The Contractor encountered so much of trouble from these interfering causes, that he was constrained to seek the interposition of the Committee of Safety ; and, on the twentieth of March, that Committee, responsive to the Contractor's complaint, ordered "that " the respective Committees of the Counties of West- " Chester and Duchess permit Mr. Abraham Living- " ston to export Provisions of any kind whatsoever, "from either of those Counties to New-York, on his " giving, or any other such proper person as is em- "ployed on his behalf giving, such security as the " Committees approve of, to land and store such Pro- " visions in New- York or Kings-county." 1

The facts that the Contractor for supplying the Continental Army with Provisions was subjected to the hindrances invented by these local Committees, and that the farmers within those Counties were thereby prevented from selling their surplus supply of Provisions, even for the known use of the Continental Army, like those similar prohibitions of trade, by similarly arbitrary authority, already noticed, at once so remarkable and so unaccountable, would have become stumbling-blocks in the way of the careful student of the history of the men of that period and of their doings, had not time and the opening of previously concealed records revealed the explanation of this, among others of the mysteries of the politics of the American Revolution. That explanation of the restrictions of trade, in this instance, will be noticed hereafter.

Early in January, 1776, while the conservatism ot the inhabitants of Queens-county was occupying the attention of the leaders of the Eebellion ; while the inhabitants of that County, because of their decided and outspoken opposition to the Rebellion and to the various Committees and Congresses which the Eebellion had called into existence, were subjected, by the Provincial Congress, to a sentence of outlawry ; z and while, in consequence of that savage enactment and the unaccountable negligence of its duty to do something for their protection, by the naval force which then occupied the harbor of New York and commanded all the neighboring waters, that populous and thickly-settled County was overrun and pillaged and the inhabitants subjected to all classes of barbarities, by inroads from Connecticut