The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1.: Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage ManuscriptsCooper, James Fenimore
History
The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1.: Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts
Cooper, James Fenimore
Indians of North America -- Fiction; New York (State) -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Fiction
among the other freeholders of the State. But we all know that as many
minute gradations in means must and do exist in a community, as there
exists gradations in characters. A majority soon will, in the nature of
things, be below the level of the freeholder, and by destroying the
system of having landlords and tenants, two great evils are created--the
one preventing men of large fortunes from investing in lands, as no man
will place his money where it will be insecure or profitless, thereby
cutting off real estate generally from the benefits that might be and
would be conferred by their capital, as well as cutting it off from the
benefits of the increased price which arise from having such buyers in
the market; and the other is, to prevent any man from being a husbandman
who has not the money necessary to purchase a farm. But they who want
farms _now_, and they who will want votes next November, do not look
quite so far ahead as that, while shouting "equal rights," they are, in
fact, for preventing the poor husbandman from being anything but a
day-labourer.
We obtained tolerably decent lodgings at our inn, though the profoundest
patriot America possesses, if he know anything of other countries, or of
the best materials of his own, cannot say much in favour of the sleeping
arrangements of an ordinary country inn. The same money and the same
trouble would render that which is now the very _beau ideal_ of
discomfort, at least tolerable, and in many instances good. But who is
to produce this reform? According to the opinions circulated among us,
the humblest hamlet we have has already attained the highest point of
civilization; and as for the people, without distinction of classes, it
is universally admitted that they are the best educated, the acutest,
and the most intelligent in Christendom;--no, I must correct myself;
they are all this, except when they are in the act of leasing lands, and
then the innocent and illiterate husbandmen are the victims of the arts
of designing landlords, the wretches![1]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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