| You are here: Home >> American Archives |
COUNCIL OF SAFETY OF DELAWARE. At a general meeting of the Council of Safety for the government of Newcastle, Kent, and Sussex, on Delaware, at Dover, in Kent County, aforesaid, on the 8th of January, 1776, and continued by adjournment to the 12th of the same month, inclusively: Saturday, January 13, 1776. On motion, Resolved, That the President transmit to Congress a list of such persons as by this Council of Safety have been appointed Officers in the Continental Battalion, to be raised in this Government, with their ranks and dates of their Commissions, respectively, certified by him as President of the Council. Extract from the Minutes: JOHN CHEW, Secretary. A List of the Persons to be appointed Officers in the Battalion to be raised in the DELAWARE Government by the Council of Safety thereof, in pursuance of the requisition of the honourable Continental Congress, together with their ranks and dates of their Commissions, viz:
Staff Officers.
I do certify that the foregoing is a true list, taken from the Minutes of the Council. JOHN KINLEY, President. In the House of Representatives for the Counties of Newcastle, Kent, and Sussex, upon Delaware, at Newcastle: Wednesday, P. M., March 20, 1776. On motion made, Resolved, That Dr. Thomas McDonough, of the County of Newcastle, be, and he is hereby, recommended to the honourable the Continental Congress, as Major in the Delaware Battalion, vice John Macpherson, Jun., Esq., deceased. Extract from the Minutes: JAMES BOOTH, Clerk of Assembly. CASSANDDRA TO CATO. SIR: I thought you had forgotten the fatal 7th of November, 1774, on which all your ambitious projects were blasted by a publick vote of your fellow-citizens, to divide from the County in their choice of Committee-men, and to hold all future elections by ballot; but I find I was mistaken. While Committees were chosen by holding up of hands, and letters from millers and popular harangues could be employed to serve the; purposes of your party, though Cato could write, yet no press teemed with his lucubrations; but now that publick business is carried on in the only way which can secure the people from undue influence, and the party has suffered a total defeat in their electioneering attempts, his masterly pen is called forth into the field of political controversy, and, with a few dashes of it, he has overset our Committee of Inspection, demolished the whole tribe of patriotick scribblers in newspapers, and laid Common Sense in the dirt; taken a catalogue of all the Whigs and Tories in the Province; converted thirty-six Commissioners (about to be sent over to insult us with terms no one can accept) into ambassadors of peace; and poor Cassandra into an enthusiast, madman, barbarian, and drunken Independent. Wretched must the lot of that Whig be who falls into the hands of this fiery defender of Ministerial stratagems. Daniel may be protected from the jaws of the lions; but alas! who can protect us when Cato is roused? The whole band of us is crushed to atoms with one grasp of his hand. Why did you assure us that no persons need be alarmed, for that no indecent nor angry expression should dishonour your pen? Was it that the suddenness of our destruction might heighten its terrour? Well has the Scriptures assured us that the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. Your grievous paragraph about restraining the press is so notorious a falsehood, that I boldly put you to defiance to point out the instance. And when you give the publick the names of the few who turned the mode of electing Committees out of the channel of corruption, and thereby excluded you and your colleagues, I will undertake to mention the other few who, contrary to every principle of our Constitution, by a prostitution of the cry of publick necessity, are endeavouring to cloak an unbounded hatred to our present cause, under an affected zeal for constitutional dependance; and who have nearly effected their malicious purposes, of destroying their own liberties to be avenged of their enemies. But let not Cato too far provoke the majesty of the people of Pennsylvania, by the bold flourishes of a pen which pays no respect to truth, lest he may find it expedient to end his days on the principles of dependancy. “Few persons,” says Cato, “gave themselves any concern about the election of a Committee of Inspection, being well satisfied that any number of respectable citizens, who would take the trouble of such a Committee, should be thankfully indulged with the office; and although it consists of a hundred members, they had not two hundred votes,” Cassandra begs leave to inform Cato, that our Committees of Inspection, ever since chosen by ballot, got possession of their office by a more respectable number of voters than any Burgess which sat in the House of Assembly since the first day in which a comparison could be made, as he can make appear by the state of the several elections. “In carrying on our great controversy with England, Pennsylvania,” say you, “has no need either to make the least sacrifice of its Constitution, nor yet to yield in zeal to the foremost of the Colonies.” This assertion might pass for truth on the coast of Labrador, or in the deserts of Siberia; but the people of Pennsylvania must have drunk deep of the waters of oblivion, and laid aside all pretensions to recollection, before they can consider such assertions in any other light than insults on their understanding. Can Cato inform them of the single measure that can be pursued in the line of our Charter Constitution? I should gladly view the paragraph which gives our Assembly the power of legislating without the Governour; and Cato is too well acquainted with the King’s Representative, to believe he would ever give his sanction to our opposition. Name the act of Assembly, Cato, which makes legal tender of the money they have so patriotically struck, and I will believe you have for once strayed into the truth. But because our Representatives can do nothing legal without the Governour, therefore Cato is fiery hot for confining our opposition to them, and not to a Convention, which is under no such restrictions. The interest of the Governour, and not of the people, is plainly Cato’s. “The great privilege,” you add, “which we enjoy of giving our free unbiased voice, annually, in the choice of an Assembly, who, from that moment, by charter, become a constitutional body, vested with the authority of the people, and can meet when they please, and sit as long as they judge necessary.” Here, sir, you prudently drop the consideration of their being a constitutional body. Had yon pointed out the advantages of constitutionally meeting and sitting, when they can constitutionally do no more, you had told us something. But this, alas! was out of your power. So much for your first letter. In your second, you begin by saying that you know not on what grounds I have satisfied myself that the sole view
|