The concrete disputes in which the persistent opposition of governor and assembly found expression were many--quit-rents in Maryland, control of the judges in New York, taxation of proprietor's estates in Pennsylvania, and everywhere questions growing out of the problem of defense and the demand for paper money. Instructed in English precedent, the assemblies knew well how to condition the grant of salary or necessary revenue upon the governor's surrender to their demands. But more insidious and far-reaching in its constitutional effects was the practice by which the governor's executive and administrative functions were restricted. Money bills, even when unconnected with special riders, were often made minutely specific, both in respect to the purposes for which the money was to be used, and in respect to the officials by whom it was to be expended. Even salaries in the army were sometimes granted by individual appropriation. In many colonies, and notably in New York, it was by the constant and excessive use of specific appropriations that the governors were reduced to the level of executive figureheads--mere agents of the colonial assembly rather than representatives of the Crown exercising wise and effective administrative discretion. This process was especially rapid during the French wars, when the assemblies were enabled to exact tremendous concessions in return for indispensable aid against the common enemy. "The New York Assembly," said Peter Kalm about 1750, "may be looked upon as a Parliament or Diet in miniature. Everything relating to the good of the province is here debated." In 1763 he might have said the same, not of New York alone, but of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. And the governors of these provinces could have told him, as they repeatedly told the Board of Trade, that not only was everything debated there, but there everything was finally decided.