USA > New Jersey > The history of New Jersey, from its discovery by Europeans, to the adoption of the federal Constitution > Part 15
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The principles which directed his administration, were the converse of those of his predecessor. He had more confidence in the melting power of kindness and respect, than in that of haughtiness and reserve ; in the influ- ence of justice and frankness, than in force and fraud, to bend the people to his wishes. His address to the House was full of conciliation. He assured them, " that he would not give them any just cause of uncasiness under his administration, and hoped they would bear with one another; and that past differences and animosities would be buried in oblivion, and the peace and welfare of the country, only, would be pursued by each individual." On the subject of the support of government and the establishment of a militia, the contrast is striking between his course and that of the infatuated Corn- . bury. Instead of peremptorily demanding a large and fixed annual sum, payable for a long period; he observed, that " her Majesty would not be bur- densome to her people; but there being an absolute necessity, that govern- ment be supported, he was directed to recommend that matter to their consi- deration ; that they knew best what the province could conveniently raise for its support, and the easiest methods of raising it; that the making a law for putting the militia on a letter footing than it at present stood, with as much case to the people as possible. required their consideration ; that he should always be ready to give his assent to whatever laws they found ne- cessary for promoting religion and virtue, for the encouragement of trade and industry, and discouragement of vice and profaneness, and for any other matter or thing, relating to the good of the province."
Il. These liberal and favourable sentiments were reciprocated by the House; they passed a bill, appropriating a sum exceeding seventeen hun- dred pounds, for the support of government; an act for settling the mi- litia of the province; an act for the encouragement of the post-office; and
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an act for explaining grants and patents, for land, in the eastern division of the province. They, also, availed themselves of the present opportunity of' changing the constitution of the General Assembly, giving to it a more aris- torratical essence, than it received from the royal instructions. The latter required, that, the House should consist of two members elected by the householders and inhabitants of the towns of Amboy, Burlington, and Salem, respectively, and five members, chosen by the freeholders of the re- spective counties. The Assembly now directed that the electors, in all cases, should be freeholders, and that two members should be chosen for each of the above mentioned towns, and two for cach county, and that the members should be frecholders of that division, for which they were, respectively, elected. The frechold required for the elector and representative, was that specified in the instructions, and the House was made the judge of the quali- fication of its members. This change was induced by the proprietaries; to whom it was a matter of obvious and deep interest, that, every inhabitant should be an owner of land.
The Assembly obtained from the governor, a copy of the address which the lieutenant governor and council had made to the Queen in favour of Lord Cornbury; and engaged him to hear their defence of the charges against them, in presence of the addressors, but the latter contrived, for a season, to elude the inquiry.
III. The prospect which the province now had of a happy administration, in which the interests of the people were duly consulted, and the officers of government, liberally and satisfactorily maintained, were content with the emoluments the law conferred, was unhappily obscured by the sudden death of their popular governor, in a few days after the passage of the above-men- tioned laws, and the devolvement of his power upon the lieutenant governor Ingoldsby.
I.V. This officer, pursuant to his instruction from the ministers of the Queen, - laid before the Assembly their demand for aid, in an attack upon the French provinces in North America. The French had actively prosecuted the war declared against them by England, on the 4th May, 1702, and the northern English provinces of America, had suffered greatly from their incursions. In the preceding year, they had penetrated to Haverhill, on the Merrimack river, and reduced the town to ashes. Upon the entreaty of the inhabitants of New England, the ministry adopted a plan proposed by Col. Vetch, for the conquest of Arcadia, Canada, and Newfoundland. An attack upon Quebec was to be made, by a squadron of ships carrying five regiments of regular troops from England, and twelve hundred provincials, furnished by the zeal of Massachusetts and Rhode Island; whilst an army of fifteen hundred men from Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, conducted by Colonels Nicholson and Vetch, should attempt Montreal, by way of the lakes. The enterprise, however, was never prosecuted; the exigencies of the war in Europe requiring all the forces of the allies. The quota of troops required from New Jersey, was two hundred. The Assembly entered spi- ritedly into the views of the ministry; passed one act appropriating three thousand pounds to aid the expedition, to be raised by the issue of bills of credit; another, for enforcing their currency, and a third for the encourage- ment of volunteers. The few Indian chiefs who were in the province, were summoned before the council, and incited to engage in the enterprise; and Col. Schuyler was commissioned by the governors of Connectient, New York and Pennsylvania, to direct the efforts of these and of the Five Nations.
