Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/186

 CHAPTER IV.

THE LANDLORDS.

of us who, like the old man in the story-book, have "gone flying in the face of the Bible," where, according to that old man's dutiful and affectionate son "three score-and-ten's the mark; and no man with a conscience, and a proper sense of what's expected of him, has any business to live longer," can bring up strange memories of the days when George the Third was King and his son was Regent. In those days of the Regency the British landlords were glorious upon earth. Their power seemed as firmly established as that of Louis XIV. when the star of his prosperous fortune was in its blazing zenith. They had