armed and disguised, in order to _defend_ the rights
of property that are solemnly guarantied in these institutions, of
which it would seem to be the notion of some that it is the "spirit" to
dispossess them, we should all of us have been the inmates of States'
prisons, without legislators troubling themselves to pass laws for our
liberation! This is another of the extraordinary features of American
aristocracy, which almost deprives the noble of the every-day use and
benefit of the law. It would be worth our while to lose a moment in
inquiring into the process by which such strange results are brought
about, but it is fortunately rendered unnecessary by the circumstance
that the principle will be amply developed in the course of the
narrative.

A stranger could hardly have felt the real character of this meeting by
noting the air and manner of those who had come to attend it. The "armed
and disguised" kept themselves in a body, it is true, and maintained, in
a slight degree, the appearance of distinctness from "the people," but
many of the latter stopped to speak to these men, and were apparently on
good terms with them. Not a few of the gentler sex, even, appeared to
have acquaintances in the gang; and it would have struck a political
philosopher from the other hemisphere with some surprise, to have seen
the "people" thus tolerating fellows who were openly trampling on a law
that the "people" themselves had just enacted! A political philosopher
from among ourselves, however, might have explained the seeming
contradiction by referring it to the "spirit of the institutions." If
one were to ask Hugh Littlepage to solve the difficulty, he would have
been very apt to answer that the "people" of Ravensnest wanted to compel
him to sell lands which he did not wish to sell, and that not a few of
them were anxious to add to the compulsory bargains conditions as to
price that would rob him of about one-half of his estate; and that what
the Albany philosophers called the "spirit of the institutions," was, in
fact, a "spirit of the devil," which the institutions were expressly
designed to hold in subjection!

There was a good deal of out-door management going on, as might be seen
by the private discussions that were held between pairs, under what is
called the "horse-shedding" process. This "horse-shedding" process, I
understand, is well known among us, and extends not only to politics,
but to the administration of justice. Your