Rural Rides

CONTENTS.

RURAL RIDES, ETC.

JOURNAL: FROM LONDON, THROUGH NEWBURY, TO BERGHCLERE, HURSTBOURN TARRANT, MARLBOROUGH, AND CIRENCESTER, TO GLOUCESTER.

Berghclere, near Newbury, Hants,
October 30, 1821, Tuesday (Evening).

Fog that you might cut with a knife all the way from London to Newbury. This fog does not wet things. It is rather a smoke than a fog. There are no two things in this world; and, were it not for fear of Six-Acts (the “wholesome restraint” of which I continually feel) I might be tempted to carry my comparison further; but, certainly, there are no two things in this world so dissimilar as an English and a Long Island autumn.—These fogs are certainly the white clouds that we sometimes see aloft. I was once upon the Hampshire Hills, going from Soberton Down to Petersfield, where the hills are high and steep, not very wide at their base, very irregular in their form and direction, and have, of course, deep and narrow valleys winding about between them. In one place that I had to pass, two of these valleys were cut asunder by a piece of hill that went across them and formed a sort of bridge from one long hill to another. A little before I came to this sort of bridge I saw a smoke flying across it; and, not knowing the way by experience, I said to the person who was with me, “there is the turnpike road (which we were expecting to come to); for, don’t you see the dust?” The day was very fine, the sun clear, and the weather dry. When we came to the pass, however, we found ourselves, not in dust, but in a fog. After getting over the pass, we looked down into the valleys, and there we saw the fog going along the valleys to the North, in detached parcels, that is to say, in clouds, and, as they came to the pass, they rose, went over it, then descended again, keeping constantly along just above the ground. And, to-day, the fog came by spells. It was sometimes thinner than at other times; and these changes were very sudden too. So that I am convinced that these fogs are dry clouds, such as those that I saw on the Hampshire Downs. Those did not wet me at all; nor do these fogs wet any thing; and I do not think that they are by any means injurious to health.—It is the fogs that rise out of swamps, and other places, full of putrid vegetable matter, that kill people. These are the fogs that sweep off the new settlers in the American Woods. I remember a valley in Pennsylvania, in a part called Wysihicken. In looking from a hill, over this valley, early in the morning, in November, it presented one of the most beautiful sights that my eyes ever beheld. It was a sea bordered with beautifully formed trees of endless variety of colours. As the hills formed the outsides of the sea, some of the trees showed only their tops; and, every now-and-then, a lofty tree growing in the sea itself raised its head above the apparent waters. Except the setting-sun sending his horizontal beams through all the variety of reds and yellows of the branches of the trees in Long Island, and giving, at the same time, a sort of silver cast to the verdure beneath them, I have never seen anything so beautiful as the foggy valley of the Wysihicken. But I was told that it was very fatal to the people; and that whole families were frequently swept off by the “fall-fever.”—Thus the smell has a great deal to do with health. There can be no doubt that Butchers and their wives fatten upon the smell of meat. And this accounts for the precept of my grandmother, who used to tell me to bite my bread and smell to my cheese; talk, much more wise than that of certain old grannies, who go about England crying up “the blessings” of paper-money, taxes, and national debts.

The fog prevented me from seeing much of the fields as I came along yesterday; but the fields of Swedish Turnips that I did see were good; pretty good; though not clean and neat like those in Norfolk. The farmers here, as every where else, complain most bitterly; but they hang on, like sailors to the masts or hull of a wreck. They read, you will observe, nothing but the country newspapers; they, of course, know nothing of the cause of their “bad times.” They hope “the times will mend.” If they quit business, they must sell their stock; and, having thought this worth so much money, they cannot endure the thought of selling for a third of the sum. Thus they hang on; thus the landlords will first turn the farmers’ pockets inside out; and then their turn comes. To finish the present farmers will not take long. There has been stout fight going on all this morning (it is now 9 o’clock) between the sun and the fog. I have backed the former, and he appears to have gained the day; for he is now shining most delightfully.

Came through a place called “a park” belonging to a Mr. Montague, who is now abroad; for the purpose, I suppose, of generously assisting to compensate the French people for what they lost by the entrance of the Holy Alliance Armies into their country. Of all the ridiculous things I ever saw in my life this place is the most ridiculous. The house looks like a sort of church, in somewhat of a gothic style of building, with crosses on the tops of different parts of the pile. There is a sort of swamp, at the foot of a wood, at no great distance from the front of the house. This swamp has been dug out in the middle to show the water to the eye; so that there is a sort of river, or chain of diminutive lakes, going down a little valley, about 500 yards long, the water proceeding from the soak of the higher ground on both sides. By the sides of these lakes there are little flower gardens, laid out in the Dutch manner; that is to say, cut out into all manner of superficial geometrical figures. Here is the grand en petit, or mock magnificence, more complete than I ever beheld it before. Here is a fountain, the basin of which is not four feet over, and the water spout not exceeding the pour from a tea-pot. Here is a bridge over a river of which a child four years old would clear the banks at a jump. I could not have trusted myself on the bridge for fear of the consequences to Mr. Montague; but I very conveniently stepped over the river, in imitation of the Colossus. In another part there was a lion’s mouth spouting out water into the lake, which was so much like the vomiting of a dog, that I could almost have pitied the poor Lion. In short, such fooleries I never before beheld; but what I disliked most was the apparent impiety of a part of these works of refined taste. I did not like the crosses on the dwelling house; but, in one of the gravel walks, we had to pass under a gothic arch, with a cross on the top of it, and in the point of the arch a niche for a saint or a virgin, the figure being gone through the lapse of centuries, and the pedestal only remaining as we so frequently see on the outsides of Cathedrals and of old Churches and Chapels. But, the good of it was, this gothic arch, disfigured by the hand of old Father Time, was composed of Scotch fir wood, as rotten as a pear; nailed together in such a way as to make the thing appear, from a distance, like the remnant of a ruin! I wonder how long this sickly, this childish, taste is to remain. I do not know who this gentleman is. I suppose he is some honest person from the ’Change or its neighbourhood; and that these gothic arches are to denote the antiquity of his origin! Not a bad plan; and, indeed, it is one that I once took the liberty to recommend to those Fundlords who retire to be country-’squires. But I never recommended the Crucifixes! To be sure, the Roman Catholic religion may, in England, be considered as a gentleman’s religion, it being the most ancient in the country; and therefore it is fortunate for a Fundlord when he happens (if he ever do happen) to be of that faith.

This gentleman may, for anything that I know, be a Catholic; in which case I applaud his piety and pity his taste. At the end of this scene of mock grandeur and mock antiquity I found something more rational; namely, some hare hounds, and, in half an hour after, we found, and I had the first hare-hunt that I had had since I wore a smock-frock! We killed our hare after good sport, and got to Berghclere in the evening to a nice farm-house in a dell, sheltered from every wind, and with plenty of good living; though with no gothic arches made of Scotch fir!

October 31. Wednesday.

A fine day. Too many hares here; but our hunting was not bad; or, at least, it was a great treat to me, who used, when a boy, to have my legs and thighs so often filled with thorns in running after the hounds, anticipating, with pretty great certainty, a “waling” of the back at night. We had greyhounds a part of the day; but the ground on the hills is so flinty, that I do not like the country for coursing. The dogs’ legs are presently cut to pieces.

Nov. 1. Thursday.

Mr. Budd has Swedish Turnips, Mangel-Wurzel, and Cabbages of various kinds, transplanted. All are very fine indeed. It is impossible to make more satisfactory experiments in transplanting than have been made here. But this is not a proper place to give a particular account of them. I went to see the best cultivated parts round Newbury; but I saw no spot with half the “feed” that I see here, upon a spot of similar extent.

Hurstbourn Tarrant, Hants,
Nov. 2. Friday.

This place is commonly called Uphusband, which is, I think, as decent a corruption of names as one would wish to meet with. However, Uphusband the people will have it, and Uphusband it shall be for me. I came from Berghclere this morning, and through the park of Lord Caernarvon, at Highclere. It is a fine season to look at woods. The oaks are still covered, the beeches in their best dress, the elms yet pretty green, and the beautiful ashes only beginning to turn off. This is, according to my fancy, the prettiest park that I have ever seen. A great variety of hill and dell. A good deal of water, and this, in one part, only wants the colours of American trees to make it look like a “creek;” for the water runs along at the foot of a steepish hill, thickly covered with trees, and the branches of the lowermost trees hang down into the water and hide the bank completely. I like this place better than Fonthill, Blenheim, Stowe, or any other gentleman’s grounds that I have seen. The house I did not care about, though it appears to be large enough to hold half a village. The trees are very good, and the woods would be handsomer if the larches and firs were burnt, for which only they are fit. The great beauty of the place is the lofty downs, as steep, in some places, as the roof of a house, which form a sort of boundary, in the form of a part of a crescent, to about a third part of the park, and then slope off and get more distant, for about half another third part. A part of these downs is covered with trees, chiefly beech, the colour of which, at this season, forms a most beautiful contrast with that of the down itself, which is so green and so smooth! From the vale in the park, along which we rode, we looked apparently almost perpendicularly up at the downs, where the trees have extended themselves by seed more in some places than others, and thereby formed numerous salient parts of various forms, and, of course, as many and as variously formed glades. These, which are always so beautiful in forests and parks, are peculiarly beautiful in this lofty situation and with verdure so smooth as that of these chalky downs. Our horses beat up a score or two of hares as we crossed the park; and, though we met with no gothic arches made of Scotch fir, we saw something a great deal better; namely, about forty cows, the most beautiful that I ever saw, as to colour at least. They appear to be of the Galway-breed. They are called, in this country, Lord Caernarvon’s breed. They have no horns, and their colour is a ground of white with black or red spots, these spots being from the size of a plate to that of a crown piece; and some of them have no small spots. These cattle were lying down together in the space of about an acre of ground: they were in excellent condition, and so fine a sight of the kind I never saw. Upon leaving the park, and coming over the hills to this pretty vale of Uphusband, I could not help calculating how long it might be before some Jew would begin to fix his eye upon Highclere, and talk of putting out the present owner, who, though a Whig, is one of the best of that set of politicians, and who acted a manly part in the case of our deeply injured and deeply lamented Queen. Perhaps his Lordship thinks that there is no fear of the Jews as to him. But does he think that his tenants can sell fat hogs at 7s. 6d. a score, and pay him more than a third of the rent that they have paid him while the debt was contracting? I know that such a man does not lose his estate at once; but, without rents, what is the estate? And that the Jews will receive the far greater part of his rents is certain, unless the interest of the Debt be reduced. Lord Caernarvon told a man, in 1820, that he did not like my politics. But what did he mean by my politics? I have no politics but such as he ought to like. I want to do away with that infernal system, which, after having beggared and pauperized the Labouring Classes, has now, according to the Report, made by the Ministers themselves to the House of Commons, plunged the owners of the land themselves into a state of distress, for which those Ministers themselves can hold out no remedy! To be sure, I labour most assiduously to destroy a system of distress and misery; but is that any reason why a Lord should dislike my politics? However, dislike or like them, to them, to those very politics, the Lords themselves must come at last. And that I should exult in this thought, and take little pains to disguise my exultation, can surprise nobody who reflects on what has passed within these last twelve years. If the Landlords be well; if things be going right with them; if they have fair prospects of happy days; then what need they care about me and my politics; but, if they find themselves in “distress,” and do not know how to get out of it; and, if they have been plunged into this distress by those who “dislike my politics;” is there not some reason for men of sense to hesitate a little before they condemn those politics? If no great change be wanted; if things could remain even; then men may, with some show of reason, say that I am disturbing that which ought to be let alone. But if things cannot remain as they are; if there must be a great change; is it not folly, and, indeed, is it not a species of idiotic perverseness, for men to set their faces, without rhyme or reason, against what is said as to this change by me, who have, for nearly twenty years, been warning the country of its danger, and foretelling that which has now come to pass and is coming to pass? However, I make no complaint on this score. People disliking my politics “neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg,” as Jefferson said by the writings of the Atheists. If they be pleased in disliking my politics, I am pleased in liking them; and so we are both enjoying ourselves. If the country wants no assistance from me, I am quite sure that I want none from it.

Nov. 3. Saturday.

