Hamilton of Philadelphia, who made so artful an address to the Jury at the trial a few days afterwards "that," in the words of one of their own friends,? "when he left his client in those hands, such was the fraudful dexterity of the orator, and the severity of his invectives upon the Governor and his adherents, that the Jury missing the true issue before them, they, as if triers of their rulers, rather than of Zenger, pronounced the criminal innocent because they believed them to be guilty."
Chief Justice De Lancey's course on this occasion has been much misunderstood, owing to the fact, that the only report of the trial was that published by Zenger himself, written by the silenced lawyers, and printed, not in New York but in Boston, in 1738, three years after the trial, which of course represents him in the worst possible light. Taking the facts of the case, however, as given even there, it would be difficult to point out any other course which the court could have taken consistently with its own dignity and self-respect. é
At this period, and from these controversies and others allied to them, arose the two great parties, which ever afterwards divided the people of the Province. The one maintaining principles moderate and conservative; the other, those of a more radical tendency.
Both professed the strongest attachment and loyalty to the British constitution, and vied with each other in claiming and upholding all the rights of Englishmen.
In New York, as in some of the other colonies, the religious element entered largely into politics. In point of wealth and