» Although this is not likely to be disputed, by any one, it may be proper to state that it was not claimed to have been so, by those whc promoted the call for it--" it is allowed by the most Intelligent among "them, that these assemblies of the People are illegal and may be danger- "ous, but they deny that they are unconstitutional when a national " grievance cannot otherwise be removed."-- (Lieutenant-governor Colden to the Earl of Dartmouth, " New York 1st June, 1774.")

WESTCHESTEK COUNTY.

sent, and alarm, among those who had not been promised such a result; among those wh j were not inclined to be crowded into insurrection, without their consent ; and among those whose best interests and whose families' best interests rested on a continued peace throughout the Colonies and on a due attention to their own affairs.

The purposes of this work afford no warrant for a more extended narrative than we have given of the really varied designs of those, in other Colonies than in that of New York, who promoted the assembling of a Congress of the Colonies ; nor of the intrigues of those who, some for one purpose and some for another, desired to become members of that body ; nor of the objects for which it was specially invited and convened ; nor of the influences which controlled it, after it was convened, and which transformed it from that instrument for securing a peaceful redress of those grievances of which the Colonists had complained, that Reconciliation with the Mother Country which was " most ardently desired by all good men," that Harmony and good Will between Great Britain and her Colonists which only a very few revolutionists, in some of the Colonies, did not anxiously hope for, and that general Peace which would have restored prosperity and happiness to both the Colonists and the inhabitants of Great Britain, for securing all of which and for no other purpose whatever it had been specifically invited and convened, into an instrument for the violation of the rights of individuals and of property, previously regarded as sacred, and for the promotion of Insurrection and of Revolution and of Rebellion, of War and of Devastation and of Ruin, and these for nothing else than for the advancement of individual and sectional interests, for none of which latter purposes was there more than a handful of reckless advocates, in any of the Colonies, and against which, with the exception of the handful of " fire-eaters " of that period, to whom we have referred, there was, in each of the Colonies, nothing else than a firm and undivided opposition, in which every sect and every faction and every party were sincerely united.