160 Mr. Butler's Discourse. 



assembly have also been disregarded. The civil history of 

 the state, from the close of the revolutionary war to the pre- 

 sent period, including an account of its frame of government 

 and its literary and other institutions, is compressed into less 

 than fifty pages ; but though the matter be brief, the errors 

 are numerous and provoking. 



Thus, he informs us, that after the revolution, the state 

 government " threw obstacles in the way" of settlements in 

 the interior ; that the act of the 5th of May, 1786, " for the 

 sale of the unappropriated lands," by which the commission- 

 ers of the land-office were created, was intended for the spe- 

 cial benefit of a few individuals, their friends and connex- 

 ions ; that the party, which in 1787 urged the formation of 

 a new and more perfect confederacy between the states, " con- 

 tended for the allowance of public and private engagements, 

 and was friendly to a regular administration of justice ;" that 

 the other party " viewed with tenderness the case of the 

 debtor — thought it harsh to exact a compliance with contracts 

 — was in favor of relaxing the administration of justice, and 

 resisted every attempt to transfer from its own hands into 

 those of congress, those powers which were essential to the 

 welfare and preservation of the union." In this latter party, 

 he includes one of the most distinguished of the patriot fathers 

 of this state — George Clinton ; and asserts that this venerable 

 statesman, with several of the leading men of New- York, 

 opposed the federal constitution, because " they foresaw that 

 the establishment of a federal government would abridge their 

 power ;" and he closes what he calls " an outline of the ori- 

 gin of parties in the United States," with the bold assertion 

 — that the anti-federalists " were the enemies of the union of 

 the states."* 



Under the head of the literature of the state, we are in- 

 formed, that " there are about thirty-six academies," when 

 the report of the regents of the university for the year 1829, 

 published several months before the appearance of his volume, 

 would have given him the names of fifty-six academies, 

 then actually subject to their visitation, without enumerating 

 those incorporated by special laws and not under their coja- 



- Macauley's History, vol. 111. p. 427 lo 440. 



