USA > New York > Suffolk County > Riverhead > History of Suffolk country, comprising the addresses delivered at the celebration of the bi-centennial of Suffolk county, N.Y., in Riverhead, November 15, 1883 > Part 3
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But these laws have come from the people, they are all enacted at gen- eral assemblies of the freeholders of the different colonies or towns. His- tory presents no purer democracy than that governing the English settle- ments here from 1640 to the Convention at Hempstead, in 1665, and the institution of the Duke's Laws. If its enactments move us, in more liberal times, with indignation, if we view with sentiments akin to honor an order of civilization that strangely combined learning and religious enthusiasm with vindictive and barbarous dispensations in matters of personal obliga- tion, we are to reflect that our fathers framed their systems as best for their times, and their vindication is asserted in the blessings that crown their posterity. The organization of the town meeting, that simple, effective political power that ensures civil liberty, was an institution peculiar to the colonial period. Necessity was its source, but its virtues soon embedded it in the structure of government. From it sprang the determination to representative power in the State. Had the colonists been controlled by the direct flow of power from the Throne or Protectorate of Great Britain,
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the town meeting would never have been inaugurated. With a free and more kindly government in Holland, the Dutch of New Netherlands were denied any personal participation in the administration of their public affairs. The West India Company vested the Dutch directors with abso- lute power. Appeals from their decisions lay to the States General, but who dared make them. "If I was persuaded," thundered truculent old Stuyvesant to the accusers of Krift, his mercenary predecessor, "that you would complain of my sentences or divulge them, I would have you hanged on the highest tree in New Netherlands." The colonial annals of Suffolk County reveal no such assumption of tyrannical authority. If our magistrates dealt severely with their subjects, they dealt openly and in con- formity with the law to which the subject had assented, and in framing which he had his free voice. He had discussed the merits of the rule in the town meeting, and if it fell harshly upon him later because of his in- fraction he could assert neither ignorance nor inability to protest against its adoption, as reasons in mitigation of its effect upon himself.
To the town meetings of these times we clearly trace and owe the firm establishment in our organic law of the principle of civil liberty in the people, and the inauguration of their right to participate in legislation through representation. From these local assemblies sprang the great Re- publican principle of government, and upon them it still reposes in confi- dence and honor. Increase of wealth and power begets respect, and Con- necticut from its attitude of friendly ally, began to measure the advantage of permanent absorption of the Long Island settlements into its body pol- itic. The advantages of political consolidation were reciprocal. The habits, tastes, religious belief. and laws of the two establishments were in common. As our ancestors encountered the Dutch at Oyster Bay and ex- perienced the antagonisms of characteristics, they sought for strength in closer attachment to a powerful colony with which they were in sympathy. Had Charles II. deferred his Royal Grant of 1664 to his brother James for a few years, there is probability that this good County of Suffolk would have formed part of the State of Connecticut, to-day.
In 1664 the elements of liberal government were fully developed in Eastern Long Island. The people had become accustomed to the exer- cise of power. Their magistrates and officers were selected at their general town meetings. At these assemblies new laws were enacted. The Church received its support from their decisions, and such taxes as were necessary were here levied. Here, too, applications for admission as citizens into the little community, were heard. The simple, but effective machinery of government was thus in full operation. A pure democracy is fitted only to small societies. It can never satisfy the needs of a large population or scattered collections of individuals. (The experiment that failed centuries ago on the banks of the Vistula had taught this lesson to the political thinker). Representative forms of government approximate nearest to pure democracy and alone answer the demands of popular government. Twenty-four years after the settlement of Southampton and Southold the necessity for a more central power than the town meeting, had become fully apparent. The diversity of interest among the towns swelled with their growing population. A central and regulating administration had forced itself upon the thoughts of the wise and patriotic as a necessity no longer to be deferrel, and union with Connecticut seemed the only solu- tion of an embarrassment from which popular interests were sadly suffer- ing.