Fat hogs have lately sold, in this village, at 7s. 6d. a score (but would hardly bring that now), that is to say, at 4½d. a pound. The hog is weighed whole, when killed and dressed. The head and feet are included; but so is the lard. Hogs fatted on peas or barley-meal may be called the very best meat that England contains. At Salisbury (only about 20 miles off) fat hogs sell for 5s. to 4s. 6d. a score. But, then, observe, these are dairy hogs, which are not nearly so good in quality as the corn-fed hogs. But I shall probably hear more about these prices as I get further towards the West. Some wheat has been sold at Newbury-market for 6l. a load (40 bushels); that is, at 3s. a bushel. A considerable part of the crop is wholly unfit for bread flour, and is not equal in value to good barley. In not a few instances the wheat has been carried into the gate, or yard, and thrown down to be made dung of. So that, if we were to take the average, it would not exceed, I am convinced, 5s. a bushel in this part of the country; and the average of all England would not, perhaps, exceed 4s. or 3s. 6d. a bushel. However, Lord Liverpool has got a bad harvest at last! That remedy has been applied! Somebody sent me some time ago that stupid newspaper, called the Morning Herald, in which its readers were reminded of my “false prophecies,” I having (as this paper said) foretold that wheat would be at two shillings a bushel before Christmas. These gentlemen of the “respectable part of the press” do not mind lying a little upon a pinch. [See Walter’s “Times” of Tuesday last, for the following: “Mr. Cobbett has thrown open the front of his house at Kensington, where he proposes to sell meat at a reduced price.”] What I said was this: that, if the crop were good and the harvest fine, and gold continued to be paid at the Bank, we should see wheat at four, not two, shillings a bushel before Christmas. Now, the crop was, in many parts, very much blighted, and the harvest was very bad indeed; and yet the average of England, including that which is destroyed, or not brought to market at all, will not exceed 4s. a bushel. A farmer told me, the other day, that he got so little offered for some of his wheat, that he was resolved not to take any more of it to market; but to give it to hogs. Therefore, in speaking of the price of wheat, you are to take in the unsold as well as the sold; that which fetches nothing as well as that which is sold at high price.—I see, in the Irish papers, which have overtaken me on my way, that the system is working the Agriculturasses in “the sister-kingdom” too! The following paragraph will show that the remedy of a bad harvest has not done our dear sister much good. “A very numerous meeting of the Kildare Farming Society met at Naas on the 24th inst., the Duke of Leinster in the Chair; Robert de la Touche, Esq., M.P., Vice-President. Nothing can more strongly prove the BADNESS OF THE TIMES, and very unfortunate state of the country, than the necessity in which the Society finds itself of discontinuing its premiums, from its present want of funds. The best members of the farming classes have got so much in arrear in their subscriptions that they have declined to appear or to dine with their neighbours, and general depression damps the spirit of the most industrious and hitherto prosperous cultivators.” You are mistaken, Pat; it is not the times any more than it is the stars. Bobadil, you know, imputed his beating to the planets: “planet-stricken, by the foot of Pharaoh!”—“No, Captain,” says Welldon, “indeed it was a stick.” It is not the times, dear Patrick: it is the government, who, having first contracted a great debt in depreciated money, are now compelling you to pay the interest at the rate of three for one. Whether this be right, or wrong, the Agriculturasses best know: it is much more their affair than it is mine; but, be you well assured, that they are only at the beginning of their sorrows. Ah! Patrick, whoever shall live only a few years will see a grand change in your state! Something a little more rational than “Catholic Emancipation” will take place, or I am the most deceived of all mankind. This Debt is your best, and, indeed, your only friend. It must, at last, give the THING a shake, such as it never had before.—The accounts which my country newspapers give of the failure of farmers are perfectly dismal. In many, many instances they have put an end to their existence, as the poor deluded creatures did who had been ruined by the South Sea Bubble! I cannot help feeling for these people, for whom my birth, education, taste, and habits give me so strong a partiality. Who can help feeling for their wives and children, hurled down headlong from affluence to misery in the space of a few months! Become all of a sudden the mockery of those whom they compelled, perhaps, to cringe before them! If the Labourers exult, one cannot say that it is unnatural. If Reason have her fair sway, I am exempted from all pain upon this occasion. I have done my best to prevent these calamities. Those farmers who have attended to me are safe while the storm rages. My endeavours to stop the evil in time cost me the earnings of twenty long years! I did not sink, no, nor bend, beneath the heavy and reiterated blows of the accursed system, which I have dealt back blow for blow; and, blessed be God, I now see it reel! It is staggering about like a sheep with water in the head: turning its pate up on one side: seeming to listen, but has no hearing: seeming to look, but has no sight: one day it capers and dances: the next it mopes and seems ready to die.

Nov. 4. Sunday.

This, to my fancy, is a very nice country. It is continual hill and dell. Now and then a chain of hills higher than the rest, and these are downs, or woods. To stand upon any of the hills and look around you, you almost think you see the ups and downs of sea in a heavy swell (as the sailors call it) after what they call a gale of wind. The undulations are endless, and the great variety in the height, breadth, length, and form of the little hills, has a very delightful effect.—The soil, which, to look on it, appears to be more than half flint stones, is very good in quality, and, in general, better on the tops of the lesser hills than in the valleys. It has great tenacity; does not wash away like sand, or light loam. It is a stiff, tenacious loam, mixed with flint stones. Bears Saint-foin well, and all sorts of grass, which make the fields on the hills as green as meadows, even at this season; and the grass does not burn up in summer.—In a country so full of hills one would expect endless runs of water and springs. There are none: absolutely none. No water-furrow is ever made in the land. No ditches round the fields. And, even in the deep valleys, such as that in which this village is situated, though it winds round for ten or fifteen miles, there is no run of water even now. There is the bed of a brook, which will run before spring, and it continues running with more or less water for about half the year, though, some years, it never runs at all. It rained all Friday night; pretty nearly all day yesterday; and to-day the ground is as dry as a bone, except just along the street of the village, which has been kept in a sort of stabble by the flocks of sheep passing along to and from Appleshaw fair. In the deep and long and narrow valleys, such as this, there are meadows with very fine herbage and very productive. The grass very fine and excellent in its quality. It is very curious that the soil is much shallower in the vales than on the hills. In the vales it is a sort of hazle-mould on a bed of something approaching to gravel; but on the hills it is stiff loam, with apparently half flints, on a bed of something like clay first (reddish, not yellow), and then comes the chalk, which they often take up by digging a sort of wells; and then they spread it on the surface, as they do the clay in some countries, where they sometimes fetch it many miles and at an immense expense. It was very common, near Botley, to chalk land at an expense of sixteen pounds an acre.——The land here is excellent in quality generally, unless you get upon the highest chains of hills. They have frequently 40 bushels of wheat to the acre. Their barley is very fine; and their Saint-foin abundant. The turnips are, in general, very good at this time; and the land appears as capable of carrying fine crops of them as any land that I have seen. A fine country for sheep: always dry: they never injure the land when feeding off turnips in wet weather; and they can lie down on the dry; for the ground is, in fact, never wet except while the rain is actually falling. Sometimes, in spring-thaws and thunder-showers, the rain runs down the hills in torrents; but is gone directly. The flocks of sheep, some in fold and some at large, feeding on the sides of the hills, give great additional beauty to the scenery.—The woods, which consist chiefly of oak thinly intermixed with ash, and well set with underwood of ash and hazle, but mostly the latter, are very beautiful. They sometimes stretch along the top and sides of hills for miles together; and as their edges, or outsides, joining the fields and the downs, go winding and twisting about, and as the fields and downs are naked of trees, the sight altogether is very pretty.—The trees in the deep and long valleys, especially the Elm and the Ash, are very fine and very lofty; and from distance to distance, the Rooks have made them their habitation. This sort of country, which, in irregular shape, is of great extent, has many and great advantages. Dry under foot. Good roads, winter as well as summer, and little, very little, expense. Saint-foin flourishes. Fences cost little. Wood, hurdles, and hedging-stuff cheap. No shade in wet harvests. The water in the wells excellent. Good sporting country, except for coursing, and too many flints for that.—What becomes of all the water? There is a spring in one of the cross valleys that runs into this, having a basin about thirty feet over, and about eight feet deep, which, they say, sends up water once in about 30 or 40 years; and boils up so as to make a large current of water.—Not far from Uphusband the Wansdike (I think it is called) crosses the country. Sir Richard Colt Hoare has written a great deal about this ancient boundary, which is, indeed, something very curious. In the ploughed fields the traces of it are quite gone; but they remain in the woods as well as on the downs.

Nov. 5. Monday.

A white frost this morning. The hills round about beautiful at sun-rise, the rooks making that noise which they always make in winter mornings. The Starlings are come in large flocks; and, which is deemed a sign of a hard winter, the Fieldfares are come at an early season. The haws are very abundant; which, they say, is another sign of a hard winter. The wheat is high enough here, in some fields, “to hide a hare,” which is, indeed, not saying much for it, as a hare knows how to hide herself upon the bare ground. But it is, in some fields, four inches high, and is green and gay, the colour being finer than that of any grass.—The fuel here is wood. Little coal is brought from Andover. A load of fagots does not cost above 10s. So that, in this respect, the labourers are pretty well off. The wages here and in Berkshire, about 8s. a week; but the farmers talk of lowering them.—The poor-rates heavy, and heavy they must be, till taxes and rents come down greatly.—Saturday, and to-day Appleshaw sheep-fair. The sheep, which had taken a rise at Weyhill fair, have fallen again even below the Norfolk and Sussex mark. Some Southdown Lambs were sold at Appleshaw so low as 8s. and some even lower. Some Dorsetshire Ewes brought no more than a pound; and, perhaps, the average did not exceed 28s. I have seen a farmer here who can get (or could a few days ago) 28s. round for a lot of fat Southdown Wethers, which cost him just that money, when they were lambs, two years ago! It is impossible that they can have cost him less than 24s. each during the two years, having to be fed on turnips or hay in winter, and to be fatted on good grass. Here (upon one hundred sheep) is a loss of 120l. and 14l. in addition at five per cent. interest on the sum expended in the purchase; even suppose not a sheep has been lost by death or otherwise.—I mentioned before, I believe, that fat hogs are sold at Salisbury at from 5s. to 4s. 6d. the score pounds, dead weight.—Cheese has come down in the same proportion. A correspondent informs me that one hundred and fifty Welsh Sheep were, on the 18th of October, offered for 4s. 6d, a head, and that they went away unsold! The skin was worth a shilling of the money! The following I take from the Tyne Mercury of the 30th of October. “Last week, at Northawton fair, Mr. Thomas Cooper, of Bow, purchased three milch cows and forty sheep, for 18l. 16s. 6d.!” The skins, four years ago, would have sold for more than the money. The Hampshire Journal says that, on 1 November (Thursday) at Newbury Market, wheat sold from 88s. to 24s. the Quarter. This would make an average of 56s. But very little indeed was sold at 88s., only the prime of the old wheat. The best of the new for about 48s., and then, if we take into view the great proportion that cannot go to market at all, we shall not find the average, even in this rather dear part of England, to exceed 32s., or 4s. a bushel. And if we take all England through, it does not come up to that, nor anything like it. A farmer very sensibly observed to me yesterday that “if we had had such a crop and such a harvest a few years ago, good wheat would have been 50l. a load;” that is to say, 25s. a bushel! Nothing can be truer than this. And nothing can be clearer than that the present race of farmers, generally speaking, must be swept away by bankruptcy, if they do not, in time, make their bow, and retire. There are two descriptions of farmers, very distinct as to the effects which this change must naturally have on them. The word farmer comes from the French, fermier, and signifies renter. Those only who rent, therefore, are, properly speaking, farmers. Those who till their own land are yeomen; and when I was a boy it was the common practice to call the former farmers and the latter yeoman-farmers. These yeomen have, for the greater part, been swallowed up by the paper-system which has drawn such masses of money together. They have, by degrees, been bought out. Still there are some few left; and these, if not in debt, will stand their ground. But all the present race of mere renters must give way, in one manner or another. They must break, or drop their style greatly; even in the latter case, their rent must, very shortly, be diminished more than two-thirds. Then comes the Landlord’s turn; and the sooner the better.—In the Maidstone Gazette I find the following: “Prime beef was sold in Salisbury market, on Tuesday last, at 4d. per lb., and good joints of mutton at 3½d.; butter 11d. and 12d. per lb.—In the West of Cornwall, during the summer, pork has often been sold at 2½d. per lb.”—This is very true; and what can be better? How can Peel’s Bill work in a more delightful manner? What nice “general working of events!” The country rag-merchants have now very little to do. They have no discounts. What they have out they owe: it is so much debt: and, of course, they become poorer and poorer, because they must, like a mortgager, have more and more to pay as prices fall. This is very good; for it will make them disgorge a part, at least, of what they have swallowed, during the years of high prices and depreciation. They are worked in this sort of way: the Tax-Collectors, the Excise-fellows, for instance, hold their sittings every six weeks, in certain towns about the country. They will receive the country rags, if the rag man can find, and will give, security for the due payment of his rags, when they arrive in London. For want of such security, or of some formality of the kind, there was a great bustle in a town in this county not many days ago. The Excise-fellow demanded sovereigns, or Bank of England notes. Precisely how the matter was finally settled I know not; but the reader will see that the Exciseman was only taking a proper precaution; for if the rags were not paid in London, the loss was his.

Marlborough,
Tuesday noon, Nov. 6.

