All this by way of preliminary to a few gleanings from some old records of New Jersey, illustrating “past politics” principally in the days of that erstwhile Royal Province, under that unique Chief Executive, Lord Cornbury, who was foisted on the people by his amiable cousin, Queen Anne, doubtless glad enough of the chance to banish him by an ocean’s broad expanse from her Court. For a score of years New Jersey had been divided into two Provinces—East Jersey, largely controlled by the Scotch proprietors and their settlers; and West Jersey, dominated by the outwardly meek but inwardly determined Quakers. When the two Provinces were reunited into one—New Jersey—the profligate courtier, the ruffling gallant, the soldier of doubtful reputation, Lord Cornbury, of all men was chosen as the solvent to blend these and all the other antagonistic elements in the Province into one harmonious whole.
His troubles began with the first election of representatives to the General Assembly, held between August 13 and September 9, 1703. That body was to be composed of two members each from Perth Amboy and Burlington, and ten from each Division—twenty-four in all. (So long ago was ordained the exact political equality of East Jersey and West Jersey, which has been scrupulously maintained for two centuries, at least in the upper branch of the Legislature, regardless of the overwhelming preponderance of population now concentrated in what was formerly East Jersey). In the latter Division there appeared at the polls forty-two qualified voters in the interest of the Scotch Proprietors, a great part of them from New York and Long Island. “On behalfe of the Country there appear’d betwixt three & four hundred men qualifyed & had they thought necessary could have brought severall Hundred more.” But the High Sheriff (Thomas Gordon) appointed in the Scotch interest, “multiply’d Tricks, upon Tricks, till at last barefac’d he made ye returne contrary to the choice of the Country.” So too in West Jersey, the Quakers, though really in the majority only in Burlington County, “by their usuall application & diligence” secured the return of ten members. Lord Cornbury was intensely disgusted at so adverse a result, and complained to the Lords of Trade that “Severall persons very well qualified to serve, could not be elected, because they had not a thousand Acres of Land, though at the same time, they had twice the vallue of that Land, in money and goods, they being trading men, [while] on the other hand some were chosen because they have a thousand Acres of Land, and at the same time have not twenty shillings in money, drive noe trade, and can neither read nor write, nay they can not answer a question that is asked them, of this sort we have two in the Assembly.” However, the Royal Governor was prejudiced against the plebeian Jerseymen.
When the House met, November 10, 1703, a petition was presented, complaining of an undue election of five of the members returned for the Eastern Division. Sheriff Gordon, at his request, was furnished with a copy of the petition, and time was given him to answer it, and to send for such persons as he should find necessary for his defense. Gordon, by the way, was a member of the House from Perth Amboy, and so had a great advantage over his adversaries, as he could sit on his own case, and by judicious logrolling could influence votes in his own behalf. Nor is there anything in the records to show that he had the slightest hesitation in availing himself of his opportunities. Apparently he had doubts about the allegiance of one of his fellow-members, Richard Hartshorne, for on November 16, Messrs. Gordon and Reid were given permission to ask the Governor and Council whether Hartshorne was qualified to sit in the House, and to give their opinion thereon. The Governor advised Mr. Hartshorne to qualify himself as the law required (by the ownership of a thousand acres of land), but in the meantime the House ordered him to withdraw, until he should qualify himself, and he left his seat. The complaint against Gordon was taken up on November 16, and evidence produced on both sides on that and two succeeding days. Hartshorne was unseated on the 17th, and on the 18th it was voted that the evidence for the regularity and legality of the return made by Mr. Gordon was sufficient, and the petition was dismissed. The House declined, however, to allow the Sheriff his charges against the petitioners. It was also voted not to take any action against the clerks who took the poll at the election in Amboy, and who had refused to deliver them to the Sheriff. It is quite apparent that the House was pretty evenly divided between the friends and foes of the Sheriff-Assemblyman. It is not unlikely that Gordon’s finesse in unseating Hartshorne before the final vote was taken determined the result.
Governor Cornbury found the First Assembly so recalcitrant that he dissolved it, September 28, 1704, and a few days later issued writs for the election of a new Assembly, to meet at Burlington on November 9, 1704. His enemies charged that “The writs were issued and the Elections directed to be made, in such hast, that in one of the writs the Qualifications of the persons to be elected was omitted, and the Sheriff of one County not sworn till Three days before the Election, and many of the Townes had not any (much less due) notice of the day of Election.” Despite these extraordinary precautions of the Governor to have the elections controlled by his friends there was an adverse majority in the Second Assembly, when it met at Burlington on November 13, 1704, and organized the next day. How was this to be overcome? The way was quickly and readily devised. On November 15, Messrs. Thomas Revel and Daniel Leeds, two of Cornbury’s staunchest supporters in the Council, presented a petition to that body, questioning the right of Thomas Lambert, Thomas Gardiner and Joshua Wright to sit in the House. The Governor thereupon refused to swear in those three members-elect. The next day the petitioners asked for fourteen days’ time in which to show that these men lacked the requisite property qualification of 1,000 acres of land. The object in asking this long time was to outwear the patience of the Assembly. The same day (November 16) the members in question produced to the House copies of returns of surveys of lands possessed by them, and were given further time to make their qualifications more fully appear, the result being that on December 6 the House decided that each of the men owned a thousand acres of land, and voted unanimously to seat them. Lord Cornbury, however, still declined to administer to them the prescribed oath. The counties for which the three men were chosen to serve, with several other representatives, delivered an address to his Excellency for having them admitted, which, “mett with noe other Reception, than being called a piece of Insolence, and Ill manners.” By this exclusion a majority of one was gained for the Governor’s party, and he having secured such legislation as he most desired adjourned the Assembly, December 12, to meet April 27, 1705, leaving the three members-elect in question to cool their heels on the outside.
