In fact, during the century that elapsed between the final British conquest of the colony and the Revolution, the New Yorkers--Dutch, French, German, Irish, and English--had become in the main welded into one people; they felt alike towards outsiders, having chronic quarrels with the New England States as well as with Great Britain, and showing, indeed, but little more jealous hostility towards the latter than they did towards Connecticut and New Hampshire.
The religious differences no longer corresponded to the differences of language. Half of the adherents of the Episcopalian Church were of Dutch or Huguenot blood; the leading ministers of the Dutch Church were of Scotch parentage; and the Presbyterians included some of every race. The colonists were all growing to call themselves Englishmen; when Mayor Cruger, and a board of aldermen with names equally Dutch, signed the non-importation agreement, they prefaced it by stating that they claimed "their rights as Englishmen." But though there were no rivalries of race, there were many and bitter of class and religion, the different Protestant sects hating one another with a virulence much surpassing that with which they now regard even Catholics.
The colony was in government an aristocratic republic, its constitution modeled on that of England and similar to it; the power lay in the hands of certain old and wealthy families, Dutch and English, and there was a limited freehold suffrage. The great landed families, the Livingstons, Van Rennselaers, Schuylers, Van Cortlandts, Phillipses, Morrises, with their huge manorial estates, their riches, their absolute social preëminence and their unquestioned political headship, formed a proud, polished, and powerful aristocracy, deep rooted in the soil; for over a century their sway was unbroken, save by contests between themselves or with the royal governor, and they furnished the colony with military, political, and social leaders for generation after generation. They owned numerous black slaves, and lived in state and comfort on their broad acres, tenant-farmed, in the great, roomy manor-houses, with wainscoted walls and huge fireplaces, and round about the quaint old gardens, prim and formal with their box hedges and precise flower beds. They answered closely to the whig lords of England, and indeed were often connected with the ruling orders abroad by blood or marriage; as an example, Staats Long Morris, Gouverneur's elder brother, who remained a royalist, and rose to be a major-general in the British army, married the Duchess of Gordon. Some of the manors were so large that they sent representatives to the Albany legislature, to sit alongside of those from the towns and counties.