and compelling the latter to seek safety in flight.' It as=!unied judicial functions, in putting some of its victims on " trial," before itself or a Committee of its members ; sometimes it graciously absolved those whom it had seized on mere "informations;"' and, occasionally, it honored a victim of a local Committee, by listening to an Appeal from the decision of that inferior tribunal,* although it was not always exempt from an appearance, at least, of partiality to the Respondent in the Case.' In the same connection, it called into existence and inaugurated the " Com- " mittee to detect Conspiracies," that powerful inquisitorial agency of the Rebellion, in New York, whose doings will be noticed more fully, hereafter. ********

Those who had been hoist with their own petard, in becoming the speculative holders of Dutch Tea, which they had smuggled into the Colony, and which they could not, now, di.spose of, unless on terms and at prices which would have been disastrous to them, pestered the Provincial Congress with appeals for relief from the enactments of their own friends ; and some of them -- one of them a member of the preceding Provincial Congresses, and another a Delegate of the Colony in the Continental Congress -- were charged with violating those enactments, in their

' The Continental CoDgre.ss having authorized the employment of Continental troops for such a purpose, a Regiment was sent to Hempstead, for the pnrp<i3e of seizing those who were disaffected to the Reljellion. The proposed victims having heen disarmed, by order of the Provincial Congress, during the Winter of 1775-'f>, they had no means for their defense, and, therefore, they fled and hid themselves in swamps, in woods, in barns, in hollow trees, in corn-fields, and in the mai-shes. Numbere took refuge in tlie pine barrens of Suffolk-county ; others, in small boats, kept sailing about the Sound, landing in the night and sleeping in the woo<ls, and taking to the water again in the morning.