University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.

At the springs we parted, Mr. Warren and his friends
finding a conveyance, with their own horses, in readiness to
carry them the remainder of the distance. As for my uncle
and myself, it was understood that we were to get on in the
best manner we could, it being expected that we should
reach Ravensnest in the course of a day or two. According
to the theory of our new business, we ought to travel on
foot, but we had a reservation in petto that promised us also
the relief of a comfortable wagon of some sort or other.

“Well,” said my uncle, the moment we had got far
enough from our new acquaintances to be out of ear-shot,
“I must say one thing in behalf of Mr. Seneky, as he calls
himself, or Sen, as his elegant sister calls him, and that is,
that I believe him to be one of the biggest scoundrels the
state holds.”

“This is not drawing his character en beau,” I answered,
laughing. “But why do you come out so decidedly upon
him at this particular moment?”

“Because this particular moment happens to be the first
in which I have had an opportunity to say anything since
I have known the rascal. You must have remarked that
the fellow held me in discourse from the time we left Troy
until we stopped here.”

“Certainly; I could see that his tongue was in motion
unceasingly: what he said, I have to conjecture.”

“He said enough to lay bare his whole character. Our
subject was anti-rent, which he commenced with a view to
explain it to a foreigner; but I managed to lead him on,
step by step, until he let me into all his notions and expectations
on the subject. Why, Hugh, the villain actually proposed
that you and I should enlist, and turn ourselves into
two of the rascally mock redskins.”

“Enlist! Do they still persevere so far as to keep up
that organization, in the very teeth of the late law?”

“The law! What do two or three thousand voters care
for any penal law, in a country like this? Who is to enforce
the law against them? Did they commit murder, and
were they even convicted, as might happen under the excitement
of such a crime, they very well know nobody would
be hanged. Honesty is always too passive in matters that
do not immediately press on its direct interests. It is for
the interest of every honest man in the State to set his face
against this anti-rent movement, and to do all he can, by
his vote and influence, to put it down into the dirt, out of
which it sprang, and into which it should be crushed; but
not one in a hundred, even of those who condemn it toto
cœlo, will go a foot out of their way even to impede its progress.
All depends on those who have the power; and they
will exert that power so as to conciliate the active rogue,
rather than protect the honest man. You are to remember
that the laws are executed here on the principle that `what
is everybody's business is nobody's business.”'

“You surely do not believe that the authorities will wink
at an open violation of the laws!”

“That will depend on the characters of individuals; most
will, but some will not. You and I would be punished soon
enough, were there a chance, but the mass would escape.
Oh! we have had some precious disclosures in our corner
of the car! The two or three men who joined Newcome are
from anti-rent districts, and seeing me with their friend, little
reserve has been practised. One of those men is an anti-rent
lecturer; and, being somewhat didactic, he favoured me
with some of his arguments, seriatim.”

“How! Have they got to lectures? I should have supposed
the newspapers would have been the means of circulating
their ideas.”

“Oh, the newspapers, like hogs swimming too freely,
have cut their own throats; and it seems to be fashionable,
just at this moment, not to believe them. Lecturing is the
great moral lever of the nation at present.”

“But a man can lie in a lecture, as well as in a newspaper.”

“Out of all question; and if many of the lecturers are
of the school of this Mr. Holmes—`Lecturer Holmes,' as
Seneca called him—but, if many are of his school, a pretty
set of liberty-takers with the truth must they be.”

“You detected him, then, in some of these liberties?”

“In a hundred: nothing was easier than for a man in
my situation to do that; knowing, as I did, so much of the
history of the land-titles of the State. One of his arguments
partakes so largely of the weak side of our system, that I
must give it to you. He spoke of the gravity of the disturbances—of
the importance to the peace and character of
the State of putting an end to them; and then, by way of
corollary to his proposition, produced a scheme for changing
the titles, IN ORDER TO SATISFY THE PEOPLE!”

“The people, of course, meaning the tenants; the landlords
and their rights passing for nothing.”

