" I owe it to my Affection to this Colony, to declare my wish, that " some Measure may be speedily adopted for this purpose ; as I feel an " extreme Degree of Anxiety, in being Witness to the growing Calamities " of this Country, without the Power to alleviate them: Calamities " that must increase, while so many of the Inhabitants withhold their " Allegiance from their Sovereign, and their Obedience to the Parent " Country ; by whose Power and Patronage they have hitherto been sus- " tained and protected.

'William Tryon.

' Ship Dutchess of Gordon, " Harbour of New York, 4th Dec. 1775."

concerned in them. Joshua Hett Smith, another of the brothers, whose unholy associations with General Benedict Arnold and Major John Andre, at a later period, are well known, was not, then, in any Committee or Congress ; but, nevertheless, he was, at that time, one of the leaders of the Rebellion, out-doors, and was admitted to the inner councils of those who were its leaders. William Smith, the elder of the historical family of that period and allied to the Livingstons, by marriage, was the most influential of all those who were, at that time, engaged in the political affairs of the Colony. He had been associated with William Livingston and John Morin Scott, in the historically famous "triumvirate." He had professed to approve the usurpations of legislative authority and other questionable doings of the Continental Congress of 1774 ; and he is known to have been an outside adviser of the factious minority of the General Assembly, with whom and with whose inconsistency of action the reader is already acquainted. He was the life-long and confidential friend and the frequent host of General Philip Schuyler ; and the correspondent, friend, and political adviser of George Clinton.