We have found only one Return of an JSlection in Westchestercounty, during the period of which we write ; but that very completely illustrates our subject. In the Election for the first Governor of the new-formed State, in 1777, the aggregate of the votes cast in Albany, Cumberland, Tiyon, Duchess, Ulster, and Westch ester-counties, including those of the Freemen of the City of Albany, was only twenty six hundred and forty-two. -- {Fragment of a General Return of Votes cast throughout the State -- Miscellaneous Papers, Volume xxxvii., in the Office of the Secretary of State, at Albany.)
In 1783, when there was nothing to disturb the election, the entire vote of the State for Governor, less that of ten Precincts which was illegally cast, was only four thousand seven hundred and forty-seven.-- (Hutchins's Civil List and Forms of Government of the Colony and State of New York, Edition of 1870, 75.)
. From these facts, the reader will understand how completely the governmental power was concentrated in the hands of the wealthy and how little those who were not wealthy could control the Government under which they lived, during the Colonial era and that which succeeded it, until the second Constitution of the State, within our own recollection, broke the power of the aristocracy and made every white male adult, who was a permanent resident and a tax-payer, also a member of the State and a voter.
*Rivington said the aggregate vote was a thousand and seventy-two.
were required to respect) constituting, also, another and entirely independent factor in the political ele-« ments of that period, in each of the several Colonies, which, in its very important relations with the politics and the- politicians of its day, must, also, be generally disregarded, in this place, because it, and its aspirations, and its doings, are not, generally, germain to the purposes of this work.