The second of the facts referred to is, at the time under consideration and during the succeeding half century, as we have already stated {vide pages i, 5, ante,) those who were not Freeholders or Freemen of a Municipality, were not vested with the right of suffrage, in any of the Colonies ; and it need not be a matter of surprise that, at that early day, the great body of the Freeholder and Freemen, in New York, was not inclined to permit any interference, in political affairs, by those who were not, legally, entitled to take part in them. Indeed, the rule of universal .suffrage is not, to-day, generally recognized ; and one State, in New England, if no more, continues to make a division of her citi- I zens, at the Polls.

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 1774-1783.

federated party of the Opposition, notwithstanding tiieir apparent harmony on other questions, was promptly and very energetically displayed.

The Resolution offered by Theophilact Bache had no sooner been declared to have been carried, than Isaac Sears, seconded by Peter Van Brugh Livingston, representing the minority of the Committee, offered another Resolution, jiroviding "that Messrs. "Isaac Low, James Duane, Philip Livingston, John " j\Iorin Scott, and Alexander ^IcDougal be nomi- '■ nated, agreeable to the question now carried ;" but it was not the intention of the aristocratic, conservative majority of the Committee that the plebeian, revolutionary minority of that body should have the slightest representation in the proposed Delegation ; and, notwithstanding its seeming fairness, the Resolution was promptly rejected, by a vote of twelve to twenty-five. The subject was subsequently disposed of, as it then appeared, by a Resolution, offered by John De Lancey and seconded by Benjamin Booth, providing for the nomination of the Delegates by the body of the Committee, of which the conservative aristocrats held the entire control, which resulted in the nomination of Philip Livingston, John Alsop, Isaac Low, James Duane, and John Jay, of whom John Alsop and John Jay, who had been substituted for the two candidates of the minority, John Morin Scott and Alexander McDougal, by reason of their known peculiarly conservative tendencies, were espejiecially obnoxious to that revolutionary minority, as well as to the revolutionary portion of the unfranchised masses whom that minority indirectly represented.