Westchester County, New York, During the American Revolution
" Some difficulties having arisen relative to the Ad- " vertisement published by the Committee, for choos- " ing a Committee of Inspection "--in other words, the handful of professional politicians who assumed to represent the unfranchised Mechanics and Working-men of the City, having repudiated the limitations imposed by the Congress, and insisted that the votes of the great body of the inhabitants, as well as those of the Freeholders and Freemen, of the City, should be received, in the election of the proposed Committee of Inspection -- an interview, between the leaders of those plebeian and revolutionary claimants of political authority and their aristocratic and conservative neighbors of the Committee of Correspondence, was invited by the latter ; 2 and, on the fol-
1 Minutes of the Committee of Correspondence, l ' New- York, November 7, 1774."
The eleventh Resolution of the Congress, referred to in the text, provided "that a Committee be chosen in every County, City, and ' ' Town, by those who are qualified to vote for Representatives in the " Legislature, whose business it shall be attentively to observe the con- "ductof all persons, touching this Association" [of Non- Importation, Non-Consumption, and Non- Exportation,]; "and when it shall be made " to appear to the satisfaction of a majority of any such Committee, that "any person within the limits of their appointment has violated "this Association" [whether he man have consented to it, or not] "that " such majority do forthwith cause the truth of the case to be published " in the Gazette, to the end that all such foes to the Rights of British "America may be publicly known and universally contemned, as the " enemies of American Liberty ; and, thenceforth, we respectively will "break off all dealings, with him or her."