New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [115]
So surely, he’d felt, if decent men like himself used common sense, the affairs of the colonies could be set in good order. But it hadn’t happened. The last five years had been a disaster.
For a short time, when the Stamp Act had been repealed, he had hoped that good sense might prevail. He’d been one of those who’d urged the Assembly to supply provisions to the British troops again.
“God knows,” he’d pointed out to one of the Assembly Whigs, “we need the troops, and they have to be fed and paid.”
“Can’t do it, John,” was the reply. “Point of principle. It’s a tax we haven’t agreed to.”
“So why don’t we just agree to it?” he’d asked.
But if he could see why the ministers in London felt the colonies were being obstructive, why did the London men, in turn, have to be so arrogant?
For their next move had been an insult. It had come from a new minister, named Townshend: a series of duties, slapped on a whole range of items including paper, glass and tea. “New minister, new tax,” Master sighed. “Can’t they play any other tune?” But the sting was in the tail. The money raised wasn’t only to pay for the troops. It would be used to pay the salaries of the provincial governors and their officials too.
And, of course, the New York Whigs were furious.
“The governors have always been paid by our elected Assembly,” they protested. “It’s the one thing that gives us some control over them. If the governors are all paid from London, they can ignore us entirely.”
“It’s obvious, John,” a fellow merchant told him. “London wants to destroy us.” And then he had added: “So to hell with them.”
In no time, the merchants were refusing to trade with London again. The Assembly, it seemed to Master, was losing its way. But worst of all had been the damned Sons of Liberty. Charlie White and his friends. They’d practically taken over the streets.
They’d erected a huge Liberty Pole, tall as a ship’s mast, on the Bowling Green, right in front of the fort. They were always having fights with the redcoats there. If the soldiers took the pole down, the Liberty Boys would raise another one, even bigger, a totem of triumph and defiance. And the Assembly men were now so frightened that they pandered to them. Some of the Liberty boys were even standing for election themselves. “If we’re not careful,” Master warned, “this city will be governed by the mob.”
On top of all this had come the trouble with the Dissenters.
Master didn’t mind Dissenters. There had always been plenty in New York: respectable Presbyterians, the Huguenot congregation of the French church, and the Dutch of course. Then there were Lutherans and Moravians, Methodists and Quakers. A fellow called Dodge had started a group of Baptists. Beyond even the Dissenters, for that matter, there had always been a community of New York Jews.
The trouble had started with a simple, legal issue. Trinity Church was a corporation. Corporate status brought legal and financial benefits. So then the Presbyterian churches had decided that they ought to be corporations too. The issue, however, was delicate. The king’s coronation oath, and much historic legislation, obliged the government to uphold the Church of England. To incorporate a Dissenting Church might be a legal and certainly a political problem. As soon as the Presbyterians raised the issue, however, all the other churches wanted to incorporate too. The government had not agreed. The Dissenters were disappointed.
But alas, he had to admit, it was his own Church which had thrown fuel onto the