whether, at that time, the delegates of any Colony, assembled in a general Congress, could have had any authority to extinguish the rights of their Constituents, by amalgamating them with others, into one Nation, except under their credentials and instructions.—Should he say, as speaking in that spirit, he must say, that they could not have had authority derived from any other source, I then refer to these credentials and instructions, to shew, that all of them contained expressed limitations upon the power of these delegates, by which they were prohibited from doing any such act.
It is not necessary to recite all these papers; a part of one only will suffice. The Provincial Congress of New Jersey, assembled at Burlington, on the 21st of June, 1776, empowered their delegates, to join with the delegates of the other Colonies, "in declaring the United Colonies independent of Great Britain, entering into a confederation for union and common defence, making Treaties with foreign nations for commerce and assistance, and to take such other measures as might appear to them and you necessary for these great ends; always observing that whatever plan of Confederacy you enter into, the regulating the internal police of this province, is to be reserved to the Colony Legislature."[1] Words containing a more explicit prohibition, against welding New Jersey with the other Colonies, or any of them, into one Nation, could not well have been employed; and yet the authority communicated to the delegates of New Jersey, by these instructions, was even greater than that possessed by the Representatives of many of the other Colonies. If the nature and intent of the Declaration of Independence, are such, as I have stated; it is of little consequence to inquire, whether that decisive and important step was taken by its authors, jointly or severally; or whether it deserves the name of a joint act, or of several acts; for let the act be done as it may, it was certainly done for the purposes it announces, and could not have been done for any such purpose as the President ascribes to it, namely, to declare the Colonies one Nation, or the Colonists one People.
In further proof of this, I will here remark, that during the very
- ↑ See Journals of the Old Congress, Vol. 2, pp. 224, 225.
