"This Congress is, at all times, ready and willing "to attend to every request of their constituents, or "of any part of them: we are of opinion that the "Continental Congress, alone, have that enlarged "view of our political circumstances which will ena- "ble them to decide upon those measures which are "necessary for the general welfare: we cannot pre- "sume, by any instructions, to make or declare any "Resolutions or Declarations, upon a so general and "momentous concern; but are determined patiently " to await and firmly to abide by whatever a majority '• of that august body shall think needful. We, there- "fore, cannot presume to instruct the Delegates of "this Colony, upon the momentous question to which "your Address refers, until we are informed that it is "brought before the Continental Congress and the "sense of this Colony be required through this Congress." 3

To that contemptuous Answer, the Mechanics in Union, ten days afterwards, [June 14, 1776,] sent a second Address, in reply, in which, under cover of an inquiry concerning one of the Resolutions of the Provincial Congress relating to a proposed establish-

2 John Jay was not in his Beat, in the Provincial Congress, during that entire day ; and, therefore, he had no hand in it. John Morin Scott was present ; but no one will pretend that such a sturdy sycophant of the popular element as he, would have ventured to have written such a paper, so contemptuously disrespectful of that great class of generally uufranchised Working-men. The President of the Congress, General Woodhull, of Suffolk, was not handy with the pen ; and he possessed no such animosity againBt " the lower classes," asiBseeninthiB.d»wrtver. It remained, therefore, to the high toned, "well born" Deputy from Westchestercounty, Gouverneur MorriB --the same who had stood in the window of the Coffee-house, on the nineteenth of May, 1774, and, thence, bad studied the rising power of the democracy, whom he loathed *-- to write the Answer of the Congress ; and it was, unquestionably, he who did it.