Equity courts, of which the governor was ex officio chancellor, had always been extremely distasteful to the people, and being constituted by the exclusive act of the executive, without the consent of the legislature, were, according to the best legal opinion, tribunals of at least doubtful authority. The assumption of the powers of chancellor by former governors had given rise to intense popular discontent, and the more intelligent predecessors of Cosby had shrunk from attempting to exercise them, except quite sparingly. But Cosby recognized no such scruples of prudence. He designated three of the Supreme Court judges -- Chief Justice Morris, Frederick Philipse, and James de Lancey -- as equity judges to act iu the Van Dam prosecution, stopping short only of the extreme measure of personally sitting at the head of the court as chancellor. Wan Dam's counsel, William Smith ''the elder," and James Alexander, when the cause came np, boldly denied the legality of the court, maintaining that the governor and council were utterly without power to organize such a body. To the great astonishment of Judges Philipse and de Lancey, Chief Justice Morris at once held with Smith and Alexander, ami, on the ground that the Equity Court was a tribunal of irregular creation, delivered a decision in favor of Van Dam. This, of course, brought matters to a crisis. Cosby, incensed at the act of the chief justice, wrote to him in decidedly discourteous terms, requesting a copy of his opinion. Morris, in transmitting the document to him, accompanied it with a communication couched in strong but dignified language. '"This, sir," he wrote, "is a copy of the paper I read in court. I have no reason to expect that it or anything that I can say will be at all grateful or have any weight with your Excellency, after the answer I received to a message I did myself the honor to send you, concerning an ordinance you were about to make for establishing a Court of Equity in the Supreme Court as being in my opinion contrary to law, which I begged might be delaved till I could be heard on that head.