those who had originated and promoted it, secretly and rapidly, without alarming those who were assembled at Cap'tain Hatfield's, and before they could be brought to the Courthouse, to defeat those purposes and to relegate the Morrises to that political obscurity in which, very ungraciously, they had so long and so ingloriously rested. It was, in short, nothing else than a political coup-de-main; but, unfortunately for the honor of those who participated in it, it was not as respectably successful as those who had contrived it, had desired. 1

Intelligence of the movement of their opponents very soon reached those who were assembled at Captain Hatfield's Tavern ; and we are told that, undoubtedly with very little delay, they, also, " walked " down to the Courthouse, although not half of their " friends who were expected had yet appeared." At that time, when the full force of all who thus presumed to act, in so vital a question, in the name of all who were, then, in Wesbchester-county -- and that, too, without any delegation of authority and, certainly, without any expressed "consent" -- was undoubtedly present and acting, there was not present more than from a hundred to a hundred and twentyfive. Freeholders and others ; and there is evidence that quite as large a number, Freeholders and others, walked down to the Courthouse, from Captain Hatfield's Tavern, and stripped all the novelty and all there was of what was said to have been integrity from the exposed and unsuccessful coup-de-main. 1 The individual respectability of none of these, of either faction, appears to have been impeached by any one ; but Colonel Morris subsequently attempted to depreciate the political standing of some of those who were