History of Westchester County, New York, Vol. I
The subject of a new form of Government was scarcely disposed of, when, on the fourth of June, the same "Society of Mechanics in Union," so called, whom the master-spirits of the Committee of Fiftyone had deceived and betrayed-- the same who was composed of the fragments of that phantom which had been known by the general title of "The Sons of
3 This peculiarity of the Resolutions of the Provincial Congress did not
escape the vigilant attention of the Working men and tenants of only small properties, within the City of New-York -- of those very "poor "reptiles" of whom Gouverneur Morris had written to Mr. Penn, in Jlay, 1774, (vule page 188, an<c)-- and only with whose very acceptable help, the Delegation to the Continental Congress of 1774 had managed to secure their seats in that body. Whatever may have been their standing in the social scale of aristocracy, but for the co-operation of those who constituted the so calleil, " Society of Mechanics in Union," there would have been no place for either James Duane or John Jay in the Continental Congress of 1774 or in that similar Congress which succeeded it ; and without their assent and approval, corruptly secured, in every instance except one, the members of the Delegation to the first-named of those Congresses, if not those to both, had lived in fretful obscurity, and have died as their respective ancestors had died, " unwept, unhonored, and " unsung." There was a fitness, therefore, in the alarm of these Workingmen of the City of New York, because of the contemptuous disregard of their political Rights, by those, of the Provincial Congress, who were only the creatures of their plebeian will and the administrators of their inherent authority. The Addiess of the Society, which those workingmen subsequently presented to the I'rovincial Congress, on that subject, a master-piece of political reasoning, has been preserved iu the archives of the State, and will be referred to hereaftei-.