If so, what possible ground is there for consistently regarding them as either honest or sincere, when, on the ninth of July, the occasion which is now under notice, while they were yet without that " consent" of their principals and constituents which had been previously regarded as essential to ensure validity to any such action, they actually, on their own motion, made such a declaration ; severed the political connection which had previously existed between the Colony and Great Britain; abrogated all the Laws under which the Colony had been previously governed ; de[)osed the previously existing Colonial Government ; and usurped, to themselves, without the slightest limitation, the absolute and despotic control of every thing relating to the Civil, the Ecclesiastical, and the Military concerns of all who were within the Colony, not sparing even the consciences, the opinions, the properties, the liberties, or the lives of those who presumed to say to them, "What doest thou?"

We shall see, hereafter, how much of honesty and integrity there were, in either of these, when the series of Resolutions, on the subject of the Colony's independence, which is now under consideration, was written and adopted ; how little the writer of them honestly and sincerely regarded those Resolutions as being, really, what they appeared to have been ; and how little foundation in truth there is for the greater portion of what has been written concerning that writer and what he did, on the ninth of 'July, 177G.

Having disposed of the subject of Independence in the curt and crispy Resolution which headed the series which was reported by the Committee, the Provincial Congress turned to other subjects of vastly less importance ; and, two days afterwards, on Thursday, the eleventh of July, very probably, no record of the fact having been found, the publication of the Declaration was made, otEcially, at the White Plains, in conformity with the second Resolution of the series, on that subject, which had been adopted by the Congress.'