about sixty-four thousand aeres, which cost him upwards of eight thousand dollars, and subsequently large additional sums for surveyors' fees and other expenses, of which neither he nor his heirs obtained anything but the small dividend of the $30,000, which Vermont agreed to pay when New York signed off the rights of her citizens. The bargain was made by our politicians to obtain a new state to overbalance southern influence, and in this paramount object with them, compensation to the comparatively few landholders among her citizens was almost entirely overlooked.

The professional business of Mr. Duane, the boundary commissions with the neighboring colonies in which he was employed, the settlement of Duanesburgh, and the Vermont controversy, devolved upon him an amount of business which naught but an iron constitution could stand, and would seem to preclude him from engaging in the ecclesiastical and political disputes that agitated the colonists of New York. We find him, however, taking an active part on the side of the church in the effort to obtain bishops to be sent to America, and in the disputes about - taxation by authority of parliament alone, when such authority was first exercised. He was a decided churchman, but, like his friends Jay and Chancellor Livingston, he was a strenuous advocate both for civil and religious liberty.

When faithful and skilful agents were sought for in 1774, to devise means to regain those rights which England had grossly infringed, and to secure them from future violation, Mr. Duane was naturally one of the earliest selected. He was a member of most of the committees in the city of New York, raised to devise plans of opposing the British encroachments, and when the general Congress of 1774, was determined upon, and the Colonial Assembly had refused to appoint any delegates to act, Mr.