I left Uphusband this morning at 9, and came across to this place (20 miles) in a post-chaise. Came up the valley of Uphusband, which ends at about 6 miles from the village, and puts one out upon the Wiltshire Downs, which stretch away towards the West and South-west, towards Devizes and towards Salisbury. After about half a mile of down we came down into a level country; the flints cease, and the chalk comes nearer the top of the ground. The labourers along here seem very poor indeed. Farmhouses with twenty ricks round each, besides those standing in the fields; pieces of wheat 50, 60, or 100 acres in a piece; but a group of women labourers, who were attending the measurers to measure their reaping work, presented such an assemblage of rags as I never before saw even amongst the hoppers at Farnham, many of whom are common beggars. I never before saw country people, and reapers too, observe, so miserable in appearance as these. There were some very pretty girls, but ragged as colts and as pale as ashes. The day was cold too, and frost hardly off the ground; and their blue arms and lips would have made any heart ache but that of a seat-seller or a loan-jobber. A little after passing by these poor things, whom I left, cursing, as I went, those who had brought them to this state, I came to a group of shabby houses upon a hill. While the boy was watering his horses, I asked the ostler the name of the place; and, as the old women say, “you might have knocked me down with a feather,” when he said, “Great Bedwin.” The whole of the houses are not intrinsically worth a thousand pounds. There stood a thing out in the middle of the place, about 25 feet long and 15 wide, being a room stuck up on unhewed stone pillars about 10 feet high. It was the Town Hall, where the ceremony of choosing the two Members is performed. “This place sends Members to Parliament, don’t it?” said I to the ostler. “Yes, Sir.” “Who are Members now?” “I don’t know, indeed, Sir.”—I have not read the Henriade of Voltaire for these 30 years; but in ruminating upon the ostler’s answer, and in thinking how the world, yes, the whole world, has been deceived as to this matter, two lines of that poem came across my memory:

Représentans du peuple, les Grands et le Roi:
Spectacle magnifique! Source sacrée des lois![1]

The Frenchman, for want of understanding the THING as well as I do, left the eulogium incomplete. I therefore here add four lines, which I request those who publish future editions of the Henriade to insert in continuation of the above eulogium of Voltaire.

Représentans du peuple, que celui-ci ignore,
Sont fait à miracle pour garder son Or!
Peuple trop heureux, que le bonheur inonde!
L’envie de vos voisins, admiré du monde![2]

The first line was suggested by the ostler; the last by the words which we so very often hear from the bar, the bench, the seats, the pulpit, and the throne. Doubtless my poetry is not equal to that of Voltaire; but my rhyme is as good as his, and my reason is a great deal better.—In quitting this villanous place we see the extensive and uncommonly ugly park and domain of Lord Aylesbury, who seems to have tacked park on to park, like so many outworks of a fortified city. I suppose here are 50 or 100 farms of former days swallowed up. They have been bought, I dare say, from time to time; and it would be a labour very well worthy of reward by the public, to trace to its source the money by which these immense domains, in different parts of the country, have been formed!—Marlborough, which is an ill-looking place enough, is succeeded, on my road to Swindon, by an extensive and very beautiful down about 4 miles over. Here nature has flung the earth about in a great variety of shapes. The fine short smooth grass has about 9 inches of mould under it, and then comes the chalk. The water that runs down the narrow side-hill valleys is caught, in different parts of the down, in basins made on purpose, and lined with clay apparently. This is for watering the sheep in summer; sure sign of a really dry soil; and yet the grass never parches upon these downs. The chalk holds the moisture, and the grass is fed by the dews in hot and dry weather.—At the end of this down the high-country ends. The hill is high and steep, and from it you look immediately down into a level farming country; a little further on into the dairy-country, whence the North-Wilts cheese comes; and, beyond that, into the vale of Berkshire, and even to Oxford, which lies away to the North-east from this hill.—The land continues good, flat and rather wet to Swindon, which is a plain country town, built of the stone which is found at about 6 feet under ground about here.—I come on now towards Cirencester, thro’ the dairy county of North Wilts.

Cirencester,
Wednesday (Noon), 7 Nov.

I slept at a Dairy-farm house at Hannington, about eight miles from Swindon, and five on one side of my road. I passed through that villanous hole, Cricklade, about two hours ago; and, certainly, a more rascally looking place I never set my eyes on. I wished to avoid it, but could get along no other way. All along here the land is a whitish stiff loam upon a bed of soft stone, which is found at various distances from the surface, sometimes two feet and sometimes ten. Here and there a field is fenced with this stone, laid together in walls without mortar or earth. All the houses and out-houses are made of it, and even covered with the thinnest of it formed into tiles. The stiles in the fields are made of large flags of this stone, and the gaps in the hedges are stopped with them.—There is very little wood all along here. The labourers seem miserably poor. Their dwellings are little better than pig-beds, and their looks indicate that their food is not nearly equal to that of a pig. Their wretched hovels are stuck upon little bits of ground on the road side, where the space has been wider than the road demanded. In many places they have not two rods to a hovel. It seems as if they had been swept off the fields by a hurricane, and had dropped and found shelter under the banks on the road side! Yesterday morning was a sharp frost; and this had set the poor creatures to digging up their little plats of potatoes. In my whole life I never saw human wretchedness equal to this: no, not even amongst the free negroes in America, who, on an average, do not work one day out of four. And this is “prosperity,” is it? These, Oh, Pitt! are the fruits of thy hellish system! However, this Wiltshire is a horrible county. This is the county that the Gallon-loaf man belongs to. The land all along here is good. Fine fields and pastures all around; and yet the cultivators of those fields so miserable! This is particularly the case on both sides of Cricklade, and in it too, where everything had the air of the most deplorable want.—They are sowing wheat all the way from the Wiltshire downs to Cirencester; though there is some wheat up. Winter-Vetches are up in some places, and look very well.—The turnips of both kinds are good all along here.—I met a farmer going with porkers to Highworth market. They would weigh, he said, four score and a half, and he expected to get 7s. 6d. a score. I expect he will not. He said they had been fed on barley-meal; but I did not believe him. I put it to his honour whether whey and beans had not been their food. He looked surly, and pushed on.—On this stiff ground they grow a good many beans, and give them to the pigs with whey; which makes excellent pork for the Londoners; but which must meet with a pretty hungry stomach to swallow it in Hampshire. The hogs, all the way that I have come, from Buckinghamshire, are, without a single exception that I have seen, the old-fashioned black-spotted hogs. Mr. Blount at Uphusband has one, which now weighs about thirty score, and will possibly weigh forty, for she moves about very easily yet. This is the weight of a good ox; and yet, what a little thing it is compared to an ox! Between Cricklade and this place (Cirencester) I met, in separate droves, about two thousand Welsh Cattle, on their way from Pembrokeshire to the fairs in Sussex. The greater part of them were heifers in calf. They were purchased in Wales at from 3l. to 4l. 10s. each! None of them, the drovers told me, reached 5l. These heifers used to fetch, at home, from 6l. to 8l., and sometimes more. Many of the things that I saw in these droves did not fetch, in Wales, 25s. And they go to no rising market! Now, is there a man in his senses who believes that this THING can go on in the present way? However, a fine thing, indeed, is this fall of prices! My “cottager” will easily get his cow, and a young cow too, for less than the 5l. that I talked of. These Welsh heifers will calve about May; and they are just the very thing for a cottager.

Gloucester,
Thursday (morning), Nov. 8.

In leaving Cirencester, which is a pretty large town, a pretty nice town, and which the people call Cititer, I came up hill into a country, apparently formerly a down or common, but now divided into large fields by stone walls. Anything so ugly I have never seen before. The stone, which, on the other side of Cirencester, lay a good way under ground, here lies very near to the surface. The plough is continually bringing it up, and thus, in general, come the means of making the walls that serve as fences. Anything quite so cheerless as this I do not recollect to have seen; for the Bagshot country, and the commons between Farnham and Haslemere, have heath at any rate; but these stones are quite abominable. The turnips are not a fiftieth of a crop like those of Mr. Clarke at Bergh-Apton in Norfolk, or Mr. Pym at Reigate in Surrey, or of Mr. Brazier at Worth in Sussex. I see thirty acres here that have less food upon them than I saw the other day upon half an acre at Mr. Budd’s at Berghclere. Can it be good farming to plough and sow and hoe thirty acres to get what may be got upon half an acre? Can that half acre cost more than a tenth part as much as the thirty acres? But if I were to go to this thirty-acre farmer, and tell him what to do to the half acre, would he not exclaim with the farmer at Botley: “What! drow away all that ’ere ground between the lains! Jod’s blood!”—With the exception of a little dell about eight miles from Cititer, this miserable country continued to the distance of ten miles, when, all of a sudden, I looked down from the top of a high hill into the vale of Gloucester! Never was there, surely, such a contrast in this world! This hill is called Burlip Hill; it is much about a mile down it, and the descent so steep as to require the wheel of the chaise to be locked; and even with that precaution, I did not think it over and above safe to sit in the chaise; so, upon Sir Robert Wilson’s principle of taking care of Number One, I got out and walked down. From this hill you see the Morvan Hills in Wales. You look down into a sort of dish with a flat bottom, the Hills are the sides of the dish, and the City of Gloucester, which you plainly see, at seven miles distance from Burlip Hill, appears to be not far from the centre of the dish. All here is fine; fine farms; fine pastures; all enclosed fields; all divided by hedges; orchards a plenty; and I had scarcely seen one apple since I left Berkshire.—Gloucester is a fine, clean, beautiful place; and, which is of a vast deal more importance, the labourers’ dwellings, as I came along, looked good, and the labourers themselves pretty well as to dress and healthiness. The girls at work in the fields (always my standard) are not in rags, with bits of shoes tied on their feet and rags tied round their ankles, as they had in Wiltshire.

JOURNAL: FROM GLOUCESTER, TO BOLLITREE IN HEREFORDSHIRE, ROSS, HEREFORD, ABINGDON, OXFORD, CHELTENHAM, BERGHCLERE, WHITCHURCH, UPHURSTBOURN, AND THENCE TO KENSINGTON.

Bollitree Castle, Herefordshire,
Friday, 9 Nov. 1821.

