THE LOYALISTS IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION CHAPTER III THE INQUISITION. BARTLETT: page 68 The position of the "Tory committees," as they came to be known, was rarely enviable. If they persecuted vigorously they gained the bitterest hatred of the opposition, but if they gave a sign of leniency they were at once denounced by the Whigs as "timorous and inactive." "Maryland Records; Journal of Committee of Safety," 1775-6, p. 347.2 Sometimes they were even accused of being controlled by the Tories, Pamphlet, "Letter of J. Bartlett to Wm. Whipple, of New Hampshire, pp. 9, 67.3 as they probably were in the communities where the Whigs were in the minority. In New York, and especially on Long Island, the course of a Whig committee-man never did run smoothly. At Jamaica, Long Island.4 ninety-one freeholders, out of one hundred and sixty in the township, signed a declaration that they never gave their consent toward choosing the loll committee and utterly disapproved of such tyrannical proceedings. Had it not been for the aid of the neighboring militia, the Long Island committees would have found it impossible to carry out even the more important orders of the provincial and of the Continental Congress.