"To the gentlemen of the Westchester bar generally, as well as to yourself in particular, I am deeply indebted for the uniform kindness and courtesy with which I have been treated; and had I known at the December term that we were not to meet again, I would have embraced the opportunity of publicly acknowledging my obligations to them, and of bidding them an affectionate farewell. "Under the circumstances of the case, it would be an affectation of humility to ascribe my loss of office to any dissatisfaction with my official conduct on the part of the bar or the public. The _New York Plebeian_, amid all its vituperative clamour for my dismissal, does not even hint a charge against me as a judge, and the editor of the _Westchester Herald_, notwithstanding his blind devotion to his party, bears a flattering testimony to my ability as a 'jurist,' and admits that my 'moral worth' is not questioned, as he believes, 'by any man in the country.' "Nor have I been proscribed on account of my political opinions. Those opinions belong to the old Washington school--I have never concealed them; and they are the same now as they were when I received office from Governors Tompkins, Clinton, Throop, and Marcy, and when President Jackson tendered to me an important and lucrative appointment. "For twenty years or more I have had no connection with party politics, and have attended no party meeting. It appeared to me unbecoming a judge to be a political partisan; and I, moreover, observed so much profligacy, venality, and hypocritical profession in both parties, that I could not conscientiously identify myself with either. I have for years voted for those I believed to be the most honest of the candidates offered for my suffrage, without regard to the party dogmas they professed. "That the people of Westchester had lost their confidence in me and wished me to descend from the bench is not pretended. On the contrary, I have the most abundant and gratifying proofs of the correctness of your remark, that my removal has occasioned in the county, with all political parties, unusual dissatisfaction and complaint. "If, then, my removal has been effected contrary to the wishes of the county, and not because I lacked in ability or integrity, nor even on account of my politics, it becomes a matter of public interest to inquire with what motives and with what views the chief magistrate of New York dispenses the patronage intrusted to him by the constitution for the good of the State. "Governor Bouck has, in this instance, as in another far more important, only acted as the instrument of a faction which, while prating about _equal rights_, is ever ready and eager to barter the welfare, honour, and freedom of the North for Southern votes.