Authority of the said Commissioners; and that no Court shall deliver any of the Gaols, within this State, of any Person or Persons, so confined as aforesaid, unless such Persons, shall have been indicted, and tried for the Offence or Offences, for which he or she, shall have been respectively committed." Before entering upon his duties, each commissioner was obliged to take the prescribed oath of office to " faithfully execute and perform, for the Benefit and Advantage of the People of the State of New- York, all and singular the Powers and Authorities, by Force and Virtue of the said Act " given to him. They were authorized to draw upon the public treasury for sums of money, from time to time, not to exceed in the whole the sum of five thousand pounds, and were ordered to render a just and true account of their expenditures, and to keep regular minutes of all their proceedings,

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to be submitted, if required, " to the Consideration of the Senate or Assembly, or to such Person or Persons, as shall be, for that Purpose appointed." For each day that he would be actually engaged with the business of his trust, each commissioner was to receive the sum of twenty shillings. The act was made operative until November I, 1778, " and no longer." 1

Now, although the act became operative on February 5, 1778, the proceedings of senate and assembly reveal that the subject had been under careful consideration for some time before, and had been interrupted by reverses of the war. On September 23, 1777, Egbert Benson, assemblyman from Dutchess County, asked and was given leave to introduce in the assembly a bill for appointing "Commissioners for Conspiracies, &c. and declaring their Powers," which was presented the following morning, read and ordered to a second reading.