George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[429] ‘Why,’ asked Colden, ‘should the chief justices of

chap. XVIII.} 1762.

Nova Scotia and Georgia have certain and fixed salaries from the crown, and a chief justice of so considerable a province as this be left to beg his bread of the people?’ and reporting to the Board of Trade the source of opposition in New York, ‘For some years past,’ said he, ‘three popular lawyers educated in Connecticut, who have strongly imbibed the independent principles of that country, calumniate the administration in every exercise of the prerogative, and get the applause of the mob by propagating the doctrine, that all authority is derived from the people.’ These ‘three popular lawyers’ were William Livingston, John Morin Scot,¹ and—alas, that he should afterwards have turned aside from the career of patriotism!—the historian, William Smith.

The news of the resignation of Pitt, who was ‘almost idolized’ in America, heightened the rising jealousy and extended it through the whole continent. ‘We have such an idea of the general corruption,’ said Ezra Stiles, a dissenting minister in Rhode Island, ‘we know not how to confide in any person below the crown.’² ‘You adore the Oliverian times,’ said Bernard to Mayhew, at Boston. ‘I adore Him alone who is before all times,’ answered Mayhew, and at the same time avowed his zeal for the principles of ‘the glorious Revolution’ of 1688, especially for ‘the freedom of speech and of writing.’³ Already he was known among royalists as ‘an enemy to kings.’

The alarm rose every where to an extreme height,