levy. The bill was rejected by the council with severe comments on the injustice of the discrimination, especially on that against New York city. The council scouted the notion that the taxable wealth of the city and county of New York amounted to one-third of that of the whole province, and went on to show that the quota assigned to New York exceeded even onethird of the levy by more than the entire quotas of Suffolk, Queens and Richmond counties combined. There seems little doubt that Long Island was sponsor for this discrimination, for the House appointed the members from Suffolk and Queens counties as a committee to answer the council's representation which had embodied criticism of the quotas.

By the latter part of the same session it is evident that New York and Albany had rallied their forces. In framing the quotas of a tax for £13,000 they succeeded in winning over the delegations from Dutchess and Westchester counties and one vote each from Orange and Richmond counties. By means of this combination the discriminations in the earlier bill were corrected. New York's quota was fixed at thirty-three and onethird per cent, instead of forty-four per cent, and thereafter New York city always paid one-third of every tax levy. Albany's share was reduced from nineteen per cent to fourteen per cent, making the combined quotas of the two commercial centers forty-seven per cent instead of sixty-five per cent. This correction involved an increase of nearly one hundred per cent each in the cases of Queens and Suffolk counties-the significance of which is obvious. Equally significant is the fact that Dutchess and Westchester counties escaped for the time without any substantial increase in their quotas. Though participating with the Long Island counties in the original raid on New York and Albany, they were rewarded for their adhesion on this occasion to the New York-Albany combination by increases in their own quotas which were almost negligible.

The general domination of the New York-Albany combination with Dutchess and Westchester counties continued in the

1 Journal of Legisl. Council, II, 916-17. Journal of Assembly, II, 95–99, 101, 109-110. Col. Laws, III, 548, 577, 660.

apportionments of the taxes levied for the conduct of the fourth intercolonial war, 1755 to 1759, but with significant variations. The quotas in a tax of £45,000, voted in February, 1755, displayed especial tenderness for Albany, reducing its quota from a little over fourteen per cent to ten and three-fifths per cent. This made necessary substantial increases somewhere, and this time the blow fell on Westchester and Dutchess counties, whose quotas were nearly doubled, while Suffolk and Queens counties received slight mitigation. Westchester and Dutchess, however, could hardly expect much sympathy. Their percentages of the total white population stood respectively at fourteen and onethird per cent and nearly sixteen per cent, while their tax quotas in previous apportionments were five and one-half per cent and four and one-tenth per cent. Nevertheless, we find them resisting the increase of their quotas, in which resistance they were aided, though fruitlessly, by the New York city members. But Albany was unable to retain its advantage. Within three months a new apportionment of quotas was made. This scheme stood for the remainder of the war, and was applicable to levies amounting to £270,000. By this apportionment Albany's quota was placed at a fraction over sixteen per cent, New York's remained at thirty-three and one-third per cent and a slight reduction was distributed generally over the other counties. Thus the two commercial centers, comprising about one-third of the white population, paid just one-half of every levy of direct tax.' The only instances after the last decade of the seventeenth century of apportionment of militia detachments among the counties occurred in 1709 and 1711, and in 1759. In general, the quotas for this purpose conformed to the respective percentages of total white population very much more closely than in the case of the privilege of representation or share in the burden of taxation. The quotas for the detachment in 1711, however, reveal the discrimination against Long Island of which Mulford complained. New York and Westchester counties were favored, while Suffolk county, with a population quota of

'Journal of Assembly, II, 441–2. Col. Laws, III, 1038, 1078, 1131, IV, 60, 215, 317.

thirteen and a half per cent, was assigned a detachment quota of eighteen per cent. In the assignment of detachment quotas in 1759 this discrimination against Suffolk county was corrected. The journal of the assembly reveals a close parliamentary struggle at every step. But the usually prevailing majority, in a series of votes standing fifteen to eleven, consisted of a combination of the members from New York city, from the Albany region and from Dutchess and Westchester counties. When, however, in settling their own quotas, Dutchess and Westchester tried to turn and rend each other, the matter was settled each time by the combination of the New York and Albany members with those who on the other quotas were usually in the minority. And this same combination defended Ulster county

against undue discrimination.'