“That is one beautiful feature of the morality—an eye,
or a cheek, if you will—but here is the nose, and highly Roman
it is. A certain portion of the community wish to get
rid of the obligations of their contracts; and finding it cannot
be done by law, they resort to means that are opposed
to all law, in order to effect their purposes. Public law-breakers,
violators of the public peace, they make use of
their own wrong as an argument for perpetuating another
that can be perpetuated in no other way. I have been looking
over some of the papers containing proclamations, &c.,
and find that both law-makers and law-breakers are of one
mind as to this charming policy. Without a single manly
effort to put down the atrocious wrong that is meditated, the
existence of the wrong itself is made an argument for meeting
it with concessions, and thus sustaining it. Instead of
using the means the institutions have provided for putting
down all such unjust and illegal combinations, the combinations
are a sufficient reason of themselves why the laws
should be altered, and wrong be done to a few, in order that
many may be propitiated, and their votes secured.”

“This is reasoning that can be used only where real
grievances exist. But there are no real grievances in the
case of the tenants. They may mystify weak heads in the
instance of the Manor leases, with their quarter sales, fat
hens, loads of wood and days' works; but my leases are all
on three lives, with rent payable in money, and with none
of the conditions that are called feudal, though no more feudal
than any other bargain to pay articles in kind. One
might just as well call a bargain made by a butcher to deliver
pork for a series of years feudal. However, feudal or
not, my leases, and those of most other landlords, are running
on lives; and yet, by what I can learn, the discontent
is general; and the men who have solemnly bargained to
give up their farms at the expiration of the lives are just as
warm for the `down-rent' and titles in fee, as the Manor
tenants themselves! They say that the obligations given
for actual purchases are beginning to be discredited.”

“You are quite right; and there is one of the frauds practised
on the world at large. In the public documents, only
the Manor leases, with their pretended feudal covenants
and their perpetuity, are kept in view, while the combination
goes to all leases, or nearly all, and certainly to all
sorts of leases, where the estates are of sufficient extent to
allow of the tenants to make head against the landlords. I
dare say there are hundreds of tenants, even on the property
of the Renssalaers, who are honest enough to be willing to
comply with their contracts if the conspirators would let
them; but the rapacious spirit is abroad among the occupants
of other lands, as well as among the occupants of
theirs, and the government considers its existence a proof
that concessions should be made. The discontented must
be appeased, right or not!”

“Did Seneca say anything on the subject of his own interests?”

“He did; not so much in conversation with me, as in the
discourse he held with `Lecturer Holmes.' I listened attentively,
happening to be familiar, through tradition and
through personal knowledge, with all the leading facts of
the case. As you will soon be called on to act in that matter
for yourself, I may as well relate them to you. They
will serve, also, as guides to the moral merits of the occupation

of half the farms on your estate. These are things,
moreover, you would never know by public statements,
since all the good bargains are smothered in silence, while
those that may possibly have been a little unfavourable to
the tenant are proclaimed far and near. It is quite possible
that, among the many thousands of leased farms that are to
be found in the State, some bad bargains may have been
made by the tenants; but what sort of a government is that
which should undertake to redress evils of this nature? If
either of the Renssalaers, or you yourself, were to venture
to send a memorial to the Legislature setting forth the
grievances you labour under in connection with this very
`mill lot'—and serious losses do they bring to you, let me
tell you, though grievances, in the proper sense of the term,
they are not—you and your memorial would be met with a
general and merited shout of ridicule and derision. One
man has no rights, as opposed to a dozen.”

“So much difference is there between `de la Rochefoucauld
et de la Rochefoucauld.”

