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

[40] of Massachusetts the wary barrister declined a decided

chap. II.} 1748. Nov.

rupture. When, in November, the legislature of that province, jealous from a true instinct, reduced his salary one third, on the plea of public distress, he answered plausibly, that the province had doubled its population within twenty years; had in that time organized within its limits five-and-twenty new towns; and, at the close of the long war, was less in debt than at its beginning. But his hopes of sure emoluments rested in England, and were connected with the success of the applications from New-York.

The same conspiracy against the colonies extended to New Jersey. In December, the council of that

Dec.

province likewise found it ‘their indispensable duty to represent to his Majesty the growing rebellion in their province.’¹ The conflict for lands in its eastern moiety, where Indian title deeds, confirmed by long occupation, were pleaded against claims derived from grants of an English king, led to confusion which the rules of the English law could not remedy. The people of whole counties could not be driven from their homesteads, or imprisoned in jails; Belcher,² the temporizing governor, confessed that ‘he could not bring the delegates into measures for suppressing the wicked spirit of rebellion.’ The proprietors, who had purchased the long dormant claim to a large part of the province, made common cause with men in office, invoked British interposition, and accused their opponents of throwing off the king's authority and treasonably and boldly denying his title to New