There was a marked difference between what the Congress said aloud, for the hearing of the world, and what it did in order quietly to make its purpose of defeating the designs of the ministers effective. At the outset of its sessions it came near to yielding itself to the initiative and leadership of its more conservative members, headed by Joseph Galloway, the trusted leader of the Pennsylvanians, a stout loyalist, but for all that a sincere patriot and thorough-going advocate of the legal rights of the colonies. He proposed a memorial to the crown asking for a confederate government for the colonies, under a legislature of their own choosing, very like the government Mr. Franklin had made a plan for twenty years ago in the congress at Albany; and his suggestion failed of acceptance by only a very narrow margin when put to the vote. Even Edward Rutledge, of South Carolina, who spoke more hotly than most men for the liberties of the colonies, declared it an “almost perfect plan”; and the Congress, rejecting it, substituted no other. It turned, rather, to the writing of state papers, and a closer organization of the colonies for concert of action. Its committees drew up an address to the King, memorials to the people of Great Britain and to the people of British North America, their fellow-subjects, and a solemn declaration of rights, so earnest, so moderate in tone, reasoned and urged with so evident and so admirable a quiet passion of conviction, as to win the deep and outspoken admiration of their friends in Parliament and stir the pulses of liberal-minded men everywhere on both sides of the sea.