Whatever may have been the determining reasons for his support of Governor Cosby

ARISTOCRATIC

FAMILIES

and antagonism of Chief Justice Morris in the Van Dam ease, he unhesitatingly followed to its logical conclusion the course that he adopted upon that occasion. Of a very proud nature, he deeply resented the assumption by the other side of superior virtue and superior regard for liberty and law. Morris was a man of positive traits, and by the exercise of unquestioned judicial authority had grown dictatorial in his old age. Incensed at the attitude of his young associate justices, both of whom were still in their thirties, he did not hesitate to make known his personal views of their conduct. " On the day after the Van Dam decision," writes Governor Cosby to the Duke of Newcastle, " the chief justice, coming to court, told those two judges, openly and publicly upon the bench before a numerous audience, that their reasons for their opinion were mean, weak, and futile; that they were only his assistants, giving them to understand that their opinions, or rather judgments, were of no signification." One can imagine how the haughty spirit of de Lancey must have chafed under such language. Although the quarrel resulted in the dismissal of Morris and his own appointment to the vacated office, he had to suffer for two years the humiliation of extreme unpopularity and of utter failure to compel acceptation for his official orders and rulings in the further developments of the controversy. The grand jury, despite his strenuous and repeated application, refused to indict Zenger, and on the final trial of that arch-libeler the jury in the case contemptuously scorned the urgent instructions given them by the chief justice to find against the accused, and instantly rendered a verdict of not guilty amid the rapturous applause of the assembled populace.