Livingston ;^ but the character of those who framed the Resolution only increases our surprise, and, more clearly than before, indicates the desperate straits into which, even at that early date, the Continental Congress had been crowded, unless the "spies " against whom the Committee fulminated its Report were those Commissioners whom the Ministry had authorized to treat for Reconcilation and PeacCj^ and who were, at that time, nearing and not distant from New York ; and unless, also, the Continental Congress, by these Resolutions, proposed to naturalize Admiral Howe, and General Howe, and the forces which were respectively under their command; and to transform ail these, on their arrival within the harbor of New York, into " members of " the Colony " of New York, " owing allegiance to " the Laws of the United Colonies," and subject to be tried on a charge of " Treason against such Colony " of New York, should they become prisoners of war.

Whatever the purposes of the Continental Congress may have been, in the adoption and promulgation of these Resolutions, no one can attribute to the learned lawyers who reported them the slightest sincerity, since none knew better than they, that "allegiance," under any possible circumstances, was not and could not become due to what was nothing else than a mere " Law," and that the " Law " of a mere " Colony," w'hich might be enacted on one day and be repealed on the next; that "allegiance" was, tiien, and would always be, due to nothing else than to the Sovereign of whom the person was or should become, legitimately, a subject; that an avowed sojourner, " pass- " ing through" a Colony or merely "visiting" it or "making a temporary stay" within it, at the same time owing "allegiance" to the Sovereign of another country, while he would certainly owe obedience to the local Law, during the entire period of his journey through or of his visit to or of his temporary stay ■within that Colony, by no Law nor by any possible interpretation of a Law which would have been entitled to the slightest respect, only by reason of that journey or visit or temporary stay, could have been said to have surrendered his "allegiance" due only to his own Sovereign, and, instead, only for the same reason, to have become a subject of, owing "alle- "giance" to, the authority which controlled the place of his journey or visit or temporary stay, and especially so while that place was or should continue to be only an acknowledged dependency of a foreign Prince, to whom it was or should be, itself, avowedly subject, and by whom no such enactment or order had