" Resolved, That the Delegates of this State, in " Continental Congress, be and they are hereby "authorized to consent to and adopt all such mea- " sures as they may deem conducive to the happiness "and welfare of the United States of America.'!

It is said that the Report which was thus made by the Committee was unanimously adopted by the Congress ; and, further, that an Order was made by the Congress directing that copies of the Resolutions which constituted the Report should be transmitted to the Continental Congress.*

The reader need only to be reminded that the evident author and the known supporters of this series of Resolutions were the same author who, twentyeight days previously, had written, and almost entirely the same individual Deputies who, at the same time, had voted, that the authority of "the good "people of this Colony" was, then, necessary to enable the Provincial Congress or the Delegates of the Colony in the Continental Congress "to declare this " Colony to be and continue indejjendentof the Crown " of Great Britain ; " that, in the absence of any such authority already delegated to themselves or to the Colony's Delegates in the Continental Congress, it was, at that time, considered proper and necessary to ask for authority to do so, if it should be subsequently considered expedient and proper to make such a declaration of Independence, in behalf of that " good "people" of whom they, then, acknowledged themselves to have been only agents or deputies ; that, for reasons which will be remembered, no such authority, then nor subsequently, had been delegated to either themselves or to the Colony's Delegates in the Continental Congress, by that "good people" whose servants and representatives both they and the Delegates referred to acknowledged themselves to have been ; and that, on the later occasion, which is now under notice, themselves having been the witnesses, they were quite as much without authority, legal or revolutionary, "to declare this Colony to be and " continue independent of the Crown of Great "Britain," as they had been, on the former occasion, of which mention has been made.