Those who had been appointed to membership in the proposed Committee of Correspondence of the City of New York-- in the " Committee of Fifty- " one," as it was popularly called -- were duly assembled, at the Coffee-House, on Monday, the twenty-third of May, 1774, forty-three of the fifty-one being present; and the Committee was duly organized by the appointment of Isaac Low, as its permanent Chairman, and that of John Alsop, as its permanent Deputychairman 2 -- at a subsequent Meeting, Joseph Allicocke was appointed Secretary, and Thomas Pettit, Messenger, of the Committee ; 3 the first two, in whom some authority was vested, being high-toned, antirevolutionary Merchants ; while the last two, who were not members of the Committee, and to whom no authority was given, were among those unfranchised, revolutionary Workingmen, whom the former had previously looked on with so much disfavor.

Immediately after the organization of the Committee had been completed, a letter was received from "the body of the Mechanics, signed by Jonathan "Blake, their Chairman," informingthe Committee of the concurrence of the Mechanics with the other inhabitants of the City, in their nomination of it ; which clearly indicated the entire good faith of the great body of the unfranchised masses, in the transfer of the leadership of the confederated party of the Opposition, from those, with revolutionary tendencies, who had called themselves " Sons of Liberty," to the aristocratic, conservative elements of the party opposed to the Colonial policy of the Home Government, which had been made at the Coffee-house, on the preceding Thursday ; and clearly indicating, also, that whatever the differences between the two factions, on social questions, might be, they were one in all which related to the great political questions of the day, concerning the obnoxious features of the Colonial policy of the Home Government, notwithstanding the disappointment of some of the assumed leaders of those masses, when they had failed to secure seats in the Committee * -- the sinister purposes of those who