General Lincolu's command can scarcely be regardi-ii, with any propriety, as a portion of the main Army nor as a part of tlie fighting force of any .\rmy, since it was sent for, to perform police duty, to ijuiet the apprehensions of the Convention of New Yorlv u!i account of tlie disaf" fected, in that Stiite -- those whom the Congresses and the (;ommittee8 had forced into disaffection, by the outrages wliich had been inflicted on them, in the vain attempt to secure an entire conformity of political opinions with the official opinions of the dominant faction.

3 General Howe's Returns show thiit, when he occupied Staten Island, after the arrival of the reinforcements brought by Lord Howe, say on the iiinth of .\ugu8t, his command numbered, including his Officers, twentynine thousand, three hundred, and eight, of whom twenty four thousand, two hundred, and twenty-seven were rank and file, fit for duty. (Reply to the Observations of Lieut. Gen. Sir William Howe, on a pamphlet, entitled Letters to a Nobleman, Second Edition, 37.) Three days after the date of that Return, [August 12,] the two fleets, convoyed, respectively, by Commodore Hotham and the Repulse, came into the harbor of New York, with the Guards and the Fii"st Division of the Hessians, {Compare Lord George Germaine's despateh to General Howe, dated, " Whitehall, 21 "June, 1776," wit/i General Howe's d&tpaieh to Lord George Germaine, dated " Staten-Isl.vnd, 15 August, 177C ; ") and, two days subsequently, [j4ti3HS( 14,] Sir Peter Parker and Lord Dunniore also arrived, {General Howe to Lord George Gerrniiine, " Sr.\TEX-IsLAND, 1.5 August, 177C,") the former, with what remained of the forces which had been sent to Virginia and the Carolinas, " as well as with some Regiments from Florida "and the West Indies," (^Hnwfi Register for 1776: History of Europe, *169,) numbering, "at least,five thousandmen," (Jones's Historf/ of New