into conflict with the assembly, largely formed of members from the Society of Friends, and brought about the state of affairs which we may call usual in all the British colonies ruled by a governor appointed by the king, and by an assembly elected by the people. Hunter must be termed the first satisfactory governor of New Jersey. Early in his administration he met with opposition from those who so far had slavishly followed the royal governor. These opponents were the council of the province, who objected to every measure which Governor Hunter, advised by Lewis Morris and other influential members of the Quaker or country party, deemed necessary for the public good. The council was entirely under the thumb of Secretary Jeremiah Basse, who, having been an Anabaptist minister, agent in England for the West Jersey Society, governor of East and West Jersey, had shared in the obloquy attached to Lord Cornbury’s administration. Public business threatened to come to a standstill, as the home authorities were slow in acting on recommendations to remove the obnoxious members of the council. Hunter constantly prorogued the assembly of New Jersey; “it being absolutely needless to meet the assembly so long as the council is so constituted,” he writes to the Lords of Trade, June 23, 1712, “for they have avowedly opposed the government in most things, and by their influence obstructed the payment of a great part of the taxes.” But it was not until August, 1713, that the queen approved of the removal of William Pinhorn, Daniel Coxe, Peter Sonmans, and William Hall from the council, in whose places John Anderson, a wealthy trader and farmer of Perth Amboy, John Hamilton, postmaster-general of North America, and John Reading, of West Jersey, were appointed. William Morris, recommended in place of Sonmans, had died meanwhile. Sonmans stole and took out of the province all public records, and, having gone to England with his booty, he used the papers to injure Governor Hunter in the estimation of the people of New Jersey, while “our men of noise” agitated against him in the province and in its assembly. No effort was spared to prevent a renewal of Hunter’s commission in 1714, and when he was reappointed notwithstanding, Coxe, Sonmans, and their friends had so inflamed the “lower rank of people that only time and patience, or stronger measures, could allay the heat.” At last it became an absolute necessity to summon the assembly again, and an act “for fixing the sessions of assembly in the Jersies at Burlington” was passed in 1715, which became the cause of incessant attacks upon the governor by Coxe and his party. Hunter, seeing the wheels of government stopped by the factious absence of Coxe and his friends from the legislative sessions, said to the assembly, May 19, 1716: “Whereas, it is apparent and evident that there is at present a combination amongst some of your members to disappoint and defeat your meetings as