Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 June 1893 — MORALS OF OLD NEW YORK [ARTICLE]

MORALS OF OLD NEW YORK

A Writer Who Says They Were Bad Two Centuries Ago. In point of morals the New York of 200 years ago seems to have been about on a par with frontier towns and outpost settlements of the present day, says a writer in Harper’s Magazine. About the time that Governor Dongan made his report to the Board of Trade, the Rev. John Miller—for three years a resident of the colony as chaplain to the King’s forces—addressed to the then Bishop of London a letter in which he reviewed the spiritual shortcomings of the colonists. Mr. .Miller’s strictures upon the Dissenters, naturally warped by his point of view, scarcely are to be quoted in fairness; but of the clergymen of the Establishment, toward whom his disposition would be lenient, he thus wrote: “There are here, and also in other provinces, many of them such as, being of a vicious life and conversation, have played so many vile pranks, and show such an ill light, as have been very prejudicial to religion in general and to the Church of England in particular.”

Continuing, he complains of “the great negligence of divine things that is generally found in the people, of what sect or sort soever they pretend to be.” And, in conclusion, he declares: “In a soil so rank as this no marvel if the Evil One finds a ready entertainment for the seed he is ready to cast in, and from a people so inconstant and regardless of heaven and holy things no wonder if God withdrew His grace, and give them up a prey to those temptations which they so industriously seek to embrace. ”

These cheering remarks relate to the province at large. Touching the citizens of New York in particular, the reverend gentleman briefly but forcibly describes them as drunkards and gamblers, and adds: “This, joined to their profane, atheistical, and scoffing method of discourse, makes their company extremely uneasy to sober and religious men.”