Bancroft, also, as far as his fragmentary paragraphs may be regarded as history (HUtory of the Vnited States^ original edition, iv., 207-21U ; the same, centenary edition, iv., 454-4.511) insinuated what he.would have been glad to have asserted, had he possessed even a shadow of evidence to support him, that it was the influence of the Government and that of the Established Church, the venality of the Representatives in the .\ssembly, the timidity of the Colonists themselves, and prejudice against lawyei-s and Presbyterians, combined, which produced that notable Vote. The servility of the Assembly to the Ministry, singularly enough, produced it, if the acute and untrustworthy John C. Hamilton (HMory of the Hepnblu;, i., 7!)), is to be believed. Lodge (UiMory of the Knijlit^h Cobmies, 491,) one of the latest specimens of Miissachusetts dilettanteism, sneeringly refei-s to the Assembly of New York as "the close corporation known as the .Assembly," as if the General Court of Massachusetts, locked in its Chamber, was notquiteas "close" a body, while it was in session, aseven he could find. Others, including Krothingham (Itise of the Reimblic, 39S) to'd only of the rejection of Colonel Ten Broeck's Resolution, and, by the suppression of much of the truth concerning the subject, left their less informed readers to infer, if the latter are not directly told so, that the Assembly was influenced, in that action, by an antagonism to the popular cause.

No one, unacquainted with tbe facts and depending on any of the above-named historians for information, can jiossibly learn, from them, that the Vote refeixed to was taken in the interest of the common cause, as a prelude to what the Assembly intended to do, in its own manner, in support of that cause ; that there was not a " friend of the Government," or " Tory," or member of the " party of the Government," among the members of that Assembly ; that the Colonial Government was not consulted, respecting anything which was done, or to be done, by that Assembly ; and that not even the Congress of the Continent, as will be seen hereafter, more earnestly, n>ore powerfully, or more successfully opposed the Jlinistry and demanded a redress of the grievances of the Colonies, than that Assembly, in every thing which it did, on those subjects.