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who are departing to our God,". these were Leisler's words to his oppressed friends, "but weep for your

selves, that remain behind in misery and vexation ;" adding, as the handkerchief was bound round his face, "I hope these eyes shall see our Lord Jesus in heaven." Milborne exclaimed, "I die for the king and queen, and the Protestant religion, in which I was born and bred. Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."

On an appeal to the king, the estates of "the deceased" were restored to their families; and the friends of Leisler persevered till, in 1695, an act of parliament reversed the attainder. In 1698, the assembly of New York confirmed the judgment of the British legisla

ture.

Thus fell Leisler, a victim to party spirit. Long af terwards, his friends, whom a royalist of that day described as "the meaner sort of the inhabitants," and who were distinguished always by their zeal for popular power, for toleration, for opposition to the doctrine of legitimacy, formed a powerful, and ultimately a successful, party. His rashness and incompetency were forgotten in sympathy for the judicial murder by which he fell; and the principles which he upheld became the principles of the colony.

There existed in the province no party which would sacrifice colonial freedom. Even the legislature, composed of the deadly enemies of Leisler, asserted the right to a representative government, and to English liberties, to be inherent in the people, and not a consequence of the royal favor. This act received the veto of King William. "No tax whatever shall be levied on his majesty's subjects in the province, or on their estates, on any pretence whatsoever, but by the act and consent of the representatives of the people in general assembly convened: " supreme legislative power belongs to the governor and council, and to the people by their representatives: "-such was the enactment of the most royalist assembly that could ever be con

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vened in New York, vainly annulled by the English sovereign.

In 1692, in the administration of the covetous and passionate Fletcher, the old hope of extending the bounds of the province from Connecticut River to Delaware Bay revived; and, for the security of the central province, the command of the militia of New Jersey and Connecticut was, by a royal commission, conferred on Fletcher. An address was also sent to the king, representing the great cost of defending the frontiers, and requesting that the neighboring colonies might be compelled to contribute to the protection of Albany. In the necessity of common defence lay the root of the parliamentary attempt at taxation; for it created the desire of a central will, and this desire looked sometimes to the English monarch as the fountain of sovereignty, sometimes to the idea of a confederacy of the colonies, and at last to the action of parliament. In this age, it led only to instructions. In 1695, all the colonies north of Carolina were directed to furnish quotas for the defence of New York or the attacks on Canada; but the instructions, though urgently renewed, were never enforced, and were by some colonies openly disregarded.

In its internal affairs, New York is the most northern colony that admitted by enactment the partial establishment of the Anglican Church. When the colony became English, the conquest was made by men devoted to the English throne and the English Church, and the influence of Churchmen was at once predominant in the council. The idea of toleration was still imperfect in New Netherlands; equality among religious sects was unknown. It is not strange, therefore, that, in 1693, the house framed a bill, in which they established certain churches and ministers, yet reserving the right of presentation to the vestrymen and church-wardens; and, after much altercation, the English Church succeeded in engrossing the provision made by the ministry acts.

The jealousy of the dissenters was tranquillized in the

1698.]

NEW YORK.

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short administration of the kindlier earl of Bellamont, an Irish peer, with a sound heart and honorable sympathies for popular freedom, who arrived in New York in April, 1698, with a commission extending to the borders of Canada, including all the northern British possessions, except Connecticut and Rhode Island.

The enforcement of the acts of trade, which had been violated by the connivance of men appointed to execute them, the suppression of piracy, which, as the turbulent offspring of long wars and of the false principles of the commercial systems of that age, infested every sea from America to China, were the great purposes of Bellamont; yet for both he accomplished little. The acts of trade, despotic in their nature, contradicting the rights of humanity, were evaded every where; but in New York, a city, in part, of aliens, owing allegiance to England, without the bonds of common history, kindred, and tongue, they were disregarded without scruple. No voice of conscience declared their evasion a moral offence; respect for them was but a calculation of chances. In the attempt to suppress piracy, the promises of infinite booty to be recovered from pirates, or to be won from the enemies of England, had gained from the king and the admiralty a commission for William Kidd, and had deluded Bellamont into a partnership in a private expedition. Failing in his hopes of opulence, Kidd found his way as a pirate to the gallows. In the house of commons, the transaction provoked inquiry, and hardly escaped censure.

