uch parcels and on
such terms as they deemed expedient, and under this power 5,542,173
acres returned $1,030,433. Some of the land brought three shillings
per acre, some two shillings six pence, some one shilling, but
Alexander McComb picked up 3,635,200 acres at eight pence. McComb was
a friend of Clinton. More than that, he was a real estate dealer and
speculator. In the legislative investigation that followed,
resolutions condemning the commissioners' conduct tangled up Clinton
in a division of the profits, and sent McComb to jail. This was a
sweet morsel for the Federalists. It mattered not that the Governor
denied it; that McComb contradicted it; that no proof supported it; or
that the Assembly acquitted him by a party vote of thirty-five to
twenty; the story did effective campaign service, and lived to torture
Aaron Burr, one of the commissioners, ten years afterward. Burr tried
to escape responsibility by pleading absence when the contracts were
made; but the question never ceased coming up--if absence included all
the months of McComb's negotiations, what time did the Attorney-General
give to public business?

It was a deep grief to Jay that the Livingstons opposed him. The
Chancellor and Edward were his wife's cousins, Brockholst her brother.
Brockholst had been Jay's private secretary at the embassy in Madrid,
but now, to use a famous expression of that day, "the young man's head
was on fire," and violence characterised his political feelings and
conduct. Satirical letters falsely attributed to Jay fanned the sparks
of the Livingston opposition into a bright blaze, and, although the
Chief Justice denied the insinuation, the Chancellor gave battle with
the enthusiasm of a new convert.

As one glances through the list of workers in the campaign of 1792, he
is reminded that the juniors or beginners soon came to occupy higher
and more influential positions than some of their elders and leaders.
DeWitt Clinton, for instance, not yet in office, was soon to be in the
Assembly, in the State Senate, and in the United States Senate--a
greater force than any man of his time in New York, save Hamilton.
James Kent had just entered the Assembly. As a student in Egbert
Benson's office, his remarkable industry impressed clients and
teacher, but when his voice sounded the praises of John Jay, few could
have anticipated that this young man, small in stature, vivacious in
speech, quick in action, with dark eyes and a swarthy c