According to the 1730 census, New York’s population stood at 8,622: 7,045 whites and 1,577 blacks. That same year, a comprehensive property assessment revealed that the richest 10 percent of the city’s taxable population, some 140 merchants and landowners, held almost half its taxable wealth. By contrast, 49 percent of white taxables held property worth ten pounds or less—a pathetically meager sum, indicating that around one-third of all whites were more or less destitute. On the assumption that virtually all blacks were no better off, nearly three-fifths of the city’s inhabitants thus lived
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