Bellomont, in addressing the first assembly under his administration, made a bid for popular favor by finding fault with the doings of his predecessor, who had left him as a legacy “difficulties to struggle with, a divided people, an empty treasury, a few miserable, naked, half-starved soldiers, being not half the number the king allowed pay for, the fortifications, and even the governor’s house, very much out of repairs, and, in a word, gentlemen (he said), the whole government out of frame.” The assembly was to find remedies, that is, money wherewith to repair all these evils. How they did it is shown by a speech made to them by Bellomont a month later: “You have now sat a whole month ... and have done nothing, either for the service of his Majestie or the good of y^e country.... Your proceedings have been so unwarrantable, wholy tending to strife and division, and indeed disloyal to his Majestie and his laws, and destructive to the rights and libertys of the people, that I do think fit to _dissolve_ this present assembly, and it is _dissolved_ accordingly.” Having come with the best intentions of curing the evils of Fletcher’s rule, and being instructed to break up piracy, of which New York had been represented in England as the very hot-bed, Bellomont soon became popular, and no doubt grew in favor with the people, both by persuading the assembly to enact a law of indemnity for Leisler, whose body, with that of Milbourne, was now granted the honors of a public reinterment, and by bringing Kidd, the celebrated sea-rover, to justice. To-day that which was meted out to Kidd might hardly be called justice; for it seems questionable if he had ever been guilty of piracy.