Hunter’s wise course in yielding on several points had a better effect on the province than at first he was willing to confess. Fletcher had found the people of New York “generally very poor and the government much in debt, occasioned by the mismanagement of those who have exercised the King’s power.” The revenues of the province were in such deplorable condition that several sums of money had to be borrowed on the personal credit of members of the council to pay the most pressing debts of government; the burden of war, unjustly placed on the shoulders of New York, had impoverished the inhabitants and almost destroyed their usefulness as taxpayers; while the neighboring colonies, either refusing to assist in the defence of the frontiers against the French or being dilatory in sending their quota of money and men, reaped the advantage of New York’s patriotism by receiving within their boundaries the bulk of the foreign trade, and by adding to their population the majority of emigrants. When Hunter left the province, after ten years’ service as its governor, he could congratulate the assembly on increased prosperity and on a better state of public affairs. His successor was the comptroller of customs at London, William Burnet, the son of the celebrated bishop, who exchanged places with Hunter. Smith, the historian, describes him as “a man of sense and polite breeding, a well-read scholar, sprightly and of social disposition.... He used to say of himself, ‘I act first and think afterwards.’” The good reports which preceded Burnet made a favorable impression on the colonial assembly, and the whole period of his administration was undisturbed by constitutional disputes, even though people opposed to him tried to create trouble by asserting that the appointment of a new governor of the province required, like the accession of a new king, the election of a new assembly, and by representing the continuance of an assembly under two governors as unconstitutional. Burnet’s distrust of the neighboring French caused some stir in mercantile circles. He had an act passed forbidding all trade in Indian goods with Canada,—an act which would have benefited the province in general by securing all the Indian trade, a large part of which now found its way to Canada; but the merchants of New York and Albany, who disposed of their surplus to Canada traders, would have made less profits. They consequently opposed Burnet’s plans until the end of his administration (1728). [Illustration]