the allegation has been strongly made that the whites, and not the Indians, were the first to violate the treaty; that the Indians entered Iturbide peacefully, and with good intentions; that they were kindly received, and were disposed to order and quiet, until Boquiro, at the head of a party of Campeachan troops, had, in the face of the treaty, and the remonstrances of the white inhabitants of the town, forcibly expelled them from the place. But this statement has always needed confirmation. It seems to stand directly opposed to the communication of Mr. Sierra, the representative of the government, to whose relation of facts the people of this country are bound to give credit. He has ever shown himself awake to the misfortunes of his people. He asked for arms, for ammunition, for help, in the sad hour of disaster, for his poor and suffering countrymen, unable to purchase the means of protection, and who were threatened with annihilation. The documents communicated to the Senate by the President, will fully exhibit all the essential facts in reference to the entire difficulties referred to, and truly explain everything in regard to the capitulation and its violation. As late as the 10th of May last, the Indians had penetrated far into the main settlements, and the whole range of country between Cilan and Cape Cotoeche, as also between Cotoeche and Bacalar, was under their arbitrary control. This march seemed to be followed, everywhere, with a succession of victories and triumphs. No intervention coming to the aid of the whites, their condition was for a time apparently most hopeless and deplorable. Some relief was, however, temporarily afforded through the energies of our naval commander, Commodore PERRY, who had been ordered to visit the coast of Yucatan for its protection. To the extent of his limited means, he went to their relief. By order of our energetic and devoted Secretary of the Navy, all arms and munitions of war were to be admitted free into the ports of the Peninsula, and the entire marine force at Alvarado were directed to Laguna, with instructions to repel any attack of the Indians should they attempt, with hostile intentions, to approach that point-but the equipment and force were not then considered sufficient to justify an advance into the interior of the country. The naval force of our gulf squadron had recently been too much weakened by the withdrawal of several of our vessels of war, to allow of that effective aid which in such an emergency was so desirable, and which the then crying wants and distresses of those houseless wanderers so loudly demanded. The lurking savage was then in his ambush, watching for his prey, with no strong arm to check his depredations.

The distracted inhabitants of the plains, hills and valleys, bewil dered and in despair, knew not whither to fly, or where to seek for

safety, and every mountain dell was made to resound with the shrieks of innocence. Scenes the most appalling on which the eye of humanity ever rested, marked the blood-stained track of Indian Pat wherever the whoop of his merciless banditti was heard. Some flew to the mountains, some to the sea shore, and some yet more hopeless, drifting far away upon the ocean wave, left all to God and his mercy for their deliverance. Hundreds and thousands of flying families from the interior, crowded into the cities and towns. along the coast, poor, penniless, and in absolute destitution, craving protection against the uplifted hand of the savage. Nearly ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND of these forlorn wretches sought an asylum from the wild fury of the storm in the city of Merida, whose bishops and clergy having been spared their lives, on the promise of instant flight, immediately threw open the spacious catholic convents of the capital for the protection of the starving fugitives. Here, though temporarily sheltered from the knife and the bayonet, the horrid spectre of pestilence and famine was before them. Crammed into promiscuous heaps, fathers and mothers, wives and children, huddled together in the then humbled capital of their country, while an unrestrained and unmitigated war of carnage and desolation raged around, what must have been their sensations! what but an abiding faith in the interposition of the Most High, and in that philanthropic spirit of the world, which seeks the relief of suffering and distress wherever found, could have dispelled the deep gloom of an hour so disastrous and threatening. The day of their entire destruction, it seems, had not yet come. As a people, they have at length the prospect of relief. We offered them a helping hand. We tendered them our aid and our protection, and before their full realization, a gleam of light broke in upon the oppressed. The star of hope is now upon their path, and at the latest intelligence, the Indians had, in various conflicts and battles, been successfully foiled and driven back. The tide seems to be changed, the current of events to be turned, and the hearts of many will unite in the prayer, that deliverance and permanent peace may be secured to Yucatan. J. A. B.

WASHINGTON, August, 1848.

TENURE OF LAND.

We have received an able and valuable article on this subject from a friend, who is particularly averse to all visionary schemes and disorganizing movements: so much so, that his views on another deeply absorbing subject, which were characterized as “frankly and eloquently expressed by the distinguished writer," were pub lished by a prominent journal, for the purpose of allaying popular feeling. Our business is mainly with facts, and we therefore make room for this communication, which is intrinsically valuable for its facts, and for its clear statement of results, derived from a comparison of nation with nation, and of the past with the present. We have been obliged, in consequence of the large amount of history and documents in this number, to divide the article, and will give the remainder in our next. The subject is divided into three parts-facts relating to the tenure of land in Europe and America; the tenure of land in Hindostan, Egypt, Palestine, and in ancient Greece, Rome, and Hispania; and, lastly, a comparison drawn and the subject discussed in accordance with the opinion expressed by Mr. Webster, when speaking of the subdivision of property, that "what is lost in individual wealth will be more than gained in numbers, in intelligence, and in sympathy of sentiment." To the Editor of the American Quarterly Register.

