Besides this highest motive, which influenced the best and the purest-minded among the opponents of colonial separation, there were undoubtedly other motives of lower character, which affected some men in their decision, and disposed them to loyalty. The political power of all the colonies had been largely in the hands of those who were known as the “better sort,” usually gentlemen of good family, rich and well educated; in some of the colonies official position had been treated as the special prerogative of a few distinguished families who contended with one another for its possession: none of the colonies, not even Connecticut, was democratic as we understand the term to-day. In some cases the revolutionary movements and impulses came from a class which wished to occupy public positions from which they had been excluded, and in others from dissatisfied and discontented men of birth and family, who were tired of being out in the cold, while their rivals were enjoying the pleasures and emoluments of office.[156] Thus in New York, the history of the revolution is closely bound up with the family feuds of the De Lanceys on the one side with the Livingstons on the other. In Massachusetts, the quarrel between Governor Bernard and the Otises did much to increase the patriotism of the latter family; and until the very breaking out of hostilities, the contest within the colony was between a majority of the well-to-do merchants and lawyers of Boston on the one side, and the least stable elements of the populace, under the leadership of one of the most skilful of political agitators, Samuel Adams, upon the other.