The disastrous inaction of King George and the London lords, arising probably from jealousy of the provincials, and the rumours of a great French fleet under D’Anville to be sent against New England, caused the abandonment of the expedition to Quebec. This, however, was not known by submarine electric cable; and meantime New York politics, at which we must now glance, had become interesting. Two friends, the Chief-Justice De Lancey and Governor Clinton, quarrelled over their cups at a convivial gathering, and this took place just after the latter had renewed the former’s commission for life. Happening, too, on the eve of the great council of the Six Nations, which Clinton had summoned at Albany, just when that town was pestiferous with small-pox and bilious fever, the outlook for successful negotiations was not very promising. Messrs. Rutherford, Livingston, and Dr. Cadwallader Colden were the only members of his council who came with Clinton, while of the expected Indians only three had arrived. These, for the two scalps with the blood hardly dried on the hair, were rewarded with strouds and laced coats, and sent to drum up recruits, while the governor waited a month for the tardy, suspicious, and sullen savages to appear before him. Matters looked dark indeed. Yet when Mohawk runners, despatched by Johnson on a scouting expedition to Crown Point, arrived, bringing news of French preparations for a descent upon Schenectady and the Valley, and possibly upon Albany, the governor was unable to see the imminent danger. He still waited; he still believed wholly in the defensive policy, and seemed satisfied, because for the fort on the Hudson at Saratoga, now Easton, a sum equal to about eight hundred dollars had been voted by the Assembly. This sum enabled the colonial engineers to build a palisade one hundred and fifty feet long, with six redoubts for barracks, all of timber, and to mount on platforms twelve cannon of six, twelve, and eighteen pound calibre. In this way the summer was wasted in waiting; for the Indians came not, and Clinton’s ambition to be a powerful diplomatist with the Indians was for the present baffled. Believing this was a matter between French and English alone, strongly inclining to neutrality, and diligently persuaded thereto by the French Jesuits, the Iroquois sulked at home. Not only did they flatly refuse to meet the governor, but some of the chiefs went openly over to the French.