" It may, nevertheless, be proper to inform you that it " is the sense of this Congress that no coercive steps " ought to be used to induce any person to sign the " Association. The propriety of the measure, the " example of the other Counties, and the necessity of " maintaining a perfect union in every part of this " Colony, it is presumed, are sufficient reasons to " induce the Inhabitants of your County to comply ■' with this requisition."
The Resolution and letter which were thus reported to the Provincial Congress, were taken up, for consideration, on the twenty-ninth of May ; and, after some amendments had been made therein, they were " approved, agreed to, and resolved ; " and five hundred copies were ordered to be printed ; and as many copies of the letter as should be necessary were ordered to be signed by the President and delivered to the members of the Congress, "to be by them " directed." 2
As the County of Westchester had already been favored with the appointment of a County-committee, or what purported to have been such a Committee, 3 it is probable that it was not considered necessary, in tiiat instance, to interfere with that former appoint-
1 The authority which appeal's to have been vested in members of the Provincial Congress, to appoint local Committees where the inhabitants had not ■ done so, probably originated in that. Congress, in an earlier secret meeting of that body ; but no record of any such action is seen on its published Journal-- like the Secret Journals of the Continental Congress, those of the Provincial Congress of New York, could they also be published, would undoubtedly throw different tints of light and color on many a romance, called " history."