University of Virginia Library

5. CHAP. V.

Among the many wrecks and fragments of exalted
wisdom, which have floated down the stream
of time, from venerable antiquity, and have been
carefully picked up by those humble, but industrious
wights, who ply along the shores of literature,
we find the following sage ordinance of Charondas,
the locrian legislator—Anxious to preserve the ancient
laws of the state from the additions and improvements
of profound “country members,” or
officious candidates for popularity, he ordained, that
whoever proposed a new law, should do it with a
halter about his neck; so that in case his proposition
was rejected, he was strung up—and there the
matter ended.

This salutary institution had such an effect, that
for more than two hundred years there was only

one trifling alteration in the criminal code—and the
whole race of lawyers starved to death for want of
employment. The consequence of this was, that
the Locrians being unprotected by an overwhelming
load of excellent laws, and undefended by a standing
army of pettifoggers and sheriff's officers, lived
very lovingly together, and were such a happy people,
that we scarce hear any thing of them throughout
the whole Grecian history—for it is well known
that none but your unlucky, quarrelsome, rantipole
nations make any noise in the world.

Well would it have been for William the Testy,
had he happily, in the course of his “universal acquirements,”
stumbled upon this precaution of the
good Charondas. On the contrary, he conceived
that the true policy of a legislator was to multiply
laws, and thus secure the property, the persons and
the morals of the people, by surrounding them in a
manner with men traps and spring guns, and besetting
even the sweet sequestered walks of private
life, with quick-set hedges, so that a man could
scarcely turn, without the risk of encountering some
of these pestiferous protectors. Thus was he continually
coining petty laws for every petty offence
that occurred, until in time they became too numerous
to be remembered, and remained like those of
certain modern legislators, in a manner dead letters
—revived occasionally for the purpose of individual
oppression, or to entrap ignorant offenders.

Petty courts consequently began to appear,
where the law was administered with nearly as
much wisdom and impartiality as in those august
tribunals the aldermen's and justice shops of the
present day. The plaintiff was generally favoured,
as being a customer and bringing business to the
shop; the offences of the rich were discreetly
winked at—for fear of hurting the feelings of their
friends;—but it could never be laid to the charge
of the vigilant burgomasters, that they suffered
vice to skulk unpunished, under the disgraceful
rags of poverty.

About this time may we date the first introduction
of capital punishments—a goodly gallows being
erected on the water-side, about where Whitehall
stairs are at present, a little to the east of the
battery. Hard by also was erected another gibbet
of a very strange, uncouth and unmatchable description,
but on which the ingenious William Kieft valued
himself not a little, being a punishment entirely
of his own invention.[7]

It was for loftiness of altitude not a whit inferior
to that of Haman, so renowned in bible history;
but the marvel of the contrivance was, that the
culprit instead of being suspended by the neck, according

to venerable custom, was hoisted by the
waistband, and was kept for an hour together,
dangling and sprawling between heaven and earth—
to the infinite entertainment and doubtless great
edification of the multitude of respectable citizens,
who usually attend upon exhibitions of the kind.

It is incredible how the little governor chuckled
at beholding caitiff vagrants and sturdy beggars
thus swinging by the breech, and cutting antic gambols
in the air. He had a thousand pleasantries,
and mirthful conceits to utter upon the occasions
He called them his dandle-lions—his wild fowl—
his high flyers—his spread eagles—his goshawks—
his scare-crows and finally his gallows birds, which
ingenious appellation, though originally confined to
worthies who had taken the air in this strange manner,
has since grown to be a cant name given to all
candidates for legal elevation. This punishment,
moreover, if we may credit the assertions of certain
grave etymologists, gave the first hint for a
kind of harnessing, or strapping, by which our forefathers
braced up their multifarious breeches, and
which has of late years been revived and continue.
to be worn at the present day. It still bears the
name of the object to which it owes its origin; being
generally termed a pair of gallows-es—though
I am informed it is sometimes vulgarly denominated
suspenders.

Such were the admirable improvements of

William Kieft in criminal law—nor was his civil
code less a matter of wonderment, and much does
it grieve me that the limits of my work will not
suffer me to expatiate on both, with the prolixity
they deserve. Let it suffice then to say; that in a
little while the blessings of innumerable laws became
notoriously apparent. It was soon found
necessary to have a certain class of men to expound
and confound them—divers pettifoggers accordingly
made their appearance, under whose protecting
care the community was soon set together by
the ears.

