The desire for such a change was, also, sometimes promoted by the consciousness, among those whose consciences had not become charred by their hankering for offices, of that evident hypocrisy in pretending to an earnest loyalty toward a monarch against whom they were waging an open and recognized public War, with which the Committees and the Congresses of the Rebellion had continued to affront the common sense and the morality of Christendom ; and that moral inclination to Independence, and those other inclinations, in the same direction, which were prompted by less holy influences, were all strengthened by the alarm which was produced by information that the Colonies had been formally declared to be in rebellion ; that mercenaries had been employed to assist in reducing them to subjection, in which all classes would be subjected to a common ruin -- a repetition, on a larger scale, but on the other side, of what had been done, already, by the leaders of the Rebellion, in New York, against the peaceful, agricultural inhabitants of Westchester and Duchess and Queens and Richmond-counties ; that the Indians were to be employed by the Home-Government, for the purpose of harassing the frontiers and threatening the inland settlements and villages; and that the Slaves were to be withdrawn from their masters, as far as possible, and armed in the service of the King. All these influences had culminated in the submission to the Continental Congress of a Resolution, "That " these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, " free and independent States, that they are absolved " from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that " all political connection between them and the State " of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dis- " solved. That it is expedient forthwith to take the " most effectual measures for forming foreign Al- " liances.