Even the Secretary of the first County Committee looked out for the profits of official station, and secured, through his associations, some of the fat things of place -- Micah Townsend, the Clerk of the first County-Committee,- secured the command of a Company of Colonial Troops, early in 1776 j and he' was, in other respects, well provided for, during that era of distress and ruin.

The reader may judge from this exhibit how much of genuine patriotism and how much of personal selfishness, controlled the revolutionary politics of WeBtchester-County, 1774-76.

WESTCHESTEK COUNTY.

abreast of the moat advanced of the anarchists of that period ; and if, without a semblance of that "consent" of which so much had been said and written, as a prerequisite to any change of government-- without, also, any of those qualifications in itself and authorities from others, of which mention has been made -- the same handful of new-born revolutionists, at the same time, can be said to have really done so, the allegiance of the great body of the anti-revolutionary iiirmers of that County, and there were no others, to its Sovereign, was violated, if not abrogated, and all the obligations of that great body of the inhabitants of the County, to obey the legally established Governments and the legally enacted Laws of the Country, were dissolved, and all were made subject, instead, to that self-constituted County Committee which was then organized and taking its first step in Rebellion ; to the proposed Congress of the Colony, in whom was to be vested absolute, unrestrained authority, in all classes of governmental affairs relating only to the Colony of New York ; and to the coming second Continental Congress, in whom, also, a similarly absolute, unrestrained authority, on every con-' ceivable subject, within each and every of the several Colonies, would, also, be seated ; and, therefore, every one of those peaceful and peacefully inclined farmers and every member of their respective families were, by that handful of revolutionists, insignificant in numbers and only tools in the hands of an unprincipled master mischief-maker, made subject, nolms volens, to every edict which should be promulgated by either of those three self-constituted, unrestrained, revolutionary bodies ; to whatever they or either of them should determine, no matter how monstrous its character might be ; and, very often, to whatever individual members of one or other of those bodies, intoxicated with the possession of a power to which, previously, they had been strangers and reveling in a despotism to which the Colony had not, at any period of its existence, been subjected, should demand and require.