nent among these was the practice which had been growing up, of making only an annual provision for the payment of the officers of the Government. He also alluded to the modern practice of naming the officers for whose benefit the appropriations were made in the act, thus interfering with the prerogative in the appointing honor. He admonished the Assembly that he should give his assent to no acts of that character for the future; and demanded an appropriation for the payment of the Governor's secretaries, judges, and other salaried officers, for the term of five years, according to the practice that had prevailed during the administration of his four immediate predecessors, namely, Governors Hunter, Burnett, Montgomery, and Cosby. The inconvenience of these annual grants of salaries and allowances was adverted to, and objections further urged against the recent method of intermixing matters of an entirely different nature with the provisions of the salary-bills, and tacking new grants for other purposes to the Governor's own support.

The Assembly, in its reply, justly regarding the request for a permanent supply as a direct attempt to render the Crown independent of the people, with great indignation refused to grant it. As to the more recent practice of naming the officers provided for in the salary bills, it not only justified it, but intimated that if this course had been adopted at an earlier day, his Excellency would not have been able to remove the third Justice of the Supreme Court "without any color of misconduct" on his part-who was "a gentleman of learning and experience in the law.*" The result can readily be seen. After continual bickerings for several weeks, Mr. Clinton, in great wrath, prorogued the Assembly.

Thus the parties separated, and thus again commenced that great struggle between the Republican and Monarchal principle, which in the onward progress of the former was destined at a day not even then far distant, to work such mighty results in the Western Hemisphere.

Although, from a very early date in the history of this protracted controversy, it became inexcusably personal, yet it is not difficult to perceive that it was in reality one of principle. On the one hand, the infant Hercules, though still in his cradle, was becoming impatient of restraint. The yoke of colonial servitude chafed the necks, if not of the people, at least of their representatives. The royal Governor was not slow to perceive what kind of leaven was fermenting the body-politic; and hence he became perhaps over-jealous in asserting and defending the prerogatives of his master. Doubtless, in the progress of the quarrel, there were faults on both sides. Of an irascible and overbearing temperament, and accustomed in his profession to command rather than to persuade, he was ill-qualified to exercise a limited or concurrent power with a popular

*Alluding to the removal, the year before, of Justice Horsmanden. This act was again imputed to the influence of "a person of a mean and despicable character"-meaning, as it was well understood, Dr. Colden.

Assembly equally jealous of its own privileges and of the liberties of the people; watching with sleepless vigilance for every opportunity to circumscribe the influence of the Crown; and ready at every moment to resist the encroachments of arbitrary power. Still, however patriotic the motives, under the promptings of De Lancey, their opposition to Mr. Clinton became factious; and it is not difficult even for a republican to believe that he was treated, not only with harshness, but with great injustice, especially in regard to his measures, and his personal exertions for the public defense and the prosecution of the Indian war.

At length, worn out in health and spirits by his struggle against a powerful opposition, Clinton, in 1753, sent in his resignation to the home government, and Sir James Osborne was appointed in his stead.

The character of Mr. Clinton has not, I think, been fairly drawn. Those upon whose opinions his character rests, were persons living at the same day, and who, influenced by party strife, were not in a position to judge impartially. He was an uncouth and unlettered Admiral, who had been, through the Newcastle interest, appointed to the chair of Governor. He was evidently unsuited to his position; and his former profession, in which he had always been accustomed to command, illy fitted him to brave the rebuffs and the opposition of party faction. His manner, too, was not such as to win friends. Having to depend entirely upon the advice of those around him, he was often the dupe of those better versed in the arts of diplomacy than himself. But I look in vain for that love of ease, to the neglect of his official duties, of which he is accused by his enemies. On the contrary, although he relied too much on the advice of others for his own good, yet it was caused more by a consciousness of a lack of education, than by a desire to shirk action. In the care of the Indians he was indefatigable, as appears by his large correspondence with Colonel, afterwards Sir Wm. Johnson, and the officers of the different frontier posts. He labored incessantly with his Assembly to make them realize the condition of the colony; and had they met his views half-way, or even manifested a tithe of his energy, the Province of New York would not have presented such an inviting field for the encroachments of the French. He is accused of amassing by unfair means a large fortune while Governor, yet he freely advanced out of his private purse large sums for the exigencies of the Indian affairs, and many times saved the Six Nations from defection, and the province from the horrors of a predatory warfare, when it was impossible to rouse the Assembly to a sense of danger. Indeed, I think it may safely be said, that had it not been for the untiring efforts of Mr. Clinton and Colonel Johnson, the Six Nations would have been completely won over by the French, and the fire-brand and tomahawk carried down to the very gates of New York.

