THE MIDDLE COLONIES.
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.
[Illustration]
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.
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
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]
[Illustration]
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.
* * * * *
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.
[Illustration: GOVERNOR FLETCHER.
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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration: GOVERNOR HUNTER.
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).
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration: GOVERNOR CLINTON.
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.
[Illustration: GOV. JAMES DE LANCEY.
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.
[Illustration: GOV. CADWALLADER COLDEN.
_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.
[Illustration: GOV. MONCKTON.
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.
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.
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
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.