itself will be in the English gothic style. It was designed by Mr. Bertram G. Goodhue of the firm of Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson. Its length will be 200 feet; the breadth of the west front including porches, 70 feet; and the total inside width, 57 feet. The chancel, one of the largest in New York, will be 51x37 feet in size. The inside height will be 81 feet. A crypt chapel, intended for use as a mortuary chapel and other purposes, has been built. On the south side, on the same level as the floor of the church, is a small chapel for daily service. The contents of the cornerstone of the second building were placed in the new one, and the old corner-stone was placed under the latter.

The services on October 24, 1912, were conducted by the Rev. William T. Manning, D. D., rector of Trinity parish, assisted by the Rev. Milo H. Gates, D. D., vicar of the chapel. The Rev. E. B. Smith, United States Army Chaplain at Governor's Island, was master of ceremonies. A procession of lay and clerical officials, preceded by the chapel choir and trumpeters, marched from the old church at Broadway and 158th Street to the site of the new building. The Right Reverend David H. Greer, Bishop of the diocese, officiated, assisted by the Right Reverend Charles S. Burch, D. D., Suffragan Bishop.

APPENDIX D.

NOTES CONCERNING

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE,

Including the Correction of Some Popular Errors.

By EDWARD HAGAMAN HALL, L. H. D.

[467]

NOTES CONCERNING

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

BY EDWARD HAGAMAN HALL, L. H. D.

The efforts which have been made in the City of New York and elsewhere in the United States during the past three years to celebrate the Fourth of July in a manner which should avoid the dangers to life, health and property attendant upon the use of fireworks and the indulgence in noisy demonstrations, have resulted in the giving of much careful study to the Declaration of Independence itself and the circumstances surrounding its adoption.

The Genesis of the Idea of Independence.

The dates of important events always possess great interest, because, on account of the power of the association of ideas, they help one to fasten the thoughts upon concrete subjects. It is impossible, however, to fix any certain date upon which the idea of American independence was born. Probably in all nations at all times there is, with a few persons at least, an underlying current of discontent with the established order of government and more or less secretly cherished wishes for a change. Such sentiments become accentuated in proportion to the oppressiveness and injustice -real or conceived of the ruling power and on adequate occasion appear in open eruption; but so gradual and subtle is the evolution of any human idea that one cannot say that it was born on a given day.

So it is with the idea of American independence. Chalmers claims that the passion for independence had existed latently from the very founding of New England. Without going back farther than 1734, we may recall the utterances of John Peter Zenger's New York Weekly Journal, which supplied many of the ideas

and some of the actual words employed later by prominent advocates of the separation of the Colonies. During the Stamp Act troubles of 1765-1766 and the Liberty Pole riots in New York, there were manifest evidences of revolt against the established government, even if political separation was not openly advocated.

Major General Thomas Gage of the British army wrote from New York, September 28, 1765: "The Provinces never declared their sentiments of Independency so openly before, and they state their Grievances (if in reality they have any), in such a way that I do not see how it will be possible to relieve them. They push matters so closely to the Point that the subject seems to be whether they are Independant States or Colonys dependant on Great Britain."

On January 13, 1766, Benjamin Franklin, then in London, wrote a letter to Joseph Galloway in which he said:

"A certain sect of people, if I may judge from all their late conduct, seem to look on this as a favorable opportunity of establishing their republican principles and of throwing off all connection with their mother country."

If the bloodshed in the conflict on Golden Hill in New York City in January, 1770, and in the battle of Concord and Lexington in April, 1775, did not indicate a sentiment in favor of political independence, it at least indicated a state of mind which might rapidly ripen into a sentiment for separation. In May, 1775, while the Colonies were rumbling with discontent, a series of resolves of no little interest was adopted by the Scotch-Irish inhabitants of Mecklenburg County, N. C. These resolutions, sometimes called the "Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence," later acquired a fictitious importance for reasons which it is not necessary here to discuss; nevertheless, they indicated the trend of public sentiment by declaring suspended in that County all civil and military commissions granted by the Crown, and

"That the Provincial Congress of each Province, under the direction of the Great Continental Congress, is invested with all legislative and executive powers within their respective Provinces, and that no other legislative or executive power does or can exist at this time in any of these Colonies."