Chapter XXIII: Governor Burnet Is Defied

'Twas early Autumn when we returned to Albany. The leaves were coloring, and there was a nip of frost in the air. The flag over the battlements of Fort Orange stood out straight from its staff. The citizens who thronged the street leading up to the fort gate must needs hold on to their hat-brims.

"Are the streets usually so crowded?" I asked Peter.

He shook his head, and I accosted a tavernkeeper who stood in his doorway, regarding the passers-by with anticipation of the harvest he would reap later.

"'Tis his Excellency the governor," he explained. "Master Burnet is come up-river from New York town this morning."

"What is toward?"

"I know not, my master. The governor and Master Colden of his Council have summoned certain gentry and merchants and the officers of the troops to meet them in the Great Hall of the fort this afternoon."

I thanked him, and passed on.

"Here is great luck for us!" I exclaimed to Corlaer and Ta-wan-ne-ars. "We are saved the trip down-river."

"_Ja_," grunted Peter.

Ta-wan-ne-ars smiled.

"Does my brother already surrender to the spell of the wilderness?" he inquired.

I started, for indeed the Seneca's uncanny inward vision had perceived the question I was then debating in my own mind.

"How knew you that?" I demanded as we shouldered our way through Dutch farmers and burghers, English settlers of the newly opened districts, slaves, patentees, patroons, Indians from the Lower Castle of the Mohawks, frontiersmen and soldiers.

His smile broadened.

"My brother was pleased to think that he need not go down-river."

"'Tis true," I affirmed. "I have no wish to leave the forest. I find even this village overcrowded to suit me."

Whilst I pondered this we came to the fort gate and gave our names to the sentry who stopped all save the few the governor had summoned to attend upon him. A messenger he dispatched brought back word that we were to enter, and we were escorted across the parade and into the quarters of the commandant adjoining the Great Hall.

Master Colden met us in the doorway.

"Zooks, but I am right glad to see you," he cried. "And his Excellency is overjoyed. But I will leave it to him to express his satisfaction."

He opened an inner door and ushered us into the presence of the governor. Master Burnet rose from the chair in which he was sitting by a flat-topped table which served him for desk, and came forward with hand outstretched.

"Master Ormerod, this could not have been better! I wished above all things for speech with you. Corlaer, I am deeply in your debt. Ta-wan-ne-ars, you have again incurred the gratitude of the province. I shall not forget that you have imperiled your life in our cause."

"Did you receive my report from Oswego, sir?" I asked.

"Certes, 'twas that--and this"--he tapped a document which lay before him on the table--"which brought me here."

He proffered it. 'Twas a report from a secret agent at Montreal, quoting the decision of the French fur-dealers, acting in conjunction with their Government, to raise the price of beaver from two livres, or one shilling six pence in English currency, the pound, to the level of four livres, or three shillings, the established price then prevailing at the English trading-posts.

"That, mind you," continued the governor as I returned the paper to him, "was the first reaction in Canada to the tidings that Murray had succeeded in legitimatizing his trade over the Doom Trail."

"We have found the Doom Trail, your Excellency," I said.

"You have done well," he applauded. "Aye, better than I expected of you in so short a time."

"We also slew----"

"I beg your Excellency's indulgence," interrupted Master Colden, "but the gentlemen you bade to meet you are now assembled in the Great Hall. Can not Master Ormerod's report await the conclusion of your interview with them!"

"That would be best," agreed the governor, "But I wish Master Ormerod and his companions to come with me. It may be I shall appeal to them for first-hand testimony."

We deposited our muskets in a corner of the room, and then filed behind Master Burnet and the surveyor-general into the larger chamber adjoining, where some thirty men awaited him. Several were gentry who were members of his Council. Three were officers in command of the frontier garrisons. The remainder were merchants, dealing to greater or lesser extent in the fur-trade, the great export staple of the province.

They rose when the governor entered and remained standing until he was seated. Master Colden found seats for Ta-wan-ne-ars, Peter and me to one side of the room, and we watched with interest the battle which began almost with his Excellency's first word.

