Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). New York. 1906.
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| England—was the fashionable organization, the one to which the Crown officials belonged, and the center round which the court party rallied. Among its members were to be found most of the influential people,—the manorial lords and large merchants, who controlled the affairs of the colony, and were the social and political leaders. It claimed to be in a sense the State Church, and had many immunities and privileges; and as far as it could, though only in petty fashion, it oppressed the dissenting bodies,—notably the Presbyterians, who were not, like the Huguenots and Hollanders, protected by treaty. When King’s College, now Columbia, was founded by the colony, it was put under the control of the Church of England, and was made in a small way a seat of Tory feeling. The various Protestant bodies were all filled with sour jealousy of one another, and were only united in cordial hatred of the Romanists, to whom they forbade entrance into the colony; and though they tolerated the presence of the Jews, they would not for some time let them vote. |
| Social lines were very strongly marked,—the intensely aristocratic make-up of the town being in striking contrast to the democratic equality typical of a young American city of the same size nowadays. The manorial lords stood first in rank and influence, and in the respect universally |