History of Westchester County, New York, Vol. I
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. If the reader will closely watch the successive events, in that connection, and notice the final result, he will see, also, how well the consolidation of aristocracy and democracy, into one mass of political conglomerate, for the advancement in authority of particular men, accomplished that purpose, the interests of the Colonies and those of political honesty, in the meanwhile, having been entirely disregarded.