Those _Bills which failed to become Laws_ (1685-1732) make three volumes of manuscript, and though the measures proposed never became operative they show the drift of public opinion during the period covered by them. Several of these bills have been bound into the volumes of laws. The student of colonial commerce and finances will find much to interest him in other manuscript volumes, now in the State library at Albany, to wit: _Accounts of the Treasurer of the Province_, under various titles, and covering the period from 1702 to 1776, eight volumes, and _Manifest Books and Entry Books of the New York Custom House_, 1728 to 1774, forty-three volumes. Much information coveted by the genealogist is hidden in the _Indentures of Palatine Children_, 1710 and 1711, two volumes; in forty volumes of _Marriage Bonds_, 1752 to 1783, of which an index was published in 1860 under the title _New York Marriages_; and in the records kept in the office of the clerk of the Court of Appeals,—_Files of Wills_, from 1694 to 1800, and of _Inventories_, 1727 to 1798. Out of the 28 volumes of _Council Minutes_, 1668 to 1783, everything relating to the legislative business before the council has been published by the State of New York in the _Journal of the Provincial Council_. The unpublished parts of these records—the seven volumes of “Warrants of Survey, Licenses to Purchase Indian Lands,” 1721 to 1766, the fourteen “Books of Patents,” 1664 to 1770, the nineteen “Books of Deeds,” 1659 to 1774, and the thirty-four volumes of “Land Papers,” from 1643 to 1775—give as complete a history of the way in which the colony of New York gained its population as at this day it is possible to obtain without following the many private histories of real estate. The above-mentioned “Books of Deeds” contain papers of miscellaneous character, widely differing from deeds, such as commissions, letters of denization, licenses of schoolmasters, etc. Of the “Land Papers” a _Calendar_ was published by the State in 1864.[495] A public-spirited citizen of Albany, General John Tayler Cooper, enriched in 1850 the State library with twenty-two volumes of manuscripts, containing the correspondence of Sir William Johnson, the Indian commissioner. This correspondence covers the period from 1738 to 1774, and is important for the political, Indian, social, and religious history of New York. Extracts from it appeared in Dr. O’Callaghan’s _Documentary History of New York_ (vol. ii.).[496] Less important for the period treated of in this chapter are the _Clinton Papers_, especially the later series; but of the first importance in the study of the French wars are the _Letters of Colonel John Bradstreet_, deputy quartermaster-general, and _The Letters of General Sir Jeffrey Amherst_, commander-in-chief in America, dated New York, Albany, etc., from 1755 to 1771, a manuscript volume presented to the State library by the Rev. Wm. B. Sprague, D. D.[497]