It waited for no verified complaint : it made no pretence that a breach of any written Law or of any other enactment was necessary, to warrant an arrest : it received secret, ex parte " information " as all which was needed to authorize the arrest, the confinement, and the infliction of punishment on its victims, not unfrequently without a hearing or an examination : and it held those who were accused, and tried them in secret Sessions, and passed judgments on them, not unfrequently without permitting them to confront their accusers or to see and read the papers on which they had been arrested, and held, and tried -- in one notable instance, the accused was not permitted to see the fifteen affidavits, which had been trumped up ' against him, after he had been arrested and thrown into a jail, nor to know their contents nor the natureof the accusation, until he was brought out for trial when they were only read to him ; and copies of those affidavits were withheld from him, by a formal vote of the Congress, when they were asked for and when the cost of copying them was tendered, only because the publication of those several papers would have exposed the fifteen partisan tools and the eminently genteel hand who had guided them in a shameless

1 See, in tho Journals and Correspondence of the Congress and in the Historical Manuscripts relating to tlie War of the Revolution, preserved in the office of the Secretary of State, at Albany, the records and papers in the several cases, among others, of Angus McDonald, Captain Patrick Sinclair, Captain Johan Christian Drewidz, John Mon-ell, Adam Patrick, Isaiah Purdy, 'Captain Melancton Lawrence, Joseph Allicock, Captain Charles De Kay, and John Candell. A simple reference to the several papers, in detail, would require more room than can bo given to it, in this place.