The Town of Providence, in Town-meeting, May 17, 1774, was, probably, the first organized body which recommended a Congress of the several Colonies, for general purposes ; but it only requested the Deputies of the Town, in the approaching General Assembly, to " use their influ- " ence," in that body, not yet assembled, "for promoting a Congress, as soon "as maybe, of the Representatives of the General Assemblies of the "several Colonies and Provinces in North America," for the general purposes of the whole number, (Proceedings of the Town-Meeting, reprinted in Force's American Archives, Fourth Series, i., 333 ;) and the Committee of Correspondence of Philadelphia, in its reply to the Committee of Correspondence of Boston, dated "Philadelphia, May 21, 1774," compared the proposition of Boston, to enter into au Association of Non- Exportation and Non-Intercourse, with the proposition of New-York, to convene a Congress of the Colonies, without determining which of the two it would approve, (Letter, dated as above stated,) leaving the subject undecided, until the eighteenth of June, when the Congress was determined on, by a Meeting of the Citizens, without the intervention of the Committee, (Proceedings of the Meeting, reprinted in Force's American Archives, Fourth Series, i., 426, 427.)

Because the General Assemblies of the greater number of the Colonies, at that time, could not have elected Deputies to the proposed Congress, even if they had been willing to have done so -- the Governor having, in each case, the power of proroguing or dissolving the Assembly, which, in the greater number of instances, he would have certainly done-- the action of the Town of Providence, although well intended, could not result in the convention of a Congress ; and what was done by the Committee of Correspondence in Philadelphia, was not entitled to the honorable mention of it, which Frothingham and others have made, since it iimounted to nothing, either of approval or disapproval of the Newand judicious action, the Committee of Correspondence, in New York, offended those of the revolutionary clique, in that City, who had not been invited to places and seats in that Committee, and how much the revolutionary leaders and the revolutionary popu-