2 In the preceding September, Lord Dunniore, then at Norfolk, in Vir^iinia, had hel]K'd himself to the type and printing-press of John Holt, in that Town ; and it was said of the thief and his confederates, " a few "spirited gentlemen in Norfolk, justly incensed at so flagrant a breach "of good order and the Constitution, and highly resenting the conduct "of Lord Dunmore and the Navy Gentry, who have now conmicnccd "downright Pirates and Banditti, ordered the drum to beat to arms," etc. {Ejrtract from a contemporurj) jmblication, in Force's American Archive«, Fourth Series, iii., 847.)
Besides the entire fitness of the words to distinguish those who were guilty of such lawless doings, a precedent for the usi of those otherwise strong terms in such specific connections, is afforiled in the above extract, from unquestionably revolutionary authority ; and we offer no apology for applying one or both of them to those, from Connecticut, on the occasion now under notice, when Lord Dunmore wnsfar outdone, in wanton atrocity. •28
ards, Silleck, and Mead.' It was not pretended that these enterprising Connecticut-men- had any other warrant to engage in such an undertaking, than that afforded in the propensity of every cowardly thief to plunder those who were known to have been stripped of their means for defence, and who were, therefore, helpless. It was not pretended that any of the proposed victims, in the instance under notice, had said or done anything, in opposition to the Rebellion, which had made them amenable to the unbridled caprices of those who were in rebellion ; and it was evident that, had those proposed victims thus transgressed against the " Associations " or the " rec- " ommendations " or the " Resolutions " of the revolutionary authorities, the local Committee in Westchester-county, or the Provincial Congress in the City of New York, or the Committee of Safety of the last-named body, and not an improvised and selfconstituted power, in another Colony, was the proper tribunal to take cognizance of such an offence.