USA > New York > New York City > The Memorial History of the City of New York: From Its First Settlement to the Year 1892, Volume II > Part 27
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It is no wonder that the small city, extending only from Cortlandt street to Whitehall, disturbed by rival sects and leaders, should be torn by violent dissensions. It was divided into two parties, the court's and the people's. Cosby, in the course of a few months, had contrived to revive all the suspicions, the fears, and the factious strife that had been quieted under the prudent rule of Montgomerie and Rip Van Dam; they now rose into new violence. Against his opponents he resolved to use all the powers of an arbitrary rule. "The rights of the people," said Smith, as late as 1756, " lie even
1 Smith, History of New-York, 2: 339-350, is obliged as late as 1756 to argue the point; he asserts that the Church of England is not established in New-York.
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now at the mere mercy of their governours"; under Cosby they seemed to retain no rights at all. The assembly, although it peti- tioned constantly for its own dissolution, he refused to dissolve. He allowed it to meet only seldom, and at long intervals. He would have no new elections, and feared the popular will. He held his councilors in obedience by threats of dismissal. He established a kind of social despotism; those who were willing to submit to his arbitrary rule he asked to the court dinners and suppers in the James De Lancey palace in the fort; the patriots were rigidly excluded, or rather avoided. Morris boasts that he had never waited on the governor; it is not likely that Rip Van Dam and his friends ever passed the gate of the fort; Alexander and Smith were too wise to enter it. Thus it is likely that three fourths of the people of New-York were already the governor's avowed enemies, and that he relied for his support only on his powerful English friends and his obedient councilors at home.
The leader of the court or conservative party was James De Lan- cey. His father, Stephen De Lancey, a Huguenot exile, had accu- mulated a large fortune in the African trade, and by his marriage with the daughter of Van Cortlandt had become connected with the wealthiest families in the colony. He had given to his son unusual educational advantages, sent him to England to study at Cambridge, and in the age of Pope, Swift, and Gay made him familiar with Eng- lish literature and manners. At the university James De Lancey had for his tutor Dr. Thomas Herring, who was afterward Arch- bishop of York and Canterbury, and with whom he always preserved a close friendship. The archbishop, it is said, aided De Lancey, in his various political difficulties, by his influence with the king, and was always his firm friend. In 1725 De Lancey returned to New- York, and was soon after admitted to practise law. No one was better fitted to attain the highest rank in his profession. His mind was clear and strong; his opportunities for mental cultivation had surpassed those of his fellows; he was industrious, ambitious, and his family influence insured him success. He was made a member of the council in 1728, and was married to the daughter of Caleb Heathcote, one of the wealthiest men in the province, a member of the council and the receiver of customs for all North America. Business flowed in upon De Lancey ; he grew wealthy by his own labors and by the large fortune of his wife; his health was perhaps not strong, but he was by far the most prominent and fortunate young man in the prov- ince when he was yet under thirty. Unhappily, his natural conser- vatism, or the influence of the reactionary circle in which he moved, clouded and embarrassed his intellect. He might have saved New-
WILLIAM COSBY AND THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS 225
York from many trials and even calamities, had he joined the party of reform, and he might have led the way to much real progress. But he seems to have fallen at once into the hands of the court party and the reactionists. He became their leader and their victim. He lent his powerful aid to Cosby in some of his most iniquitous mea- sures. He covered up his peculations, defended his tyranny. He was a bitter persecutor of the opposite faction, and his influence in this disastrous period was fatal to the best interests of his native city. With De Lancey were joined Harrison, Clarke, and the majority of the council. Francis Harrison was a lawyer of note, but apparently so active on the governor's side as to become the object of the sharpest satires of the opposition. Many of the wealthier families, the Philipses, Van Cortlandts, and others, followed De Lancey, but
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GREAT SEAL OF GEORGE II. (NO PERFECT IMPRESSION IS KNOWN TO EXIST.)
added little to the mental strength of his party. Except the great leader himself, nearly all the rising intellects of the day were on the side of the opposition : Morris, Alexander, Smith, Colden, the Liv- ingstons, all the Presbyterians, and the greater part of the Dutch, some of the more prudent Episcopalians, and the great majority of the voters, formed the popular party. But they found themselves pow- erless, and had no means even of complaining. Bradford's "Gazette " was closed to them, the legislature was not permitted to meet. No elections were held. The courts were controlled by the governor. The reformers probably knew that Cosby was writing home to Eng- land the most infamous calumnies against them; Morris, Alexander, and Van Dam felt that he was plotting to drive them from their of- fices ; that he had resolved to crush out the few remaining traces of freedom ; that they were slaves. They appealed to the power of the press - their only refuge. They determined to establish in New-York VOL. II .- 15.
