My answers were to this purpose: that my circumstances, thanks to God, were such as to make proprietary favors unnecessary to me; and that, being a member of the Assembly, I could not possibly accept of any; that, however, I had no personal enmity to the proprietary, and that, whenever the public measures he proposed should appear to be for the good of the people, no one should espouse and forward them more zealously than myself, my past opposition having been founded on this, that the measures which had been urged were evidently intended to serve the proprietary interest, with great prejudice to that of the people; that I was much obliged to him (the governor) for his professions of regard to me, and that he might rely on everything in my power to make his administration as easy as possible, hoping at the same time that he had not brought with him the same unfortunate instructions his predecessor had been hampered with. On this he did not then explain himself; but when he afterward came to do business with the Assembly, they appeared again, the disputes were renewed, and I was as active as ever in the opposition, being the penman, first, of the request to have a communication of the instructions, and then of the remarks upon them, which may be found in the votes of the time, and in the "Historical Review" I afterward published. But between us personally no enmity arose; we were often together. He was a man of letters, had seen much of the world, and was very entertaining and pleasing in conversation. He gave me the first information that my old friend James Ralph was still alive; that he was esteemed one of the best political writers in England; had been employed in the dispute between Prince Frederic and the king, and had obtained a pension of three hundred a year; that his reputation was indeed small as a poet, Pope having damned his poetry in the "Dunciad," but his prose was thought as good as any man's. The Assembly, finally finding the proprietary obstinately persisted in manacling their deputies[190] with instructions inconsistent not only with the privileges of the people but with the service of the Crown, resolved to petition the king against them, and appointed me their agent to go over to England to present and support the petition. The House had sent up a bill to the governor, granting a sum of sixty thousand pounds for the king's use, (ten thousand pounds of which was subjected to the orders of the then general, Lord Loudoun,) which the governor absolutely refused to pass, in compliance with his instructions. [Footnote 184: The publisher, Edward Cave (1691-1754), was the founder of the Gentleman's Magazine, the earliest literary journal of the kind.] [Footnote 185: "Copy money," i.e., money paid for the copy or article.] [Footnote 186: Monsieur.] [Footnote 187: A title formerly assumed in France by a class of men who had slight connections with the church, and were employed as teachers or engaged in some literary pursuit.]