Dongan’s crowning offense, however, in the eyes of his King was his failure to force his faith upon a people who were in no mood, as later events proved, to permit their religious prejudices to be tampered with. Again were the prudence and the wisdom of the lieutenant demonstrated at the expense of the intelligence of the King. Dongan’s loyalty and devotion to his church never was doubted nor questioned. The course he pursued reflects the highest credit upon his conservatism, his courage and his fidelity to religious principle. If any event were needed in the life of a King to prove deficiency in judgment, and incompetence as a ruler, the action of the unfortunate James II in superseding Thomas Dongan at this critical time and for the specific cause selected would prove sufficient and convincing.

We all have read and listened to the marvellous tales of that jaunty terror of the seas, Captain William Kidd, and been brought up from childhood on the mournful ballad of William Moore—household names both of them—but how many remember the importance of the influence exercised in those days by the governor of New York, Richard Coote, Earl of Bellomont, in the formation of the expedition organized by the former and in the apprehension of the culprit for the murder of the latter. The times were scandalously corrupt and corrupt individuals lived extravagantly up to the times. Land-grabbing was practised as an art in New York then as it is practised in Oregon today. Indian rings and land grants were common and notorious and flourished brazenly. Officers of the Crown who should have crushed them were often ringleaders in organizing them; ministers of the gospel, who should have interceded for and protected the innocent child of the forest, basely betrayed their trust, and were leagued in corruption to acquire vast tracts of valuable land from the confiding aboriginal owner. The governor of the province seldom arose above his environment. As a rule he possessed no capabilities for the position. If he were not bankrupt he was ignorant, or a degenerate representative of the nobility, despatched to New York to repair or redeem his shattered fortune or to make one by whatever means he might employ, the province being regarded by the home authorities as a common receptacle to be utilized for the purposes named. Sympathy for the colonists on the part of a governor was displayed as seldom as integrity or interest in the future of the province. The ambition of the governor seemed to be bounded by perquisites and he generally left the shores of New York for England with a fortune that placed him on a plane with the richest men of the old world. Privateering was a prolific source of revenue. No man with ready cash disdained identity with it. It was countenanced by so gracious a ruler as William III, who encouraged and patronized it. A change of flag only was necessary to convert an innocent privateer into a ferocious and bloodthirsty pirate. These wild rovers of the sea respected neither vessel nor nation. Many bore commissions from James II and from William III and many bore none at all. Governor Fletcher was their acknowledged friend and alleged co-partner in their villainies. New York City was their recognized headquarters.

It was because Bellomont had established a reputation as a man of resolution and of integrity that he was chosen by his King as governor of New York. His orders imposed obligations that reflected credit upon his abilities as an executive of the purest virtue and the strongest character. Discontent and disorder were rampant because of the cruel murder of Leisler and Milborne. Uneasiness and anxiety prevailed throughout the province because of the threatened attitude of the Indians. The rapacity and greed of his predecessor, Fletcher, had engendered enmities and jealousies that even the mighty resources of the King were powerless to allay.

Bellomont’s requisition for a frigate to suppress piracy was vetoed, for the reason that England needed her entire available marine force for service in home waters because of the war with France. The suggestion of a private ship was more successful and met with the financial assistance of the King, the duke of Shrewsbury, lord chancellor Somers, the Earls of Oxford and Romney, Robert Livingston and others, Bellomont assuming the responsibility of equipment. It was this ship, the Adventure, which was turned over to William Kidd, a resident of New York, then in London. Kidd, beyond question, ranks as the transcendent specimen of his class. He was a navigator par excellence, a man of the world; a type that, when pushed by fortune into any orbit, commands the situation by the power of his own robust characteristics. Kidd’s orders were simple. He was to prey upon French commerce and to destroy pirates. In the first desideratum he proved a failure; in the second, by becoming a pirate himself he achieved a brilliant and, in the end, a fatal success. Upon his career on the high seas, as a privateer and pirate, it is not necessary to dilate. Two years after his departure from Plymouth he arrived in New York, only to find that his friend, Governor Fletcher, and other piratical sympathizers were no longer in control of the affairs of the province. Kidd sailed Eastward along the Sound and buried part of his plunder on Gardiner’s Island. He then proceeded to Boston, where he appeared on the streets in the gorgeous raiment of a man of fashion. Governor Bellomont happened to meet him, recognized him, arrested him and shipped him to Europe. Kidd was tried and convicted for the murder of William Moore—and was hanged as a pirate.

