THE DISAPPEARING SQUIRE 



The young owner of those old lands <who has just been 

 our host) is one who will, we hope, keep up the traditions 

 so fast dying out, or being stamped out a little longer. He 

 is, as his grandfather was, the centre of his own people, 

 the shepherd of his flock. Not quite to the same extent, 

 perhaps : we do not suppose, for instance, that he is both 

 maker and depository of their wills, or that he is sum- 

 moned to every tenant's deathbed as was that kindly, 

 sturdy old Lancastrian his grandsire. 

 "Hurry, Jimmy, hurry !" the afflicted wife and mother 

 would say. " Run oop to the Hall and tell Squoire to 

 coom along quick, for feyther's at his last ! " 

 Neither would he undertake to mend the broken leg/ or 

 patch up the conjugal quarrel. But the young Squire will 

 still hear such a phrase as this at election time : " What we 

 wants to know is which way Squoire's voting ? Squoire's 

 man is the man for we ! " 



He will let his cottages at eighteen pence a week / and the 

 larger the family is the smaller will be the rent. And the 

 claims of the tenant will be attended to before his own. 

 He seems as much part of them as they are part of him. 

 Has anyone ever heard of a labourer on a large estate 

 being in destitution ? We never have. Our great land- 

 owners do more to provide for their own dependents and 

 keep down pauperism than any frantic legislator or whole- 

 sale philanthropist. But the system is to go/ we have 

 the best authority for it, the authority of those in power. 

 God help England and England's poor peasants, say we, 

 when they have their way ! 



We can speak with examples under our eyes. Every time 

 a bit of an estate is sold, hereabouts, the cottages thereon 



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