it, £26,000, and made ready to receive the Spanish privateers, to whose attacks by the Delaware the country lay invitingly open. The danger was not so great as it seemed. In 1763 Hamilton was superseded by John Penn, the son of Richard and grandson of William Penn.

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During these later years, Pennsylvania could justly be called the most flourishing of the English colonies. A fleet of four hundred sail left Philadelphia yearly with the season’s produce. The colony’s free population numbered 220,000 souls, and of these possibly half were German folk, who had known not a little of Old World oppression; one sixth were Quakers, more than a sixth were Presbyterians, another sixth were Episcopalians, and there were a few Baptists. The spirit and tenets of the first framers of its government, as the Quakers had been, were calculated to attract the attention of oppressed sectaries everywhere, and bodies of many diversified beliefs, from different parts of Europe, flocked to the land, took up their abodes, and are recognized in their descendants to-day. Conspicuous among these immigrants were those of the sect called Unitas Fratrum, United Brethren, or Moravians, who settled principally in the present county of Northampton. Though they labored successfully among the Indians in making converts, it was rare that they succeeded in uniting to their communion any of their Christian neighbors. The Moravians had been preceded by a sect of similar tenets, the adherents of Schwenckfeld. They had come to Pennsylvania in 1732 and mostly settled in the present county of Montgomery. Still earlier a sort of German Baptists, called Dunkers, Tunkers, or Dumplers, coming to America between 1719 and 1729, had found homes in Lancaster County. Another sect of Baptists, the followers of Menno Simon, or Mennonists,—like the Friends, opposed to taking oaths and bearing arms,—had begun to make their way across the ocean as early as 1698, induced thereto by information derived from Penn himself. Like the Dunkers, they chose Lancaster County for their American homes.

But there were other motives than religious ones. There came many Welsh, Irish, and Scotch farmers. The Welsh were a valuable stock; the same cannot be said of the Irish, who began to come in 1719, and continued to arrive in such large numbers that special legislation in regard to them was required in 1729. An act laying a duty on foreigners and Irish servants imported into the province was passed May 10, 1729. This act was repealed, but many features of it were embodied in an act of the following year, imposing a duty on persons convicted of heinous crimes, and preventing poor and impotent persons being imported into the province. It must be acknowledged that the Catholic religion, professed by these immigrants, had not a little to do with the temper of the legislation which restrained them, in a colony which had been modelled on the principles of religious freedom. It was not assuring, on the other hand, for the legislators to discover that the sympathy which the Roman priests showed for the French enemies of the province foreboded mischief.

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It has been told in a previous chapter how New Jersey passed from the state of a conquered province to that of a proprietary or settled colony, and how little the change of dynasty in England affected the public affairs of this section of the middle colonies. The proprietors of East New Jersey had grown weary of governing the province, and in April, 1688, had drawn up an act surrendering their share. The revolutionary disturbances in England which soon followed prevented action upon this surrender; but when, at the beginning of the next century, the proprietors of West New Jersey also showed themselves willing to surrender the burden and cares of government to the crown, the Lords of Trade gave it as their opinion that no sufficient form of government had ever been formed in New Jersey, that many inconveniences and disorders had been the result of the proprietors’ pretence of right to govern, and advised the Law Lords to accept the surrender. The proprietors reserved to themselves all their rights in the soil of the province, while they abandoned the privilege of governing. East and West New Jersey, now become again one province, was to be ruled by a governor, a council of twelve members appointed by the crown, and twenty-four assembly-men elected by the freeholders. The governor was given the right of adjourning and dissolving the assembly at pleasure, and of vetoing any act passed by council and assembly, his assent being subject to the approval or dissent of the king.

