Prudence, therefore, if no higher motive, required that the Livingstons be not overlooked in the division of federal patronage. There was much of it to divide. Besides cabinet positions and judicial appointments, the foreign service offered rare opportunities to a few accomplished statesmen and recognised scholars. Robert R. Livingston, as chancellor of New York, stood in line of promotion for chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, but John Jay stood nearer to Hamilton, just as Philip Schuyler did when United States senators were chosen. Other honourable and most desirable positions, however, were open. John Quincy Adams thought a mission to England or France better than the Cabinet, but Gouverneur Morris went to France, Thomas Pinckney to England, William Short to Spain, and David Humphreys to Portugal. The Livingstons were left out. Hamilton's funding system, especially the proposed assumption of state debts, then dividing the public mind, afforded plausible cause for opposing federalism; and ostensibly for this reason, the Livingstons ceased to be Federalists. Some of the less conspicuous members, residents of Columbia County, continued their adherence, but the statesmen who give the family its name in history wanted nothing more of a party whose head was a "young adventurer," a man "not native to the soil," a "merchant's clerk from the West Indies." The story is that the Chancellor convened the family and made the separation so complete that Washington's subsequent offer of the mission to France failed to secure his return. The first notice of the Livingston break was in the election of a United States senator in 1791. Philip Schuyler, Hamilton's father-in-law, confidently expected a re-election. His selection for the short term was with this understanding. But several members of the Assembly, nominally Federalists, were friendly to Clinton, who preferred Aaron Burr to Schuyler because of Hamilton's influence over him;[54] and when the Governor promised Morgan Lewis, the Chancellor's brother-in-law, Burr's place as attorney-general, Livingston's disposition to injure Hamilton became intensified, and to the disappointment of Schuyler, the vote of the Legislature disclosed a small majority for Burr. [Footnote 54: In a letter to Theodorus Bailey, Chancellor Kent, then a member of the Assembly, expressed the opinion that "things look auspicious for Burr. It will be in some measure a question of northern and southern interests. The objection of Schuyler's being related to the Secretary has weight."--William Kent, _Memoirs and Letters of James Kent_, p. 39.]