ton, cruel or oppressive towards them? Retributive justice demauded the punishment and it was inflicted.

Other persons were convicted and attainted by the same act, some of them civilians, and all the persons named in the act were perpetually banished from the state, and their return to it was denounced a felony punishable with death, without the benefit of clergy. Persons adhering to the public enemy, and guilty of treason against the state, after the 9th day of July, 1776, were subjected to indictment and trial; and it is here worthy of notice, that the legislature were so tender of the rights of those who might be complained of and brought to trial, as to declare that the several matters which, by the laws of England, were held to be evidence and overt acts of high treason, in adhering to the king's enemies, should be the rule in like cases when the parties were charged with high treason against the people of this state, making some other provisions to meet the peculiar circumstances of the times.

After exerting an act of high prerogative, which had been done by the British parliament at various periods in the history of that country, and for causes much less justifiable than those which provoked the attainder we have been considering, all proceedings against other parties chargeable with affairs of this character, against the state, were turned over to the courts, where a conviction could only be had upon an indictment and trial or outlawry.

By the attainder of Sir John Johnson it was supposed the whole of the Royal Grant, so called from the fact that the patent granted to Sir William received the sign manual of the king in person, was forfieted. That tract comprises all that part of the county lying between the East and West Canada creeks, the Mohawk river on the south, and the south line of Jerseyfield on the north, which runs from the village of Devereaux at the northeast corner of the Grant, on the East Canada creek in a northwesterly direction to the West Canada creek, intersecting it north of Prospect in

Oneida county, with the exception of Glen's Purchase, a few lots in Burnetsfield, and some few patents in Manheim. The towns of Norway, Russia, Newport, Fairfield, Salisbury, Manheim, Herkimer and Little Falls, contain portions of this extensive domain. The tract of 2000 acres granted to Guy Johnson in 1765, situated in the present towns of German Flats and Little Falls, was forfeited by his attainder.

The Herkimer estates forfeited lay within the present limits of German Flats and Herkimer, and are believed to embrace portions of the Palatine grants; the only case of attainder or forfeiture within the limits of the patent granted to Johan Joost Petri and others.

Sir John Johnson and the wife of Guy Johnson, were the children of Sir William, by a German woman, legitimated a short time before the baronet's death by the solemnization of marriage with the mother. Johan Joost Herkemer is the only instance of attainder and forfeiture by any of the Palatines or their descendants in the upper Mohawk valley. There may have been others who deserved it, and perhaps there was one, but his case did not come within the letter of the statute.

Those who are familiar with all the revolutionary events of Tryon county, can not but be amazed at the infatuated conduct of the Johnson family through the whole of that eventful period. They must, on the outbreak of the struggle, have concluded that all their princely estates in the country were lost to them, and they would henceforth deal with them and the property of their former neighbors as well as trusty adherents, as belonging to the common enemy, to be consigned to indiscriminate destruction; or they must have resolved to act the part of marauders out of mere wantonness and a spirit of revenge.

Sir William Johnson came to this country at an early day, occupying no higher position than that of land agent. By his zeal, ability, good conduct and attention to business, he acquired large estates, and was promoted to the highest

own.

honors ever bestowed by a confiding sovereign upon a colonial subject. Many are the vague surmises in respect to the cause of his death, which took place but a short time before the colonists assumed their defiant attitude to the crown. He was beloved and respected by his neighbors and dependants, and he perhaps foresaw all the miseries in store for a country he could not look upon in any other light than his He might have died by his own hand, but facts do not authorize this conclusion. There were, it must be admitted, many powerful considerations which should have induced his family to adhere to the royal cause. They had been bountiful recipients of their sovereign's favor. Honors and wealth had been literally showered upon them, and they felt it would be forfeiting all claim to honorable distinction, should they abandon the mother country in the eventful emergency which had overtaken it. They mistook the temper and feeling of their fellow subjects in the colonies, and did not, probably, comprehend the final result of a separation between the two countries. This family did not embrace the cautious policy of having some one or more of their number nominal adherents to the patriotic cause to protect their possessions, which was adopted by others, and some too of much less distinction and note.

The startling events of the revolution are yet remembered by a few now living witnesses, and a more just estimate of the rights and duties of nations, belligerent and neutral, seem to be more generally entertained at this day than during the last century. This no doubt has occasioned the remark that the provincial governments had been too stringent in enforcing a forfeiture against the adherents of the crown, and that when the independence of the states was acknowledged, restitution ought to have been made. It should be remembered that the colonies never encouraged but at all times deprecated the employment of the Indians in the revolutionary war, or in any way making them parties in that contest. They knew their situation; that their own

country must be the battle field; and that their own frontier inhabitants would be subjected to a warfare and desolation of the most unmitigated severity, not practiced by civilized nations, and like that with which they too recently had been afflicted, to be then disremembered. When these visitations were renewed with a ten-fold severity by those who had previously deprecated this mode of warfare, and when too, the object seemed to be to kill, burn and plunder, and not to subjugate and hold the conquered territory; it was not the surviving sufferer who could forgive or forget the authors of his calamities or the instruments used in the infliction of them.

To one member of this family, as soon as he was able to reach Canada, a regiment was given, called the Johnson Greens, principally composed of refugees, who made continual marauding expeditions into the Mohawk valley, during the war, and the memory of whose deeds were not forgotten at the close of the last century. The other, at the head of the Indian agency at Montreal, retaining a great influence over the western tribes, including most of the New York Indians, was zealously and efficiently employed in retaining them in the service of the crown, and encouraging and promoting expeditions against the frontier colonists, in which they were to be joined. This service was not performed by a slack hand or an unwilling mind. In this work of mischief and revenge he was but too well supported by that shrewd, active, but stern and resolute Mohawk chief, Joseph Brant, who displayed no more of the savage, in his hostile incursions, than should have been expected, perhaps, when the motives of his prompters were carefully scanned.

There may have been instances in which restitution might have found a willing response in the heart of the country; but that was not the case in respect to this family; where was the point of discrimination? That was the great difficulty. Expatriation and adherence to the common enemy were open acts of avowed hostility, so marked as not to be

mistaken. If the party left the country and remained out of it until the close of the war, unless on business of an open, pacific nature, and if he failed to return to it, after being required to do so, these were taken as overt acts of hostility, sufficient to authorize sequestration and forfeiture. There could be but one rule prescribed, which must be broad enough to embrace the whole class of offenders, and while hostilities were being carried on, exceptions could not be applied, and when a state of war no longer existed and the country assumed regular and settled forms of government, it so happened that the individual states retained the whole power of remission, and these were not recognized in diplomatic relations, nor could they separately form treaties with foreign governments, or even enter into negotiations. There was no mode of remission or restitution except by individual application to the states; and here the fundamental rules of government had been settled with so much precision and exactness, as to prohibit the legislative department of the governments from granting restitution of the forfeited estates. The poverty of the states and the excited feelings of the people on the subject of the war, rendered any application for recompense entirely hopeless; and it would have been found very difficult to settle upon any rule for granting relief except that of mere grace and favor, and no refugee of that day could be found bold or craven enough to put his loyalty to that severe test. There were cases in which restitution, remission or recompense could not be asked for with even a remote prospect of success, and which, certainly, could not be granted without violating the plainest principles of justice.

The judicial tribunals of the country have always been open to appeals for legal redress, and the legislative department of the state governments has never interfered, and indeed it could not have done so with any effect, being prohibited by the fundamental law. The title to the lands in one county and part of another, in this state, held under the