USA > New York > The history of the late province of New-York, from its discovery, to the appointment of Governor Colden, in 1762. Vol. II > Part 6
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They remind him that, under the old form, the public creditors were sometimes obliged to sell their war- rants at a discount, through the delay of payment, of which there had been no instance under the modern regulations. Towards the close, they assert their right to apply what they raise, and obliquely hint that he is of the same opinion, but indirectly influenced by the auditor-general : and to the gover- nor's general remark, that other colonies paid fees to Mr. Walpole, they oppose his own letter to Mr. Belcher, the late governor of Massachusetts, assert- ing that he had received nothing from New England; and thence, because Massachusetts is a considerable colony, they conclude (and certainly secundum artem) that he has not received any allowances from the other of our neighbouring colonies.
Mr Clarke indulged his resentment in an unusual manner, for when the speaker had read the address, he gave them no other answer than a bow, on which they retired, not without some disappointment ; and he afterwards communicated several matters, by an irregular method he had before practised, in a letter to their speaker, instead of a message to the House.
After the two obnoxious bills for continuing and applying the revenue for a year, were brought in, Mr. David Jones carried a resolve by fourteen votes against eleven, for postponing them till others more beneficial for the inhabitants in general were passed into laws. Mr. Clarke, upon sight of their entry, prorogued them for two days. When they met, they instantly introduced the lost bills ; but soon after, voted one thousand five hundred and sixty pounds to the expected governor, for a year from
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the day his commission should be published here ; continued all the old allowances ; voting at the same time fifty pounds to the lieutenant-governor, to re- imburse him for house-rent.
As soon as the support bill, with several others, had reached the council and obtained their concur- rence, Mr. Clarke sent for the house, and gave them the efficacy of laws.
When the application bill was ordered to be engrossed, Mr. Jones renewed his late motion, but the house was not disposed to countenance his bold- ness ; and the lieutenant-governor, on the 27th November, passed it, with several others, and the house was adjourned till the month of March.
One of the most important acts of this session, was that for introducing the English practice of balloting for jurors. Mr. Clarke had formerly recommended it, and for that reason it was not forwarded till now. It had been passed by the council, but Mr. Jones brought the draft, that it might originate in the lower House; and when it was committed, proposed to oblige the quakers of Queens county, which he then represented, to serve as jurymen ; but he could prevail upon none but his colleague Mr. Cornet, and another member, to join in his motion .*
This gentleman came into public service with the patriots of the new assembly, in 1737, and the favorable opinion of his constituents, by his firm adherence to the project of an annual support. He was therefore returned again in 1739, and then became acquainted with Mr. Clarkson, who was
* See note D.
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chosen one of the city members; and these two, with colonel Morris the younger, who was a little in the shade for his compliances to Mr. Clarke, were the leading members of the house.
The lieutenant-governor, trusting to his own abilities, and by the first dissolution, had piqued the pride of chief justice Delancey, who, discerning the advantages of popularity, not only for the better securing his salary, for which he now became dependent upon the assembly, but to be revenged upon the lieutenant-governor, and gain an influence upon his successors, and, with a view perhaps to the succession itself, studied to recommend himself to the house, and now, by the intervention of Mr. Clarkson, began an intimacy with Mr. Jones, of which he made a good use, and it continued to the end of his life.
In the two late sessions, therefore, Mr. Clarke had little or no assistance from his council, where Delan- cey kept the majority cool, himself privately abetting the opposition of the lower house.
