en laymen manifesting tempers, in this respect,
that properly belong to devils. But our governors have certainly
treated this matter as if the tenants actually had griefs; when in truth
their sole oppression is in being obliged to pay rents that are merely
nominal, and in not being able to buy other men's property contrary to
their wishes, and very much at their own prices. One governor has even
been so generous as to volunteer a mode of settling disputes with which,
by the way, he has no concern, there being courts to discharge that
office, that is singularly presuming on his part, to say the least, and
which looks a confounded sight more like aristocracy, or monarchy, than
anything connected with leasehold tenure."

"Why, what can the man have done?"

"He has kindly taken on himself the office of doing that for which I
fancy he can find no authority in the institutions, or in their
spirit--no less than advising citizens how they may conveniently manage
their own affairs so as to get over difficulties that he himself
substantially admits, while giving this very advice, are difficulties
that the law sanctions!"

"This is a very extraordinary interference in a public functionary;
because one of the parties to a contract that is solemnly guarantied by
the law, chooses to complain of its _nature_, rather than of its
_conditions_, to pretend to throw the weight of his even assumed
authority into the scales on either side of the question!"

"And that in a popular government, Hugh, in which it tells so strongly
against a man to render him unpopular, that not one man in a million has
the moral courage to resist public opinion, even when he is right. You
have hit the nail on the head, boy; it is in the last degree presuming,
and what would be denounced as tyrannical in any monarch in Europe. But
he has lived in vain who has not learned that they who make the loudest
professions of a love of liberty, have little knowledge of the quality,
beyond submission to the demands of numbers. Our executive has carried
his fatherly care even beyond this; he has actually suggested the terms
of a bargain by which he thinks the difficulty can be settled, which, in
addition to the gross assumption of having a voice in a matter that in
no manner belongs to him, has the palpable demerit of recommending a
pecuniary compromise that is flagrantly wrong as a mere pecuniary
compromise."

"You astonish me, sir! What is the precise nature of his
r