negro voters in his district.  He was repeatedly warned by some of his neighbours to desist and abandon politics, but continued resolutely on his course.  A mob, composed of many of the leading men in the town, then attacked him in his house.  He made his escape, with his wife and young daughter and son, a lad of fourteen, to the jail.  His assailants broke the jail open, and killed him and his son, and desperately wounded the daughter.  The poor lad received such a volley of bullets, that his blood went in one rush to the floor, and traced the outlines of his trunk on the ceiling 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 left the amount in trust by his will for the payment of his debts, and his heirs proceeded to collect it, and persisted in the attempt during the ensuing seven years.  What then happened I shall describe in the words of Mr. John Bigelow.  Mr. Tilden was a member of the State Legislature in 1846, and was appointed Chairman of a Committee to investigate the rent troubles, and make the report which furnished the basis for the legislation by which they were subsequently settled.  Mr. Bigelow, who has edited Mr. Tilden’s Public Writings and Speeches, prefaces the report with the following explanatory note:—­