defied the law of the land. Nothing can be a better example of such
defiance than the anti-rent war which raged in New York between 1839 and
1846.[23] The struggle exhibited all the recklessness of a no-rent
agitation in Ireland with none of the excuses which can be urged in
palliation of outrage by half-starving tenants; it produced a "reign of
terror which for ten years practically suspended the operations of law
and the payment of rent throughout the district" which was the field of
the anti-rent movement; it ended in a nominal compromise which was a
real victory for the anti-renters. In this instance, be it remarked, no
sentiment of nationality or State right came into play. The law was
hated, not because it was "foreign," but because it enforced the
obligation of an unpopular contract. Landlords, it is now all but
admitted, are not entitled to the full rights of citizens. The triumph
therefore of the anti-renters at New York may command a certain amount
of sympathy. The popular sentiment which in 1833 induced the people of
Connecticut to boycott Miss Prudence Crandall cannot be brought under
the sanction of any "higher law." Her crime was that she chose, obeying
the dictates of her conscience, to open a school for negro girls in
Connecticut. She was subjected to every annoyance and insult which the
most reckless boycotter could invent. Legislation itself was turned
against her, and the State failed utterly in the duty of protecting one
of the most meritorious, and now, one is happy to think, one of the most
honoured among the women of America. The Lyman Riots at Boston, as
indeed every stage in the noble struggle of the American Abolitionists
against popular injustice, tell the same tale, namely, that law in the
United States has once and again failed to assert its due supremacy over
injustice backed by public approval. This melancholy failure may
possibly support the proposition that England cannot enforce the law in
Ireland. It far more conclusively shows that even in countries deeply
imbued with the spirit of legality self-government has no necessary