After a letter from the Delegation of the Colony in the Continental Congress, bearing date the second of July, " on the subject of Independence, and request- " ing instructions from this Congress," 8 had been read, a second letter from the Delegation, of a subsequent date, " enclosing the Declaration of Independence," was also read, and referred to a Committee consisting of John Jay and Abraham Brasier, of the City of New York, Abraham Yates, Junior, of Albany-county, and John Sloss Hobart and William Smith, of Suffolk. 9

The Declaration which was thus referred, was a duly authenticated copy of A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, of which document mention has been already made ; and, with its authentication, in extenso, it was entered at length on the Journal of the Congress. 10

A very important letter, concerning prisoners of Monday, the eighth of July, 1776 ; * but it was not

6 Journal of the Provincial Congress, "Tuesday, 9th July, 1776." Very singularly, and without the slightest authority except that of J. Warren Tompkins, Bolton, (History of Westcliester-county, original edition, ii., 359 ; tile same, second edition, ii., 664,) considered the Congress which was assembled, at the White Plains, on the ninth of July* 1776, as the same body as that which had been in session, in the City of New York, from the eighteenth of May until the thirtieth of June, preceding. In other words, both these learned historians regarded the third^nd the fourth Provincial Congresses as one and the same body