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a weekly journal that should demand freedom of thought and speech as the birthright of every free people. It was a most important epoch in the history of journalism and of America when Morris and his associates first determined to test the power of the press and as- sert its liberty. In England the liberty of the press was scarcely un- derstood. De Foe was pilloried for a satirical pamphlet; Swift was in danger of imprisonment for the Drapier's Letters, having himself inflicted on the opposition writers the punishment he now feared. Steele suffered for his pamphlets. Ralph or Shebbeare could tell of the severity of the law. In Philadelphia Bradford had been prose- cuted and exiled; Franklin fled from Boston because he had written too freely. The patriots of New-York were the first to demand free- dom of thought and speech. "No nation ancient or modern," writes " Cato," in Zenger's new journal,1 " no nation ever lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing or publishing, but forthwith lost their liberty and became slaves."
John Peter Zenger, the editor of the "New-York Weekly Jour- nal," - the beginning of its free press,- was a German who had been sent to New-York when young, by the charity of Queen Anne. He had learned the art of printing in Bradford's employ. He was made collector of taxes, and was in arrears, his enemies said not honestly. In November, 1733, he began to publish his "Weekly Journal." It was a small folio sheet, resembling Bradford's "Gazette," but even less careful in proof-reading and printing. He spells Monday "Munday," his dates are constantly incorrect, the paper poor, the type intoler- able. Yet Zenger was bold and fearless; he evidently enjoyed his sudden elevation to renown; his paper was successful; he gathered news, and had as many advertisements as the "Gazette." But the chief purpose of the paper lay in its bitter attacks upon Cosby's ad- ministration. No point of assault is neglected, no personality or satire spared. Morris, Alexander, Smith, and others had formed a club that met weekly, and here were no doubt arranged and suggested the essays, the squibs, the verses, parodies, and sharp rejoinders to the heavy and often ill-considered replies that were sometimes inserted in the " Ga- zette." It is not likely that Bradford, its editor, was in sympathy with Cosby's party ; he claims to be neutral, but his paper was con- trolled by Harrison and De Lancey, and was treated with little ten- derness by his acute assailants. Many of the leading essays in the "Journal " are written in a clear, correct style, full of force and nov- elty. Their chief aim is to defend the most liberal view. of the liberty of the press. The writers felt no doubt that they lived under a despotism that might at any moment strike them with its sharp penalties; they use all the resources of reason to rouse the people to
1 " Munday," November 12, 1733.
WILLIAM COSBY AND THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS 227
THE New - York Weekly JOURNAL
Containing the frefbeft Advices, Foreign; and Domefick.
MUNDAT November 12, 1733.
Mr. Zenger.
and you'll oblige your Friend, CATO.
their Sovereign, the fole fupream Ma- jiftrate ; for there being no Law in INcert the following in your next, thofe Monarchies, but the Will of the Prince, it makes it neceifary for his Minifters to confult his Plcafure, be- fore any Thing can be undertaken : He is therefore properly chargeable with the Grievances of his Subjects, and what the Minifter there ats being in Obedience to the Prince, he ought not to incur the Hatred of the People ; for it would be hard to impute that to him for a Crime, which is the Fruit of his Allegiance, and for refufing which he might incur the Penalties of Trea-
Mira temporum felicitas ubi fentiri que velis, & que frutim dicere licit. Tacit.
