"This Congress is, at all times, ready and willing "to attend to every request of their constituents, or "of any part of them: we are of opinion that the "Continental Congress, alone, have that enlarged "view of our political circumstances which will ena- "blethem to decide upon those measures which are "necessary for the general welfare: we cannot pre- "sume, by any instructions, to make or declare any "Resolutions or Declarations, upon a so general and "momentous concern ; but are determined patiently "to await and firmly to abide by whatever a majority "of that august body shall think needful. We, there- "fore, cannot presume to instruct the Delegates of "this Colony, upon the momentous question to which "your Address refers, until we are informed that it is "brought before the Continental Congress and the "sense of this Colony be required through this Con- "gress." *

To that contemptuous Answer, the Mechanics in Union, ten days afterwards, [^June 14, 1776,] sent a second Address, in reply, in which, under cover of an inquiry concerning one of the Resolutions of the Provincial Congress relating to a proposed establish-

2 Joliu Jay was not in his seat, in the Provincial Congress, during that entire day ; and, therefore, he had no hand In it. John Morin Scott was present ; but no one will pretend that such a sturdy sycopliant of the popular element as he, would have ventured to have written sui h a paper, so contemptuously disrespectful of that great class of generally unfriiuchised Working-men. The President of the Congress, General Woodhull, of Sufiblk, was not handy with the pen; and he possessed no such animosity against "the lower classes," as isseen in this .-l«s!Mr. Itrenuiined, therefore, to the high toned, "well born" Deputy from Westchestercounty, Gouverneur Morris -the same who had stood in the window of the Coffee-house, on the nineteenth of May, 1774, and, thence, had studied the rising power of the democracy, wliom he loathed*-- to write the Answer of the Congress ; and it was, uncpiestionably, he who did it.