The Chainbearer: or, The Littlepage Manuscripts

"If matters proceed in the lively manner they have for the last ten years, you'll hear of it often. Hitherto, the rich of Europe have been in the habit of laying by a penny in America against an evil day, but the time will soon come, unless there is a great change, when the rich of America will return the compliment in kind. We are worse off than if we were in a state of nature, in many respects; having our hands tied by the responsibility that belongs to our position and means, while those who choose to assail us are under a mere nominal restraint. They make the magistrates, who are altogether in their interests; and they elect the sheriffs who are to see the laws executed. The theory is, that the people are sufficiently virtuous to perform all these duties well; but no provision has been made for the case in which the people themselves happen to go astray, en masse."

"We have our governors and masters at Albany, sir."

"Yes, we have our governors and servants at Albany, and there they are! There has not been the time, probably, since this infernal spirit first had its rise among us, that a clear, manly, energetic and well-principled proclamation alone, issued by the governor of this State, would not have aroused all the better feelings of the community and put this thing down; but, small as would have been that tribute to the right, it has never been paid, and, until we drop double-distilled patriots, and have recourse again to the old-fashioned, high-principled gentlemen for offices of mark, it never will be done. Heaven preserve me from extra-virtuous, patriotic, and enlightened citizens; no good ever comes of them."

"I believe the wisest way, sir, is to make up our minds that we have reached the point of reaction in the institutions, and be ready to submit to the worst. I keep the 'revolver' well primed, and hope to escape being burnt up at least."

After a little more such discourse, we parted and sought our pillows, and I can say that I never slept more soundly in my life. If I did lose my estate, it was what other men had suffered and survived, and why might not I as well as another? It is true, those other men were, in the main, the victims of what are called tyrants; but others, again, had certainly been wronged by the masses. Thousands have been impoverished in France, for instance, by the political confiscations of the multitude, and thousands enriched by ill-gotten gains, profiting by the calamities of those around them; and what has happened there might happen here. Big words ought to pass for nothing. No man was ever a whit more free because he was the whole time boasting of his liberty, and I was not now to learn that when numbers did inflict a wrong, it was always of the most intolerable character. Ordinarily, they were not much disposed to this species of crime; but men in masses were no more infallible than individuals. In this philosophic mood I slept.

I was awoke next morning by John's appearing at my bedside, after having opened the shutter of my window.

"I declare to you, Mr. Hugh," began this well-meaning, but sometimes officious servant, "I don't know what will come next at Ravensnest, now the evil spirit has got uppermost among the inhabitants!"

"Tut, tut, John – what you call the evil spirit is only the 'spirit of the institutions;' and is to be honored, instead of disliked."

"Well, sir, I don't know what they calls it, for they talks so much about the hinstitutions in this country, I never can find out what they would be at. There was a hinstitution near where I lived in my last place, at the West End, in Lun'on, and there they taught young masters to speak and write Latin and Greek. But hinstitutions in Hamerica must mean something, for them as doesn't know any more Latin than I do seems to be quite hintimate with these Hamerican hinstitutions. But, Mr. Hugh, would you, could you, believe the people committed parricide last night?"

"I am not at all surprised at it, for to me they have seemed to be bent on matricide for some time, calling the country their mother."

"It's hawful, sir – it's truly hawful, when a whole people commits such a crime as parricide! I know'd you would be shocked to hear it, Mr. Hugh, and so I just came in to let you know it."

"I am infinitely obliged to you for this attention, my good fellow, and shall be still more so when you tell me all about it."

"Yes, sir, most willingly; and most unwillingly, too. But there's no use in 'iding the fact; it's gone, Mr. Hugh!"

"What is gone, John? Speak out, my good fellow; I can bear it."

"The pew, sir – or, rather that beautiful canopy that covered it and made it look so much like the lord mayor's seat in Guildhall. I 'ave hadmired and honored that canopy, sir, as the most helegant hobject in this country, sir."

"So they have destroyed it at last, have they? Encouraged and sustained by an expression of public sentiment, as proclaimed in a meeting that had a chairman and secretary, they have actually cut it down, I suppose?"

"They have, sir; and a pretty job they've made of it. There it stands, up at Miller's, hover his pig-pen!"