I got to this beautiful place (Mr. William Palmer’s) yesterday, from Gloucester. This is in the parish of Weston, two miles on the Gloucester side of Ross, and, if not the first, nearly the first, parish in Herefordshire upon leaving Gloucester to go on through Ross to Hereford.—On quitting Gloucester I crossed the Severne, which had overflowed its banks and covered the meadows with water.—The soil good but stiff. The coppices and woods very much like those upon the clays in the South of Hampshire and in Sussex; but the land better for corn and grass. The goodness of the land is shown by the apple-trees, and by the sort of sheep and cattle fed here. The sheep are a cross between the Ryland and Leicester, and the cattle of the Herefordshire kind. These would starve in the pastures of any part of Hampshire or Sussex that I have ever seen.—At about seven miles from Gloucester I came to hills, and the land changed from the whitish soil, which I had hitherto seen, to a red brown, with layers of flat stone of a reddish cast under it. Thus it continued to Bollitree. The trees of all kinds are very fine on the hills as well as in the bottoms.—The spot where I now am is peculiarly well situated in all respects. The land very rich, the pastures the finest I ever saw, the trees of all kinds surpassing upon an average any that I have before seen in England. From the house, you see, in front and winding round to the left, a lofty hill, called Penyard Hill, at about a mile and a half distance, covered with oaks of the finest growth: along at the foot of this wood are fields and orchards continuing the slope of the hill down for a considerable distance, and, as the ground lies in a sort of ridges from the wood to the foot of the slope, the hill-and-dell is very beautiful. One of these dells with the two adjoining sides of hills is an orchard belonging to Mr. Palmer, and the trees, the ground, and everything belonging to it, put me in mind of the most beautiful of the spots in the North of Long Island. Sheltered by a lofty wood; the grass fine beneath the fruit trees; the soil dry under foot though the rain had scarcely ceased to fall; no moss on the trees; the leaves of many of them yet green; everything brought my mind to the beautiful orchards near Bayside, Little Neck, Mosquito Cove, and Oyster Bay, in Long Island. No wonder that this is a country of cider and perry; but what a shame it is that here, at any rate, the owners and cultivators of the soil, not content with these, should, for mere fashion’s sake, waste their substance on wine and spirits! They really deserve the contempt of mankind and the curses of their children.—The woody hill mentioned before, winds away to the left, and carries the eye on to the Forest of Dean, from which it is divided by a narrow and very deep valley. Away to the right of Penyard Hill lies, in the bottom, at two miles distance, and on the bank of the river Wye, the town of Ross, over which we look down the vale to Monmouth and see the Welsh hills beyond it. Beneath Penyard Hill, and on one of the ridges before mentioned, is the parish church of Weston, with some pretty white cottages near it, peeping through the orchard and other trees; and coming to the paddock before the house are some of the largest and loftiest trees in the country, standing singly here and there, amongst which is the very largest and loftiest walnut-tree that I believe I ever saw, either in America or in England. In short, there wants nothing but the autumnal colours of the American trees to make this the most beautiful spot I ever beheld.—I was much amused for an hour after daylight this morning in looking at the clouds, rising at intervals from the dells on the side of Penyard Hill, and flying to the top, and then over the Hill. Some of the clouds went up in a roundish and compact form. Others rose in a sort of string or stream, the tops of them going over the hill before the bottoms were clear of the place whence they had arisen. Sometimes the clouds gathered themselves together along the top of the hill, and seemed to connect the topmost trees with the sky.——I have been to-day to look at Mr. Palmer’s fine crops of Swedish Turnips, which are, in general, called “Swedes.” These crops having been raised according to my plan, I feel, of course, great interest in the matter. The Swedes occupy two fields: one of thirteen, and one of seventeen acres. The main part of the seventeen-acre field was drilled, on ridges, four feet apart, a single row on a ridge, at different times, between 16th April and 29th May. An acre and a half of this piece was transplanted on four-feet ridges 30th July. About half an acre across the middle of the field was sown broad-cast 14th April.—In the thirteen-acre field there is about half an acre sown broad-cast on the 1st of June; the rest of the field was transplanted; part in the first week of June, part in the last week of June, part from the 12th to 18th July, and the rest (about three acres) from 21st to 23rd July. The drilled Swedes in the seventeen-acre field, contain full 23 tons to the acre; the transplanted ones in that field, 15 tons, and the broad-cast not exceeding 10 tons. Those in the thirteen-acre field which were transplanted before the 21st July, contain 27 if not 30 tons; and the rest of that field about 17 tons to the acre. The broad-cast piece here (half an acre) may contain 7 tons. The shortness of my time will prevent us from ascertaining the weight by actual weighings; but such is the crop, according to the best of my judgment, after a very minute survey of it in every part of each field.—Now, here is a little short of 800 tons of food, about a fifth part of which consists of tops; and, of course, there is about 640 tons of bulb. As to the value and uses of this prodigious crop I need say nothing; and as to the time and manner of sowing and raising the plants for transplanting, the act of transplanting, and the after cultivation, Mr. Palmer has followed the directions contained in my “Year’s Residence in America;” and, indeed, he is forward to acknowledge that he had never thought of this mode of culture, which he has followed now for three years, and which he has found so advantageous, until he read that work, a work which the Farmer’s Journal thought proper to treat as a romance.—Mr. Palmer has had some cabbages of the large, drum-head kind. He had about three acres, in rows at four feet apart, and at little less than three feet apart in the rows, making ten thousand cabbages on the three acres. He kept ninety-five wethers and ninety-six ewes (large fatting sheep) upon them for five weeks all but two days, ending in the first week of November. The sheep, which are now feeding off yellow turnips in an adjoining part of the same field, come back over the cabbage-ground and scoop out the stumps almost to the ground in many cases. This ground is going to be ploughed for wheat immediately. Cabbages are a very fine autumn crop; but it is the Swedes on which you must rely for the spring, and on housed or stacked Swedes too; for they will rot in many of our winters, if left in the ground. I have had them rot myself, and I saw, in March 1820, hundreds of acres rotten in Warwickshire and Northamptonshire. Mr. Palmer greatly prefers the transplanting to the drilling. It has numerous advantages over the drilling; greater regularity of crop, greater certainty, the only sure way of avoiding the fly, greater crop, admitting of two months later preparation of land, can come after vetches cut up for horses (as, indeed, a part of Mr. Palmer’s transplanted Swedes did), and requiring less labour and expense. I asserted this in my “Year’s Residence;” and Mr. Palmer, who has been very particular in ascertaining the fact, states positively that the expense of transplanting is not so great as the hoeing and setting out of the drilled crops, and not so great as the common hoeings of broad-cast. This, I think, settles the question. But the advantages of the wide-row culture by no means confine themselves to the green and root crop; for Mr. Palmer drills his wheat upon the same ridges, without ploughing, after he has taken off the Swedes. He drills it at eight inches, and puts in from eight to ten gallons to the acre. His crop of 1820, drilled in this way, averaged 40 bushels to the acre; part drilled in November, and part so late as February. It was the common Lammas wheat. His last crop of wheat is not yet ascertained; but it was better after the Swedes than in any other of his land. His manner of taking off the crop is excellent. He first cuts off and carries away the tops. Then he has an implement, drawn by two oxen, walking on each side of the ridge, with which he cuts off the tap root of the Swedes without disturbing the land of the ridge. Any child can then pull up the bulb. Thus the ground, clean as a garden, and in that compact state which the wheat is well known to like, is ready, at once, for drilling with wheat. As to the uses to which he applies the crop, tops as well as bulbs, I must speak of these hereafter, and in a work of a description different from this. I have been thus particular here, because the Farmer’s Journal treated my book as a pack of lies. I know that my (for it is mine) system of cattle-food husbandry will finally be that of all England, as it already is that of America; but what I am doing here is merely in self-defence against the slanders, the malignant slanders, of the Farmer’s Journal. Where is a Whig lord, who, some years ago, wrote to a gentleman that “he would have nothing to do with any reform that Cobbett was engaged in”? But in spite of the brutal Journal, farmers are not such fools as this lord was: they will not reject a good crop because they can have it only by acting upon my plan; and this lord will, I imagine, yet see the day when he will be less averse from having to do with a reform in which “Cobbett” shall be engaged.

Old Hall,
Saturday night, Nov. 10.

Went to Hereford this morning. It was market-day. My arrival became known, and, I am sure, I cannot tell how. A sort of buz got about. I could perceive here, as I always have elsewhere, very ardent friends and very bitter enemies; but all full of curiosity. One thing could not fail to please me exceedingly: my friends were gay and my enemies gloomy: the former smiled, and the latter, in endeavouring to screw their features into a sneer, could get them no further than the half sour and half sad: the former seemed in their looks to say, “Here he is,” and the latter to respond, “Yes, G—— d—— him!”—I went into the market-place, amongst the farmers, with whom, in general, I was very much pleased. If I were to live in the county two months, I should be acquainted with every man of them. The country is very fine all the way from Ross to Hereford. The soil is always a red loam upon a bed of stone. The trees are very fine, and certainly winter comes later here than in Middlesex. Some of the oak trees are still perfectly green, and many of the ashes as green as in September.—In coming from Hereford to this place, which is the residence of Mrs. Palmer and that of her two younger sons, Messrs. Philip and Walter Palmer, who, with their brother, had accompanied me to Hereford; in coming to this place, which lies at about two miles distance from the great road, and at about an equal distance from Hereford and from Ross, we met with something, the sight of which pleased me exceedingly: it was that of a very pretty pleasant-looking lady (and young too) with two beautiful children, riding in a little sort of chaise-cart, drawn by an ass, which she was driving in reins. She appeared to be well known to my friends, who drew up and spoke to her, calling her Mrs. Lock, or Locky (I hope it was not Lockart), or some such name. Her husband, who is, I suppose, some young farmer of the neighbourhood, may well call himself Mr. Lucky; for to have such a wife, and for such a wife to have the good sense to put up with an ass-cart, in order to avoid, as much as possible, feeding those cormorants who gorge on the taxes, is a blessing that falls, I am afraid, to the lot of very few rich farmers. Mrs. Lock (if that be her name) is a real practical radical. Others of us resort to radical coffee and radical tea; and she has a radical carriage. This is a very effectual way of assailing the THING, and peculiarly well suited for the practice of the female sex. But the self-denial ought not to be imposed on the wife only: the husband ought to set the example: and let me hope that Mr. Lock does not indulge in the use of wine and spirits while Mrs. Lock and her children ride in a jackass gig; for if he do, he wastes, in this way, the means of keeping her a chariot and pair. If there be to be any expense not absolutely necessary; if there be to be anything bordering on extravagance, surely it ought to be for the pleasure of that part of the family who have the least number of objects of enjoyment; and for a husband to indulge himself in the guzzling of expensive, unnecessary, and really injurious drink, to the tune, perhaps, of 50 or 100 pounds a year, while he preaches economy to his wife, and, with a face as long as my arm, talks of the low price of corn, and wheedles her out of a curricle into a jack-ass cart, is not only unjust but unmanly.

Old Hall, Sunday night, 11 Nov.

We have ridden to-day, though in the rain for a great part of the time, over the fine farm of Mr. Philip Palmer, at this place, and that of Mr. Walter Palmer, in the adjoining parish of Pencoyd. Everything here is good, arable land, pastures, orchards, coppices, and timber trees, especially the elms, many scores of which approach nearly to a hundred feet in height. Mr. Philip Palmer has four acres of Swedes on four-feet ridges, drilled on the 11th and 14th of May. The plants were very much injured by the fly; so much, that it was a question whether the whole piece ought not to be ploughed up. However, the gaps in the rows were filled up by transplanting; and the ground was twice ploughed between the ridges. The crop here is very fine; and I should think that its weight could not be less than 17 tons to the acre.—Of Mr. Walter Palmer’s Swedes, five acres were drilled, on ridges nearly four feet apart, on the 3rd of June; four acres on the 15th of June; and an acre and a half transplanted (after vetches) on the 15th of August. The weight of the first is about twenty tons to the acre; that of the second not much less; and that of the last even, five or six tons. The first two pieces were mauled to pieces by the fly; but the gaps were filled up by transplanting, the ground being digged on the tops of the ridges to receive the plants. So that, perhaps, a third part or more of the crop is due to the transplanting. As to the last piece, that transplanted on the 15th of August, after vetches, it is clear that there could have been no crop without transplanting; and, after all, the crop is by no means a bad one.—It is clear enough to me that this system will finally prevail all over England. The “loyal,” indeed, may be afraid to adopt it, lest it should contain something of “radicalism.” Sap-headed fools! They will find something to do, I believe, soon, besides railing against radicals. We will din “radical” and “national faith” in their ears, till they shall dread the din as much as a dog does the sound of the bell that is tied to the whip.

Bollitree, Monday, 12 Nov.

Returned this morning and rode about the farm, and also about that of Mr. Winnal, where I saw, for the first time, a plough going without being held. The man drove the three horses that drew the plough, and carried the plough round at the ends; but left it to itself the rest of the time. There was a skim coulter that turned the sward in under the furrow; and the work was done very neatly. This gentleman has six acres of cabbages, on ridges four feet apart, with a distance of thirty inches between the plants on the ridge. He has weighed one of what he deemed an average weight, and found it to weigh fifteen pounds without the stump. Now, as there are 4,320 upon an acre, the weight of the acres is thirty tons all but 400 pounds! This is a prodigious crop, and it is peculiarly well suited for food for sheep at this season of the year. Indeed it is good for any farm-stock, oxen, cows, pigs: all like these loaved cabbages. For hogs in yard, after the stubbles are gone; and before the tops of the Swedes come in. What masses of manure may be created by this means! But, above all things, for sheep to feed off upon the ground. Common turnips have not half the substance in them weight for weight. Then they are in the ground; they are dirty, and in wet weather the sheep must starve, or eat a great deal of dirt. This very day, for instance, what a sorry sight is a flock of fatting sheep upon turnips; what a mess of dirt and stubble! The cabbage stands boldly up above the ground, and the sheep eats it all up without treading a morsel in the dirt. Mr. Winnal has a large flock of sheep feeding on his cabbages, which they will have finished, perhaps, by January. This gentleman also has some “radical Swedes,” as they call them in Norfolk. A part of his crop is on ridges five feet apart with two rows on the ridge, a part on four feet ridges with one row on the ridge. I cannot see that anything is gained in weight by the double rows. I think that there may be nearly twenty tons to the acre. Another piece Mr. Winnal transplanted after vetches. They are very fine; and, altogether, he has a crop that any one but a “loyal” farmer might envy him.—This is really the radical system of husbandry. Radical means, belonging to the root; going to the root. And the main principle of this system (first taught by Tull) is that the root of the plant is to be fed by deep tillage while it is growing; and to do this we must have our wide distances. Our system of husbandry is happily illustrative of our system of politics. Our lines of movement are fair and straightforward. We destroy all weeds, which, like tax-eaters, do nothing but devour the sustenance that ought to feed the valuable plants. Our plants are all well fed; and our nations of Swedes and of cabbages present a happy uniformity of enjoyments and of bulk, and not, as in the broad-cast system of Corruption, here and there one of enormous size, surrounded by thousands of poor little starveling things, scarcely distinguishable by the keenest eye, or, if seen, seen only to inspire a contempt of the husbandman. The Norfolk boys are, therefore, right in calling their Swedes Radical Swedes.

Bollitree, Tuesday, 13 Nov.

Rode to-day to see a grove belonging to Mrs. Westphalin, which contains the very finest trees, oaks, chestnuts, and ashes, that I ever saw in England. This grove is worth going from London to Weston to see. The Lady, who is very much beloved in her neighbourhood, is, apparently, of the old school; and her house and gardens, situated in a beautiful dell, form, I think, the most comfortable looking thing of the kind that I ever saw. If she had known that I was in her grove, I dare say she would have expected it to blaze up in flames; or, at least, that I was come to view the premises previous to confiscation! I can forgive persons like her; but I cannot forgive the Parsons and others who have misled them! Mrs. Westphalin, if she live many years, will find that the best friends of the owners of the land are those who have endeavoured to produce such a reform of the Parliament as would have prevented the ruin of tenants.—This parish of Weston is remarkable for having a Rector who has constantly resided for twenty years! I do not believe that there is an instance to match this in the whole kingdom. However, the “reverend” gentleman may be assured that, before many years have passed over their heads, they will be very glad to reside in their parsonage houses.

Bollitree, Wednesday, 14 Nov.

