Matthew Arnold, Civilization in the United States: First and Last Impressions of America.

[124] to do. If the price of wheat falls so low that his means of expenditure are greatly reduced, he tells you that if this lasts he cannot possibly go on as a country gentleman; and every wellbred person amongst us looks sympathizing and shocked. An American would say, “Why should he?” The conservative newspapers are fond of giving us, as an argument for the game laws, the plea that without them a country gentleman could not be induced to live on his estate. An American would say, “What does it matter?” Perhaps to an English ear this will sound brutal; but the point is that the American does not take his rich man so seriously as we do ours, does not make him into a grandee; the thing, if proposed to him, would strike him as an absurdity. I suspect that Mr. Winans himself, the American millionaire who adds deer-forest to deer-forest, and will not suffer a cottier to keep a pet lamb, regards his own performance as a colossal stroke of American humor, illustrating the absurdities of the British system of property and privilege. Ask Mr. Winans if he would promote the introduction of the British game laws into the United States, and he would tell you with a merry laugh that the idea is ridiculous, and that these British follies are for home consumption.