Indeed, the absence of the landlord gave them necessarily, as matters were managed, an unlimited power over the people, and gratified that malignant vigilance which ever attends upon suspicion and conscious guilt.

Many of the tenants, for instance, when driven to the uttermost depths of distress and misery, have been desperate enough to appeal to the head landlords, and almost in every case the agent himself was enabled to show them their own letters, which the absentee had in the meantime transmitted to the identical party whose tyranny had occasioned them.
The appointment of Phil to the under agency was felt even more strongly than the removal of Mr.Hickman or Val's succession to that gentleman; for there was about honest Val something which the people could not absolutely despise.

His talents for business, however, prostituted as they were to such infamous purposes, only rendered him a greater scourge to the unhappy tenantry over whom he was placed.

As for Phil, he experienced at their hands that combined feeling of hatred and contempt with which we look upon a man who has every disposition to villany but not the ability to accomplish its purposes in a masterly manner.
Val's promotion to the Bench did not occasion so much surprise as might be supposed.

It is well known, that every such scoundrel, however he may disregard the opinions of the people whom he despises, leaves nothing undone that either meanness or ingenuity can accomplish to sustain a plausible character with the gentry of the neighborhood.