“All the difference in the world: but let me give you the
facts, for they will serve as a rule by which to judge of
many others. In the first place, my great-grandfather Mordaunt,
the `patentee,' as he was called, first let the mill lot
to the grandfather of this Seneca, the tenant then being quite
a young man. In order to obtain settlers, in that early day,
it was necessary to give them great advantages, for there
was vastly more land than there were people to work it.
The first lease, therefore, was granted on highly advantageous
terms to that Jason Newcome, whom I can just remember.
He had two characters; the one, and the true,
which set him down as a covetous, envious, narrow-minded
provincial, who was full of cant and roguery. Some traditions
exist among us of his having been detected in stealing
timber, and in various other frauds. In public he is one of
those virtuous and hard-working pioneers who have transmitted
to their descendants all their claims, those that are
supposed to be moral, as well as those that are known to be
legal. This flummery may do for elderly ladies, who affect
snuff and bohea, and for some men who have minds of the
same calibre, but they are not circumstances to influence
such legislators and executives as are fit to be legislators

and executives. Not a great while before my father's marriage,
the said Jason still living and in possession, the lease
expired, and a new one was granted for three lives, or
twenty-one years certain, of which one of the lives is still
running. That lease was granted, on terms highly favourable
to the tenant, sixty years since, old Newcome, luckily
for himself and his posterity, having named this long-lived
son as one of his three lives. Now Seneky, God bless him!
is known to lease a few of the lots that have fallen to his
share of the property for more money than is required to
meet all your rent on the whole. Such, in effect, has been
the fact with that mill-lot for the last thirty years, or even
longer; and the circumstance of the great length of time so
excellent a bargain has existed, is used as an argument why
the Newcomes ought to have a deed of the property for a
nominal price; or, indeed, for no price at all, if the tenants
could have their wishes.”

“I am afraid there is nothing unnatural in thus perverting
principles; half mankind appear to me really to get a
great many of their notions dessus dessous.”

“Half is a small proportion; as you will find, my boy,
when you grow older. But was it not an impudent proposal
of Seneca, when he wished you and me to join the
corps of `Injins?”'

“What answer did you make? Though I suppose it would
hardly do for us to go disguised and armed, now that the
law makes it a felony, even while our motive, at the bottom,
might be to aid the law.”

“Catch me at that act of folly! Why, Hugh, could they
prove such a crime on either of us, or any one connected
with an old landed family, we should be the certain victims.
No governor would dare pardon us. No, no; clemency is
a word reserved for the obvious and confirmed rogues.”

“We might get a little favour on the score of belonging
to a very powerful body of offenders.”

“True; I forgot that circumstance. The more numerous
the crimes and the criminals, the greater the probability
of impunity; and this, too, not on the general principle
that power cannot be resisted, but on the particular principle
that a thousand or two votes are of vast importance,

where three thousand can turn an election. God only knows
where this thing is to end!”

We now approached one of the humbler taverns of the
place, where it was necessary for those of our apparent pretensions
to seek lodgings, and the discourse was dropped.
It was several weeks too early in the season for the Springs
to be frequented, and we found only a few of those in the
place who drank the waters because they really required
them. My uncle had been an old stager at Saratoga—a
beau of the “purest water,” as he laughingly described himself—and
he was enabled to explain all that it was necessary
for me to know. An American watering-place, however,
is so very much inferior to most of those in Europe,
as to furnish very little, in their best moments, beyond the
human beings they contain, to attract the attention of the
traveller.

In the course of the afternoon we availed ourselves of the
opportunity of a return vehicle to go as far as Sandy Hill,
where we passed the night. The next morning, bright and
early, we got into a hired wagon and drove across the country
until near night, when we paid for our passage, sent the
vehicle back, and sought a tavern. At this house, where
we passed the night, we heard a good deal of the “Injins” having
made their appearance on the Littlepage lands, and many
conjectures as to the probable result. We were in a township,
or rather on a property that was called Mooseridge,
and which had once belonged to us, but which, having been
sold, and in a great measure paid for by the occupants, no
one thought of impairing the force of the convenants under
which the parties held. The most trivial observer will soon
discover that it is only when something is to be gained that
the aggrieved citizen wishes to disturb a convenant. Now,
I never heard any one say a syllable against either of the
convenants of his lease under which he held his farm, let him
be ever so loud against those which would shortly compel
him to give it up! Had I complained of the fact—and such
facts abounded—that my predecessors had incautiously let
farms at such low prices that the lessees had been enabled
to pay the rents for half a century by subletting small portions
of them, as my uncle Ro had intimated, I should be

