the grandson in 1775 from his position as recorder of the city of New York speaks louder than words of the attachment of the youngest member of the Livingston family to the popular cause. A delegate from Dutchess County to the New-York Provincial Convention of 1775, his abilities and influential family connection led that body to appoint him, though hardly twenty-nine years of age, one of its delegates to the Second Continental Congress,—a position that the necessities of his native State, invaded by British soldiery, allowed him to hold but a few months. Chosen by ballot a member of the famous committee that draughted the Declaration of Independence, Livingston began public life as an associate of Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and Sherman. To Jefferson belongs the honor of draughting, and to Adams that of supporting the Declaration on the floor of Congress. But the knowledge that the representative of the most powerful family in the Colonies, a man who had every thing to lose and little to gain from a successful revolution, gave his hearty approval to so radical a measure, won for that act the votes of members whom the eloquent words of John Adams could not influence.
The social and political system of Colonial New York, that allowed young Robert Livingston and other great landed proprietors to exercise a dominant influence in all public and social life, was peculiar to the time. Unlike the New-England Colonies, which were ruled by the yeomanry, New York, with its great population of farmers and traders, had from the earliest times supported an aristocracy not unlike, in many of its characteristics, that of Virginia. A few great families, the Van Rensselaers, the Cortlandts, the Livingstons, and the Phillipses, had received from the Crown vast grants, embracing thousands of acres of the best land of the Colony. Indeed, the manorial system of England in its entirety was transferred to this portion of the New World. The manor of Livingston, farmed out to a numerous tenantry, was entitled to three representatives in the Assembly. Allied by marriage with the most distinguished families of the Colony, and endowed with wealth, social influence, and political power by inheritance, it is not surprising that the youngest member of the Livingston family became a leader in the Second Continental Congress, and was looked upon as representing the ruling and aristocratic families of his Colony; a position, however, which none but a man of brilliant intellect and versatile talents could have long maintained in a delegation that numbered such men as James Duane, the learned lawyer; John Jay, the friend, and afterwards successful rival, of Robert R. Livingston; George Clinton, the great governor; and Philip Livingston, the signer of the Declaration.
The exigencies of his native State, and the protection of his own home and family, demanded his presence; and Livingston left Congress, to take a seat in the Provincial Congress of New York,—thus depriving himself of the privilege of signing the immortal Declaration of Independence, but not of the honor of having supported in committee the act that gave birth to a nation. Of his participation in the stirring events of those years of war, it is unnecessary to speak at length. That he was a leader, is apparent. His position as a member of nearly every committee appointed by the New-