I would not here, for the whole world, be
thought to insinuate any thing derogatory to the
profession of the law, or to its dignified members.
Well am I aware, that we have in this ancient
city an innumerable host of worthy gentlemen,
who have embraced that honourable order,
not for the sordid love of filthy lucre, or the selfish
cravings of renown, but through no other motives
under heaven, but a fervent zeal for the correct administration
of justice, and a generous and disinterested
devotion to the interests of their fellow citizens!—Sooner
would I throw this trusty pen into
the flames, and cork up my ink bottle forever
(which is the worst punishment a maggot brained
author can inflict upon himself) than infringe even
for a nail's breadth upon the dignity of this truly
benevolent class of citizens—on the contrary I allude

solely to that crew of caitiff scouts who in these
latter days of evil have become so numerous—who
infest the skirts of the profession, as did the recreant
Cornish knights the honourable order of chivalry
—who, under its auspices, commit their depredations
on society—who thrive by quibbles, quirks
and chicanery, and like vermin swarm most, where
there is most corruption.

Nothing so soon awakens the malevolent passions
as the facility of gratification. The courts of
law would never be so constantly crowded with petty,
vexatious and disgraceful suits, were it not for
the herds of pettifogging lawyers that infest them.
These tamper with the passions of the lower and
more ignorant classes; who, as if poverty was not
a sufficient misery in itself, are always ready to
heighten it, by the bitterness of litigation. They
are in law what quacks are in medicine—exciting
the malady for the purpose of profiting by the cure,
and retarding the cure, for the purpose of augmenting
the fees. Where one destroys the constitution,
the other impoverishes the purse; and it may likewise
be observed, that a patient, who has once been
under the hands of a quack, is ever after dabbling
in drugs, and poisoning himself with infallible remedies;
and an ignorant man who has once meddled
with the law under the auspices of one of these empyrics,
is forever after embroiling himself with his
neighbours, and impoverishing himself with successful

law suits.—My readers will excuse this digression
into which I have been unwarily betrayed;
but I could not avoid giving a cool, unprejudiced
account of an abomination too prevalent in this excellent
city, and with the effects of which I am unluckily
acquainted to my cost; having been nearly
ruined by a law suit, which was unjustly decided
against me—and my ruin having been completed,
by another which was decided in my favour.

It is an irreparable loss to posterity, that of the
innumerable laws enacted by William the Testy,
which doubtless formed a code that might have
vied with those of Solon, Lycurgus or Sancho Panza,
but few have been handed down to the present
day, among which the most important is one framed
in an unlucky moment, to prohibit the universal
practice of smoking. This he proved by mathematical
demonstration, to be not merely a heavy
tax upon the public pocket, but an incredible consumer
of time, a hideous encourager of idleness,
and of course a deadly bane to the morals of the
people. Ill fated Kieft!—had he lived in this most
enlightened and libel loving age, and attempted to
subvert the inestimable liberty of the press, he
could not have struck more closely, upon the sensibilities
of the million.

The populace were in as violent a turmoil as
the constitutional gravity of their deportment would

permit—a mob of factious citizens had even the
hardihood to assemble around the little governor's
house, where setting themselves resolutely down,
like a besieging army before a fortress, they one and
all fell to smoking with a determined perseverance,
that plainly evinced it was their intention, to funk
him into terms with villainous Cow-pen mundungus!—Already
was the stately mansion of the governor
enveloped in murky clouds, and the puissant
little man, almost strangled in his hole, when
bethinking himself, that there was no instance on
record, of any great man of antiquity perishing in
so ignoble a manner (the case of Pliny the elder being
the only one that bore any resemblance)—he was
fain to come to terms, and compromise with the
mob, on condition that they should spare his life,
by immediately extinguishing their tobacco pipes.

The result of the armistice was, that though he
continued to permit the custom of smoking, yet did
he abolish the fair long pipes which prevailed in the
days of Wouter Van Twiller, denoting ease, tranquillity
and sobriety of deportment, and in place
thereof introduced little captious short pipes, two
inches in length; which he observed could be stuck
in one corner of the mouth, or twisted in the hat-band,
and would not be in the way of business.
But mark, oh reader! the deplorable consequences.
The smoke of these villainous little pipes—continually
ascending in a cloud about the nose, penetrated

into and befogged the cerebellum, dried up all the
kindly moisture of the brain, and rendered the people
as vapourish and testy as their renowned little
governor—nay, what is more, from a goodly burley
race of folk, they became, like our honest dutch
farmers, who smoke short pipes, a lanthorn-jawed,
smoak-dried, leathern-hided race of men.

