USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York, 1609-1909 > Part 18
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As part of his plan he put a bill through the legislature, by the efforts of Lewis Morris, which prohibited all sales of goods to the French under a penalty of forfeiture of the articles so sold and a fine of £100 additional. The New York merchants who had been engaged with profit in the sale of goods to the Montreal traders made vigorous protest, and laid the matter before the British Lords of Trade, which suggested a modification, but otherwise fully sustained the governor, and in 1726 an act was passed which imposed a tax of thirty shillings per piece on sales to the French of "strouds," as the kind of English cloth in demand among the Indians was called, from the city of Stroud, in Kent, where it was woven. The same goods, if sold to English traders, were taxed only fifteen shillings per piece.
To push his policy Governor Burnet depended not only on legislation, but also on active efforts to encourage the colonials to engage more vigorously in Indian trade. He held various conferences with the Indians and secured their friendship; obtained legislation from the Assembly authorizing the renewal of the stockades around Albany and Schenectady, which were in a state of decay, and permitting the Albany authorities to erect two new blockhouses for home protection. He established a trading post at Oswego in 1722, thus for the first time planting the English flag on the Great Lakes. This, while not much liked by the Iroquois, or Six Nations, turned out a very profitable policy for the English. Peter Schuyler, Jr., son of the ex-president of the Council, with eight other young traders, established a great business. The new duties enabled them to sell goods much more cheaply than the French traders, and the busi- ness in furs greatly increased, though at first there was a considerable falling off of the business of some merchants who had been supplying Montreal traders.
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SOCIAL LIFE UNDER GOVERNOR BURNET
The social life of New York City was bright and gay. The governor was a handsome man of excellent manners, genial and affable, and his wife was a social favorite; so the governor's mansion at Fort George at the Battery was the scene of many noteworthy gatherings of the best colonial society. Many of the wealthier classes maintained elaborate establishments, and Secre- tary Clarke and a few others owned spinets, those queer little jingle-boxes which were the crude forerunners of the pianoforte. "Likely negro men and wenches" fetched from £45 to £60; and besides those already in the colony or brought from the other colonies there were directly imported from Africa 703 negro slaves during the seven years from 1720 to 1726. The negro slave market established in 1709 at the foot of Wall Street was still in operation.
As a consequence of the ordinance passed in 1708 to permit Broadway residents to plant trees in front of their houses, that thoroughfare presented a very attractive appearance all the way to the Common, where at the upper end of the present City Hall Park, there was a famous spring of excellent water over which a large pump had been placed. The well-water downtown was of execrable quality, so the people secured water for their tea from this pump, which men carried in carts and sold to customers. This "Tea-Water Pump" was one of the leading institutions of the city until the early part of the Nineteenth Century. Not far from the pump was the public gallows.
While tea was a favorite beverage, it did not displace a general liking for stronger waters. Everybody drank, not only of the beer and hard cider made at home, but also of rum imported largely from Jamaica and retailed at two shillings and ninepence the gallon, and of wine brought from Madeira, while some of the Dutch residents continued to prefer Schiedam schnapps.
Trade increased considerably both in imports and exports, but particu- larly the latter. Imports for the period, 1717-1723 averaged £21,254, and from 1723 to 1727 averaged £27,480 yearly, while the exports, which averaged £53,389 from 1717 to 1723, averaged £73,000 per annum from 1723 to 1727, notwithstanding the obstruction to commerce caused by frequent captures of vessels by the pirates who infested the neighboring seas and coasts.
Municipal finances were very simple in those days. The receipts of the city for the seven years from 1721 to 1727 inclusive, were £3176, and the dis- bursements for the same period were £2187. There was due the city in 1728 a total of £1384, and there had never been a penny of bonded debt. The resources of the city were increased in 1728 by a lease, on better terms, of the ferry privilege between the city and Long Island, the term being for five years, and the rental £258 yearly. The City of New York claimed this right of ferriage exclusively, and the legislature backed that view of the matter, though the little Dutch village of Breukelen, a mile inland, asked for the right to establish a ferry of its own, which was not granted.
