16 Letter from Oyster-bay to James Rivington, from " A Spectator," describing a Meeting of ninety Freeholders of that Town, on the thirtieth of December, 1774. {Rivington's New-York Gazetteer, No. 90, New York, Thursday, January 5, 1775.)

17 Declaration of ninety-one Freeholders and forty-five other principal Inhabitants of Ja.naica, "Jamaica, January 27, 1775," in Rivington^s New- York Gazetteer, No. 94, New- York, Thursday, February 2, 1775.

18 Card, dated "Ulster-county, New York, February 11, 1775," published in Force's American Archives, Fourth Series, i., 1230.

w Proceedings of the Committee of Observation of Elizabethlown, Neio Jersey, February 13, 1775, published in Holt'B New-York Journal, No. 1676, New- York, Thursday, February 16, 1775 ; and those of the Committee for Observation for the Township of Woodbridge, New Jersey, " Woodbridge, JFebruary 20, 1775," published in Force's American Archives, Fourth Series, i., 1249, each providing for " boycotting " the Staten Islanders.

20 Lieutenant-governor Colden to the Earl of Dartmouth, "New York. "2 Nov. 1774 ; " the same to the same, " New York, December 7, 1774 ; "

some of them by formal Votes, in legal Town-meetings, and all of them, in practise, also declared their disapproval of the revolutionary measures adopted by the Congress and recommended by it, to be enforced in the several Colonies.

While the more conservative portions of the Colonists, in opposition to the Home Government, were earnestly laboring to maintain themselves in the leadership of the political elements of the Colony, ancl, at the same time, to secure a redress of the grievances to which the Colony had been subjected and to effect an honorable reconciliation between the Colonies and the Mother Country, the revolutionary portion of the same body of Colonists, strengthened by the accession to their number, of those, recently of the opposite portion, who we're endeavoring to pose, for office-sake, both as aristocrats and as democrats, as might best suit successive audiences, nominally intent on the accomplishment of the same ends, was really employed in zealously promoting measures which were better adapted to the defeat of itself, in whatever it should really seek to accomplish, in the interests of peace.