Tlie Correct Arms of the State of Neto York. 261 



SOD river, by means of which commerce easily reaches the lakes. And 

 in the same year Adam Smith, discussing the possible future of the 

 British empire, had applied by anticipation to the colonies the phrase 

 ** the seat of the empire."* With the writings of both these men, 

 Washington must have been well acquainted ; and hence when in 1784 

 in responding in Xew York city to an address of the Common Coun- 

 cil, he applied to Xew York the phrase **'your State (at present the 

 Seat of the Empire)," he was adopting language expressive of a 

 thought, already current in America for many years; a thought sug- 

 gested first to the inventors of the Arms from the marvelous facts of 

 nature, then from the writings of these English authors, and finally 

 by them set forth to all men on the Arms themselves, f 



The choice of Liberty and Justice as supporters of the shield, may 

 have been suggested to our committee, from their remembering that 

 in the Congress of 1776, on the tenth day of August these emblem- 

 atic figures had been suggested as the supporters by the first com- 

 mittee appointed to devise Arms for the United States, a committee 

 of the most distinguished character possible, John Adams, Thomas 

 Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, and only abandoned on account of 

 the whole device as proposed for a seal with obverse and reverse, being 

 too complicated. In brief, on the shield of our Arms is expressed not 

 merely a sun rising upon the earth, but a sun rising upon the Hudson 

 river, the great geographical feature of the State ; while the crest is 

 not merely a portion of a globe but represents America, and the eagle's 

 flight expresses the hope of other poets and authors than Berkeley — 

 the belief of tens of thousands of that day of the coming glories of 

 the New World. I 



The Arms as we have now described them, continued to be set 

 forth on seals and vignettes of books published by authority, without 

 essential change, for a period of forty years. Engravings or wood- 

 cuts of them appeared on the title pages of the successive editions 

 of the laws of the State, which were published by Greenleaf in 1798, 

 by Webster and Skinner in 1801, by Southwick in 1813, and in the 

 annual volumes of the session laws from 1815 to 1819 ; they all give 

 us a passable idea of what was the original device. Gradually after 



* Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Chap. 7, p. 59. 



f New York City : Addresses to Washington and his Answers, 1775-89, N. Y. , 

 1867. 



j Rev. A. Burnaby in his travels in North America published in Lond., 1775, 

 writes : "An idea, strange as it is visionary, has entered into the minds of the 

 generality of mankind, that empire is traveling westward, and every one is look- 

 ing forward with eager and impatient expectation to that destined moment when 

 America is to give law to the rest of the world." p. 155. 



