[Footnote 78: There was a slight vein of eccentricity running through the Morris family, with its occasional outcroppings accentuated in the presence of death. The grandfather, distinguished as chief justice of New York and governor of New Jersey, forbade in his will the payment of any one for preaching his funeral sermon, but if a person volunteered, he said, commending or blaming his conduct in life, his words would be acceptable. Gouverneur's father desired no notice of his dissolution in the newspapers, not even a simple announcement of his death. "My actions," he wrote, "have been so inconsiderable in the world, that the most durable monument will not perpetuate my folly while it lasts." It is evident that Gouverneur did not inherit from him the almost bumptious self-confidence which was to mar more than help him. That inherent defect came from his mother, who gave him, also, a brilliancy and versatility that other members of the family did not share, making him more conspicuously active in high places during the exciting days of the Revolution. Gouverneur Morris was a national character; Richard and Lewis belonged exclusively to New York.] The influences surrounding Gouverneur's youth were decidedly Tory. His mother warmly adhered to George the Third; his professors at King's taught loyalty to the Crown; his distinguished tutor in the law, William Smith, New York's Tory historian, magnified the work and the strength of Parliament; while his associates, always his mother's welcomed guests at Morrisania, were British officers, who talked of Wolfe and his glorious struggles for England. But there never was a moment from the time Gouverneur Morris entered the Provincial Congress of New York on May 22, 1775, at the age of twenty-three, that he was not conspicuously and brilliantly active in the cause of America. Whenever or wherever a Revolutionary body was organised, or for whatever purpose, Congress, Convention, or Committee of Safety, he became a member of it. Six years younger than Jay, and six years older than Hamilton, he seemed to complete that remarkable New York trio, so fertile in mental resources and so successful in achievement. He did not, like Jay, outline a constitution, but he believed, with Jay, in balancing wealth against numbers, and in contending for the protection of the rights of property against the spirit of democracy. It is interesting to study these young men, so different in temperament, yet thinking alike and acting together for a quarter of a century--Jay, gentle and modest; Hamilton, impetuous and imperious; Morris, self-confident and conceited; but on all essential matters of state, standing together like a tripod, firm and invincible. In his distrust of western influences, however, Morris was more conservative than Jay or Hamilton. He was broad and liberal toward the original thirteen States, but he wanted to subordinate the balance of the country to their control.