During this period civil matters were very quiet, and the energies of the Lt. Governor were given to promoting, directing, and carrying out the various measures which the events of the war rendered necessary on the part of the Colony. He contributed greatly to the retrieving of the disasters of 1757, and to the success of the operations of 1758 and 1759; and especially to promoting the expedition which ended in the repulse at Ticonderoga, and that which followed it in the succeeding year.

Though generally quiet, the opposition did not give up entirely their attempts against the party in power. The most notorious

1 Smith's Hist. N. Y.; I1., 278. 2 Doc. Hist. N. Y.; IL., 648. 3 See his letter to this effect, dated Aug. 2nd, 1750, Lond. Doc. ; XX XIII., 367.

1054 MEMOIR OF THE

of which was the printing, in England and secret circulation there and in the colony, of an anonymous pamphlet, entitled a "Review of the military operations in North America, from the commencement of the French hostilities on the frontiers of Virginia, in 1758, to the surrender of Oswego, on the 14th August 1756, in a letter to a nobleman." In this publication the Lt. Governor was attacked by name, and in termsof' bitterest invective. Falsehood was, however, so evident on its face that neither Lt. Gov. De Lancey, nor any of the other gentlemen whom it attacked, ever considered it worthy of notice. Mr. Alexander superintended its printing as he acknowledged himself, being at the time in England, engaged in his vain attempt to prove title to the earldom of Stirling ; but its author is now believed to have been William Smith, the younger, the writer of the colony's history, notwithstanding it has been ascribed' to Mr. Livingston. ?