This was not a very heroic termination of the career of the obnoxious canopy; but it was one that made me laugh heartily. John was a little offended at this levity, and he soon left me to finish my toilet myself. I dare say, many of the honest folk of Ravensnest would have been as much surprised as John himself, at the indifference I manifested at the fate of this dignified pew. But, certainly, so far as my own social elevation, or social depression, was concerned, I cared nothing about it. It left me just where I was – neither greater nor otherwise; and as for any monuments to let the world know who my predecessors had been, or who I was at that moment, the country itself, or the part of it in which we dwelt, was sufficient. Its history must be forgotten, or changed, before our position could be mistaken; though I dare say the time will come when some extremely sublimated friend of equality will wish to extinguish all the lights of the past, in order that there may not exist that very offensive distinction of one man's name being illustrated, while another man's name is not. The pride of family is justly deemed the most offensive of all pride, since a man may value himself on a possession to which he has not the smallest claim in the way of personal merit, while those of the highest personal claims are altogether deprived of an advantage, to the enjoyment of which ancestors alone have created the right. Now, the institutions, both in their letter and their spirit, do favor justice in this particular, as far as they can; though even they are obliged to sustain one of the most potent agents to such distinctions, by declaring, through the laws, that the child shall succeed to the estate of the father. When we shall get everything straight, and as it ought to be, in this progressive country, heaven only knows; for I find my tenants laying stress on the fact that their fathers have leased my lands for generations, while they are quite willing to forget that my fathers were the lessors all the while.

I found all four of the girls on the piazza, breathing the air of as balmy a summer morning as a bountiful nature ever bestowed. They had heard of the fate of the canopy, which affected them differently, and somewhat according to temperament. Henrietta Coldbrooke laughed at it violently, and in a way I did not like; your laughing young lady rarely having much beyond merriment in her. I make all allowance for youthful spirits, and a natural disposition to turn things into fun; but it was too much to laugh at this exploit of the anti-renters for quite half an hour together. I liked Anne Marston's manner of regarding it better. She smiled a good deal, and laughed just enough to show that she was not insensible to the effect of an absurdity; and then she looked as if she felt that a wrong had been done. As for Patt, she was quite indignant at the insult; nor was she very backward in letting her opinions be known. But Mary Warren's manner of viewing the affair pleased me best, as indeed was fast getting to be the fact with most of her notions and conceits. She manifested neither levity nor resentment. Once or twice, when a droll remark escaped Henrietta, she laughed a little; a very little, and involuntarily, as it might be – just enough to prove that there was fun in her – when she would make some sensible observation, to the effect that the evil temper that was up in the country was the true part of the transaction that deserved attention; and that she felt this as well as saw it. Nobody seemed to care for the canopy – not even my excellent grandmother, in whose youth the church had been built, when distinctions of this sort were more in accordance with the temper and habits of the times than they are to-day. I had been on the piazza just long enough to note this difference in the manner of the girls, when my grandmother joined us.

"Oh! grandmother, have you heard what those wretches of 'Injins,' as they are rightly named, have been doing with the canopy of the pew?" cried Patt, who had been at the bedside of our venerable parent and kissed her an hour before; "they have torn it down, and placed it over the pen of the pigs!"

A common laugh, in which Patt herself now joined, interrupted the answer for a moment, old Mrs. Littlepage herself manifesting a slight disposition to make one of the amused.

"I have heard it all, my dear," returned my grandmother, "and, on the whole, think the thing is well enough gotten rid of. I do not believe it would have done for Hugh to have had it taken down under a menace, while it is perhaps better that it should no longer stand."

"Were such things common in your youth, Mrs. Littlepage?" asked Mary Warren.

"Far from uncommon; though less so in country than in town churches. You will remember that we were but recently separated from England when St. Andrew's was built, and that most of the old colonial ideas prevailed among us. People in that day had very different notions of social station from those which now exist; and New York was, in a certain sense, one of the most, perhaps the most, aristocratic colony in the country. It was somewhat so under the Dutch, republicans as they were, with its patroons; but when the colony was transferred to the English, it became a royal colony at once, and English notions were introduced as a matter of course. In no other colony were there as many manors, perhaps; the slavery of the South introducing quite a different system there, while the policy of Penn and New England generally was more democratic. I apprehend, Roger, that we owe this anti-rent struggle, and particularly the feebleness with which it is resisted, to the difference of opinion that prevails among the people of New England, who have sent so many immigrants among us, and our own purely New York notions."

"You are quite right, my dear mother," answered my uncle, "though New Yorkers, by descent, are not wanting among the tenants to sustain the innovation. The last act either from direct cupidity, or to gain popularity with a set, whereas, as I view the matter, the first are influenced by the notions of the state of society from which either they themselves, or their parents, were directly derived. A very large proportion of the present population of New York is of New England origin. Perhaps one-third have this extraction, either as born there, or as the sons or grandsons of those who were. Now, in New England generally, great equality of condition exists, more especially when you rise above the lower classes; there being very few, out of the large trading towns, who would be deemed rich in New York, and scarcely such a thing as a large landholder at all. The relation of landlord and tenant, as connected with what we should term estates, is virtually unknown to New England; though Maine may afford some exceptions. This circumstance is owing to the peculiar origin of the people, and to the fact that emigration has so long carried off the surplus population; the bulk of those who remain being able to possess freeholds. There is a natural antipathy in men who have been educated in such a state of society to anything that seems to place others in positions they do not and cannot occupy themselves. Now, while the population of New York may be one-third, perhaps, of New England descent, and consequently more or less of New England notions, a much larger proportion of the lawyers, editors of newspapers, physicians, and active politicians, are of that class. We think little, and talk little of these circumstances; for no nation inquires into its moral influences, and what I may call its political statistics, less than the Americans; but they produce large consequences."

