On the 15th of May, Congress adopted a resolution recommending to all the colonies to form for themselves independent governments, and in a preamble, written by John Adams, it was declared that the American people could no longer conscientiously take oath to support any government deriving its authority from the Crown; all such governments must now be suppressed, since the king had withdrawn his protection from the inhabitants of the United Colonies. Like the famous preamble to Townshend's bill of 1767, this Adams preamble contained within itself the gist of the whole matter. To adopt it was virtually to cross the Rubicon, and it gave rise to a hot debate. James Duane of New York admitted that if the facts stated in the preamble should turn out to be true, there would not be a single voice against independence; but he could not yet believe that the American petitions were not destined to receive a favourable answer. "Why," therefore, "all this haste? Why this urging? Why this driving?" James Wilson of Pennsylvania, one of the ablest of all the delegates in the revolutionary body, urged that Congress had not yet received sufficient authority from the people to justify it in taking so bold a step. The resolution was adopted, however, preamble and all; and now the affair came quickly to maturity. "The Gordian knot is cut at last!" exclaimed John Adams. In town meeting the people of Boston thus instructed their delegates: "The whole United Colonies are upon the verge of a glorious revolution. We have seen the petitions to the king rejected with disdain. For the prayer of peace he has tendered the sword; for liberty, chains; for safety, death. Loyalty to him is now treason to our country. We think it absolutely impracticable for these colonies to be ever again subject to or dependent upon Great Britain, without endangering the very existence of the state. Placing, however, unbounded confidence in the supreme council of the Congress, we are determined to wait, most patiently wait, till their wisdom shall dictate the necessity of making a declaration of independence. In case the Congress should think it necessary for the safety of the United Colonies to declare them independent of Great Britain, the inhabitants, with their lives and the remnant of their fortunes, will most cheerfully support them in the measure." [Sidenote: Lee's motion in Congress] This dignified and temperate expression of public opinion was published in a Philadelphia evening paper, on the 8th of June. On the preceding day in accordance with the instructions which had come from Virginia, the following motion had been submitted to Congress by Richard Henry Lee:-- "That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.