* The Democratic paper was published by John Peter Zenger, and was called The New York Weekly Journal; the aristocratic paper was published by William Bradford, formerly of Philadelphia (see page 258), and was called The New York Gazette. The latter was established in 1725, and the former in 1726. Bradford had been in the printing business in New York since 1693. His was the first newspaper printed in the colony.
** This was the first attempt in New York to muzzle the press. Andrew Hamilton, of Philadelphia, was Zenger's counsel; and the people, to express their approbation of the verdict, entertained Hamilton at a public dinner, and the corporation presented him with the freedom of the city in a gold box. On his departure, he was honored with salutes of cannon.
*** The loss of his wife had preyed upon the cheerfulness of Osborn, and he had become almost a misanthrope. Dismayed by the cares and perplexities of office which he saw awaited him, he hung himself with a handkerchief upon the garden fence of his residence.
**** We have already considered, in the first volume, the convention of colonial delegates at Albany in 1754, and the part which New York took in the war which ensued, and continued until 1763.
* (v) Colden was one of the most active and useful of the public men of New York before the Revolution. From a well-written memoir of him, by the pen of John W. Francis, M.D., of the city of New York, and published in The American Medical and Philosophical Register (January, 1811, volume i.), I have gleaned the materials for the following brief sketch: Cadwallader Colden was the son of a Scotch minister of the Gospel, and was born at Dunse, in Scotland, on the seventeenth of February, 1688. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he completed his collegiate studies in 1705, at the early age of seventeen years. He then devoted three years to the study of mathematics and medical science, when he came to America, and remained here five years, practicing the profession of a physician. He returned to Great Britain in 1715, and in London became acquainted with the leading minds of the day; among others, with Halley the astronomer. He married a young lady in Scotland, and returned, with her, to America in 1716. They settled in the city of New York in 1718, and soon afterward Colden abandoned his profession for employments in public life. He became the surveyor general of the province, a master in Chancery, and a member of the Governor's Council. About 1750, he obtained a patent for a large tract of land near Newburgh, in Orange county, which was called Coldenham, where he resided with his family a great portion of his time, after 1755. In 1760, he was appointed lieutenant governor, and held that office until a year before his death. On account of the absence or death of the governor-in-chief, Colden often exercised the functions of chief magistrate. Such was his position when the Stamp Aet excitement prevailed. He was relieved from office in 1775, when he retired to his seat at Flushing. He died there on the twenty-eighth of September, 1776, a few days after the great fire broke out, which consumed a large portion of the city of New York. Doctor Colden was a close student and keen observer through life, and he enriched medical and other scientific works by numerous treatises from his pen. His "History of the Five Nations of Indians" is a work of great research and observation, and is now much sought after by scholars. Botany was his delight, and with Linnæus, the great master of the science, he was a constant and valued correspondent for many years. Almost all of the eminent scientific men of Europe became his correspondents, and Franklin and other leading men in America were his intimate epistolary friends. Doctor Colden paid much attention to the art of printing, wrote upon the subject, and was a real, if not the original, inventor of the process called stereotyping. To Doctor Francis I am indebted for a fine copy of the portrait of Colden, from which the one here given was made.
Cadwallader Colden.—Sons of Liberty.—Place of Meeting.—Newspapers in the City.
eighty years was acting governor, and his council were men of the highest character in the province.
