ment of a new form of Government, but in words and in terms which entitled the Artisan-author of it to the highest honors, the generally unfranchised Workingmen of the City of New York manfully declared their Eights, as a portion of that body of the People, throughout the Colony, in whom, they considered, were vested the original power and the source of all political authority, within the Colony ; denounced the assumption, by either of the Congresses or any of the Committees, of an authority over and beyond that which had been delegated to them, as illegal and destructive of the ends sought to be secured by the creation of those several bodies ; and warning the Provincial Congress of the necessary consequences of such an usurpation. That Reply, most respectful in its tone while it was most overwhelming in its facts and in its argument, was evidently not permitted to be presented to the Provincial Congress ; and, without the slightest notice on the official Journal of that body -- probably, without the slightest official action by the Congress -- it was buried in the files of that "oligarchic" body, to await a resurrection in these later days. 1
On the following day, [June 5, 1776,] the Provincial Congress was pestered, again, with that obnoxious subject of Independence ; but, on that occasion, the aristocratic Colonial Convention of Virginia was the unwelcome claimant on its attention ; and, consequently, it was constrained to be more civil in its words and more respectful in its demeanor than it had been, on the day before, when the plebeian Workingmen of the City in which it was seated had addressed it, respectfully, on the same subject.