In consequence of this conversion and new alliance, the house was now led to serve Mr. Horsmanden, (who often held the pen for Delancey,) by a bill to give him two hundred and fifty pounds for a digest of the laws of the colony : and before the adjourn- ment, both houses concurred in a joint address to the king, imploring his royal aid towards repairing the colony loss by the late fire ; a measure from which they expected to derive no other advantage than, by declarations of their poverty, to obviate any bad consequences from Mr. Clarke's represen- tation, either of the asperity of their addresses, or
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their disregard to the great ends he had assiduously laboured to accomplish, for the advancement of the authority and influence of the crown .*
When the proposal for compiling the laws was taken into consideration, the house had discovered what they seem to have been ignorant of, when they presented Mr. Clarke with the long address of 24th April, 1741, for in that they applaud the revolution, as restoring to the colony the benefit of assemblies ; but, as they now perceived, in setting a rule to Mr. Horsmanden for executing his work, that they had assemblies before that happy æra, and that there were some unfavorable acts of those days still in force, they not only authorised him to begin in 1691, but hastily gave leave to Mr. Justice Philipse, who had also enlisted with the chief justice on the popular side, to bring in a bill, declaring all acts and ordi- nances passed before that period null and void. It was then already prepared ; but whether from the advanced state of the session, or the improbability of its success in so well-informed an administration, or the prudence of not stirring the old embers, and the hope that the new edition would help to conceal what they wished to annul, this bill was never taken up after the first reading. Of the digesting act, Mr. Horsmanden took no advantage, hoping greater gain by compiling the proceedings against the late conspirators, under the title of the History of the Negro Plot : he left the digest to be executed by other hands, which was done in 1751.
" It was concealed in the copy of the entries of the day transmitted to Mr. Clarke, under the pretext of decency to the king, and transmitted, not by him to the secretary of state, but in a private letter to Mr. Clinton. the new governor.
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Mr. Clarke's glory being in the wane, and the assembly looking out for the rising of a new sun, they took the unprecedented liberty, at their next meeting, on the 16th of March, 1742, to request a further adjournment. He gratified them till the 20th April ; and two days afterwards, insisted upon their repair of the town and fort; payment for the transportation of ordnance to the interior frontier ; the rearing new buildings for the governor's resi- dence ; the victualling and transporting recruits to general Wentworth ; the support of agents in the Indian country, and the amendment of the militia law.
They gave him no answer, but in a few days appropriated a small sum for repairing fortifications, and forwarding the volunteers to the West Indies ; and when the act for this purpose was passed, with another, regulating the payment of quit-rents and land partitions, they adjourned, and did not meet again upon business till the 13th of October, when he renewed his request for a permanent revenue, a new act for the support of Oswego, and the con- veyance of twenty more recruits to the West Indian army.
Except an act for securing Oswego, little was done but to provide the ordinary supplies and salaries for the year ; and they separated before the expiration of that month.
He repeated his requests on the 21st April, 1743, and urged their supplying the magazines with ammunition, ball, and other necessary stores ; with which they were piqued, as Mr. Clinton, at their private instance, had asked for them in England, and did not succeed.
VOL. IT .- 11
THE
HISTORY OF NEW-YORK.
CHAPTER II.
FROM GOVERNOR CLARKE'S RETURN TO ENGLAND, TO THE APPOINTMENT OF GOVERNOR CLINTON.
WITH a sullen disregard of the speech, they hastened to a close of the session ; and after the passing three bills, neither of extensive or permanent utility, they took their leave of each other, and never met again, except for further adjournments, till Mr. Clinton arrived.
Though Mr. Clarke had several children, they made no connexions in the colony. After previous dispositions, he returned in 1745 to England to possess a handsome estate in Cheshire, purchased with his American acquisitions. He was taken prisoner on the passage, but found means on his arrival, to procure a parliamentary donation superior to his losses both by the fire and his captivity. By his offices of secretary, clerk of the council, coun- sellor, and lieutenant-governor, he had every advantage of inserting his own, or the name of
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some other person in trust for him, in the numerous grants, which he was in a condition, for near half a century, to quicken or retard ; and his estate, when he left us, by the rise of his lands and the population of the colony, was estimated at one hundred thou- sand pounds.
His lady, who was a Hyde, a woman of fine accomplishments, and a distant relation of that branch of the family so highly distinguished by the famous lord chancellor Clarendon, died at New- York; but Mr. Clarke survived her to about the year 1761, having lived in the affluence he acquired in America, and leaving the world at a very advanced age.
