undertook to change the objects of the professorships. They excluded the two schools for divinity, and that for the Greek and Latin languages, and substituted others; so that at present they stand thus :

A Professorship for Law and Police:
Anatomy and Medicine:

Natural Philosophy and Mathematics :

Moral Philosophy, the Law of Nature and Nations, the Fine Arts:

Modern Languages:

For the Brafferton."

To the professorships usually established in the universities of Europe, it would seem proper to add one for the ancient languages, and literature of the north, on account of their connexion with our own language, laws, customs, and history. The purposes of the Brafferton institution might be better answered, by maintaining a perpetual mission among the Indian tribes, the object of which, besides instructing them in the principles of christianity, as the founder requires, should be to collect their traditions, laws, customs, languages and other circumstances, which might lead to the discovery of their relation with one another, or descent from other nations. When these objects were accomplished with one tribe, the missionary might pass on to another, &c.

COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURES, INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR TRADE, &c.

"We never had an interior trade of any importance. Our exterior commerce has suffered very much from the beginning of the present contest. During this time we have manufactured within our families the most necessary articles of clothing. Those of cotton will bear some com

parison with the same kinds of manufacture in Europe; but those of wool, flax, and hemp are very coarse, unsight, ly, and unpleasant and such is our attachment to agriculture, and such our preference for foreign manufactures, that be it wise or unwise, our people will certainly return as soon as they can, to the raising raw materials, and exchanging them for finer manufactures than they are able to execute themselves.

"The political economists of Europe have established it as a principle, that every state should endeavor to manufacture for itself: and this principle, like many others, we transfer to America, without calculating the difference of circumstance which should often produce a difference of result. In Europe the lands either are cultivated, or locked up against the cultivator...Manufacture must therefore be resorted to of necessity, not of choice, to support the surplus of their people. But we have an immensity of land courting the industry of the husbandman. Is it best then that all our citizens should be employed in its improvement, or that one half should be called off from that, to exercise manufactures and handicraft arts for the other? Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth. Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators, is a phænomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example. It is the mark set on those, who not looking up to heaven, to their own soil and industry, as does the husbandman, for their subsistence, depend for it on casualties and caprice of customers. Dependance begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition. This, the natural progress and consequence of the arts, VOL. II.

40

of

has sometimes perhaps been retarded by accidental circumstances but, generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of the other classes of citizens bears in any state to that of its husbandmen, is the proportion of its unsound to its healthy parts, and is a good enough barometer whereby to measure its degree of corruption. While we' have land to labor, then let us never wish to see our cit izens occupied at a work-bench, or twirling a distaff. Carpenters, masons, smiths, are wanting in husbandry: but, for the general operations of manufacture, let work-shops remain in Europe. It is better to carry provisions and materials to workmen there, then bring them to the provisions and materials, and with them their manners and principles. The loss by the transportation of commodities across the Atlantic will be made up in happiness and permanence of government. The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution."

Jefferson's Notes.,

CHAPTER XXIII.

NEW-YORK CONTINUED FROM THE DEATH OF THE EARL OF

BELLOMONT, 1701, TO THE DEATH OF LORD LOVELACE, 1709.

THE Earl of Bellomont was a minister for good to the colonies over which he presided, and his death was severely felt. Nanfan, the lieut. governor, was then absent, in the Island of Barbadoes, and the questions of administration that sprang up in the council, became serious.The old party of Leisler and Schuyler was revived, the council were divided. The partizans of Leisler claimed that the powers of administration belonged of right to the whole council; but Col. Smith claimed the right of administering the government, as the oldest counsellor, and president of that board. Here they were at issue. Col. Schuyler, and Robert Livingston stood aloof, and refused to join the council. The assembly were convened on the 2d of April, and were constrained to adjourn from time to time, to wait for the decision of the council upon their executive head. At length they resolved to decide a question for the council, which they appeared to be incompetent, in their present warmth of temper, to decide for themselves; and accordingly resolved, that the executive charge of the government devolved upon the council, by a majority of voices, and not by a single head. This decision gave no relief; the council were not prepared to receive this order from the house, and accordingly the house of assembly adjourned to the first Tuesday in June.

On the 19th of May, 1701, Lieut. Gov. Nanfan arrived, and decided the controversy, and entered upon the duties. of his office.

At this time his majesty granted two thousand pounds for the defence of the northern frontier, and five hundred pounds for the purpose of erecting a fort in the country of Onondaga. The lords of trade ordered a court of chancery to be erected, to commence and continue its sittings, on the first Tuesday of each month; which court was to be composed of the governor and council, or any two of their board. Commissioners were also impowered to appoint masters, clerks, and a register for this court. On the 2d of September, 1701, the court was completely organized, and commenced its sittings. The parties continuing warm in the legislative body, to the damage of the public weal, the lieut. governor thought fit to dissolve the assembly on' the 1st of June, 1701.

The lieut. governor issued his writs of election for a new assembly to be convened in August; this revived the old party feelings and strife; but the Leislerians prevailed, and returned a majority to the house of assembly, which was convened on the 19th of August, and Abraham Gov; erneur was elected speaker; and the county of Dutchess, for the first time, sent two representatives. Gov. Nanfan, in his speech to the assembly, announced the liberal grants of his majesty, as before stated; also, a grant of a large tract of land to the crown, by the Five Nations, on the 19th of July, as a pledge for their protection against the French. Also, that his majesty had granted a salary of three hundred pounds per annum to the chief justice, and one hundred and fifty to the attorney-general, and that they had both arrived from England. The spir it of controversy, which had constrained the governor to dissolve the last assembly, had lost none of its force or bitterness, by passing through the ordeal of a popular election; and the parties were again convened in the full strength of the old spirit, sharpened and poisoned by the bitterness of tumultuous, electioneering strife.