It is a very significant fact that, when the Committee's Circuhir Letter was written and made ready for transmission to Westchester-county, there was no appearance whatever, within tiiat County, of the slightest organized opposition to either the Home or the Colonial Government; and that, among the debris of what had been conveniently regarded as a Convention of the County, assembled, in the preceding August, for the election of Deputies to represent the County in the late Congress, at Philadel[)hia, neither a County nor a Town Committee, actual or imixginary, remained, to bear testimony to the fact that such a Convention had ever existed, or to receive | the Committee's Circular Letter and to take action [ on its recommendation. Indeed, there can be very little doubt that the well-to-do and generally contented farmers, throughout that County, those who were Freeholders quite as much as those who were i only Leaseholders of properties on the various j Manors, with here and there a rare exception, had continued to gather their crops and to send them to •market, during the preceding Autumn ; to enjoy their

' This is a copy of the original publication, as it npppenred in Oaine's yeic-York Gazette and Wtcklij Mercm-t/j No. New- York, Monday,

March 20. 1775.

usual indoor and outdoor recreations, during the preceding Winter ; and to return to the labors of the season, on their farms or elsewhere, during the earlier weeks of the Spring, as they had done, before, year after year and generation after generation, knowing little and caring less concerning that bitter struggle for commercial gain, no matter how lawlessly conducted, or concerning that equally bitter struggle for the honors and emoluments of political place, no matter with what auxiliaries nor with what disregard of individual and social {jroprieties and of public morals that struggle should be conducted, which had kept the neighboring City and the entire seaboard in an unceasing and disgraceful turmoil, during that entire period.