1 Journal of the Provincial Congress, "Tuesday, P.M., White Plains, "July 9th, 1776."

2 It is very evident that James De Lancey , the Sheriff of Westchestercounty, or the Deputy who represented him, obeyed the Resolution of the Provincial Congress by holding in confinement, in the County Jail, those "Prisoners of State" who, for political reasons, had beeu or who

Immediately after the provision of depositaries for the victims of its absolutism, as stated in the Resolu* tion above referred to, the Provincial Congress revived the notorious Committee to detect Conspiracies, which had ceased to exist by reason of the dissolution of the Congress who had created it; 3 united it to the Committee on Prisoners of War, which had been appointed during the morning session; withdrew the authority to interfere with those who were suspected of disaffection, which had been vested in General Washington, by the preceding Provincial Congress, puring the panic occasioned by the arrival of the Royal Army ; * vested the consolidated Committee, thus created, with authority to " carry into execution "all such Resolves of the Continental Congress and " comply with all such necessary requisitions of the ''General" [ Washington,'] "as require so much de- " spatch as to render an application to this Congress " impracticable or attended with dangerous delay ; " appointed John Sloss Hobart, of Suffolk, Gouverneur Morris and Colonel Lewis Graham, of Westchestercounty, Leonard Gansevoort, of Albany-county, and Thomas Randall and Colonel Henry Remsen, of the City of New York, or any three of them, for such Committee ; " permitted " the Committee " to proceed "in the business under" [untof^ "them committed, " in such a manner as to them shall appear to be most " agreeable to the dictates of justice and humanity " and most advancive of the public good : " 5 and so set in motion, again, that concealed instrumentality of despotism, which, under the same plea of " necessity," had stamped the records and the history of the third Provincial Congress with everlasting shame; and, in this later instance, with such an increase of authority as made it, practically, an absolute power which was greater in its ability to oppress the State than even the Provincial Congress itself. 6