In the meantime Bellomont deplored the legacy his predecessor, Fletcher, had left him: A divided people, an empty purse, a few miserable, naked, half-starved soldiers, not half the number the King allowed pay for; the fortifications and the governor’s house very much out of repair, and “in a word the whole government was out of frame.” The province was rent with turmoil and turbulence in consequence of the Leisler-Milborne rebellion. The new governor’s sympathies had been drawn toward the martyr Leisler, whose enemies in the aristocratic party resisted almost to the point of violence Bellomont’s efforts to make restitution for a monstrous crime. As a rebuke to the rascality of his predecessor Bellomont had declared: “I will take care there shall be no misapplication of the public money; I will pocket none of it myself nor shall there be embezzlement by others.” To this standard he unflinchingly held. No breath of scandal, no charge of prostitution of duty for self-aggrandizement tainted his reputation. He loyally protected the interests of those whom he was sent to govern. He was distinctively a statesman of the constructive school, in marked contradistinction to many of those governors who preceded and who followed him, who pursued a policy of confiscation or of destruction—of confiscation in grabbing everything in sight and of destruction by undermining the liberties of the people and by attempted restriction of their God-given rights. Under Bellomont’s short administration the frontiers were strengthened, a library was established, printing was encouraged, shipping promoted and education, which had been neglected, stimulated. His untimely death, however, prevented the development of many beneficent reforms which he had under contemplation. Under the cloak of politics repressive religious measures were adopted and inhuman persecutions practised. Dongan, an Irish Catholic, favored an act permitting Jews to exercise their religion, but the New York Common Council vetoed the proposition, while Bellomont, an Irish church of England worshipper, approved the measure proscribing priests, on the ground that Catholic prelates uniformly labored to excite the Indians against the Anglo-Americans. Both governors recommend themselves to posterity for enlightened statesmanship that throws into deep obscurity the times in which they lived. Dongan brought to the province of New York the first semblance of a representative form of government; under Lord Bellomont the first spark of American Independence flashes, by the demand that the colonists repudiate the laws of England because the colonists are not represented in the parliament that frames these laws. The board of trade of London directs Bellomont to check this heresy because “the independence the Colonists thirst for is so notorious.”