COUNTRY LIFE. 125 



thing that a man can desire after his first wants are 

 satisfied. 



There are certain privileges attached to landed pro- 

 perty. The wealthiest proprietor in a county is usually 

 lord-lieutenant, which, although more an honorary title 

 than anything else, invests its possessor with somewhat 

 of a regal consequence in the county ; the wealthiest 

 after the lord-lieutenant are justices of the peace. These 

 are the principal, and almost the only, administrators 

 of justice in the county, the representatives of public 

 authority. In France, public officers are almost all 

 strangers to the department where they are employed ; 

 they are bound by no ties to local interests. In Eng- 

 land, on the other hand, the landed proprietors are the 

 functionaries in their own district ; and although nomi- 

 nated by the Crown, they hold office from the fact alone 

 of their being proprietors. There is probably no instance 

 of a commission of justice of the peace being refused to 

 a wealthy and influential landed proprietor. 



It is easy to understand how such a system gives con- 

 sequence to a person residing on his own property. In 

 France, when a proprietor is ambitious of playing a part, 

 he must come away from his estates ; in England he 

 must remain upon them. Therefore everybody in that 

 commercial and manufacturing country desires to become 

 a landed proprietor : those who make fortunes buy land, 

 and those who strive for riches aspire only to follow the 

 same course. The rage in this respect goes so far, that 

 when a man has had the misfortune to be born in a 

 town, he tries to conceal it as much as possible. Every- 

 body would be born in the country, because a country 

 life is the mark of an aristocratic origin ; and when a 

 man happens not to have been born there, he wishes 

 at least to die there, that his children may inherit the 



