George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 3, 15th edition.

[59] succeeded in engrossing the provision made by the

Chap. XIX.}

ministry acts, on the other, the dissenters were wakened to jealousy, lest the Episcopal party, deriving countenance from England, might nourish a lust for dominion.

The differences were tranquillized in the short administration of the kindlier earl of Bellamont, an Irish peer, with a sound heart and honorable sympathies for popular freedom. He arrived in New York after the peace of Ryswick, with a commission extending to the

1698 April 2.

borders of Canada, including all the northern British possessions, except Connecticut and Rhode Island. In New York, Lord Bellamont, who had served on the committee of parliament to inquire into the trials of Leisler and Milborne, was indifferent to the little oligarchy of the royal council, of which he reproved the vices and resisted the selfishness. The memory of the wrongs of Leisler was revived; and the assembly, by an appropriation of its own in favor of his family, confirmed the judgment of the English parliament.

The enforcement of the acts of trade, which had been violated by the connivance of men appointed to execute them; the suppression of piracy, which, as the turbulent offspring of long wars and of the false principles of the commercial systems of that age, infested every sea from America to China,—were the great purposes of Bellamont; yet for both he accomplished little. The acts of trade, despotic in their nature, contradicting the rights of humanity, were evaded every where; but in New York, a city, in part, of aliens, owing allegiance to England, without the bonds of common history, kindred, and tongue, they were disregarded without scruple. No voice of conscience declared their violation a moral offence; respect