themselves: there would have been no need of troops from England: of course the subsequent pretext for taxing America, and the bloody contest it occasioned, would have been avoided. But such mistakes are not new: history is full of the errors of states and princes." (Life, by Sparks, I. 178.) We may not join in his regrets now. [4] It is not certain by whom the first suggestion of a Continental Congress was made. Thomas Cushing, Speaker of the Massachusetts Assembly, and a correspondent of Dr. Franklin, appears to have expressed to him the opinion, previously to the date of Franklin's official letter quoted in the text, that a congress would grow out of the committees of correspondence which had been recommended by the Virginia House of Burgesses. But Mr. Sparks thinks that no other direct and public recommendation of the measure can be found before the date of Franklin's letter to the Massachusetts Assembly. Sparks's Life of Franklin, I. 350, note. In the early part of the year 1774, the necessity of such a congress began to be popularly felt throughout all the colonies. Sparks's Washington, II. 326. [5] These delegates were Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, Patrick Henry, Richard Bland, Benjamin Harrison, and Edmund Pendleton. [6] Thomas Cushing, Samuel Adams, Robert Treat Paine, James Bowdoin, and John Adams. [7] The delegates in the Congress of 1774 from New Hampshire were appointed by a Convention of Deputies chosen by the towns, and received their credentials from that Convention. In Rhode Island, they were appointed by the General Assembly, and commissioned by the Governor. In Connecticut, they were appointed and instructed by the Committee of Correspondence for the Colony, acting under authority conferred by the House of Representatives. In New York, the mode of appointment was various. In the city and county of New York, the delegates were elected by popular vote taken in seven wards. The same persons were also appointed to act for the counties of West Chester, Albany, and Duchess, by the respective committees of those counties; and another person was appointed in the same manner for the county of Suffolk. The New York delegates received no other instructions than those implied in the certificates, "to attend the Congress and to represent" the county designated. In New Jersey, the delegates were appointed by the committees of counties, and were simply instructed "to represent" the Colony. In Pennsylvania, they were appointed and instructed by the House of Assembly. In the counties of New Castle, Kent, and Sussex on Delaware, delegates were elected by a convention of the freemen assembled in pursuance of circular letters from the Speaker of the House of Assembly. In Maryland, the appointment was by committees of the counties. In Virginia, it was by a popular convention of the whole Colony. In South Carolina, it was by the House of Commons. Georgia was not represented in this Congress. [8] Journals, I. 1, 12.