Great and small burghers.

tion of the two classes of "great burghers" and "small burghers," introduced by Stuyvesant in 1657. The distinction was imitated from the custom in Amsterdam and other Dutch cities. Members of the council, burgomasters and schepens, officers of the militia, and ministers of the gospel, with their descendants in the male line, were enrolled as great burghers; and other persons could be admitted to that class on payment of 50 guilders into the city treasury. These great burghers were eligible to public offices, and in case of conviction for a capital offence were exempt from confiscation or attainder. The class of small burghers comprised all other persons born in the city, or who had dwelt there for a year and six weeks; all men who were married to the daughters of burghers; all salaried servants of the West India Company; and all persons who kept a shop or permanently transacted business in the city. Strangers temporarily in the city could be enrolled in this class by paying a fee of 25 guilders. The privileges pertaining to it scarcely extended beyond sundry facilities for trading.1 This division into classes proved very unpopular, and it was abolished in 1668 with general satisfaction.

Several families from Boston now bought estates in New York and came there to live, willing perhaps, like Maverick, to escape from the saintly rule of the "lords brethren." The most important and memorable act of Lovelace's administration was the establishment of a regular monthly

1 O'Callaghan, History of New Netherland, ii. 341.

mail service through southern New England between New York and Boston. This event

The monthly

mail be

tween New

York and

Boston.

may best be described by quoting the letter which Lovelace sent to Winthrop, at Hartford, in December, 1672: "I here present you with two rarities, a pacquett of the latest intelligence I could meet withal, and a Post. By the first, you will see what has been acted on the stage of Europe; by the latter you will meet with a monthly fresh supply; so that if it receive but the same ardent inclinations from you as at first it hath from myself, by our monthly advisoes all publique occurrences may be transmitted between us, together with severall other great conveniencys of publique importance, consonant to the commands laid upon us by His sacred Majestie, who strictly injoins all his American subjects to enter into a close correspondency with each other. This I look upon as the most compendious means to beget a mutual understanding; and that it may receive all the countenance from you for its future duration, I shall acquaint you with the model I have proposed; and if you please but to make an addition to it, or substraction, or any other alteration, I shall be ready to comply with you. This person that has undertaken the imployment I conceaved most proper, being both active, stout, and indefatigable. He is sworne as to his fidelity. I have affixt an annual sallery on him, which, together with the advantage of his letters and other small portable packes, may afford him a handsome livelyhood. Hartford is the first stage I have designed him to change his horse,

where constantly I expect he should have a fresh one lye. All the letters outward shall be delivered gratis, with a signification of Post Payd on the superscription; and reciprocally, we expect all to us free. Each first Monday of the month he sets out from New York, and is to return within the month from Boston to us againe. The maile has divers baggs, according to the townes the letters are designed to, which are all sealed up till their arrivement, with the seale of the Secretarie's Office, whose care it is on Saturday night to seale them up. Only by-letters are in an open bag, to dispense by the wayes. Thus you see the scheme I have drawne to promote a happy correspondence. I shall only beg of you your furtherance to so universall a good work; that is to afford him directions where and to whom to make his application to upon his arrival at Boston; as likewise to afford him what letters you can to establish him in that imployment there. It would be much advantagious to our designe, if in the intervall you discoursed with some of the most able woodmen, to make out the best and most facile way for a Post, which in processe of tyme would be the King's best highway; as likewise passages and accommodation at Rivers, fords, or other necessary places." 1

The first mail on the American continent started from New York for Boston on New Year's Day, 1673. The postman followed the Bowery Lane till it merged into the wagon-road just finished to

1 General Entries, iv. 243; Mass. Hist. Soc. Trumbull Papers, MSS., xx. 110.

the new village of Harlem, where even then the beer gave a foretaste of the preeminence in brewing to which Manhattan has since attained. After a cooling draught he was ready to go on The posthis way past "Annie's Hook," or Pel- man's route. ham Manor, to Greenwich and Stamford, and so on to New Haven, Hartford, and Springfield, crossing all rivers and arms of the sea in boats, as was necessary until the last years of the eighteenth century. Now it was a stretch of newly built English wagon-road that our postman followed, but oftener a mere bridle-path, or an ancient Indian trail, and sometimes the way must needs be indicated by marking trees in the virgin forest. From Springfield eastward his path must have followed the same winding watercourses of which the Boston and Albany railroad now takes advantage, climbing near Quabaug (Brookfield) to a thousand feet above sea-level, then gently descending into the pleasant valley of the Charles. While our indefatigable carrier was thus earning his "handsome livelyhood," a locked box stood in the secretary's office in New York awaiting his return, and in it from day to day the little heap of eastward bound letters grew. When the postman returned with his prepaid mail he emptied his New York bag on a broad table in the coffeehouse where citizens most did congregate. That locked box and that coffee-house table had in them the prophecy of the great post-office that now stands in the City Hall Park, and indirectly of all the post-offices, urban and rural, in Englishspeaking America. There was admirable foresight

in Governor Lovelace's scheme. That indefatigable horseman of his was an indispensable instrument in "begetting a mutual understanding;" he was one of the pioneers of our Federal Union.

Another prophetic incident of Lovelace's administration was the establishment of the first Merchants' Exchange, —a weekly meeting, on Friday mornings, at about the site where Exchange Place now crosses Broad Street. Some of the first American ships, moreover, were built at New York under this governor, and they were staunch craft.

The Long Island protest against

Lovelace's rule, like that of Nicolls, was autocratic but in no wise oppressive. The change from Dutch to English rule had not yet bestowed English self-government upon the province of New York. The despotism of Kieft and Stuyvesant was continued, only now, instead of the iron clutch, it was a stroke of velvet. This was simply due to the different personal qualities of the rulers. The most restive part of the population, under this prolonged autocracy, was to be found arbitrary in the English towns on Long Island. Their people persistently grumbled at this sort of government to which no Englishmen had from time immemorial been subjected. They wanted a representative assembly. In 1670 there was an approach toward an explosion. A tax was levied upon these Long Island towns to pay for repairs upon Fort James, in New York. The case was quite similar to that of the tax levied by the governor and council of Massachusetts in 1631 upon the men of Watertown, to pay for a palisadoed wall in Cambridge. The men of Water

taxation.