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white persons were imprisoned. One hundred and fifty-four negroes were arrested, of whom fourteen were burned alive at the stake, and eighteen were hanged. Throughout the affair Mary Burton seems to have played the part which at Salem was shared among the " afflicted children," and just as at Salem, when the panic was clearly waning, the end was hastened by her aiming the accusations too high and striking at persons of consequence. The wretched girl received ;£ioo, the wages of her perjury. But after the terror was over, it began to be doubted, and has ever since been doubted, whether the " Great Negro Plot" was anything more than a figment of the imagination.1
It is only a shallow criticism, however, and utterly devoid of historic appreciation, that would cite this melancholy affair in disparagement of the good people of colonial New York. The panic, as we have seen, arose very naturally from the circumstances, and it was not strange that some of the strongest and clearest heads in the community were turned by it. He would be a rash man who should venture to predict that even in the most enlightened communities Revulsion in the world a recurrence of such horrors has for- of feeUn« ever ceased to be possible. It is pleasant to add that by a wholesome revulsion of popular feeling, soon after the panic of 1741, a sentiment was aroused in favour of the negroes; within ten years they were admitted to the franchise, and New York soon became honourably distinguished among the states that actively endeavoured to loosen their chains and insure their welfare.
1 Dunlap's History of New York, chapter xxi.; Smith's History of New York, ii. 70, 71; Colonial Documents, vi. 186, 196, 199, 201-203 > Horsmanden's Negro Plot, New York, 1744.