text:  They grudged the poor-rate before even when their own overseer paid it away to poor old lame Davy or blind Gwinny; but now that it reaches them by a more circuitous route and in the altered form of loaves or workhouse support they seem to lose sight of it and fancy that it stops _by the way_ in the pockets of these "strange" new middlemen as we may call them thrust in between the farmers and their poor and worn-out labourers