The efforts of Governor Clinton to reconcile the assembly by giving his assent to all the bills passed by them in their first session did not prevent their assuming greater powers than the House of Commons. He could not obtain from them either money or men for the Cape Breton expedition, set on foot by Governor Shirley of Massachusetts. Trying to regain control of colonial politics, he stirred up a bitter feeling among the popular party men; and after years of struggle, during which the home government afforded him little comfort and support, Clinton was willing to throw up his commission as governor of New York in 1751, and return to England and resume his station as admiral. The French of Canada had used many artifices and had been indefatigable in their endeavors to gain over the Six Nations. They had cajoled many of them to desert their own tribes and remove to Canada, and had instigated others, whom they could induce to desert, to go to war with the Catawba Indians, friends of South Carolina, thereby endangering and weakening the allegiance of the Southern Indians to the British interest. Commissioners had arrived, or were to come, from all the other colonies, to meet the Six Nations at Albany and renew the covenant chain. If Quidor (the Indian name for the governor of New York) were to be absent on such an occasion, especially a Quidor who already had made an excellent impression on the king’s red allies, the council conceived that the meeting would not only be without result, but that the Indians, considering themselves slighted, would turn a more willing ear to the French, and thus endanger the existence of the colonies. Clinton was luckily a man who considered duty higher than any personal comfort, and on the 1st of July, 1751, opened the conference with the Indians which may be said to have been one of the most important in the history of the English colonies. Colonel William Johnson was induced to withdraw his resignation as Indian agent, which had made the Six Nations very uneasy, and a peace was made between the Iroquois, of New York, and the Catawbas, which also included their friends among the Southern Indians. There is not space to say much of the Indian policy pursued by Governor Clinton and other royal governors of New York. To use the Indian explanation, “they took example from the sun, which has its regular course; and as the sun is certain in its motion, New York was certain to the Indians in the course of their mutual affairs, and deviated not in the least.” New York alone had to bear the expenses (£1,150) of this conference, since Massachusetts, Connecticut, and South Carolina refused to contribute, while New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia were not represented. The other colonies also refused to help New York in keeping the Iroquois in good humor by supplying smiths to live in the Indian territory and repair the savages’ guns and hatchets. New York has the benefit of the