On questions of finance, the popularity of Bellamont prevented collisions by an honest promise-"I will pocket none of the public money myself, nor shall there be any embezzlement by others." And the necessity of the promise is the strongest commentary upon the character of his predecessors. The confiding house of representatives vcted a revenue for six years, and placed it, as before, at the disposition of the governor. His death interrupted the short period of harmony in the colony; and, happily for New York, Lord Cornbury,

his successor, had every vice of character necessary to discipline a colony into self-reliance and resistance.

By a house of assembly not yet provoked to defiance, the expenses of his voyage were compensated by a grant of two thousand pounds, and an annual revenue for the public service for a period of seven years. In April, 1703, a further grant was made of fifteen hundred pounds to fortify the Narrows, "and for no other use whatever." But the money, by the warrant of Lord Cornbury, disappeared from the treasury, while the Narrows were still defenceless; and, in June, the assembly, awakened to distrust by addresses to the governor and the queen, solicited a treasurer of its own appointment. In the next year, they more earnestly asserted "the rights of the house." "I know of no right that you have," answered Lord Cornbury, "but such as the queen is pleased to allow you." But the firmness of the assembly won the right of appointing by the general assembly its own treasurer to take charge of extraordinary supplies.

In affairs relating to religion, Lord Cornbury was equally imperious, disputing generally the right of either minister or schoolmaster to exercise his vocation without his license. The question of the freedom of the pulpit no longer included the whole question of intellectual freedom; the victory for toleration had been won; and the spirit of political freedom found its organ in the provincial legislature. The captious reference to the standing instructions in favor of the English Church, sometimes encouraging arbitrary acts of power in its behalf, and always tending to bias every question in its favor, led only to acts of petty tyranny, useless to English interests, and benefiting the people by compelling their active vigilance. The power of the people redressed the griefs. If Francis Makemie, a Presbyterian, was indicted for preaching without a license from the governor, if the chief justice advised a special verdict, the jury, composed, it is said, of Episcopalians, constituted themselves the judges of the law, and readily

1707.]

NEW JERSEY.

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agreed on an acquittal. In like manner, at Jamaica, the church which the whole town had erected, was, by the connivance of Lord Cornbury, reserved exclusively for the Episcopalians an injustice which was afterwards reversed in the colonial courts.

Twice had Lord Cornbury dissolved an assembly. The third which he convened, in August, 1708, proved how rapidly the political education of the people had advanced. Dutch, English, and New England men, were all of one spirit. The rights of the people, with regard to taxation, to courts of law, to officers of the crown, were asserted with an energy to which the governor could offer no resistance. Without presence of mind, subdued by the colonial legislature, and now appearing dispirited as he was indigent, he submitted to the ignominy of reproof, and thanked the assembly for the simplest act of justice.

Shall we glance at his career in New Jersey? There are the same demands for money, and a still more wary refusal; representatives, elected by a majority of votes, excluded by the governor; assemblies convened, and angrily dissolved. In April, 1707, necessity compels a third assembly. Its members, according to the usage of that day, wait on the governor with their remonstrance. Samuel Jennings, the Quaker speaker, reads it for them most audibly. It charges Lord Cornbury with accepting bribes; it deals sharply with "his new methods of government," his "encroachment" on the popular liberties, by "assuming a negative voice to the freeholders' election of their representatives;" "they have neither heads, hearts, nor souls, that are not forward with their utmost power lawfully to redress the miseries of their country." Stop! "exclaimed Lord Cornbury; as the undaunted Quaker delivered the remonstrance; and Jennings meekly and distinctly repeated the charges, with greater emphasis than before. What could Lord Cornbury do? He attempted to retort, charging the Quakers with disloyalty and faction; and they answered, in the words of Nehemiah to Sanballat, "There is no

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