Jt is well "known to several members of your honorable Houses that our landlord "in the first of these troubles, espoused our cause, but soon after sent " up a writing purporting a protest against Congresses and Committees, "which he enjoined us, the inhabitants, to sign, or we should labor "under his displeasure; but disregarding his threats, the inhabitants "had a meeting, and concluded not to sign the paper ; and not long "after we were all summoned to meet Mr. Pliilipse at the White "Plains, expecting by his presence to awe his tenants into compliance, "but to his mortification found we had virtue enough (a few only "excepted) to refuse him, being not only then determined to risk all our "properties in the glorious cause of Liberty, and are still fixed in our "resolutions to persevere to the end of the contest.

"That we have been and are still greatly exposed to the ravages "of the enemy, and that during the contest they have been up among "us as far as Tarry Town four different times with considerable armies, "and that the losses sustained and the distress occasioned thereby to "the unfortunate families where they came is not to be conceived.

"That many of us have repeatedly lost all of our stock and been "plundered of wearing apparel, beds, beef, pork; and such furniture "as they could not carry off has been wantonly stove to pieces.

"That we have several instances of the enemy burning our "houses, barns, etc., the unhappy sufferers being turned out of doors "in inclement seasons of the year, thus reducing from comfortable liv- "ing to that of indigence and distress.