The result was that, instead of being a co-operative factor in the business of managing the province, it held itself in an attitude of confirmed reserve toward the executive It was a substantial repetition of the feud between the parliament and the king, with the difference that, while that unhappy feud in the mother country endured for only a brief comparative period, its simulacrum in New York covered the entire time of the existence of the province. To the New York assembly, as to the British house of commons, was reserved the exclusive right to originate money bills, which, moreover, were1 unamendable by the council. This power was early appreciated by the people as their great safeguard against effectual tyranny, and in the case of every governor of unacceptable behavior they enforced it with unsparing rigidity. Holding the purse-strings, they could exceedingly embarrass the haughtiest governor, and, in fact, there was a perpetual irritation between the executive and the legislature on the subject of grants of supplies. Governor after governor was sent over from England with express instructions to correct these exasperating practices, but dismal failure resulted in every instance. To such a pitch had the resolute spirit of the colonists readied after sixty years of representative government, that upon the arrival of the royal Governor Osborn, in 1753, he was greeted by the city corporation with an address in which was expressed the significant expectation that lie would be as "averse from countenancing as we from brooking any infringements of our inestimable liberties.'' It happened that Osborn had been particularly directed by the British government to curb the aggressive tendencies of the colonists. He was a man of peculiarly sensitive soul, and the use of such terms in an official address of welcome from the capital of the province over which he was to rule greatly disturbed him.