ny other spot in the
colony, as the Peak had undergone fewer. The town by this time contained
more than two hundred buildings, of one sort and another, and the
population exceeded five hundred souls. This was a small population for
so many tenements; but the children, as yet, did not bear a just
proportion to the adults. The crater was the subject of what to Mark
Woolston was a most painful law-suit. From the first, he had claimed
that spot as his private property; though he had conceded its use to the
public, under a lease, since it was so well adapted, by natural
formation, to be a place of refuge when invasions were apprehended. But
the crater he had found barren, and had rendered fertile; the crater had
even seemed to him to be an especial gift of Providence bestowed on him
in his misery; and the crater was his by possession, as well as by other
rights, when he received strangers into his association. None of the
older inhabitants denied this claim. It is the last comers who are ever
the most anxious to dispute ancient rights. As they can possess none of
these established privileges themselves, they dislike that others
should enjoy them; and association places no restraints on their
cupidity. Pennock, once in the hands of "the people," was obliged to
maintain their rights, or what some among them chose to call their
rights; and he authorized the attorney-general to bring an action of
ejectment against the party in possession. Some pretty hard-faced
trickery was attempted in the way of legislation, in order to help along
the claim of the public; for, if the truth must be said, the public is
just as wont to resort to such unworthy means to effect its purposes as
private individuals, when it is deemed necessary. But there was little
fear of the "people's" failing; they made the law, and they administered
it, through their agents; the power being now so completely in their
hands that it required twice the usual stock of human virtue to be able
to say them nay, as had formerly been the case. God help the man whose
rights are to be maintained against the masses, when the immediate and
dependent nominees of those masses are to sit in judgment! If the
public, by any inadvertency, have had the weakness to select servants
that are superior to human infirmities, and who prefer to do right
rather than to do as their masters would have them, it is a weakness
that experience will be sure to correct, and which will not be often
rep