New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [77]
“Out! Leave us, sir,” the merchant shouted. But John remained oblivious.
“Ah.” His eyes now rested on Kate, who, since he was behind her, had turned around to look at him. “Miss Kate.” He nodded to himself. “My cousin. The lovely, I say the lovely, Miss Kate.”
“Sir?” she replied, scarcely knowing what it would be best to say. But she needn’t have worried, for her cousin had acquired a momentum of his own. He took a step forward, seemed about to topple, righted himself, and then cannoned into the back of her chair, against which he steadied himself for a moment as he lolled over her shoulder.
“What a pretty dress, cousin,” he cried. “You are beautiful tonight. You are always beautiful,” he cried out. “My beautiful cousin Kate. I kiss your hand.” And leaning over the back of her chair, he reached his hand down over her shoulder, attempting to take her hand in his. And then threw up.
He threw up over her hair, over her shoulder, over her arm, and all over her brown-and-white check dress.
He was still throwing up a moment later, as his enraged father dragged him from the room, leaving behind a scene of some confusion.
It was a bright, clear August morning, somewhat cooler than the days before, as the small carriage carrying Kate and her father rolled up the Boston road. Behind them the sound of cannon boomed out. The people of New York, whether their governor liked it or not, were giving a formal salute to Andrew Hamilton as he set out, in the other direction, for Philadelphia.
“Ha,” said her father, with satisfaction. “A salute deserved. It has been a visit worth making, Kate, despite the unfortunate incident last night. I am truly sorry, my child, that you should have suffered such a thing.”
“I did not mind, Father,” she answered. “I have known my brother and sisters to be sick in the past.”
“Not like that,” he answered firmly.
“He is young, Father. I think he is shy.”
“Pah,” said her father.
“I did not dislike him,” she said. “In fact—”
“There is no reason,” said her father decidedly, “for us to encounter those people any more.”
And since Boston was far away, and her father in control of her fate, she knew that she would never, in all her life, see her cousin John again.
As the salute of the cannon echoed over New York harbor, and old Andrew Hamilton took his leave, the townspeople could enjoy not only their triumph over a venal governor, but something more profound. Eliot Master’s statement had been correct. The Zenger trial did not change the law of libel, but it told every future governor that the citizens of New York, and every other town in the American colonies, would exercise what, without being philosophers, they believed to be their natural right to say and write what they pleased. The trial was never forgotten. It became a milestone in the history of America. And the people at the time sensed correctly that it was so.
There was one other feature of the trial that was little remarked upon, however.
The rights that Eliot Master believed in, the rights claimed by Andrew Hamilton and exercised by the jury, came from the common law of England. It was Englishmen, alone in Europe, who had executed their king for being a tyrant; it was England’s great poet, Milton, who had defined the freedom of the press; it was an English philosopher, Locke, who had argued for the existence of men’s natural rights. The men who fired the cannon knew they were British, and they were proud of it.
Yet when old Hamilton addressed the jury, he had made one other point that they had liked. An ancient law, he told them, might have been a good law long ago, in England; but it could also become a bad law centuries later, in America. Though no one particularly remarked upon this statement, the idea had been sown. And it would put down roots, and propagate, in the huge American land.
The Philadelphia Girl
1741
THE BOY MOVED cautiously. A May evening. Late shadows were falling, and nothing was safe. Not a street, not a house. If only he had known what was going on when he