CHAINBEARER;

OR,

THE LITTLEPAGE MANUSCRIPTS.

EDITED BY THE

AUTHOR OF "SATANSTOE," "SPY," "PATHFINDER,”

སི་ཏ་

Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1845, by

J. FENIMORE COOPER,.

in the clerk's office of the District Court for the Northern District of New York.

STEREOTYPED BY J. FAGAN, PHILADELPHIA.

(2)

THE plot has thickened in the few short months that have intervened since the appearance of the first portion of our Manuscripts, and bloodshed has come to deepen the stain left on the country by the widespread and bold assertion of false principles. This must long since have been foreseen; and it is perhaps a subject of just felicitation, that the violence which has occurred was limited to the loss of a single life, when the chances were, and still are, that it will extend to civil war. That portions of the community have behaved nobly under this sudden outbreak of a lawless and unprincipled combination to rob, is undeniable, and ought to be dwelt on with gratitude and an honest pride; that the sense of right of much the larger portion of the country has been deeply wounded, is equally true; that justice has been aroused, and is at this moment speaking in tones of authority to the offenders, is beyond contradiction: but, while all this is admitted, and admitted not altogether without hope, yet are there grounds for fear, so reasonable and strong, that no writer who is faithful to the real interests of his country ought, for a single moment, to lose sight of them,

High authority, in one sense, or that of political power, has pronounced the tenure of a durable lease to be opposed to the spirit of the institutions! Yet these tenures existed when the institutions were formed, and one of the provisions of the institutions themselves guarantees the observance of the cove.