a band of slaveholders under
another name. This has a harsh sound, and yet should not be offensive to any -
to even the noble himself - unless the fact itself be an offence: for the
statement simply formulates a fact. The repulsive feature of slavery is the
thing, not its name. One needs but to hear an aristocrat speak of the classes
that are below him to recognize - and in but indifferently modified measure -
the very air and tone of the actual slaveholder; and behind these are the
slaveholder's spirit, the slaveholder's blunted feeling. They are the result of
the same cause, in both cases: the possessor's old and inbred custom of
regarding himself as a superior being. The king's judgments wrought frequent
injustices, but it was merely the fault of his training, his natural and
unalterable sympathies. He was as unfitted for a judgeship as would be the
average mother for the position of milk-distributor to starving children in
famine-time; her own children would fare a shade better than the rest.
    One very curious case came before the king. A young girl, an orphan, who had
a considerable estate, married a fine young fellow who had nothing. The girl's
property was within a seignory held by the Church. The bishop of the diocese, an
arrogant scion of the great nobility, claimed the girl's estate, on the ground
that she had married privately, and thus had cheated the Church out of one of
its rights as lord of the seignory - the one heretofore referred to as le droit
du Seigneur. The penalty of refusal or avoidance was confiscation. The girl's
defence was, that the lordship of the seignory was vested in the bishop, and the
particular right here involved was not transferable, but must be exercised by
the lord himself or stand vacated; and that an older law, of the Church itself,
strictly barred the bishop from exercising it. It was a very odd case, indeed.
    It reminded me of something I had read in my youth about the ingenious way
in which the Aldermen of London raised the money that built the Mansion House. A
person who had not taken the Sacrament according to the Anglican rite, could not
stand as a candidate for sheriff of London. Thus Dissenters were ineligible;
they could not run if asked, they could not serve if elected. The Aldermen, who
without any question were Yankees in disguise, hit upon this neat device: they
passed a bye-law imposing a fine of £400 upon any one who should refuse to be a
candidate for