He wasted no time in preliminaries or generalities. He deposited several papers on the table in front of him, and addressed himself to his task.

"Gentlemen," he began, "I have summoned you to meet me here because a situation has arisen which is of the utmost gravity to the welfare of the province and the larger interests of his Majesty's realm. Recently I have been in receipt of a communication in the form of a petition signed by many of the chief merchants of the province, beseeching me to abandon my opposition to the retention of the free trade with Canada which is now temporarily secured to them by the action of the Lords of Trade in suspending decision upon the law prohibiting the trade in Indian goods which I secured to be passed last year."

"That petition represented the sober thought of a majority of the merchants and traders, your Excellency," spoke up a prosperous-looking man in the front row facing Master Burnet.

"It may be so," replied the governor. "But I would suggest to you, my friends, that certain knowledge hath come to me which compels me to wonder whether you would persist in this attitude were you acquainted with it. Briefly, I have lately obtained definite information that the French are beginning the erection of a stone fort at Jagara."

"There are many such reports in circulation," said another merchant, a hard-featured man with graying hair. "It seems to many of us, sir, that the fault is as much upon our side as upon that of the French. Why must we assail them if they seek to protect their interests?"

"I agree with the principle of what you say, sir," answered the governor patiently. "But in this case, permit me to point out that the territory this side of the Falls of Jagara is secured to us by the Peace of Utrecht. 'Tis not only that the French have no right to construct a fort there. They have no right to maintain a trading-post there.

"Yet my agent talked with the officers in charge, Monsieur de Joncaire and Monsieur de Lery, and they boasted of their intent to erect such a fort as would be a curb on our Indian allies, the Iroquois, and divert to their posts farther up the Cadarakui Lake the fur trade which now comes to us at Irondequoit and Oswego, Schenectady and Albany."

"Your Excellency is needlessly worried concerning the fur-trade," asserted the hard-featured merchant. "What matters it to us the way in which the furs come! They will go ultimately to the people paying the best prices for them, and those people are ourselves."

"I thank you for putting me in the way of bringing forward a most important point," returned the governor suavely. "At the time I received word of the building of the fort at Jagara, I received also this report from an agent in Montreal----"

"Why must we have spies?" interrupted a third merchant.

"To protect our just interests, sir," said the governor, and for the first time a hint of sternness rang in his voice. "This report announces the doubling of the price paid for beaver at tie French posts, so that now they are on a par with us."

"We can afford to pay more than we do. London will still take it from us at a profit," rejoined the merchant who had first spoken.

"Aye, sirs," urged the governor; "but do you not see that presently, if things go on as they do, the French may increase their price again slowly, a few sous at a time, until they are frankly overbidding you?"

"We will chance that," spoke up several men.

"Trade is trade," cried another. "It goes where the money is."

"Aye, we have no fear," clamored others.

"And let us suppose," resumed the governor, "that the French permit you to draw supplies of furs through them. I can conceive they might do so if it netted them the prices they desire. Does that mean that you will always be safe in expecting to have your wants so filled!"

"To be sure," answered three or four men at once.

"I differ with you," replied Master Burnet. "The fur-trade is not only a means to earn profits. 'Tis a most important stake in securing military success. The nation which controls the fur-trade, my masters, will have the interest of the larger numbers of savages. The nation which owns the support of the most Indian tribes will be the nation superior in extending its territories in time of peace and superior in battle in time of war."

"It ill becomes a plain merchant to take issue with your Excellency," remarked the hard-featured merchant. "And 'tis like to go against me if I do----"

"Speak with entire freedom, sir," interrupted Master Burnet.

"Then I must say, your Excellency, that it seems to me you attach overmuch importance to savage tribes and war. There is enough land in North America for French and English and Indians, too. But if you go around looking for attack, why, 'tis likely you will bring such a catastrophe upon yourself."

"Hear, hear," cried the bulk of the merchants and traders.

"You mistake me," answered the governor. "I aim to serve your own interests as well as those of his Majesty's other subjects which transcend even yours."

"Trade is everything," snapped the hard-featured merchant.

