Note 19 — Chapter XXV

I am a little apprehensive that the profound political philosophers who have sprung up among us within a few years, including some in high places, and who virtually maintain that the American is so ineffably free, that it is opposed to the spirit of the institutions of the country to suffer him to be either landlord or tenant, however much he may desire it himself (and no one pretends that either law or facts compel him to be either, contrary to his own wishes), will feel mortified at discovering that they have not the merit of first proposing their own exquisite theory; Aaron Thousandacres having certainly preceded them by sixty years. There is no great secret on the subject of the principle which lies at the bottom of this favorite doctrine, the Deity himself having delivered to man, as far back as the days of Moses, the tenth commandment, with the obvious design of controlling it. An attempt to prove that the institutions of this country are unsuited to the relations of landlord and tenant, is an attempt to prove that they are unsuited to meet the various contingencies of human affairs, and is an abandonment of their defence, as that defence can only be made on broad, manly, and justifiable grounds. As a political principle, it is just as true that the relations of debtor and creditor are unsuited to the institutions, and ought to be abolished.—Editor.