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Opposition to the governor was for the first few years confined to the dis- missed councilors, Peter Schuyler and Adolph Philipse, and a few who sup- ported them in their demand for a new legislature, but there were many who objected to the active assumption by the governor of the functions of chan- cellor. A case came up in reference to Rev. Louis Rou, pastor of the flourish- ing Huguenot congregation, L'Eglise du Saint Esprit. It had a stone build- ing in Pine Street, and after Mr. Rou succeeded James Laborie in the pas- torate, in 1710, it increased in membership so that several years later Rev. J. J. Moulinars was called as assistant pastor. In the autumn of 1724 the Consistory of the church dismissed the pastor, appointing Mr. Moulinars to the place. Mr. Rou protested against dismissal and was backed by many of his parishioners, and the council, after a hearing, declared the dismissal was irregular and unlawful, but as the Consistory declined to reinstate the pastor he filed a bill in chancery to compel them to produce their contract with him. Governor Burnet, acting as chancellor, overruled a plea by the Consistory to the jurisdiction of the court, whereupon the suit was drop- ped, Mr. Rou was reinstated and those of the defeated faction left the church, and charged their defeat to Governor Burnet, who was an inti- mate friend of the victorious pastor. The most powerful of the disgruntled faction was Stephen DeLancey, who was a man of much influence in local and provincial affairs. Adolph Philipse, who had a bill in chancery dis- missed by the governor, for want of equity, found in this ruling new cause for enmity, and both he and DeLancey were open in their expressions of ill will against the governor.
At the meeting of the Assembly, in 1725, Adolph Philipse was elected speaker and Stephen DeLancey was one of the new members chosen to fill vacancies. When DeLancey presented himself to qualify for the place, Gov- ernor Burnet unwisely refused to administer the oaths to him until he had proved his citizenship. Later, after consulting Chief Justice Morris, the governor receded from this position, but his action in the matter had in- creased DeLancey's hostility. After a few weeks session in which several bills intended to embarrass the governor and Chief Justice Morris were passed the Assembly adjourned. In the spring it met again, but instead of renewing the appropriation for five years, as asked by the governor, they only provided for three years, so he dissolved the Assembly, which had been in office for eleven years. In 1726 he called a new one, which proved no less intractable, except that they approved his Indian policy, and his propo- sition to build a stone fortress at the mouth of the Onondaga River. Gov- ernor Burnet, being thus empowered, set about the work at once and the French, after erecting a fort at Niagara, sent a demand to New York that the fort at Oswego be abandoned.
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BURNET SENT TO MASSACHUSETTS
Burnet, on the accession of George II, ordered the election of a new Assembly, which convened September 30, 1727, and adjourned November 25 following. There had been no friction between the Assembly and the governor about legislation, although it was dominated by Philipse and De- Lancey, but there had come, meanwhile, the tidings that the new monarch had appointed a new governor for New York, and so the opportunity seemed ripe to give Burnet a volley. On the last day of the session, be- fore the Assembly adjourned, it adopted resolutions denouncing the Court of Chancery set up by the governor, and declaring a purpose to pass an act at the next session declaring all the acts, proceedings and decrees of that court null and void, coupled with denunciations of the tyranny and violent measures of the court. The governor, greatly incensed, dissolved the Assembly. He had reason to be indignant, for whatever may be said of the merits of the contention that a court should not have been created without the consent of the legislature, as a matter of political ethics, it is still true that as the law then stood it was on the side of the governor's right to do as he did; and the criticism of the governor's acts as chancellor was entirely untruthful and unjust, for his rulings seem to have been marked by an endeavor to judge rightly.
Burnet and his friends, when the news came that he was to be trans- ferred to the governorship of Massachusetts, tried to have the order changed, but the word came back that he had been chosen, because of his abilities "to manage the troublesome people of Massachusetts," and the king's service required that he should make the sacrifice; so he made no further effort. He was in great sorrow at this period, for after Mrs. Burnet had borne him a son on the morning of August 7, 1727, she be- came very ill, and she and her child were buried together, after a few days, in the chapel within the fort. He had three other children, William, Thomas and Mary, by this wife, who survived their mother.
