Page:History of Delaware County (1856).djvu/278

254 HISTORY OF occupied, from a time anterior to the organization of our State institutions. Under this leasehold system, the tenants were prosperous. By a great and gradual change the forest had given way to cultivated fields, and the rude hut to splendid or at least commodious mansions. Yet amid numerous gratifying and beneficial changes, at a time when general depression was far removed from the mass, and when prosperity was waiting upon the people, a surmise crept in among them, that the tenures under which they lived were onerous, anti-republican, and unjust, and that as individuals and citizens a strenuous opposition was demanded of them. A feeling extremely radi- cal and consequently highly dangerous, seemed to have per- vaded the general mass, seeking some escape. This local ex- citement discovered a way, and the pent up spirit rushed forth and assumed the name of the local cause which produced it. Some, the calmer and more worthy sort, who honestly believed their leases highly objectionable, and, of right, ought to be modified and corrected, adopted the new name, under which in a legal, honorable way, they meant to combat the error and gain the right. Others again, the larger portion, who fancied they saw a new and easy way to pay their debts, which, like an in- cubus, were pressing them down, and who stopped not to inquire whether justice and law were with them, provided they could gain their wished for ends, rallied under the gathering word of anti-rentism, and uncouth disguises, and called themselves " Indians,^^ assuming the high-sounding titles of the sons of the forest, and by their actions gave all to understand, that they were determined to prosecute to success their treasonable designs, by force, if necessary, and that they were firmly re- solved to pay no longer any rent, or acknowledge a landlord's title. Still another class, followers of Fourier and Owen, world-conventionists, who give a ready support to every scheme, however wide from nature, or wanting in common sense, joined themselves to the two former, and gave them their sympathy