The result of Zenger’s trial established the freedom of the press in the colonies,[476] for it settled here the right of juries to find a general verdict in libel cases, as was done in England by a law of Parliament passed many years later, and it took out of the hands of judges appointed to serve during the king’s pleasure, and not during good behavior, as in England, the power to do mischief.[477] It also gave a finishing blow to the Court of Exchequer, which, after the case of Cosby _versus_ Van Dam, never again exercised an equity jurisdiction, and it suppressed the royal prerogative in an assumed right to establish courts without consulting the legislature. The jurisdiction hitherto exercised by the Supreme Court as a Court of Exchequer—that is, in all matters relating to his majesty’s lands, rights, rents, profits, and revenues—had always been called in question by colonial lawyers, because no act of the general assembly countenanced it. It was, therefore, a relief to everybody in the province when the legislature, in 1742, passed an “Act for regulating the payment of the Quit-Rents,” which in effect, though not in name, established on a firm basis a branch of the Supreme Court as a Court of Exchequer. As then instituted, it passed into the courts of the state, and was only abolished in December, 1828. The excitement over the Zenger trial had hardly had time to subside when Rip van Dam again disturbed the public mind by claiming, after Cosby’s death, that he as eldest councillor was entitled to be president of the council, and as such to be acting governor, although he had been removed from the council by Cosby. Before the quarrel could attain too threatening dimensions, Clarke’s commission as lieutenant-governor happily arrived, and Van Dam’s claim was set at rest. Clarke’s administration of the province was in the main a satisfactory one. He had lived nearly half a century in New York,[478] and was thoroughly conversant with its resources and its needs, and, assisted by a good education as a lawyer, he found little difficulty in managing the refractory assembly and in gaining most of his important legislative points. His greatest victory was that by certain concessions he induced the assembly of 1739 to grant again a revenue to the king equivalent to the civil list in England, which had been refused since 1736, but was continued during the whole of Clarke’s administration. Although perhaps never unmindful of his own interests, he had also the good of the province at heart, and it must be regretted that a plan, drawn up while he was yet secretary, for colonizing the Indian country was not fully carried out and bore no fruits. He proposed to buy from the Iroquois about 100,000 acres of land, the purchase money to be raised either by subscription or by the issue of bills of credit. Every Protestant family made acquainted with the conditions and wishing to settle was to have 200 acres at nominal quit-rents.