Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/238

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230
Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.

whom she paid the rent always said he spoke to the college[1] which was the owner, but could not get them to do anything.

No repairs for thirty years! Corporations are said to have no souls. Here is an example—a proof indeed—of the truth of the saying. But though there are certain powers and rights which corporations have by law, I cannot find that they are entitled by law to have no souls—and no bowels of compassion. Stomachs they certainly have in fact, whether they have them in law or not. I therefore apprehend that this corporation cannot plead that they are entitled by law to feel no compassion for the sufferings which their tenants endure by reason of the entrances of the wind and the rain, the frost and the snow, through the "rents of ruin" which time has made in their hovels.

Whether their landlords were or were not entitled by law to plead that they had no souls, it seemed to go hard anyway with these poor people. For it did not appear that the advantages enjoyed by the other proprietor, the noble or most noble


  1. A college in one of the Universities which was the owner of this part of the parish with which this village was nearly co-extensive.