an see no
more hardship in it than there is in paying the rent itself; and, by
giving the landlord this check on the transfer of his lands, he compels
a compromise that maintains what is just. The tenant is not obliged to
sell, and he makes his conditions accordingly, when he has a good tenant
to offer in his stead. When he offers a bad tenant, he ought to pay for
it."

"Many persons with us would think it very aristocratic," I cried,
laughingly, "that a landlord should have it in his power to say, I will
not accept this or that substitute for yourself."

"It is just as aristocratic, and no more so, than it would be to put it
in the power of the tenant to say to the landlord, you _shall_ accept
this or that tenant at my hands. The covenant of the quarter sale gives
each party a control in the matter; and the result has ever been a
compromise that is perfectly fair, as it is hardly possible that the
circumstance should have been overlooked in making the bargain; and he
who knows anything of such matters, knows that every exaction of this
sort is always considered in the rent. As for feudality, so long as the
power to alienate exists at all in the tenant, he does not hold by a
feudal tenure. He has bought himself from all such tenures by his
covenant of quarter sale; and it only remains to say whether, having
agreed to such a bargain in order to obtain this advantage, he should
pay the stipulated price or not."

"I understand you, sir. It is easy to come at the equity of this matter,
if one will only go back to the original facts which colour it. The
tenant had no rights at all until he got his lease, and can have no
rights which that lease does not confer."

"Then the cry is raised of feudal privileges, because some of the
Rensselaer tenants are obliged to find so many days' work with their
teams, or substitutes, to the landlord, and even because they have to
pay annually a pair of fat fowls! _We_ have seen enough of America,
Hugh, to know that most husbandmen would be delighted to have the
privilege of paying their debts in chickens and work, instead of in
money, which renders the cry only so much the more wicked. But what is
there more feudal in a tenant's thus paying his landlord, than in a
butcher's contracting to furnish so much meat for a series of years, or
a mail contractor's agreeing to carry the mail in a four-horse coach for
a term of years, eh? No one objects to the rent in wheat, and why should
they obj