When surrendering in 1701 their rights of government, the proprietors recommended, for the office of royal governor, Andrew Hamilton, their representative in the colony, in whose ability and integrity they had the fullest confidence, and who during his previous terms as governor had also won the admiration and reverence of the governed. Intrigues against Hamilton, instituted by two influential proprietors, Dockwra and Sonmans, and by Colonel Quary, of Pennsylvania, resulted in Hamilton’s defeat and the appointment of Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury, who was already governor of New York. Cornbury published his commission in New Jersey on the 11th of August, 1703, and inaugurated, by his way of dealing with the affairs of the colony, the same series of violent contests between the governor and the people, represented by the assembly, that had served under him to keep New York unsettled. Complaints made by the proprietors against him in England had no effect, although he had clearly violated his instructions, by unseating three members of the assembly; by making money the proper qualification for election to the same, instead of land; and by allowing an act taxing unprofitable and waste land to become a law. His successor, John, Lord Lovelace, appointed early in 1708, arrived in New York early in December of the same year. He had various schemes for the improvement of both colonies, but it is doubtful whether his previous position of cornet in the royal horse-guards had fitted him for administrative and executive work. A disease was, moreover, already fastened upon him, which in a few months carried him off. His successor, Major Richard Ingoldsby, is best described by Bellomont, under whom he had previously served in New York. “Major Ingoldesby has been absent from his post four years,” says Bellomont in a letter to the Lords of Trade, October 17, 1700, “and is so brutish as to leave his wife and children here to starve. Ingoldesby is of a worthy family, but is a rash, hot-headed man, and had a great hand in the execution of Leisler and Milburn, for which reason, if there were no other, he is not fit to serve in this country, having made himself hatefull to the Leisler party.” Cornbury understood the man so fully that he would not allow him to act as lieutenant-governor of either New York or New Jersey, to which office he had been appointed in 1704. Ingoldsby’s commission as lieutenant-governor was revoked in 1706, but he was admitted as a member of the council for New Jersey. It seems that the order revoking the commission was not sent out to New York in 1706, for upon Lord Lovelace’s death he assumed the government, and acted so brutally that, when news of it reached England, a new order of revocation was issued. In the short interval before the arrival of his successor, Governor Robert Hunter, who published his commission in New Jersey in the summer of 1710, Ingoldsby had managed to get into conflict with the assembly, largely formed of members from the Society of Friends, and brought about the state of affairs which we may call usual in all the British colonies ruled by a governor appointed by the king, and by an assembly elected by the people. Hunter must be termed the first satisfactory governor of New Jersey. Early in his administration he met with opposition from those who so far had slavishly followed the royal governor. These opponents were the council of the province, who objected to every measure which Governor Hunter, advised by Lewis Morris and other influential members of the Quaker or country party, deemed necessary for the public good. The council was entirely under the thumb of Secretary Jeremiah Basse, who, having been an Anabaptist minister, agent in England for the West Jersey Society, governor of East and West Jersey, had shared in the obloquy attached to Lord Cornbury’s administration. Public business threatened to come to a standstill, as the home authorities were slow in acting on recommendations to remove the obnoxious members of the council. Hunter constantly prorogued the assembly of New Jersey; “it being absolutely needless to meet the assembly so long as the council is so constituted,” he writes to the Lords of Trade, June 23, 1712, “for they have avowedly opposed the government in most things, and by their influence obstructed the payment of a great part of the taxes.” But it was not until August, 1713, that the queen approved of the removal of William Pinhorn, Daniel Coxe, Peter Sonmans, and William Hall from the council, in whose places John Anderson, a wealthy trader and farmer of Perth Amboy, John Hamilton, postmaster-general of North America, and John Reading, of West Jersey, were appointed. William Morris, recommended in place of Sonmans, had died meanwhile. Sonmans stole and took out of the province all public records, and, having gone to England with his booty, he used the papers to injure Governor Hunter in the estimation of the people of New Jersey, while “our men of noise” agitated against him in the province and in its assembly. No effort was spared to prevent a renewal of Hunter’s commission in 1714, and when he was reappointed notwithstanding, Coxe, Sonmans, and their friends had so inflamed the “lower rank of people that only time and patience, or stronger measures, could allay the heat.” At last it became an absolute necessity to summon the assembly again, and an act “for fixing the sessions of assembly in the Jersies at Burlington” was passed in 1715, which became the cause of incessant attacks upon the governor by Coxe and his party. Hunter, seeing the wheels of government stopped by the factious absence of Coxe and his friends from the legislative sessions, said to the assembly, May 19, 1716: “Whereas, it is apparent and evident that there is at present a combination amongst some of your members to disappoint and defeat your meetings as a house of representatives by their wilful absenting themselves from the service of their country ... I have judged it absolutely necessary ... to require you forthwith to meet as a house of representatives, and to take the usual methods to oblige your fellow members to pay their attendance.” The assembly, like a sensible body, aware that Governor Hunter had always acted with justice and moderation, answered his appeal to them by expelling on the 23d of May their speaker, Coxe, as a man whose study it had been to disturb the quiet and tranquillity of the province, and such other members as did not attend and could not be found by the sergeant-at-arms of the house.