T HE Liberty of the Prefs is a Subject of the great- eft Importance, and in which every Individual is as much concern'd as he is in any other Part of Liberty : fon. Befides, in an abfolute Monar- Therefore it will not be improper to chy, the Will of the Prince being the Law,a Liberty of the Prefs to complem of Grievances would be complaining againft the Law, and the Conftitution, to which they have fubmitted, or have communicate to the Publick the Senti- ments of a late excellent Writer upon this Point. fuch is the Elegance and Perfpicuity of his Writings, fuch the inimitable Force of his Reafoning, that been obliged to fubmit; and therefore it will be difficult to fay any Thing new that he has not faid, or not to fay that much worfe which he has lute Monarchy, I fay, fuch a Liberty faid.
in one Senfe, may be faid to delerve Punifhment, So that under an abfo is inconfiftent with the Conftitution, having no proper Subject in Politics,
There are two Sorts of Monarchies, an abfolute and a limited one. In the on which it might be exercis'd, and if firft, the Liberty of the Prefs can never exercis'd would incur a certain Pemley. be maintained, it is inconfiflent with it ; for what abfolute Monarch would
But in a limited Monarchy, as Fre land is, our Laws are known, fixed fuffer any Subject to animadvert and eftablifhed. They are the ftreigh on his Actions, when it is in his Pow- Rule and furc Guide to direct the King, the Minifters, and other his Subjects : And therefore an Offence againft the er to declare the Crime, and to nomi- nate the Punifhment ? This would make it very dangerous to exercifefuch Laws is fuch an Offence againft , the a Liberty Befides the Object againft Conftitution as ought to receive # pro which thole Pens muft be directed, is per adequate Punishment ; the levety's
The above fac-simile is reduced from the origi- nal issue of Zenger's paper, measuring 744 by 12 inches, in the possession of the New-York His-
torical Society. A more complete fille of the first volume of the "Journal " is included in the collec- tions of the American Antiquarian Society. EDITOR.
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resistance. Their argument is unanswerable because true. But its unrivaled power lay in its novelty. Few, in 1730, had even heard of the liberty of the press; fewer understood its meaning. It was many years before Junius was to complete his reputation by his powerful enunciation of the same truth. It was so long since Milton had written his great period on Truth's certain victory that it was forgotten. In the days of Swift and Addison few read Milton's prose. But week after week, in grave and stately sentences, the New-York writers kept up one long, loud cry, THE VAN CORTLANDT MANSION AT KINGSBRIDGE. "The Liberty of the Press." The effect was startling. It spread from colony to colony; a newspaper was soon established in Charleston that took up the cry ; Boston and Philadelphia watched attentively the struggle in New- York, and we may trace in the leading articles of the "New-York Weekly Journal" of 1733 and 1734 many of the ideas and sometimes the language itself that Otis, Franklin, and Adams made use of in defending and securing the liberties of the continent.
It would be possible to collect many witty sayings and more wise ones from this sudden display of colonial talent. The wit is often harsh, the personalities cruel. Harrison is represented as a monkey who escapes into the country and arms himself with sword and pistol; next he is a spaniel who runs away from home. Cosby is never spared. An amusing satire of the alphabet shows that some letters are for- tunate, some unlucky, but that C is the letter ever fatal to New-York. Cornbury sold offices and took bribes, Coote (Bellomont) and Carteret were unfortunate,-a blank is left for Cosby. When the governor's supporters urged that a certain respect was due to his position, "Cato" replied in the "Journal": "If all governours are to be reverenced, why not the Turk and old Muley or Nero?" and, "If we reverence men for power alone, why not the D -? " Some retainer of the court said it was best to keep well with a governor. The "Journal" replies: "A gov- ernour turns rogue, does a thousand things for which a small rogue would deserve a halter, . . . therefore it is prudent to keep in with him." For those who yielded to the seductions of court dinners and gave up their independence, the "Weekly Journal" has no mercy. The
WILLIAM COSBY AND THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS 229
widows are made to complain that they are left out of the governor's invitations because they have no husbands to control; young women because they have no lovers on the jury. The court entertainments are a favorite aim of satire: they are wasteful, they corrupt and de- stroy. A correspondent complains of the swift growth of luxury; men now contend, he says, who shall wear the finest clothes, drink the costliest wines, have the most dishes on the table, and not, as of old, who shall be of most service to his country. One evening a letter was found in the house of the Honorable James Alexander, threaten- ing ruin to him and all his family. The news was spread over the town by Zenger's journal. Soon it began to be whispered that the hand- writing was that of the Honorable F. Harrison, member of the coun- cil. Harrison denied it with furious rage. He asserted that it was a forgery, that it was written by his enemies, William Smith and James Alexander, to do him injury. He even went to Zenger's house and threatened him with a beating. To clear himself from all con- nection with the letter, Cosby offered a reward for the discovery of its author; or perhaps he hoped to fix the authorship on one of his enemies. The affair made a great sensation in the city. Those who thought it a real threat from the court party feared for their lives and property; the governor and his friends looked upon it as a new insult from their foes.