Though he had enemies, Governor Burnet was liked by a majority of the people in New York, and was very popular in New Jersey. In Massa- chusetts he had a controversy with the Assembly in endeavoring to have that body carry out the king's instructions in the matter of appropria- tions, but did not succeed in inducing the legislature to accede. His term was short, for he died of pneumonia September 7, 1729.
At the time of his death he had only been in Massachusetts a few months, for although his successor in New York, Colonel John Mont- gomerie, had been appointed August 12, 1727, he did not reach New York until April 15, 1728.
During the administration of Governor Burnet as governor, the city had three mayors: first, Richard Walters, an Englishman, who was a mer-
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK
chant, and son-in-law of Jacob Leisler, and was mayor from 1720 to 1725; then Johannes Jansen, who after nine years' service in the Common Coun- cil was elected mayor in 1725, serving one year. He was succeeded by Robert Lurting, who served from 1826 to 1735. He was of English birth, came to New York as a young man, became a successful merchant and married the widow of a rich merchant named Richard Jones.
In the history of the administration of Governor Burnet no event is more important, historically, than the fact that it saw the inauguration of the newspaper in New York City. William Bradford, born in Leicester, England, in 1658, learned the printing trade in that country, and being a Quaker, was brought by William Penn to America in 1682, and was thus one of the founders of Philadelphia. In 1685 he established in Philadel- phia the first printing press south of New England and the third in the colonies, and in 1691 was tried for seditious libel, but acquitted by the jury. Governor Fletcher, after his acquittal, invited him to New York, where he arrived in 1693, and was appointed public printer for the province of New York at a salary of £50 per annum, and later was also appointed printer to the government of New Jersey. He printed, besides public laws and documents, many of the early books and pamphlets of the colonies, and had desired to start a newspaper several years before, under Gover- nor Burnet, he was permitted to do so. On October 16, 1725, he issued the first number of the New York Gazette, the fourth newspaper in the colo- nies. William L. Stone, in the monograph chapter written in 1893 on the "Newspapers and Magazines of New York," in General Wilson's Memo- rial History of New York City, says of this publication: "Bradford's Gazette was printed on a half sheet of foolscap, with large and almost worn-out type. There is a large volume of these papers in the New York Society Library, in good preservation, and a few numbers also in the New York Historical Society. The advertisements do not average more than three or four a week, and are mostly of runaway negroes. The ship news is diminutive enough, now and then a ship and some half-dozen sloops arriving and leaving in the course of a week. Such was the daily news- paper published in the metropolis of America one hundred and sixty-eight years ago!"
John Montgomerie, who succeeded Burnet in the governorship of New York, was a Scot from Dumfries-shire. He had been reared to the profes- sion of arms and reached the rank of colonel, but he became a member of Parliament, and attached to the court of George, Prince of Wales, as groom of the bedchamber. He became an intimate and favorite of the prince, who, upon his accession to the throne, gave Montgomerie his choice of various positions, and he selected that of governor of New York and New Jersey.
183
THE MONTGOMERIE CHARTER
When he arrived in New York in April, 1728, he went through the usual ceremonies of induction, and followed the established custom of calling the Indian chiefs together and telling them how much His Majesty George II loved them, making them various presents to prove it. He called a new Assembly, and as he was not insistent in his demands for any- thing, he secured a liberal grant, running for five years, with less trouble about the matter than any of his predecessors.
The new governor was a man of good moral character, but intellec- tually dull and temperamentally indolent. He had the virtue of modesty, however, and was fully aware of his limitations. Therefore he decided not to preside over the Court of Chancery, although under the law that was one of the functions of his office as chief magistrate. But he gave the very excellent reason that he lacked both knowledge and ability for the proper performance of the duties of the office, an example of reasonable- ness which might often have been followed with great benefit to the coun- try, but which has seldom been imitated in the history of American offi- cialdom.