Rode to the forest of Dean, up a very steep hill. The lanes here are between high banks, and on the sides of the hills the road is a rock, the water having long ago washed all the earth away. Pretty works are, I find, carried on here, as is the case in all the other public forests! Are these things always to be carried on in this way? Here is a domain of thirty thousand acres of the finest timber-land in the world, and with coal-mines endless! Is this worth nothing? Cannot each acre yield ten trees a year? Are not these trees worth a pound apiece? Is not the estate worth three or four hundred thousand pounds a year? And does it yield anything to the public, to whom it belongs? But it is useless to waste one’s breath in this way. We must have a reform of the Parliament: without it the whole thing will fall to pieces.—The only good purpose that these forests answer is that of furnishing a place of being to labourers’ families on their skirts; and here their cottages are very neat, and the people look hearty and well, just as they do round the forests in Hampshire. Every cottage has a pig or two. These graze in the forest, and, in the fall, eat acorns and beech-nuts and the seed of the ash; for these last, as well as the others, are very full of oil, and a pig that is put to his shifts will pick the seed very nicely out from the husks. Some of these foresters keep cows, and all of them have bits of ground, cribbed, of course, at different times, from the forest: and to what better use can the ground be put? I saw several wheat stubbles from 40 rods to 10 rods. I asked one man how much wheat he had from about 10 rods. He said more than two bushels. Here is bread for three weeks, or more perhaps; and a winter’s straw for the pig besides. Are these things nothing? The dead limbs and old roots of the forest give fuel; and how happy are these people, compared with the poor creatures about Great Bedwin and Cricklade, where they have neither land nor shelter, and where I saw the girls carrying home bean and wheat stubble for fuel! Those countries, always but badly furnished with fuel, the desolating and damnable system of paper-money, by sweeping away small homesteads, and laying ten farms into one, has literally stripped of all shelter for the labourer. A farmer, in such cases, has a whole domain in his hands, and this not only to the manifest injury of the public at large, but in open violation of positive law. The poor forger is hanged; but where is the prosecutor of the monopolizing farmer, though the law is as clear in the one case as in the other? But it required this infernal system to render every wholesome regulation nugatory; and to reduce to such abject misery a people famed in all ages for the goodness of their food and their dress. There is one farmer, in the North of Hampshire, who has nearly eight thousand acres of land in his hands; who grows fourteen hundred acres of wheat and two thousand acres of barley! He occupies what was formerly 40 farms! Is it any wonder that paupers increase? And is there not here cause enough for the increase of poor, without resorting to the doctrine of the barbarous and impious Malthus and his assistants, the feelosofers of the Edinburgh Review, those eulogists and understrappers of the Whig-Oligarchy? “This farmer has done nothing unlawful,” some one will say. I say he has; for there is a law to forbid him thus to monopolize land. But no matter; the laws, the management of the affairs of a nation, ought to be such as to prevent the existence of the temptation to such monopoly. And, even now, the evil ought to be remedied, and could be remedied, in the space of half a dozen years. The disappearance of the paper-money would do the thing in time; but this might be assisted by legislative measures.—In returning from the forest we were overtaken by my son, whom I had begged to come from London to see this beautiful country. On the road-side we saw two lazy-looking fellows, in long great-coats and bundles in their hands, going into a cottage. “What do you deal in?” said I, to one of them, who had not yet entered the house. “In the medical way,” said he. And I find that vagabonds of this description are seen all over the country with tea-licences in their pockets. They vend tea, drugs, and religious tracts. The first to bring the body into a debilitated state; the second to finish the corporeal part of the business; and the third to prepare the spirit for its separation from the clay! Never was a system so well calculated as the present to degrade, debase, and enslave a people! Law, and as if that were not sufficient, enormous subscriptions are made; everything that can be done is done to favour these perambulatory impostors in their depredations on the ignorant, while everything that can be done is done to prevent them from reading, or from hearing of, anything that has a tendency to give them rational notions, or to better their lot. However, all is not buried in ignorance. Down the deep and beautiful valley between Penyard Hill and the Hills on the side of the Forest of Dean, there runs a stream of water. On that stream of water there is a paper-mill. In that paper-mill there is a set of workmen. That set of workmen do, I am told, take the Register, and have taken it for years! It was to these good and sensible men, it is supposed, that the ringing of the bells of Weston church, upon my arrival, was to be ascribed; for nobody that I visited had any knowledge of the cause. What a subject for lamentation with corrupt hypocrites! That even on this secluded spot there should be a leaven of common-sense! No: all is not enveloped in brute ignorance yet, in spite of every artifice that hellish Corruption has been able to employ; in spite of all her menaces and all her brutalities and cruelties.

Old Hall, Thursday, 15 Nov.

We came this morning from Bollitree to Ross-Market, and, thence, to this place. Ross is an old-fashioned town; but it is very beautifully situated, and if there is little of finery in the appearance of the inhabitants, there is also little of misery. It is a good, plain country town, or settlement of tradesmen, whose business is that of supplying the wants of the cultivators of the soil. It presents to us nothing of rascality and roguishness of look which you see on almost every visage in the borough-towns, not excepting the visages of the women. I can tell a borough-town from another upon my entrance into it by the nasty, cunning, leering, designing look of the people; a look between that of a bad (for some are good) Methodist Parson and that of a pickpocket. I remember, and I never shall forget, the horrid looks of the villains in Devonshire and Cornwall. Some people say, “O, poor fellows! It is not their fault.” No? Whose fault is it, then? The miscreants who bribe them? True, that these deserve the halter (and some of them may have it yet); but are not the takers of the bribes equally guilty? If we be so very lenient here, pray let us ascribe to the Devil all the acts of thieves and robbers: so we do; but we hang the thieves and robbers, nevertheless. It is no very unprovoking reflection, that from these sinks of atrocious villany come a very considerable part of the men to fill places of emolument and trust. What a clog upon a Minister to have people, bred in such scenes, forced upon him! And why does this curse continue? However, its natural consequences are before us; and are coming on pretty fast upon each other’s heels. There are the landlords and farmers in a state of absolute ruin: there is the Debt, pulling the nation down like as a stone pulls a dog under water. The system seems to have fairly wound itself up; to have tied itself hand and foot with cords of its own spinning!—This is the town to which Pope has given an interest in our minds by his eulogium on the “Man of Ross,” a portrait of whom is hanging up in a house in which I now am.—The market at Ross was very dull. No wheat in demand. No buyers. It must come down. Lord Liverpool’s remedy, a bad harvest, has assuredly failed. Fowls 2s. a couple; a goose from 2s. 6d. to 3s.; a turkey from 3s. to 3s. 6d. Let a turkey come down to a shilling, as in France, and then we shall soon be to rights.

Friday, 16 Nov.

A whole day most delightfully passed a hare-hunting, with a pretty pack of hounds kept here by Messrs. Palmer. They put me upon a horse that seemed to have been made on purpose for me, strong, tall, gentle and bold; and that carried me either over or through everything. I, who am just the weight of a four-bushel sack of good wheat, actually sat on his back from daylight in the morning to dusk (about nine hours) without once setting my foot on the ground. Our ground was at Orcop, a place about four miles’ distance from this place. We found a hare in a few minutes after throwing off; and in the course of the day we had to find four, and were never more than ten minutes in finding. A steep and naked ridge, lying between two flat valleys, having a mixture of pretty large fields and small woods, formed our ground. The hares crossed the ridge forward and backward, and gave us numerous views and very fine sport.—I never rode on such steep ground before; and really, in going up and down some of the craggy places, where the rains had washed the earth from the rocks, I did think, once or twice, of my neck, and how Sidmouth would like to see me.—As to the cruelty, as some pretend, of this sport, that point I have, I think, settled in one of the Chapters of my “Year’s Residence in America.” As to the expense, a pack, even a full pack of harriers, like this, costs less than two bottles of wine a day with their inseparable concomitants. And as to the time thus spent, hunting is inseparable from early rising: and with habits of early rising, who ever wanted time for any business?

Oxford,
Saturday, 17 Nov.

We left Old Hall (where we always breakfasted by candle-light) this morning after breakfast; returned to Bollitree; took the Hereford coach as it passed about noon; and came in it through Gloucester, Cheltenham, Northleach, Burford, Whitney, and on to this city, where we arrived about ten o’clock. I could not leave Herefordshire without bringing with me the most pleasing impressions. It is not for one to descend to particulars in characterising one’s personal friends; and, therefore, I will content myself with saying, that the treatment I met with in this beautiful county, where I saw not one single face that I had, to my knowledge, ever seen before, was much more than sufficient to compensate to me, personally, for all the atrocious calumnies, which, for twenty years, I have had to endure; but where is my country, a great part of the present hideous sufferings of which will, by every reflecting mind, be easily traced to these calumnies, which have been made the ground, or pretext, for rejecting that counsel by listening to which those sufferings would have been prevented; where is my country to find a compensation?——At Gloucester (as there were no meals on the road) we furnished ourselves with nuts and apples, which, first a handful of nuts and then an apple, are, I can assure the reader, excellent and most wholesome fare. They say that nuts of all sorts are unwholesome; if they had been, I should never have written Registers, and if they were now, I should have ceased to write ere this; for, upon an average, I have eaten a pint a day since I left home. In short, I could be very well content to live on nuts, milk, and home-baked bread.——From Gloucester to Cheltenham the country is level, and the land rich and good. The fields along here are ploughed in ridges about 20 feet wide, and the angle of this species of roof is pretty nearly as sharp as that of some slated roofs of houses. There is no wet under; it is the top wet only that they aim at keeping from doing mischief.—Cheltenham is a nasty, ill-looking place, half clown and half cockney. The town is one street about a mile long; but, then, at some distance from this street, there are rows of white tenements, with green balconies, like those inhabited by the tax-eaters round London. Indeed, this place appears to be the residence of an assemblage of tax-eaters. These vermin shift about between London, Cheltenham, Bath, Bognor, Brighton, Tunbridge, Ramsgate, Margate, Worthing, and other spots in England, while some of them get over to France and Italy: just like those body-vermin of different sorts that are found in different parts of the tormented carcass at different hours of the day and night, and in different degrees of heat and cold.

Cheltenham is at the foot of a part of that chain of hills which form the sides of that dish which I described as resembling the vale of Gloucester. Soon after quitting this resort of the lame and the lazy, the gormandizing and guzzling, the bilious and the nervous, we proceeded on, between stone walls, over a country little better than that from Cirencester to Burlip-hill.——A very poor, dull, and uninteresting country all the way to Oxford.

Burghclere (Hants),
Sunday, 18 Nov.

We left Oxford early, and went on, through Abingdon (Berks) to Market-Ilsley. It is a saying, hereabouts, that at Oxford they make the living pay for the dead, which is precisely according to the Pitt-System. Having smarted on this account, we were afraid to eat again at an Inn; so we pushed on through Ilsley towards Newbury, breakfasting upon the residue of the nuts, aided by a new supply of apples bought from a poor man, who exhibited them in his window. Inspired, like Don Quixote, by the sight of the nuts, and recollecting the last night’s bill, I exclaimed: “Happy! thrice happy and blessed, that golden age, when men lived on the simple fruits of the earth and slaked their thirst at the pure and limpid brook! when the trees shed their leaves to form a couch for their repose, and cast their bark to furnish them with a canopy! Happy age; when no Oxford landlord charged two men, who had dropped into a common coach-passenger room, and who had swallowed three pennyworths of food, ‘four shillings for teas,’ and ‘eighteen pence for cold meat,’ ‘two shillings for moulds and fire’ in this common coach-room, and ‘five shillings for beds!’” This was a sort of grace before meat to the nuts and apples; and it had much more merit than the harangue of Don Quixote; for he, before he began upon the nuts, had stuffed himself well with goat’s flesh and wine, whereas we had absolutely fled from the breakfast-table and blazing fire at Oxford.—Upon beholding the masses of buildings at Oxford devoted to what they call “learning,” I could not help reflecting on the drones that they contain and the wasps they send forth! However, malignant as some are, the great and prevalent characteristic is folly: emptiness of head; want of talent; and one half of the fellows who are what they call educated here, are unfit to be clerks in a grocer’s or mercer’s shop.—As I looked up at what they call University Hall, I could not help reflecting that what I had written, even since I left Kensington on the 29th of October, would produce more effect, and do more good in the world, than all that had for a hundred years been written by all the members of this University, who devour, perhaps, not less than a million pounds a year, arising from property, completely at the disposal of the “Great Council of the Nation;” and I could not help exclaiming to myself: “Stand forth, ye big-wigged, ye gloriously feeding Doctors! Stand forth, ye rich of that church whose poor have had given them a hundred thousand pounds a year, not out of your riches, but out of the taxes, raised, in part, from the salt of the labouring man! Stand forth and face me, who have, from the pen of my leisure hours, sent, amongst your flocks, a hundred thousand sermons in ten months! More than you have all done for the last half century!”—I exclaimed in vain. I dare say (for it was at peep of day) that not a man of them had yet endeavoured to unclose his eyes.—In coming thro’ Abingdon (Berks) I could not help thinking of that great financier, Mr. John Maberly, by whom this place has, I believe, the honour to be represented in the Collective Wisdom of the Nation.—In the way to Ilsley we came across a part of that fine tract of land, called the Vale of Berkshire, where they grow wheat and beans, one after another, for many years together. About three miles before we reached Ilsley we came to downs, with, as is always the case, chalk under. Between Ilsley and Newbury the country is enclosed; the land middling, a stony loam; the woods and coppices frequent, and neither very good, till we came within a short distance of Newbury. In going along we saw a piece of wheat with cabbage-leaves laid all over it at the distance, perhaps, of eight or ten feet from each other. It was to catch the slugs. The slugs, which commit their depredations in the night, creep under the leaves in the morning, and by turning up the leaves you come at the slugs, and crush them, or carry them away. But besides the immense daily labour attending this, the slug, in a field sowed with wheat, has a clod to creep under at every foot, and will not go five feet to get under a cabbage-leaf. Then again, if the day be wet, the slug works by day as well as by night. It is the sun and drought that he shuns, and not the light. Therefore the only effectual way to destroy slugs is to sow lime, in dust, and not slaked. The slug is wet, he has hardly any skin, his slime is his covering; the smallest dust of hot lime kills him; and a few bushels to the acre are sufficient. You must sow the lime at dusk; for then the slugs are sure to be out. Slugs come after a crop that has long afforded a great deal of shelter from the sun; such as peas and vetches. In gardens they are nursed up by strawberry beds and by weeds, by asparagus beds, or by anything that remains for a long time to keep the summer-sun from the earth. We got about three o’clock to this nice, snug little farmhouse, and found our host, Mr. Budd, at home.

