42 



The First Constitution of New Torlc. 



wherewith the bigotry and ambition of weak and wicked princes have 

 scourged mankind." 



Here was the beginning of that absolute toleration in religious 

 belief, and the complete separation of church and State, in the United 

 States. New York was so far in advance of her sister States because 

 there was so much of the spirit of Holland in her early institutions, 

 and because no one of the classes that had chosen a particular way in 

 which to worship God was in political or social ascendancy within 

 her borders. With the Dutch Protestants were mingled the English 

 Puritans and the French Huguenots in nearly equal proportions. Upon 

 this body, were grafted segments of German, Swedish, Scottish and 

 Irish, besides Catholics, Quakers and Churchmen from England. It 

 is said that eighteen languages were spoken in the thriving village 

 of New Amsterdam, when Stuy vesant surrendered the fortress to the 

 English. All these diverse elements found a neutral ground in the 

 principle of toleration. They were all more or less directly repre- 

 sented in the convention from which emanated the Constitution of 

 1777. 



That convention was composed of men in every sense representative. 

 They had had large experience in public affairs, in the colonial as- 

 semblies, or the continental congress, or the corporation meetings. A 

 committee of thirteen was appointed to draft the Constitution. Of 

 these John Jay, Robert R. Livingston, Gouverneur Morris and J ames 

 Duane were the men who left their individual impress upon the 

 instrument. Upon Mr. Jay devolved the principal labor of its prep- 

 aration, and to him belongs its chief honor. The original drafts, 

 still preserved in the State Library at Albany, are almost entirely in 

 Mr. Jay's handwriting. 



In the distinctive features of the Constitution of 1777, we can trace 

 unerringly the political convictions of its framers. Mr. Jay and the 

 associates I have named were born in New York, all graduates of 

 King's college, all bred lawyers, and at the close of the war all 

 espoused the Federalist side of national politics. They had learned, 

 by bitter experience, to distrust a supreme authority; but they were 

 not Democrats, either by habit of mind, or by education and associa- 

 tion. Judge Hammond says that originally New York was the least 

 democratic of the colonies, and all the facts sustain his judgment. 

 The early political principles of the colony somewhat resembled those 

 of a feudal aristocracy. There was no written charter, as in Rhode 

 Island and Connecticut, where for years before the revolution there 

 existed a pure democracy. The difference between the colonies in this 



