What are you to do, then? First,—the act which will be the foundation of all bettering and strength in your own lives, as in that of your tenants,—fix their rent; under legal assurance that it shall not be raised; and under moral assurance that, if you see they treat your land well, and are likely to leave it to you, if they die, raised in value, the said rent shall be diminished in proportion to the improvement; that is to say, providing they pay you the fixed rent during the time of lease, you are to leave to them the entire benefit of whatever increase they can give to the value of the land. Put the bargain in a simple instance. You lease them an orchard of crab-trees for so much a year; they leave you at the end of the lease, an orchard of golden pippins. Supposing they have paid you their rent regularly, you have no right to anything more than what you lent them—crab-trees, to wit. You must pay them for the better trees which by their good industry they give you back, or, which is the same thing, previously reduce their rent in proportion to the improvement in apples. “The exact contrary,” you observe, “of your present modes of proceeding.” Just so, gentlemen; and it is not improbable that the exact contrary in many other cases of your present modes of proceeding will be found by you, eventually, the proper one, and more than that, the necessary one. Then the second thing you have to do is to determine the income necessary for your own noble and peaceful country life; and setting that aside out of the rents, for a constant sum, to be habitually lived well within limits of, put your heart and strength into the right employment of the rest for the bettering of your estates, in ways which the farmers for their own advantage could not or would not; for the growth of more various plants; the cherishing, not killing, of beautiful living creatures—bird, beast, and fish; and the establishment of such schools of History, Natural History, and Art, as may enable your farmers’ children, with your own, to know the meaning of the words Beauty, Courtesy, Compassion, Gladness, and Religion. Which last word, primarily, (you have not always forgotten to teach this one truth, because it chanced to suit your ends, and even the teaching of this one truth has been beneficent;)—Religion, primarily, means ‘Obedience’—binding to something, or some one. To be bound, or in bonds, as apprentice; to be bound, or in bonds, by military oath; to be bound, or in bonds, as a servant to man; to be bound, or in bonds, under the yoke of God. These are all divinely instituted, eternally necessary, conditions of Religion; beautiful, inviolable captivity and submission of soul in life and death. This essential meaning of Religion it was your office mainly to teach,—each of you captain and king, leader and lawgiver, to his people;—vicegerents of your Captain, Christ. And now—you miserable jockeys and gamesters—you can’t get a