Sir Danvers Osborne’s career in America was a short tragedy in three acts. It lasted five days. He came to be ground as powder between the upper millstone of royal prerogative and the nether disk of popular rights. He came from an aristocratic and monarchical country, whose government believed that it was the source of power to the people, to colonists whose fathers had been educated mostly under a republic, where it was taught that the people were, under God, the originators of power. Charged with instructions much more stringent than those given to his predecessor, he was confronted in the town-hall by the city corporation, whose spokesman’s opening sentence was that “they would not brook any infringement of their liberties, civil or religious.” On meeting his Council for the first time, he was informed that any attempt to enforce the strict orders given him and to insist upon an indefinite support, would be permanently resisted. That night the unfortunate servant of the king took his own life. He committed suicide by hanging himself on his own garden wall. De Lancey, the chief-justice, was now called to the difficult post of governor, and to the personally delicate task of serving King George and his former associates, whom he had so diligently prodded against Clinton, Colden, and Johnson. This was especially difficult, when the Assembly found, in the instructions to Sir Danvers Osborne, how diligently the late governor and his advisers had slandered and misrepresented them to the British Government. The good results of a change in the executive were, however, at once visible, and the Assembly promptly voted money for the defence of the frontier, for the governor’s salary, for his arrears of pay as chief-justice, for Indian presents, for his voyage to Albany, and indeed, for everything reasonable. They added a complaint against Clinton, and a defence of their conduct to the Crown and Lords of Trade, which De Lancey sent to London. The clouds of war which had gathered in the Ohio Valley now broke, and M. Contrecœur occupied Fort Du Quesne. George Washington began his career on the soil of the State of Pennsylvania, in which his longest marches, deepest humiliations, fiercest battles, and most lasting civil triumphs were won; and on the 4th of July, 1754, honourably surrendered Fort Necessity. The French drum-beat was now heard from Quebec to Louisiana. The English were banished behind the Alleghanies, and their flag from the Ohio Valley.