V. Upon failure of the expedition, Col. Nicholson returned to England to solicit further assistance, taking with him, five of the Indian sachems of the Five Nations, together with Col. Schuyler, whose influence over these
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warlike savages was almost unbounded. It suited the ministry to make an exhibition of these sons of the forest. The court being then in mourning for the death of the prince of Denmark, the American kings were dressed in black under clothes, and their coarse and filthy blankets were exchanged for rich scarlet cloth mantles, trimmed with gold. A more than ordinary solemnity attended the audience they had of her Majesty; Sir Charles Cotteral con- ducted them in coaches to St. James's; and the Lord Chamberlain introduced them into the royal presence, where the chief warrior and orator addressed a speech, with the customary belts of wampum, to her Majesty.
VI. To the solicitations of Colonels Nicholson and Schuyler, the ministry returned the most favourable promises; but their execution was so long de- layed, that Nicholson resolved to attack Port Royal, with the means at his disposal in the colonies. With twelve ships of war and twenty transports, having on board one regiment of marines, and four of infantry, raised in New England, he assailed and captured the place, and obtained full posses- sion of Nova Scotia, on the 5th of October 1710.
VII. Lieutenant Governor Ingoldsby was, as we have seen, justly obnox- ious to the people of New York and New Jersey, and their remonstrances, also, procured his removal soon after the dismission of Cornbury. But before the arrival of another governor appointed by the crown, the executive powers were exercised in New Jersey, by Mr. William Pinhorne, one of the most unpopular of the council. Ile was, however, very soon superseded by the arrival of Brigadier General Hunter, on the 14th June, 1710, with the com- mission of governor general of the provinces of New York and New Jersey.
VIII. Governor Hunter was a native of Scotland, and when a boy, was put apprentice to an apothecary. But he deserted his master and entered the army, and being a man of wit and personal beauty, acquired the affections of Lady Hay, whom he afterwards married. He had been nominated in the year 1707, lieutenant governor of Virginia, under George, Earl of Orkney; but having been captured by the French, in his voyage to that colony, was carried into France. Upon his release, he was appointed to succeed Lord Lovelace. He was, unquestionably, a man of merit, since he enjoyed the intimacy of Swift, Addison, and others, distinguished for sense and learning; by whose interest, it is supposed, he obtained this profitable place. He min- gled freely with the world, and was somewhat tainted by its follies; had en- gaging manners, blended perhaps, not unhappily, for his success in the pro- vince, with a dash of original vulgarity. His administration of ten years' duration, was one of almost unbroken harmony, and consequently productive of scarcely aught else, worthy of historical notice.
IX. He met the Assembly of New Jersey on the 6th of December, 1710; to whom he delivered a frank, soldierly, and acceptable speech, much in the spirit of his predecessor Lovelace. The session continued more than two months, during which the joint labours of the governor and House of Repre- sentatives were unimpeded, save by the occasional refractoriness of the ob- noxious council. This led the House, nothing loth, to the consideration of the charges which a majority of the present council had made to the Queen, against a former Assembly, whose vindication the present House assumed not the less eagerly, that it was composed, -almost wholly, of other indi- viduals. *
They presented to governor Hunter a long memorial, in which, these members of council were certainly not spared. And if we may judge of their characters, from their sycophancy, no terms of reprobation could have been too strong. It was scarce possible for the minions of the most despotic and profligate court, to flatter a monarch, more than the council
* Smith's N. Y. Smith's N. J. Sce note T.
