Lee were then appointed to prepare a preamble to the resolution. Lee and Adams, Massachusetts and Virginia, were of one mind; and on the following Monday they made their report. Recalling the act of parliament which excluded the Americans from the protection of the crown, the king's neglect to return any answer whatever to their petition, the employment of "the whole force of the kingdom, aided by foreign mercenaries, for the destruction of the good people of these colonies," they declared that it was "absolutely irreconcilable with reason and good conscience for the people of these colonies now to take the oaths and affirmations necessary for the support of any government under the crown of Great Britain, and that it was necessary that the exercise of every kind of authority under the crown should be totally suppressed, and all the powers of government exerted under the authority of the people of the colonies."

These words, which bore the impress of John Adams, implied the sovereignty of one continental people, a complete independence of the British parliament, crown, and nation. It was a blow dealt by the general congress against the proprietary government of Pennsylvania. Duane sounded the alarm; before changing the government of the colonies, he wished to wait for the opinions of the inhabitants, who were to be followed and not driven on. He showed that the powers conferred on him by New York did not justify him in voting for the measure without a breach of trust; and yet, if the averments of the preamble should be confirmed, he pledged New York to independence. Sherman argued that the adoption of the resolution was the best way to procure the harmony with Great Britain which New York desired. Mackean, who represented Delaware, thought the step must be taken, or liberty, property and life be lost. "The first object of New York," said Samuel Adams, "is the establishment of their rights. Our petitions are answered only by fleets and armies and myrmidons from abroad. The king has thrown us out of his protection; why should we support governments under his authority?" Floyd of New York was persuaded "that there were little or no hopes of commissioners coming to treat of peace; that therefore America ought to be in a situation to preserve her

liberties another way." "This preamble contains a reflection upon the conduct of some people in America," interposed Wilson, referring to the assembly of Pennsylvania, which so late as February had required of Reed and Rittenhouse oaths of allegiance to the king. "If the preamble passes," he continued, "there will be an immediate dissolution of every kind of authority in this province; the people will be instantly in a state of nature. Before we are prepared to build the new house, why should we pull down the old one?" The delegates of Pennsylvania declined to vote on the question; those of Maryland announced that, under their instructions, they should consider their colony as unrepresented, until they should receive the directions of their principals, who were then sitting at Annapolis.

Overruling the hesitation of the moderate men, the majority adopted the preamble, and ordered it to be published. The colonies never existed separately as independent states or peoples. As they rose, they united. The unity symbolized by the crown passed to the good people of the colonies, who collectively spoke the word for totally suppressing all authority under the king, giving the law to Pennsylvania by proscribing its proprietary government, and investing all the several colonies with authority to institute governments of their own. The measure proved "a piece of mechanism to work out independence." "The Gordian knot is cut," said John Adams as he meditated in solitude upon the lead which he had assumed in summoning so many populous and opulent colonies to rise from the state of subjection into that of independent republics. Many of those who were to take part in framing constitutions for future millions turned to him for instruction. He recalled the first principles of political morals, the lessons inculcated by American experience, and the example of England. Familiar with the wise and eloquent writings of those of her sons who had treated of liberty, and combining with them the results of his own reflections, he did not shrink from offering his advice. He declared the only moral foundation of government to be the consent of the people; yet he counselled respect for existing rules, and, to avoid opening a fruitful source of controversy, he refused to promote for the present any

alteration, at least in Massachusetts, in the qualifications of voters. "There is no good government," he said, "but what is republican; for a republic is an empire of laws, and not of men;" and, to constitute the best of republics, he enforced the necessity of separating the executive, legislative, and judicial powers. The ill use which the royal governors had made of the veto power did not confuse his judgment; he upheld the principle that the chief executive magistrate ought to be invested with a negative upon the legislature. To judges he wished to assign commissions during good behavior, and to establish their salaries by law, but to make them liable to impeachment and removal by the grand inquest of the colony.

The republics of the ancient world had grown out of cities, so that their governments were originally municipalities; to make a republic possible in the large territories embraced in the several American colonies, where the whole society could never be assembled, power was to be deputed by the many to a few, who were to be elected by suffrage, and were in theory to be a faithful miniature portrait of the people. Nor yet should all power be intrusted to one representative assembly. John Adams taught, what an analysis of the human mind and the examples of history through thousands of years unite to confirm, that a single assembly is liable to the frailties of a single individual, to passionate caprices, and to a selfish eagerness for the increase of its own importance. "If the legislative power," such were his words just as the American constitutions were forming, "if the legislative power is wholly in one assembly, and the executive in another or in a single person, these two powers will oppose and encroach upon each other, until the contest shall end in war, and the whole power, legislative and executive, be usurped by the strongest.'

These are words to be inscribed on the memory and heart of every nation that would constitute a republic; yet at that time there was not one member of the continental congress who applied the principle to the continental congress itself. Hawley of Northampton had advised an American parliament with two houses of legislature; but John Adams as yet saw no occasion for any continental constitution except a congress, which should contain a fair representation of the colo

nies, and confine its authority sacredly to war, trade, disputes between colony and colony, the post-office, and the unappropriated public lands.

In the separate colonies, he urged that all the youth should be liberally educated, and all men be required to keep arms and to be trained to their use. A country having a constitution founded on these principles, diffusing knowledge among the people, and inspiring them with the conscious dignity becoming free men, would, "when compared with the regions of monarchical or aristocratical domination, seem an Arcadia or an Elysium."

CHAPTER XXII.

BRITAIN SEEKS FOREIGN AID.

1775-1776.

COULD the king have employed none but British troops, the war by land against the colonies must have been of short duration. Sir Joseph Yorke, the British ambassador at the Hague, proposed the transfer of a brigade from the service of the Netherlands to that of his sovereign. The young stadholder made reply directly to his cousin, the king of England, declining the request. King George renewed his solicitation. In 1599, the Low Countries pledged to Queen Elizabeth as security for a loan three important fortresses, which she garrisoned with her own troops; in 1616 the Dutch discharged the debt, and the garrisons were withdrawn from the cautionary towns, except an English and a Scottish brigade which passed into the service of the United Provinces. William III. recalled the English brigade, and in 1749 the privilege of recruiting in Scotland was withdrawn from the other, so that its rank and file, consisting of more than twenty-one hundred men, were of all nations, though its officers were still Scotchmen by birth or descent. In favor of the loan of these troops, it was urged that the officers already owed allegiance to the British king; that common interests connected the two countries; that the present occasion offered to the prince of Orange "the unique advantage and particular honor" of strengthening the bonds of close friendship which had been more or less enfeebled" by the neutrality of the United Provinces during the last French war.

In the states general Zealand and Utrecht consented; the