The fourth was the deciding blow. Even Morgan lacked the decision which would have led Arnold to carry the (second) barricade at all hazards—and that carried, the third must have fallen and with it the city. Had Arnold so much as suspected Morgan’s inaction, it is certain he would have remained in the field, and personally directed the assault in which he could not join. It was his first and last failure. Valcour Island, Saratoga, Ridgefield—all exhibit the vigor of him of whom Mr. Codman justly remarks: “Arnold, with the exception of Ethan Allen, seems beyond all others, to have understood the value of rapid action at the beginning of (he might have said, throughout) a war.—ED. Footnote 2: The official reply to the governor’s message expresses this shrewd inference in prose thus: “But we hope Great Brittaine & the other Powers of Europe may mediate and divert the War with which we are alarm’d & conclude it in a happy and lasting Peace, and this we believe in as much as your Excell^y doth not mention in your Speech that the advice you rec^d in the last ships was from the ministry of Great Brittaine who this House apprehends would have sent forward their Directions had they conceived any immediate Danger of a War.” Footnote 3: Polls and Estates. Footnote 4: December 3, 1730, the House passed acts for raising £6000 for the repair of Fort William and Mary and for building a state house, and for removing three of the courts of general quarter sessions of the peace and the inferior courts of common pleas from Portsmouth to Exeter, Hampton, and Dover. The same day the governor in council approved the act for removing the courts, but no action was taken on the money bill. Footnote 5: The same day, March 10, the governor, in anger, dissolved the assembly, intending thereby “to give his Maj^{ties} good subjects an opportunity of sending such to represent them in the next Assembly as will do all in their Power to retrieve the Injustice you have practiced in not paying the Publick Debts; and those that will promote peace & a good agreem^t amongst all Branches of the Legislature.” Footnote 6: This refers to the disputed boundary between New Hampshire and Massachusetts, which had been in controversy for many years, and was then in an acute stage. See the governor’s message, _ante_. Footnote 7: Capt. John Rindge was appointed by the House to be agent of the province to present the boundary line controversy to the home government in England, but the appointment was not recognized by the council. Footnote 8: