Robert Yates and John Lansing

“ Thus circumstanced, under these impressions, to have hesitated, would have been to be culpable; we, therefore, gave the principles of the constitution which has received the sanction of a majority of the convention, our decided and unreserved dissent; but we must candidly confess, that we should have been equally opposed to any system, however modified, which had in object the consolidation of the United States into one government. ”

“ It is with the sincerest concern we observe, that, in the prosecution of the important objects of our mission, we have been reduced to the disagreeable alternative, of either exceeding the powers delegate to us, and giving our assent to measure which we conceive destruction to the political happiness of the citizens of the United States, or opposing our opinions to that of a body of respectable men, to whom those citizens had given the unequivocal proofs of confidence. ”

“ The limited and well defined powers under which we acted, and which could not, on any possible construction, embrace an idea of such magnitude, as to assent to a general constitution, in subversion of that of the State. ”