A ■Delegation of twelve had been elected, by a Convention which had been convened for that purpose, to represent the Colony in a second Congress of the Colonies ; and of that Delegation, two were Livingstons, two were of those who had married Livingstons, and two others were assured and well-tried supporters of the Livingston interest. The excitement which was occasioned by "the news from Lexington" had added strength to the friends of the Continental Congress and its revolutionary policy, to the Livingston interests, and to the revolutionary faction, generally ; and, in the same interests and with the same revolutionary ends in view, a Provincial Congress had been called and elected, although, as was subsequently seen, the Deputies thus elected were not always pliant tools, to be handled by a skilful politician, for purely partisan purposes. The control of the political affairs of the Colony, it will be seen, as far as those affairs could be controlled by the revolutionary faction, was, by the election of the members of the Provincial Congress, firmly secured to the Livingstons and to their friends ; and the government of the Colonists, thenceforth, was revolutionary, without warrant of Law, and oligarchic.

In England, at the time of which we write, the Ministry, revelling in the strength of its party and haughtily disregarding everything of prudence and conciliation, had recently led the Parliament to enact, first, the Bill for restraining the Trade and Commerce

of the Provinces of Massachusetts-Bay and New Hampshire and the Colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, in North America, with Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Islands in the West Indies; and to prohibit such Provinces and Colonies from carrying on any Fishery on the Banks of Newfoundland or other places therein mentioned, under certain specified conditions and limitations ; and, second, the Bill for restraining the Trade and Commerce of the Colonies of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina, with Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Islands in the West Indies, under certain conditions and limitations -- the Commerce and Fishing Rights of the Colony of New York, in each instance, having been left, undisturbed -- and the First Session of the Fourteenth Parliament was drawing near to its close.