Page:History of Delaware County (1856).djvu/281

DELAWARE COUNTY. 257 hack-rent demands, which on some places accumulated to several hundreds of dollars, was one of the principal moving causes of the commonly styled anti-rent war/' That the people had just claims for the revision of existing laws, in relation to distraining for rent, and of ejecting tenants from their farms for the non-payment of rent, when there is unencumbered personal property enough on the place to satisfy the demand, none will deny. And further, if they doubted the validity of the title, the interest of the tenant involved gave him a perfect right to demand an investigation. It was a duty they owed themselves and their posterity to have the matter tested, and the validity of the title established, or declared null and void. Biit to speak more definitely ; the excitement first showed itself in the form of a mass meeting ; accompanied by strong resolutions, and followed up by the refusal of tenants to pay the annual rent, within the manors of Rensselaer and Livingston ; and to oppose more efi"ectually the officers in the administration of the law, by screening themselves from observation and detection, masks and disguises were substituted. The following are what the original anti-rent association claimed as the grievances of the tenants or rent-payers, as pub- lished sometime prior to the period when the excitement assumed so popular a form. First, It is held by this class of community, that they are under an unequal ratio of taxation, they paying all, and the Patroon none, for the support of either the county or State government. This taxing them for lands owned by somebody else, they hold to be an unjust and exorbitant demand. Secondly, They consider it wrong, legally, as well as wicked, that the lessor has power to collect rents, while the lessee has no power to contest that right. " Thirdly, It is believed that this system of things, as prac- 22*