Council.

[Footnote 152: Alfred B. Street, _New York Council of Revision_, p.
429.]

DeWitt Clinton had not approved the Governor's course. The flagrant
partiality shown Lewis' family in the unpopular appointment of Maturin
Livingston, his son-in-law, displeased him, and the removal of Porter
seemed to him untimely and vindictive. In killing Hamilton, Clinton
reasoned, Burr had killed himself politically, and out of the way
himself there was no occasion to punish his friends who would now
rejoin and strengthen the Republican party. Clinton, however, remained
passive in his opposition until the incorporation of the bank
furnished a plausible excuse for an appeal to the party; then, with a
determination to subjugate the Livingstons, he caused himself and his
adherents to be nominated and elected to the State Senate upon the
platform that "a new bank has been created in our city, and its
charter granted to political enemies." It was a bold move, as stubborn
as it was dangerous. Clinton had little to gain. The Livingstons were
not long to continue in New York politics. Maturin was insignificant;
Brockholst was soon to pass to the Supreme Court of the United States;
Edward had already sought a new home and greater honours in New
Orleans; and the Chancellor, having returned from France, was without
ambition to remain longer in the political arena. Even the
brothers-in-law were soon to disappear. John Armstrong was in France;
Smith Thompson, who was to follow Brockholst upon the bench of the
United States Supreme Court, refused to engage in party or political
contests, and the gifts of Tillotson and Lewis were not of quality or
quantity to make leaders of men. On the other hand, Clinton had much
to lose by forcing the fight. It condemned him to a career of almost
unbroken opposition for the rest of his life; it made precedents that
lived to curse him; and it compelled alliances that weakened him.

Lewis resented Clinton's imperious methods, but he made a fatal
mistake in furnishing him such a pretext for open opposition. He ought
to have known that in opposing the Merchants' Bank, Clinton
represented the great majority of his party which did not believe in
banks. Undoubtedly Clinton's interest in the Manhattan largely
controlled his attitude toward the Merchants', but the controversy
over the latter was so old, and its claims had been pressed so
earnestly by the Federalists in their own interest, that the question
had prac