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The Royal Letters Patent under which James, Duke of York and Albany, acquired tithe to Long Island empowered the Duke to establish a government, and clothed him with powers of well nigh regal extent. The condition of Long Island was represented at Whitehall as surpassingly ex- cellent. Among the aims of the Duke the supremacy of this portion of the possessions granted him by his brother seems paramount. John Scott had moved his cupidity by tales of wealth that were founded wholly upon imagination. Careful in the selection of subordinates, James found in Richard Nicholls an incomparable agent for his financial work. "You may inform all men that a great end of your design is the possessing of Long Island, and reducing that people to us and our government. now vested in our brother, the Duke of York," wrote Clarendon in his commis- ' sion of instructions to Nicolls, and the other Commissioners dispatched by the Duke to regulate the affairs of the provinces. Winthrop, Governor of Connecticut, attends upon Nicolls at Gravesend before the surrender of New Amsterdam, examines his Commission and the letters patent, and yields all claim on behalf of his colony to jurisdiction over Long Island, and declares it " in view of His Majesty's pleasure to have ceased and be- come null." And thus in August, 1664, the various towns of this County passed from a state of independence and elementary government into one of rigor, method and oppression. However great the difficulties attending their separation from other colonies in the parent State the inestimable boon of freedom and self-dependence was an ample requital. We shall witness its fruits in the Assembly, whose acts we reverence now ..
The intervention of Nicolls was marked by the Convention of Depu- ties from Long Island, Staten Island and Westchester, at Hempstead in 1665. Here a body of Laws was submitted by Nicolls and approved by the delegates. This code, well known as the "Duke's Laws," was fami- liar to our eastern towns. It simply embodied regulations in force in New England, but in its application to the tenure and institution of office in the towns, it wrought a radical change and was bitterly offensive. No states- man needs to be taught the elementary lesson that a people once pos- sessed of power never yields it without resistance. The Duke's Laws sub- stituted appointment of magistrates and other officers by the Governor for the old usage of election. To the remonstrances of the delegates upon this measure, Nicolls candidly responded that the election of magistrates was entirely unknown to the laws of England, and a Parliament of En- gland could neither make a Judge nor Justice of the Peace. All legisla- tion was vested in the Governor and Council and Court of Assize, whose officers were of the Governor's appointment. Petty town tribunals were suffered, the overseers of which were subjects of popular choice, but the free voice of the people in the selection of their other officers was now silenced by despotic power.
The propagation of the Duke's Laws and the general labors of the Assembly stirred the Puritan population of the East-Riding of Yorkshire, as this County was styled by Act of this Assembly. The Deputies return- ing to their homes met no such cordial welcome as they had chosen to convey to His Royal Highness in an address that followed the end of their legislative labors. Exactions attended in the train of the new govern- ment. Titles were questioned and confirmation refused, except upon payment of excessive charges. Perhaps none of the colonial Governors surpassed Nicolls in integrity, prudence, or fidelity to trust as representa-
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tive of the Duke and of the Crown. Perhaps no successor strove to lighten the task imposed by a mercenary master upon his subjects with greater zeal or more generous humanity. Under James there could be no popular government. His largest inheritance was stubborn resistance to popular rights. Exile taught him no lesson, and experience as a Ruler. no wisdom.
