Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). New York. 1906.
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| Nevertheless, democracy, as such, had small share in the government. |
| However, the Leislerians soon plucked up heart, and appeared once more in public, claiming their fallen chief as a martyr, and troubling their foes for a generation ere they gradually lost their identity and became merged in the general mass of the popular party. Though this element of the population, owing to the restricted suffrage, possessed less than its due weight in the government, yet it always had allies and mouthpieces in the Assembly. These advocates of popular rights rarely made a fight for the granting of political power to the masses, but they were kept busy in battling against the prerogatives of the Crown and the power of the great patroons and rich merchants. For the next three quarters of a century the struggle for popular rights in New York took the form, not of a demand for democratic government and manhood suffrage, but of a contest waged on behalf of the men of small property against the authority of a foreign monarchy and the rule of a native oligarchy. |