Meanwhile the white settlers were, according to Johnson’s report, abandoning their farms along the Mohawk, and concentrating in the block-houses or palisaded towns. Besides having sent Indian scouts to the Champlain country, Johnson wrote urgent letters to Clinton stating the case, and asking him to open his eyes to the facts. To protect Johnson’s stores of eleven thousand bushels of grain, while standing his ground, the governor sent a lieutenant and thirty men. Another militia company was despatched to the upper Mohawk Castle. Having done these things, Clinton, who had as early as the 4th of August officially notified Governor Shirley of Massachusetts that he would proceed against Crown Point with the warriors of the Five Nations, was at his wits’ end. He had alienated Colonel Schuyler and the members of the Board of Indian Commissioners, mostly faithful and trusted men well known in the provinces. In the quarrel of the governor with De Lancey, these ranged themselves on the side of the chief justice. It is too clumsy an attempt at explanation of the difficulty between the king’s agent, Clinton, and the Board of Indian Commissioners, to ascribe the causes chiefly or entirely to the “rascality” of the commissioners, who “abused their office for private peculation,” or to the ambition of De Lancey. It is not necessary in one who appreciates the great abilities of Johnson to describe him as a white lily of honesty and purity. English authors, the Tory historians of the Revolution, and the prejudiced writers of American history, who reflect their own narrowness and sectional views, take delight in maligning the character of the men of colonial New York simply because they were Dutch. As matter of unsentimental fact, there is much to be said on both sides. The people of New York were not anxious to send the Indians on the war-path, nor to furnish white soldiers to guard their squaws and pappooses while they were away from their villages. They were not at all persuaded of the superior honesty either of the governor or his advisers and appointees. The greater facts are also clear, that the New York Assembly was vigilantly jealous of the people’s liberties, and was determined at all hazards to limit the royal prerogative as far as possible. Since his quarrel with De Lancey, the governor had shown excessive zeal in maintaining the rights of the king. On the other hand, most of the steps necessary to make New York an independent state had, as the British Attorney-General Bradley declared, already been taken by his Assembly, which of twenty-seven members had fourteen of Dutch descent. These men were determined to teach the king’s agent that he must bow to the will of the people, who were more important than king and court, and make no advance in monarchical ideas. They saw that the governor was under the close personal influence of Cadwallader Colden, a radical Tory, who they suspected prepared most of Clinton’s State papers; and they set