-by trade; in arrears to a small amount as collector of taxes in the city,and the Assembly had refused to allow him to discharge the small debt by doing public printing enough to cover it.?

He subsequently published a small paper entitled the New York Weekly Journal, at the instance of the opposition, in which the libels complained of were published. His counsel were James Alexander and Wm. Smith the elder, the supposed authors of the libels, two gentlemen of ability and intellect, both politically opposed to Chief Justice De Lancey.

Aware that the law would certainly convict their client they attempted to destroy the court, by excepting to the commissions of the judges as invalid and illegal; though they knew them to be in the usual form, and such as their predecessors had always. held, and under which they had.acted for a number of years. Their objections, if valid, would have destroyed the court as well as the commissions, for it existed not by force of any statute, as they contended, but by virtue of an ordinance of the Governor

1 See similar clause in Sir Danvers Osborn's Commission. Appendix to Smith's Hist. of N. Y.; I., 299.

2 The following entry explains Zenger's difficulties:--'' Sept. 8, 1781. The petition of John Peter Zenger was presented to the House and read, setting forth, that he having been chosen Collector of sundry public Taxes in the city of New York, was prevented from gathering the same, when they should have been collected, by reason he fell under some Trouble from his creditors at that time, that by Removal of some and Insolvency of others, rated in the said Taxes, there is about-Twenty three pounds irrecoverable; that, including the said sum, he remains accountable to the Province. for the sum of Forty pounds and upwards, for which he is informed Writs are issued against him, And that he being unable to pay the same, has been forced to keep out of the way, but pro. poses to discharge in his way of Printing, at the most moderate and reasonable _ wages.