"Am I to understand you, sir, to say that anti-rentism is of New England origin?"

"Perhaps not. Its origin was probably more directly derived from the devil, who has tempted the tenants as he is known once to have tempted the Saviour. The outbreak was originally among the descendants of the Dutch, for they happened to be the tenants, and, as for the theories that have been broached, they savor more of the reaction of European abuses than of anything American at all; and least of all of anything from New England, where there is generally a great respect for the rights of property, and unusual reverence for the law. Still, I think we owe our greatest danger to the opinions and habits of those of New England descent among us."

"This seems a little paradoxical, uncle Ro, and I confess I should like to hear it explained."

"I will endeavor so to do, and in as few words as possible. The real danger is among those who influence legislation. Now, you will find hundreds of men among us who feel the vast importance of respecting contracts, who perceive much of the danger of anti-rentism, and who wish to see it defeated in its violent and most offensive forms, but who lean against the great landlords, on account of those secret jealousies which cause most men to dislike advantages in which they do not share, and who would gladly enough see all leases abolished, if it could be done without a too violent conflict with justice. When you talk with these men, they will make you the commonplace but unmeaning profession of wishing to see every husbandman the owner in fee of his farm, instead of a tenant, and that it is a hardship to pay rent, and quantities of such twaddle. Henry the Fourth, in a much better spirit, is said to have wished that each of his subjects had "une poule dans son pôt," but that wish did not put it there. So it is with this idle profession of wishing to see every American husbandman a freeholder. We all know such a state of society never did exist, and probably never will; and it is merely placing a vapid pretension to philanthropy in the foreground of a picture that should rigidly represent things as they are. For my part, I am one of those who do not believe that this or any other country would be any the better for dispensing with landlords and tenants."

"Mr. Littlepage!" exclaimed Mary Warren, "you surely do not mean that competency widely diffused is not better than wealth in a few hands and poverty in a great many!"

"No, I shall not go as far as that; but I do say, that what this country most wants just now is precisely the class that is connected with the independence of character and station, the leisure, with its attendant cultivation and refinement, and the principles as well as taste that are connected with all."

"Principles! Mr. Littlepage!" added my uncle's sweet interlocutor; "my father would hardly uphold that, though he agrees with you in so much of what you say."

"I do not know that. I repeat the word principles; for when you have a class of men who are removed from a large range of temptations, without being placed above public opinion, you get precisely those who are most likely to uphold that sort of secondary, but highly useful morals which are not directly derived from purely religious duties. Against the last I shall not say one word, as it comes from the grace, which is of the power of God, and is happily as accessible to the poor as to the rich, and more too; but, of men as they are, not one in a hundred regulates his life by a standard created under such impulses; and even when they do, the standard itself is, in some degree, qualified by the ordinary notions I apprehend. The Christian morality of an East Indian is not identical with that of a Puritan, or that of a man of highly cultivated mind with that of one who has enjoyed fewer advantages. There is one class of principles, embracing all those that are adverse to the littlenesses of daily practice, which is much the more extended among the liberal-minded and educated, and it is to that set of principles I refer. Now we want a due proportion of that class of men, as our society is getting to be organized; of those who are superior to meannesses."

"All this would be deemed atrociously aristocratic, were it told in Gath!" exclaimed Patt, laughing.

"It is atrociously common sense, notwithstanding," answered my uncle, who was not to be laughed out of anything he felt to be true; "and the facts will show it. New England early established a system of common schools, and no part of the world, perhaps, has a population that is better grounded in intelligence. This has been the case so long as to put the people of Connecticut and Massachusetts, for instance, as a whole, materially in advance of the people of any other State, New York included; although, by taking the system from our eastern brethren, we are now doing pretty well. Notwithstanding, who will say that New England is as far advanced, in many material things, as the Middle States. To begin with the kitchen – her best cookery is much below that of even the humbler classes of the true Middle States' families; take her language for another test, it is provincial and vulgar; and there is no exaggeration in saying that the laboring classes of the Middle States, if not of New England origin, use better English than thousands of educated men in New England itself. Both of these peculiarities, as I conceive, come from the fact that in one part of the country there has been a class to give a tone that does not exist in the other. The gentlemen of the larger towns in the East have an influence where they live, no doubt; but in the interior, as no one leads, all these matters are left to the common mind to get along with as well as it can."