Coxe did not consider himself vanquished. An appeal to the king followed. Coxe charged Hunter with illegal acts of every kind, and his petition was numerously signed; but the council certified that his subscribers were “for the most part the lowest and meanest of the people,” and the king sustained and commended the governor. When, a few years later, Hunter resolved to return to Europe to recover his health at the baths of Aix-la-Chapelle, he could with pride assert that the provinces governed by him “were in perfect peace, to which both had long been strangers.”

William Burnet, who succeeded his friend Hunter, was not so amiable a man, and showed the airs of personal importance too much to suit the Quaker spirit which prevailed among the New Jersey people. He needed money to live upon, however, and there was something of the Jacobite opposition in the province for him to suppress. He had difficulty at first in getting the assembly to pass other than temporary bills; but in 1722 the governor and assembly had reached an understanding, and Burnet passed through the rest of his term without much conflict with the legislature, and when transferred to the chair of Massachusetts, in 1728, he turned over the government in a quiet condition, and with few or no wounds unhealed.

The most notable event during the three years’ term of his successor, Montgomerie, was the renewal of an effort, already attempted in Burnet’s time, but defeated by him, to have New Jersey made again a government separate from New York. “By order of the house 4th 5mo, 1730,” John Kinsey, Junr., speaker, signed a petition to the king for a separate governor. Montgomerie died July 1, 1731, and Lewis Morris, as president of the council, governed till September, 1732, when Cosby, the new governor, arrived. The grand jury of Middlesex tried to further the attempt for a separate government in 1736, but nothing was done till Cosby died, when Morris, whom Cosby had shamefully maligned, received the appointment from a grateful king, and New Jersey was again possessed of a separate governor.

Governor Morris published his commission at Amboy on the 29th of August, 1738; at Burlington a few days later. The council, with the assembly, expressed the thanks and joy of the people in unmeasured terms, prophetically seeing trade and commerce flourish and justice more duly and speedily administered under the new rule. The pleasant relations between the governor and the representatives of the people which these expressions of satisfaction seemed to foreshadow were not to be of long duration. “There is so much insincerity and ignorance among the people, ... and so strong an inclination in the meanest of the people to have the sole direction of all the affairs of the government,” writes Morris to his friend Sir Charles Wager, one of the treasury lords, May 10, 1739, “that it requires much more temper, skill, and constancy to overcome these difficulties than fall to every man’s share.” Under these influences, Morris, the former leader of the popular party, betrayed them, and tried to obey his instructions to the very letter. Following the example set by Cosby, of New York, in regard to the salary of an absent governor and a present lieutenant-governor or president of the council, he began to quarrel with John Hamilton, who as president had temporarily acted as governor. Fortunately for Morris’s reputation, this case did not grow into such a public scandal as the Cosby-Van Dam case, mentioned above, and was quietly settled in the proper way. The assembly, having early discovered that Morris was not an easy man to deal with, tried to discipline him by interfering with the disposal of the revenue granted for the support of the government, and finally refused to pass supply bills unless the governor disobeyed his instructions and assented to bills enacted by them. The wheels of the governmental machinery threatened to come to a standstill for want of money, when Morris, after an illness of some weeks, died at Trenton on the 21st of May, 1746, leaving the government of the province to his whilom adversary. John Hamilton, as president of the council, who was then already suffering from ill health, prorogued the assembly, then sitting at Trenton, and reconvened them at Perth Amboy, his own home. Relieved of their political enemy, Morris, the assembly became more amenable to reason, and during Hamilton’s brief administration “chearfully made provision for raising 500 men” for the Canada expedition, and lent the government £10,000 to arm and equip the New Jersey contingent. Hamilton soon succumbed to his disease, and died June 17, 1747. When John Reading, another member of the council, succeeded to power, his administration of a few months was mainly signalized by riots at Perth Amboy,—in which Reading was roughly handled. These disturbances were caused by an act to vacate and annul grants of land and to divest owners of property which had been bought some years before from the Indians.

Jonathan Belcher, after being removed in 1741[489] from the executive office of Massachusetts, had gone to England, where, with the assistance of his brother-in-law, Richard Partridge, the agent at court for New Jersey, he obtained the appointment of governor of this province. When he first met the council and assembly of New Jersey, on the 20th of August, 1747, he said to them, “I shall strictly conform myself to the king’s commands and to the powers granted me therein, as also to the additional authorities contained in the king’s royal orders to me, and from these things I think you will not desire me to deviate.” Belcher had not yet had occasion to arouse the anger of the assembly, when the latter, at their first session, of unusual long duration (fourteen weeks), already showed their distrust of him by voting his salary for one year only, and not “a penny more” than to the late governor, who had “harast and plagued them sufficiently.” Belcher was too well inured to colonial politics openly to manifest his anger at such treatment, or to tell the assembly that he considered them “very stingy,” as he called them in a letter to Partridge. His administration gave evidence of his ability to yield gracefully up to the limits of his instructions; but when a conflict with his assembly could not be avoided, he faced it stubbornly. On the whole, his rule resulted in a much-needed quiet for the province, which was only briefly disturbed by the riots already mentioned, which had begun before Belcher’s arrival. The members of the assembly, who depended largely for their election on the votes of these rioters, sympathized with the lawless element in Essex and other counties; but in the end wiser counsels prevailed, and the disturbances ceased.

In another part of the province the dispute over the boundary line with New York, as it affected titles of land, was also a source of agitation, which in Belcher’s time was the cause of constant remonstrance and appeal and of legislative intervention, but he left the question unsettled, a legacy of disturbance for later composition.

Age and a paralytic disorder, which even the electrical apparatus that Franklin sent to Belcher could not remove, ended Belcher’s life on the 31st of August, 1757, leaving the government in the hands of Thomas Pownall, who, on account of Belcher’s age and infirmity, had been appointed lieutenant-governor in 1755. Pownall was at the time of Belcher’s death also governor of Massachusetts. After a short visit to New Jersey he found “that the necessity of his majesty’s service in the government of the Massachusetts Bay” required his return to Boston, and his absence brought the active duties of the executive once more upon Reading, as senior counsellor, who, through age and illness, was little disposed towards the burden.

The arrival, on the 15th of June, 1758, of Francis Bernard, bearing a commission as governor, relieved Reading of his irksome duties. Bernard had, during his short term, the satisfaction of pacifying the Indians by a treaty made at Easton in October, 1758. The otherwise uneventful term of his administration was soon ended by his transfer to Massachusetts. His successor, Thomas Boone, after an equally short and uneventful term, was replaced by Josiah Hardy, and the latter by William Franklin, the son of the great philosopher. The latter had secured his appointment through Lord Bute, but nothing can be said in this chapter of his administration, which, beginning in 1762, belongs to another volume.[490]

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The possible injury which a development of the manufacturing interests in the colonies might inflict on like interests in Great Britain agitated the mind of the English manufacturer at an early date. Already in Dutch times this question of manufactures in the province of New Netherland had been settled rather peremptorily by an order of the Assembly of the Nineteen, which made it a felony to engage in the making of any woollen, linen, or cotton cloth. The English Parliament, perhaps influenced by the manufacturers among their constituents, or not willing to appear as legislating in the interest of money, declared, in 1719, “that the erecting of manufactories in the colonies tends to lessen their dependence on Great Britain,” and a prohibition similar to that of the Dutch authorities was enacted. During the whole colonial period this feeling of jealousy interfered with the development of industries and delayed their growth. Whatever England could not produce was expected to be made here, such as naval stores, pearlash and potash, and silks; but the English manufacturer strenuously set himself in opposition to any colonial enterprise which affected his own profits.

