WEBVTT NOTE 10. Reaction in New York 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.440 Volume 3, Chapter 10, Reaction in New York 2 00:00:05.440 --> 00:00:10.080 Neither was New York laggard in protesting the molasses tax. 3 00:00:10.080 --> 00:00:16.480 The New York Assembly appointed a committee in September 1764 to draft a protest against 4 00:00:16.480 --> 00:00:21.720 infringing the right to be taxed only by consent. 5 00:00:21.720 --> 00:00:27.440 The assembly approved the committee's statement the following month and, unlike Massachusetts, 6 00:00:27.440 --> 00:00:35.840 Connecticut and Rhode Island made absolutely no concessions to a supposed expediency. 7 00:00:35.840 --> 00:00:43.720 The historian Bernhard Nolenberg justly called the New York Assembly's addresses, one each 8 00:00:43.720 --> 00:00:50.840 to the Houses of Commons and Lords and the King, among the great state papers of the 9 00:00:50.840 --> 00:00:57.240 Pre-Revolutionary Period Thus the assembly's remonstrance and petition 10 00:00:57.240 --> 00:01:06.120 to the commons took its stand against taxation without representation squarely on the natural 11 00:01:06.120 --> 00:01:08.920 right of private property. 12 00:01:08.920 --> 00:01:15.040 The exemption from such taxation was not simply a privilege but a natural right of 13 00:01:15.040 --> 00:01:22.040 The Petition expressly repudiated the artificial distinction between internal and external taxation, since all impositions, whether they be internal taxes or duties paid for what we consume, equally diminish the estates upon which they are charged. 14 00:01:45.040 --> 00:01:52.400 The New York Petitions were prepared by three New York City lawyers, the liberal leaders 15 00:01:52.400 --> 00:01:59.720 of New York, John Moran Scott, William Smith Jr., who wrote the drafts, and the eminent 16 00:01:59.720 --> 00:02:04.680 liberal William Livingston, the leading theoretician. 17 00:02:04.680 --> 00:02:11.080 As early as March, Livingston had written of his implacable hostility to the deep-formed 18 00:02:11.080 --> 00:02:18.900 and Steadily Prosecuted Plan of the British Ministry to Reduce Us by Degrees to Perfect 19 00:02:18.900 --> 00:02:27.080 Vassalage, a judiciary appointed by the Crown, a standing army among us, a measure absolutely 20 00:02:27.080 --> 00:02:34.880 inconsistent with civil liberty, and now the crushing the trade of North America in such 21 00:02:34.880 --> 00:02:39.720 essential articles as must reduce us to beggary. 22 00:02:39.720 --> 00:02:44.700 Did they also carry another favorite point, subjecting us to the payment of the national 23 00:02:44.700 --> 00:02:51.700 tax? We should certainly envy the superior political happiness of the French. 24 00:02:51.700 --> 00:02:58.620 The boldness and daring of New York's action was undoubtedly traced to the shock of a recent 25 00:02:58.620 --> 00:03:07.380 message by Governor Cadwallader Colden, ordered by the Board of Trade. Colden urged the unilateral 26 00:03:07.380 --> 00:03:15.060 Annulment of a huge land grant of 800,000 acres that had been given by Governor Cornberry 27 00:03:15.060 --> 00:03:19.780 to 13 grantees in 1708. 28 00:03:19.780 --> 00:03:25.460 Underlying Colden's urging was a threat of further parliamentary coercion to annul the 29 00:03:25.460 --> 00:03:26.460 grant. 30 00:03:26.460 --> 00:03:34.780 By 1764, ownership of this tract, the Cayo de Roseros grant, between the Hudson and Mohawk 31 00:03:34.780 --> 00:04:04.380 The question of the Kea der Rosaris grant was ostensible altruism in behalf of the probably 32 00:04:04.380 --> 00:04:10.600 The assembly defrauded Mohawk sellers of the land, but the assembly correctly suspected 33 00:04:10.600 --> 00:04:17.920 chicanery behind the altruistic mask. All the Crown officials involved stood to gain 34 00:04:17.920 --> 00:04:26.780 handsomely by the annulment. Governor Colden stood to earn 10,000 pounds, his fee for re-granting 35 00:04:26.780 --> 00:04:35.900 The Kea de Roseris Land, Cauldron's son, Alexander, £4,000 in fees as Surveyor General of land 36 00:04:35.900 --> 00:04:41.880 in New York for the re-granting. The Crown itself would gain from an increased annual 37 00:04:41.880 --> 00:04:50.800 quit-rent payment of over £1,500 for negotiating the lands, and Sir William Johnson, the Crown's 38 00:04:50.800 --> 00:04:57.280 Superintendant of the Northern Indians, who pushed the Mohawk claim, had received overlapping 39 00:04:57.280 --> 00:05:05.200 land grants from the Crown and from the Mohawks of over 100,000 acres in the same area. 40 00:05:05.200 --> 00:05:13.320 Colden agreed to back Johnson's highly dubious Indian claim after Johnson offered him 10,000 41 00:05:13.320 --> 00:05:15.560 acres from the tract. 42 00:05:15.560 --> 00:05:22.740 The New York Assembly swiftly and angrily rejected the whole scheme and, no doubt, its 43 00:05:22.740 --> 00:05:29.880 reaction radicalized the Assemblymen into taking a firm, principled stand on the molasses 44 00:05:29.880 --> 00:05:31.880 and Business Tax.