o return home, a step that indeed was
required by prudence. I was now of an age to enter into the full
possession of my own property (so far as "new laws and new lords" would
permit); and the letters received by my late guardian, as well as
certain newspapers, communicated the unpleasant fact that a great many
of the tenants of Ravensnest had joined the association, paid tribute
for the support of "Injins," and were getting to be as bad as any of the
rest of them, so far as designs and schemes to plunder were concerned,
though they still paid their rents. The latter circumstance was ascribed
by our agent to the fact that many leases were about to fall in, and it
would be in my power to substitute more honest and better disposed
successors for the present occupants of the several farms. Measures were
taken accordingly for quitting Paris as soon as possible, so that we
might reach home late in the month of May.

"If we had time, I would certainly throw in a memorial or two to the
legislature," observed my uncle, a day or two before we proceeded to
Havre to join the packet. "I have a strong desire to protest against the
invasion of my rights as a freeman that is connected with some of their
contemplated laws. I do not at all like the idea of being abridged of
the power of hiring a farm for the longest time I can obtain it, which
is one of the projects of some of the ultra reformers of free and equal
New York. It is wonderful, Hugh, into what follies men precipitate
themselves as soon as they begin to run into exaggerations, whether of
politics, religion, or tastes. Here are half of the exquisite
philanthropists who see a great evil affecting the rights of human
nature in one man's hiring a farm from another for as long a term as he
can obtain it, who are at the very extreme in their opinions on free
trade! So free-trade are some of the journals which think it a capital
thing to prevent landlords and tenants from making their own bargains,
that they have actually derided the idea of having established fares for
hackney-coaches, but that it would be better to let the parties stand in
the rain and higgle about the price, on the free-trade principle. Some
of these men are either active agents in stimulating the legislature to
rob the citizen of this very simple control of his property, or passive
lookers-on while others do it."

"Votes, sir, votes."

"It is, indeed, votes, sir, votes; nothing short of votes could
reconcile