CHAPTER IV. MANDATORY LAWS OF NEW YORK. The spirit of opposition and resentment had risen so high because of the events recorded in the preceding chapter, that New York was led to adopt the most stringent measures of coercion. The law which the wisdom of that colony devised to meet the exigencies of the occasion was a curiosity in American Legislation. It enacted that if any person opposed the civil officers of New York, or burned or destroyed property belonging to subjects of that colony, or assembled for riotous purposes, such offenders shall be adjudged guilty of felony, without benefit of clergy, and were to suffer death as felons. The law made it the duty of the Governor to publish the names of offenders indicted for capital offenses, with an order requiring them to deliver themselves up in seventy days; in default of which the courts might award execution against them the same as though they had been tried and convicted--the death penalty to be administered without the benefit of clergy. All crimes, therefore, that had been committed on the Grants, could be tried at Albany, and a neglect to obey summons to deliver one’s person into custody, was equivalent to a conviction. Thus was sought to be evaded the dangerous duty of serving processes on the Green Mountain Boys, and they would convict themselves by refusal to surrender without the inconvenience of a trial. If this law was remarkable, the answer of the Green Mountain Boys was no less so. Said they: “By legerdemain, bribery and deception, they [the New Yorkers] have extended their dominion far and wide. We are resolved to inflict immediate death on whomsoever shall attempt the apprehension of the persons indicted as rioters. We will kill and destroy any person that shall be presumed to be accessory, aiding or assisting in taking any of us; although they have a license by the law to kill us, and an indemnification for so doing, they have no such indemnification from the Green Mountain Boys. If New York insists on killing us to take possession of our vineyards, let them come on; we are ready for a game of scalping with them.” These sentiments were announced by handbills and in the papers throughout New England, with the design of deterring New York from attempting to enforce the law, as such an attempt would be certain to result in an effusion of blood. The people of Vermont maintained in this that they were merely contending for justice, and that the officers of New York, who were calling upon the inhabitants of Vermont to obey the royal orders, were themselves acting in open violation of the express commands of their King.