The reader will judge how ill-adapted such a "smelling Committee" as was thus ordered, in every Town, must have been, to promote harmony among the Colonists, or to give support to those who were seeking a redress of the grievances of the Colonies and a restoration of harmony between the Colonies and the Mother Country.

-3liiintes of the Committee of Correspondence, "New York, November " 14, 1774 ; " Letter from the Committee of Correupmidence to the Committee of Mechanics, " Committek Chamber, November 14, 1774."

The uncertaincies, if nothing else, of political ofRce-seeking, and. the tricks, if nothing else, of office-seekers, during that eventful [jeriod, may lie seen, although they may not be entirely understood, in a comparison of the contemptuous manner in which the aristocratic Committee had spurned the democratic Coimnittee, when it was proposed that the latter should be consulted, in the nomiuation of the ticket for Members of the proposed Congress, {Minntcs of the former, June 29 and July 4, 1774,) with the eagerness with which the aristocratic nominees on that ticket, very soon afterwards, repudiated the fundamental principle maintained

lowing day \_Novemher \5, 1774,] such an interview was had; but not until the Committee of Correspondence, meeting separately, had ordered " that, when " a Committee for carrying the Association of the Con- "gress into execution shall be elected, this Committee " do consider themselves as dissolved ; and that this " Resolution be immediately made public."*

It was thus acknowledged by that Committee which had been originated in the memorable Caucus, at Sam. Francis's, six months previously, and which had been subsequently organized, with so much ostentation, at the Coffee-house, nominally, for the promotion of" the common cause " of the Colonies, in their reasonable dispute with the Home Government; but, more surely, for the protection of the conservative and aristocratic elements of the City's pojDulation from the already unwelcome and yet more threatened aggressions of those which were more democratic and revolutionary in their inclinations; and, less prominently, but most surely, for the advancement of the individual purposes of those who were its originators and master-spirits -- by that hitherto respectable Committee of Fifty-one which no longer represented, without wavering, those political principles on which it had been originally founded and for which it had resolutely contended, not always unsuccessfully ; which was no longer controlled by those who even appeared to be actuated simply by an unselfish deby their own organization, and accepted that of their plebeian neighbors' organization, in order to secure the support of that body, at the Polls, and to assure their election, {Correi*pomlence between Abraham Brasher and other$, a Committee, and Philip Liringston and others, nominees for the office, July 26 and 27, 1774) ; and with the voluntary invitation, from the aristocratic to the democratic Committee, to meet in conference, in the instance mentioned in the text, when the primary movement was to be made, toward the election of another Delegation, to meet m another Congress, in the ensuing; May.