Still the Assemblymen, who thought the Indians ought to have been allowed to go on their hunting, ought to have been kept friendly, but not stirred up to fight the French or be sent to Canada, and ought to have stayed in New York to guard their own old men and squaws instead of having white men drafted to do it, distrusted the servant of the king and the tool of Colden, and doubted the fitness of the governor’s appointees to office. They questioned the wisdom of the governor’s general policy; and they intimated, with only too good reason, that the money so freely distributed for the Indians was not properly and publicly accounted for. They voted promptly all that was necessary for the expedition against Canada. They fully realized the necessity of holding firm the loyalty of the Six Nations; and to keep it, they offered at once to vote the sum of eight hundred pounds, provided the persons chosen to distribute the people’s money were such as they approved of. In regard to the forts on the distant frontier, so near Canada, they considered that the other colonies should share the expense of permanently guarding the king’s dominions. In answer to these defiant resolutions, which practically impeached the governor, Clinton sent a curt and insulting note of less than one hundred words. The Dutchman’s ire now blazed fiercely. After the significant ceremony of locking the door and laying the key on the table, they proceeded to issue a manifesto, marshalling in review the whole proceedings since June 6, 1746. They censured him for removing the former commissioners of Indian affairs, and for practically making Dr. Colden the real administrator of affairs in the cabinet, and Colonel Johnson in the field. They sneered at the pretensions and vanity of the governor in his constant boasting of what he claimed to have done. They charged him with treating the people of the colony with contempt, and with insulting them by vile epithets. They complained of the many brief and inconvenient adjournments to which he had needlessly subjected them. Especially were they enraged in their feelings at the deference paid, at their expense, to the commissioners from Massachusetts and Connecticut. They claimed that they ought to have been kept in session, in order that they might have been advised with, and their opinions consulted from time to time as to the matters under consideration.