250 



Tlie Correct Arms of ihe Slate of New York. 



any early printed document of the State ; nor has there been found a 

 line, in any early document or memorandum printed or written any- 

 where, touching t^he arms or the seals, authorizing both of the figures 

 of Justice and Liberty, or either of them, to be seated. 



It might be conjectured by some persons that the changes which 

 were from time to time made in the seals implied a change in the 

 Arms, on the assumption that the word arms was merely a name for 

 the central portion of the seal. This assumption is without founda- 

 tion, because that, when in 1778 the great and privy seals were decreed, 

 the Arms were also decreed as a separate thing. The proof of this 

 is given in the specimens of the seals of 1778 annually reprinted in 

 the New York Civil List, where we see that the devices of the seals 

 differ from the device for the Arms. The first seal had on the 

 obverse side a sun, rising behind mountains with the motto, Excel- 

 sior, and the legend, The great seal of the State of New York." 

 On the reverse, was a rock amid the ocean, with the legend, Frustra, 

 1777. At the same time, the Arms Avere made having among other 

 emblems Liberty and Justice as supporters of the shield. 



It will not have escaped notice that the resolution of the N. Y. 

 Provincial Congress of 1777 called for a seal only; while the law of 

 1778 declares the existence of and adopts both Arms and Seals. We 

 may be allowed to suppose that the committee having provided a seal 

 with a portion of what is now the Arms, with an obverse and reverse, as 

 for the pendent seals which have a seal on both sides, judged it neces- 

 sary to set forth an Arms complete as a substitute for the colonial 

 Arms formerly in use with the Eoyal escutcheon, looking forward to 

 the time when they would be also upon the Seal. The section in the 

 law of 1778 providing for Arms speaks of the Governor's ''Seal at 

 Arms." And so twenty years having elapsed before the subject was 

 again reached by the legislature, the Commission under the law of 

 1798, speak in 1799, of the new great seal, as having the " arms com- 

 plete," as if they had completed a work which had been intended for 

 the great seal from the beginning.* Embarrassment had been felt on 

 account of the contrast between the Seal and the Arms, and therefore 

 the new seal was made to embrace the original Arms of 1778, with 

 modifications, which there was authority to make, as regards devising 

 a seal; but as the law of 1798 makes no allusion to the Arms, conse- 

 quently it gave the commission no authority to make changes in them. 



The whole interest of this essay turns upon the fact, that having, 

 as I hope, produced a strong conviction in your minds, that the Arms 

 of the State have never been changed by statute or legal autharity. 



*X. Y. Civil List, ed. of 1857, p. 437. 



