satisfied with concessions, while each successful demand only increases the popular clamor for more. Thus it was in the experience of Mr. Clarke. It is true, indeed, that the year 1740 passed without any direct collision upon the question of prerogative; although at the second short session of that year, the speech alleged the entire exhaustion of the revenue, and again demanded an ample appropriation for a term of years. But the controversy was reopened at the spring session of the following year-1741-on which occasion the Lieutenant-Governor delivered a speech, long beyond precedent, and enumerating the grievances of the Crown by reason of the continued encroachments of the General Assembly. The speech began by an elaborate review of the origin and progress of the difficulties that had existed between the representatives of the Crown and the Assembly, in respect to the granting of supplies, evincing —such, indeed, is the inference—a want of gratitude on the part of the latter, in view of the blessings which the colony had enjoyed under the paternal care of the Government since the revolution of 1688. But it was not in connection with the supplies, only, that the Assembly had invaded the rights of the Crown. It was the undoubted prerogative of the Crown to appoint the Treasurer. Yet the Assembly had demanded the election of that officer. Not satisfied with that concession, they had next claimed the right of choosing the Auditor-General. Failing in that demand, they had sought to accomplish their object by withholding the salary from that officer. These encroachments, he said, had been gradually increasing from year to year, until apprehensions had been seriously awakened in England " that the plantations are not without thoughts of throwing off their dependence on the Crown." He, therefore, admonished the Assembly to do away with such an impression "by giving to his Majesty such a revenue, and in such a manner, as will enable him to pay his own officers and servants," as had been done from the Revolution down to the year 1709 -during which period the colony was far less able to bear the burden than now."*

Thus early and deeply were those principles striking root in America, which John Hampden had asserted and poured out his blood to defend, in the great ship-money contest with Charles I-which brought that unhappy monarch to the block-and which-fulfilling the apprehensions of Mr. Clarke-thirty-five years afterward, separated the colonies from the British Crown-although in the answer of the House to the “insinuation of a suspicion" of a desire for independence, with real or affected gravity, they "vouched that not a single person in the colony had any such thoughts;" adding—“ for under what government can we be better protected, or our liberties or properties so well secured ?"

This

*Vide Journals of the Colonial Assembly, vol. 1, Hugh Gains' edition. (1741) was the year in which the chapel, barracks, Secretary's office, &c., at Fort George (the Battery) were burnt, and the speech referred to in the text asked an apropriation for their rebuilding-but without success.

But the popularity of Mr. Clarke was rapidly on the wane. Chief Justice De Lancy, the master-spirit of the Council, having rather abandoned him, and attached himself to the popular party, managed to preserve a considerate coolness on the part of that body toward their executive head, while the House heeded but little his recommendations.

The only subject of local excitement, however, during the year 1741, was the celebrated plot supposed to have been discovered on the part of the negroes, to murder the inhabitants of New York, and ravage and burn the city—an affair which reflects little credit either upon the discernment or the humanity of that generation.

African slavery had existed from an early period in New Netherland. It was encouraged as the most certain and economical way of introducing slavery in a new country, where there was no surplus population. The slave-trade was brought into the Dutch Colony by the Dutch West India Company, and, shortly after its introduction, became a considerable and profitable branch of its shipping interest. A "prime slave" was valued from one hundred and twenty dollars to one hundred and fifty dollars, and below this price he could not profitably be purchased from Africa or the West Indies. In 1702, there were imported one hundred and sixty-five African slaves; in 1718, five hundred and seventeen. After that year, however, the traffic began to fall off, the natural increase being large.*

As far back as 1628, slaves constituted a portion of the population of New Amsterdam; and to such an extent had the traffic in them reached, that, in 1709, a slave-market was erected at the foot of Wall street, where all negroes who were to be hired or sold stood, in readiness for bidders. Their introduction into the colony was hastened by the colonial establishment of the Dutch in Brazil and upon the coast of Guinea, and also by the capture of Spanish and Portuguese prizes with Africans on board. The Boere-knechts, or servants, whom the settlers brought over with them from Holland, soon deserted their field-work for the fur traffic, thus causing European laborers to become scarce and high; and, as a natural result, slaves, by their cheapness, became one of the staples of the new country. In 1652, the Directors at Amsterdam removed the export duty of eight per cent., which had been hitherto paid by the colonists on tobacco. The passage-money to New Netherland was also lessened from fifty to thirty guilders; and besides trading to the

