Hardwicke Rawnsley he wrote to "The Times" protesting against Britain's high tax on the importation of French wine, which he saw as unfair and as contributing to rural poverty in France. To protect the countryside from damaging development, Rawnsley, building on an idea propounded by Ruskin, conceived of a National Trust that could buy and preserve places of natural beauty and historic interest for the nation. The Trust became a reality in 1895; its co-founders were Rawnsley, Octavia Hill and Sir Robert Hunter. Until his death, Rawnsley worked as Honorary Secretary to the Trust. He was responsible for the campaign to raise
The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists (1914) is a semi-biographical novel by the Irish writer Robert Tressell, published after his death from tuberculosis in 1911, about a house painter's efforts to find work in the fictional English town of Mugsborough (based on the coastal town of Hastings) to stave off the workhouse for himself and his daughter. An explicitly political work, it is widely regarded as a classic of working-class literature. The original title page carried the subtitle: "Being the story of twelve months in Hell, told by one of the damned, and written down by Robert Tressell." Robert Tressell