INTRODUCTION

The history of constitutional development in New York
should interest the lawyer, the statesman, the student and the
man of affairs. Much has been admirably written to show the
extent of the debt which the State owes to its Netherland be¬
ginnings, and the influence of a long English colonial experi¬
ence in shaping the main outlines of the first State government
and in moulding institutions which still persist afid will form
enduring features of State polity. After the elaborate, pains¬
taking and admirable work of Mr. Charles Z. Lincoln upon the
constitutional history of New York, and numerous essays and
studies concerning the relations of the State government to the
colonial governments by Mr. Robert Ludlow Fowler and others,
it might be thought that no need exists for a volume seemingly
covering part of the same ground. No attempt is made in these
pages to rival the contributions of these authors to the constitu¬
tional history of the State, or to write its political history,—
which Mr. De Alva Stanwood Alexander has recently so well
done. The aim, far less ambitious, is, by presenting in a single
volume a series of pictures of constitutional evolution, to arouse
an interest which longer and more technical works, hardly popu¬
lar in character, have perhaps failed to create.

The annals of colonial times have been explored by his¬
torians with more industry and fullness than have later records.
The effort of the present writer has been briefly to sketch the
colonial epoch as a background for the story since the Revolu¬
tion, and to describe in short chapters the events which have led
to the successive constitutions of the State and the constitutions