If the rough Minutes of flie Courts, in Cciniinn? .\ctions, prior to 17S7, were preserved, at all, they have all disai)peared ; and we feel justified in saying, as we have said, in the text, that where Pauperism and Intemperance were as uncommon as they were in Westchestei'-county, during the later Colonial period, there was, in consequence, a minimum of Crime.

- It is understood that there was no Newspaper established in Westchester-county, until about I8I11, when one was published at Somers, and one at Peekskill.

left, undisturbed, in all his relations, by any outside influence.'

Such a community as that which constituted the Colonial County of Westchester -- a community of well-situated, intelligent, and well-to-do farmers, diligently and discreetly attending to its own affairs, without the di.sturbing influence of any Village or County coterie -- has generally been distinguished for its rigid Conservatism, in all its relations; and such a community has always been more inclined to maintain those various long-continued, well-settled, and, generally, satisfactory relations, with more than ordinary tenacity, preferring, very often, to continue an existing inconvenience or an intangible wrong, to which it had become accustomed, rather than to accei)t, in its stead, the jjossibility of an advantage, indefinitely promised, in an untried and uncertain change. The tenure under which so many of those Westchester-county farmers held their lands, which did not permit them to enjoy the rights of Freeholders, at the Polls, had, from the beginning, removed that portion of the inhabitants of the County from the arena of politics, without having created any discontent ; and, to a great extent, it had served, also, to increase that Conservatism, even in political affairs, which would have undoubtedly controlled even those who were Tenants, under any other circumstances. There is not, indeed, any known evidence of the existence, at any time, within the County, of any material excitement, among the great body of those farmers, on any subject;* and, consequently, there is very little, if any, evidence that the excitement of the earlier opposition to the Home Government, which had so seriously disturbed the peace of the neighboring City, as well as that of other Towns and Cities, on the seaboard, prior to the Summer of 1774, had found any active sympathy, in West-