Rut, as we are informed, "debates arose on " the said motion " -- there were grave questions, at that time, concerning the propriety of such an approval of all the jiroceedings of that first Congress, as was projiosed by the leaders of the ultra-revolutionists--and the rural Delegations again determined on the side of j)eace and reconciliation and Ctdonial iiide|)endence from all foreign inlluenees, by post]ionini!; the further consideration of the i)ro|»ositioii, without day,* where it has remained, from that day until the present.

It is more than possible that the avowed Conservative elements within the Provincial Congre.s.s had been hirgely instrumental in securing both the.se votes, in opi)osition to the discordant ellbrts, successively, of the ultra-aristocracy, represented by Isaac I>()w and Gouverneur Morris, and of the ultra-revolu-

* Journal of tite I'roviucial CongreMj **'y bo., P.M., May 2.'>t>'."

HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

tionarj' faction, represented by John Morin Scott and Thomas Smith ; but, whatever may have led to the practical rejection of those two propositions, each of which tended toward the centralization of the entire authority and all the power of the several Colonies, iu the Congress of the Continent, thereby destroying the autonomy of each of the Colonies, without subjecting that Congress, in its exercise of that authority and that power, to any other limitation than the unbridled will of a majority of the Delegations composing it, this is clearly evident : the Provincial Congress intended, by those two adverse votes, to declare that, though a purely local body, it was, nevertheless, determined not to divest itself, even by implication, of that unquestioned governmental supremacy, within the Colony of New York, which it had already acquired, no matter how ; that, on the contrary, it had determined to retain, within itself, and to continue to exercise, unhampered by the interference of any other body, the several legislative, and judicial, and executive authorities, within the Colony, which it already held, no matter by what warrant ; that it would yield to the Continental Congress, if it yielded anything to that foreign body, nothing else than a voluntary ac(iuicscence ; that it would promulgate the Orders and Resolutions and " recommendations " of that other Congress, if it pronuilgated them at all, not as original and .supreme rules of action of all who were or who might be within the Colony of New York, but as the bases of its own local enactments, to the latter of wiiich, per »e, and not to the former, it required the implicit obedience of all those within or to come within the Colony, whose supreme political ruler it assumed to be and to remain.