1 Journal of the Continental Congress, "Wednesday, June 5, 1776."

2 " According to the noble Lord's explanation, Lord Howe and his " brother are to be Bent as Spies, not as Commissioners ; that if they can- " not go on shore, they are to sound upon the coast, "-- (Speech of Cliarles Janus Fox, on the Motion for Lord Howe's Instructions, " House of Com- " mons, Wednesday, May 22, 1776.")

been made; that no mere Colony, dependent on another and superior political power, could possibly have been said, sincerely, by such a Committee, to have possessed a political Sovereignty, nor that, in the absence of such a Sovereignty, there could possibly have been a respectable and competent charge of Treason against it, in any instance whatever; and, more than all, that such a pretense and threat of charges of Treason against a Colony, made by the Committee, in its Resolutions, was simply a harmless thunderbolt, before the Law, since the King of Great Britain, against whom and against whose authority the Resolutions were specifically directed, was, at the time of the adoption and promulgation of these Resolutions, actually the Sovereign of all those Colonies and of all those who were thus denouncing him, openly and generally recognized, throughout the former, as the source of all their legitimate political authority and as their King ; and, by the members of that Committee and the authors of those Resolutions, themselves, specifically recognized as the Sovereign to whom each and every of them was himself proud to owe allegiance. 3