shall have the privilege of converting his leasehold estate into a fee on which the debt is secured in the shape of mortgage, there is little left in the way of security to the affluent and unrepresented. They must unite their means to prevent destruction; and woe to that land which gives so plausible an excuse to the rich and intelligent for combining their means to overturn the liberties of a nation, as is to be found in abuses like those just named. We very well know that the idea is prevalent among us of the irresistible power of popular sway; but he has lived in vain who has seen the course of events in other nations for the last half century, and has not made the discovery that men in political matters become the servants of money as certainly and almost as actively as the spirits of the lamp were made to do the bidding of Aladdin. To us, it would seem that the future of this country holds out but three possible solutions of the tendencies of the present time--viz. the bayonet, a return to the true principles of the original government, or the sway of money. For the first it may be too soon; the pressure of society is scarcely sufficient to elevate a successful soldier to the height of despotism, though the ladder has been raised more than once against the citadel of the Constitution by adventurers of this character, through the folly and heedless impulses of the masses. Fifty years hence, and a condition of society will probably exist among us that would effectually have carried out the principle of despotic rule which is beginning to show itself in the bud amongst us, and which is nothing more than the shadowing out of coming events. {legislative body can be brought = the New York State legislature had enacted laws giving certain tenant farmers the right to purchase the land they occupied, thus ending one of the causes of the so-called "anti-rent wars" of the 1840s in upstate New York} Notwithstanding all these obvious tendencies and the manifest dangers that beset the real liberties of the country, we do not see that any material influence will be brought by them to bear upon the fortunes and ascendancy of the particular place of which we are writing. Even political despotism in this age would necessarily respect the ordinary rights of commerce, and quite probably the greater security that would be given to property, the increased dignity and authority of the courts of justice, and the visible control of a vigilant and efficient government might rather have a tendency to build up than to check the progress of the capital of any country.