ase for a year, or a term of years; and men did
not begin to reason as if one indulgence gave birth to a right, to demand
more. In that day, paying rent in chickens, and wood, and work, was not
fancied to be a remnant of feudality, but it was regarded as a favour
conferred on him who had the privilege: and even now, nine countrymen in
ten endeavour to pay their debts in everything they can, before they
resort to the purse. In that day, the audacious sophism of calling land a
monopoly, in a country that probably possesses more than a hundred acres
for every living soul within its limits, was not broached: and, in that
day, knots of men did not set themselves up as special representatives of
the whole community, and interpret the laws in their own favour, as if
they were the first principles of the entire republic. But my pen is
running away with me, and I must return to Lucy. A crisis is at hand; and
we are about to see the laws triumphant, or acts of aggression that will
far outdo all that has hitherto rested on the American name, as connected
with a want of faith in pecuniary transactions.

Should I ever continue these adventures, occasions may offer to draw
certain pictures of the signs of the times; signs that have an ominous
aspect as regards real liberty, by substituting the most fearful of all
tyrannies, the spurious, in its place. God alone knows for what we are
reserved; but one thing is certain--there must be a serious movement
backward, or the nation is lost.

I had no tenantry to come out and meet me; but there were the blacks. It
is true, the law was on the point of liberating these slaves, leaving a
few of the younger to serve for a term of years, that should requite their
owners for the care of their infancies and their educations; but this law
could not effect an immediate change in the condition of the Clawbonnys.
The old ones did not wish to quit me, and never did; while it took years
to loosen the tie which bound the younger portion of them to me and mine.
At this hour, near twenty of them are living round me, in cottages of
mine; and the service of my kitchen is entirely conducted by them. Lucy
prepared me for a reception by these children of Africa, even the outcasts
having united with the rest to do honour to their young master. Honour is
not the word; there was too much _heart_ in the affair for so cold a term;
the negro, whatever may be his faults, almost always possessing an
affectionate heart.