All accounts agree, however, in describing the hard lot of these unfortunate exiles. Their ocean voyage was long and stormy with much fatal illness. The sites selected for their settlements were not desirable. The native pine was found unsuited to the production of tar in large quantities. They soon discovered that they would never be able to pay for their maintenance by such unprofitable labor. Moreover, the provisions given them were of inferior quality; and they were forced to furnish men for an expedition against Canada while their women and children were left either to starvation or to practical servitude. In this desperate situation some of the Palatines turned from their fellow Christians to the native savages, and their appeal was not in vain. The Indians gave them permission to settle at Schoharie, and many families removed thither in defiance of the Governor, who was still bent on manufacturing tar and pitch. But the great majority remained in the Hudson valley and eventually built homes on lands which they purchased.
The climate of New York disagreed with Hunter, and his mental depression kept pace with his physical debility. After six years of hopeless effort, he was obliged to admit the failure of his plans to produce naval stores. In 1710 he reported of the locality that it "had the finest air to live upon; but not for me"; again he says that Sancho Panza is a type for him, since that in spite of every effort to do his duty no dog could be worse treated. It is easy to understand that a member of the Pope-Swift-Bolingbroke circle in England should have found the social atmosphere of early New York far from exhilarating; and it is equally easy to comprehend that the pioneers of the New World resented his mismanagement of the campaign of 1711 against Canada and his assertion of the English Government's right to tax the colonists without the consent of the colonial Governments. But perhaps Hunter and the people appreciated each other more than either realized, for when he took leave in 1719 his words were warmly affectionate and his address embodied the exhortation: "May no strife ever happen amongst you but that laudable emulation who shall approve himself the most zealous servant and most dutiful subject of the best of Princes." And in response to this farewell address the colony of New York assured Governor Hunter that he had governed well and wisely, "like a prudent magistrate, like an affectionate parent," and that the good wishes of his countrymen followed him wherever he went.
It would be pleasant to dwell on this picture of mutual confidence and regard, but the rude facts of history hurry us on to quite different scenes. William Burnet, son of the Bishop of Salisbury, continued the policy of his predecessor, it is true, and lived on unusually amicable terms with the Assembly. He identified himself with the interests of the province by marrying the daughter of a prosperous Dutch merchant and by prohibiting the fur trade between Albany and Canada; yet even Burnet clashed with the Assembly on occasion. And when after an interval William Cosby became Governor, the worst abuses of executive power returned, fomenting quarrels which reached a climax in the famous Zenger trial.
The truth was that no matter how popular a governor might be, clashes were bound to occur between him and the representatives of the people whom he governed, because they represented divergent interests. The question of revenue was an ever-recurring cause of trouble. Without adequate funds from the home Government, the Governor looked to the Assembly for his salary as well as for grants to carry on the administration of the province. No matter how absolute the authority conferred by his commission and his instructions, the Governor must bow to the lower house of the provincial Legislature, which held the purse strings.
Under Sloughter, Fletcher, Bellomont, and Cornbury the Assembly had voted revenues for a term of years. But when Cornbury appropriated to his own uses £1000 out of the £1800 granted for the defense of the frontiers and when in addition he pocketed £1500 of the funds appropriated for the protection of the mouth of the Hudson, the Assembly grew wary. Thereafter for four successive years it made only annual appropriations, and, wiser still by 1739, it voted supplies only in definite amounts for special purposes. Short-sighted the Assembly often was, sometimes in its parsimony leaving the borders unprotected and showing a disposition to take as much and to give as little as possible—a policy that was fraught with grave peril as the French and Indian War drew on apace.
The growing insubordination of the province gave more than one governor anxious thought. Governor Hunter wrote warningly to friends in England: "The colonies are infants at their mother's breasts and will wean themselves when they become of age." And Governor Clinton was so incensed by the contumacy of the Assembly that he said bluntly: "Every branch of this legislature may be criminal in the eyes of the law, and there is a power able to punish you and that will punish you if you provoke that power to do it by your behaviour. Otherwise you must think yourselves independent of the crown of Great Britain!"