"So long as 'tis rightly conducted," amended Master Burnet. "Bear in mind, my masters, that the whole history of our possessions on this continent disproves the statement just made that there is land enough for ourselves and the French. The French are the first to dispute this view.

"They plan openly to drive us into the sea. The New France they see in the future will embrace all the settlements of the Atlantic coast together with the inland wilderness."

"If you bait them sufficiently, doubtless they will seek to fight us," asserted a merchant.

"But they know not the English breed if they think to do so," cried a neighbor.

"Or the Dutchman either," said a third.

"Good! That is the spirit I want to arouse," acknowledged the governor, quick to seize what he thought an advantage. "Gentlemen, you have heard some of my evidence. Additional, if you wish it, can be laid before you.

"What I desire from you especially today is your support in a plan I have been considering for moderating the exit of goods to Canada. The volume reached in recent weeks passes all reason. If permitted to continue 'twill exhaust our supplies. It plays directly into the hands of----"

But he was not suffered to continue.

"Free trading!" shouted a group.

"Stick by the law, governor!" warned one.

"The law is the law!" cried a third.

The prosperous-looking merchant in the front row stood up and made himself heard by pounding his stick on the floor.

"Do I understand your Excellency to mean that you would alter the instructions received from the Lords of Trade?" he asked.

"My plan is rather to amend the carrying out of the law by certain restrictions until I can forward representations on the situation to their lordships," replied Master Burnet steadily.

"But as one of my brethren has just remarked, the law is the law.

"The trouble here, sirs, is that there is no law," declared the governor. "We have the suspension of the law, and in the interim there is no provision for a substitute statute."

"Tush, we want no such law," proclaimed the hard-featured merchant. "Let us not quibble. His Excellency might as well know the truth. Since Master Murray won his case we have been able to sell and buy as we chose. And our coffers have swollen thereby.

"The law was an ill-judged law. It restricted trade, reduced profits. Let the French secure furs if they wish. They may do the dirty work. We will sit back and reap the profits."

"Gentlemen, you still avoid my point," insisted the governor. "The profits you have made recently are unnatural profits, and were you in your right minds you would be the first to appreciate that they can not continue. I should be content to leave your education to the normal processes of time, but for the fact that the French are turning your assistance to account, and we are like to pay heavily to them for it in the long run."

"How?" inquired a skeptical voice.

"By permitting the French to confirm their prestige with the savages, by undermining the confidence in us of those Indian allies we have won hitherto. Your lot will be improved only so long as it pleases the French. If matters continue as they are, the French will force a war at the moment they deem most promising, and likely enough conquer us by reason of the very profits which you say have swollen your coffers."

"Better so, mayhap," shouted the hard-featured merchant. "Better have free trade under France than limited trade under England or any other country."

"You talk treason, sir," said the governor coldly. "Moreover, you talk foolishly. There is no freedom of trade in Canada----"

"Well, we have it here; and by ----, we'll keep it as long as we can," replied the merchant.

"That is not like to be very long, my masters," announced a new voice.

All eyes were turned to the door. There stood Andrew Murray, a fashionably cut blue plush coat draping his fine shoulders, half-revealing the canary-yellow vest beneath; a beautiful periwig framing his handsome, masterful face; a laced and cocked hat tucked under his arm.

He bowed low to the governor.

"I must beseech your Excellency's pardon for my unheralded entrance," he said. "I am but just arrived in town, and I hastened here to present my case to you."

He swept his eyes over the room as he spoke and fastened them upon my face.

"You are welcome, Master Murray," returned the governor. "Had I known where to reach you I should have invited your attendance."

"I am honored, sir."

Murray bowed again. His eyes passed from me to Peter's stolid features and the calm, impassive face of Ta-wan-ne-ars.

"I venture to intrude upon you," he continued, "because of information I possess which I am sure will be of interest to you and all others who have the prosperity of the province at heart."

"I am interested," said the governor impartially. "Pray state your case, Master Murray."

"I shall do so all the more readily, your Excellency, because I am persuaded you can have no knowledge of the crimes recently committed by persons who represent themselves to be your agents."