In the meantime Bellomont deplored the legacy his predecessor, Fletcher, had left him: A divided people, an empty purse, a few miserable, naked, half-starved soldiers, not half the number the King allowed pay for; the fortifications and the governor’s house very much out of repair, and “in a word the whole government was out of frame.” The province was rent with turmoil and turbulence in consequence of the Leisler-Milborne rebellion. The new governor’s sympathies had been drawn toward the martyr Leisler, whose enemies in the aristocratic party resisted almost to the point of violence Bellomont’s efforts to make restitution for a monstrous crime. As a rebuke to the rascality of his predecessor Bellomont had declared: “I will take care there shall be no misapplication of the public money; I will pocket none of it myself nor shall there be embezzlement by others.” To this standard he unflinchingly held. No breath of scandal, no charge of prostitution of duty for self-aggrandizement tainted his reputation. He loyally protected the interests of those whom he was sent to govern. He was distinctively a statesman of the constructive school, in marked contradistinction to many of those governors who preceded and who followed him, who pursued a policy of confiscation or of destruction—of confiscation in grabbing everything in sight and of destruction by undermining the liberties of the people and by attempted restriction of their God-given rights. Under Bellomont’s short administration the frontiers were strengthened, a library was established, printing was encouraged, shipping promoted and education, which had been neglected, stimulated. His untimely death, however, prevented the development of many beneficent reforms which he had under contemplation.

Under the cloak of politics repressive religious measures were adopted and inhuman persecutions practised. Dongan, an Irish Catholic, favored an act permitting Jews to exercise their religion, but the New York Common Council vetoed the proposition, while Bellomont, an Irish church of England worshipper, approved the measure proscribing priests, on the ground that Catholic prelates uniformly labored to excite the Indians against the Anglo-Americans. Both governors recommend themselves to posterity for enlightened statesmanship that throws into deep obscurity the times in which they lived. Dongan brought to the province of New York the first semblance of a representative form of government; under Lord Bellomont the first spark of American Independence flashes, by the demand that the colonists repudiate the laws of England because the colonists are not represented in the parliament that frames these laws. The board of trade of London directs Bellomont to check this heresy because “the independence the Colonists thirst for is so notorious.”

During the Colonial epoch England assigned many men to govern New York. The governor possessed unlimited despotic powers. He exercised authority denied to the King. He not only made the laws but interpreted and executed them, and when necessary unmade them. He usurped the prerogatives of the Assembly and of the courts; his council was merely an aggregation of automatons who danced when he pulled the string. No act of the Assembly was placed on the statute book without his signature and no decision of the court was valid until he, as chief justice, passed judgment, and in this respect he exercised powers denied to the King, for his Majesty, while permitted to sit on the king’s bench, was prohibited from expressing judgment. There were two governors of early New York who never have been brought under the ban of usurping the functions of the coördinate branches of government nor of debasing the powers confided to them by their superiors, Thomas Dongan and the Earl of Bellomont. No charge ever has been brought that they carried away money unworthily raised or dishonestly made. Nor has either ever been accused of using his high position for unmeritorious or discreditable purposes. Both, however, have received the encomiums and praise of historians of England and America as rulers and statesmen of the highest degree of efficiency and honesty at a time when the standard of morals and of statesmanship was lamentably low and unquestionably debased. Toward both every Irishman and every New Yorker should turn with sentiments of the strongest esteem and admiration of the highest calibre, not only in commendation of the success they gained in the fulfillment of official obligations in the face of discouraging and corrupt environment, but for the sturdy and sterling manhood they displayed in the maintenance of their official honor and in the normal performance of their official duty.

In this connection it may not be amiss for us to pay a deserved tribute to Dr. Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan, a native of Ireland, who was more instrumental in awakening the study of the Dutch language and of our priceless Dutch records than any other man since the creation of the State of New York. Dr. O’Callaghan represented the type of the pushing, aggressive and scholarly Irishman. Two years of his early life were devoted to the study of medicine in Paris. At the age of twenty-six he crossed the ocean, settled in Canada and at once became prominent in the agitation for Catholic emancipation in Ireland and England. He became secretary of an organization for Irish immigrants to America, edited a newspaper in Montreal, and was sent to the Provincial Parliament, where his activity and ability placed him in the front rank as a leader. His radical views and conduct, however, brought a mob of tories to his office and led to the destruction of his type, press and establishment. His neighbors, however, made it so unpleasant that he was compelled to seek refuge in the United States when he was forty years of age. He established his residence in Albany, was fortunate in the selection of his most intimate friend, Chancellor Reuben Hyde Walworth, practised his profession with more or less success, and at the same time conducted an industrial paper called the Northern Light. It was at this period that, during the anti-rent disturbances, he undertook the study of the Dutch language. His “History of New Netherlands” made him famous and stimulated the study of Colonial records and Colonial research throughout the United States.

HONORABLE JAMES FITZGERALD.
Justice of Supreme Court of the State of New York.