The Chainbearer Part 57

"That its members will be called the friends of the people, and not the friends of the landlords. Would any man tax his friends, if he could help it?"

"But what will that portion of the people who compose the anti-renters gain by such a measure?"

"Nothing; and their complaints will be just as loud, and their longings as active, as ever. Nothing that can have any effect on what they wish will be accomplished by any legislation in the matter. One committee of the a.s.sembly has actually reported, you may remember, that the State might a.s.sume the lands, and sell them to the tenants, or some one else; or something of the sort."

"The Const.i.tution of the United States must be Hugh's aegis."

"And that alone will protect him, let me tell you. But for that n.o.ble provision of the Const.i.tution of the Federal Government, his estate would infallibly go for one-half of its true value. There is no use in mincing things, or in affecting to believe men more honest than they are--AN INFERNAL FEELING OF SELFISHNESS IS SO MUCH TALKED OF, AND CITED, AND REFERRED TO, ON ALL OCCASIONS, IN THIS COUNTRY, THAT A MAN ALMOST RENDERS HIMSELF RIDICULOUS WHO APPEARS TO REST ON PRINCIPLE."

"Have you heard what the tenants of Ravensnest aim at, in particular?"

"They want to get Hugh's lands, that's all; nothing more, I can a.s.sure you."

"On what conditions, pray?" demanded I.

"As you 'light of chaps,' to use a saying of their own. Some even profess a willingness to pay a fair price."

"But I do not wish to sell for even a fair price. I have no desire to part with property that is endeared to me by family feeling and a.s.sociation. I have an expensive house and establishment on my estate, which obtains its princ.i.p.al value from the circ.u.mstance that it is so placed that I can look after my interests with the least inconvenience to myself. What can I do with the money but buy another estate? and I prefer this that I have."

"Poh! boy, you can shave notes, you'll recollect," said Uncle Ro, dryly.

"The calling is decided to be honorable by the highest tribunal; and no man should be above his business."

"You have no right, sir, in a free country," returned the caustic Jack Dunning, "to prefer one estate to another, more especially when other people want it. Your lands are leased to honest, hard-working tenants, who can eat their dinners without silver forks, and whose ancestors----"

"Stop!" I cried, laughing; "I bar all ancestry. No man has a right to ancestry in a free country, you'll remember!"

"That means landlord ancestry; as for tenant ancestry, one can have a pedigree as long as the Maison de Levis. No, sir; every tenant you have has every right to demand that his sentiment of family feeling should be respected. His father planted that orchard, and he loves the apples better than any other apples in the world----"

"And my father procured the grafts, and made him a present of them."

"His grandfather cleared that field, and converted its ashes into pots and pearls----"

"And _my_ grandfather received that year ten s.h.i.+llings of rent, for land off which his received two hundred and fifty dollars for his ashes."

"His great-grandfather, honest and excellent man--nay, superhonest and confiding creature--first 'took up' the land when a wilderness, and with his own hands felled the timber, and sowed the wheat."

"And got his pay twenty-fold for it all, or he would not have been fool enough to do it. I had a great-grandfather, too; and I hope it will not be considered aristocratic if I venture to hint as much. He--a dishonest, pestilent knave, no doubt--leased that very lot for six years without any rent at all, in order that the 'poor confiding creature'

might make himself comfortable, before he commenced paying his sixpence or s.h.i.+lling an acre rent for the remainder of three lives, with a moral certainty of getting a renewal on the most liberal terms known to a new country; and who knew, the whole time, he could buy land in fee, within ten miles of his door, but who thought _this_ a better bargain than _that_."

"Enough of this folly," cried Uncle Ro, joining in the laugh; "we all know that in our excellent America, he who has the highest claims to anything must affect to have the least, to stifle the monster envy; and being of one mind as to principles, let us come to facts. What of the girls, Jack, and of my honored mother?"

"She, n.o.ble heroic woman! she is at Ravensnest at this moment; and as the girls would not permit her to go alone, they are all with her."

"And did you, Jack Dunning, suffer them to go unattended into a part of the country that is in open rebellion?" demanded my uncle, reproachfully.

"Come, come! Hodge Littlepage, this is very sublime as a theory, but not so clear when reduced to practice. I did not go with Mrs. Littlepage and her young fry, for the good and substantial reason that I did not wish to be 'tarred and feathered.'"

"So you leave them to run the risk of being 'tarred and feathered' in your stead?"

"Say what you will about the cant of freedom that is becoming so common among us, and from which we were once so free; say what you will, Ro, of the inconsistency of those who raise the cry of 'feudality,' and 'aristocracy,' and 'n.o.bility,' at the very moment they are manifesting a desire for exclusive rights and privileges in their own persons; say what you will of dishonesty, envy, that prominent American vice, knavery, covetousness, and selfishness, and I will echo all you can utter; but do not say that a woman can be in serious danger among any material body of Americans, even if anti-renters and mock-redskins in the bargain."

"I believe you are right there, Jack, on reflection. Pardon my warmth; but I have lately been living in the Old World, and in a country in which women were not long since carried to the scaffold on account of their politics."

