40 The First Constitution of New York. 



a science, each separate principle of which has had its cause and effect 

 established in experience. 



Circumstances have so shaped themselves that New York has done 

 more than any other State, more perhaps than all other States, to test, 

 to simplify, to re-adjust, to develop, to strengthen the autonomy 

 of the American system. She is and has been from the first, the 

 Empire State, largest.in extent, most varied in topography and geologi- 

 cal resources, wealthiest in her industries, most diverse in her pursuits, 

 the most populous not only, but the most cosmopolitan in population, 

 with a commerce that pays ninety per cent of the national revenues, 

 with natural and artificial water-ways and railroad systems that bring 

 tribute from every sister State, the very heart, geographically, com- 

 mercially, industrially, politically, of our confederated nationality. 



New York was the last of the thirteen colonies, as Massachusetts 

 was the first, to formally put off the swaddling clothes of provisional 

 government and pass under the voluntary restraint of a self-regulating, 

 self -perpetuating popular sovereignty. In the interim, her Constitu- 

 tion has been amended more frequently and more radically than any 

 other in the Union. In the interim she has tried every experiment in 

 constitutional government that has found favor in this country; has 

 rejected many of them after demonstrating their failure; has modified 

 others; has deserted some not perfect for others less perfect. Each 

 one of these changes has been to a degree a civil revolution. The 

 frequency of their occurrence, the ease with which they have been 

 effected, the absolute acquiescence in their supremacy each time mani- 

 fested, combine to make a spectacle without parallel among the nations 

 of the old world, and proving to us that our self-government is not 

 mythical but absolute — a spectacle that proves the imperial sovereignty 

 of the people obeying the law, but knowing neither written nor un- 

 written law that is beyond its reach— that is not "originated by 

 its impulse, organized by its consent and conducted by its em- 

 bodied will." 



The recommendation to form State governments came from the 

 general congress in 1775. The provisional congress of New York ap- 

 pointed a committee to draft a Constitution early in 1776. It was a 

 year later before this committee reported. John Jay, its chairman, 

 has written that the delay was compelled by the labors of its members 

 in preparations for the defense of the colony. But the fact remains 

 that two-thirds of the men of wealth and influence in New York had 

 no sympathy with the movement for the organization of an indepen- 

 dent State government, and either kept aloof from the struggle, or 



