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TIME AND TIDE.

surplus still on the rents they pay after I have taken my five per cent., with which, if all goes well, they will eventually be able to buy twelve years of the lease from me. The freehold pays three per cent, with similar results in the comfort of the tenant. This is merely an example of what might be done by firm State action in such matters.

149. Next, of wholly unjustifiable rents. These are for things which are not, and which it is criminal to consider as, personal or exchangeable property. Bodies of men, land, water, and air, are the principal of these things.

Parenthetically, may I ask you to observe, that though a fearless defender of some forms of slavery, I am no defender of the slave trade. It is by a blundering confusion of ideas between governing men, and trading in men, and by consequent interference with the restraint, instead of only with the sale, that most of the great errors in action have been caused among the emancipation men. I am prepared, if the need be clear to my own mind, and if the power is in my hands, to throw men into prison, or any other captivity—to bind them