" General WoodhuU to the Contention, " Jamaica, .\ugn.st 27, 1770 ; " etc. 1" The road from the North side of the Highlands to Kingsbridge and

times, very frequently, it was called from its homes and its necessary labors on the farms, when there was not theslightest appearance of danger, to throw up the defcnceson which ordinary day-laborers, then sutlcring from want of employment, had better been employed.

The vessels of war which the Provincial Congresses had equipped and sent to sea, were duly cared for ; " and it continued to give authority for the equipment of privateers.

As the Convention was largely composed of the same persons as those who had been members of the Provincial Congresses, unto whom the exercise of despotic power has become not only familiar but agreeable and, sometimes, profitable, the same range of authority which those Congresses had usurped was exercised by the Convention, without any other Laws than the promptings of their own wilN, as their respective rules of action. It continued, therefore, to provide, as best it could, for the wants of the Army, by manufacturing and by purchasing and distributing among the Powder-mills, all the Saltpeter which it could secure ; by making or buying or borrowing Gunpowder, and by distributing it or giving it away; " by searching for Lead, and opening Klines, and stripping Window-sashes, in Tryon and Albanycounties, and distributing it or giving it away; and it attended to the search for Sulphur and Flints and Lead, and to the testing of those discovered.'*" It busied itself, also, with the details of distributing Cartridges'' and Gunflints.'* Like the Congresses who had preceded it, it engaged, directly, in the manufacture of Arms and Equij)ments, including that of Lances, with which somebody induced the Convention to attempt to arm the Militia who had been called into the service ; "* and it also bought Arms,