Shipbuilding and the saw-mill had early sprung from the domestic necessities of the people. The Dutch had made the windmill a striking feature in the landscape of New York. The people of Pennsylvania had been the earliest in the middle colonies to establish a press, and it had brought the paper-mill in its train, though after a long interval; for it was not till 1697 that the manufacture of paper began near Philadelphia, and not till thirty years later (1728) was the second mill established at Elizabethtown in New Jersey. The Dutch had begun the making of glass in New York city, near what is now Hanover Square, and in Philadelphia it was becoming an industry as early as 1683; though if one may judge from the use of oiled paper in the first houses of Germantown, the manufacture of window-glass began later. Wistar, a palatine, erected a glass-house near Salem, in West New Jersey, in 1740, and Governor Moore, of New York, in 1767, says of a bankrupt glass-maker in New York that his ill success had come of his imported workmen deserting him after he had brought them over from Europe at great cost.

The presence of iron ore in the hills along the Hudson had been known to the Dutch, but they had made no attempt to work the mines, relying probably to some extent upon Massachusetts, where “a good store of iron” was manufactured from an early date. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, when the ore was tried, the founders discovered the iron to be too brittle to encourage its use. Lieutenant-Governor Clarke tried to arouse interest for the iron industry in 1737, and induced the general assembly to consider the advisability of encouraging proprietors of iron-works; but the movement came to nothing, and Parliament did what it could to thwart all such purposes by enacting a law “to encourage the importation of pig and bar iron from his Majesty’s Colonies in America, and to prevent the erection of any Mill or other Engine for Slitting or Rolling of Iron; or any plating Forge to work with a Tilt Hammer; or any Furnace for making Steel in any of the said Colonies.” When this act was passed in 1750 only a single plating-forge existed in the province of New York, at Wawayanda, Orange County, which had been built about 1745, and was not in use at the time. Two furnaces and several blomaries had been established about the same time in the manor of Cortland, Westchester County, but a few years had sufficed to bring their business to a disastrous end.

In 1757 the province could show only one iron-work at Ancram, which produced nothing but pig and bar iron. At this same establishment, owned by the Livingstons, in the present Columbia County, many a cannon was cast some years later to help in the defence of American liberties. In 1766 we find a little foundry established in New York for making small iron pots, but its operations had not yet become very extensive.

The first iron-works in New Jersey seem to have been opened by an Englishman, James Grover, who had become dissatisfied with the rule of the Dutch and the West India Company, and had removed from Long Island to Shrewsbury, New Jersey, where he and some iron-workers from Massachusetts set up one of the first forges in the province.

In 1676 the Morris family, which later became so prominent in colonial politics, was granted a large tract of land near the Raritan River, with the right “to dig, delve, and carry away all such mines for iron as they shall find” in that tract. The smelting-furnace and forge mentioned in an account of the province by the proprietors of East New Jersey, in 1682, employing both whites and blacks, was probably on the Morris estate. The mineral treasures of the province, however, remained on the whole undiscovered at the end of the century; but in the following century several blomary forges and one charcoal-furnace were erected in Warren County, the latter of which was still running twenty-five years ago. Penn had early learned of the richness of his province in iron and copper, though no attempt was made to mine them till 1698. At this early period Gabriel Thomas mentions the discovery of mineral ores, which were probably found in the Chester County of that day, and the first iron-works in the province were built in that region. Governor Keith owned iron-works in New Castle County (Delaware) between 1720 and 1730, and had such good opinion of the iron industry in the colonies that he considered them capable of supplying, if sufficiently encouraged, the mother country with all the pig and bar iron needed.

In 1718 we read of iron-works forty miles up the Schuylkill River, probably the Coventry forge, on French Creek, in Chester County; also of a forge in Berks or Montgomery County, which in 1728 became the scene of an Indian attack. The mineral wealth of Lancaster County soon attracted the attention of the thrifty Germans who had settled there. In 1728 this county had two or more furnaces in blast, and the number of them in the province increased rapidly up to the time of the Revolution.

Upon the Delaware, the Dutch and Swedes seem to have neglected the ores of silver, copper, iron, and other minerals, which they did not fail to discover existed in that region; but an Englishman, Charles Pickering, who lived in Charlestown, Chester County, Pennsylvania, appears to have been the earliest to mine copper, and was on trial in 1683 on the charge of uttering base coin. A letter written by Governor Morris, of New Jersey, to Thomas Penn in 1755, speaks of a copper-mine at the Gap in Lancaster County, which had been discovered twenty years previous by a German miner.