At a meeting held on the 5th of May, a committee of one hundred of the first and foremost citizens of New York and Kings County was chosen to administer affairs during the political crisis. This committee was composed of such men as John Jay, the brave Welshman Francis Lewis, whose bold signature was appended to the Declaration of Independence, and who for many years resided and owned property in Brooklyn; Philip Livingston, the fearless; James Duane and John Alsop, who were members of the Colonial Congress of September, 1774, which met in Philadelphia; William Walton, whose house in Pearl Street was rendered famous as an ancient landmark; Augustus Van Horne, a stalwart Dutchman; Abraham Duryea, Samuel Verplanck, Abraham Brasher, Leonard Lispenard, Nicholas Hoffman, Lewis Pintard, Nicholas Bogart, Isaac Roosevelt, Gabriel H. Ludlow, Abraham Brinkerhoff, Henry Remsen, Benjamin Kissam, Jacob Lefferts, James Beekman, John Berrien, John Lamb, the daring and intrepid Richard Sharp, Jacob Van Voorhis, Comfort Sands, who afterward lived in Brooklyn; Peter Goelet, and James Desbrosses. Just previous to the assembling of the Provincial Congress in New York, a general town meeting was held in Brooklyn. The official record of that meeting is as follows:-- At a general town meeting, regularly warned at Brooklyn, May 20, '75, the magistrates and freeholders met and voted Jer. Remsen, Esq., into the chair, and Leffert Lefferts, Esq., clerk. Taking into our serious consideration the expediency and propriety of concurring with the freeholders and freemen of the City and County of New York, and the other colonies, townships and precincts within this province, for holding a Provincial Congress to advise, consult, watch over and defend, at this very alarming crisis, all our civil and religious rights, liberties and privileges, according to their collective prudence: After duly considering the unjust plunder and inhuman carnage committed on the property and persons of our brethren in the Massachusetts colony, who, with the other New England colonies, are now deemed by the mother country to be in a state of actual rebellion, by which declaration England hath put it beyond her own power to treat with New England, or to propose or receive any terms of reconciliation until those colonies shall submit as a conquered country--the first effort to effect which was by military and naval force; the next attempt is, to bring a famine among them by depriving them both of their natural and acquired right of fishing. Further, contemplating the very unhappy situation to which the powers at home, by oppressive measures, have driven all the other provinces, we have all evils in their power to fear, as they have already declared all the provinces aiders and abettors of rebellion; therefore, first,