In the prosecution of that ill-advised and injudicious, as well as barbarous, policy, it continued to make arrests of individuals whom somebody had denounced as " suspected ; ^ and even individual members of the Convention, on their individual motions, without the slightest charge against their victims, ordered individuals into imprisonment.*

bleeding from every pore, from outrages inflicted on them by authority or with the permission of the Provincial Congress, and rejoicing that protection had been extended to them and to their property, by strangers, in such svorils as these : " The unprincipled and unfeeling and un- "natunil inhabitants of Staten-Ishinil are conllally receiving the enemy • "and, deserters say, have engaged to take arms. They are an ignorant, " cowardly pack of scoundrels. Their numl)er3 are small, anil their "spiritless." (L««cr Mm. .-liJ.ims, " 1'iiii.adei,phia, July U, 1770. ")

Mr. .\dams should have told just what he would have done, had he and his family passed through such au ordeal of '• patriotism " as tlieso islanaers had sustained, and had he, as they were, been without hope of relief from his own countrymen. The record of his judgment would, then, have been complete.

3 See the instances of Christopher Templer, {Journal of the Couventi.n, "Die Lun,-*, i ho., P.M., July 22, 177G ; ") that of Robert Sutton, {the mme, " Die ilercurii, 9 ho., A.M., July 24th, 177G ;") that of Nicholas Couwenhoven, {Jounml of Ok Cummiihe of S<ifitij, " Tuesday afternoon " Augt. 27, 1776 ; ") and many others.