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of New Jersey did the good Lord Lovelace, in an address, " which," say the Assembly, "for the peculiarity of the language, (and we might add, the un- intelligibleness of the terms), ought never to be forgotten." The address commenced thus : " Your lordship has not one virtue or more, but a com- plete accomplishment of all perfections," &c. &c. The address to the Queen, purporting to be an act of the council, it appears had never been formally considered before that body, but had been prepared at the instance of Lord Cornbury, and was signed by the counsellors at different times and places; and many of them, afterwards, becoming ashamed of its contents, alleged that they had signed it without having read it.
In their defence, the Assembly charge upon the council an attempt to de- feat their endeavours, to aid the expedition against Canada, by conspiring to negative the acts which they proposed for that purpose. And they allege such misdeeds against most of the counsellors, that we are driven to believe, that party spirit must have aided much in forming the accusation. Thus Mr. Hall is accused of extortion, of imprisoning and selling the queen's sub- jects, and " of taking up adrift several casks of flour, denying them to the owner, and selling them."-Mr. Sonmans of being indicted for perjury, "from which, by a pack'd jury he was cleared, there being too much reason to be- lieve he was justly accused, and of being a bankrupt," who at this time, and for some years past, has lived in open and avowed adultery in contempt of the laws. They allege also, that the courts of law, in which the gentlemen of the council were judges, instead of being a protection and security to her Ma- jesty's subjects, became their chief invaders and destroyers-That though the courts were holden, alternately, at Amboy and Burlington, "yet the causes of one division were tried in the other, and juries and evidences carried for that end;" that " the writ of habeas corpus, the undoubted right, as well as the great privilege of the subject, was by William Pinhorne, Esq. second Judge of the Supreme Court, denied to Thomas Gordon, Esq. then speaker of the Assembly ; and, notwithstanding the station he was in, he was kept fifteen hours a prisoner, until he applied by the said Pinhorne's son, an attor- ney at law; and then, not before, he was admitted to bail : that, many per- sons prosecuted upon informations, had been, at their excessive charge, forced to attend, court after court, and not brought to trial, when there was no evidence to ground such information on : that, the people called Quakers, who are by her Majesty, admitted to places of the most considerable trust within this province, are sometimes admitted to be evidences, as in a capital case, at a Court of Over and Terminer, holden by Chief Justice Mompesson, Colonel Daniel Coxe, Colonel Huddy and others, on which evidence the pri- soner was condemned to be executed; and sometimes, they are refused to be jurors or evidences, either in civil or criminal cases; so that their safety or receiving the benefit of her Majesty's favour, seems not to depend upon the laws or her directions, but the humours and caprices of the gentlemen who were judges of the court: all persons not friends to the gentlemen of the council, or some of them, were sure in any trial at law to suffer; every thing was done in favour of those that were: justice was banish- ed, and trick and partiality substituted in its place: no man was secure in his liberty or estate; but, both, subjected to the caprices of an incon- siderate party of men, in power, who scemed to study nothing more than to make them as precarious as possible :"-that " all the original copies of the laws, passed in the time of the just Lord Lovelace, are somehow or other made away with : Basse* offers to purge himself by his oath, that, he
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* Mr. Jeremiah Basse, once deputy governor under the proprietaries of East Jersey, at this time, secretary of state, clerk of council, and prothonotary of the Supreme Court.
a
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has them not, nor knows any thing of them; and it may be so, for aught we know; but in this province, where he is known, it is also known, that, few men ever believed his common conversation, and several juries have refused to credit bis caths. It is certain, that the secretary's office is the place these laws should have been." "It does appear to have been the inte- rest of the lieutenant governor and his friends, to destroy it, (the law appro- priating eight hundred pounds to Lord Lovelace) for they had got an act passed, which took from the Lord Lovelace three hundred and thirty pounds of that money, and gave it to the lieutenant governor; and two hundred and twenty pounds more of it was given to him for the support of the govern- ment. , Had he sent the act, made in favour of the Lord Lovelace, to the Queen, for her approbation or disallowance, it would not have served him, had her Majesty approved of it, as, iu all probability, she would have done; but had the other gone home first, there was an expectation it might pass, the Queen knowing no more about the first act, than that a vote had passed in favour of the Lord Lovelace."
