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.

The message which the letter of Edmund Pendleton had conveyed to the Provincial Congress was the celebrated and well-known Resolutions of that Convention, adopted on the fifteenth of May preceding, through which the Delegation from Virginia, in the Continental Congress, was instructed " to declare the " United Colonies free and independent States, absolved from all allegiance to or dependence upon "the Crown and Parliament of Great Britain; and " that it give the assent of this Colony to such Decla- " ration, and to whatever measures may be thought " proper and necessary, by the Congress, for forming " foreign alliances and a Confederation of the Colonies, " at such time and in the manner as to them shall seem " best ; Provided, That the power of forming Go vern- " ment for and the regulation of the internal concerns "of each Colony be left to the respective Colonial "Legislatures ; " 2 and the Provincial Congress ordered

> This admirable Reply to the Answer of the Provincial Congress, which was more especially devoted to the proposal of that body to impose a new form of Government on the Colony or State, without having submitted it to the body of the People, for ratification or rejection, was in these words : ********** 2 Journal of a Convention of Delegates from the Counties and Corporations in the Colony of Virginia, held at tlie Capitol, in tile City of Williamsburgh, " Wednesday May 15, 1776."