facts that, on Monday, the twenty-second of August, 1774, a Convention of Delegates from the several Towns and Districts of Westchester-county, or from a number of them, was assembled in the Court-house, at the White Plains ; that Colonel Frederic Philipse, Lord of the Manor of Philipseborough and a Member of the General Assembly of the Province, representing the County of Westchester in that body, was in the Chair of that Convention ; x that it was determined to authorize a Delegation to represent the County, in the proposed Congress of the Continent, at Philadelphia ; and that Isaac Low, Philip Livingston, James Duane, John Alsop, and John Jay, who had been elected to represent the City and County of New York, in that Congress, should be duly authorized, also, to represent the County of Westchester, therein. 2

By that determination and action of its nominally authorized Convention, the County of Westchester, in history, if not in fact, 3 placed itself abreast of the most advanced advocates for the autonomy of the British Colonies in America ; and no one can successfully dispute the fact that the Delegates whom, the records say, the County authorized to represent it, in the consultations and discussions and votes of the

1 " Card to the Public" reprinted in Force's American Archives, Fourth Series, i., 1188, 1189.

2 Oi-ede»tials of the Delegates from New-York, Journal of the Congress, "Monday, September 5, 1 7 74."

3 The subsequently published disclaimer of inhabitants of Rye and other circumstances of the same tendency, incline us to the belief of what Lieutenant-governor Colden informed the Earl of Dartmouth, on that general subject, in his Despatch of October 6, 1774, that " a great deal of