No reasonable reason which would be honorable to the minority of the Assembly, therefore, can be given for the eagerness which it displayed, on the sixteenth of February, to disturb the harmony of that body, in which all of both factions appeared to have been united in both purpose and action ; but, on that day, Colonel Philip Schuyler, of Albany-county, in behalf of that minority, renewed the conflict of factions which had been opened, unsuccessfully, by Colonel Abraham Ten Broeck, of the Manor of Rensselaerswyck, on the preceding twenty-sixth of January. For that unseemly purpose, that distinguished mem-

" their trade." -- (Speech of Mr. Jenkinson, in Vie House of Commons, May 15, 1775.-- Almon's Parliamentary Register, i., 470.)

Besides the peculiarity of the titles of those several papers, to which reference has been made there was a grave significance in the fact that they were moved for, with those titles, by the head of the leading family in the Colony ; and that they were ordered by an unanimous vote of the Assembly. It has suited those who have preferred to traduce New York and her General Assembly, however, to regard both the General Assembly and its papers as only favorable to the Home Government and antagonistic to the common cause.

1 Journal of the House, " Die Martis, 10 ho., A.M., the 31st January, " 1775."

2 111 the language of that period, the word " State," as it was used in this and similar connections, was the equivalent of the word "State- " ment," which, in such connections, is now employed.