The Convention also " earnestly recommended to the Gen- " eral Committees of the Counties and the Sub-Com- " mittees in the Districts of the several Counties in " this State, immediately to apprehend and secure all

Ooniniittee of the Convention, instead of a letter by the hands of a Jlessenger ; and Colonel John Broome, of New York City, and William Duer, of Charlotte-county, were selected for that purpose. {General Washinijlon to the President of the Continental Comjress, " New York, 19 "July, 1776." )

■ These Resolutions are almost identical with other Re.solutions, of the same tenor, which had been adopted by the Continental Congress, on the twenty-fourth of June preceding, {ritle parji's 3.i.5, 3.56, ante;) but, because of the Bubsei|uent abrogation of all the Laws of the Colony, and because no other Laws had been enacted, even provisionally, to take their places, the truth was. that, on the day of the adoption of these Resolutions, by the Convention, there were no Laws, of any kind, in force, within the State, nor any Courts to try offenders, of any kind; and the Resolutions were, therefore, practically, mere buncombe, meaning nothing.

But the ridiculousness of the Resolutions was not confined to their allusions to Laws which had been formally abrogated and to Courts which had been as formally abol shed. Obedience to the Laws, had there been any Laws, would have been truly due from every one within the limits of the Stati; ; but that was something which was entirely distinct from Allegiance, which was not due to the Laws but to the Sovereign to whose supieme authority the person was legally subject, and from whom even the Laws themselves, had there been any, had derived all the authority which they could have possibly possessed. Treason has always consisted, and still consists, of something else than a mere misdemeanor or a simple felony ; and the subject of another .Sovereign, although a violator of the lex loci, to which he properly owed obedience, could not, then nor since, have been legally tried and convicted of Treason, for any such violation of the local Law, in the State of New York or elsewhere, else, under these Resolutions, every officer and soldier of the Royal Army, whether British or Irish or German, who were within the State of New Y"ork, on and alter the sixteenth of July, 1776, were Traitoi-s "against the State." liable to be tried for that very capital offence, and to "sufl'er the pains and " penalties of Death," therefor.