"Recent circumstances induce me to accompany my acceptance of this nomination with some remarks. Attempts are making to render the Liberty party subservient to other objects than the overthrow of slavery and the elevation of the coloured people. To these attempts I can lend no aid. While I most explicitly accord to every abolitionist the right of expressing his own opinions on every political and religious subject, I as explicitly deny the right, and shall strenuously resist the attempt, to make me and other members responsible for opinions not necessarily involved in the great objects for the attainment of which the party was formed. In the pursuit of those objects I will cordially and honestly co-operate with others from whose sentiments I dissent; but I cannot co-operate with them in promoting religious and political changes which I believe to be wrong, in order to increase the influence and hasten the triumph of the Liberty party. To do so would be to act upon the principle, as wicked and detestable as slavery itself, that the end justifies the means. The fact that many good men who unite in abhorrence of slavery entertain conflicting views of the expediency and morality of various proposed reforms seems to me a sufficient reason why the Liberty party should not permit itself to be distracted by the other questions which agitate the community, and which in truth are of but little moment compared with the great evil with which we are struggling." In 1846 Jay wrote again on this subject: "I shall leave the Liberty party whenever it makes abolition a pack-horse to carry favourite measures unconnected with slavery, whether those measures are of whig or democratic origin." Early in the year 1843 the antislavery opinions and labours of Judge Jay caused the loss of his seat on the bench of Westchester County, which he had occupied for more than twenty-five years with such general approval as to cause his steady reappointment term after term by governors of the State who were his political opponents. The circumstances of his removal are described in a letter which he wrote to Mr. Minot Mitchell, in May, 1843: "I thank you for your friendly letter in relation to my removal from the bench. The loss of an office which I had held for about a quarter of a century (and which I had contemplated resigning in the course of the present year) is not a matter of personal regret. My motive in holding for so long a time a situation which subjected me to no little inconvenience and yielded no emolument was a desire to be useful, and a belief that I could exert on the bench a wholesome moral influence. How far that belief was well founded is for others to decide. To myself, it is grateful to know that my official conduct, whatever mistakes I may have made, has been pure, unbiased by personal partialities, and uninfluenced by any fear except that of my Maker.