lusion than to suppose
that true democracy has anything in common with injustice or roguery.

Nor is it an apology for anti-rentism, in any of its aspects, to say
that leasehold tenures are inexpedient. The most expedient thing in
existence is to do right. Were there no other objection to this
anti-rent movement than its corrupting influence, that alone should set
every wise man in the community firmly against it. We have seen too much
of this earth, to be so easily convinced that there is any disadvantage,
nay that there is not a positive advantage in the existence of large
leasehold estates, when they carry with them no political power, as is
the fact here. The common-place argument against them, that they defeat
the civilization of a country, is not sustained by fact. The most
civilized countries on earth are under this system; and this system,
too, not entirely free from grave objections which do not exist among
ourselves. That a poorer class of citizens have originally leased than
have purchased lands in New York, is probably true; and it is equally
probable that the effects of this poverty, and even of the tenure in the
infancy of a country, are to be traced on the estates. But this is
taking a very one-sided view of the matter. The men who became tenants
in moderate but comfortable circumstances, would have been mostly
labourers on the farms of others, but for these leasehold tenures. That
is the benefit of the system in a new country, and the ultra friend of
humanity, who decries the condition of a tenant, should remember that if
he had not been in this very condition, he might have been in a worse.
It is, indeed, one of the proofs of the insincerity of those who are
decrying leases, on account of their aristocratic tendencies, that their
destruction will necessarily condemn a numerous class of agriculturists,
either to fall back into the ranks of the peasant or day-labourer, or to
migrate, as is the case with so many of the same class in New England.
In point of fact, the relation of landlord and tenant is one entirely
natural and salutary, in a wealthy community, and one that is so much in
accordance with the necessities of men, that no legislation can long
prevent it. A state of things which will not encourage the rich to hold
real estate would not be desirable, since it would be diverting their
money, knowledge, liberality, feelings and leisure, from the
improvement of the soil, to objects neither so useful n