ect to the rent in chickens? Is it because our republican
farmers have got to be so _aristocratic_ themselves, that they do not
like to be thought poulterers? This is being aristocratic on the other
side. These dignitaries should remember that if it be plebeian to
furnish fowls, it is plebeian to receive them; and if the tenant has to
find an individual who has to submit to the degradation of tendering a
pair of fat fowls, the landlord has to find an individual who has to
submit to the degradation of taking them, and of putting them away in
the larder. It seems to me that one is an offset to the other."

"But, if I remember rightly, uncle Ro, these little matters were always
commuted for in money."

"They always must lie at the option of the tenant, unless the covenants
went to forfeiture, which I never heard that they did; for the failure
to pay in kind at the time stipulated, would only involve a payment in
money afterwards. The most surprising part of this whole transaction is,
that men among us hold the doctrine that these leasehold estates are
opposed to our institutions when, being guarantied _by_ the
institutions, they in truth form a part of them. Were it not for these
very institutions, to which they are said to be opposed, and of which
they virtually form a part, we should soon have a pretty kettle of fish
between landlord and tenant."

"How do you make it out that they form a part of the institutions, sir?"

"Simply because the institutions have a solemn profession of protecting
property. There is such a parade of this, that all our constitutions
declare that property shall never be taken without due form of law; and
to read one of them, you would think the property of the citizen is held
quite as sacred as his person. Now, some of these very tenures existed
when the State institutions were framed; and, not satisfied with this,
we of New York, in common with our sister States, solemnly prohibited
ourselves, in the constitution of the United States, from ever meddling
with them! Nevertheless, men are found hardy enough to assert that a
thing which in fact belongs to the institutions, is opposed to them."

"Perhaps they mean, sir, to their spirit, or to their tendency."

"Ah! there may be some sense in that, though much less than the
declaimers fancy. The spirit of institutions is their legitimate object;
and it would be hard to prove that a leasehold tenure, with any
conditions of mere pecuniary indebtedn