"So?" observed the governor.

"Yes, sir," Murray went on. "I see in this room three men whom I charge with the wanton destruction of a large quantity of furs and the murder of two of my servants and a number of friendly Indians."

And that there might be no mistaking the objects of his accusation Murray pointed his forefinger at my comrades and me. A rustle of interest agitated the audience. Murmurs arose and hostile glances were bent upon us.

"Be explicit, if you please," said the governor.

"I will, sir," replied Murray boldly. "The young man known as Harry Ormerod, with Peter Corlaer and a Seneca chief called Ta-wan-ne-ars, raided a fleet of canoes on the shore of the Cadarakui Lake near Oswego and burned hundreds of packs of valuable furs which the far-western savages were bringing in for trade."

"I have heard something of this matter," admitted Master Burnet. "But I understood the savages were in charge of Monsieur de Joncaire, the French commandant at Jagara, and bound for Montreal."

"Monsieur de Joncaire was accompanying them, 'tis true," admitted Murray. "But the savages were bound for my own trading-stations. The loss, which will run into thousands of pounds, will fall upon our New York merchants."

The murmurs grew into an outburst of indignation which the governor quelled with difficulty. But before he could speak Murray continued his attack.

"Nor is that all, your Excellency. These same three men afterwards attacked from ambush and murdered two of my servants, a man named Bolling and a negro."

"It sticks in my mind that both have been charged with murders of their own in the past," the governor broke in drily.

"They were never convicted of such a crime," returned Murray.

"Bolling was wanted for an attempt upon Master Ormerod's life in New York town," interjected Colden.

"I am not responsible for that," observed Murray. "It shows at best that there was enmity betwixt the two. But surely, my masters, enmity does not call for cold-blooded murder."

There was no misinterpreting the unanimity of the endorsement which his words received. Governor Burnet held up his hand for silence.

"I shall look into Master Murray's charges," he said. "So much, at least, he is entitled to. But first I wish to acquaint him with what I have laid before this gathering, all the more so because he is more vitally interested perhaps than any other.

"Master Murray, I am concerned over the extent to which the fur-trade is passing into French hands, and I am bound to say my information indicates that the French have your assistance in the matter. The quantities of trade-goods going up-river have enormously increased this Summer. They are hundreds of tons in excess of what formerly passed through Albany."

"Doubtless our trading-posts have profited thereby," suggested Murray blandly.

"On the contrary," returned Master Burnet with decision. "Our trading-posts have fared worse, if anything. Aside from the Iroquois, the savages are patronizing more and more the French traders. And as I have told these gentlemen here, the French have increased their trading-stocks already to such an extent that they have been able to establish parity with our prices."

"Yet the volume of furs coming through Albany has increased and not diminished," said Murray.

"What has that to do with the situation I have outlined?" demanded the governor with his first show of impatience.

"Everything, sir."

"I think not. Briefly, Master Murray, I am canvassing the sentiment of our merchants on the advisability of suspending for the time being, to some degree at any rate, the proclamation I issued in response to the action of the Lords of Trade in withholding the assent of his Majesty's government to our law prohibiting the trade in Indian goods with Canada."

Murray took snuff deliberately, and I, who had passed considerable time in his company, did not miss the gleam of frank hostility which showed in his eye.

"I am not surprized," he commented. "I am free to say, your Excellency, that I have noted hitherto a laxness on the part of the provincial authorities in administering the free-trade requirements of their lordships."

"You charge that?" inquired the governor coldly.

"I do, sir. And I give fair warning that, with a view to the best interests of the province and in response to the wishes of the majority of the merchants, I purpose to carry my complaint before the Privy Council at the earliest opportunity."

Governor Burnet rose from his chair. The cordiality was gone from his manner.

"This meeting is dissolved," he pronounced. "No, not a word, gentlemen"--this as several undertook to object--"I still hold his Majesty's commission as governor, and I purpose to secure assent to my authority by one means or another.

"I have striven to reason with you. I shall now proceed as seems best to me. Master Murray, file your charges in writing and be prepared to bear testimony in their defense. You may go."