"Professes!" cried Squire Rollick,--"it is the prop of the land; and as
for those manufacturing fellows who have bought up the 'Mercury'--"

"Bought up the 'Mercury,' have they, the villains?" cried Uncle Jack,
interrupting the Squire, and now bursting into full scent. "Depend upon
it, sir, it is a part of a diabolical system of buying up,--which must
be exposed manfully. Yes, as I was saying, what is that agricultural
interest which they desire to ruin; which they declare to be so bloated;
which they call 'a Vampire!'--they the true blood-suckers, the venomous
millocrats? Fellow-creatures, Sir! I may well call distressed fellow-
creatures the members of that much-suffering class of which you yourself
are an ornament. What can be more deserving of our best efforts for
relief than a country gentleman like yourself, we'll say,--of a nominal
L5,000 a-year,--compelled to keep up an establishment, pay for his fox-
hounds, support the whole population by contributions to the poor-rates,
support the whole church by tithes; all justice, jails, and prosecutions
of the county-rates; all thoroughfares by the highway-rates; ground down
by mortgages, Jews, or jointures; having to provide for younger
children; enormous expenses for cutting his woods, manuring his model
farm, and fattening huge oxen till every pound of flesh costs him five
pounds sterling in oil-cake; and then the lawsuits necessary to protect
his rights,--plundered on all hands by poachers, sheep-stealers, dog-
stealers, churchwardens, overseers, gardeners, gamekeepers, and that
necessary rascal, his steward. If ever there was a distressed fellow-
creature in the world, it is a country gentleman with a great estate."

My father evidently thought this an exquisite piece of banter, for by
the corner of his mouth I saw that he chuckled inly.

Squire Rollick, who had interrupted the speech by sundry approving