Of the middle colonies, New Jersey was the first to follow Massachusetts in issuing paper money, which she did by authorizing the issue of £3,000 in bills for the expedition against Canada in 1709.
The people of the Netherlands and the Belgic provinces had profited as little under religious persecution as the puritans and separatists of New England, to become tolerant of other faiths when in the New World they had the power of control. The laws of New Netherland were favorable only to the Protestant Reformed Dutch Church, although Swedes and Finns, who had come to New Sweden on the Delaware, were allowed to worship according to the Lutheran ritual. The directors of the West India Company, the supreme authority, did not approve of any religious intolerance, and expressed themselves forcibly to that effect when Stuyvesant tried to prosecute members of the Society of Friends. When New York and New Jersey became English provinces, complete freedom of religion was granted to them. This drew to them members of all established churches and of nearly every religious sect of Europe, the latter class largely increased by such as fled to New York from Massachusetts to enjoy religious toleration. In 1686, in New York at least, “the most prevailing opinion was that of the Dutch Calvinists.” How the Roman Catholics were treated has been shown above. The same reasons which had led to their proscription tried to impose upon the colonies the Church of England, by directing the governors not to prefer any minister to an ecclesiastical benefice unless he was of this order. This royal command to the governors of New York and New Jersey produced results which its originators probably did not contemplate. It led to the incorporation of Trinity Church in New York, with the celebrated and ever-reviving Anneke Jans trials growing out of it as a fungus, and to the creating a demand for ministers of the Anglican or Episcopal church which necessitated a school to educate them. This was the King’s College, known to us of the present day as Columbia College, chartered in 1754. The non-Episcopalians saw in this movement the fulfillment of their fears, first aroused by the Ministry Act under Governor Fletcher in 1693, tending towards the establishment of a state church. Out of this dread and out of the difficulty in obtaining ministers for the Dutch Reformed Church grew another educational institution, the Queen’s College, now known as Rutgers College, in New Brunswick, N. J. Another institution preceded it, the College of New Jersey at Princeton. This was first founded by charter from President Hamilton in 1746, and enlarged by Governor Belcher in 1747, who left, by will, to its library a considerable number of books. The proprietors of Pennsylvania, always thoughtful of the weal of their subjects, gave, in 1753, $15,000 to a charitable school and academy, founded four years before in Philadelphia by public subscription. Two years later, in 1755, it grew into the “College, Academy, and Charitable School of Philadelphia,” by an act of incorporation, and to-day it is the “University of Pennsylvania.”
Urged thereto by the founder of the independence of the Netherlands, William the Silent, Prince of Orange, the states-general had adopted in the sixteenth century the system of universal education, which, in our days, the New England States claim as their creation. Hence we find schools mentioned and schoolmasters at work from the beginning of the New Netherland; and though at first no classics were taught, even at so early a date as 1663 we read of a government schoolmaster who taught Greek and Latin. The assembly of New York passed, in 1702, an act for the encouragement of a free grammar school, and favored generally the primary education of the children of their constituents. New Jersey did not lag in the good work. In 1765 she had 192 churches of all denominations except the Roman Catholic, and we may safely suppose that a school was connected with nearly every church. The Moravians of Pennsylvania imitated the example set to them at home, and established boarding-schools at Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Litiz. The small number of schools among the “Dissenters,” as the Rev. Samuel Johnson calls all non-Episcopalians, induced him, however, to say, in 1759, that “ministers and schools are much wanted in Pennsylvania.”
[CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.]
I. The Manuscript Sources of New York History. (By Mr. Fernow.)—New York has taken the lead among the American States in the extent of the printed records of her history.[492] In the archives at Albany there are certain manuscript documents illustrating the period now under consideration deserving mention.
“When first his Royall Highnesse, the Duke of York, took possession of this Province [New York], he ... gave him [Govr Nicolls] certain Laws, by which the Province was to be governed.” Several copies of these, Duke’s Laws (1674), were made, and they were sent to the different districts, Long Island, Delaware, the Esopus, and Albany, into which the province was then divided.[493]
The so-called Dongan’s Laws (1683 and 1684) make a manuscript volume, containing the laws enacted by the first general assembly of the province during the years 1683 and 1684. It has upon its original parchment cover a second title, evidently written at a later date: “The Duke of York’s Charter of Liberty & Priviledges to the Inhabitants of New York, anno 1683, with Acts of Assembly of that year & the year 1684.” The laws are mainly a reënactment of the Duke’s Laws, and are now deposited in the State library. They have never been printed.
The Original Colonial Laws (1684-1775) make nineteen volumes of manuscripts, now in the office of the secretary of state at Albany, of which such as had not in the mean time expired by their own limitation were printed in 1694,[494] 1710, and 1726, by William Bradford; in 1719 by Baskett; in 1762 by Livingston and Smith; in 1768 by Parker, and in 1773 by Van Schaack. The Bradford edition of 1710 contains also the journal of the general assembly, etc.