Apportionment of direct tax quotas and of militia detachments are matters which furnish the typical arena for sectional struggles. What happened in this matter during this period seems to be about as follows. In the tax-levies for the third war, excessive discrimination against the commercial centers was at first attempted. This was defeated by the aid of the council in which the commercial interests found a protector. The New York-Albany combination pursued a policy of divide et impera and attached to itself, significantly, that portion of the province which was most completely controlled by the great provincial families and "interests." New York city accepted permanently a quota greater than was in its opinion just, but the best that according to its estimate of the actual situation could be obtained. At the beginning of the levies for the fourth war, Albany tried to develop a combination between itself and the rest of the province against New York, Dutchess and Westchester counties. This attempt to attain an undue advantage was at first successful, but for much the greater part of the huge levies for this war, a readjustment was effected which restored Albany's quota to a more nearly equitable position.

IV

Two features are significant in this development. The first

1 Journal of Assembly, II, 594-7. Col. Laws, I, 723.

is the defensive combination of the commercial centers with the counties occupied by great estates, against quotas excessive in their weight on the commercial centers. This was in 1746.

The second is the fact that it was the combination of New York city with the counties containing the estates of its most influential citizens, which was the makeweight in the readjustments following Albany's temporarily successful combination with Long Island and the counties on the western shore of the Hudson.

There is some significance in the composition of the usually dominant majority, namely, New York, the Albany region and Dutchess and Westchester counties. New York city and county furnished four votes; the city and county of Albany, two; Westchester and Dutchess counties, two each. But, besides these, the Albany region accounts for three more votes, one each from the special jurisdictions, Schenectady, Rensselaerwyck and Livingston Manor. Westchester sent two additional members, one from the borough of that name and one from Cortlandt Manor. One-third of this dominant combination of votes came from what were practically pocket boroughs, under the control of great families, or business and family alliances, whose interests were both commercial and territorial. The two commercial centers, New York and Albany, were reciprocally useful to each other, one as the source by way of importation from Europe of the goods required for the Indians, the other as the headquarters of the " handlers," to whose agents at Oswego and Albany the furs were brought from the interior of the continent. In matters relating to trade, "business interests" drew New York and Albany together. In like manner there was a bond between the commercial centers and the "planting" regions. In a country as yet thinly peopled but with possibilities of development, land speculation is a prevailing form of investment. In New York this had taken a form which favored comparatively slow, but also comparatively steady, occupation of the "vacant lands" behind the Iroquois screen. The great estates on whose leaseholds the occupying population was settling throughout the period were controlled by the same groups of interests which were powerful in determining the commercial policy of the

province. And it was especially Dutchess and Westchester counties that were characterized by the dominance, politically and otherwise, of these estate-holding grandees. It was not, then, by accident that the combination of votes which we have seen presiding over the assignment of quotas among the counties. was made up as it was. More votes in assembly roll-calls might be cast by members residing in the rural regions than by town dwellers; but the influences controlling these votes centered in small groups of men whose interests were concerned at the same time in trade and in "planting."

No sweeping or portentous conclusion seems possible to be drawn from this sketch. The features of political practice, instances of which have been outlined, serve, however, to enforce the general observation that provincial politics were as much of a tangle of the important and the petty, as much of an interweaving of vaguely felt principle and stalwart local prejudice as are state politics today. In one sense the "petty cabals" over tax quotas were only "contests between crows and kingbirds." Stubborn determination to put the expense of government support on trade rather than land was, perhaps, only the form of tax-dodging which suited the circumstances of the time. In this very sense, however, these manifestations of intense localism have a certain interest. All the efforts of today for efficient procedure in state or federal finance find their most deeprooted obstacle in the passion for log-rolling for local appropriations among representatives of localities. This seems to have become almost a primary characteristic of "politics" as at present practiced. It should be evident, however, even from this fragmentary sketch, that this trait is no recent development of degeneracy in representative institutions. The problem of relative voting strength in the legislature of metropolis or cities, and "up-state" or "down-state," as the case may be, is after all older than the industrial revolution. More complete familiarity with other aspects of provincial politics would probably enable one to trace to a like ancient origin features regarded as equally characteristic of the present parlous state of politics in our commonwealths.

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY.

CHARLES WORTHEN SPENCER.