There is no road to wealth so easy and respectable as that of matrimony.

The line is a characteristically Trollopian piece of social satire: it treats marriage not as romance or moral vocation but as a socially sanctioned financial strategy. By calling matrimony the “easy and respectable” road to wealth, the speaker exposes how Victorian society could dignify economic self-advancement when it was pursued through the institution of marriage—especially for those without independent means. The wit depends on the tension between “respectable” (publicly approved) and the implied cynicism (private calculation). In Trollope’s fiction, such remarks often illuminate the marriage market’s pressures—inheritance, class mobility, and gendered constraints—while inviting readers to judge both the society that rewards such bargains and the individuals who exploit them.