Indeed it has been remarked by the observant
writer of the Stuyvesant manuscript, that under the
administration of Wilhelmus Kieft the disposition
of the inhabitants of New Amsterdam experienced
an essential change, so that they became very
meddlesome and factious. The constant exacerbations
of temper into which the little governor
was thrown, by the maraudings on his frontiers,
and his unfortunate propensity to experiment and
innovation, occasioned him to keep his council in a
continual worry—and the council being to the
people at large, what yeast or leaven is to a batch,
they threw the whole community into a ferment—
and the people at large being to the city, what the
mind is to the body, the unhappy commotions they
underwent operated most disastrously, upon New
Amsterdam—insomuch, that in certain of their
paroxysms of consternation and perplexity, they
begat several of the most crooked, distorted and
abominable streets, lanes and alleys, with which
this metropolis is disfigured.

But the worst of the matter was, that just about
this time the mob, since called the sovereign people,
like Balaam's ass, began to grow more enlightened
than its rider, and exhibited a strange
desire of governing itself. This was another effect
of the “universal acquirements” of William
the Testy. In some of his pestilent researches
among the rubbish of antiquity, he was struck with
admiration at the institution of public tables among
the Lacedemonians, where they discussed topics
of a general and interesting nature—at the schools
of the philosophers, where they engaged in profound
disputes upon politics and morals—where grey
beards were taught the rudiments of wisdom, and
youths learned to become little men, before they
were boys. “There is nothing” said the ingenious
Kieft, shutting up the book, “there is nothing
more essential to the well management of a country,
than education among the people; the basis of a
good government, should be laid in the public mind.”
—now this was true enough, but it was ever the
wayward fate of William the Testy, that when he
thought right, he was sure to go to work wrong.
In the present instance he could scarcely eat or
sleep, until he had set on foot brawling debating
societies, among the simple citizens of New Amsterdam.
This was the one thing wanting to
complete his confusion. The honest Dutch burghers,
though in truth but little given to argument

or wordy altercation, yet by dint of meeting often
together, fuddling themselves with strong drink,
beclouding their brains with tobacco smoke, and
listening to the harangues of some half a dozen
oracles, soon became exceedingly wise, and—as is
always the case where the mob is politically enlightened—exceedingly
discontented. They found
out, with wonderful quickness of discernment, the
fearful error in which they had indulged, in fancying
themselves the happiest people in creation—
and were fortunately convinced, that, all circumstances
to the contrary notwithstanding, they were
a very unhappy, deluded, and consequently, ruined
people!

In a short time the quidnuncs of New Amsterdam
formed themselves into sage juntos of
political croakers, who daily met together to groan
over public affairs, and make themselves miserable;
thronging to these unhappy assemblages with the
same eagerness, that your zealots have in all ages
abandoned the milder and more peaceful paths of
religion to crowd to the howling convocations of
fanaticism. We are naturally prone to discontent,
and avaricious after imaginary causes of lamentation—like
lubberly monks we belabour our own
shoulders, and seem to take a vast satisfaction in
the music of our own groans. Nor is this said for
the sake of paradox; daily experience shews the
truth of these sage observations. It is next to a

farce to offer consolation, or to think of elevating
the spirits of a man, groaning under ideal calamities;
but nothing is more easy than to render him wretched,
though on the pinnacle of felicity; as it is an
Herculean task to hoist a man to the top of a steeple,
though the merest child can topple him off thence.

In the sage assemblages I have noticed, the
philosophic reader will at once perceive the faint
germs of those sapient convocations called popular
meetings, prevalent at our day—Hither resorted
all those idlers and “squires of low degree,” who
like rags, hang loose upon the back of society, and
are ready to be blown away by every wind of doctrine.
Coblers abandoned their stalls and hastened
hither to give lessons on political economy—
blacksmiths left their handicraft and suffered their
own fires to go out, while they blew the bellows
and stirred up the fire of faction; and even taylors,
though but the shreds and patches, the ninth parts
of humanity, neglected their own measures, to attend
to the measures of government—Nothing
was wanting but half a dozen newspapers and patriotic
editors, to have completed this public illumination
and to have thrown the whole province in
an uproar!

I should not forget to mention, that these popular
meetings were always held at a noted tavern;
for houses of that description, have always been
found the most congenial nurseries of politicks;

abounding with those genial streams which give
strength and sustenance to faction—We are told that
the ancient Germans, had an admirable mode of
treating any question of importance; they first deliberated
upon it when drunk, and afterwards reconsidered
it, when sober. The shrewder mobs of
America, who dislike having two minds upon a
subject, both determine and act upon it drunk; by
which means a world of cold and tedious speculation
is dispensed with—and as it is universally allowed
that when a man is drunk he sees double, it
follows most conclusively that he sees twice as well
as his sober neighbours.