During the Colonial epoch England assigned many men to govern New York. The governor possessed unlimited despotic powers. He exercised authority denied to the King. He not only made the laws but interpreted and executed them, and when necessary unmade them. He usurped the prerogatives of the Assembly and of the courts; his council was merely an aggregation of automatons who danced when he pulled the string. No act of the Assembly was placed on the statute book without his signature and no decision of the court was valid until he, as chief justice, passed judgment, and in this respect he exercised powers denied to the King, for his Majesty, while permitted to sit on the king’s bench, was prohibited from expressing judgment. There were two governors of early New York who never have been brought under the ban of usurping the functions of the coördinate branches of government nor of debasing the powers confided to them by their superiors, Thomas Dongan and the Earl of Bellomont. No charge ever has been brought that they carried away money unworthily raised or dishonestly made. Nor has either ever been accused of using his high position for unmeritorious or discreditable purposes. Both, however, have received the encomiums and praise of historians of England and America as rulers and statesmen of the highest degree of efficiency and honesty at a time when the standard of morals and of statesmanship was lamentably low and unquestionably debased. Toward both every Irishman and every New Yorker should turn with sentiments of the strongest esteem and admiration of the highest calibre, not only in commendation of the success they gained in the fulfillment of official obligations in the face of discouraging and corrupt environment, but for the sturdy and sterling manhood they displayed in the maintenance of their official honor and in the normal performance of their official duty.