Committee of the Convention, instead of a letter by the hands of a Messenger ; and Colonel John Broome, of New York City, and William Duer, of Charlotte-county, wore selected for that purpose. {General Washington to tlte President of Qie Continental Congress, " New York, 19 "July, 1776." )

7 Theso Resolutions are almost identical with other Resolutions, of the same tenor, which bad been adopted by the Continental Congress, oil the twenty-fourth of June preceding, {vide pages 179, 180, ante;) but, because of the subsequent abrogation of all the Laws of the Colony, and because no othor Laws had been enacted, even provisionally, to take their places, the truth was, that, on the day of the adoption of those Resolutions, by the Convention, there were no Laws, of any kind, in force, within the State, nor any Courts to try offenders, of any kind; and the Resolutions were, therefore, practically, mere buncombe, meaning nothing.

But the ridiculousness of the Resolutions was not confined to their allusions to Laws which had been formally abrogated and to Courta which had been as formally abol shed. Obedience to the Laws, had there been any Laws, would have been truly due from every one within the limits of the State ; but that was something which was entirely distinct from Allegiance, which was not due to the Laws but to the Sovereign to whose supreme authority the person was legally subject, and from whom even the Laws themselves, had there been any, had derived all the authority which they could have possibly possessed. Treason has always consisted, and still consists, of something else than a mere misdemeanor or a simple felony ; and the subject of another Sovereign, although a violator of the lex loci, to which he properly owed obedienoo, could not, then nor since, have been legally tried and convicted of Treason, for any such violation of the local Law, in the Stwte of New York or elsewhere, else, under these Resolutions, every officer and soldier of the Royal Army, whether British or Irish or German, who were within the State of New York, on and after the sixteenth of July, 1776, wore Traitors "against the State," liable to be tried for that very capital offence, and to "suffer the pains and "penalties of Death," therefor.