_To the Legislature of the State of New York:_

Informed by the newspapers of this morning that five of my associates
in the Peace Convention, after waiting nearly three weeks, made
yesterday to the Legislature a communication purporting to be an
answer to the note which I thought it my duty to append to the report,
explaining why the vote of New York was not given at a particular
time, I beg leave to submit the following in reply:

I do not perceive that my associates impugn a single statement of fact
contained in my note. My engagement in Court, the importance of the
engagement, the necessity for my keeping it, the meeting of the
delegation in contemplation of it, their resolution directing how the
vote should be cast in my absence, the neglect so to cast it, are all,
by silence, admitted. Nor do I perceive any denial of the proposition
that the delegation had a right to pass the resolution, which thus
became binding on all its members until reconsidered and reversed.

Perhaps I ought to make one exception to this use of admissions. My
associates apparently wish to have it believed, yet hesitate to
assert, that the Convention made a decision respecting the right to
vote. In one place they say, "that an appeal had been made to the
Convention, and refused by its President;" in another, that "it was
under the decision of the Convention alone that the vote was declared
to be divided;" and in a third, that the objection of the minority was
made after notice to me that it would be made, and the "Convention
sustained it, hence the vote was lost," by my absence. They should
have reflected that there could have been no "decision of the
Convention" if the appeal to it was "refused by its President." The
truth beyond question is, that although my associates imagined that
the Convention decided something, it did in fact decide nothing.

My associates say further, that I argue to show that my duty to my
client was paramount to my "duty as Commissioner of the State of New
York, in a question involving constitutional principles." This is an
idle calumny. My note can be read as well as theirs; and in general
will be read by the same persons, and there is not a word in it to
justify or excuse their assertion. I never thus argued. I claimed that
I had two duties to perform, and that I performed both. I did not
claim that my duty to my State was subordinate to any other duty
whatever.

When my associates assert that their Chairm