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. In short, from the beginning, the Provincial Congress of New York recognized no superior, controlling power, except that of its own actual constituents ; and, at no subsequent period -- not even when the Governor of New York declined the release of Alexander McLeod, though demanded by both the Government of Great Britain and the President of the United States -- has there been any more resolute supporter of the Sovereignty of the several States, any more determined opponent of a transfer to any other body, from the People -- which latter word is only an equivalent term for .the State, and, in New York, if not elsewhere, is used, officially, to designate the State, itself -- of the original authority, the Sovereignty of those several Peoples, than was that revolutionary Congress of the Colony of New York, in its opposition, on the one hand, to its ultra-aristocratic masterspirits, and, on the other, to the ultra-revolutionists among its members, early in the year 1775.