The period of eighteen years from the establishment of the Colonial power of England over our County, and the establishment of the County, is marked by the exercise of despotism and the violation of faith. Love- lace, succeeding Nicolls, bore with him instructions to make no altera- tions in the laws of the government settled before his arrival. He was of a "generous mind and noble," and there are not wanting instances of the exercise upon his part of an enlightened understanding of popular needs. His letter to a minister will stand as an example of excellent intent to in- troduce liberality in the Church. Upon the other hand he reflected the policy of the colonial Governors in his letter to Sir Robert Carr, Governor of New Jersey, advising that the best method to keep the people in order was, "to lay such taxes on them as may not give them liberty to enter- tain any other thoughts, but how to discharge them." We have seen that the Court of Assize sitting in New York combined the powers of the Ju- diciary and Legislature. The mischief sure to develop from committing to Judges the power to legislate is so obvious that argument will not in- crease the force of the proposition. If, added to this anomalous lodg- ment of power, the Judges are appointees of the Governor and removable at his will, you find a form of government in which liberality is the merest pretence, and tyranny the sure principle. The Duke's Laws were endur- able in all that pertained to personal rights and obligations, and were broad in their favor of the institutions of Religion and the local Church establishments. While the structure of these laws and their tendency were illy adapted to the improvement of a community, yet they could be tolerated and the growth of society not seriously retarded by their opera- tion. But in stripping the people of their power to choose their leaders and to participate in general legislation, and particularly in all questions of taxation, the government instituted by Col. Nicolls gave birth to a spirit of discontent and revolt that no force in its possession could allay or quell. Lovelace's policy in this behalf, to stifle complaint by taxation so heavy that the citizen could think of nothing but how to pay, was the reproduction of the oppressive system encouraged in the Palace of White- hall, but sure of defeat when aimed at a hasty, zealous, resolute people who for more than a quarter of a century had bowed the knee to no mas= ter save the Almighty. The administration of justice in localities was ac- ceptable when the cases submitted concerned such trifling interests as afforded jurisdiction to the elective courts. 'As the determination to re- sist a rule that allowed no popular voice became settled, the inevitable consequence was developed. The citizen refused to pay taxes under the resolution adopted by a general meeting of his Town, ministers joined in denunciation of the authorities, arrests, fines and imprisonments upon the part of the Colonial Government were sweet morsels to a body of Puritans who hailed martyrdom as an assured election, and who wielded the Sword with the devout conviction that it was an instrument of biblical invention, and with the skill that years of steady use had imparted. These heated disturbances arrested productive labor, and impoverishment set in where
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abundance should have prevailed. The eastern towns made overtures to Connecticut. Huntington flatly refused to pay a levy for the repairs of Fort James because "they were deprived of the liberties of Englishmen." The brief period of Dutch conquest and rule increased the sufferings of the colonists. Col. Andros, not yet knighted, brought to his post of gov- ernment the most odious qualities. Extravagance, injustice, oppression, relentless cruelty were characteristics of most of the colonial Governors, and specially of this one. The towns were forced to accept new charters and submit to onerous exactions. Taxes were levied without semblance of authority and upon the personal dictation of the Governor alone, and all protests of the people were treated with scorn. The Duke was hum- bly petitioned for a popular legislative assembly. He replied to Andros that popular assemblies were dangerous to the government and he saw no use for them. Meantime, disappointed in the revenue he had confi- dently expected from his American possessions, he was assailed by peti- tions for redress of grievances, and by representations of the evil lot of his subjects. That lot was indeed evil, and mitigated by only a single so- lace. The consolations of religious faith present their greatest value in the deepest affliction, and brighten most as the hours darken. The un- believer is tossed upon an uncertain and stormy sea. No light assures him of a haven, for there is no haven for him. Above is the blackness of darkness, below the fury of the tempest, on every side the lurid flash of Heaven's thunderbolt. ' The Christian discerns light through the clouds, and knows that in the severest peril there is safety in the "Rock of Ages cleft for him." Through the dark days of oppression under the Duke of York, the pure religious sentiments of the colonists sustained and cheered them. Their welfare and the cause of civil liberty demanded resistance, and they made it under prayer, and sought Divine aid in its behalf.
The Court of Assize joined in the supplication for a new form of gov- ernment, and through brave John Young, of Southold, High Sheriff of Yorkshire, addressed the Duke "representing the great pressure and la- mentable condition of his Majesty's subjects in your Royal Highness' colony," and submissively praying that "for the redressing of the griev- ances the government of this your colony may, for the future, be settled and established, ruled and governed by a Governor, Council and Assem- bly, which Assembly to be duly elected and chosen by the freeholders of the colony. It may be well questioned if the Duke would have yielded to any petition or representation from people or Court. He had recalled Andros and subjected him to examination for misgovernment. Two in- fluences now operated from diverse sources to procure the end desired by the colonists.
