These deputies, chosen by their colleges, and properly instructed, were sent to the place of meeting.

During the war they had always been commissioned to resolve in common on matters regarding the liberty of the land.

These deputies, thus assembled, represented, by commission, the States; but they are not, in their own persons, the States; and no one of them had any such pretension.

"The people of this country," said the States, "have an aversion to all ambition; and in these disastrous times, wherein nothing but trouble and odium is to be gathered by public employment, these commissions are accounted 'munera necessaria'.

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