'2 Those who are interested in the metho<ls of this Committee, the subseipiently much eulogized Chief-justice of the State of New York and Chief-justice of the United States being the presiding oflicer, may «'e the forms of its iitu»mn»A and its P<trnte^ in Jones's Ilistttry of Sew York duriwjlhe Itemiluliimary H'lir, ii., 2!t.'>, 296 ; the forms of its li'iimiiiM, in its Miiniles of June 1!), 22, and 24, 1776; and those of its various DoniU, in its Mimitet of June 24, 25, 26, and 27, 1776.

The future eulogists of John Jay and Gouveruevir Morris may advan-

HISTORY OF WESTCHESTEll COUNTY.

improper for us to state, however, that, thirteen days after its sessions were interrupted, in tlie general panic wliich was produced by General Howe's arrival, there remained twenty-seven prisoners, confined in the cells in the City Hall, and forty-three, including the Mayor of the City, in those of the new Jail.'

It would appear incredible that such a relentless spirit of partisan bitterness could have been entertained, at such a time, in such a body as the Provincial Congress of New York ; but the records of the Congress which clearly avowed such bitterness, and those of the Committee which it created for the purpose of executing its malignant enactments, to say nothing of the unwritten and other informal testimony of the terrorism which was at once revived, and the renewed activity, in persecution, of every petty Precinct, District, and Town Committee, all bear ample testimony to the fact that personal animosities and partisan malignity had so entirely overwhelmed the reason and the judgment and the humanity of the aristocratic leaders of the Rebellion, in their haughty demands for uniformity of opinion as well as of practice, in religion as well as in politics,^ that not even tlve near approach of an avowed and powerful enemy nor the severely pressing necessity of preparing to receive and to successfully oppose that not distant enemy could check their headlong and reckless work of arousing those, among themselves, victims of their former oppression and plunder and outrage -- many of whom, nevertheless, would have remained passive spectators of the struggle -- and of forcing them, in retaliation and self-defence, to become earnest and active, if not desperate, belligerents, on the side and in sujjport of the Crown.