New Amsterdam had been a charge upon the West India Company, and its example stood as a constant menace to the Duke's scanty purse. He was in ill favor with Parliament as well as people, and could hope for no relief from either.
Thus his dread that the settlements in the New World would be an expense, inclined him to their surrender to the Crown. At this juncture of critical moment to the colonies, he took counsel of one of the most extraordinary men of the times. The instruments appointed to accom- plish important results are frequently as unexpected as they are successful. William Penn, accomplished in the learning of the Universities and of Lincoln's Inn, polished by foreign travel and courtly society, master of
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the sword, and of such manly exercises as became the son of an Admiral of England, had experienced the conviction that God dwells in the inner conscience, and come to believe all men equal before Jehovah's throne. He was in high favor with the King and Duke. His renunciation of proffered honors, coupled with sincere humility, as well as the accept- ance of a tract of wilderness peopled by Savages in discharge of a Royal debt, won for him such love as Charles was capable of bearing toward any subject. His absolute sincerity and non-resistance equally commended him to James, who was as true to his word plighted to men as he was shameless in its breach toward the opposite sex. Penn believed in pop- ular governments. "You shall be governed by laws of your own mak- ing," he wrote to the settlers in his new territory of Pennsylvania. He resisted the temptation to exercise the great powers of a Ruler abundant- ly conferred by the Court with the noble resolution, "I purpose for the matters of liberty that which is extraordinary, to leave myself and my successors no power of doing mischief."
Under the great elm on the banks of the Delaware he entered into indissoluble treaty with the Indians, saying: "I will not call you chil- dren, for parents sometimes chide their children too severely, nor brothers, for brothers differ. We are all one flesh and blood." And the red men, deeply touched by the testimony of equality, pledged themselves, “We will live in love with William Penn and his children as long as the sun and moon shall endure."
No act proved of greater value than this of the Duke's calling Penn into private consultation upon the course to be pursued with the colonies. The advice could be easily anticipated. The Duke adopted Penn's coun- sel, and the Colonies were now to have liberty acknowledged if not yet practiced. Dongan appointed to inaugurate the new policy called a Gen- eral Assembly, composed of delegates chosen by the freeholders, and on the 17th of October, 1683, its sessions began. On the 30th of October the Great Charter of liberties and privileges received the approval of the Governor and Council. On the ist of November, among the twelve Counties created by the Assembly, this of Suffolk came into being. This great Charter of liberties and privileges consummated the hopes and prayers of our forefathers. It recognized the People as the power in leg- islation. It opened with the grand avowal, "For the better establishing the government of this Province of New York, and that justice and right may be equally done to all persons within the same," and then declared, " Be it enacted, That the Supreme legislative authority under His Majes- ty and His Royal Highness, James, Duke of York and Albany, Lord Pro- prietor of the said Province, shall forever be and reside in a Governor. Council, and the People met in General Assembly."
Thus was constituted a Representative body to which the people could forever appeal for redress of wrongs and administering of right. Through all the vicissitudes of authority the recognition of the people as the great power in legislation, has never been lost in this State from that time. It has been embodied in our Constitutions and borne down through these two centuries in entire integrity, and to-day the enacting clause of every statute of our Legislature presents it in the form-
" The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and As- sembly, do enact-"
The Duke ascending the throne refused to confirm the charter, assert-
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ing that the use of the phrase, "the people," was unknown in any charter. The concession, however, had been granted, and it remained until a cen- tury later, when the evacuation of our shores by the Royal armies left us to perfect the sentiment and power in the Great Federal Charter that en- sures liberty and protection. The careful student of history will never re- gard this concession of a Representative Assembly as voluntary on the part of the Duke. It was forced from him against his inclinations by the per- sistent efforts of the colonists in this County. That the resistance of the settlers, and their constant demand for representation, wrought upon the fears of the Duke, and that he acquiesced in their solicitations, detracts nothing from the merit of the liberal movement here, and in no respect creates any claim to generous recognition on his behalf.