" We are concerned," say the Assembly in conclusion, "we have so much reason to expose a number of persons combined to do New Jersey all the hurt that lies in their power. Her Majesty has been graciously pleased to remove Colonel Richard Ingoldsby, from being lieutenant governor, and we cannot, sufficiently, express our gratitude for so singular a favour, and, especially, for appointing, your excelleney, our governor : we have all the reason in the world to be well assured, you will not forget that you are her subject; but will take care, that justice be duly administered to the rest of her subjects here; which can never be done while William Pinhorne, Roger Mompesson, Daniel Coxe, Richard Townley, Peter Sonmans, Hugh Huddy, William Hall, or Jeremiah Basse, Esquires, continue in places of trust, within this province; nor can we think our persons or properties safe, while they do; but if they are continued, must. with our families, desert this province, and seek some safer place of abode."
These representations are, without doubt, highly coloured ; but there must have been great cause for them ; since sustained by the governor, they were attended with the desired effect; all the obnoxious counsellors being removed by the Queen.
X. Major Sandford, one of the unfortunate counsellors, who had now been elected a member of the Assembly, from Bergen county, was expelled the Hlouse; it having resolved, " that any one who had signed the false and scandalous representation of the representative body of the province, was unfit to sit in the House, unless he acknowledged his fault," which the offending member refused to do. An address to the Queen was, also, prepared, and immediately despatched.
XI. Since the surrender of the government, by the proprietaries, the ad- ministration of the province had been greatly embarrassed by the obstacles created by the requisition of' oaths from the Quaker inhabitants, who were, thereby, precluded from sitting on juries, and from exercising other offices. This grievance had been foreseen, and, in some degree, provided for, by the instruction of the ministers to Lord Cornbury, directing that he should unite with the Assembly in passing an act, to the like effect as that of the seventh and eighth of King William, entitled, " An act, that the solemn affirmation and declaration of the people, called Quakers, shall be accepted, instead of oath, in the usual form." "The disregard of this just and prudent provision, enabled the governor, Corubury, at will, to admit or reject, the services of Quakers, and became one of the means by which he oppressed the people. The House proposed to provide against similar abuses, in future, by two bills; one for ascertaining the qualification of jurors, and the other for sub-
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stituting affirmations, for oaths, where a party was conscientiously scrupu- lous in taking them. But though laws, for these purposes, were subsequently enacted, the opposition of the council, at this time, defeated the efforts of the Assembly. And a bill for explaining the militia law, and relieving persons aggrieved thereby, met a like fate.
XII. Animated by his successes in Newfoundland, Colonel Nicholson again urged upon the ministry, the reduction of Canada, which had been strongly recommended by the Indian chiefs, as the only effectual means of securing the northern colonies. The attempt having been resolved upon, circulars were addressed to the governors of the northern and middle colo- nies, requiring them to meet and confer with Nicholson, and to prepare their respective quotas of men and provisions. Governor Hunter summoned the Assembly of New Jersey in July, 1711; and informing them that the fieet and army destined for this service, had arrived at Boston, demanded that they should provide three hundred and sixty effective men beside officers, together with the means for their subsistence and pay. The service was one which this, together with the northern provinces, looked upon with great favour. The House, therefore, promptly resolved to aid it, by appro- priating twelve thousand five hundred ounces of plate (dollars) in bills of credit, to be sunk, together with the three thousand pounds formerly appro- priated, by a subsequent tax; and by measures for raising and supporting the requisite troops.
