398 Journal and Correspondence

would proceed to attempt the Inlistment of the men with the
twenty Dollars Bounty without promising the ten Dollars
which Congress were not inclinable to grant at present but
had appointed a Committee to draw up a Letter to the Con-
vention of Maryl^d on the Subject of their Resolves setting
forth their Reasons for not furnishing us with money and
dissuading them from that mode of raising men.

We informed the Gentlemen our Province had no Land
solely, that an Expectation was formed by the People of our
State that what was conquered from an Enemy at the joint
Expence of Blood and Treasure of the whole should become
their joint property but as Claims had been set up opposite
to our Ideas of natural Justice it became wise people rather
to prepare for the worst by giving ten Dollars now than trust
to the mercy of a few Venders from whom they would be
obliged to purchase (having pledged their Honour) at any
price, the Case of all Monopolies; that we had limited Orders
from our Convention a special Authority under which we
must act and not deviate; that if their Letter to our Conven-
tion could be wrote in any reasonable Time we would await
the Event and return or advance as we should be by them
ordered.

They also observed that the State of Maryland shewed a
Disposition to separate by their Resolves from the united
States, that the Resolves ran in the Stile of we would not—
We remarked in Reply that the Terms made use of were
ought not and the two Reasons that appeared in the Resolves
themselves were first that the mode of Calculation was
unequal and the second that it was out of our power to
comply not having the Lands solely and exclusively and yet
notwithstanding Injustice was done us and we had not the
Lands &^c We had as a State resolved to raise the men
requested by Congress which together with our former Zeal
in the Cause evinced our Attachment to it and ought in our
opinion to have excused us from such an Imputation. Thus
ended the Discourse and it is now Thursday Evening and no
Lre wrote that we know of I shall wait upon a Gentleman of the
Congress tomorrow for the Lre to go by the Post and we
intend to write to the Convention. The Aristocratical Party
or those who have a Desire for a Mixture of it in the Governm^t
have appealed to the People at large ag' the Democratical or
ag^l a great part of the Constitution settled by the late
Convention of Pennsylvania—The Aristocraticks headed by
Dickinson M^cKean Wilson Rush &c^a have beat their Adver-
saries Cannon Matlock &^o all hollow as the Sportsmans
phrase is—This work is to go on through all the Counties