The urgent appeals with which the newspapers had been filled, year by year, and the inflammatory handbills which had been posted throughout the City, whenever the purposes of " the Merchants and " Tradei-s " of the City of New York had required their powerful, but, sometimes, questionable, co operation in opposing the Colonial policy of the Home Government, had gradually taught " the Inhabitants" of that City --as, on such occasions only, the unfranchised Mechanics and Workingmen were delicately called, by those who had thus resorted to them -- with more or less thoroughness, concerning the personal and political " Rights of Man and of Englishmen," as those Rights had been defined, from time to time, by those " Merchants and Traders " or by their well-paid Counsel, for the promotion of the ])articular purposes of those more aristocratic gentlemen ; and these " In- " habitants " had also learned, from all those varied teachings and from their own well-trained reflections, that the particular Rights w-hicli had been so earnestly and learnedly claimed by their high-toned neighbors, were not less the Rights of the unfranchised masses, and equally the birthright of their children. Little by little, therefore, under the leadership of, probably, not more than half a dozen shrewd and able and ambitious men, generally of higher social and political standing than themselves, these " In- " habitants " began to grow uneasy and insubordinate, if not radically revolutionary ; and the confederated " Merchants and Traders " and the more aristocratic portion of the citizens who were not in Trade were as quickly made sensible that a power had been created and fostered, by themselves, for their own lawless purposes, which, because of its tendency towards a radical Revolution in both the social and political relations of the Colony, they were no longer able to control -- a power, indeed, which, if it were notspeedily and effectually checked, would surely overwhelm them and, probably, involve the Colony and the Continent in revolution and disaster.