1695.

Albany. The necessity of common defence in this age led only to instructions. 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 relations towards Canada, New York shared the passion for conquest, which gradually extended to other colonies. In its internal affairs, bordering on Puritan New England, it is the most northern province that admitted by enactment the partial establishment of the Anglican church. The Presbyterians had introduced themselves under compacts with the Dutch government. The original settlers from the Netherlands were Calvinists, yet with a church organization far less popular than that of New England, and having in some degree sympathy with the ecclesiastical polity of Episcopacy. During the ascendency of the Dutch, it had often been asserted in an exclusive spirit; 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 became predominant in the council. The idea of toleration was still imperfect in New Netherland. It is not strange, therefore, that the efforts of Fletcher to privilege the English service were partially successful. The house framed a bill, in which they established certain churches and ministers, reserving the right of presentation to the vestrymen and church-wardens. The governor, interpreting the act, limited its meaning to the English form of worship, and framed an amendment giving the right of presentation to the representative of the crown. The assembly asserted it for the people, rejecting the amendment. "Then I must tell you," retorted Fletcher, this " seems very unmannerly. There never was an amendment desired by the council board but what was rejected. It is a sign of a stubborn ill-temper. I have the power of collating or suspending any minister in my government by their majesties' letters patent; and, whilst I stay in this government, I will take care that neither heresy, schism, nor rebellion, be preached among you, nor vice and pro

fanity encouraged. You seem to take the whole power into your hands, and set up for every thing."

1695.

The "stubborn temper" of the house was immovable; and, two years afterwards, that the act might Apr. 12. not be construed too narrowly, it was declared that the vestrymen and church-wardens of the church established in New York might call a Protestant minister who had not received Episcopal ordination. Not a tenth part of the population of that day adhered to the Episcopal Church; the public spirit demanded toleration; and if, on the one hand, the English church succeeded in engrossing the provision made by public acts for the ministry, on the other, the dissenters were wakened to jealousy, lest the Episcopal party, deriving countenance from England, might nourish a lust for dominion. To the mixed races of legislators in the province, the governor, in 1697, said: "There are none of you but what are big with the privileges of Englishmen and Magna Charta."

1698.

April 2.

The differences were tranquillized in the short administration of the kindlier Earl of Bellomont, an Irish peer, with a sound heart and honorable sympathies for popular freedom. He arrived in New York after the peace of Ryswick, with a commission extending to the borders of Canada, including New York, New Jersey, and all New England, except Connecticut and Rhode Island. In New York, Bellomont, who had served on the committee of parliament to inquire into the trials of Leisler and Milborne, was indifferent to the little oligarchy of the royal council, of which he reproved the vices and resisted the selfishness. The memory of Leisler was revived; and the assembly, by an appropriation of its own in favor of his family, confirmed the judgment of the English parliament. The enforcement of the acts of trade, which had been violated by the connivance of men appointed to execute them; and 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 Bellomont; yet for both he accomplished little. The acts of trade,

despotic in their nature, contradicting the rights of humanity, were evaded everywhere; 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 violation a moral offence; respect for them was but a calculation of chances. In the attempt to suppress piracy, the prospect 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 Bellomont 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.

Neither war nor illiberal legislation could retard the growth of the city of New York in commerce, in wealth, and in numbers. The increased taxes were imposed with equity and collected with moderation. "I will pocket none of the public money myself, nor shall there be any embez zlement by others," was the honest promise of Bellomont; and the necessity of the promise is the strongest commentary upon the character of his predecessors. The confiding house of representatives voted 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.

Of the same family with the queen of England; brotherin-law to a king whose service he had betrayed; the grandson of a prime minister; himself heir to an earldom, Lord Cornbury, destitute of the virtues of the aristocracy, illustrated the worst form of its arrogance, joined to intellectual imbecility. Of the sagacity of the common mind, of its firmness, he knew nothing; of political power he had no conception, except as it emanates from the self-will of a superior; to him popular rights existed only as a condescension. Educated at Geneva, he yet loved Episcopacy as

And

1702.

a religion of state subordinate to executive power. now, at about forty years of age, with self-will and the pride of rank for his counsellors, without fixed principles, without perception of political truth, he stood among mixed people of New Jersey and of New York as their governor. The royalists anticipated his arrival with the incense of flattery; and the hospitality of the colony, which was not yet provoked to defiance, elected a house of assembly disposed to confide in the integrity of one who had been represented as a friend to Presbyterians. The expenses of his voyage were compensated by a grant of two thousand pounds, and an annual revenue for the public service provided 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 Lord Cornbury cared little for the limitations of a provincial assembly. The money, by his warrant, disappeared from the treasury, while the Narrows were left defenceless; and the assembly, awakened to distrust, by addresses to the governor and the queen solicited a treasurer of its own appointment. The governor sought to hide his own want of integrity by reporting to the lords of trade that "the colonies were possessed with an opinion. that their assemblies ought to have all the privileges of a house of commons; but how dangerous this is," he adds, "I need not say." The general revenue had 1704. been fixed for a period of years; no new appropriations could be extorted; and, heedless of menaces or solicitations, the representatives of the people in 1704 asserted "the rights of the house." Lord Cornbury answered: “I know of no right that you have as an assembly, but such as the queen is pleased to allow you." Broughton, the attorney-general in New York, reported in the same year that "republican spirits" were to be found there. The firmness of the assembly won its first victory; for 1705. the queen permitted specific appropriations of inci

1703.

June.

dental grants of money, and the appointment by the general assembly of its own treasurer to take charge of extraordinary supplies.

In affairs relating to religion, Lord Cornbury was equally imperious, disputing the right of ministers or schoolmasters to exercise their 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. His long undetected forgery of a standing instruction in favor of the English church led only to acts of petty tyranny, useless to English interests, degrading the royal prerogative, and benefiting the people by compelling their active vigilance. 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 agreed on an acquittal. In like manner, at Jamaica, the church which the whole town had erected was, by the connivance of Cornbury, reserved exclusively for the Episcopalians; an injustice which was reversed in the colonial

courts.

-

The

1708. Twice had Cornbury dissolved the assembly. The Aug. 19. third which he convened 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 as dispirited as he was indigent, he submitted to the ignominy of reproof, and thanked the assembly for the simplest act of justice.

In New Jersey there were the same demands for money,

and a still more wary refusal; representatives, elected 1704. by a majority of votes, excluded by the governor ;

assemblies convened, and angrily dissolved. At last, necessity compelled a third assembly, and among its members were Samuel Jennings and Lewis Morris. The latter was of a liberal mind, yet having no fixed system; intrepid, but