Meanwhile, several public edifices had been erected, and various

improvements taken place in the city. In 1747, the Presbyterian Church in Wall street, which had been erected by Hunter, was rebuilt. "In the course of the next two years, Beekman and the contiguous streets were regulated. Ferry street was ceded to the city; Beekman, Dey, and Thames streets were paved; Pearl street was dug down near Peck Slip, and graded from Franklin Square to Chatham street; and John street was paved and regulated. In 1751, a Moravian Chapel was built in Fulton street; the following year, the first Merchants' Exchange was erected at the foot of Broad street; and St. George's Chapel was built by Trinity Church on the corner of Cliff and Beekman, and was consecrated on the 1st of July by the Rev. Mr. Barclay, a former missionary among the Mohawks, but now the rector of Trinity Church. This building yet remains in good preservation, and is well known as one of the few original landmarks. This is, next to the Post-Office, the oldest church edifice now standing in the city, and its quaint old chandeliers, and aisles flagged with gray stone, still remain as relics of days of yore." Washington, it is said, was a frequent attendant of this church during his residence in this city in the early part of the Revolutionary War.* But alas! this old landmark is about to share the fate of so many other structures of a similar character, and is to be torn down to make room for another altar to the god Mammon. Workmen are, as we write, employed in removing the wood-work and other articles of furniture, preparatory to the destruction of the church. It is said that the owners of the vaults underneath the sacristy are about to contest the right of the recent sale in the courts; but their efforts will probably have little effect in saving the doomed building from the grasp of sacrilegious hands. In speaking of the history of this edifice, a writer in the New York World, of March 17th, 1868, recalls the following interesting facts:

"One hundred and twenty years ago, New York City had not attained its majority, and Broadway was but a cow-path above Canal street. The Right Honorable George Clinton, Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief in and over the Province of New York and the Territories thereon, Depending in America, ViceAdmiral of the Same, and Vice-Admiral of the Red Squadron of His Majesty's Fleet,' as that most doughty and right honorable personage was wont to sign himself in proclamations to the fat burghers of New York, sat in the chair now filled by Reuben E. Fenton. In that day, New York City was a nest for privateers, which sailed hence to destroy French and Spanish commerce. According as their destination might be, these vessels, with a fair quantity of rum, molasses, and sea-provisions, would be piloted to the Hook, and there take on board an India, Mediterranean, or

* Another important event occurred at this time, which should not be omitted by one who attempts to give a history of the city-inasmuch as it gives us the origin of the yearly appropriation made by the Common Council for the City Manual, viz. that in 1747 the Common Council appropriated four pounds for the publication of fifty copies of An Essay on the Duties of Vestrymen! Some ill-natured cynic may here suggest that it would have been better if the Common Council had con-fined themselves to publications of a similar kind.

other pilot, to carry them to their destination. Small negro boys and Jamaica men in parcels were sold at auction where now the Custom-House rears its lofty pillars. Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria and Queen of Bohemia and Hungaria, wielded the scepter of the Cæsars; George the Second, Fides Defensor, twiddled his thumbs in Windsor Park and played bowls with his Hanoverian mistresses; and wheat was six shillings a bushel; flour, eighteen shillings a hundred; beef, forty shilllings a barrel; West India rum, three and eight pence a gallon; salt, three shillings & bushel; and single-refined sugar, one and tuppence' a pound in New York City. Manus Carroll had been hung at the old powder-house, which still stands on an eminence at the upper end of the Central Park, for a cruel and most 'un-Christian'like murder which he had committed two years before in Albany, then a thriving town. Counterfeiters were at that time amenable to the death-penalty, and the Barnum of that day exhibited wax-figures in Dock street, and the editor of the New York Weekly Post Boy was in the habit of receiving presents of baskets of Bermuda potatoes from the masters of vessels bound into the goodly port of New York. One day the editor received a potato weighing seven pounds from the master of the Good Delight, from Plumb Island, in the far-off' Bermoothes,' and, out of sheer joy at the prodigy, he went and made himself drunk on arrack-punch,' the most aristocratic tipple of our forefathers' days. The City and County of New York had at that early day a population of twelve thousand, two thousand of which number were negroes. "On the 15th of April, 1748, a number of gentlemen met in the vestry of King's Chapel or Trinity Church, then situated where the present church stands in the Broadway, but at the time referred to, overhanging the banks of the Hudson, whose limits have since been pushed back a quarter of a mile by the contractors and dustcollectors; and these gentlemen being of the opinion, after a deliberate consultation, that it was necessary to have a chapel of ease connected with Trinity, it was then and there ordained that the Church-Wardens, Colonel Moore, Mr. Watts, Mr. Livingston, Mr. Chambers, Mr. Horsmanden, Mr. Reade, and Mr. Lodge, be appointed a committee to select a place for the erection of ye' Chapel of St. George's. Another meeting was held on the 4th of July, 1748. Colonel Robinson, one of the committee, reported that he had agreed with a Mr. Clarkson for a number of lots, for which that person had asked the sum of £500, to be paid in a year, and several persons in Montgomerie Ward had stated to him that the lots of Colonel Beekman, fronting Beekman and Van Cliff streets, would be more commodious for building the said chapel, and proposed that if the vestry would agree to the building of the chapel on Colonel Beekman's property, the inhabitants of Montgomerie Ward would raise money among themselves to purchase the ground, and that if Mr. Clarkson insisted on the performance of the agreement with him for his lots, they would take a conveyance for them, and pay the purchase-money; which was agreed to after many hot words. For these respectable vestrymen, in a manner like all vestrymen from time immemorial, had tempers of their own, and no doubt they were exercised at, the fact that the doughty Robinson had taken upon himself to make an agreement to purchase lots for £500, a very large sum in those days when the gold-board had not been established, while on the other hand the inhabitants of Montgomerie Ward, which was afterward called the 'Swamp' in the memory of man, were, without whip or spur, eager for the honor and glory of the future, to furnish the lots and build upon them a church. Well, the vestrymen went home and drank more arrack-punch, sweetened with Muscovado sugar, and punished 'oelykoeks,' greasy with oil and other substances, and then returned to the bosoms of their respective families. Donations poured in to the committee, and the first subscription, of £100, was made by Sir Peter Warren, who desired, if not inconsistent with the rules of the church, that they would reserve a pew for himself and family in perpetuity. The Archbishop of