Burghclere, Monday, 19 Nov.

A thorough wet day, the only day the greater part of which I have not spent out of doors since I left home.

Burghclere, Tuesday, 20 Nov.

With Mr. Budd, we rode to-day to see the Farm of Tull, at Shalborne, in Berkshire. Mr. Budd did the same thing with Arthur Young twenty-seven years ago. It was a sort of pilgrimage; but as the distance was ten miles, we thought it best to perform it on horseback.—We passed through the parish of Highclere, where they have enclosed commons, worth, as tillage land, not one single farthing an acre, and never will and never can be. As a common it afforded a little picking for geese and asses, and in the moory parts of it, a little fuel for the labourers. But now it really can afford nothing. It will all fall to common again by degrees. This madness, this blind eagerness to gain, is now, I hope, pretty nearly over.—At East Woody we passed the house of a Mr. Goddard, which is uninhabited, he residing at Bath.—At West Woody (Berks) is the estate of Mr. Sloper, a very pretty place. A beautiful sporting country. Large fields, small woods, dry soil. What has taken place here is an instance of the workings of the system. Here is a large gentleman’s house. But the proprietor lets it (it is, just now, empty), and resides in a farmhouse and farms his own estate. Happy is the landlord who has the good sense to do this in time. This is a fine farm, and here appears to be very judicious farming. Large tracts of turnips; clean land; stubbles ploughed up early; ploughing with oxen; and a very large and singularly fine flock of sheep. Everything that you see, land, stock, implements, fences, buildings; all do credit to the owner; bespeak his sound judgment, his industry and care. All that is wanted here is the radical husbandry; because that would enable the owner to keep three times the quantity of stock. However, since I left home, I have seen but very few farms that I should prefer to that of Mr. Sloper, whom I have not the pleasure to know, and whom, indeed, I never heard of till I saw his farm. At a village (certainly named by some author) called Inkpen, we passed a neat little house and paddock, the residence of a Mr. Butler, a nephew of Dr. Butler, who died Bishop of Oxford, and whom I can remember hearing preach at Farnham in Surrey when I was a very very little boy. I have his features and his wig as clearly in my recollection as if I had seen them but yesterday; and I dare say I have not thought of Doctor Butler for forty years before to-day. The “loyal” (oh, the pious gang!) will say that my memory is good as to the face and wig, but bad as to the Doctor’s Sermons. Why, I must confess that I have no recollection of them; but, then, do I not make Sermons myself?——At about two miles from Inkpen we came to the end of our pilgrimage. The farm, which was Mr. Tull’s; where he used the first drill that ever was used; where he practised his husbandry; where he wrote that book, which does so much honour to his memory, and to which the cultivators of England owe so much; this farm is on an open and somewhat bleak spot in Berkshire, on the borders of Wiltshire, and within a very short distance of a part of Hampshire. The ground is a loam, mixed with flints, and has the chalk at no great distance beneath it. It is, therefore, free from wet; needs no water furrows; and is pretty good in its nature. The house, which has been improved by Mr. Blandy, the present proprietor, is still but a plain farmhouse. Mr. Blandy has lived here thirty years, and has brought up ten children to man’s and woman’s estate. Mr. Blandy was from home, but Mrs. Blandy received and entertained us in a very hospitable manner.—We returned, not along the low land, but along the top of the downs, and through Lord Caernarvon’s park, and got home after a very pleasant day.

Burghclere, Wednesday, 21 Nov.

We intended to have a hunt; but the foxhounds came across and rendered it impracticable. As an instance of the change which rural customs have undergone since the hellish paper-system has been so furiously at work, I need only mention the fact, that, forty years ago, there were five packs of foxhounds and ten packs of harriers kept within ten miles of Newbury; and that now there is one of the former (kept, too, by subscription) and none of the latter, except the few couple of dogs kept by Mr. Budd! “So much the better,” says the shallow fool, who cannot duly estimate the difference between a resident native gentry, attached to the soil, known to every farmer and labourer from their childhood, frequently mixing with them in those pursuits where all artificial distinctions are lost, practicing hospitality without ceremony, from habit and not on calculation; and a gentry, only now-and-then residing at all, having no relish for country-delights, foreign in their manners, distant and haughty in their behaviour, looking to the soil only for its rents, viewing it as a mere object of speculation, unacquainted with its cultivators, despising them and their pursuits, and relying for influence, not upon the good will of the vicinage, but upon the dread of their power. The war and paper-system has brought in nabobs, negro-drivers, generals, admirals, governors, commissaries, contractors, pensioners, sinecurists, commissioners, loan-jobbers, lottery-dealers, bankers, stock-jobbers; not to mention the long and black list in gowns and three-tailed wigs. You can see but few good houses not in possession of one or the other of these. These, with the Parsons, are now the magistrates. Some of the consequences are before us; but they have not all yet arrived. A taxation that sucks up fifty millions a year must produce a new set of proprietors every twenty years or less; and the proprietors, while they last, can be little better than tax-collectors to the government, and scourgers of the people.—I must not quit Burghclere without noticing Mr. Budd’s radical Swedes and other things. His is but miniature farming; but it is very good, and very interesting. Some time in May, he drilled a piece of Swedes on four feet ridges. The fly took them off. He had cabbage and mangel-wurzel plants to put in their stead. Unwilling to turn back the ridges, and thereby bring the dung to the top, he planted the cabbages and mangel-wurzel on the ridges where the Swedes had been drilled. This was done in June. Late in July, his neighbour, a farmer Hulbert, had a field of Swedes that he was hoeing. Mr. Budd now put some manure in the furrows between the ridges, and ploughed a furrow over it from each ridge. On this he planted Swedes, taken from farmer Hulbert’s field. Thus his plantation consisted of rows of plants two feet apart. The result is a prodigious crop. Of the mangel-wurzel (greens and all) he has not less than twenty tons to the acre. He can scarcely have less of the cabbages, some of which are green savoys as fine as I ever saw. And of the Swedes, many of which weigh from five to nine pounds, he certainly has more than twenty tons to the acre. So that here is a crop of, at the very least, forty tons to the acre. This piece is not much more than half an acre; but he will, perhaps, not find so much cattle food upon any four acres in the county. He is, and long has been, feeding four milch cows, large, fine, and in fine condition, upon cabbages sometimes, and sometimes on mangel-wurzel leaves. The butter is excellent. Not the smallest degree of bitterness or bad taste of any sort. Fine colour and fine taste. And here, upon not three quarters of an acre of ground, he has, if he manage the thing well, enough food for these four cows to the month of May! Can any system of husbandry equal this? What would he do with these cows, if he had not this crop? He could not keep one of them, except on hay. And he owes all this crop to transplanting. He thinks that the transplanting, fetching the Swede plants and all, might cost him ten or twelve shillings. It was done by women, who had never done such a thing before.——However, he must get in his crop before the hard weather comes; or my Lord Caernarvon’s hares will help him. They have begun already; and it is curious that they have begun on the mangel-wurzel roots. So that hares, at any rate, have set the seal of merit upon this root.

Whitchurch,
Thursday (night), 22 Nov.

We have come round here, instead of going by Newbury in consequence of a promise to Mr. Blount at Uphusband, that I would call on him on my return. We left Uphusband by lamp-light, and, of course, we could see little on our way.

Kensington,
Friday, 23 Nov.

Got home by the coach. At leaving Whitchurch we soon passed the mill where the Mother-Bank paper is made! Thank God, this mill is likely soon to want employment! Hard by is a pretty park and house, belonging to “’Squire” Portal, the paper-maker. The country people, who seldom want for sarcastic shrewdness, call it “Rag Hall”!—I perceive that they are planting oaks on the “wastes,” as the Agriculturasses call them, about Hartley Row; which is very good; because the herbage, after the first year, is rather increased than diminished by the operation; while, in time, the oaks arrive at a timber state, and add to the beauty and to the real wealth of the country, and to the real and solid wealth of the descendants of the planter, who, in every such case, merits unequivocal praise, because he plants for his children’s children.—The planter here is Lady Mildmay, who is, it seems, Lady of the Manors about here. It is impossible to praise this act of hers too much, especially when one considers her age. I beg a thousand pardons! I do not mean to say that her Ladyship is old; but she has long had grand-children. If her Ladyship had been a reader of old dread-death and dread-devil Johnson, that teacher of moping and melancholy, she never would have planted an oak tree. If the writings of this time-serving, mean, dastardly old pensioner had got a firm hold of the minds of the people at large, the people would have been bereft of their very souls. These writings, aided by the charm of pompous sound, were fast making their way, till light, reason, and the French revolution came to drive them into oblivion; or, at least, to confine them to the shelves of repentant, married old rakes, and those of old stock-jobbers with young wives standing in need of something to keep down the unruly ebullitions which are apt to take place while the “dearies” are gone hobbling to ’Change.——“After pleasure comes pain,” says Solomon; and after the sight of Lady Mildmay’s truly noble plantations, came that of the clouts of the “gentlemen cadets” of the “Royal Military College of Sandhurst!” Here, close by the road side, is the drying-ground. Sheets, shirts, and all sorts of things were here spread upon lines, covering, perhaps, an acre of ground! We soon afterwards came to “York Place” on “Osnaburg Hill.” And is there never to be an end of these things? Away to the left, we see that immense building, which contains children breeding up to be military commanders! Has this plan cost so little as two millions of pounds? I never see this place (and I have seen it forty times during the last twenty years) without asking myself this question: Will this thing be suffered to go on; will this thing, created by money raised by loan; will this thing be upheld by means of taxes, while the interest of the Debt is reduced, on the ground that the nation is unable to pay the interest in full?—Answer that question, Castlereagh, Sidmouth, Brougham, or Scarlett.

KENTISH JOURNAL: FROM KENSINGTON TO DARTFORD, ROCHESTER, CHATHAM, AND FAVERSHAM.

Tuesday, December 4, 1821,
Elverton Farm, near Faversham, Kent.

