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By Root 7446 0

. setting up personal henchmen with unlawful powers to control the judicial system of New York.” Over the next year the Morrisites, billing themselves as “the party of the people,” widened their popular appeal by calling for the adoption of electoral procedures already in place in Boston and Philadelphia: annual or triennial Assembly elections, the reapportionment of that body to reflect population growth, and adoption of the secret ballot (which would allow ordinary people to vote “for the Man they Love, and not for the haughty Tyrant they fear, and consequently hate”). They further proposed that mayors, sheriffs, and other officials be popularly elected and that judges be appointed during good behavior, protecting them from gubernatorial whim. They promised the city’s artisans to build a permanent almshouse (a project that would promote employment). They also pledged to issue paper money for the construction of fortifications (yet another public works project that would have the additional benefit of easing credit, bringing down interest rates, and affording relief to debtors).

The Morrisites swept the hotly contested municipal elections of September 1734, capturing control of the Common Council. Laboring New Yorkers voted for the upperclass candidates who most convincingly claimed to be favorable to their interest. But they elected men of their own kind as well. Among the popular party’s councilmen that year were a painter, three bakers, a bricklayer, and a bolter—“the meanest labourers, tradesmen and Artificers” in town, Cosby sniffed. At no time since the suppression of the Leislerians a generation earlier had working people been so actively engaged in city politics, or so successful.

THE CASE OF THE POOR PRINTER

Nor had political rhetoric been more strident. Week after week, Zenger’s Weekly Journal lashed Cosby for incompetence, influence peddling, corruption, collusion with the French, election fraud, and tyranny. His confederates were sycophantic politicians, rich merchants, “people in Exalted Stations,” and haughty “courtiers” who regarded their opponents as “Canaille or Dregs of the People.” By contrast, the “industrious poor” who backed Morris were truly “the support of any country.” Writers named “Timothy Wheelwright” and “John Chisel” urged honest working men—men like “Shuttle” the weaver, “Plane” the joiner, “Drive” the carter, “Mortar” the mason, and “Tar” the mariner—to defend their “rights and liberties” from “Gripe” the merchant, “Squeeze” the shopkeeper, and “Spintext and Quible” the lawyers. To be sure that his readers would see all this in its wider, British frame of reference, Zenger also reprinted essays from the Craftsman as well as lengthy excerpts from Cato’s Letters. Stylistically, too, the Journal imitated the Craftsman by treating its readers to the same outrageous lampoons, brutal caricatures, mocking ballads, and double-entendre advertisements that had delighted the denizens of London’s coffeehouses year after year.

The Gazette labored to respond in kind. It attributed the Weekly Journal to “a parcel of griping lawyers” who had failed to receive the patronage they hoped for from the governor. It reprinted selections from the standard English defenses of the established order and itemized the journal’s not infrequent errors of omission and commission. Others in the gubernatorial party issued pamphlets denouncing Morrisite appeals to “unthinking” people who were “of no Credit or Reputation, rak’d out of Bawdy-Houses and Kennels.”

Soon, however, Cosby and De Lancey tired of bandying words and resolved to silence the Journal by force. De Lancey asked a grand jury to indict Zenger for two “scandalous” songs published after the “popular” party’s victory in the 1734 elections. The jurors balked, claiming they couldn’t confirm the printer’s identity. Cosby then ordered the sheriff to arrest Zenger for “seditious libel” and burn four especially offensive issues of his paper. Both the Assembly and Common Council objected, to no avail. Zenger went to jail in mid-November 1734. De Lancey set his bail