“This is the most candid and charitable manner in which the committee can account for the melancholy truths which they have been obliged to report. Indeed the same deluding principles seems to govern persons and bodies of the highest rank in Britain; for it is worthy of notice, that not pamphleteers only, but king and parliament, constantly call those acts lenity, which on their first publication filled this whole continent with resentment and horror.” “Resolved, That the said report be accepted, and that the committee who brought it in, publish the same, with the affidavits.” The royalists, or tories as they are generally called, in the Maryland counties of Somerset and Worcester, became so formidable that an insurrection was dreaded; and it was feared that the insurgents would in such case be joined by a number of disaffected persons in the county of Sussex, in the Delaware state. Congress, to prevent the evil [April 20.] recommended the apprehension and removal of all persons of influence or of desperate characters, within the counties of Sussex, Worcester and Somerset, who manifested a disaffection to the American cause, to some remote place within their respective states, there to be secured; and authorised the governor of Maryland to detain the weakest continental battalion till further orders. From appearances, the friends of America had reason to believe, that the tories in the New-England governments and New-York state, had also concerted an insurrection. [April 23.] General Gates, who had been sent to command in the northern department, wrote to general Fellows—“The committee of Albany, alarmed at the amazing increase and plots of the tories in this and the Mohawk’s country, have desired me to apply to you and the committee of Berkshire, to send immediately a strong reinforcement of militia, not less than a complete regiment, to secure this place (Albany) and the magazines at different posts between Albany and Lake George.”