[240]

The Negro plot of 1741 furnishes the most interesting and thrilling
chapter in the history of the colony of New York. Unfortunately for
the truth of history, there was but one historian[241] of the affair,
and he an interested judge; and what he has written should be taken
_cum grano salis_. His book was intended to defend the action of the
court that destroyed so many innocent lives, but no man can read it
without being thoroughly convinced that the decision of the court was
both illogical and cruel. There is nothing in this country to equal
it, except it be the burning of the witches at Salem. But in stalwart
old England the Popish Plot in 1679, started by Titus Oates, is the
only occurrence in human history that is so faithfully reproduced by
the Negro plot. Certainly history repeats itself. Sixty-two years of
history stretch between the events. One tragedy is enacted in the
metropolis of the Old World, the other in the metropolis of the New
World. One was instigated by a perjurer and a heretic, the other by an
indentured servant, in all probability from a convict ship. The one
was suggested by the hatred of the Catholics, and the other by hatred
of the Negro. And in both cases the evidence that convicted and
condemned innocent men and women was wrung from the lying lips of
doubtful characters by an overwrought zeal on the part of the legal
authorities.

Titus Oates, who claimed to have discovered the "_Popish Plot_," was a
man of the most execrable character. He was the son of an Anabaptist,
took orders in the Church, and had been settled in a small living by
the Duke of Norfolk. Indicted for perjury, he effected an escape in a
marvellous manner. While a chaplain in the English navy he was
convicted of practices not fit to be mentioned, and was dismissed from
the service. He next sought communion with the Church of Rome, and
made his way into the Jesuit College of St. Omers. After a brief
residence among the students, he was deputed to perform a confidential
mission to Spain, and, upon his return to St. Omers, was dismissed to
the world on account of his habits, which were very distasteful to
Catholics. He boasted that he had only joined them to get their
secrets. Such a man as this started the cry of the Popish Plot, and
threw all England into a state of consternation. A chemist by the name
of Tongue, on the 12th of August, 1678, had warned the king against a
plot that was directed at his life, etc. But th