3 Journal of the ProvincUd Congress, " Sunday morning, June 9, 1776."

been of a different tenor ; but John Morin Scott, who was present on both occasions, and whose master mind probably controlled, wisely halted, and evidently induced the Congress to halt, in the work of proposed persecution and devastation and ruin. The Committee of Salem was coldly dismissed, without even a word of sympathy ; and the Provincial Congress paid no further attention to the subject.

With a persistency which was worthy of a better purpose, notwithstanding the rebuke which the Provincial Congress had thus administered, the Committee at Salem was not disposed to be thus relegated to the obscurity of a rural Town ; and, subsequently, two other letters, relating to the same general subject of " the disaffected persons who were under bonds to " that Committee," were addressed by it, to the Congress. The first of these letters is in these words :

" Gentlemen :

" As our civil and religious privileges all lie at " stake, we that are friends thereto desire to lend a " lifting hand in trying to preserve them ; and as the " tories grow more and more disaffected, and are daily "going off on to Long island -- four men last week " from my neighborhood, several- more from other " parts, Capt. Theal and his son John Lobdin, and " Stephen Delance " [De Lancey f] " some of them "laid under £500. bonds and also the solemnity of an " oath -- but they regard not any thing the Commit- ■' tee does with them, so long as they have their lib- " erty. It is supposed numbers are concealed on " Long island. Please to take it into your wise con- " sideration, whether or no it will not be best to send " and purge Long island ; and as I wrote to you a " little back by Mr.