pointed at as a fool. “Stick to your bond” would have been
the cry, and “Shylock” would have been forgotten. I do
not say that there is not a vast difference between the means
of acquiring intelligence, the cultivation, the manners, the
social conditions, and, in some senses, the social obligations
of an affluent landlord and a really hard-working, honest,
well-intentioned husbandman, his tenant—differences that
should dispose the liberal and cultivated gentleman to bear
in mind the advantages he has perhaps inherited, and not
acquired by his own means, in such a way as to render
him, in a certain degree, the repository of the interests of
those who hold under him; but, while I admit all this, and
say that the community which does not possess such a class
of men is to be pitied, as it loses one of the most certain
means of liberalizing and enlarging its notions, and of improving
its civilization, I am far from thinking that the men
of this class are to have their real superiority of position,
with its consequences, thrown into their faces only when
they are expected to give, while they are grudgingly denied
it on all other occasions! There is nothing so likely to advance
the habits, opinions, and true interests of a rural population,
as to have them all directed by the intelligence and
combined interests that ought to mark the connection between
landlord and tenant. It may do for one class of political
economists to prate about a state of things which supposes
every husbandman a freeholder, and rich enough to
maintain his level among the other freeholders of the State.
But we all know that as many minute gradations in means
must and do exist in a community, as there exists gradations
in characters. A majority soon will, in the nature of
things, be below the level of the freeholder, and by destroying
the system of having landlords and tenants, two great
evils are created—the one preventing men of large fortunes
from investing in lands, as no man will place his money
where it will be insecure or profitless, thereby cutting off
real estate generally from the benefits that might be and
would be conferred by their capital, as well as cutting it off
from the benefits of the increased price which arise from
having such buyers in the market; and the other is, to prevent
any man from being a husbandman who has not the
money necessary to purchase a farm. But they who want
farms now, and they who will want votes next November,
do not look quite so far ahead as that, while shouting “equal
rights,' they are, in fact, for preventing the poor husbandman
from being anything but a day-labourer.

We obtained tolerably decent lodgings at our inn, though
the profoundest patriot America possesses, if he know anything
of other countries, or of the best materials of his own,
cannot say much in favour of the sleeping arrangements of
an ordinary country inn. The same money and the same
trouble would render that which is now the very beau idéal
of discomfort, at least tolerable, and in many instances good.
But who is to produce this reform? According to the opinions
circulated among us, the humblest hamlet we have has
already attained the highest point of civilization; and as for
the people, without distinction of classes, it is universally
admitted that they are the best educated, the acutest, and the
most intelligent in Christendom;—no, I must correct myself;
they are all this, except when they are in the act of leasing
lands, and then the innocent and illiterate husbandmen are
the victims of the arts of designing landlords, the wretches![1]

We passed an hour on the piazza, after eating our supper,
and there being a collection of men assembled there,
inhabitants of the hamlet, we had an opportunity to get into
communication with them. My uncle sold a watch, and I
played on the hurdy-gurdy, by way of making myself popular.
After this beginning, the discourse turned on the engrossing
subject of the day, anti-rentism. The principal
speaker was a young man of about six-and-twenty, of a
sort of shabby genteel air and appearance, whom I soon
discovered to be the attorney of the neighbourhood. His
name was Hubbard, while that of the other principal speaker
was Hall. The last was a mechanic, as I ascertained, and
was a plain-looking working-man of middle age. Each of
these persons seated himself on a common “kitchen chair,”
leaning back against the side of the house, and, of course,
resting on the two hind legs of the rickety support, while
he placed his own feet on the rounds in front. The attitudes
were neither graceful nor picturesque, but they were
so entirely common as to excite no surprise. As for Hall,
he appeared perfectly contented with his situation, after
fidgeting a little to get the two supporting legs of his chair
just where he wanted them; but Hubbard's eye was restless,
uneasy, and even menacing, for more than a minute. He
drew a knife from his pocket—a small, neat pen-knife only, it
is true—gazed a little wildly about him, and just as I thought
he intended to abandon his nicely poised chair, and to make
an assault on one of the pillars that upheld the roof of the
piazza, the innkeeper advanced, holding in his hand several
narrow slips of pine board, one of which he offered at once
to 'Squire Hubbard. This relieved the attorney, who took
the wood, and was soon deeply plunged in, to me, the unknown
delights of whittling. I cannot explain the mysterious
pleasure that so many find in whittling, though the
prevalence of the custom is so well known. But I cannot
explain the pleasure so many find in chewing tobacco, or in
smoking. The precaution of the landlord was far from
being unnecessary, and appeared to be taken in good part
by all to whom he offered “whittling-pieces,” some six or
eight in the whole. The state of the piazza, indeed, proved
that the precaution was absolutely indispensable, if he did
not wish to see the house come tumbling down about his

