In 1836 Judge Jay resigned the presidency of the New York State Antislavery Society. The distance of his home from the headquarters of the society made the office nearly nominal, and he thought that it should be filled by a person more favourably situated for usefulness. "We commenced the present struggle," he wrote in his letter of resignation, "to obtain the freedom of the slave; we are compelled to continue it to preserve our own. We are now contending, not so much with the slaveholders of the South about human rights, as with the political and commercial aristocracy of the North, for the liberty of speech, of the press, and of conscience. Our politicians are selling our constitutions and laws for Southern votes. Our great capitalists are speculating, not merely in land and banks, but in the liberties of the people. We are called to contemplate a spectacle never, I believe, before witnessed--the wealthy portion of the community striving to introduce anarchy and violence on a calculation of profit; making merchandise of peace and good order! In Boston we have seen the editor of a newspaper led through the streets with a halter by gentlemen 'of property and standing.' The New York mobs were excited, not by the humble penny press, but by the malignant falsehood and insurrectionary appeals of certain commercial journals. Rich and honourable men in Cincinnati have recently at a public meeting proclaimed lynch law, and through their influence a printing-press devoted to freedom has been destroyed, and the whole affair, we are coolly and most truly told, was a _business transaction_. [Illustration: William Jay] "... It cannot be, it is not in human nature that judges and lawyers and rich merchants will long enjoy the exclusive privileges of trampling on the laws. These men are sowing the wind and they will reap the whirlwind. They may see the buddings of their harvest in the recent assaults upon the Holland Land Company. When the tempest of anarchy they are now raising shall sweep over the land it will not be the humble abolitionist, but the lofty possessor of power and fortune, who will first be levelled by the blast.... The obligations of religion and of patriotism; the duties we owe to ourselves, to our children, the cause of freedom, and the cause of humanity--all require us to be faithful to our principles, to persevere in our exertions, and to surrender our rights only with our breath. Duties are ours and consequences are God's, and while we discharge the first we may be confident that the latter will be entirely consistent with our true welfare." CHAPTER V. GRADUAL DECLINE OF RIOTOUS DEMONSTRATIONS AGAINST THE ABOLITIONISTS.--CHANGES OCCUR IN THE DOCTRINES AND METHODS OF THE AMERICAN ANTISLAVERY SOCIETY.--JUDGE JAY RESIGNS HIS MEMBERSHIP, WHILE CONTINUING HIS EFFORTS ON BEHALF OF EMANCIPATION.