In your last number, at p. 28, you remarked that "it is still a mooted question in political economy, whether it is the wiser policy to multiply the number of landholders by subdividing real estate without limit, as is done in France, or to check such subdivisions by rights of primogeniture and other policy of law, so as to secure the advantage of larger farms, as in England." I have collected some facts and information bearing upon this subject, which may help to solve the important question stated by you, and cannot but prove interesting and instructive to your readers, however they may vary in the conclusions they arrive at. A. G. J.

ALBANY, August, 1848.

1. Tenure of Land in Europe.

My first inquiry will be into the condition of a people among whom the feudal system was never but partially introduced, the Scandinavians.

An eminent writer, in describing this remarkable race of men,

gives the following account of the early divisions of property among the Norwegians:

"At this period Norway was divided into a number of independent states, each under its chieftain or king; whose authority, however, was far from being unlimited, all public affairs being decided at the general assemblies of the freemen, who gave their assent to a measure, by striking their shields with their drawn swords. These freemen, or thengsmen, as they were called, were the landed proprietors of the country, and their sons and kindred. The tenure of land in Norway was then, as we believe it still continues to be, strictly allodial. The odalsman, or dominus allodialis, whether he held extensive domains or only a few acres, could not alienate the land. At his death it was equally divided amongst his children, or next of kin; and at a later and more civilized period, when legal right became better defined, any one who could establish his relationship with the original proprietor might evict a person who had acquired an estate once belonging to the family, without having any allodial claim to it.""*

"All odalsmen were regarded as freemen, and constituted a privileged class. Another class was that of the so-called unfree; under which negative denomination were included laborers, artizans, and others, who enjoyed personal freedom, but had no political rights; that is to say, were not thengsmen. They were, however, entitled to bear arms; and most of the opulent land-owners, or allodial lords, the real nobility of the country, had a number of them in their service as armed retainers. After these came the freedmen, or manumitted slaves; and, last of all, the slaves themselves, or thralls, to whom the law afforded no protection whatsoever. Their masters might dispose of them as they thought proper, and even kill them with impunity. These thralls were generally captives taken in war; who, if not ransomed by their friends, were sold in regular slave-markets."

"In 863, Harold Harfragar, having made himself master of the whole of Norway, became, in fact, king; and one of his first measures was to introduce a kind of feudal system. He accordingly made it known that all the allodial property in the country belonged to the crown, and that those who wished to retain possession of their estates would thenceforward have to pay a land-tax."

Throughout Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and Finland, the same system of landholding, substantially, prevails at the present day. A few nobles possess nearly all the land, and the peasantry are but

little better than slaves.

"In Iceland, a chieftain who had taken possession of a piece of land, and erected a temple, was called a godi, or hofgodi; and all

* Mallet's Northern Antiquities, p. 277.

to whom he had allotted land were bound to accompany him on his journeys, and to pay a tax for the support of the temple. We find these sacerdotal magistrates appearing at the public assemblies with a number of armed followers; not retainers, but odal-born freemen. When they went on their private affairs they were generally accompanied by their retainers and guests; and we rarely met with an instance of a godi or a wealthy landowner going out alone. The whole frame of society in Iceland was, in fact, essentially aristocratic. The laws only recognized four classes, as in Norwayfreemen, unfree, freedmen, and thralls; but among the freemen themselves a distinction was made between the godar, or pontiff chieftains, and the opulent landed proprietors called stormenn, or magistrates, who had also taken possession of extensive territories, and allotted land to their followers; and a still greater distinction. between these and the less wealthy freeholders, to whom, generally speaking, land had been allotted."

We need quote no authority to prove the condition of all the agricultural population of Russia, Esthonia, Lithuania, Livonia, Podolia, Volhynia, Poland, Gallicia, and indeed all that part of the world inhabited by the Sclavonian tribes. The owners of the soil constitute a privileged nobility. The cultivators of the land are all serfs, except perhaps a very few of the poorest landholders, who are not too proud to work, or who are too poor to be idle, or too independent to be the humble retainers of the great and rich,-the serfs are bought and sold with the land, and the value of an estate is estimated as much according to the number of serfs as acres. Throughout the whole of the vast region lying between the Baltic and Mediterranean seas, and extending eastward over the frozen realms of the Russian bear,† inhabited by the Sclavonian race, all the agricultural laborers, numbering probably 75,000,000 of human beings, are serfs, with the exception of the single principality of Wallachia, where the serfs were set free by a viceroy of the Sultan of Turkey, Constantine Mavrocordato.

A French author says:

"There are still in Europe vast countries, which have never acknowledged any other principle of succession than the allodial; and in which, consequently, the experiment of hereditary divisions has been going on for a long series of ages and generations; we refer to the nations of Sclavonian origin. In these countries the possession of lands was, in fact, exclusively reserved to the nobility; but as the sole restriction upon the equality of the rights attributed to

* Mallet's Northern Antiquities, p. 290.

†There are 40.000,000 of serfs in Great Russia-the largest slave population in the world-bought and sold with the soil. The peasantry held the free disposal of their persons until the reign of Boris, in 1598, who made a law by which the peasant became the slave of the noble and bound to the soil.