had not been generally entertained by the people of any of the colonies. All their public proceedings, from the commencement of the disputes down to the election of delegates to the first Congress, including the instructions given to those delegates, proves, as we have seen, that they looked for redress and relief to means which they regarded as entirely consistent with the principles of the British constitution. Still, although this Congress did not take upon themselves the functions of a government, or propose revolution as a remedy for the wrongs of their constituents, they regarded and styled themselves as 'the guardians of the rights and liberties of the colonies;' and in that capacity they proceeded to declare the causes of complaint, and to take the necessary steps to obtain redress, in what they believed to be a constitutional mode. These steps, however, although not directly revolutionary, had a revolutionary tendency."[1]
It must not be supposed that there was no opposition to the measures finally determined upon by Congress. On the contrary, there were many wealthy and influential men, who both doubted the propriety of the steps resolved upon, and dreaded the prospect of an open rupture with the mother country. "Men of very different dispositions," as M. Guizot well says, had here "met together. Some, full of respect and attachment to the mother country, others passionately absorbed in that American fatherland which was rising under their eyes and by their hands; the former grieved and anxious, the latter daring and confident, but all governed and united by the same feeling of dignity, a like resolve of resistance, giving free play to the variety of their ideas and fancies, without any lasting or wide division occurring between them. On the contrary, respecting one another in their reciprocal liberty, and discussing the great affair of the country together with conscientious respect, with that spirit of mutual deference and of justice, which assures success and makes its purchase less costly." Whatever differences existed among the members they were not known to the public, who looked with confiding trust to the combined wisdom and .patriotism of the country there assembled to consider upon what ought to be done in a crisis of so great magnitude.
Just at the close of October, after a session of fifty-one days, Congress adjourned, having previously made provision for another Congress to meet the May following. Every subject was discussed fully and fairly, and the papers issued by this Congress have been pronounced masterpieces of political wisdom and truth.[2] Of Wash-
- ↑ Curtis's "History of the Constitution," vol. i., p. 17–20.
- ↑ The eulogium of Lord Chatham on these state papers deserves to be quoted here: "When your lordships have perused the papers transmitted to us from America, when you consider the dignity, the firmness, and the wisdom with which Americans have acted, you cannot but respect their cause. History, my lords, has been my favorite study, and in the celebrated writings of antiquity, I have often admired the patriotism of Greece and Rome; but, my lords, I must declare and avow that, in the master states of the world, I know not the people, nor the senate who, in such a complication of difficult circumstances