Soon after Montgomerie's arrival the boundary line between New York and Connecticut, which in some of its detail had still remained a subject of dispute, was settled by actual survey upon the lines which are still retained. But the most important thing which occurred during the administration of Montgomerie and bears his name, is the Montgomerie Charter of the City of New York. The city had been governed under the charter of 1686, known as the "Dongan Charter," which had been promul- gated by Governor Dongan and signed by the Duke of York; and under a supplemental charter relating to ferry privileges, granted by Lord Corn- bury in 1708. There was some question as to the strict legality of the Dongan instrument, which was a proprietary charter, and had not been confirmed by the crown after the accession of the Duke of York to the throne under the title of James II. Needs of the city had from time to time been developed which did not seem to be sufficiently covered by the existing charters and, therefore, the corporation laid before the governor and his council, August 6, 1830, a petition for the issue of a royal charter by His Majesty George II, in which certain grants and privileges, addi- tional to those embodied in the existing charters, were outlined. This petition was referred to a committee headed by James Alexander, a mem- ber of the Council, who had been surveyor general and attorney-general, and who was during the next quarter of a century to take a leading place among those who made the history of New York. After a week the com- mittee reported, with some amendments in the form and substance of the charter, which was unanimously approved by the Council and then trans-
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK
mitted to England for consideration of the authorities there. It was ap- proved there and received the king's seal, and was formally presented to the city February II, 1731 (O. S., or February 22d, N. S.), exactly one year to a day, before the birth of George Washington. The presentation was made to the city officials headed by Robert Lurting, who was named in the charter as mayor, at whose nomination John Cruger, one of the aldermen, was appointed deputy mayor by the governor. Francis Harrison, the recorder, read a very flattering address to the governor, full of praise of his "just and wise administration," and of his bountiful goodness in permitting the city to receive this valuable charter.
The charter was very thorough in its provisions, covering practically every detail necessary for the thorough and efficient government of the city. The mayor continued to be appointed by the governor of the province and afterward by the governor of the State, until 1834; but the Montgomerie Charter still applies in many of its provisions as a part of the organic law of the city, and still merits the comment made upon it in 1836 by Chan- cellor Kent, who said of it in a treatise on "The Charter of the City of New York, with Notes Thereon": "This last charter is entitled to our respect and attachment for its venerable age and the numerous blessings and great commercial prosperity which have accompanied the due exercise of its powers," and further adds, "It remains to this day with much of its origi- nal form and spirit, after having received by statute such modifications and such a thorough enlargement in its legislative, judicial and executive branches, as were best adapted to the genius and wants of the people, and to the astonishing growth and still rapidly increasing wealth and magni- tude of the city."
It was only a few months after the promulgation of this important charter that Governor Montgomerie's term was ended by his death. He had been ill only a few days, and as his demise seemed imminent the Council was summoned during the night, and the governor gave clear in- structions that until the next governor should come from England the member of the Council who had served the longest should be acting gov- ernor and president of the Council. The governor died at five o'clock on the morning of July 1, 1831, and an hour later the Council met in formal session and recognized President Rip van Dam as governor pro tem.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE VAN DAM INTERREGNUM AND THE COSBY ADMINISTRATION-ZENGER'S "JOURNAL" AND THE FIGHT FOR A FREE PRESS
Van Dam was a Dutchman, though a native of Albany, at which place his father was an Indian trader when it was called Fort Orange and the province New Netherland. Claes Ripse van Dam was a successful business man and his son Rip was brought up in the Dutch settlement in which he was born. The date of his birth is not accurately known, but is some date be- tween 1662 and 1670. He came to New York City when he entered upon his business life and engaged in the West India trade, first as a captain and after- wards as owner of vessels. During the Leisler troubles he was on the side of the old Council, his signature appearing on one of the petitions against Leisler.
He had accumulated a large fortune in trade, had married a wife of Dutch extraction who bore him fifteen children, and until his mature manhood his social relations were almost exclusively Dutch. Of him and Abraham van Horne, the father-in-law of Governor Burnet, a contemporary writer, says: "If they understand the common discourse, 'tis as much as they do."
