But, as we are informed, " debates arose on " the said motion "--there were grave questions, at that time, concerning the propriety of such an approval of all the proceedings of that first Congress, as was proposed by the leaders of the ultra-revolutionists -- and the rural Delegations again determined on the side of peace and reconciliation and Colonial independence from all foreign influences, by postponing the further consideration of the proposition, without day,* where it has remained, from that day until the present.

It is more than possible that the avowed Conservative elements within the Provincial Congress had been largely instrumental in securing both these votes, in opposition, to the discordant efforts, successively, of the ultra-aristocracy, represented by Isaac Low and Gouverneur Morris, and of the ultra-revolu-

* Journal of the Provincial Congress, "5 ho., P.M., May 25 t V'

WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

tionary faction, represented by John Morin Scott and Thomas Smith ; but, whatever may have led to the practical rejection of those two propositions, each of which tended toward the centralization of the entire authority and all the power of Ihe several Colonies, in the Congress of the Continent, thereby destroying the autonomy of each of the Colonies, without subjecting that Congress, in its exercise of that authority and that power, to any other limitation than the unbridled will of a majority of the Delegations composing it, this is clearly evident : the Provincial Congress intended, by those two adverse votes, to declare that, though a purely local body, it was, nevertheless, determined not to divest itself, even by implication, of that unquestioned governmental supremacy, within the Colony of New York, which it had already acquired, no matter how ; that, on the contrary, it had determined to retain, within itself, and to continue to exercise, unhampered by the interference of any other body, the several legislative, and judicial, and executive authorities, within the Colony, which it already held, no matter by what warrant ; that it would yield to the Continental Congress, if it yielded anything to that foreign body, nothing else than a voluntary acquiescence ; that it would promulgate the Orders and Resolutions and " recommendations " of that other Congress, if it promulgated them at all, not as original and supreme rules of action of all who were or who might be within the Colony of New York, but as the bases of its own local enactments, to the latter of which, per se, and not to the former, it required the implicit obedience of all those within or to come within the Colony, whose supreme political ruler it assumed to be and to remain.