Mr. Clinton was the son of the late earl of Lincoln, and uncle to the then earl, who had not long before united himself to the Newcastle family, by his marriage with Mr. Pelham's daughter. The gover- nor had spent his life in the navy ; and preferring ease and good cheer to the restless activity of ambition, there wanted nothing to engage the interest of his powerful patrons in his favour, than to humour a simple-hearted man, who had no ill-nature, nor sought any thing more than a genteel frugality and common civility, while he was mending his fortunes, till his friends could recall him, and with justice to their own characters and interests, to some indolent and more lucrative station.
He arrived, with Mrs. Clinton, a lady of a cha- racter very different from his own, and several young children, on Thursday, the 22d September, 1743.
His commission was published the same day, and people of all ranks, in his progress to the town hall
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for that purpose, testified a vociferous joy. He soon learned that the assembly were under an adjournment to meet in a few days, and that the multitude would be pleased with an opportunity for a new choice of assemblymen. The first act of his administration was a dissolution of the house, on the 27th of September, and writs were the same day made out for convening another.
While the chiefs of the country were feasting with, and recommending themselves to, the new governor, the elections were conducted without tumult, and with the change of not more than seven members. Mr. Clarke had displeased the principal zealots of the two parties, which took their rise in Cosby's administration; Van Dam was superan- nuated; Alexander and Smith engrossed by their pri- vate concerns, and immersed in the labours of their profession. Delancey falling in with the spirit they had raised, as most favourable to his resentment against Mr. Clarke, and being in some favour with the leaders of the last assembly, had his eye turned to the governor ; and thus the multitude were left to that torpor which generally prevails when they are uninfluenced by the arts and intrigues of the restless and designing sons of ambition.
The session opened on the 8th of November, and continued only to the 17th of December. They gave the governor a salary of fifteen hundred and sixty pounds, one hundred pounds for his house-rent, four hundred pounds for fuel and candle-light to himself and the garrison of the independent compa- nies, one hundred and fifty pounds to enable him to visit the Indians, eight hundred pounds to make
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presents to those tribes, and one thousand more for the unsuccessful solicitations of the king's aid, at - their instance, towards rebuilding the Fort, and obtaining a supply of ammunition. They continued the salary of three hundred pounds to the Chief Justice ; and now, without opposition, voted one hundred pounds a year to Mr. Justice Philipse; half that sum to Mr. Horsmanden, the third Judge ; and, on motion of Mr. Morris, began the practice of enabling the governor and council to draw upon their treasurer for contingent services, now limited to sixty pounds, but afterwards increased to one hundred pounds per annum. The governor, in return, assented to all the bills that were offered him, without any objection to those limiting the support to a year ; another for septennial assemblies; and a third, which, by giving a remedy for the recovery of legacies at common law, according to the project of the anti-Cosbyan patriots, gratified the general disgust raised in the late heats against the authority of the court of chancery ; the business of which was, by this act, considered as somewhat abridged.
In this session, the house adjudged that personal residence was not requisite to qualify a member, and therefore admitted Mr. Ludlow to a seat for the county of Orange, though his dwelling was at New-York. And it is also worthy of remark, that they applauded the practice of dissolving the as- sembly upon appointment of a governor in chief, informing Mr. Clinton in their address, that the first instance to the contrary gave rise to discontents, and that the last had furnished a great handle to the late divisions.
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On the prospect of a rebellion in Scotland, the lords justices despatched orders for military prepa- rations, which occasioned a call of the assembly in April, 1744, and the governor's renewal of his importunity for a supply of the magazine, rebuilding the fort, appointing agents, attending to Oswego, strengthening the hands of the commissioners for Indian affairs, and for guarding those allies against the intrigues of the French.