When Bellomont was enforcing the English navigation laws with much vigor, Van Dam was one of those hardest hit and loudest in complaint, as he was one of those whose vessels were seized, and he was one of the most vigorous opponents of the earl's policy. He was one of the signers of a peti- tion sent by the New York merchants to the king, protesting against Bello- mont's acts. The agitation of that period led him into politics, and he pro- cured election to the Assembly, in 1699. That body was strongly favorable to Bellomont, and Van Dam led the opposition party, and during the ad interim administration of Lieutenant Governor Nanfan, he had been in harmony with the party of Nicholas Bayard. He thus was found in harmony with the new governor, Lord Cornbury, who took the same side and dismissed Abraham de Peyster, Robert Walters and Dr. Samuel Staats from the Council, appointing new members in their place, of whom one was Rip van Dam. He had con- tinued in the Council under Cornbury and the succeeding governors for twenty-nine years, and the death of Montgomerie found him the senior mem- ber, and as such entitled to the executive office until the king should send a successor.
The fact that a Dutchman was once more governor was very pleasing to the large citizenry of Netherlander origin in New York, and although in earlier years he had been inimical to many of his compatriots, who had espoused the
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK
Leislerian side, the animosities and alignments of that period had largely dis- appeared, and he was a prominent and active member of the Reformed Dutch Church.
Van Dam, taking office July 1, 1731, had a peaceful administration of thirteen months, being thoroughly familiar with the needs of the province and encountering no partisan opposition. Dur- ing this interregnum the French, disre- garding the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht, built a fort at Crown Point, near the southern end of Lake Champlain, and Van Dam, hearing of this hostile move, sent the news to the Assembly, to which he later sent a letter from Governor Belcher, of Massachusetts, on the same subject.
The completion of a new Dutch church, while Van Dam was the executive, was a notable event of the administration, and the occasion was commemorated by making a plate of the building and dedi- cating the plate to Governor Van Dam, who was an ardent Reformed Church man. It was located on a large plot of ground on the east side of Nassau Street, extending from Cedar to Liberty Streets.
MIDDLE DUTCH CHURCH Nassau and Cedar Streets
Valuable, from a historical standpoint, was a census of the inhabitants of the province of New York, made by the sheriffs of the ten counties (New York, Albany, Queens, Suffolk, Westches- tor, Ulster, Kings, Orange, Richmond and Dutchess), taken during the administration of Van Dam. The total population of the province was 50,289, of whom 43,058 were white and 7231 were black. Race suicide had not become a common social crime in those days, for there were 16,916 of the whites and 2446 of the blacks who were under ten years of age: 10,243 white boys, 6673 white girls; 1402 black boys and 1044 black girls. Of the older people there were, over ten years of age, 14,613 white males and 11,529 white females; and of blacks (nearly all slaves), 2932 males and 1853 females. In the City of New York the total population was 8622 (4556 males and 4066 females), of which 7045 (3771 males and 3274 females) were white, and 1577 (785 males and 792 females) were black, chiefly slaves. Of the white population, 4876 (2628 males and 2250 females) were over ten years of age, and 2167 (1143 boys and 1024 girls) were children under ten years of age. Of the blacks, 1206 (599 males and 607 females)
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COLONEL COSBY BECOMES GOVERNOR
were over ten years of age, and 371 (186 boys and 185 girls) were under ten years of age. These figures are deduced from an interesting table copied from an original contemporaneous document belonging to the late General J. Watts de Peyster, and published in General Wilson's Memorial History of the City of New York. New York had the largest total population, having forty- nine more people than Albany County, but the latter had 255 more white popu- lation than New York, and Suffolk, also, is credited with twenty-nine more whites than New York. Suffolk also returns 715 Indian population, and is the only one of the counties in which the sheriff attempted to count the aborigines.
On February 4, 1732, the Lords of Trade notified Van Dam that His Majesty had appointed Colonel William Cosby to succeed the late Governor Montgomerie, and the new governor arrived in August, 1732, to begin what proved to be a short, but nevertheless a turbulent administration. The old fight for popular rights against the extreme assertion of royal prerogative, which had been entirely quelled by the good-humored non-assertiveness of Montgomerie and the wisdom of Van Dam, was renewed with a vigor which kept it alive until it burned out in the fires of the Revolution.
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