But the expedition proved most disastrous. Colonel Nicholson, under whom served Colonels Schuyler, Whiting, and Ingoldsby, mustered, at Al- bany, two thousand colonists, one thousand Germans from the Palatinate, and one thousand of the Five Nation Indians, who commenced their march towards Canada, on the 28th of August. The troops from Boston, consisted of several veteran regiments of the Duke of Marlborough's army, one bat- talion of marines, and two provincial regiments; amounting to six thousand four hundred men, commanded by Brigadier General Hill, the brother of the Queen's favourite, Mrs. Masham. They sailed on board of sixty-eight vessels, under convoy of Sir Hoveden Walker, the 30th of July, and arrived off the St. Lawrence, on the 14th of August. In ascending the river, the fleet, by the unskilfulness of the pilots, or the obstinacy and distrust of the admiral, was entangled amid rocks and islands, on the northern shore, and ran imminent hazard of total destruction. Eight transports, with eight hundred men, pe- rished. Upon this disaster, the squadron bore away for Cape Breton; and the expedition, by the advice of a council of naval and military officers, was abandoned, on the ground of want of provisions, and the impossibility of pro- curing a seasonable supply. The admiral sailed directly for England, and the colonial forces for New England ; whilst Colonel Nicholson, thus de- serted, was compelled to retreat from Fort George. The want of skill and fortitude, were eminently conspicuous in the British commanders of this on- terprisc .*
* The ministry were, generally, censured by the Whigs for the project of this en- terprise, and for the measures taken for its execution. It was never laid before Par- liament, though then in session : on account, as it was said, of the greater secrecy; and for the same reason the fleet was not victualled at home. They relied on New England for supplies, and this defeated the design: for the ships tarried at Boston, until the season for attack was past. According to Lord Harley's account, the whole was a contrivance of Bolingbroke. Moore, and the Lord Chancellor Harcourt, to cheat the public of £20,000. The latter of these, was pleased to say, " No government was worth serving, that would not admit of such advantageous jobs."-Smith's New York. 131. From the manner in which this and other enterprises against the possessions of France, in America, were conducted, we are almost prepared to agree in opinios with M
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XIII. During five years, nothing worthy of historical notice, occurred in the province. The Assembly was occasionally convened, and passed such laws as were required. These were few and simple, relating solely to the internal policy of the colony; the peace of Utrecht, 31st of March, 1713, having put an end to hostilities between Great Britain and France, and termi- nated a merciless war upon the American continent. Some leaven of the political spirit, which had been engendered during the administration of Corn- bury, still worked, at times, among the people, and in the Assembly. Gersham Mott, and Elisha Lawrence, members from Bergen, who had been of Corn- bury's party, having entered on the minutes of council, reasons for voting against aiding the expedition to Canada, were severally expelled the House of which they had become members, "for having arraigned the honour of the representative body of the province." This would seem to have been a party vote, scarce warranted by circumstances. In the interval, we have mentioned, one Assembly had been dissolved, by the demise of Queen Anne, on the 1st of August, 1714; another, by the arrival of a new com- . mission to the governor, from her successor George I .; and a third, by some cause which is not apparent. A new Assembly was convened at Amboy, on the 4th of April, 1716, in which there was a temporary majority, against the late ruling party; and the party which had suffered for ad- hesion to Cornbury, seemed about to regain its ascendency. Col. Daniel Coxe was chosen Speaker, and several of the most odious members of Cornbury's council, were members of the House. They contrived to delay the business of the session, until the governor, wearied by their procrastina- tion, prorogued them.
XIV. He summoned the House again, on the 14th of May, when nine, only, out of twenty-four members appeared. 'These adjourned from day to day, for five days, receiving no accession to their numbers. When it became appa- rent, that the absentees, intended by desertion to prevent the exercise of the legislative authority, now indispensable to renew the supplies for the support of government, and to provide for the re-emission of the bills of credit, the nine applied to the governor to enforce, by some means, the attendance of the absent members. He issued writs to several of them, commanding their pre- sence, as they would answer the contrary at their peril. Four immediately appeared, making a majority of the House, to whom he recommended the choice of a new Speaker, (Col. Coxe being of the absentees), that they might despatch their sergeant-at-arms to enforce the attendance of others. Mr. John Kinsey of Middlesex, was placed in the chair, and the Assembly proceeded with its usual business. They also entered upon an examination of the, conduct of the Speaker and his associates, all of whom they expelled, for contempt of authority and neglect of the service of their country; and re- solved that they should not sit, if returned on a new election, during the then session. Several of such members, however, were returned; but being re- jected, the electors were compelled to choose again.
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