Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [119]
For rich and influential New Yorkers, the kind who dominated the Assembly and Common Council, this was exactly as it should be. To their way of thinking, a politically engaged “commonality” meant instability and upheaval because men of little or no property, even freemen of the corporation, lacked the judgment and self-discipline needed for participation in public affairs. And because they depended on others for trade, patronage, and employment, such men (like women and children) could never be trusted to think or act independently: when they entered the political arena it was certain to be as mere tools of someone else. A stable, effective system of government was thus one in which the mass of citizens deferred to the leadership of their social superiors—just as they now appeared to be doing in New York.
But there were other reasons for the torpor of public life in the city. For one, except for the annual Common Council elections, the freemen had few venues for sustained political activity. All the important citywide offices were appointive, besides which Assembly elections occurred only at the discretion of the governor or on the death of the monarch (not until 1743 was legislation adopted that mandated elections at least once every seven years). All told, in the eighty-four years between 1691 and 1775 New Yorkers voted for assemblyman on only thirty-one occasions.
For another, the law required viva voce or “voice” voting in both charter and provincial elections, meaning that every voter declared his preference, openly, before election officials, candidates, and neighbors. While the chilling effect of this procedure cannot be discounted, freemen were not altogether vulnerable to the blandishments of powerful men. Master craftsmen owned their own shops and tools, determined for themselves how often and how hard they would work, and took a fierce pride in the “mysteries” and traditions of their trades; journeymen weren’t employees but prospective equals sharing similar assumptions and expectations.
New York’s political quiescence in the early eighteenth century thus had less to do with deference, as such, than with a combination of institutional constraints and popular indifference to the issues that tended to dominate public affairs. Governors fought with the Assembly for control over the public purse. Landed and mercantile interests jockeyed for advantage. But what did any of that matter to ordinary freemen of the municipal corporation? When they needed to sit up and take notice, they would—and did.
THE MASTER’S VOICE
And what of all those residents, roughly two out of every three adults, excluded from the corporate community by reason of gender, race, or poverty? How did the freemen expect to secure their compliance with municipal rules and regulations?
The maintenance of law and order depended—by day—on the constables of each ward (one of whom seems to have been designated high constable). From nine o’clock at night to daybreak the following morning the night watch took over—“four good And honest Inhabitants householders,” as the Common Council described them in 1698, who were paid to “go round the Citty Each Hour in the Night with a Bell and there to proclaime the season of the weather and the Hour of the Night and if they Meet in their Rounds Any people disturbing the peace or lurking about Any persons house or committing any theft they take the most prudent way they Can to Secure the said persons.” Attempts were made from time to time to improve on the system, now by adding more men, now by paying the men for their efforts. The thinness of municipal police power was unmistakable, however, and it was never regarded as the city’s main line