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

" Allegiance " and " Treason " presupposed Sovereignty existing in the Colonies, without which Sovereignty there could not have possibly been any " Allegiance " due to either of them nor " Treason " committed against them or either of , them ; but it would require a bold man, possessed of a very vivid imagination, to maintain, seriously and honestly, that any such Sovereignty existed in the Colonies, or in any or either of them, on the twenty-fourth of June, 1776, when the Continental Congress adopted these Resolutions, whatever there might have been or not have been, in the several States, a fortnight afterwards.