As James II. had left New York without a constitution, a representative assembly was called in May 1691, and a declaratory act was passed which annulled Leisler's proceedings. It required that all elections in the future should be annual, that the franchise should belong to the 40s. freeholders only, and that the colony itself should be apportioned into constituencies. At the same time it laid down liberty of conscience except for Papists, allowing a declaration instead of an oath to please the Quakers. But above all it declared that no tax was to be imposed unless it was voted by the colony. The act seemed satisfactory enough, except the important reservation with regard to taxation; a reservation which was sufficient to cause the Crown to veto the whole document, and New York was again without a true and defined constitution. Such a state of affairs was particularly bad when the colony in 1692 passed under the rule of the notoriously corrupt Benjamin Fletcher. There are, however, two things to be said for this man, whose work has been spoken of as full of deceit, fraud, and subterfuge. In the first place it has been proved that in military matters he showed considerable skill and activity; while in the second he undoubtedly realised before many men of his day the danger of disunion. In May 1696 he wrote, "The Indians, though monsters, want not sense, but plainly see we are not united, and it is apparent that the stronger these colonies grow in parts, the weaker we are on the whole, every little government setting up for despotic power and allowing no appeal to the Crown, but valuing themselves on their own strength and on a little juggling in defeating all commands and injunctions of the King."[182] On the other hand it must be allowed that Fletcher's methods were particularly scandalous, for not only did he practically license smuggling and piracy by levying blackmail upon those who carried on these lucrative trades, but he made personal friends of them, as for example Captain Tew, "a most notorious pirate," with whom, to the scandal of the inhabitants, he occasionally dined. As has been shown in another chapter, the Earl of Bellomont was made governor in 1698 to prevent these nefarious undertakings, and as ruler of New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts he did such good work that he was universally and sincerely regretted when he died in 1701. He was succeeded by Lord Cornbury, who was a profligate in character and overbearing in manner. His rule was one of petty spite and conflict, and having won the especial hatred of the dissenters and generally alienated popular support, his recall in 1708 was as much a cause of rejoicing as Bellomont's death had been of lamentation.