head. In order that those who have never seen such things
may understand their use, I will go a little out-of the way
to explain.

The inn was of wood, a hemlock frame with a “siding”
of clap-boards. In this there was nothing remarkable, many
countries of Europe, even, still building principally of wood.
Houses of lath and plaster were quite common, until within
a few years, even in large towns. I remember to have seen
some of these constructions, while in London, in close connection
with the justly celebrated Westminster Hall; and of
such materials is the much-talked-of miniature castle of
Horace Walpole, at Strawberry Hill. But the inn of Mooseridge
had some pretensions to architecture, besides being
three or four times larger than any other house in the place.
A piazza it enjoyed, of course; it must be a pitiful village
inn that does not: and building, accessaries and all, rejoiced
in several coats of a spurious white lead. The columns of
this piazza, as well as the clap-boards of the house itself,
however, exhibited the proofs of the danger of abandoning
your true whittler to his own instincts. Spread-eagles, five-points,
American flags, huzzahs for Polk! the initials of
names, and names at full length, with various other similar
conceits, records, and ebullitions of patriotic or party-otic
feelings, were scattered up and down with an affluence that
said volumes in favour of the mint in which they had been
coined. But the most remarkable memorial of the industry
of the guests was to be found on one of the columns; and
it was one at a corner, too, and consequently of double importance
to the superstructure—unless, indeed, the house
were built on that well-known principle of American architecture
of the last century, which made the architrave uphold
the pillar, instead of the pillar the architrave. The
column in question was of white pine, as usual—though latterly,
in brick edifices, bricks and stucco are much resorted
to—and, at a convenient height for the whittlers, it was literally
cut two-thirds in two. The gash was very neatly
made—that much must be said for it—indicating skill and
attention; and the surfaces of the wound were smoothed in
a manner to prove that appearances were not neglected.

“Vat do das?” I asked of the landlord, pointing to this
gaping wound in the main column of his piazza.

“That! Oh! That's only the whittlers,” answered the
host, with a good-natural smile.

Assuredly the Americans are the best-natured people on
earth! Here was a man whose house was nearly tumbling
down about his ears—always bating the principle in architecture
just named—and he could smile as Nero may be
supposed to have done when fiddling over the conflagration
of Rome.

“But vhy might de vhittler vhittle down your house?”

“Oh! this is a free country, you know, and folks do
pretty much as they like in it,” returned the still smiling
host. “I let 'em cut away as long as I dared, but it was
high time to get out `whittling-pieces' I believe you must
own. It 's best always to keep a ruff (roof) over a man's
head, to be ready for bad weather. A week longer would
have had the column in two.”

“Vell, I dinks I might not bear dat! Vhat ist mein house
ist mein house, ant dey shall not so moch vittles.”

“By letting 'em so much vittles there, they so much vittles
in the kitchen; so you see there is policy in having
your under-pinnin' knocked away sometimes, if it 's done
by the right sort of folks.”

“You 're a stranger in these parts, friend?” observed
Hubbard, complacently, for by this time his “whittling-piece”
was reduced to a shape, and he could go on reducing
it, according to some law of the art of whittling, with which
I am not acquainted. “We are not so particular in such
matters as in some of your countries in the old world.”