Both houses strove to outvie each other in this alarm ; and a joint address was immediately pre- sented, to testify their abhorrence of the Scottish rebellion and a Popish Pretender ; large sums were given for the fortifications ; three thousand pounds voted towards a mansion-house for the governor : and the arrears due to Mr. Barclay, the Mohawk missionary, paid off. After which the house ad- journed to July, when the war having been declared, and the Indians visited by the governor, he called upon them for further expenditures on the northern frontier, not only for adding to the works, but to co-operate with commissioners from Massachusetts Bay, in cultivating a more firm and extensive alliance with the savages of the wilderness. He recom- mended also the fitting out armed vessels to guard the coast, and made his third request to them for constituting agents at the British court. He backed his speech with a message, more particularly to explain his general requisitions ; and very properly proposed the construction of a fort, at the joint expense of this and the eastern colonies, in the neighbourhood of Crown Point, and another at Trondequot, or near it, at a common charge, to secure
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the fidelity of the Senecas, the strongest and most wavering of all the six confederated tribes. He was still more importunate on these subjects after the flight of the Indian traders from Oswego upon the news of a declaration of war; and added his demands for the support of certain prisoners brought in by the privateers.
The house, perceiving the insufficiency of their duties upon commerce to raise a competent fund for the public exigencies, and that it was expedient to lessen that income and encourage privateering, by exempting prize goods from all impost, proceeded with some hesitation, being disinclined to that ge- neral taxation to which they would be obliged to submit, and foreseeing their own animosities in the assessing of the county quotas for a partition of the burden. .
At this juncture, the council, to quicken their motions, requested, by. Doctor Colden and Mr. Murray, a free conference, to which they assented. Mr. Delancey opened it, and urged the necessity of strengthening the garrison of Oswego, lately de- serted by the traders ; and they were brought to join in an address, imploring the governor to send a detachment of fifty men to that fortress, for whom the lower house immediately voted a supply ; and agreeing to give a sum for the support of the pri- soners in the colony, they addressed the governor, complimenting him on his vigilance and clemency, and entreated that he would find means to send them away.
When they had provided the ordinary yearly sup- port, and for many other expenses, and were desirous
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of a recess, Mr. Clinton, observing that no provision was made for the general Indian alliance proposed by the Massachusetts Bay assembly, entreated their attention to it as a great and important object, much urged by governor Shirley in a late letter ; but their generosity being exhausted, or their fears excited, they resolved it to be imprudent to engage in the scheme, without a previous plan of it ; and they were sent home on the 21st of September.
The French attempt upon Annapolis having roused the eastern colonies to the bold design, which they accomplished in the year 1745, by the reduction of Louisburgh; Mr. Clinton, animated by Mr. Shirley's example, sent them ten pieces of field ordnance, with the necessary warlike implements, and in March solicited the assembly to co-operate in that enterprise. He took the same opportunity to press the equipment of a guard-ship for the defence of the coast ; the appointment of agents; the con- struction of more inland forts ; further presents to the Indians; money to defray the march and transportation of the detachments and supplies to Oswego ; liberal sums for contingent expenses ; further aid for supporting prisoners ; provision to enable him to send commissioners to join with others in a general treaty with the Indian nations ; and a union with the rest of the colonies, both of force and councils, agreeably to a royal instruction continued from the revolution to this day .*
The assembly, conscious of their neglect of his recommendation for constituting an agent, took the
* See note E.
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repetition unkindly. They had, on that account, been much censured without doors, a bill having been brought into parliament for preventing the colony paper money from being a legal tender, and to prevent which no steps had been taken, though it was known here before their last rising. But the other colonies awakened the popular attention, and compelled the city members and several merchants to join with the council, in the recess of the house, to co-operate in the necessary remonstrances to the commons of Great Britain for postponing the bill.
They had not then, as they now asserted, given any more than the title of it, and consequently knew nothing of the scope of its last two clauses, which alarmed all the colonies with apprehensions of a design to overturn the liberties of the plantations, by compelling our legislators to obey all the orders and instructions of the crown.
One of the first objects, therefore, of their present attention, was a report upon these transactions ; thanks to the managers of them; the reimburse- ment of the money sent to Messrs. Samuel and William Baker of London, who had been charged with the opposition to the bill offered to the com- mons, and the approbation of the objections urged against its passing into a law.
