A general Jail-delivery, in the City of New York, signalized the "new departure" -- where there was no longer any Law, there could not be any breaches of the Law, either in the matter of pecuniary obligations or in that of any other obligation -- and as every civil Commission was cancelled by that Resolution of Independence from the Crown of Great Britain, on the authority of which royal authority every such Commission was based, every Court of Justice was closed, every function of Government was paralyzed, and because no new form of local Government and no new system of Statutes had been provided to take the places of the others, which had been thus violently set aside, there was nothing but confusion and uncertainty; and had not the general conservatism of the Colonists prevailed and jireserved the general peace, the advent of Independence, throughout the Colony of New York, would have been signalized by many a local scene of terrorism and of bloodshed. It was not so in the other Colonies; and had not the master-spirits of the revolutionary faction, in New York, in the interest of Reconciliation, obstructed the work of creating a new form of Government, quite as effectively as, at the same time, they were creating a necessity for such a new system -- at least for a Provisional Government, if not for a permanent one -- New York might, also, have been fully prepared for the great changes, in all her governmental arrangements, which were thus crowded on her. A very competent writer, a witness of the great changes of which he wrote and of which we write, thus accurately and graphically described them: "The Decla- " ration of Independence, published by Congress on "the fourth of July, 1770, was the first act that i)ut "an end to the Courts of Law, to the Laws of the "land, and to the administration of Justice, under "the British Crown, within the thirteen Colonies.