The Westchester-county farmers of our own period, with their greater numbers and greater area of tillable ground, with their modern appliances of artificial manures and improved implements -- none of them, at that time, even hoped for -- and with all the improved facilities of transit and of transportation which they now possess, may reasonably hang their heads, in humiliation, on a comparison of the results of their labors with the results of the labors of those industrious, prudent, and thrifty men who preceded them, with smaller numbers and none of the advantages which are now accessible to every one.

Reference has been made to the action of the Provincial Congress encouraging the establishment of Powder-mills, and offering loans for that purpose, without interest, to proper persons, in specified Counties, of which Westchester was one. Although no mention was subsequently made of the establishment of such a Mill within the limits of Westchestercounty, the fact that such an offer was made affords another testimony to what has been already adduced concerning the peaceful disposition of the farmers, throughout that County, even in the face of the greatest

ijotirnal of the Committee of Safety, "Die Lurjffi, 9 ho., A.M., April 1, "1776."

5 Journal of the Committee of Safety, " Die Mercurii, 4 ho., P.M., April "17, 1776."

WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

aggravations, since the want of the Arms of which they had been robbed would nothavebeenahindrance to any one who had desired to destroy a Powder-mill; and it shows, also, how unwise that revolutionary policy had been, which had tended not only to impair the industrial usefulness of such a community, at a time when the results of its agricultural and other industrial labors were most needed, but to make that element, in the Colony, permanently antagonistic, which, under a peaceful and conciliatory policy, might have been made passive and useful, if not friendly and co-operative.