The story of this incendiary letter that roused all New-York to a strange excitement reads rather like a rude practical joke than a serious occurrence. As a party of guests were leaving the house of Mr. Alexander late on the night of February 1, they found the letter in the hall. It had been placed under the outer door, and was at once recognized as in the handwriting of Mr. Harrison, then a member of the council. It was addressed "To Mr. Alexander": "I am one who formerly was accounted a gentleman, but am now reduced to poverty, and having nothing to eat, and knowing you to be of a generous temper, desire you would let me have ten pistoles to supply my neces- sities and carry me back to my native country. Unless you let me have them I'll destroy you and your family by a stratagem which I have contrived." The letter directed the money to be placed at night in a bag in front of the house. It then said that if Alexander refused he would be poisoned; if he complied, he would never be molested again. The handwriting was believed by Smith, Hamilton, Lurting the mayor, and Alexander, to be that of Harrison. Smith, the historian, suggests that the letter was meant to involve Alexander and his asso- ciates in some incredible way; they were to be drawn into a plot or criminated by forged signatures. But nothing shows more clearly the excitement of the time than the effect produced by this foolish letter. It was brought before the grand jury; they refused to indict Harri-
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son on a mere resemblance in handwriting. But some traits of ex- treme malice on his part in another case lent probability to the charge that he meant injury to his opponents. Smith thinks too that the governor was planning a scheme "to hang Alexander and Smith," and Lady Cosby had often said openly that her "highest wish was to see them both on a gallows at the fort gate":1 so fierce were the tem- pers of New-York politicians, male or female, in the last century! Literature had made little progress in the rising city. There were no good schools; only one newspaper, Bradford's "New-York Gazette," appeared weekly, and a few books had already issued from his press. The "Gazette," a small folio sheet, was made up chiefly of extracts from foreign papers and some advertisements of property, runaway slaves, and shipping. As yet no political discussion was allowed, and few probably read the unattractive paper. It is probable that the majority of the citizens of New-York could neither read nor write. The women, the historian Smith ungallantly asserts, read little or nothing. There were no cultivated physicians, he adds, only a host of quacks and pretenders. The English language was slowly taking the place of the Dutch; in the Dutch churches the congregations were grow- ing smaller, while that of Trinity soon exceeded the capacity of the building. In portions of the colony a mixed language was spoken, made up of Dutch and English, no common-school system having as yet fixed the words of the nation and made way for the pure speech of Shakspeare and Milton to rule over the countless generations of the future; the common schools have given us a common tongue. Yet New-York was soon to share in the literary and scientific revival that was spreading over the other colonies. There is no doubt that the political discussions that grew out of the Zenger controversy aided greatly in awakening its intellect. It could not, in fact, linger long be- hind its fellows. In 1730-36, Franklin, a poor mechanic, was found- ing in Philadelphia literary clubs, libraries, and a newspaper of real excellence; and around him grew up men of science like Bartram, Rit- tenhouse, Rush, and several writers of merit. Berkeley (1729-1732) in Rhode Island had built his colonial house near Newport, founded clubs and literary circles, and written in his study or his garden the most tolerant of theological discussions, "Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher." Berkeley is polite even to an atheist. From his school of thought came Samuel Johnson of Yale, afterward president of King's (now Columbia) College, and Jonathan Edwards, the philoso- pher; Berkeley endowed Yale College with his Newport farm, and gathered for it large contributions in England. With Berkeley began an American school of painting. He had brought over with him
1 Smith, History of New-York, (ed. 1830), 2 : 11, 12, etc. Harrison fled to England, Smith says, to avoid punishment for gratifying his malice against another person. He died in poverty, forgotten.
