In short, from the beginning, the Provincial Congress of New York recognized no sui)erior, controlling power, except that of its own actual constituents ; and, at no subse- (juent i)eriod -- not even when the Governor of New York declined the release of Alexander McLeod, though demanded by both the Government of Great Britain and the President of the United States -- has theri^ been any more resolute supporter of the Sovereignty of the several States, any more determined opponent of a transfer to any other body, from the People -- which latter word is only an equivalent term for the State, and, in New York, if not elsewhere, is used, officially, to designate the State, itself-- of the original authority, the Sovereignty of those several Peoi)les, than was that revolutionary Congress of the Colony of New York, in its opposition, on the one hand, to its ultra-aristocratic masterspirits, and, on the other, to the ultra-revolutionists among its members, early in the year 1775.

As a ])ortion of the history f those times, reference may be made, in this j)lace, to an incident which occurred in the Provincial (Jongress, soon after that body had rejected the Resolution which Isaac Low and Gouverneur Morris had offered, of which mention has been made. On the same day, the first day

of the Session of that revolutionary body, during the same afternoon, a motion was made by Alexander McDougal, a Presbyterian, providing for the appointment of a Committee of two, to apply to all the Ministers in the City who could pray in English, "to " make such an arrangement among themselves as "would enable them alternately to open the Congress, "every morning, with prayer;" but Gouverneur Morris, Lewis Graham, Colonel Philip Van Cortlandt, Colonel James Holmes, Stephen Ward, and John Thomas, Junior, six of the nine members of the Congress who were from Westchester-county, probably recognizing the evident impropriety of spreading their politically dirty hands before Him who giveth no favor to those who loveth and maketh a lie, dissented from a majority of the Congress, and caused their dissent to be entered on the Journal of that body.'