"Because they meddled with politics. Your mother is in no serious danger, though it needs nerve in a woman to be able to think so. There are few women in the State, and fewer of her time of life anywhere, that would do what she has done; and I give the girls great credit for sticking by her. Half the young men in town are desperate at the thought of three such charming creatures thus exposing themselves to insult.

Your mother has only been sued."

"Sued! Whom does she owe, or what can she have done to have brought this indignity on her?"

"You know, or ought to know, how it is in this country, Littlepage; we must have a little law, even when most bent on breaking it. A downright, straightforward rascal, who openly sets law at defiance, is a wonder.

Then we have a great talk of liberty, when plotting to give it the deepest stab; and religion even gets to share in no small portion of our vices. Thus it is that the anti-renters have dragged in the law in aid of their designs. I understand one of the Rensselaers has been sued for money borrowed in a ferryboat to help him across a river under his own door, and for potatoes bought by his wife in the streets of Albany!"

"But neither of the Rensselaers need borrow money to cross the ferry, as the ferrymen would trust him; and no lady of the Rensselaer family ever bought potatoes in the streets of Albany, I'll answer for it."

"You have brought back some knowledge from your travels, I find!" said Jack Dunning, with comic gravity. "Your mother writes me that _she_ has been sued for twenty-seven pairs of shoes furnished her by a shoemaker whom she never saw, or heard of, until she received the summons!"

"This, then, is one of the species of annoyances that has been adopted to bully the landlords out of their property?"

"It is; and if the landlords have recourse even to the covenants of their leases, solemnly and deliberately made, and as solemnly guaranteed by a fundamental law, the cry is raised of 'aristocracy' and 'oppression' by these very men, and echoed by many of the creatures who get seats in high places among us--or what _would_ be high places, if filled with men worthy of their trusts."

"I see you do not mince your words, Jack."

"Why should I? Words are all that is left me. I am of no more weight in the government of this State than that Irishman who let you in just now will be five years hence--less, for he will vote to suit a majority; and as I shall vote understandingly, my vote will probably do no one any good."

Dunning belonged to a school that mingles a good deal of speculative and impracticable theory with a great deal of sound and just principles; but who render themselves useless because they will admit of no compromises.

He did not belong to the cla.s.s of American _doctrinaires_, however, or to those who contend--no, not _contend_, for no one does _that_ any longer in this country, whatever may be his opinion on the subject--but those who _think_ that political power, as in the last resort, should be the property of the few, for he was willing New York should have a very broad const.i.tuency. Nevertheless, he was opposed to the universal suffrage, in its wide extent, that does actually exist; as I suppose quite three-fourths of the whole population are opposed to it, in their hearts, though no political man of influence, now existing, has the moral calibre necessary to take the lead in putting it down. Dunning deferred to principles, and not to men. He well knew that an infallible whole was not to be composed of fallible parts; and while he thought majorities ought to determine many things, that there are rights and principles that are superior to even such _unanimity_ as man can manifest, and much more to their majorities. But Dunning had no selfish views connected with his political notions, wanting no office, and feeling no motive to affect that which he neither thought nor wished. He never had quitted home, or it is highly probable his views of the comparative abuses of the different systems that prevail in the world would have been essentially modified. Those he saw had unavoidably a democratic source, there being neither monarch nor aristocrat to produce any other; and, under such circ.u.mstances, as abuses certainly abound, it is not at all surprising that he sometimes a little distorted facts and magnified evils.

"And my n.o.ble, high-spirited, and venerable mother has actually gone to the Nest to face the enemy!" exclaimed my uncle, after a thoughtful pause.

"She has, indeed; and the n.o.ble, high-spirited, though not venerable, young ladies have gone with her," returned Mr. Dunning, in his caustic way.

"All three, do you mean?"

"Every one of them--Martha, Henrietta, and Anne."

"I am surprised that the last should have done so. Anne Marston is such a meek, quiet, peace-loving person, that I should think _she_ would have preferred remaining, as she naturally might have done, without exciting remark, with her own mother."

"She has not, nevertheless. Mrs. Littlepage _would_ brave the anti-renters, and the three maidens _would_ be her companions. I dare say, Ro, you know how it is with the gentle s.e.x, when they make up their minds?"

"My girls are all good girls, and have given me very little trouble,"

answered my uncle, complacently.

"Yes, I dare say that may be true. You have only been absent from home five years this trip."

"An attentive guardian, notwithstanding, since I left you as a subst.i.tute. Has my mother written to you since her arrival among the hosts of the Philistines?"

"She has, indeed, Littlepage," answered Dunning, gravely; "I have heard from her three times, for she writes to urge my not appearing on the estate. I did intend to pay her a visit; but she tells me that it might lead to a violent scene, and can do no good. As the rents will not be due until autumn, and Master Hugh is now of age, and was to be here to look after his own affairs, I have seen no motive for incurring the risk of the tarring and feathering. We American lawyers, young gentleman, wear no wigs."

"Does my mother write herself, or employ another?" inquired my uncle, with interest.