Throughout the nineteenth century the urban worker made articulate the hatred for the “landed aristocrat” which perhaps his grandfather had nourished in secret: he liked to see the squire cast in villainous melodramas, and he preferred even a Board of Guardians to the charity of a Lady Bountiful: he felt that the landowner had no “right” to his wealth whereas, if only by foul means, the mill-owner had “earned” his.
