MAGAZINE OF AMERICAN HISTORY VOL. III A THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE WRITER in the December number of this Magazine [1878], who discussed with ability and clearness "The Constitutional Development of the American Colonies," dismissed New York as an element in that development with the general assertion that "its influence was slightly felt in the earlier period of their history," and without indicating that its influence was felt at all in the later and more important periods of colonial life. We can agree that the estimate of this writer has often been expressed by historians of that epoch; but it is an estimate founded upon a failure to inquire into the real part which New York played in the development of the American system before the Revolution; and it is remarkable that a writer in a magazine like this should permit himself to fall into so antiquated an error. As a matter of fact, the part played by New York in the struggle for the attainment of a constitutional government which culminated in the Revolution, was unique in many respects, and was more important in several, both as to character and influence, here and in England, than that which progressed simultaneously in her sister colonies. After the conquest of New Amsterdam from the Dutch, the whole Atlantic coast of the original thirteen States came for the first time into the undisputed possession of Great Britain. At that time there existed in these colonies under English rule no less than three distinct forms or varieties of government, as widely dissimilar in their nature as it is possible for human governments to be. The unique and extraordinary feature in the colonial history of New York is that she passed through these three phases of government in her upward progress towards the free constitution of 1777, not attaining the last and highest form until she secured that free constitution, but wresting from a reluctant prerogative in the meanwhile many of its most important advantages. This |