Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/187

 enriched themselves by a war, the most expensive in which their country had ever been engaged. The general who had conducted that war with consummate ability was on their side. Everything that had opposed them was prostrate in the dust; and the monarchical potentates of Europe were banded together in a Holy Alliance to establish them, as Strafford wrote to Charles the First, "in wealth, strength, and glory, far above any of their progenitors."

In this plenitude of power, the English, Scotch, and Irish landlords could find little more for their hearts to desire. Their palaces—for their old manor-houses were found too rude and too small