Esq., ill his very valuable work on American loyalists, says of this individual, " That he was chief justice and a member of the council of the colony, and considered to be in office in 17S2. His father, the Tlonorable William Smith, an eminent lawyer and judge of the supreme court, died in 1769. William Smith, the subject of this notice, graduated at Yale College in 1745. It appears, that he was at a loss as to the side which he should espouse in the controversy which preceded the Revolution, and that he made no choice until late in the war. It seems, also, that a number of other gentlemen of wealth and influence, who had wavered like himself, joined the royal cause about the same time, in 1778. It is believed that, at first, he opposed the claims of the ministry. However this may be, his final decision excited the remark of both the Whigs and the Loyalists. The former indulging their wit in verse, and calling him the * weathercock,' that 'could hardly tell which way to turn ;' and the latter noticing his adhesion in their correspondence. He settled in Canada, after the war, and was chief justice of that colony. He published a history of New York, which was continued by his son William."'^

In 1776, the Rev. Ichabod Lewis, twin brother of the venera-

» "This eloquent man," alluding to .Tudge Smith, " having been an adherent to th« royal cause in the Revolution, left the city of New York in 1783, with the British troops, and was afterwards rewarded by his sovereign with a high judiciary office at Quebec. Judge Smith, although thus removed from the place of his origin, always contemplated the politics of his native country with peculiar solicitude. One evening, in the year 1789, when Dr.