It will be evident to every one, from what has been stated concerning Colonial Westchester-county and those who occupied it, that the purposes of this work, which is devoted especially to the history of that purely agricultural community, do not require us to notice the long-continued and ably-conducted struggle of parties, throughout the Colony, in which the Livingstons and the Morrises had been pitted against the De Lanceys and the Colonial and Home Governments ; nor will it be necessary, for those purposes, that we shall present, in all their different phases, the antagonism of " the Merchants and Traders " of every

1 Doctor Sparks, ill his Life of Gouverneur Morris, i., 20, told us of an " important cause in which that gentlemen was engaged," before the Courts, during the Colonial era--" that of a contested Election, in West- " chester-county, where he had Mr. Jay for an opponent." "We are not told who the contending parties, in that action, were ; but it is said, "it involved principles of evidence, questions about the right of "suffrage, as then exercised, and a complication of facts, local and general, which gave full scope for the display of legal knowledge and "forensic skill."

family and party and sect, united only in that one opposition to the Colonial policy of the Home Government 2 -- of "the Gentlemen in Trade," as they sometimes called themselves -- within the several Towns and Cities on the Atlantic seaboard, to some of the long-established Laws of the Kingdom, as well as to those which had been enacted, since the close of the War with France and Spain, for the purpose of meeting the necessities of the Mother Country, occasioned by the enormous expenses of that eventful contest -- the unfranchised Mechanics and Workingmen of that period, within the Cities and Towns referred to 3 (sometimes, courted and caressed by those