George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 7, 4th edition.

[78] strenuously to secure the management of affairs

Chap. VI.} 1774. July.

to men of property. For this end they relied on the ability of John Jay, a young lawyer of New York, whose name now first appears conspicuously in the annals of his country. Descended from Huguenot refugees, educated in the city at its college, of the severest purity of morals, a hard student, an able writer, a ready speaker; recently connected with the family of Livingston by marriage; his superior endowments, his activity and his zeal for liberty, tempered by a love for order, made him for a quarter of a century distinguished in his native state. At that time he joined the dignity of manhood to the energy of youth. He was both shy and proud, and his pride, though it became less visible, suffered no diminution from time. Tenacious of his purposes and his opinions, sensitive to indignities and prone to sudden resentments, not remarkable for selfposses-sion, with a countenance not trained to concealment, neither easy of access, nor quick in his advances, gifted with no deep insight into character, he had neither talents nor inclination for intrigue; and but for his ambition, which he always subjected to his sense of right, he would have seemed formed for study and retirement.

On Monday, the fourth day of July, it was carried in the committee of fifty-one, that delegates should be selected to serve in the general congress. Sears, who was still foremost in the confidence of the mechanics, seconded by Peter Van Brugh Livingston, a man of great intelligence, proposed John Morin Scott and Alexander Macdougall. Fitter candidates could not have been found; but they were both passed over by