This is the first time, since I went to France, in 1792, that I have been on this side of Shooters’ Hill. The land, generally speaking, from Deptford to Dartford is poor, and the surface ugly by nature, to which ugliness there has been made, just before we came to the latter place, a considerable addition by the enclosure of a common, and by the sticking up of some shabby-genteel houses, surrounded with dead fences and things called gardens, in all manner of ridiculous forms, making, all together, the bricks, hurdle-rods and earth say, as plainly as they can speak, “Here dwell vanity and poverty.” This is a little excrescence that has grown out of the immense sums which have been drawn from other parts of the kingdom to be expended on Barracks, Magazines, Martello-Towers, Catamarans, and all the excuses for lavish expenditure which the war for the Bourbons gave rise to. All things will return; these rubbishy flimsy things, on this common, will first be deserted, then crumble down, then be swept away, and the cattle, sheep, pigs and geese will once more graze upon the common, which will again furnish heath, furze and turf for the labourers on the neighbouring lands.—After you leave Dartford the land becomes excellent. You come to a bottom of chalk, many feet from the surface, and when that is the case the land is sure to be good; no wet at bottom, no deep ditches, no water furrows necessary; sufficiently moist in dry weather, and no water lying about upon it in wet weather for any length of time. The chalk acts as a filtering-stone, not as a sieve, like gravel, and not as a dish, like clay. The chalk acts as the soft stone in Herefordshire does; but it is not so congenial to trees that have tap-roots.—Along through Gravesend towards Rochester the country presents a sort of gardening scene. Rochester (the Bishop of which is, or lately was, tax Collector for London and Middlesex) is a small but crowded place, lying on the south bank of the beautiful Medway, with a rising ground on the other side of the city. Stroud, which you pass through before you come to the bridge, over which you go to enter Rochester; Rochester itself, and Chatham, form, in fact, one main street of about two miles and a half in length.—Here I was got into the scenes of my cap-and-feather days! Here, at between sixteen and seventeen, I enlisted for a soldier. Upon looking up towards the fortifications and the barracks, how many recollections crowded into my mind! The girls in these towns do not seem to be so pretty as they were thirty-eight years ago; or, am I not so quick in discovering beauties as I was then? Have thirty-eight years corrected my taste, or made me a hypercritic in these matters? Is it that I now look at them with the solemnness of a “professional man,” and not with the enthusiasm and eagerness of an “amateur?” I leave these questions for philosophers to solve. One thing I will say for the young women of these towns, and that is, that I always found those of them that I had the great happiness to be acquainted with, evince a sincere desire to do their best to smooth the inequalities of life, and to give us, “brave fellows,” as often as they could, strong beer, when their churlish masters of fathers or husbands would have drenched us to death with small. This, at the out-set of life, gave me a high opinion of the judgment and justice of the female sex; an opinion which has been confirmed by the observations of my whole life.—This Chatham has had some monstrous wens stuck on to it by the lavish expenditure of the war. These will moulder away. It is curious enough that I should meet with a gentleman in an inn at Chatham to give me a picture of the house-distress in that enormous wen, which, during the war, was stuck on to Portsmouth. Not less than fifty thousand people had been drawn together there! These are now dispersing. The coagulated blood is diluting and flowing back through the veins. Whole streets are deserted, and the eyes of the houses knocked out by the boys that remain. The jackdaws, as much as to say, “Our turn to be inspired and to teach is come,” are beginning to take possession of the Methodist chapels. The gentleman told me that he had been down to Portsea to sell half a street of houses, left him by a relation; and that nobody would give him anything for them further than as very cheap fuel and rubbish! Good God! And is this “prosperity?” Is this the “prosperity of the war?” Have I not, for twenty long years, been regretting the existence of these unnatural embossments; these white-swellings, these odious wens, produced by Corruption and engendering crime and misery and slavery? We shall see the whole of these wens abandoned by the inhabitants, and, at last, the cannons on the fortifications may be of some use in battering down the buildings.—But what is to be the fate of the great wen of all? The monster called, by the silly coxcombs of the press, “the metropolis of the empire”? What is to become of that multitude of towns that has been stuck up around it? The village of Kingston was smothered in the town of Portsea; and why? Because taxes, drained from other parts of the kingdom, were brought thither.

The dispersion of the wen is the only real difficulty that I see in settling the affairs of the nation and restoring it to a happy state. But dispersed it must be; and if there be half a million, or more, of people to suffer, the consolation is, that the suffering will be divided into half a million of parts. As if the swelling out of London, naturally produced by the Funding System, were not sufficient; as if the evil were not sufficiently great from the inevitable tendency of the system of loans and funds, our pretty gentlemen must resort to positive institutions to augment the population of the Wen. They found that the increase of the Wen produced an increase of thieves and prostitutes, an increase of all sorts of diseases, an increase of miseries of all sorts; they saw that taxes drawn up to one point produced these effects; they must have a “penitentiary,” for instance, to check the evil, and that they must needs have in the Wen! So that here were a million of pounds, drawn up in taxes, employed not only to keep the thieves and prostitutes still in the Wen, but to bring up to the Wen workmen to build the penitentiary, who and whose families, amounting, perhaps, to thousands, make an addition to the cause of that crime and misery, to check which is the object of the Penitentiary! People would follow, they must follow, the million of money. However, this is of a piece with all the rest of their goings on. They and their predecessors, Ministers and House, have been collecting together all the materials for a dreadful explosion; and if the explosion be not dreadful, other heads must point out the means of prevention.

Wednesday, 5 Dec.

The land on quitting Chatham is chalk at bottom; but before you reach Sittingbourne there is a vein of gravel and sand under, but a great depth of loam above. About Sittingbourne the chalk bottom comes again, and continues on to this place, where the land appears to me to be as good as it can possibly be. Mr. William Waller, at whose house I am, has grown, this year, Mangel-Wurzel, the roots of which weigh, I think, on an average, twelve pounds, and in rows, too, at only about thirty inches distant from each other. In short, as far as soil goes, it is impossible to see a finer country than this. You frequently see a field of fifty acres, level as a die, clean as a garden and as rich. Mr. Birkbeck need not have crossed the Atlantic, and Alleghany into the bargain, to look for land too rich to bear wheat; for here is a plenty of it. In short, this is a country of hop-gardens, cherry, apple, pear and filbert orchards, and quick-set hedges. But, alas! what, in point of beauty, is a country without woods and lofty trees! And here there are very few indeed. I am now sitting in a room, from the window of which I look, first, over a large and level field of rich land, in which the drilled wheat is finely come up, and which is surrounded by clipped quickset hedges with a row of apple trees running by the sides of them; next, over a long succession of rich meadows, which are here called marshes, the shortest grass upon which will fatten sheep or oxen; next, over a little branch of the salt water which runs up to Faversham; beyond that, on the Isle of Shepry (or Shepway), which rises a little into a sort of ridge that runs along it; rich fields, pastures and orchards lie all around me; and yet, I declare, that I a million times to one prefer, as a spot to live on, the heaths, the miry coppices, the wild woods and the forests of Sussex and Hampshire.

Thursday, 6 Dec.

“Agricultural distress” is the great topic of general conversation. The Webb Hallites seem to prevail here. The fact is, farmers in general read nothing but the newspapers; these, in the Wen, are under the control of the Corruption of one or the other of the factions; and in the country, nine times out of ten, under the control of the parsons and landlords, who are the magistrates, as they are pompously called, that is to say, Justices of the Peace. From such vehicles what are farmers to learn? They are, in general, thoughtful and sensible men; but their natural good sense is perverted by these publications, had it not been for which we never should have seen “a sudden transition from war to peace” lasting seven years, and more sudden in its destructive effects at last than at first. Sir Edward Knatchbull and Mr. Honeywood are the members of the “Collective Wisdom” for this county. The former was, till of late, a Tax-Collector. I hear that he is a great advocate for corn-bills! I suppose he does not wish to let people who have leases see the bottom of the evil. He may get his rents for this year; but it will be his last year, if the interest of the Debt be not very greatly reduced. Some people here think that corn is smuggled in even now! Perhaps it is, upon the whole, best that the delusion should continue for a year longer; as that would tend to make the destruction of the system more sure, or, at least, make the cure more radical.

Friday, 7 Dec.

I went through Faversham. A very pretty little town, and just ten minutes’ walk from the market-place up to the Dover turnpike-road. Here are the powder-affairs that Mr. Hume so well exposed. An immensity of buildings and expensive things. Why are not these premises let or sold? However, this will never be done until there be a reformed Parliament. Pretty little Van, that beauty of all beauties; that orator of all orators; that saint of all saints; that financier of all financiers, said that if Mr. Hume were to pare down the expenses of government to his wish, there would be others “the Hunts, Cobbetts, and Carliles, who would still want the expense to be less.” I do not know how low Mr. Hume would wish to go; but for myself I say that if I ever have the power to do it, I will reduce the expenditure, and that in quick time too, down to what it was in the reign of Queen Anne; that is to say, to less than is now paid to tax-gatherers for their labour in collecting the taxes; and, monstrous as Van may think the idea, I do not regard it as impossible that I may have such power; which I would certainly not employ to do an act of injustice to any human being, and would, at the same time, maintain the throne in more real splendour than that in which it is now maintained. But I would have nothing to do with any Vans, except as door-keepers or porters.

Saturday, 8 Dec.

Came home very much pleased with my visit to Mr. Walker, in whose house I saw no drinking of wine, spirits, or even beer; where all, even to the little children, were up by candle-light in the morning, and where the most perfect sobriety was accompanied by constant cheerfulness. Kent is in a deplorable way. The farmers are skilful and intelligent, generally speaking. But there is infinite corruption in Kent, owing partly to the swarms of West Indians, Nabobs, Commissioners, and others of nearly the same description, that have selected it for the place of their residence; but owing still more to the immense sums of public money that have, during the last thirty years, been expended in it. And when one thinks of these, the conduct of the people of Dover, Canterbury, and other places, in the case of the ever-lamented Queen, does them everlasting honour. The fruit in Kent is more select than in Herefordshire, where it is raised for cyder, while, in Kent, it is raised for sale in its fruit state, a great deal being sent to the Wen, and a great deal sent to the North of England and to Scotland. The orchards are beautiful indeed. Kept in the neatest order, and, indeed, all belonging to them excels anything of the kind to be seen in Normandy; and as to apples, I never saw any so good in France as those of Kent. This county, so blessed by Providence, has been cursed by the System in a peculiar degree. It has been the receiver of immense sums, raised on the other counties. This has puffed its rents to an unnatural height; and now that the drain of other counties is stopped, it feels like a pampered pony turned out in winter to live upon a common. It is in an extremely “unsatisfactory state,” and has certainly a greater mass of suffering to endure than any other part of the kingdom, the Wens only excepted. Sir Edward Knatchbull, who is a child of the System, does appear to see no more of the cause of these sufferings than if he were a baby. How should he? Not very bright by nature; never listening but to one side of the question; being a man who wants high rents to be paid him; not gifted with much light, and that little having to strive against prejudice, false shame, and self interest, what wonder is there that he should not see things in their true light?

NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK JOURNAL.

Bergh-Apton, near Norwich,
Monday, 10 Dec. 1821.

From the Wen to Norwich, from which I am now distant seven miles, there is nothing in Essex, Suffolk, or this county, that can be called a hill. Essex, when you get beyond the immediate influence of the gorgings and disgorgings of the Wen; that is to say, beyond the demand for crude vegetables and repayment in manure, is by no means a fertile county. There appears generally to be a bottom of clay; not soft chalk, which they persist in calling clay in Norfolk. I wish I had one of these Norfolk men in a coppice in Hampshire or Sussex, and I would show him what clay is. Clay is what pots and pans and jugs and tiles are made of; and not soft, whitish stuff that crumbles to pieces in the sun, instead of baking as hard as a stone, and which, in dry weather, is to be broken to pieces by nothing short of a sledge-hammer. The narrow ridges on which the wheat is sown; the water furrows; the water standing in the dips of the pastures; the rusty iron-like colour of the water coming out of some of the banks; the deep ditches; the rusty look of the pastures—all show, that here is a bottom of clay. Yet there is gravel too; for the oaks do not grow well. It was not till I got nearly to Sudbury that I saw much change for the better. Here the bottom of chalk, the soft dirty-looking chalk that the Norfolk people call clay, begins to be the bottom, and this, with very little exception (as far as I have been) is the bottom of all the lands of these two fine counties of Suffolk and Norfolk.—Sudbury has some fine meadows near it on the sides of the river Stour. The land all along to Bury Saint Edmund’s is very fine; but no trees worth looking at. Bury, formerly the seat of an Abbot, the last of whom was, I think, hanged, or somehow put to death, by that matchless tyrant, Henry VIII., is a very pretty place; extremely clean and neat; no ragged or dirty people to be seen, and women (young ones I mean) very pretty and very neatly dressed.—On this side of Bury, a considerable distance lower, I saw a field of Rape, transplanted very thick, for, I suppose, sheep feed in the spring. The farming all along to Norwich is very good. The land clean, and everything done in a masterly manner.

Tuesday, 11 Dec.

Mr. Samuel Clarke, my host, has about 30 acres of Swedes in rows. Some at 4 feet distances, some at 30 inches; and about 4 acres of the 4-feet Swedes were transplanted. I have seen thousands of acres of Swedes in these counties, and here are the largest crops that I have seen. The widest rows are decidedly the largest crops here; and, the transplanted, though under disadvantageous circumstances, amongst the best of the best. The wide rows amount to at least 20 tons to the acre, exclusive of the greens taken off two months ago, which weighed 5 tons to the acre. Then, there is the inter tillage, so beneficial to the land, and the small quantity of manure required in the broad rows, compared to what is required when the seed is drilled or sown upon the level. Mr. Nicholls, a neighbour of Mr. Clarke, has a part of a field transplanted on seven turn ridges, put in when in the other part of the field, drilled, the plants were a fortnight old. He has a much larger crop in the transplanted than in the drilled part. But, if it had been a fly-year, he might have had none in the drilled part, while, in all probability, the crop in the transplanted part would have been better than it now is, seeing that a wet summer, though favourable to the hitting of the Swedes, is by no means favourable to their attaining a great size of bulb. This is the case this year with all turnips. A great deal of leaf and neck, but not bulbs in proportion. The advantages of transplanting are, first, you make sure of a crop in spite of fly; and, second, you have six weeks or two months longer to prepare your ground. And the advantages of wide rows are, first, that you want only about half the quantity of manure; and, second, that you plough the ground two or three times during the summer.

Grove, near Holt, Thursday, 13th Dec.

