A Republican Prophet

The land on which Governor Carteret found the four families had been bought of some Indians on Long Island, who claimed it as their own. They gave a deed of it to John Bailey, Daniel Denton, and Luke Watson of Jamaica, Long Island, and Governor Nicolls granted a patent for it to seventy-four associates, whose descendants are numerous in East Jersey. This patent was given before Nicolls had heard of the extraordinary grant of the Duke of York; and when the governor's grantees were informed of that transaction, they resolved to assert their rights, as against the claims of the duke's friends. Some of the company went to Elizabethtown to confer with Carteret on the subject. At the head of the embassy was John Ogden, of Long Island, who had left England on the accession of Charles the Second to the throne, for he was a republican. The governor received them under the shadow of a great tulip tree on the borders of the creek, and there the conference was held. Ogden showed the Indian deed and the Nicolls grant. Carteret showed the duke's grant with his seal and signature attached. Ogden declared that Indian titles were more valid than royal titles, because the grantors were the original owners of the soil. This point was conceded, when the governor pointed to the lion in the British arms impressed upon the seal, as an emblem of competent power, intimating that might makes right. By this intimation the spirit of Ogden was powerfully stirred. Pointing to the sun as the visible presence of the Great Spirit whom all the Indians worshipped, he said: "As far above petty kings and their powers as is the sun in the heaven, now making the earth teem with abundance and beauty, above all below, so far is justice, the prime attribute of God, above might--the mere brute force that gives kingship to the lion and the eagle among beasts and birds. The Dutch acquired possession of this soil by the divine right of a just purchase from the Indians; King Charles had no right to this domain but that of a strong-armed robber. The British lion on that seal is, in this case, only an emblem of oppression and wrong, whose only warrant for injustice is his strength to conquer. In this land monarchs will yet be taught that they have no divine rights not the common property of their subjects, and that there is more strength in justice than in the sword."

John Ogden was a prophet. Under that tree on the soil of New Jersey, that sturdy republican caught luminous visions of the struggles of a people with royalty for the rights of man, which, more than a hundred years after-wards, led to the dismemberment of the British empire and the founding of our free Republic. Carteret admired his spirit, but his words sounded too much like the voices of the followers of Cromwell, and he refused to hold further conference with him. "Very well," said Ogden. "We shall maintain our rights as best we may;" and he and his friends were about to depart, when the courteous governor invited them into his house to partake of refreshments. He then accompanied them to their boat at the Kills, and gave them a cordial invitation to come again as friends, but not as ambassadors.

The Long Islanders liked the good-natured governor personally, and to show their kind feeling toward him and his family, they gave the name of "Elizabethtown Associates" to their company, and to their territory the "Elizabethtown Grant." They adhered to their determination to defend their rights; and during the seven years that Philip Carteret governed New Jersey, there were frequent and severe conflicts between the "Associates" and the grantees of the Duke of York