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 At the time he published that which I am about to quote (1783) he was the friend of Burke, and the domestic chaplain of the Duke of Rutland, so that no doubt these very lines were read with admiration in Belvoir Castle, and admitted to be only too true.

Speaking of the poor labourers as "the slaves that dig the golden ore," he says—

Bitter are the poor man's reflections as he thinks over his toilsome life:—

How could a man with such a passion for rural pursuits, a man all eyes and ears as Cobbett was, how could such a man not fail to see and to be deeply affected by so violent a contrast in the condition of his own countrymen, and that of the people he had been living amongst? Nor would his shrewd and penetrating intellect have been long before it sought to trace out the causes which had produced such a state of things. He soon came to the conclusion that the cause was simply this,—that England was ruled by a Oligarchy for its own benefit. Henceforth he waged as bitter