"You do not mean to say," replied his companion, who, by the way, had
witnessed the circumstances ten times for Fenton's once, "that such
an outrage upon the right of the subject, and such a contempt for the
administration of law and justice, could actually occur in a Christian
and civilized country?"

"I state to you a fact, sir," replied Fen-ton, "which I have witnessed
with my own eyes; but we have still stranger and worse usages in this
locality."

"What description of gentry and landed proprietors have you in the
neighborhood?"

"Hum! as to that, there are some good, more bad, and many indifferent,
among them. Their great fault in general is, that they are incapable of
sympathizing, as they ought, with their dependents. The pride of class,
and the influence of creed besides, are too frequently impediments, not
only to the progress of their own independence, but to the improvement
of their tenantry. Then, many of them employ servile, plausible, and
unprincipled agents, who, provided they wring the rent, by every species
of severity and oppression, out of the people, are considered by their
employers valuable and honest servants, faithfully devoted to their
interests; whilst the fact on the other side is, that the unfortunate
tenantry are every day so rapidly retrograding from prosperity, that
most of the neglected and oppressed who possess means to leave the
country emigrate to America."

"Why, Fenton, I did not think that you looked so deeply into the state
and condition of the country. Have you no good specimens of character in
or about the town itself?"

"Unquestionably, sir. Look out now from this window," he proceeded, and
he went to it as he spoke, accompanied by the stranger; "do you see,"
he added, "that unostentatious shop, with the name of James Trimble over
the door?"

"Certainly," replied the other, "I see it most distinctly."

"Well, sir, in that shop lives a man who is ten times a greater
benefactor to this town and neighborhood than is the honorable and right
reverend the lordly prelate, whose silent and untenanted palace stands
immediately behind us. In every position in which you find him, this
admirable but unassuming man is always the friend of the poor. When an
industrious family, who find that they cannot wring independence, by
hard and honest labor, out of the farms or other little tenements
which they hold, have resolved to seek it in a more prosperous country,
America, the first ma