A History of New York (25 page)

The latter sanguinary sentence, would convey an idea of direful war and bloodshed; were we not relieved by the information that it merely related to a fray, in which some half a dozen Dutchmen had been killed by the Indians, in their benevolent attempts to establish a colony and promote civilization. By this it will be seen that William Kieft, though a very small man, delighted in big expressions, and was much given to a praise-worthy figure in rhetoric, generally cultivated by your little great men, called hyperbole. A figure which has been found of infinite service among many of his class, and which has helped to swell the grandeur of many a mighty self-important, but windy chief magistrate. Nor can I resist in this place, from observing how much my beloved country is indebted to this same figure of hyperbole, for supporting certain of her greatest characters—statesmen, orators, civilians and divines; who by dint of big words, inflated periods, and windy doctrines, are kept afloat on the surface of society, as ignorant swimmers are buoyed up by blown bladders.

The proclamation against Minnewits concluded by ordering the self-dubbed governor, and his gang of Swedish adventurers, immediately to leave the country under penalty of the high displeasure, and inevitable vengeance of the puissant government of the Nieuw Nederlandts. This “strong measure,” however, does not seem to have had a whit more effect than its predecessors, which had been thundered against the Yankees—the Swedes resolutely held on to the territory they had taken possession of—whereupon matters for the present remained in statu quo.

That Wilhelmus Kieft should put up with this insolent obstinacy in the Swedes, would appear incompatible with his valourous temperament; but we find that about this time the little man had his hands full; and what with one annoyance and another, was kept continually on the bounce.

There is a certain description of active legislators, who by shrewd management, contrive always to have a hundred irons on the anvil, every one of which must be immediately attended to; who consequently are ever full of temporary shifts and expedients, patching up the public welfare and cobbling the national affairs, so as to make nine holes where they mend one—stopping chinks and flaws with whatever comes first to hand, like the Yankees I have mentioned stuffing old clothes in broken windows. Of this class of statesmen was William the Testy—and had he only been blessed with powers equal to his zeal, or his zeal been disciplined by a little discretion, there is very little doubt but he would have made the greatest governor of his size on record—the renowned governor of the island of Barataria alone excepted.

The great defect of Wilhelmus Kieft's policy was, that though no man could be more ready to stand forth in an hour of emergency, yet he was so intent upon guarding the national pocket, that he suffered the enemy to break its head—in other words, whatever precaution for public safety he adopted, he was so intent upon rendering it cheap, that he invariably rendered it ineffectual. All this was a remote consequence of his profound education at the Hague—where having acquired a smattering of knowledge, he was ever after a great conner of indexes, continually dipping into books, without ever studying to the bottom of any subject; so that he had the scum of all kinds of authors fermenting in his pericranium. In some of these title page researches he unluckily stumbled over a grand political
cabalistic word,
which, with his customary facility he immediately incorporated into his great scheme of government, to the irretrievable injury and delusion of the honest province of Nieuw Nederlandts, and the eternal misleading, of all experimental rulers.

In vain have I pored over the Theurgia of the Chaldeans, the Cabala of the Jews, the Necromancy of the Arabians—The Magic of the Persians—the Hocus Pocus of the English, the Witch-craft of the Yankees, or the Pow-wowing of the Indians to discover where the little man first laid eyes on this terrible word. Neither the Sephir Jetzirah, that famous cabalistic volume, ascribed to the Patriarch Abraham; nor the pages of the Zohar, containing the mysteries of the cabala, recorded by the learned rabbi Simeon Jochaides, yield any light to my enquiries—Nor am I in the least benefited by my painful researchers in the Shem-hamphorah of Benjamin, the wandering Jew, though it enabled Davidus Elm to make a ten days' journey, in twenty four hours. Neither can I perceive the slightest affinity in the Tetragrammaton, or sacred name of four letters, the profoundest word of the Hebrew Cabala; a mystery, sublime, ineffable and incommunicable—and the letters of which Jod-He-Vau-He, having been stolen by the Pagans, constituted their great Name Jao, or Jove. In short, in all my cabalistic, theurgic, necromantic, magical and astrological researches, from the Tetractys of Pythagoras, to the recondite works of Breslaw and mother Bunch, I have not discovered the least vestige of an origin of this word, nor have I discovered any word of sufficient potency to counteract it.

