** Connecticut elected its delegates on the 3d of June; Massachusetts on the 17th; Maryland on the 22d; New Hampshire on the 21st of July; Pennsylvania on the 22d; New Jersey on the 23d; New York on the 25th; Delaware on the 1st of August; Virginia on the same day; South Carolina on the 2d; Rhode Island on the 10th; and North Carolina on the 25th. *** See pages 510, 511, vol. i. **** The author of M'Fingal. These lines are from his Elegy on the Times, published while this first Congress was in session. * (v) The following are the names of the members who composed the first Continental Congress: New Hampshire.--John Sullivan, Nathaniel Folsom. Massachusetts.--Thomas Cushing, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine. Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.--Stephen Hopkins, Samuel Ward. Connecticut.--Eliphalet Dyer, Roger Sherman, Silas Deane.. New York.--James Duane, John Jay, Isaac Low, John Alsop, William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Henry Wisner. New Jersey.--James Kinsey, Stephen Crane, William Livingston, Richard Smith, John De Hart. Pennsylvania.--Joseph Galloway, John Morton, Charles Humphreys, Thomas Mifflin, Samuel Rhodes, Edward Biddle, George Ross, John Dickenson. Delaware.--Cæsar Rodney, Thomas M'Ivean, George Read. Maryland.--Robert Goldsborough, Samuel Chase, Thomas Johnson, Matthew Tilghman, William Pann. Virginia.--Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, Patrick Henry, Richard Bland, Benjamin Harrison, Edmund Pendleton. North Carolina.--William Hooper, Joseph Hughes, Richard Caswell. South Carolina.--Henry Middleton, John Rutledge, Thomas Lynch, Christopher Gadsden, Edward Rutledge. [[[Character of the first Continental Congress.--Its Organization.--Peyton Randolph.--Charles Thomson.]]] {266}such as the world had never seen. "For a long time," says the eloquent Charles Botta, "no spectacle had been offered to the attention of mankind of so powerful an interest as this of the present American Congress. It was, indeed, a novel thing, and, as it were, miraculous, that a nation hitherto almost unknown to the people of Europe, or only known by the commerce it occasionally exercised in their ports, should, all at once, step forth from this state of oblivion, and, rousing as from a long slumber, should seize the reins to govern itself; that the various parts of this nation, hitherto disjointed, and almost in opposition to each other, should now be united in one body, and moved by a single will; that their long and habitual obedience should be suddenly changed for the intrepid counsels of resistance, and of open defiance to the formidable nation whence they derived their origin and laws. *