We say, all these were well enough, because they were open and intelligible ; and if the question of Independence had been, thereby, submitted, even indirectly and insufficiently, to the arbitrament of the Electors, there would have been an appearance, at least, of fairness and consistency ; but John Jay had no such intention -- he aimed, mainly, to hoodwink those, in the Continental Congress, who were anxiously desiring the support of New York in their effort to crowd the question of Independence through that body, by a seeming fairness on that subject; while, at the same time, by a secret Agreement (an action, by a parliamentary body, which was unknown to parliamentary law, and without a precedent,) all

» Journal of the Provincial Congress, "Tuesday, P.M., June 11 1776.'

WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

that he and the Provincial Congress had done or pretended to have done, thereon, was made inoperative, by withholding from the Electors, until after the Election at which the Resolutions were ordered to be submitted to the judgment of those Electors, all knowledge of the existence of any such Resolutions I

If the Provincial Congress possessed no authority, legal or revolutionary, " to declare this Colony to be " and continue independent of the Crown of Great " Britain," as both common sense and history, as well as the first of John Jay's series of enabling Resolutions, unquestionably determined, those enabling Resolutions, carefully concealed and rendered entirely inoperative by the Agreement which was subsequently appended to them, assuredly did not supply nor provide for a supply of that peculiar authority which John Jay and the Provincial Congress, then, regarded as necessary, for a warrant for such a declaration ; and, consequently, that Congress was, and would necessarily continue to be, as it had previously been, without the slightest authority, legal or revolutionary, to take any action whatever, which tended toward a separation of the Colony from the Mother Country.