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

[60] for them was but a calculation of chances. In the

Chap. XIX.}

attempt to suppress piracy, the prospect of infinite booty to be recovered from pirates, or to be won from the enemies of England, had gained from the king and the admiralty a commission for William Kidd, and had deluded Bellamont into a partnership in a private expedition. Failing in his hopes of opulence,

Documents in Journals of Commons, Dec. 4, 1699, and March 28, 1701.

Kidd found his way as a pirate to the gallows. In the house of commons, the transaction provoked inquiry, and hardly escaped censure.

On questions of finance, the popularity of Bellamont prevented collisions by an honest promise,—‘I will pocket none of the public money myself, nor shall there be any embezzlement by others;’—and the necessity of the promise is the strongest commentary upon the character of his predecessors. The confiding house of representatives voted a revenue for six years, and placed it, as before, at the disposition of the governor. His death interrupted the short period of harmony in the colony; and, happily for New York, Lord Cornbury, his successor, had every vice of character necessary to discipline a colony into self-reliance and resistance.

Of the same family with the queen of England; brother-in-law to a king, whose service he had betrayed; the grandson of a prime minister; himself heir to an earldom,—Lord Cornbury, destitute of the virtues of the aristocracy, illustrated the worst form of its arrogance, joined to intellectual imbecility. Of the sagacity of the common mind, of its firmness, he knew nothing; of political power he had no conception, except as it emanates from the self — will of a superior; to him popular rights existed only as a condescension. Educated at Geneva, he yet loved Episcopacy, as a