* Almost every family in the colony owned one or more negro servants; and among the richer classes their number was considered a certain evidence of their master's easy circumstances. About the year 1703—a period of prosperity in wealth and social refinement with the Dutch of New Amsterdam --the Widow Van Cortlandt held five male slaves, two female, and two children; Colonel De Peyster had the same number; William Beekman, two; Rip Van Dam, six; Mrs. Stuyvesant, five; Mrs. Kip, seven; David Provoostd, three, etc.

Brazils, the settlers were allowed "to sail to the coast of Angola and Africa to procure as many negroes as they might be willing to employ."*

Several outbreaks had already happened among the negroes of New Amsterdam; and the whites lived in constant anticipation of trouble and danger from them. Rumors of an intended insurrection, real or imaginary, would circulate (as in the negro plot of 1712), and the whole city be thrown into a state of alarm. Whether there was any real danger on these occasions, cannot be known, but the result was always the same, viz. the slaves always suffered, many dying by the fagot or the gallows.

The "Negro Plot" of 1741, however, forms a serious and bloody chapter in the history of New York. At this distance of time it is hard to discover the truth amid the fears and prejudices which attended that public calamity. The city then contained some ten thousand inhabitants, about one-fifth of whom were African slaves, called the "black seed of Cain." Many of the laws for their government were most unjust and oppressive. Whenever three of them were found together they were liable to be punished by forty lashes on the bare back, and the same penalty followed their walking with a club outside of their master's grounds without a permit. Two justices could inflict any punishment except amputation or death, for any blow or assault by a slave upon a Christian or a Jew. Such was the outrageous law. New York swarmed with negroes, and her leading merchants were engaged in the slave trade, at that time regarded fair and honorable. New York then resembled a Southern city, with its calaboose on the Park Commons and its slave market at the foot of Wall street.

The burning of the public buildings, comprising the Governor's residence, the Secretary's office, the chapel and barracks, in March, 1741, was first announced to the General Assembly by the Lieutenant-Governor as the result of an accident-a plumber who had been engaged upon some repairs having left fire in a gutter between the house and chapel. But several other fires occurring shortly afterward in different parts of the city, some of them, perhaps, under circumstances that could not readily be explained, suspicions were awakened that the whole were acts of incendiaries. Not a chimney caught fire-and they were not at that day very well swept-but the incident was attributed to design. Such was the case in respect to the chimney of Captain Warren's house, situated near the ruins of the public buildings, by the taking fire of which the roof was partially destroyed; and other instances might be enumerated. Suspicion, to borrow the language of Shakspeare, "hath a ready tongue," and is “all stuck full of eyes," which are not easily put to sleep. Inci

* In the year 1755 a census of slaves was taken in all the colonies except Albany, New York, and Suffolk. Borough numbered 91; Manor of Pelham, 24; Westchester, 73; Bushwick, 43; Flatbush, 35; New Utrecht, 67; Newtown, 87 Oyster-Bay, 97; etc., etc.

