Need there be any surprise that, with such an array of strong men in its favor, that he more distant and less exposed Manor of Livingston should be chosen, especially since the purchasing agent of the Quartermaster-general of the Continental Army was at Fishkill, with funds to meet the drafts of Dirck Jansen, who was selected by the Convention, to gather the grain from the farmers or from the manorial storehouses, and, also, especially since no inspection of either the quantity or the quality of what was to be thus purchased, was provided for.

5 Journal of the Commiilee of Safety, " Friday morning, September 27, " 177G."

received the dilatory and half-hearted attention of the Convention -- an abridgement of their existing despotic authority was opposed by the Deputies who then exercised it ; * and there was a lingering, longing desire, among the master-spirits of the Convention, for a reconciliation with the Mother Country and a restoration of the former form of Colonial Government, evidently with themselves and their friends administering it.'

The subject was introduced into the Convention, very properly, on the day after that body had approved and accepted the Declaration of Independence ; but the consideration of it was postponed, from time to time, until the first of August, when a Committee was appointed for the purpose of taking into consideration and reporting apian for instituting and framing a Form of Government, together with a Bill of Rights, ascertaining and declaring the essential Rights and Privileges of "the good people of this State," as a foundation for such Form of Government, with instructions to report to the Convention, on the twenty-sixth