“Their pride must be pretty well humbled before they would accept of that kind of obligation. They had need go to church, in those days, to learn to bear the humiliation.” “Perhaps that is what they go to church for now, sir; for they are now taking much more from us than they would in the case I have mentioned. I don’t say they all do it knowingly,—nor half of them. There are many of our rich men who would be offended enough at being told, ‘Your eldest son’s bills at Eton were paid last year by contributions from three hedgers, and five brass-founders, and seven weavers, all of whom have families only half-fed.’ ‘Miss Isabella’s beautiful bay mare was bought for her by the knife-grinder, who has gone to bed supperless, and the work-woman who will have no fire next winter, and the thirty little children who are kept from school that Miss Isabella’s bay mare may be bought.’ O yes; there are many who are too proud to bear this being said to them, true though it be.” “They would call you a leveller, Kay, if they could hear you.” “Then I should beg leave to contradict them; for a leveller I am not.—I have no objection on earth to young gentlemen going to Eton, or young ladies riding bay mares, if these things are paid for by the natural rent which a free trade in corn would leave. If we have that free trade, and workpeople still go to bed supperless and sit up without fire, still let young gentlemen go to Eton, and young ladies ride bay mares. In that case, the landlords will be absolved, and the hardship must go to the account of imprudence in some other quarter. O, I am no leveller! Let the rich keep their estates, as long as they will let them find their own value in comparison with labour. It is the making and keeping up laws which make land of more and more value, and labour of less and less, that I complain of.” “But you did not really mean, Kay,” said a bystander, “that you would let off every man that has land from paying taxes? It is the most unfair thing I ever heard of.” “It is unfair enough, but much less unfair and ruinous than the present plan. It is better worth our while to pay the landowners’ taxes than to lose ten times the amount to enable the landowners to pay them; and that is what we are doing now.” “Ten times as much as the landlords pay in taxes?” “Yes,” replied Oliver. “We pay, as a nation, 12,500,000_l._ more for corn than we should pay if our ports were open to the world. Of this, not more than one-fifth goes into the pockets of the landowners, the rest being, for the most part, buried in poor soils. Now if the landlords pay one-half of this fifth in taxes, it is as much as their burden can be supposed to be. And now, which of you would not be glad to take his share of this one-tenth, to get rid of the other nine?” “Every one of us would go down on his knees to pray the landlords to permit us to pay their taxes, if we could but tell how to get at the gentlemen.”