The Quaker colonists grouped round Burlington and Salem, on the Delaware, and the Scotch Covenanters and New England colonists grouped around Perth Amboy and Newark, near the mouth of the Hudson, made up the two Jerseys.Neither colony had a numerous population, and the stretch of country lying between them was during most of the colonial period a wilderness.It is now crossed by the railway from Trenton to New York.It has always been a line of travel from the Delaware to the Hudson.At first there was only an Indian trail across it, but after 1695 there was a road, and after 1738 a stage route.
In 1702, while still separated by this wilderness, the two Jerseys were united politically by the proprietors voluntarily surrendering all their political rights to the Crown.The political distinction between East Jersey and West Jersey was thus abolished; their excellent free constitutions were rendered of doubtful authority; and from that time to the Revolution they constituted one colony under the control of a royal governor appointed by the Crown.
The change was due to the uncertainty and annoyance caused for their separate governments when their right to govern was in doubt owing to interference on the part of New York and the desire of the King to make them a Crown colony.The original grant of the Duke of York to the proprietors Berkeley and Carteret had given title to the soil but had been silent as to the right to govern.The first proprietors and their successors had always assumed that the right to govern necessarily accompanied this gift of the land.Such a privilege, however, the Crown was inclined to doubt.William Penn was careful to avoid this uncertainty when he received his charter for Pennsylvania.
Profiting by the sad example of the Jerseys, he made sure that he was given both the title to the soil and the right to govern.
The proprietors, however, now surrendered only their right to govern the Jerseys and retained their ownership of the land; and the people always maintained that they, on their part, retained all the political rights and privileges which had been granted them by the proprietors.And these rights were important, for the concessions or constitutions granted by the proprietors under the advanced Quaker influence of the time were decidedly liberal.The assemblies, as the legislatures were called, had the right to meet and adjourn as they pleased, instead of having their meetings and adjournments dictated by the governor.This was an important right and one which the Crown and royal governors were always trying to restrict or destroy, because it made an assembly very independent.This contest for colonial rights was exactly similar to the struggle of the English Parliament for liberty against the supposed right of the Stuart kings to call and adjourn Parliament as they chose.If the governor could adjourn the assembly when he pleased, he could force it to pass any laws he wanted or prevent its passing any laws at all.The two Jersey assemblies under their Quaker constitutions also had the privilege of making their own rules of procedure, and they had jurisdiction over taxes, roads, towns, militia, and all details of government.These rights of a legislature are familiar enough now to all.Very few people realize, however, what a struggle and what sacrifices were required to attain them.
The rest of New Jersey colonial history is made up chiefly of struggles over these two questions--the rights of the proprietors and their quitrents as against the people, and the rights of the new assembly as against the Crown.There were thus three parties, the governor and his adherents, the proprietors and their friends, and the assembly and the people.The proprietors had the best of the change, for they lost only their troublesome political power and retained their property.They never, however, received such financial returns from the property as the sons of William Penn enjoyed from Pennsylvania.But the union of the Jerseys seriously curtailed the rights enjoyed by the people under the old government, and all possibility of a Quaker government in West Jersey was ended.It was this experience in the Jerseys, no doubt, that caused William Penn to require so many safeguards in selling his political rights in Pennsylvania to the Crown that the sale was, fortunately for the colony, never completed.
The assembly under the union met alternately at Perth Amboy and at Burlington.Lord Cornbury, the first governor, was also Governor of New York, a humiliating arrangement that led to no end of trouble.The executive government, the press, and the judiciary were in the complete control of the Crown and the Governor, who was instructed to take care that "God Almighty be duly served according to the rites of the Church of England, and the traffic in merchantable negroes encouraged." Cornbury contemptuously ignored the assembly's right to adjourn and kept adjourning it till one was elected which would pass the laws he wanted.Afterwards the assemblies were less compliant, and, under the lead of two able men, Lewis Morris of East Jersey and Samuel Jennings, a Quaker of West Jersey, they stood up for their rights and complained to the mother country.But Cornbury went on fighting them, granted monopolies, established arbitrary fees, prohibited the proprietors from selling their lands, prevented three members of the assembly duly elected from being sworn, and was absent in New York so much of the time that the laws went unexecuted and convicted murderers wandered about at large.In short, he went through pretty much the whole list of offenses of a corrupt and good-for-nothing royal governor of colonial times.
The union of the two colonies consequently seemed to involve no improvement over former conditions.At last, the protests and appeals of proprietors and people prevailed, and Cornbury was recalled.