“Ja—das I can see. But does not woot ant column cost
money in America, someding?”

“To be sure it does. There is not a man in the country
who would undertake to replace that pillar with a new one,
paint and all, for less than ten dollars.”

This was an opening for a discussion on the probable cost
of putting a new pillar into the place of the one that was injured.
Opinions differed, and quite a dozen spoke on the
subject; some placing the expense as high as fifteen dollars,
and others bringing it down as low as five. I was struck
with the quiet and self-possession with which each man delivered
his opinion, as well as with the language used. The
accent was uniformly provincial, that of Hubbard included,

having a strong and unpleasant taint of the dialect of New
England in it; and some of the expressions savoured a little
of the stilts of the newspapers; but, on the whole, the language
was sufficiently accurate and surprisingly good, considering
the class in life of the speakers. The conjectures,
too, manifested great shrewdness and familiarity with practical
things, as well as, in a few instances, some reading.
Hall, however, actually surprised me. He spoke with a
precision and knowledge of mechanics that would have done
credit to a scholar, and with a simplicity that added to the
influence of what he said. Some casual remark induced me
to put in—“Vell, I might s'pose an Injin voult cut so das
column, but I might not s'pose a vhite man could.” This
opinion gave the discourse a direction towards anti-rentism,
and in a few minutes it caught all the attention of my uncle
Ro and myself.

“This business is going ahead after all!” observed Hubbard,
evasively, after others had had their say.

“More's the pity,” put in Hall. “It might have been
put an end to in a month, at any time, and ought to be put
an end to in a civilized land.”

“You will own, neighbour Hall, notwithstanding, it would
be a great improvement in the condition of the tenants all
over the State, could they change their tenures into free-holds.”

“No doubt 't would; and so it would be a great improvement
in the condition of any journeyman in my shop if he
could get to be the boss. But that is not the question here;
the question is, what right has the State to say any man
shall sell his property unless he wishes to sell it? A pretty
sort of liberty we should have if we all held our houses and
gardens under such laws as that supposes!”

“But do we not all hold our houses and gardens, and
farms, too, by some such law?” rejoined the attorney, who
evidently respected his antagonist, and advanced his own
opinions cautiously. “If the public wants land to use, it
can take it by paying for it.”

“Yes, to use; but use is everything. I 've read that old
report of the committee of the House, and don't subscribe to
its doctrines at all. Public `policy,' in that sense, doesn't
at all mean public `use.' If land is wanted for a road, or a

fort, or a canal, it must be taken, under a law, by appraisement,
or the thing could not be had at all; but to pretend,
because one side to a contract wishes to alter it, that the State
has a right to interfere, on the ground that the discontented
can be bought off in this way easier and cheaper than they
can be made to obey the laws, is but a poor way of supporting
the right. The same principle, carried out, might prove
it would be easier to buy off pickpockets by compromising
than to punish them. Or it would be easy to get round all
sorts of contracts in this way.”

“But all governments use this power when it becomes
necessary, neighbour Hall.”

“That word necessary covers a great deal of ground,
'Squire Hubbard. The most that can be made of the necessity
here is to say it is cheaper, and may help along parties
to their objects better. No man doubts that the State
of New York can put down these anti-renters; and, I trust,
will put them down, so far as force is concerned. There is,
then, no other necessity in the case, to begin with, than the
necessity which demagogues always feel, of getting as many
votes as they can.”

“After all, neighbour Hall, these votes are pretty powerful
weapons in a popular government.”

“I 'll not deny that; and now they talk of a convention
to alter the constitution, it is a favourable moment to teach
such managers they shall not abuse the right of suffrage in
this way.”

“How is it to be prevented? You are an universal suffrage
man, I know?”

“Yes, I 'm for universal suffrage among honest folks;
but do not wish to have my rulers chosen by them that are
never satisfied without having their hands in their neighbours'
pockets. Let 'em put a clause into the constitution
providing that no town, or village, or county shall hold a
poll within a given time after the execution of process has
been openly resisted in it. That would take the conceit out
of all such law-breakers, in very short order.”

