Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/226

 186 of delegates (calling themselves in their more formal acts "the delegates appointed by the good people of these colonies") assembled on the 4th of September, 1774; and having chosen officers, they adopted certain fundamental rules for their proceedings.

§ 201. Thus was organized under the auspices, and with the consent of the people, acting directly in their primary, sovereign capacity, and without the intervention of the functionaries, to whom the ordinary powers of government were delegated in the colonies, the first general or national government, which has been very aptly called "the revolutionary government," since in its origin and progress it was wholly conducted upon revolutionary principles. The congress, thus assembled, exercised de facto and de jure a sovereign authority; not as the delegated agents of the governments de facto of the colonies, but in virtue of original powers derived from the people. The revolutionary government, thus formed, terminated only, when it was regularly superceded by the confederated government under the articles finally ratified, as we shall hereafter see, in 1781.

§ 202. The first and most important of their acts was a declaration, that in determining questions in this congress, each colony or province should have one vote; and this became the established course during the revolution. They proposed a general congress to be held at the same place in May, in the next year. They appointed committees to take into consideration their rights and grievances. They passed resolutions, that "after the 1st of December, 1774, there shall be no importation into