"Aristocratic, sir – rank aristocracy!"

"If it be, has aristocracy, as you call it, which in this instance must only mean decided social position, no advantages? Is not even a wealthy idler of some use in a nation? He contributes his full share to the higher civilization that is connected with the tastes and refinements, and, in fact, he forms it. In Europe they will tell you that a court is necessary to such civilization; but facts contradict the theory. Social classes, no doubt, are; but they can exist independently of courts, as they can, have, do, and ever will in the face of democracy. Now, connect this class with the landed interest, and see how much your chances for material improvement are increased. Coke, of Norfolk, probably conferred more benefit on the husbandry of England than all the mere operatives that existed in his time. It is from such men, indeed, from their enterprise and their means, that nearly all the greater benefits come. The fine wool of America is mainly owing to Livingston's connection with land; and if you drive such men out of existence, you must drive the benefits they confer with them. A body of intelligent, well-educated, liberalized landlords, scattered through New York, would have more effect in advancing the highest interests of the community than all the 'small potato' lawyers and governors you can name in a twelvemonth. What is more, this is just the state of society in which to reap all the benefits of such a class, without the evils of a real aristocracy. They are and would be without any particular political power, and there is no danger of corn-laws and exclusive legislation for their benefit. Rich and poor we must have; and let any fair-minded man say whether he wish a state of things in which the first shall have no inducement to take an extended interest in real estate, and the last no chance to become agriculturists, except as hired laborers?"

"You do not mince matters, uncle Ro," put in Patt, "and will never go to Congress."

"That may be, my dear, but I shall retain my own self-respect by fair dealing. What I say I mean, while many who take the other side do not. I say, that in a country like this, in which land is so abundant as to render the evils of a general monopoly impossible, a landed gentry is precisely what is most needed for the higher order of civilization, including manners, tastes, and the minor principles, and is the very class which, if reasonably maintained and properly regarded, would do the most good at the least risk of any social caste known. They have always existed in New York, though with a lessening influence, and are the reason, in my judgment, why we are so much before New England in particular things, while certainly behind that quarter of the country in many others that are dependent on ordinary schooling."

"I like to hear a person maintain his opinion frankly and manfully," said my grandmother; "and this have you done, Roger, from boyhood. My own family, on my father's side, was from New England, and I subscribe to a great deal that you say; and particularly to the part that relates to the apathy of the public to this great wrong. It is now time, however, to go to the breakfast-table, as John has been bowing in the door yonder for the last minute or two."

To breakfast we went; and, notwithstanding incendiaries, anti-rentism, and canopies of pig-pens, a merry time we had of it. Henrietta Coldbrooke and Anne Marston never came out with more spirit, though in their several ways, than each did that morning. I believe I looked a little surprised, for I observed that my uncle stole occasional glances at me, that seemed to say, "There, my fine fellow, what do you think of that, now?" whenever either of his wards uttered anything that he fancied cleverer than common.

"Have you heard, ma'am," asked my uncle Ro of my grandmother, "that we are to have old Sus and Jaaf here at the Nest, shortly, and both in grand costume? It seems the red men are about to depart, and there is to be smoking of pipes and a great council, which the Trackless fancies will be more dignified if held in front of the house of his pale-face friends than if held at his own hut."

"How did you ascertain that, Roger?"

"I have been at the wigwam this morning, and have the fact directly from the Onondago, as well as from the interpreter, whom I met there. By the way, Hugh, we must shortly decide what is to be done with the prisoners, or we shall have writs of habeas corpus served on us, to know why we detain them."

"Is it possible, uncle Ro," for so his wards called him habitually – "to rescue a gentleman from the gallows by marrying him?" asked Henrietta Coldbrooke, demurely.

"That is so strange a question, that as a guardian I feel curious to hear its meaning."

"Tell – tell at once, Henrietta," said the other ward, urging her companion to speak. "I will save your blushes, and act as your interpreter. Miss Coldbrooke was honored by Mr. Seneca Newcome with this letter, within the last twenty-four hours; and, it being a family matter, I think it ought to be referred to a family council."

"Nay, Anne," said the blushing Henrietta, "this is hardly fair – nor am I sure that it would be quite lady-like in me to suffer that letter to be generally known —particularly known to you it certainly is already."

"Perhaps your reluctance to have it read does not extend to me, Henrietta?" said my uncle.

"Certainly not, sir; nor to my dear Mrs. Littlepage, nor to Martha – though I confess that I cannot see what interest Mr. Hugh can have in the subject. Here it is; take it and read it when you please."