Against The New Royal Governor
By opposing the Molasses act, Van Dam was rewarded, receiving 1,000 pounds by the assembly. Besides, the assembly had disposed a bill through which the liberal institutions of New York got much money. In April 1732, the designated royal governor William Cosby arrived. Disliking such liberal manoeuvres, Cosby decided that Van Dam should restore half of his salary of interim governor. Van Dam durst replying that, before he might comply for such demands, Cosby should return the privilege fortunes, which were being defalcated out of the English treasury for fake provincial expenditures, by Cosby since his appointment. Cosby assumed in August 1732 but Van Dam refused to take his corresponding oath of councilman.
Cosby was enraged by Van Dam's stubbornness so he filed a lawsuit against him to despoil the half of his acting governor salary. Van Dam was processed through a chancery court (with neither a jury nor a faithful following of the law texts) whereas his defence was taken by William Smith and James Alexander. The court of chancery was quite unpopular amongst the New Yorkers. Nonetheless, it was upheld although one of the three Supreme Court judges, the Chief Justice Lewis Morris, voted against it, in 1733, arguing the illegality of such type of chambers of justice. Despite his judicial victory, Cosby reacted so Van Dam was dismissdismissed off the governor council and Morris was ousted. Nonetheless, Morris' liberal party won the elections in that same year, against the royal party.
In 1734, Van Dam's Heads of Articles of Complaint Against governor Cosby was published, at Boston, Massachusetts. Under the appellative of The Morrisites, the liberal party of New York aligned for Van Dam's claims, with his active participation. Oppositely, the royal loyalists, The Court Party, stood with Cosby.
John Peter Zenger's aggressively liberal New York Weekly Journal newspaper, of which Van Dam had been a founder (1733), used the Van Dam case much in its every day crusade of free government. Usually, like the other liberal figures of New York, Van Dam wrote unsigned articles which were published by Zenger. In 1734, Cosby burned piles of the publication, prosecuting Zenger in the historical Zenger's trial of 1735.
Read more about this topic: Rip Van Dam
Famous quotes containing the words royal and/or governor:
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