Probably no stranger scene was ever witnessed in a parliamentary body than Erastus Root and Samuel Young, two radical legislators, advocates of universal suffrage, and just now especially conspicuous because of their successful support of the election of sheriffs and county clerks, arguing with zeal and ability for the appointment of justices of the peace. It seemed like a travesty, since there was not an argument in favour of electing sheriffs that did not apply with added force to the election of justices. The convention stood aghast at such effrontery. It is impossible to read, without regret, of the voluntary stultification of these orators, pleading piteously for the appointment of justices of the peace while declaiming with passionate righteousness against the appointment of sheriffs. With acidulated satire, Van Ness, enrapturing his hearers by his brilliancy, held them up to public ridicule if not to public detestation. But Van Buren's bungling proposition, though once rejected by a vote of fifty-nine to fifty-six, was in the end substantially adopted, and it remained a part of the amended constitution until the people, very soon satisfied of its iniquity, ripped it out of the organic law with the same unanimity that their representatives now abolished the Councils of Appointment and of Revision. Could Van Buren have had his way, the Council of Appointment would have been changed only in name. The work of the convention concluded, a motion for the passage of the Constitution as a whole developed only eight votes in the negative, though twenty-four members, including the eight delegates from Albany and Columbia Counties, four from Montgomery, Jonas Platt of Oneida, and Peter A. Jay of Westchester, because it extended and cheapened suffrage, refused to sign it. Other objections were urged. Ezekiel Bacon of Utica, explaining his affirmative vote, thought it worse than the existing Constitution of 1777; yet he approved it because the provision for amendment afforded the people a means of correcting defects with reasonable facility, without resorting to the difficult and dangerous experiment of a formal convention.