Now and then, it is true, those of these farmers who were Freeholders, had been engaged, among themselves, in a political contest between the friends of the De Lanceys and those of the Morrises, or between the supporters of the Van Cortlandts and those of the Philipses, all of them Westchester-county Landlords, for seats in the General Assembly of the Colony ^ or for some local abject ; but, beyond such merely local contests, they had never gone -- the " Sons of Liberty " were not represented and had no correspondents, within that County.

It will be evident to every one, from what has been stated concerning Colonial Westchester-county and those who occupied it, that the purposes of this work, which is devoted especially to the history of that purely agricultural community, do not require us to notice the long-continued and ably-conducted struggle of parties, throughout the Colony, in which the Livingstons and the Morrises had been pitted against the De Lanceys and the Colonial and Home Governments ; nor will it be necessary, for those purposes, that we shall present, in all their different phases, the antagonism of " the Merchants and Traders" of every

1 Doctor Sparlcs, in his Life of Gouvemeur Morris, i., 20, told lis of an " important cause in which that gentlemen was engaged," before the Courts, during the Colonial era -- " that of a contested Election, in West- " chester-county, where he had 5Ir. Jay for an opponent." We are not told who tlie contending parties, in that action, were ; but it is said, "it involved principles of evidence, questions about the right of "suffrage, as then exercised, and a complication of facts, local and gen- •*eral, which gave full scope for the display of legal knowledge and " forensic skill."