, while we have all
the disaffection they are said to produce."

"You will understand that better as you come to know more of men. No
party alludes to its weak points. It is just as you say; but the
proceedings of your tenants, for instance, give the lie to the theories
of the philanthropists, and must be kept in the back-ground. It is true
that the disaffection has not yet extended to one-half, or to one-fourth
of the leased estates in the country, perhaps not to one-tenth, if you
take the number of the landlords as the standard, instead of the extent
of their possessions, but it certainly _will_, should the authorities
tamper with the rebels much longer."

"If they tax the incomes of the landlords under the durable rent
system, why would not the parties aggrieved have the same right to take
up arms to resist such an act of oppression as our fathers had in 1776?"

"Their cause would be better; for that was only a constructive right,
and one dependent on general principles, whereas this is an attempt at a
most mean evasion of a written law, the meanness of the attempt being
quite as culpable as its fraud. Every human being knows that such a tax,
so far as it has any object beyond that of an election-sop, is to choke
off the landlords from the maintenance of their covenants, which is a
thing that no State _can_ do directly, without running the risk of
having its law pronounced unconstitutional by the courts of the United
States, if, indeed, not by its own courts."

"The Court of Errors, think you?"

"The Court of Errors is doomed, by its own abuses. Catiline never abused
the patience of Rome more than that mongrel assembly has abused the
patience of every sound lawyer in the State. '_Fiat justitia, ruat
coelum_,' is interpreted, now, into 'Let justice be done, and the court
fall.' No one wishes to see it continued, and the approaching convention
will send it to the Capulets, if it do nothing else to be commended. It
was a pitiful imitation of the House of Lords system, with this striking
difference; the English lords are men of education, and men with a vast
deal at stake, and their knowledge and interests teach them to leave the
settlement of appeals to the legal men of their body, of whom there are
always a respectable number, in addition to those in possession of the
woolsack and the bench; whereas our Senate is a court composed of small
lawyers, country doctors, merchants, farmers, with occasionally a man of
rea