of the room below, where it remained months afterwards, an eye-witness
told me, as an illustration of the callousness of the jailer. The
leading murderers were tried. They had no defence. The facts were not
disputed. The judge and the bar did their duty, but the jury acquitted
the prisoners without leaving their seats. Mrs. Chisholm, the widow,
found neither sympathy nor friends at the scene of the tragedy. She had
to leave the State, and found refuge in Washington, where she now holds
a clerkship in the Treasury department.

Let me cite as another illustration the violent ways in which popular
discontent may find expression in communities whose political capacity
and general respect for the law and its officers, as well as for the
sanctity of contracts, have never been questioned. Large tracts of land
were formerly held along the Hudson river in the State of New York, by a
few families, of which the Van Rensselaers and the Livingstons were the
chief, either under grants from the Dutch at the first settlement of the
colony, or from the English Crown after the conquest. That known as the
"Manor of Rensselaerwick," held by the Van Rensselaers, comprised a
tract of country extending twenty-four miles north and south, and
forty-eight miles east and west, lying on each side of the Hudson river.
It was held by the tenants for perpetual leases. The rents were, on the
Van Rensselaer estate, fourteen bushels of wheat for each hundred acres,
and four fat hens, and one day's service with a carriage and horses, to
each farm of one hundred and sixty acres. Besides this, there was a fine
on alienation amounting to about half a year's rent. The Livingston
estates were let in much the same way.

In 1839, Stephen Van Rensselaer, the proprietor, or "Patroon" as he was
called, died, with $400,000 due to him as arrears from the tenants, for
which, being a man of easy temper, he had forborne to press them. But he