In this ill humour they presented no address and, though Mr. Clinton sent them the papers, necessary for their information concerning the eastern expedition, with a copy of the instruction referred to in his speech on the 14th of March, they continued for several days inattentive to it ; slighted VOL. IT .- 12
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his opinions concerning additional fortifications ; ordered the city members to inquire for and consult some engineer ; intimated a design to lessen the garrison of Oswego; declined the project of a guard-ship ; rejected that for appointing joint com- missioners to treat with the Indians for mutual defence ; voted but three thousand pounds to the New England expedition ; resolved to appoint no agents at present, and declined the provision of pre- sents for the Indians.
Expecting nothing from them in this temper, he convened both houses before him on the 13th May, passed three bills sent up to him by the council, and dissolved the assembly, delivering a speech at the same time, in which he not only expresses his own resentment with insinuation of the receipt of personal incivilities, but endeavours to render them odious to their constituents.
The late sudden dissolution had very little influ- ence upon the minds of the community at large, for nearly the same members were returned; but it influenced the new house, for, in answer to the governor's speech of the 25th of June, they presented an address promising attention and despatch, and testifying their persuasion, that he had the king's service, and the welfare of the colony, sincerely at heart, and promising their assistance in cultivating harmony between the several branches of the legis- lature, for the great ends they all had in view.
What he had proposed was the erection of several batteries in the capital, more forts on the frontiers and aid of ships, men, and provisions, to the New England enterprise upon Louisburgh, which pro-
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mised success by the capture of one of the batteries and a ship of 64 guns.
Mr. Jones, who had long acquired the reputation of an economist, was now placed in the chair.
They immediately ordered in a bill to give five thousand pounds towards the Cape Breton expedi- tion, another for the necessary fortifications, and others for finishing the governor's house, presents for the Indians who were wavering and had lately made a visit to Canada. His design for an immediate treaty with them was his apology for convening the assembly.
They voted six hundred pounds in addition to four hundred pounds not yet expended, and he went immediately to the Indian treaty at Albany. After his return in autumn, he informed the house, by a message of 2d of November, that the French Indians had broken the neutrality and made incursions upon New England ; that he dreaded an attack upon this colony; that the Six Nations agreed to take a part in the war, and had his orders for action. They did not part before the governor's prediction was verified in the destruction of the scattered village of Saratoga, within forty miles from Albany.
The party of French and Indians, from Crown Point, surprised those settlements on the night of the 16th of November, and burnt the fort and several other buildings, killed some of the inhabitants and carried others into captivity. The country being uncovered down to the very city of Albany, this event not only spread a general consternation among the northern settlers, who all fled from their habita- tions, but raised a general dissatisfaction. Mr.
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Clinton, indeed, was unblameable, having frequently endeavoured to excite the assemblies, and so had Mr. Clarke, to erect a fortress on the northern frontier ; but the censures of the multitude being loud and clamorous, the governor indulged more heat than prudence, and sent a message to the house respecting the tragedy at Saratoga, and threatened to draw out detachments of the militia, expressing himself in such sharp reproaches for their inattention to his former requisitions, as were not soon forgot. At present they suppressed their resentment, and entered a resolve, that they would, at all times, concur in every reasonable measure, not only for the defence of the province, but the assistance of their neighbours, in any well concerted plan con- sistent with her circumstances, to distress and attack the enemy ; adding, that this was and ever had been the firm purpose and unanimous resolution of the house.
The session being nearly at an end, they passed votes of credit, offering rewards for scalps, the payment of scouting parties, the erection of redoubts, the transportation of detachments, provisions, and ammunition for the Indians. The rejection of Mr. Holland, who claimed a seat in the house, as member for the township of Schenectady, contributed not a little to the acrimony of the governor's message. Though he had a majority of electors, his petition was, at first, unreasonably postponed, and himself, at last, excluded (1st November) under the pretext of his wanting qualifications required by the town charter ; but, in truth, because he was a resident at New-York and a friend to the governor. Mr. Hol-
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