It was plain that this idea struck the listeners, and several
even avowed their approbation of the scheme aloud. Hubbard
received it as a new thought, but was more reluctant

to admit its practicability. As might be expected from a
lawyer accustomed to practise in a small way, his objections
savoured more of narrow views than of the notions of a
statesman.

“How would you determine the extent of the district to
be disfranchised?” he asked.

“Take the legal limits as they stand. If process be resisted
openly by a combination strong enough to look down
the agents of the law in a town, disfranchise that town for
a given period; if in more than one town, disfranchise the
offending towns; if a county, disfranchise the whole
county.”

“But, in that way you would punish the innocent with
the guilty.”

“It would be for the good of all; besides, you punish the
innocent for the guilty, or with the guilty rather, in a thousand
ways. You and I are taxed to keep drunkards from
starving, because it is better to do that than to offend humanity
by seeing men die of hunger, or tempting them to
steal. When you declare martial law you punish the innocent
with the guilty, in one sense; and so you do in a hundred
cases. All we have to ask is, if it be not wiser and
better to disarm demagogues, and those disturbers of the
public peace who wish to pervert their right of suffrage to
so wicked an end, by so simple a process, than to suffer
them to effect their purposes by the most flagrant abuse of
their political privileges?”

“How would you determine when a town should lose the
right of voting?”

“By evidence given in open court. The judges would
be the proper authority to decide in such a case; and they
would decide, beyond all question, nineteen times in twenty,
right. It is the interest of every man who is desirous of
exercising the suffrage on right principles, to give him some
such protection against them that wish to exercise the suffrage
on wrong. A peace-officer can call on the posse
comitatus or on the people to aid him; if enough appear to
put down the rebels, well and good; but if enough do not
appear, let it be taken as proof that the district is not worthy
of giving the votes of freemen. They who abuse such a

liberty as man enjoys in this country are the least entitled
to our sympathies. As for the mode, that could easily be
determined, as soon as you settled the principle.”

The discourse went on for an hour, neighbour Hall giving
his opinions still more at large. I listened equally with
pleasure and surprise. “These, then, after all,” I said to
myself, “are the real bone and sinew of the country. There
are tens of thousands of this sort of men in the State, and
why should they be domineered over, and made to submit
to a legislation and to practices that are so often without
principle, by the agents of the worst part of the community?
Will the honest for ever be so passive, while the corrupt and
dishonest continue so active?” On my mentioning these
notions to my uncle, he answered:

“Yes; it ever has been so, and, I fear, ever will be so.
There is the curse of this country,” pointing to a table covered
with newspapers, the invariable companion of an American
inn of any size. “So long as men believe what they
find there, they can be nothing but dupes or knaves.”

“But there is good in newspapers.”

“That adds to the curse. If they were nothing but lies,
the world would soon reject them; but how few are able to
separate the true from the false! Now, how few of these
papers speak the truth about this very anti rentism! Occasionally
an honest man in the corps does come out; but
where one does this, ten affect to think what they do not
believe, in order to secure votes; — votes, votes, votes. In
that simple word lies all the mystery of the matter.”

“Jefferson said, if he were to choose between a government
without newspapers, or newspapers without a government,
he would take the last.”

“Ay, Jefferson did not mean newspapers as they are now.
I am old enough to see the change that has taken place. In
his day, three or four fairly convicted lies would damn any
editor; now, there are men that stand up under a thousand.
I 'll tell you what, Hugh, this country is jogging on under
two of the most antagonist systems possible — Christianity
and the newspapers. The first is daily hammering into
every man that he is a miserable, frail, good-for-nothing
being, while the last is eternally proclaiming the perfection
of the people and the virtues of self-government.”

“Perhaps too much stress ought not to be laid on either.”

“The first is certainly true, under limitations that we all
understand; but as to the last, I will own I want more evidence
than a newspaper eulogy to believe it.”

After all, my uncle Ro is sometimes mistaken; though
candour compels me to acknowledge that he is very often
right.