History of Westchester County, New York, Vol. I
While the more conservative portions of the Colonists, in opposition to the Home Government, were earnestly laboring to maintain themselves in the leadershij) of the political elements of the Colony, and, at the same time, to secure a redress of the grievances to which the Colony had been subjected and to effect an honorable reconciliation between the Colonies and the Mother Country, the revolutionary portion of the same body of Colonists, strengthened by the accession to their number, of those, recently of the opposite portion, who were endeavoring to pose, for office-sake, both as aristocrats aud as democrats, as might best suit successive audiences, nominally intent on the accomplishment of the same ends, was really employed in zealously promoting measures which were better adapted to the defeat of itself, in whatever it should really seek to accomplish, in the interests of peace.
On the seventh of November, James Duane, who had already distinguished himself, in connection with John Jay and Joseph Galloway, as everything else than an honest promoter of anything which was revolutionary in its tendencies, pandered to the revolutionary spirit which pervaded the revolutionary portion of the unfranchised inhabitants of the Citj', through whose influence he had once been elevated to a seat iu the Congress and through whose continued influence, only, a similar favor might be secured, in the near future -- that James Duane submitted a Resolution to the Committee of Correspondence, in the City of New York, for the election, by the Freeholders and the Freemen of the City, of eight persons in each Ward, for the purpose " of observing the con- " duct of all Persons touching the Association " [of \oh- Importation, and Non-Exportation, and Xon- Consumption'] "entered into, by the Congress," against Great Britain and her Colonies, and for the purpose, also, of publishing the names of all those whom that Com-