The House did not meet again until October 17, 1705. The Governor sent in a message commending sundry measures to be enacted. By this time the Assembly was ready to lock horns with his Excellency, and to stand on its rights. It was accordingly resolved that it should be “full” before considering his suggestions, and a committee was appointed to wait on him and ask him to admit the three excluded members. He parried the issue, but the House would none of his evasions, and decided to do no business until those three men were admitted. The Governor wanted an appropriation for his support, and was compelled to yield and swear in the men, who took their seats October 26, 1705. The Lords of Trade disapproved of his course in a letter of April 20, 1705: “We think, your Lordship will do well to leave the Determination about Elections of Representatives to that House, and not to intermeddle therein otherwise than by Issuing of Writs for any new Election.”
Does this incident remind one of the “Broad Seal War,” arising out of the action of the Governor of New Jersey issuing his certificate of election to five men as Members of Congress, in 1838, who were really in the minority, on the ground that the returns from certain townships (which would have changed the result) were not before him in due season? Or does it in any way recall the attempt of ten members of the New Jersey Senate to assume to be a majority of the twenty-one members of that body, in 1894?
The Third Assembly, which met at Perth Amboy, April 5, 1707, was also hostile to the Governor. Two of the members of his Council—the pugnacious Lewis Morris and the imperturbable, hard-headed Samuel Jenings, a Quaker—actually resigned from that body in order to be elected to the Assembly, where they could the better harass his Excellency. The Governor had assumed the right to appoint the Clerk of the House, in the person of one William Anderson, who incurred their dislike, and they resolved to get rid of him. How? By the simple expedient of resolving themselves into a committee of the whole, wherein from day to day they discussed the public business, and figuratively “cussed” the Governor. Of course, the committee had a right to choose its own clerk, and selected one of the members. Anderson did not like this, and insisted on his right and duty to sit with them. He imprudently admitted “yt he was Sworn to discover Debates yt were dangerous to ye Govermt, & yt he did not know but ye Comittee were going to have such Debates, & yrfore did turn him out.” The chairman promptly caught him on this indiscretion, and exclaimed, “Then you suppose we are going to have such Debates?” “It looks like it,” replied the clerk. The committee indignantly resolved that his refusal to withdraw from the committee of the whole was a “high Contempt, & a great Interruption of ye public Affairs of the Province,” and that his words were a “Misdemeanor & a scandalous Reflection upon ye Members of this House.” Here was a new grievance whereof to complain to the Governor, and in order to give him time to think it over the House adjourned for a week, and then sent a committee to ask him to appoint another clerk, who should be “a Residenter of this Province.” It may be readily imagined that the Governor was loth to lose the services of so faithful a henchman, but he was anxious for another appropriation and was obliged to give way, and named a new clerk. How impatient he must have been to get that Assembly “off his hands!” Have there not been Governors, yea, even Presidents, similarly embarrassed within our own recollection?
Now the Assembly had another rod in pickle for the Governor. It was whispered about that a fund had been raised to bribe him to favor certain measures in the interest of the Proprietors, and that many citizens had been virtually compelled to contribute toward this fund, under threats of serious inconvenience in various ways. The House determined to investigate these rumors, and sent out subpœnas for a large number of witnesses. One of the parties implicated was Capt. John Bowne, a member from Monmouth County. He was a man of resources, and when a certain witness came to town to testify against him he had the man arrested on a capias in a civil suit and sent to jail, where he was detained, all bail being refused. Whereupon the House (April 30, 1707) promptly expelled Bowne for “a Contempt and a breach of the privileges of this House,” nem. con. They moved more quickly in those days than even in this modern era of hustle.
The Governor’s exclusion of three members-elect from their seats was still a sore grievance to the House, and finally that body expressed itself in language the good sense and dignity of which excuse its eccentric orthography:
“We are too Sensably touched with that procedure not to know what must be the unavoydable Consequences of the Governor’s refusing to Sweare which of the Members of an Assembly he thinks fitt; but to take upon himselfe the power of Judging of the qualifications of Assemblymen, and to keep them out of the house (as the Governour did the aforesd three members nigh Eleven Months till he was satisfied in that point) after the house had declared them qualified, is so great a violation of the Lyberties of the people, So great a breach of the privileges of the house of Representatives, So much an assuring to himselfe a negative voyce to the freeholders Election of their Representatives, that the Governour is Intreated to pardon us if this is a Different treatment from what he expected; It is not the Effects of passionate heats or the Transports of Vindictive Tempers, but the Serious Resentments of a House of Representatives For a Notorious violation of the liberties of the people to whom they could not be just nor answer the trust reposed in them Should they declyne letting the Governor know they are Extremely Dissatisfied at so unkind a treatment Especially when its Causes and Effects Conspire to render it so disagreeable.”