The Federalists resented misrepresentation with misrepresentation. Clinton's use of patronage, his opposition to the Federal Constitution, and the impropriety of having a military governor in time of peace, objections left over from 1789, still figured as set pieces in rhetorical fireworks; but the great red light, burned at every meeting throughout the State, exposed Governor Clinton as secretly profiting by the sale of public lands. The Legislature of 1791 authorised the five state officers, acting as Commissioners of the Land Office, to sell unappropriated lands in such 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.