Not to keep my reader in any suspence, the word which had so wonderfully arrested the attention of William the Testy and which in German characters, had a particularly black and ominous aspect, on being fairly translated into the English is no other than
economy
—a talismanic term, which by constant use and frequent mention, has ceased to be formidable in our eyes, but which has as terrible potency as any in the arcana of necromancy.

When pronounced in a national assembly it has an immediate effect in closing the hearts, beclouding the intellects, drawing the purse strings and buttoning the breeches pockets of all philosophic legislators. Nor are its effects on the eye less wonderful. It produces a contraction of the retina, an obscurity of the christaline lens, a viscidity of the vitreous and an inspiration of the aqueous humours, an induration of the tunica sclerotica and a convexity of the cornea; insomuch that the organ of vision loses its strength and perspicuity, and the unfortunate patient becomes
myopes
or in plain English, purblind; perceiving only the amount of immediate expense without being able to look further, and regard it in connexion with the ultimate object to be effected.—“So that,” to quote the words of the eloquent Burke, “a briar at his nose is of greater magnitude than an oak at five hundred yards distance.” Such are its instantaneous operations, and the results are still more astonishing. By its magic influence seventy-fours, shrink into frigates—frigates into sloops, and sloops into gunboats. As the defenceless fleet of Eneas, at the command of the protecting Venus, changed into sea nymphs, and protected itself by diving; so the mighty navy of America, by the cabalistic word economy, dwindles into small craft, and shelters itself in a mill-pond!

This all potent word, which served as his touchstone in politics, at once explains the whole system of proclamations, protests, empty threats, windmills, trumpeters, and paper war, carried on by Wilhelmus the Testy—and we may trace its operations in an armament which he fitted out in 1642 in a moment of great wrath; consisting of two sloops and
thirty
men, under the command of Mynheer Jan Jansen Alpendam, as admiral of the fleet, and commander in chief of the forces. This formidable expedition, which can only be paralleled by some of the daring cruizes of our infant navy, about the bay and up the sound; was intended to drive the Marylanders from the Schuylkill, of which they had recently taken possession—and which was claimed as part of the province of New Nederlandts—for it appears that at this time our infant colony was in that enviable state, so much coveted by ambitious nations, that is to say, the government had a vast extent of territory; part of which it enjoyed, and the greater part of which it had continually to quarrel about.

Admiral Jan Jansen Alpendam was a man of great mettle and prowess; and no way dismayed at the character of the enemy; who were represented as a gigantic gunpowder race of men, who lived on hoe cakes and bacon, drank mint juleps and brandy toddy, and were exceedingly expert at boxing, biting, gouging, tar and feathering, and a variety of other athletic accomplishments, which they had borrowed from their cousins german and prototypes the Virginians, to whom they have ever borne considerable resemblance—notwithstanding all these alarming representations, the admiral entered the Schuylkill most undauntedly with his fleet, and arrived without disaster or opposition at the place of destination.

Here he attacked the enemy in a vigorous speech in low dutch, which the wary Kieft had previously put in his pocket; wherein he courteously commenced by calling them a pack of lazy, louting, dram drinking, cock fighting, horse racing, slave driving, tavern haunting, sabbath breaking, mulatto breeding upstarts—and concluded by ordering them to evacuate the country immediately—to which they most laconically replied in plain English (as was very natural for Swedes) “they'd see him d——d first.”

Now this was a reply for which neither Jan Jansen Alpendam, nor Wilhelmus Kieft had made any calculation—and finding himself totally unprepared to answer so terrible a rebuff with suitable hostility he concluded, like a most worthy admiral of a modern English expedition, that his wisest course was to return home and report progress. He accordingly sailed back to New Amsterdam, where he was received with great honours, and considered as a pattern for all commanders; having achieved a most hazardous enterprize, at a trifling expense of treasure, and without losing a single man to the state!—He was unanimously called the deliverer of his country; (an appellation liberally bestowed on all great men) his two sloops having done their duty, were laid up (or dry docked) in a cove now called the Albany Bason, where they quietly rotted in the mud; and to immortalize his name, they erected, by subscription, a magnificent shingle monument on the top of Flatten barrack
³⁸
Hill, which lasted three whole years; when it fell to pieces, and was burnt for fire-wood.

 

 

 

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.
³⁹

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 scarecrows 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 continues 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.