and General Assembly of New-York, finding their interest in Old-England stronger than the interest of the New-Englanders, determined at once, that, as the King had given them jurisdiction over those 360 townships, he had also given them the lands in fee simple. Sir Henry More, the Governor, therefore, in 1767, began the laudable work of regranting those townships to such people as lived in New-York, and were willing to pay him 600l. York currency for his valuable name to each patent. It is remarkable that Sir Harry made every lawyer in the whole province a patentee; but totally forgot the four public lots, viz. that for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, those for the church, the first clergyman, and school in each township, which had been reserved in Governor Wentworth’s grants. Death stopped his career; but Colden, the Lieutenant-Governor, filled up the measure of his iniquity, by granting all the rest on the same conditions. Sir Henry More had taken care to grant to his dear self one township, settled with above 80 families, before he died. Colden did the same for himself. The virtuous William Smith, Esq. of New York, had a township also; and Sir Henry More left him his executor to drive off the New-England settlers. This, however, he attempted in vain. The polite New-Yorkers, having the jurisdiction, betook themselves to law, to get possession of the lands in question, which they called their own; and sent the posse of Albany to eject the possessors; but this mighty power was answered by Ethan Allen, and the old proprietors under Governor Wentworth, who was a King’s Governor as well as Sir Henry More:—the Mynheers of Albany were glad to
have liberty to return home alive.—See here the origin of Ethan Allen!—of the Verdmonts, and the Robbers of the Green Mountains; a compliment paid by the New-Yorkers to the settlers under Governor Wentworth;—who, on that amiable gentleman’s death, had no friend of note left in England, and were therefore under the necessity of defending themselves, or becoming tenants to a set of people who neither feared God nor honoured the King, but when they got something by it.—The New-Yorkers had the grace, after this, to outlaw Ethan Allen, which rendered him of consequence in New-England; and it would not surprise me to hear that New-York, Albany, and all that the Dutchmen possess in houses east of Hudson’s River, were consumed by fire, and the inhabitants sent to Heaven, in the style of Dr. Mather, by the way of Amsterdam. I must do the New-Englanders the justice to say, that, though they esteem not highly Kings or Lords, yet they never complained against his Majesty for what was done respecting Verdmont; on the contrary, they ever said the King would reverse the obnoxious decree, whenever he should be acquainted with the truth of the case, which the New-Yorkers artfully concealed from his knowledge.
There are in the four New-England provinces near 800,000 souls, and very few unconnected with the settlements on Verdmont; the property of which was duly vested in them by Wentworth, the King’s Governor, whose predecessors and himself had jurisdiction over it also for 106 years. They say, what is very legal and just, that his Majesty had a right to annex Verdmont to the government of New-York, but
could not give the fee of the land, because he had before given it to the New-Englanders. It appears very unlikely that those hardy sons of Oliver will ever give up Verdmont to the New-Yorkers by the order of Sir Henry More, or any other Governor, till compelled by the point of the sword. The Mynheers have more to fear than the New-Englanders, who will never yield to Dutch virtue. Van Tromp was brave; Oliver was brave and successful too.
Mather, Neal, and Hutchinson, represent religion to have been the cause of the first settlement of New-England; and the love of gold as the stimulus of the Spaniards in settling their colonies in the southern parts of America; but, if we should credit the Spanish historians, we must believe that their countrymen were as much influenced by religion in their colonial pursuits as were our own. However, in general, it may be said, that the conduct of both parties towards the aborigines discovered no principles but what were disgraceful to human nature. Murder, plunder, and outrage, were the means made use of to convert the benighted savages of the wilderness to the system of Him “who went about doing good.” If we may depend on Abbé Nicolle, the Spaniards killed of the Aytis, or the savage nations, in the Island of Hispaniola, 3,000,000 in seventeen years; 600,000 in Porto Rico, and twenty times these numbers on the continent of South-America, in order to propagate the Gospel in a savage and howling wilderness! The English colonists have been as industrious in spreading the Gospel in the howling wilderness of North-America. Upwards of 180,000 Indians, at least, have been slaughtered in Massachusets-Bay and Connecticut,[31]
to make way for the protestant religion; and, upon a moderate computation for the rest of the colonies, on the continent and West-India Islands, I think one may venture to assert, that nearly 2,000,000 savages have been dismissed from an unpleasant world to the world of spirits, for the honour of the protestant religion and English liberty. Nevertheless, having travelled over most parts of British America, I am able to declare, with great sincerity, that this mode of converting the native Indians is godlike in comparison with that adopted by the Africans.
These miserable people are first kidnapped, and then put under saws, harrows, and axes of iron, and forced through the brick-kiln to Molock.
Nearly half a million of them are doomed to hug
their misery in ignorance, nakedness, and hunger, among their master’s upper servants in Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, and Maryland. The number of these wretches upon the Continent and Islands is scarce credible; about 100,000 in Jamaica alone; all toiling for the tyrant’s pleasure; none seeking other happiness, than to be screened from the torture rendered necessary by that curious American maxim, that men must be willing to die before they are fit for the Kingdom of Heaven. However, what Mussleman, African, or American, would not prefer the state of a christian master, who dreads death above all things, to the state of those christian converts? Christianity has been cursed, through the insincerity of its professors; even savages despise its precepts, because they have no influence on christians themselves. Whatever religious pretensions the Spanish, French, or English may plead for depopulating and repeopling America, it is pretty clear that the desire of gold and dominion was no impotent instigation with them to seek the western continent. The British leaders in the scheme of emigration had felt the humiliating effects of the feudal system; particularly the partial distributions of fortunes and honour among children of the same venter in the Mother Country. They had seen that this inequality produced insolence and oppression, which awakened the sentiments of independence and liberty, the instinct of every man. Nature then kindled war against the oppressors, and the oppressors appealed to prescription. The event was, infelicity began her reign. Both parties invoked religion, but prostrated themselves before the insidious shrine of Superstition, the life of civil government, and the sinews of war;
that expiates crimes by prayers, uses ceremonies for good works, esteems devotion more than virtue, supports religion without probity, values honesty less than honour, generates happiness without morality, and is a glorious helmet to the ambitious.