for the continuance of the then Federal compact, and for its usefulness, and that the General Government should inspire respect at home and abroad, Governor Clinton resisted with ardor and firmness the making of any concessions which should weaken the State authority or further abridge its powers. The influence of his position and arguments on the public mind can readily be seen. But still abler and more practiced pens and voices were showing into what a pitiable condition public affairs were running. General Schuyler, Chief Justice Livingston, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton were setting forth and urging the necessity for a change. Another call, more commanding the country over, was heard from Virginia, suggesting that the powers of the central government be increased.

In the convention which met at Philadelphia this county shares indeed with the State at large in the honor of being represented by General Hamilton, but it is a pleasure to remember that in the person of G uverneur Morris (a distinguished and influential delegate from Pennsylvania), who was born on Westchester soil and who returned again to represent her in the United States Senate, and whose remains are sacredly enshrined in her bosom, she was present to form that wise and beneficent instrument. The Constitution thus offered to the States for adoption met with the fiercest opposition. Not only were its features faulted, but the conduct of the Convention in transcending, as asserted, its powers, was fiercely assailed. " Instead of amending the Constitution," said Mr. Jones, " it had framed one." In Albany the new Constitution was publicly burned. In the choice of delegates to a convention which was now ordered to meet at Poughkeepsie, to pass upon its adoption by the State, the greatest excitement prevailed, and the terms Federalist and Anti-Federalist, as applied to separate parties, began to be used.