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.

As portions of the general subject of proscription, mention may be properly made, in this place, of two