ace that are now abroad. I have even heard that he and Yop have
actually contemplated taking the field against them. Seneca Newcome is
their especial aversion."

"How is Opportunity?" I inquired. "Does she take any part in this
movement?"

"A decided one, I hear. She is anti-rent, while she wishes to keep on
good terms with her landlord; and that is endeavouring to serve God and
Mammon. She is not the first, however, by a thousand, that wears two
faces in this business."

"Hugh has a deep admiration of Opportunity," observed my uncle, "and you
had needs be tender in your strictures. The modern Seneca, I take it, is
dead against us?"

"Seneky wishes to go to the legislature, and of course he is on the side
of votes. Then his brother is a tenant at the mill, and naturally wishes
to be the landlord. He is also interested in the land himself. One thing
has struck me in this controversy as highly worthy of notice; and it is
the _naivete_ with which men reconcile the obvious longings of
covetousness with what they are pleased to fancy the principles of
liberty! When a man has worked a farm a certain number of years, he
boldly sets up the doctrine that the fact itself gives him a high moral
claim to possess it for ever. A moment's examination will expose the
fallacy by which these sophists apply the flattering unction to their
souls. They work their farms under a lease, and in virtue of its
covenants. Now, in a moral sense, all that time can do in such a case,
is to render these covenants the more sacred, and consequently more
binding; but these worthies, whose morality is all on one side, imagine
that these time-honoured covenants give them a right to fly from their
own conditions during their existence, and to raise pretensions far
exceeding anything they themselves confer, the moment they cease."

"Poh, poh! Jack; there is no need of refining at all, to come at the
merits of such a question. This is a civilized country, or it is not. If
it be a civilized country, it will respect the rights of property, and
its own laws; and if the reverse, it will not respect them. As for
setting up the doctrine, at this late day, when millions and millions
are invested in this particular species of property, that the leasehold
tenure is opposed to the _spirit_ of institutions of which it has
substantially formed a part, ever since those institutions have
themselves had an existence, it requires a bold front, and more capacity
than an