"lhat the supporters of the Congress, in the event of their success, would, thereby, destroy a most powerful instrumentality, then preparing to labor, independently, in a line which whilst parallel to that already occupied by the Congress itself, was, nevertheless, for the accomplishment of the great purposes for securing which that Congress had been originally proposed and was subsequently organized, and was, then, among other less desirable purposes, through its own appointed instrumentalities, apparently laboring. The last-named portion of the members, not less determined than the other, resolutely maintained that the Assembly should remain entirely independent from all those popular Committees and Congresses which had been moving and laboring, during the preceding year, in lines of action which they had respectively approved, each for itself, for the common purposes ;

l " The Ministry alledged that the Congress was no legal body, and " none could be heard in reference to their proceedings, without giving "that illegal body some degree of countenance j that they could only " hear the Colonies through their legal Assemblies and their Agents prop- " erly authorized by them, and properly admitted here ; that to do " otherwise would lead to inextricable confusion and destroy the whole '■' order of Colony Government." -- (Annual Register for the year 1775, 56.)

See, also, Parliamentary Register (Almon's) i., 115, 116, 124.

and, with equal resolution and consistency, it evidently determined, also, that the Assembly should take no omcial action on any of the occurrences of the preceding year, except such as should be brought before it, officially, or such as might have arisen from some prior action of the Assembly itself; and, more important than all else, it determined that, with all the weight of its legitimate and omcial authority and influence and with all the personal influence of its individual members, but after a fashion and in terms of its own selection, and without any violation of official or individual propriety or of the Laws of the Land- -especially without officially recognizing the existence of any other opposition to the Ministry or the existence of any other organized body which had been, which was, or which might become, similarly employed -- it would vigorously oppose the obnoxious Colonial policy of the Home Government, earnestly seek a redress of the serious grievances under which the Colonies were then laboring, and honestly endeavor to effect that honorable and permanent reconciliation of the Colonies and the Mother Country, which all factions, and all parties, and all sects, and all classes of society, throughout the Colony, professed to consider necessary and desirable ; and which, some in one manner and some in others, each faction for itself, they were endeavoring to secure, for the common weal. 2