dents and circumstances, ordinary and extraordinary, were seized upon and brought together by comparison, until it became obvious to all that there was actually a conspiracy for compassing such a stupendous act of arson as the burning of the entire town and murder of the people. Nor was it long before the plot was fastened upon the negro slaves, then forming no inconsiderable portion of the population. A negro, with violent gesticulation, had been heard to utter some terms of unintelligible jargon, in which the words "fire, fire, scorch, scorch," were heard articulated, or supposed to be heard. The crew of a Spanish ship brought into the port as a prize, were sold into slavery. They were suspected of disaffection—as well they might be, and yet be innocent-seized and thrown into prison. Coals were found disposed, as was supposed, for burning a hay-stack; a negro had been seen jumping over a fence and flying from a house that had taken fire in another place, and in a word a vast variety of incidents, trifling and unimportant, were collated and talked over until universal consternation seized upon the inhabitants, from the highest to the lowest. As Hume remarks of the Popish plot in the reign of Charles II, "each breath of rumor made the people start with anxiety; their enemies, they thought, were in their bosoms. They were awakened from their slumbers by the cry of Plot, and like men affrighted and in the dark, took every figure for a specter. The terror of each man became a source of terror to another, and an universal panic being diffused; reason, and argument, and common sense, and common humanity, lost all influence over them."* A Titus Oates was found in the person of a poor weak servant-girl in a sailor's boarding-house, named Mary Burton, who, after much importunity, confessed that she had heard certain negroes in the preceding February, conferring in private, for the purpose of setting the town on fire. She at first confined the conspirators to blacks, but afterward several white persons were included, among whom were her landlord, whose name was Hughson, his wife, another maid-servant, and a Roman Catholic, named Ury. Some other information was obtained from other informers, and numerous arrests were made, and the several strong apartments in the City Hall, called "the jails," were crowded with prisoners, amounting in number to twenty-six whites and above one hundred and sixty slaves. Numerous executions took place upon the most frivolous and unsatisfactory testimony, but jurors and magistrates were alike panic-stricken and wild with terror. Among the sufferers were Hughson, his wife, and the maid-servant, as also the Romanist Ury, who was capitally accused, not only as a conspirator, but for officiating as a priest, upon an old law of the colony, heretofore mentioned as having been passed at the instance of Governor Bellamont, to drive the French

* Quoted by Dunlap, who has given a good collection of facts respecting this remarkable plot, though not rendered into a well-digested narrative. See chap. xxi. of his History.

missionaries from among the Indians. “The whole summer was spent in the prosecutions; every new trial led to further accusations; a coincidence of slight circumstances was magnified by the general terror into violent presumptions; tales collected without doors, mingling with the proofs given at the bar, poisoned the minds of the jurors, and this sanguinary spirit of the day suffered no check until Mary, the capital informer, bewildered by frequent examinations and suggestions, began to touch characters which malice itself dared not suspect." Then, as in the case of the Popish plot and the prosecutions for witchcraft in Salem, the magistrates and jurors began to pause. But not until many had been sent to their final account by the spirit of fanaticism which had bereft men of their reason, as innocent of the charges laid against them as the convicting courts and jurors themselves. Thirteen negroes were burnt at the stake, eighteen were hanged, and seventy transported.*

The year 1742, if for no other reason, is memorable in the annals of the city from the fact that in that year was built the house now standing on the site of No. 1 Broadway, now known as the WASHINGTON HOTEL, and the oldest house in the City of New York. Previous to this year (1742) the site was occupied by an old tavern kept by a Mrs. Kocks, built a century previous by her husband, Pieter Kocks, an officer in the Dutch service and an active leader in the Indian war of 1693. Mr. David T. Valentine-to whom New York is indebted more than to any other man for the preservation of its local history, and for which she can never be sufficiently grateful-usually remarkably accurate, states that the building, No. 1 Broadway, was built by Archibald Kennedy (afterward Earl of Cassilis), then Collector of the Port of New York. This, however, is an error. It was built by Sir Peter, afterward Admiral, Warren,† K. B.—whose name is so identified with the naval glory of England, during his residence in New York City. Neither pains nor expense were spared to make it one of the finest mansions in this country. The plans were all sent out from Lisbon-the exterior and interior

* Daniel Horsmanden, the third Justice of the Supreme Court, published the history of this strange affair in a ponderous quarto. He was concerned in the administration of the judicial proceedings, however, and wrote his history before the delusion had passed away. Chief-Justice De Lancey presided at least at some of the trials, and he, too, though an able and clear-minded man, was carried away by the delusion. James De Lancey was the son of Stephen De Lancey, a French Huguenot gentleman from Caen, in Normandy, who fled from persecution in France. Settling in New York in 1686, he married a daughter of M. Van Courlandt, and was thus connected with one of the most opulent families in the province. He was also an active member of the House of Assembly during the administration of Governor Hunter: His son James was sent to Cambridge University (England), for his education, and bred to the profession of the law. On being elevated to the bench, such were his talents and application, he became a very profound lawyer.-Smith.

After whom Warren street is named.