One of these Tests, or Associations, adopted by a Provincial Committee of Safety, was proved to have been so entirely subversive of the personal Eights of those to whom it was offered, that numbers who had previously favored or acquiesced in the Rebellion, peremptorily declined to sign it, preferring rather to be considered as disaffected and to be disarmed, as such, 3 and to suffer all the other pains and penalties and insults to which those who were known as " dis- " affected " were continually subjected.
The disaffection referred to must have been quite extended, seriously impairing the prospects of a political uniformity throughout the Colony, to which the leaders of the Rebellion had constantly aspired, or the Provincial Congress would not have turned aside from its daily routine to have noticed it. As it had reached
1 Journal of the Provincial Congress : Correspondence, il., 197.
2 Journal of the Provincial Congress, "Monday afternoon, June 24, "1776."
'KecUalin the Preamble of the new Association, adopted by the Provincial Congress, on the twentieth of June, 1776.
those proportions which entitled it to respect, however, on the eighteenth of June, three days after the organization of "the Committee to detect Conspir- " acies," the Provincial Congress adopted the following Resolution, on the subject :
" Whereas doubts have arisen respecting the true " construction of a certain Association ordered by the " late Committee of Safety of this Colony, to be pre- " sented for subscription to the inhabitants thereof :