It had, indeed, asserted and successfully maintained those conservative political principles, directly antagonistic to the more revolutionary political principles which the men of Boston had as-^erted and insisted on, which it believed to have been better adapted for the promotion of "the "common cause" and for that of the best interests of the Colonies; and, for the further promotion of" that "common cause," consciously or unconsciously, it had unselfishly prepared a way for the advancement of those, within itself, who coveted place and its prerogatives, by nominating them for seats in the Congress of which it had been the originator and the unyielding promoter. It had seen, however, the nominees of its selection, with one exception, barter that fundamental principle which it had especially cherished, for the votes, at the Polls, of those whom it had i)reviously declined to recognize as parties in the struggle ; it had subsequently seen those nominees, after their election, as members of the Delegation from New "York, concur in the adoption of measures which it had already declined to approve and which were nothing if they were not aggressive and revolutionary ; and, at last, it had seen the party of the Opposition crowded toward Rebellion, by the Congress of its own g-eation ; and its own whilom master-spirits in conservative exclusiveness, anxious for a further advancement in place-holding and for the promotion of that jiarticular purpose, joining hands with the principal supj)orters of what was, very clearly, only democratic and revolutionary. There was a fitness, therefore, that those of the Committee who had honestly and unselfishly opposed the aggressions of the Home Government, should cease to allow their names and whatever influence those names might possess, to be used by those who had betrayed the confidence which had been reposed in them, directly, for the advancement of their own i)ersonal ends, and, indirectly, for the promotion of Revolution, if not for that of Rebellion ; and there was a peculiar fitness, also, that, whatever those conservative members of the Committee of Fifty-one should do or decline to do, in the interests of the Colonists and of the Colony, they should not remain, associated with, if not controlled by, those of the opposite fiiction of the confederated party of the Opposition, whose ultimate object, very clearly, was nothing else than the advancement to i)lace and political authority of those who were its leaders, even if that advancement should be made at the cost of a Revolution and of a Civil War.