n
important right and one which the Crown and royal governors were
always trying to restrict or destroy, because it made an assembly very
independent. This contest for colonial rights was exactly similar to
the struggle of the English Parliament for liberty against the supposed
right of the Stuart kings to call and adjourn Parliament as they chose.
If the governor could adjourn the assembly when he pleased, he could
force it to pass any laws he wanted or prevent its passing any laws at
all. The two Jersey assemblies under their Quaker constitutions also
had the privilege of making their own rules of procedure, and they
had jurisdiction over taxes, roads, towns, militia, and all details of
government. These rights of a legislature are familiar enough now
to all. Very few people realize, however, what a struggle and what
sacrifices were required to attain them.

The rest of New Jersey colonial history is made up chiefly of struggles
over these two questions--the rights of the proprietors and their
quitrents as against the people, and the rights of the new assembly as
against the Crown. There were thus three parties, the governor and his
adherents, the proprietors and their friends, and the assembly and the
people. The proprietors had the best of the change, for they lost only
their troublesome political power and retained their property. They
never, however, received such financial returns from the property as
the sons of William Penn enjoyed from Pennsylvania. But the union of the
Jerseys seriously curtailed the rights enjoyed by the people under
the old government, and all possibility of a Quaker government in West
Jersey was ended. It was this experience in the Jerseys, no doubt,
that caused William Penn to require so many safeguards in selling
his political rights in Pennsylvania to the Crown that the sale was,
fortunately for the colony, never completed.

The assembly under the union met alternately at Perth Amboy and at
Burlington. Lord Cornbury, the first governor, was also Governor of
New York, a humiliating arrangement that led to no end of trouble. The
executive government, the press, and the judiciary were in the complete
control of the Crown and the Governor, who was instructed to take care
that "God Almighty be duly served according to the rites of the Church
of England, and the traffic in merchantable negroes encouraged."
Cornbury contemptuously ignored the assembly's right to adjourn and kept
adjourning i