In 1741, just half a century after the witchcraft prosecutions in Massachusetts, the city of New York, then containing about nine thousand inhabitants, witnessed a scene quite rivalling, in horror and folly, that presented here.  Some one started the idea, that a conspiracy was on foot, among the colored portion of the inhabitants, to murder the whites.  The story was passed from one to another.  Although subsequently ascertained to have been utterly without foundation, no one stopped to inquire into its truth, or had the wisdom or courage to discountenance its circulation.  Soon a universal panic, like a conflagration, spread through the whole community; and the results were most frightful.  More than one hundred persons were cast into prison.  Four white persons and eighteen negroes were hanged.  Eleven negroes were burned at the stake, and fifty were transported into slavery.  As in the witchcraft prosecutions, a clergyman was among the victims, and perished on the gallows.

The “New-York Negro Plot,” as it was called, was indeed marked by all the features of absurdity in the delusion, ferocity in the popular excitement, and destruction along the path of its progress, which belonged to the witchcraft proceedings here, and shows that any people, given over to the power of contagious passion, may be swept by desolation, and plunged into ruin.

One of the practical lessons inculcated by the history that has now been related is, that no duty is more certain, none more important, than a free and fearless expression of opinion, by all persons, on all occasions.  No wise or philosophic person would think of complaining of the diversities of sentiment it is likely to develop.  Such diversities are the vital principle of free communities, and the only elements of popular intelligence.  If the right to utter them is asserted by all and for all, tolerance is secured, and no inconvenience results.  It is probable that there were many persons here in 1692 who doubted the propriety of the proceedings at their commencement, but who were afterwards prevailed upon to fall into the current and swell the tide.  If they had all discharged their duty to their country and their consciences by freely and boldly uttering their disapprobation and declaring their dissent, who can tell but that the whole tragedy might have been prevented? and, if it might, the blood of the innocent may be said, in one sense, to be upon their heads.

The leading features and most striking aspects of the witchcraft delusion have been repeated in places where witches and the interference of supernatural beings are never thought of:  whenever a community gives way to its passions, and spurns the admonitions and casts off the restraints of reason, there is a delusion that can hardly be described in any other phrase.  We cannot glance our eye over the face of our country without beholding such scenes:  and, so long as they are exhibited; so long as we permit ourselves to invest objects of little or no