Canterbury contributed ten pounds. This, the second building in the city erected for the purpose of worship being completed, notice was given to the Governor, and the installation services were held on the 1st day of July, A. D., 1752; but there being no bishop in the country at the time, it was consecrated agreeably to the ancient usages of the church. The Rev. Henry Barclay, D. D., at this time, was the rector, and Rev. Samuel Auchmuty, D. D., assistant minister of Trinity Church. Being finished in the finest style of architecture of the period, and having a handsome and lofty steeple, this edifice was justly deemed a great ornament to the city. It first stood alone, there being but few other houses in its vicinity. Shortly subsequent, however, the streets were graded and built upon, and now the immense warehouses of enterprising merchants and handsome private residences surround it on every side. When first constructed, the interior arrangement of St. George's differed considerably from the present, the chancel, at that time, being contained in the circular recess at the rear of the church, and the altar standing back against the rear-wall in full view of the middle-aisle. There was also some difference in the arrangement of the desk, pulpit, and clerk's-desk. An interesting relation is told concerning the material of which this part of the church-furniture was made, and it may be thus condensed: In one of the voyages made by a sea-captain, whose vessel was unfortunately wrecked, he sustained, among other injuries, the loss of the vessel's masts. This disaster occurring on a coast where no other wood than mahogany could be procured, the captain was obliged to remedy the loss by replacing the old masts with masts made of mahogany. This ship, thus repaired, returned to this port about the time St. George's was building, when more suitable masts were substituted, and those made of mahogany were donated to the Church. The pulpit, desk, and chancel-rails were removed some years afterward, and it may be interesting to state that they can now be seen answering a like capacity in Christ Church, in the little town of Manhasset, on Long Island.

"There is an incident connected with the beautiful font of this church, which will also bear repetition. Originally intended for a Catholic church in South America, it was shipped on a French vessel to be carried to its destination; but whilst on the voyage it was captured by the English during the old French war and brought to this city. This font is made of white marble, and is a masterly piece of workmanship. In 1814, when St. George's was burned, this font was supposed to have been destroyed, but it was found about thirty years ago in a remote part of the church, where it had been removed during the conflagration. It was somewhat damaged, but not enough, however, to prevent its further use, and after being cleaned and repaired it was replaced in front of the chancel, where it now stands, an interesting feature of the time-honored building.

"One of the melancholy events associated with this old church was the sudden death of the Rev. John Ogilvie. On the 18th of November, 1774, whilst delivering one of the lectures he was in the habit of holding on Friday evenings, he was struck with apoplexy. He had given out his text: 'To show that the Lord is upright: he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.'-Psalms, xcii., 15; and after repeating a sentence or two he sank into the reading-desk, and was deprived of speech. He suffered thus for eight days, when he was relieved by death. It was in this chapel, in July, 1787, that the Right Rev. Samuel Provost, the first bishop of the Diocese of New York, held his first ordination, at which time the late Right Rev. Richard C. Moore, D. D., Bishop of Virginia, and the Rev. Joseph G. I. Bend, of Baltimore, were made Deacons. In the year 1811, arrangements were made for a separation between the congregation of St. George's and the corporation of Trinity Church, after which the latter became duly organized as a separate parish, known as St. George's Church.