The road was beginning to be lined with vehicles carrying home the people who had collected to hear the lecture. As this was the first occasion which offered for witnessing such an exhibition since my return, I examined the different parties we passed, with a view to comparison. There is a certain air of rusticity, even in the large towns of America, which one does not meet with in the capitals of the old world. But the American country is less rustic than any part of the world with which I am acquainted, England alone excepted. Of course, in making such a remark, no allusion is intended to the immediate environs of very large towns; though I am far from certain that the population of St. Ouen, the Runnymede of France, and which stands within a league of the walls of Paris, would not have offered a more decidedly rustic spectacle than that which we then saw. As respects females, this was very strikingly true; scarce one being visible who had that air of coarseness, and ignorance, and vulgarity, which denotes a degraded condition and a life of hardships. There was little apparent that marked a peasantry in the moral sense of the word; but the whole population seemed to be at their ease, using neat and well-kept vehicles; solid, active horses; and being themselves reasonably well, though not very tastefully clad. Yet, all this was on a leased estate, under the dire oppression of a landlord, and beneath the shadow of aristocracy! A short dialogue which took place between my uncle and two sturdy weather-beaten husbandmen, who drove their horses to a short distance on a walk at the side of ours, made the impression produced by such facts deeper than it might otherwise have been. I will relate it.
"You are Jarmans, I b'lieve," commenced the oldest of the two men, a gray-headed tenant of my own, of the name of Holmes, who was well known to us both—"Jarmans, from the old countries, I hear?"
"Ja—we bees from der olt coontries; und dat is a great vay off."
"Ye-e-es, I s'pose it is—I've heern tell of them coontries, often. Does the landlord system exist there?"
"Ja—dere ist lantlordts all ofer dis worlt, I do dinks; und tenants, doo."
"Well, and how is the plan liked there; or be folks thinking of getting red (rid) on't?"
"Nein—how might dey gets red of it? It ist der law, you might see, and vhat ist der law moost be done."
This answer puzzled old Holmes a good deal. He passed a hand over his face, and turned to his companion, one Tubbs, also a tenant on my estate, as if to ask assistance. Tubbs was one of the new school; a school that makes more laws than it respects, and belongs to the movement. He is a man that fancies the world never knew anything of principles, facts, or tendencies, until the commencement of this century.
"What sort of a goverment had you, in your own country?" demanded Tubbs.
"Bretty goot. Mein coontry was Preussen; und dat might be t'ought a bretty goot gofernment."