Governor Morris published his commission at Amboy on the 29th of August, 1738; at Burlington a few days later. The council, with the assembly, expressed the thanks and joy of the people in unmeasured terms, prophetically seeing trade and commerce flourish and justice more duly and speedily administered under the new rule. The pleasant relations between the governor and the representatives of the people which these expressions of satisfaction seemed to foreshadow were not to be of long duration. “There is so much insincerity and ignorance among the people, ... and so strong an inclination in the meanest of the people to have the sole direction of all the affairs of the government,” writes Morris to his friend Sir Charles Wager, one of the treasury lords, May 10, 1739, “that it requires much more temper, skill, and constancy to overcome these difficulties than fall to every man’s share.” Under these influences, Morris, the former leader of the popular party, betrayed them, and tried to obey his instructions to the very letter. Following the example set by Cosby, of New York, in regard to the salary of an absent governor and a present lieutenant-governor or president of the council, he began to quarrel with John Hamilton, who as president had temporarily acted as governor. Fortunately for Morris’s reputation, this case did not grow into such a public scandal as the Cosby-Van Dam case, mentioned above, and was quietly settled in the proper way. The assembly, having early discovered that Morris was not an easy man to deal with, tried to discipline him by interfering with the disposal of the revenue granted for the support of the government, and finally refused to pass supply bills unless the governor disobeyed his instructions and assented to bills enacted by them. The wheels of the governmental machinery threatened to come to a standstill for want of money, when Morris, after an illness of some weeks, died at Trenton on the 21st of May, 1746, leaving the government of the province to his whilom adversary. John Hamilton, as president of the council, who was then already suffering from ill health, prorogued the assembly, then sitting at Trenton, and reconvened them at Perth Amboy, his own home. Relieved of their political enemy, Morris, the assembly became more amenable to reason, and during Hamilton’s brief administration “chearfully made provision for raising 500 men” for the Canada expedition, and lent the government £10,000 to arm and equip the New Jersey contingent. Hamilton soon succumbed to his disease, and died June 17, 1747. When John Reading, another member of the council, succeeded to power, his administration of a few months was mainly signalized by riots at Perth Amboy,—in which Reading was roughly handled. These disturbances were caused by an act to vacate and annul grants of land and to divest owners of property which had been bought some years before from the Indians.