" ' Your Petitioners do therefore most humbly pray, that this honour- " 'able House of Delegates would be pleiised to take the premises into '" their consideration, and devise some expedient topievent, for the "'future, the Inhabitants of any of the neighbouring Colonies " ' coming into this, to direct the publick affairs of it, or to destroy the " 'property or invade the liberty of Its Inhabitnnts, without the direc- " 'tion of the Continental or this Congress, or the Committee of Safety, "' or the Committee of the County into which such Inhabitants may " 'come, or of the Continental Generals, unless there should be an Inva- " * sion made into this Colony.

" ' And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, shall ever pray, etc.

" ' By order of the Committee.'

"Ordered, That the same be fairly copied, and signed by the Chair- " man of this Committee, and delivered to the Chairman of the Con- " gress."

^Journal of the Provincial Congress, "Friday morning, December 8, "1775."

^Journal of the Provincial Congress, "Die Martis, 10 ho., A.M., Decem- "ber 12, 1775;" and the same, "Die Martis, 3 ho., P.M., Deer. 12, "1775."

The following is a copy of that very important letter:

" In Provincial Congress, " New-York, 12th Deer., 1775.

" Sir :

"It gives us concern that we are under the necessity of addressing

been a regular military operation : that the fact was, then, unknown, that it was only an inroad of banditti, winked at, it is true, but without any autiiority, legal or revolutionary : that the Committee did not even suspect that the raiders were only an organized band of robbers, composed only of the floating population of another Colony.