He had been associated with William Livingston and John Morin Scott, in the historically famous "triumvirate." He had professed to approve the usurpations of legislative authority and other questionable doings of the Continental Congress of 1774 ; and he is known to have been an outside adviser of the factious minority of the General Assembly, with whom and with whose inconsistency of action the reader is already accjuainted. He was the life-long and confidential friend and the frequent host of General Philip Schuyler ; and the correspondent, friend, and political adviser of George Clinton. He gave up his house, for the occupation of General Washington, when the latter occupied the City; and, with much ostentation, he appeared to be largely in sympathy with those, in New York and elsewhere, who were in the Rebellion. But, notwithstanding all these, William Smith adroitly avoided the placing of his name to the General Association of the Congress of 1774, that act which was made the political shibboleth, after the catchwords of " Rights " and "Liberty" had accomplished their purposes and anew issue, that of an implicit obedience to the powers which were, had been made by those who were leaders in the Rebellion. He was, also, at the same time that he was thus masquerading as a confidante and an adviser of those who were leading the Rebellion and as a sympathiser with and promoter of the Rcbeiyon itself, a Member of the Colonial Council of the King; an intimate friend and confidential adviser of the Governor of the Colony, William Tryou -- whose leanings toward the pretensions of the Livingston family were as distinctly seen as were those of the venerable Lieutenant-governor, Cadwallader Colden, toward the pretensions of the more influential Dc Lancey family -- and a secret schemer, aiming to promote the interest of his own family by disarming the Rebellion of its strength'^ and, thereby, effecting a reconciliation with the Home Government.