Mrs. Bawtrey has a small holding on lease at the inadequate rent of L8
a year. She asks L45 for its transfer, but she can't transfer the
lease without my consent; and I can get L12 a year as a moderate
rental from a large choice of competent tenants. It will better
answer me to pay her the L45 myself, which I have no doubt the
incoming tenant would pay me back, at least in part; and if he did
not, the additional rent would be good interest for my expenditure.
Now, you happen to take a sentimental interest, as you pass through
the village, in the loves of a needy cripple whose utmost industry has
but served to save himself from parish relief, and a giddy girl
without a sixpence, and you ask me to accept these very equivocal
tenants instead of substantial ones, and at a rent one-third less than
the market value. Suppose that I yielded to your request, what
becomes of my reputation for practical, business-like justice? I
shall have made an inroad into the system by which my whole estate is
managed, and have invited all manner of solicitations on the part of
friends and neighbours, which I could no longer consistently refuse,
having shown how easily I can be persuaded into compliance by a
stranger whom I may never see again. And are you sure, after all,
that, if you did prevail on me, you would do the individual good you
aim at? It is, no doubt, very pleasant to think one has made a young
couple happy. But if that young couple fail in keeping the little
shop to which you would transplant them (and nothing more likely:
peasants seldom become good shopkeepers), and find themselves, with a
family of children, dependent solely, not on the arm of a strong
labourer, but the ten fingers of a sickly cripple, who makes clever
baskets, for which there is but slight and precarious demand in the
neighbourhood, may you not have insured the misery of the couple you
wished to render happy?"