1 Bolton stated, in his Mutory of Westchester-county, (original edition, ii., 359, 360; the same, second edition, ii., 564,) that, on the occasion referred to, "the Declaration was read by John Thomas, Esq., and ** seconded by Michael Varian and Samuel Crawford, two prominent '■"Whigs of Scarsdale." But he has given no authority for the statement ; and unless by " John Thomas, Esq.," the reader of the Declaration on the occasion referred to, he meant the younger of the two who bore that name, we muBt be excused for doubting the accuracy of the statement.

was seen in the immediate abrogation of all the forms of Law and Government which had previously been seeii throughout the Colony, from the earlier period of the settlement by Europeans within its territory; and the substitution, in their stead, of nothing else than the government of unrestrained force, the Law of the stronger. A general Jail-delivery, in the City of New York, signalized the "new departure" -- where there was no longer any Law, there could not be any breaches of the Law, either in the matter of pecuniary obligations or in that of any other obligation -- and as every civil Commission was cancelled by that Resolution of Independence from the Crown of Great Britain, on the authority of which royal authority every such Commission was based, every Court of Justice was closed, every function of Government was paralyzed, and because no new form of local Government and no new system of Statutes had been provided to take the places of the others, which had been thus violently set aside, there was nothing but confusion and uncertainty; and had not the general conservatism of the Colonists prevailed and preserved the general peace, the advent of Independence, throughout the Colony of New York, would have been signalized by many a local scene of terrorism and of bloodshed.