Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/239

 marquis, in the matter of soul, was attended by perceptible advantages to the poor cottagers. "He's a marquis indeed!" was the observation I heard on the spot. "He takes every thing out of it, and brings nothing into it. The Lord deliver us from such a marquis!"

I cannot say how the case might be in respect to any parish where this marquis might be resident. It is possible that he might be there as popular as he was unpopular here. The case is anyhow, at least, somewhat different where the proprietor is resident. It needs no very advanced stage in civilization for the preference of a flower-garden to a dunghill in front of one's house. It requires no very great amount of humanity to remove squalor, filth and extreme misery from under one's nose; to desire to see the cottages clustered round one's park gates, not merely neat and picturesque, but decently clean, commodious, and comfortable. A comparison of the cottages in certain localities near the owners' residences with those in certain other localities at a distance from such residences will occur to every one who has seen anything of the present state of England— at least, of its state some years ago. Sir John Falstaff declared that, when he was elevated to the peerage, he