The power over our crowd is no "longer in the hands of Sears, Ijamb, and such unimportant persons, " who have for six yeai's past, been the demagogues of a very turbulent "faction in this City; but their power and mischievous capacity ex- " piled in.^tantly uison the election of the Committee of Fifty-one, in "which there is a majority of inflexibly honest, loyal, and prudent "citizens." -- [MS. letter of Thomas Young to John Lamb, '-BoSTOV, 19th "June, 1774," in the "Lamb Papers," New York Historical Society's Library.)

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 1774-1783.

185)

fostered by the most aristocratic of her citizens, from the beginning of its existence, was one of the most powerful of those instrumentalities which, at that very time, were sapping the foundations of the Throne, in the Colonies; and it was through the proposition and the persistent effort of that particular Committee, that, very soon after it was organized, another and yet more influential body was created, composed of influential and able men, mainly from the higher classes of society, by whom, not long afterwards, the Home Government was arraigned before the bar of the entire world, on well-sustained charges of Usurpation and Oppression ; by whom, also, the standard of a united Rebellion of all the Colonies was raised ; and by whom a revolutionary power, united and energetic, extending throughout the entire seaboard, was raised for its support. In opposition to the purposes and the demands of the small revolutionary element, in New York -- in opposition, also, to the leaders and the revolutionary populace, in Boston, with whom the revolutionary leaders in New York were in constant corres})ondence and in entire harmony -- the Committee which the conservative, anti-revolutionary aristocracy of New York had thus created for the protection and the promotion of its own particular interests, the domestic as well as the foreign, originally proposed and persistently insisted on the organization of a Congress of Delegates from all the Colonies, for the united consideration of a// the matters in dirterence between all the Colonies and the Home Government; and it was that Congress, thus called into existence by an anti-revolutionary body, by assuming authority which had not been delegated to it and by disregarding the expressed opinions and intentions of those who were represented therein -- at the expense, also, of its own consistency, in excepting one of the Colonies from the provisions of its Association, in order to secure the vote of that Colony for the enforcement of that Association upon all the other Colonies -- which not only closed the door of reconciliation with the Mother Country, which it was expected to have opened to its widest extent ; but, practically, it organized a systematic and general Revolution, throughout the entire seaboard, which, ultimately, led to the overthrow of all monarchial power, within the entire territory of each and every one of its several constituent Colonies.