where constantly I expect he should have a fresh one lye. All the letters outward shall be delivered gratis, with a signification of Post Payd on the superscription; and reciprocally, we expect all to us free. Each first Monday of the month he sets out from New York, and is to return within the month from Boston to us againe. The maile has divers baggs, according to the townes the letters are designed to, which are all sealed up till their arrivement, with the seale of the Secretarie's Office, whose care it is on Saturday night to seale them up. Only by-letters are in an open bag, to dispense by the wayes. Thus you see the scheme I have drawne to promote a happy correspondence. I shall only beg of you your furtherance to so universall a good work; that is to afford him directions where and to whom to make his application to upon his arrival at Boston; as likewise to afford him what letters you can to establish him in that imployment there. It would be much advantagious to our designe, if in the intervall you discoursed with some of the most able woodmen, to make out the best and most facile way for a Post, which in processe of tyme would be the King's best highway; as likewise passages and accommodation at Rivers, fords, or other necessary places." 1

The first mail on the American continent started from New York for Boston on New Year's Day, 1673. The postman followed the Bowery Lane till it merged into the wagon-road just finished to

1 General Entries, iv. 243; Mass. Hist. Soc. Trumbull Papers, MSS., xx. 110.

the new village of Harlem, where even then the beer gave a foretaste of the preeminence in brewing to which Manhattan has since attained. After a cooling draught he was ready to go on The posthis way past "Annie's Hook," or Pel- man's route. ham Manor, to Greenwich and Stamford, and so on to New Haven, Hartford, and Springfield, crossing all rivers and arms of the sea in boats, as was necessary until the last years of the eighteenth century. Now it was a stretch of newly built English wagon-road that our postman followed, but oftener a mere bridle-path, or an ancient Indian trail, and sometimes the way must needs be indicated by marking trees in the virgin forest. From Springfield eastward his path must have followed the same winding watercourses of which the Boston and Albany railroad now takes advantage, climbing near Quabaug (Brookfield) to a thousand feet above sea-level, then gently descending into the pleasant valley of the Charles. While our indefatigable carrier was thus earning his "handsome livelyhood," a locked box stood in the secretary's office in New York awaiting his return, and in it from day to day the little heap of eastward bound letters grew. When the postman returned with his prepaid mail he emptied his New York bag on a broad table in the coffeehouse where citizens most did congregate. That locked box and that coffee-house table had in them the prophecy of the great post-office that now stands in the City Hall Park, and indirectly of all the post-offices, urban and rural, in Englishspeaking America. There was admirable foresight

in Governor Lovelace's scheme. That indefatigable horseman of his was an indispensable instrument in "begetting a mutual understanding;" he was one of the pioneers of our Federal Union.

Another prophetic incident of Lovelace's administration was the establishment of the first Merchants' Exchange, a weekly meeting, on Friday mornings, at about the site where Exchange Place now crosses Broad Street. Some of the first American ships, moreover, were built at New York under this governor, and they were staunch craft.

Lovelace's rule, like that of Nicolls, was autocratic but in no wise oppressive. The change from Dutch to English rule had not yet bestowed English self-government upon the province of New York. The despotism of Kieft and Stuyvesant was continued, only now, instead of the iron clutch, it was a stroke of velvet. This was simply due to the different personal qualities of the rulers. The

The Long Island protest against arbitrary taxation.

most restive part of the population, under this prolonged autocracy, was to be found in the English towns on Long Island.

Their people persistently grumbled at this sort of government to which no Englishmen had from time immemorial been subjected. They wanted a representative assembly. In 1670 there was an approach toward an explosion. A tax was levied upon these Long Island towns to pay for repairs upon Fort James, in New York. The case was quite similar to that of the tax levied by the governor and council of Massachusetts in 1631 upon the men of Watertown, to pay for a palisadoed wall in Cambridge. The men of Water

town refused to pay the tax, on the ground that they had no share in electing the authorities who levied it; and this protest led at once to the introduction of representative government into the new-born commonwealth of Massachusetts. The first John Winthrop did not represent a would-be despotic authority in England, but Governor Lovelace did. Hence the protest of Long Island in 1670 was not so successful as that of Watertown in 1631. The towns drew up a remonstrance in which they declared that they would not yield to a demand for money to repair the fort; they might next be called upon to support the garrison, and there was no telling to what lengths the affair might go. They stoutly maintained that the principle of "no taxation without representation"— which England had asserted in 1265 and the Netherlands in 1477 - was their inalienable birthright. This remonstrance was pronounced seditious, and Lovelace ordered it to be publicly burned in the street before the City Hall. It is needless to add that Long Island remained disaffected and more or less turbulent.

Events in Europe were fast bringing about a fresh surprise for Manhattan. After the peace of Breda, Charles II. had entered into the The Triple famous Triple Alliance with Sweden and Alliance. Holland, for the purpose of curbing the aggressive power of Louis XIV. As Bishop Burnet said, this was the best thing Charles II. ever did, and had he only adhered to this sound and manly policy it would have covered him with glory. But Louis well knew his cousin Charles's weaknesses.

The blandishments of a new French mistress, and the promise of money enough to dispense with parliaments, were quite too much for the degenerate grandson of Henry of Navarre. He broke away from the Triple Alliance, scarcely two years old, and joined hands with Louis XIV. for the destruction of Holland. There followed, in rapid sequence, the fall and shameful murder of De Witt, the stride of the third William of Orange into the historic foreground, and one more wicked and terrible war between Englishmen and their Dutch cousins.

War between England and Holland.

And thus it happened that in the Christmas season of 1672, while the worthy Lovelace was setting afoot his postal scheme, a powerful Dutch fleet of fifteen ships, commanded by Cornelius Evertsen,, was cruising in the West fleet. Indies to harass the English. By rein

Admiral
Evertsen's

forcements this fleet was increased to three-andtwenty warships, carrying, besides their crews, 1600 troops. After finishing their business in the West Indies, these Dutchmen, in July, 1673, visited Chesapeake Bay, destroying merchant vessels; and thence they kept on for New York, which had from the outset been their ultimate destination. Its recapture had been planned in Holland. On the morning of August 7 the ships dropped anchor off Staten Island; the next day they came up through the Narrows; the next they were ready to proceed to extremities.

The case was virtually a repetition of that of 1664. Governor Lovelace was absent on business, over on Long Island, but had he been on the spot