WILLIAM COSBY AND THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS 231
Smybert, an artist, who afterward settled in Boston, took the por- traits of many eminent men, and founded a school in which Trum- bull, Allston, Stuart, and Sully surpassed their master. Berkeley's pure literary style, too, was imitated by later American writers; he was one of the founders of American literature.
As yet in New-York literary men were few. The Dutch clergymen were always good Latin scholars, and several of them wrote verses, but their language was unknown to the people. The Rev. William Vesey, the rector of Trinity, had been educated at Harvard as a Congrega- tional minister; he was fond of con- troversy and wasted his leisure in dis- putes. The French clergyman, the Rev. Louis Rou, a scholar, had been the friend of Governor Burnet, but seems to have wanted discretion and charity. It was not until Zenger and his associates began to write in the " Weekly Journal" that the intellect of New-York showed any animation or literary skill. With it began the practice of ready writing, and it is impossible to go through its series of essays, replies, arguments, sallies of wit, and bitter satires without feeling that a very remarkable degree of liter- ary talent had been reached by its supporters. Their discussions of the principles of free thought and speech, of the necessity of maintaining them, of the danger of a sluggish yielding to despotism, of the certainty of the final triumph of truth in the conflict with error, show that they had studied in the school of Milton and were familiar with the best clas- sic and English authors. There was a library in the City Hall, founded by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. A library in these early days wanted nearly all the familiar names of even half a century later. Johnson was still a dull, heavy young man, translating "Father Lobo's Travels" or indolently dreaming at Lichfield. Pope was in the full maturity of his satirical vein, emulating Horace and Juvenal. Hume and the Scottish school of history and philosophy were yet unheard of. In Ireland Swift was stirring up a fierce internecine feud that was never to cease; Berkeley was the philosopher, Akenside and Thomson were the new poets of the age, Bolingbroke the political teacher and reformer. And when Smith and Alexander were writing their acute discussions of liberty and free speech, they could have had few materials of research and few models of style and thought.
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Shakspeare was perhaps on the shelves of the library in the City Hall, Dryden and some of the gross comic writers of the age of Charles, possibly an imperfect edition of Milton. But the list of English au- thors was still so brief that one wonders how Montgomerie could well have made up his collection of fourteen hundred volumes. The City Library was chiefly theological and polemical. Some popular works no doubt had crept into its shelves. There may have been some huge folio editions of the classics. Smith and Alexander constantly appeal to the example of the Roman republicans, a Cato or a Brutus, or to the empire and its decay. They had read Livy and Tacitus at least in translations. But the chief value of the City Library of 1730 con- sisted in its being the first, and in that it gave rise to larger collections of books. It was itself enlarged and transformed by the liberality of private citizens into that admirable institution, the Society Library of New-York. On its shelves may be found some of the early volumes from which Colden, Smith, and Alexander may have gathered their wit and wisdom.
One of the founders of American literature and science was Cad- · wallader Colden. He had come from Scotland already known for his talents and learning, and was made a member of the council by Gov- ernor Burnet. He belonged to the liberal party of which Smith and Alexander were the active leaders, but seems to have given his atten- tion chiefly to letters and science. He was the first to study the habits and manners of the native Indian races with care, and wrote an excellent account of them.1 At his seat at Coldenham, near New- burgh-on-the-Hudson, he practised agriculture and entertained men of science and learning. He corresponded with Bartram, was a mem- ber of Franklin's philosophical society, and was well known in Europe and America. New-York owes much to its Scottish governor and citizens, Burnet, Alexander, the Livingstons, Colden, and others, and has never ceased to show traces of their influence. But Colden could not as the friend of the reformers escape the intense dislike of Gover- nor Cosby. He writes to England that Colden is "unfit to be trusted," he is a "spy "; "these infamous fellows," he calls his opponents, and never ceases to urge their removal from the council. He would have Thomas Freeman, Esq., who had married his daughter, appointed to one of the vacant seats. Colden's mind was incessantly active. He wrote a treatise on the plants of Coldenham, which Linnæus used, naming a genus, after him, Coldenia. Colden, too, wrote excellent medical treatises, on gravitation, mathematical papers, on the "climate and diseases of New-York," and many other pieces. He kept up an extensive correspondence with the learned, was lieutenant-governor
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