Plus ca change

 Mr Jonas Brown, a character in The MacDermots of Ballycloran, published in 1847, sounds so familiar:

 Jonas Brown was hated by the poor. In every case he would, if he had
the power, visit every fault committed by them with the severest
penalty awarded by the law. He was a stern, hard, cruel man, with
no sympathy for any one, and was actuated by the most superlative
contempt for the poor, from whom he drew his whole income. He was
a clever, clear-headed, avaricious man; and he knew that the only
means of keeping the peasantry in their present utterly helpless and
dependent state, was to deny them education, and to oppose every
scheme for their improvement and welfare. He dreaded every movement
which tended to teach them anything, and when he heard of landlords
reducing their rents, improving cabins, and building schools, he
would prophesy to his neighbour, Sir Michael, that the gentry would
soon begin to repent of their folly, when the rents they had reduced
were not paid, the cabins which they had made comfortable were filled
with ribbonmen, and when the poor had learnt in the schools to
disobey their masters and landlords. 

 --from page 263 of the Penguin edition of The MacDermots of Ballycloran

 though lifted here from the project gutenberg site.