George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 7, 4th edition.

[107] of Albemarle county, in Virginia, had a

Chap. IX.} 1774. Aug.

month earlier expressed the same conclusion, and, in the language of Jefferson, claimed to hold the privilege of exemption from the authority of every other legislature than their own as one of the common rights of mankind.

After resting one night at New Haven, and visiting the grave of the regicide Dixwell, the envoys continued on their way. As they reached the Hudson, they found that the British ministry had failed to allure, to intimidate, or to divide New York. A federative union of all the English colonies, under the sovereignty of the British king, had for a quarter of a century formed the aspiration of its ablest men, who long remained confident of the ultimate consummation of their hopes. The great design had been repeatedly promoted by the legislature of the province. The people wished neither to surrender liberty, nor to dissolve their connection with the crown of England. The possibility of framing an independent republic with one jurisdiction from the far North to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic indefinitely to the West, was a vision of which nothing in the history of man could promise the realization. Lord Kames, the friend of Franklin, though he was persuaded that the separation of the British colonies was inevitably approaching, affirmed that their political union was impossible. Prudent men long regarded the establishment of a confederacy of widely extended territories, as a doubtful experiment, except under the moderating influence of a permanent executive. That the colonies, if disconnected from England, would fall into bloody dissensions among themselves,