The strong qualities of character displayed by our forefathers are dis- cernible in their descendants throughout the two hundred years succeeding the event we commemorate. No County in the State surpassed this in its bold utterances for freedom from the Mother country at the outset of the Revolution, and none suffered more severely for its patriotism during that period.
The administration of justice has blended mercy with vigor. The laws have received their proper enforcement, but freed from the manifesta- tion of personal prejudice or power. The peaceful disposition of the population has afforded few opportunities for violence, and small inclina- tion to personal disputes. In 1820 Dr. Dwight assures us that no lawyer had been able to support himself in this County upon the fruits of his pro- fession. Instances exist of sessions of the Court with no litigation to en- gage its judicial functions.
The temple of justice has been maintained in purity and order. Let us not overlook those who have presided at its altars or ministered in its sacred rites. Silas Wood, historian, scholar and statesman, who from long and efficient labors in the National Councils won the affection and esteem of the leaders of the day, was at the head of the bar in my youth. Strong, tenacious of memory, replete with 'law learning, adorned the Bench. Floyd, chivalrous and genial, was here. Rose, brilliant and fascinating; Buffet, keen, logical and sagacious; Wickham, deliberate and laborious; and he, over whose new made grave the cold November winds sweep the falling leaves; he whose heart was in this celebration, and who through a life-time of physical suffering did his work without murmur, was also here. Were it decorous to touch upon the living, bright examples of professional merit and distinction could be freely gathered, but of these we are not at this hour to speak.
We have traced the formation of the County to its sources, and have found it consecrated by sacrifices and ennobled by devotion. Let us here, in commemorating its origin, enter into a sacred pledge that we will trans- mit it to our descendants undiminished in its confines, enlarged in its civ- ilization, more memorable than ever in the honor of its sons and the vir- tues of its daughters.
Religious Progress and Christian Culture
-OF-
SUFFOLK COUNTY.
AMUEL
ERRICK,
I AM invited to address you upon the Religious Progress and Christian Culture of Suffolk County for the last two hundred years. My theme has thus been stated very definitely and very happily, as it seems to me, by the committee which have done me the honor to extend to me this in- vitation.
Religious progress has Christian culture for its end. The one is the path, the other the goal of the traveler; the one the growth of the tree, the other the ripened fruit which the tree produces. The one relates to the various processes of breaking up the soil, and applying to it the methods of tillage, the selection and sowing of the seed, the attention and care be- stowed upon the growing crops, the fostering which they get from the brooding skies, the suns which shine, and the storms which beat upon them, as well as the cultivation of human skill. The other signifies the yellow fields of ripening grain, the wealth of sheaves which the reaper gath- ers in his bosom and garners in his barns. I am to say something to you of the thought, and toil, and anxieties of the fathers, and the abounding joy and comfort and prosperity of the children resultant thereupon. "Day unto day uttereth speech." The days of old are speaking to this day of ours. I am to tell you what these old days seem to be saying into our ears, and what response these days of ours are gratefully or ungratefully returning to the past.
But progress of any sort involves not only a goal, but a point of de- parture. There must be, as the philosophers say, a terminus a quo as well as a terminus ad quem. To find the beginnings of our county's progress for the period assigned therefore, we shall be obliged to go back of its politi- cal formation. Our religious institutions are of venerable origin. They are rooted in that great movement which brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth, and the Puritans to Massachusetts Bay. To-day our fathers share the honors, as two hundred and fifty years ago they shared the privations and the sufferings, of the men of whom James the First declared that he would make them conform or he would "harry them out of the land." That Suffolk County is, peopled as it is to-day, is due to the fact that the royal tyrant was as good, or rather as bad, as his word.
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