s; that they
will be like a legislative without an executive." Did Congress have, or
could it assume, authority to compel men to observe its resolutions, to
compel them to observe, for example, a non-importation agreement? This
was a delicate question upon which opinion was divided. "We have
no legal authority," said Mr. Rutledge, "and obedience to our
determinations will only follow the reasonableness, the apparent
utility, and necessity of the measures we adopt. We have no coercive or
legislative authority." If this was so, the non-intercourse policy would
doubtless prove a broken reed. Massachusetts men were likely to be of
another opinion, were likely to agree with Patrick Henry, who said, "that
"Government is dissolved. Fleets and armies and the present state of
things show that government is dissolved. We are in a state of nature,
Sir!" If they were indeed in a state of nature, it was perhaps high time
that Congress should assume the powers of a government, in which case it
might be possible to adopt and to enforce non-intercourse measures. In
this gingerly way did the deputies lift the curtain and peer down the
road to revolution.

The deputies, like true Britons, contrived to avoid the highly
theoretical question of authority, and began straightway to concern
themselves with the practical question of whether the Congress, with
or without authority, should recommend the adoption of strict
non-intercourse agreements. Upon this question, as the chief issue, the
deputies were divided into nearly equal groups. Mr. Galloway, Mr. Duane,
and Mr. Rutledge were perhaps the leaders of those, probably a majority
at first, who were opposed to such vigorous measures, fearing that they
were intended as a cloak to cover the essentially revolutionary designs
of the shrewd New Englanders. "We have too much reason to suspect that
independence is aimed at," Mr. Low warned the Congress; and Mr. Galloway
could see that while the Massachusetts men were in "behavior very
modest, yet they are not so much so as not to throw out hints, which
like straws and feathers show from which point in the compass the wind
comes." In the early days of the Congress, if we are to believe Mr.
Hutchinson, this cold north wind was so much disliked that the New
York and New Jersey deputies, "and others," carried a vote against the
adoption of non-intercourse agreements, "agreed to present a petition
to the King," and "expected to break up, when letters arr