This proposal was instantly opposed by William " Smith, one of his Majesty's Council, who openly declared ' that the ' ' ' ferment which then raged in the City was general and not confined to " ( a few ; that it was owing to a design in the British Ministry to cn- " 'slave the Colonies, and to carry such design into execution by dint of " 'a military force ; that the Battle of Lexington was looked upon as " ' a prelude to such intention ; and that the spirit theu prevailing in " ' the Town (which he represented as universal) would subside as soon " ' as the grievances of the people were redressed ; and advised to let " ' the populace act as they pleased' -- Nobody replied, the times were " critical, a declaration of one's sentiments might be dangerous, the " Council broke up, and nothing was done." -- (History of New York daring the Revolutionary War, i. 41.)

fact that, there, the entire machinery of the Colonial Government had been stopped; the Courts had been closed; and decrees of the most oppressive character had been enacted ; and these, not by the Colonial Government nor by those who were peculiarly supporters of the authority of the King, but by those who had assumed to lead the popular movement, who had utilized the project of a Provincial Convention or Congress as a more powerful instrumentality for the acquirement of authority which they had not previously possessed, for the establishment of systems of government which were neither practical nor useful, and for the gratification of malice and revenge, between individuals and communities, all of them done, too, in the name of " Liberty " and the " Eights of the " Colonies," with violent denunciations of tyranny and official oppression, per se, and with solemn appeals to Heaven, as guaranties of the self-assumed righteousness and of the good intentions of the self-constituted and lawless oppressors. 2 Eeference was also made to other instances, in other Colonies, in which the revolutionary elements, regardless of all law, human or divine, and governed only by their own unbridled wills and for their own individual purposes, had become more oppressive than those Colonial Governments had been, against whom the full force of the revolutionary opposition had been so noisily hurled ; and it was peculiarly noticeable, in the greater number, if not in all, such instances, that the most violent and lawless of those who were most reckless of the rights of individuals, were those demagogues who, previously to the uprising, had been most unmindful of the complaints of the masses -- those of the "poor reptiles " of their estimates -- and most sycophantic in their zealfor the promotion of the pretensions of the Colonial and Home Governments.