Came to the Grove (Mr. Withers’s), near Holt, along with Mr. Clarke. Through Norwich to Aylsham and then to Holt. On our road we passed the house of the late Lord Suffield, who married Castlereagh’s wife’s sister, who is a daughter of the late Earl of Buckinghamshire, who had for so many years that thumping sinecure of eleven thousand a year in Ireland, and who was the son of a man that, under the name of Mr. Hobart, cut such a figure in supporting Lord North and afterwards Pitt, and was made a peer under the auspices of the latter of these two heaven-born Ministers. This house, which is a very ancient one, was, they say, the birth-place of Ann de Boleyne, the mother of Queen Elizabeth. Not much matter; for she married the king while his real wife was alive. I could have excused her, if there had been no marrying in the case; but hypocrisy, always bad, becomes detestable when it resorts to religious ceremony as its mask. She, no more than Cranmer, seems, to her last moments, to have remembered her sins against her lawful queen. Fox’s “Book of Martyrs,” that ought to be called “the Book of Liars,” says that Cranmer, the recanter and re-recanter, held out his offending hand in the flames, and cried out “that hand, that hand!” If he had cried out Catherine! Catherine! I should have thought better of him; but it is clear that the whole story is a lie, invented by the protestants, and particularly by the sectarians, to white-wash the character of this perfidious hypocrite and double apostate, who, if bigotry had something to do in bringing him to the stake, certainly deserved his fate, if any offences committed by man can deserve so horrible a punishment.—The present Lord Suffield is that Mr. Edward Harbord, whose father-in-law left him 500l. to buy a seat in Parliament, and who refused to carry an address to the late beloved and lamented Queen, because Major Cartwright and myself were chosen to accompany him! Never mind, my Lord; you will grow less fastidious! They say, however, that he is really good to his tenants, and has told them, that he will take anything that they can give. There is some sense in this! He is a great Bible Man; and it is strange that he cannot see, that things are out of order, when his interference in this way can be at all necessary, while there is a Church that receives a tenth part of the produce of the earth.—There are some oak woods here, but very poor. Not like those, not near like the worst of those, in Hampshire and Herefordshire. All this eastern coast seems very unpropitious to trees of all sorts.—We passed through the estate of a Mr. Marsin, whose house is near the road, a very poor spot, and the first really poor ground I have seen in Norfolk. A nasty spewy black gravel on the top of a sour clay. It is worse than the heaths between Godalming and Liphook; for, while it is too poor to grow anything but heath, it is too cold to give you the chirping of the grasshopper in summer. However, Mr. Marsin has been too wise to enclose this wretched land, which is just like that which Lord Caernarvon has enclosed in the parishes of Highclere, and Burghclere, and which, for tillage, really is not worth a single farthing an acre.—Holt is a little, old-fashioned, substantially-built market-town. The land just about it, or, at least, towards the east, is poor, and has been lately enclosed.

Friday, 14th Dec.

Went to see the estate of Mr. Hardy at Leveringsett, a hamlet about two miles from Holt. This is the first time that I have seen a valley in this part of England. From Holt you look, to the distance of seven or eight miles, over a very fine valley, leaving a great deal of inferior hill and dell within its boundaries. At the bottom of this general valley, Mr. Hardy has a very beautiful estate of about four hundred acres. His house is at one end of it near the high road, where he has a malt-house and a brewery, the neat and ingenious manner of managing which I would detail if my total unacquaintance with machinery did not disqualify me for the task. His estate forms a valley of itself, somewhat longer than broad. The tops, and the sides of the tops of the hills round it, and also several little hillocks in the valley itself, are judiciously planted with trees of various sorts, leaving good wide roads, so that it is easy to ride round them in a carriage. The fields, the fences, the yards and stacks, the buildings, the cattle, all showed the greatest judgment and industry. There was really nothing that the most critical observer could say was out of order. However, the forest trees do not grow well here. The oaks are mere scrubs, as they are about Brentwood in Essex, and in some parts of Cornwall; and, for some unaccountable reason, people seldom plant the ash, which no wind will shave, as it does the oak.

Saturday, 15 Dec.

Spent the evening amongst the Farmers, at their Market Room at Holt; and very much pleased at them I was. We talked over the cause of the low prices, and I, as I have done everywhere, endeavoured to convince them, that prices must fall a great deal lower yet; and that no man, who wishes not to be ruined, ought to keep or take a farm, unless on a calculation of best wheat at 4s. a bushel and a best Southdown ewe at 15s. or even 12s. They heard me patiently, and, I believe, were well convinced of the truth of what I said. I told them of the correctness of the predictions of their great countryman, Mr. Paine, and observed, how much better it would have been, to take his advice, than to burn him in effigy. I endeavoured (but in such a case all human powers must fail!) to describe to them the sort and size of the talents of the Stern-path-of-duty man, of the great hole-digger, of the jester, of the Oxford scholar, of the loan-jobber (who had just made an enormous grasp), of the Oracle, and so on. Here, as everywhere else, I hear every creature speak loudly in praise of Mr. Coke. It is well known to my readers, that I think nothing of him as a public man; that I think even his good qualities an injury to his country, because they serve the knaves whom he is duped by to dupe the people more effectually; but, it would be base in me not to say, that I hear, from men of all parties, and sensible men too, expressions made use of towards him that affectionate children use towards the best of parents. I have not met with a single exception.

Bergh Apton,
Sunday, 16 Dec.

Came from Holt through Saxthorpe and Cawston. At the former village were on one end of a decent white house, these words, “Queen Caroline; for her Britons mourn,” and a crown over all in black. I need not have looked to see: I might have been sure that the owner of the house was a shoe-maker, a trade which numbers more men of sense and of public spirit than any other in the kingdom.—At Cawston we stopped at a public house, the keeper of which had taken and read the Register for years. I shall not attempt to describe the pleasure I felt at the hearty welcome given us by Mr. Pern and his wife and by a young miller of the village, who, having learnt at Holt that we were to return that way, had come to meet us, the house being on the side of the great road, from which the village is at some distance. This is the birth-place of the famous Botley Parson, all the history of whom we now learned, and, if we could have gone to the village, they were prepared to ring the bells, and show us the old woman who nursed the Botley Parson! These Norfolk baws never do things by halves. We came away, very much pleased with our reception at Cawston, and with a promise, on my part, that, if I visited the county again, I would write a Register there; a promise which I shall certainly keep.

Great Yarmouth,
Friday (morning), 21st Dec.

The day before yesterday I set out for Bergh Apton with Mr. Clarke, to come hither by the way of Beccles in Suffolk. We stopped at Mr. Charles Clarke’s at Beccles, where we saw some good and sensible men, who see clearly into all the parts of the works of the “Thunderers,” and whose anticipations, as to the “general working of events,” are such as they ought to be. They gave us a humorous account of the “rabble” having recently crowned a Jackass, and of a struggle between them and the “Yeomanry Cavaltry.” This was a place of most ardent and blazing loyalty, as the pretenders to it call it; but, it seems it now blazes less furiously; it is milder, more measured in its effusions; and, with the help of low prices, will become bearable in time. This Beccles is a very pretty place, has watered meadows near it, and is situated amidst fine lands. What a system it must be to make people wretched in a country like this! Could he be heaven-born that invented such a system? Gaffer Gooch’s father, a very old man, lives not far from here. We had a good deal of fun about the Gaffer, who will certainly never lose the name, unless he should be made a Lord.—We slept at the house of a friend of Mr. Clarke on our way, and got to this very fine town of Great Yarmouth yesterday about noon. A party of friends met us and conducted us about the town, which is a very beautiful one indeed. What I liked best, however, was the hearty welcome that I met with, because it showed, that the reign of calumny and delusion was passed. A company of gentlemen gave me a dinner in the evening, and, in all my life I never saw a set of men more worthy of my respect and gratitude. Sensible, modest, understanding the whole of our case, and clearly foreseeing what is about to happen. One gentleman proposed, that, as it would be impossible for all to go to London, there should be a Provincial Feast of the Gridiron, a plan, which, I hope, will be adopted—I leave Great Yarmouth with sentiments of the sincerest regard for all those whom I there saw and conversed with, and with my best wishes for the happiness of all its inhabitants; nay, even the parsons not excepted; for, if they did not come to welcome me, they collected in a group to see me, and that was one step towards doing justice to him whom their order have so much, so foully, and, if they knew their own interest, so foolishly slandered.

Bergh Apton,
22nd Dec. (night).

After returning from Yarmouth yesterday, went to dine at Stoke-Holy-Cross, about six miles off; got home at mid-night, and came to Norwich this morning, this being market-day, and also the day fixed on for a Radical Reform Dinner at the Swan Inn, to which I was invited. Norwich is a very fine city, and the Castle, which stands in the middle of it, on a hill, is truly majestic. The meat and poultry and vegetable market is beautiful. It is kept in a large open square in the middle, or nearly so, of the City. The ground is a pretty sharp slope, so that you see all at once. It resembles one of the French markets, only there the vendors are all standing and gabbling like parrots, and the meat is lean and bloody and nasty, and the people snuffy and grimy in hands and face, the contrary, precisely the contrary of all which is the case in this beautiful market at Norwich, where the women have a sort of uniform brown great coats, with white aprons and bibs (I think they call them) going from the apron up to the bosom. They equal in neatness (for nothing can surpass) the market women in Philadelphia.—The cattle-market is held on the hill by the castle, and many fairs are smaller in bulk of stock. The corn-market is held in a very magnificent place, called Saint Andrew’s Hall, which will contain two or three thousand persons. They tell me, that this used to be a most delightful scene; a most joyous one; and, I think, it was this scene that Mr. Curwen described in such glowing colours when he was talking of the Norfolk farmers, each worth so many thousands of pounds. Bear me witness, reader, that I never was dazzled by such sights; that the false glare never put my eyes out; and that, even then, twelve years ago, I warned Mr. Curwen of the result! Bear witness to this, my Disciples, and justify the doctrines of him for whose sakes you have endured persecution. How different would Mr. Curwen find the scene now! What took place at the dinner has been already recorded in the Register; and I have only to add with regard to it, that my reception at Norfolk was such, that I have only to regret the total want of power to make those hearty Norfolk and Norwich friends any suitable return, whether by act or word.

Kensington,
Monday, 24 Dec.

Went from Bergh Apton to Norwich in the morning, and from Norwich to London during the day, carrying with me great admiration of and respect for this county of excellent farmers, and hearty, open and spirited men. The Norfolk people are quick and smart in their motions and in their speaking. Very neat and trim in all their farming concerns, and very skilful. Their land is good, their roads are level, and the bottom of their soil is dry, to be sure; and these are great advantages; but they are diligent, and make the most of everything. Their management of all sorts of stock is most judicious; they are careful about manure; their teams move quickly; and, in short, it is a county of most excellent cultivators.—The churches in Norfolk are generally large and the towers lofty. They have all been well built at first. Many of them are of the Saxon architecture. They are, almost all (I do not remember an exception), placed on the highest spots to be found near where they stand; and, it is curious enough, that the contrary practice should have prevailed in hilly countries, where they are generally found in valleys and in low, sheltered dells, even in those valleys! These churches prove that the people of Norfolk and Suffolk were always a superior people in point of wealth, while the size of them proves that the country parts were, at one time, a great deal more populous than they now are. The great drawbacks on the beauty of these counties are, their flatness and their want of fine woods; but, to those who can dispense with these, Norfolk, under a wise and just government, can have nothing to ask more than Providence and the industry of man have given.

Landlord Distress Meetings.

For, in fact, it is not the farmer, but the Landlord and Parson, who wants relief from the “Collective.” The tenant’s remedy is, quitting his farm or bringing down his rent to what he can afford to give, wheat being 3 or 4 shillings a bushel. This is his remedy. What should he want high prices for? They can do him no good; and this I proved to the farmers last year. The fact is, the Landlords and Parsons are urging the farmers on to get something done to give them high rents and high tithes.

At Hertford there has been a meeting at which some sense was discovered, at any rate. The parties talked about the fund-holder, the Debt, the taxes, and so on, and seemed to be in a very warm temper. Pray, keep yourselves cool, gentlemen; for you have a great deal to endure yet. I deeply regret that I have not room to insert the resolutions of this meeting.

There is to be a meeting at Battle (East Sussex) on the 3rd instant, at which I mean to be. I want to see my friends on the South Downs. To see how they look now.

[At a public dinner given to Mr. Cobbett at Norwich, on the market-day above mentioned, the company drank the toast of Mr. Cobbett and his “Trash,” the name “two-penny trash,” having being at one time applied by Lord Castlereagh to the Register. In acknowledging this toast Mr. Cobbett addressed the company in a speech, of which the following is a passage:]

“My thanks to you for having drunk my health, are great and sincere; but much greater pleasure do I feel at the approbation bestowed on that Trash, which has, for so many years been a mark for the finger of scorn to be pointed at by ignorant selfishness and arrogant and insolent power. To enumerate, barely to name, all, or a hundredth part of, the endeavours that have been made to stifle this Trash would require a much longer space of time than that which we have now before us. But, gentlemen, those endeavours must have cost money; money must have been expended in the circulation of Anti-Cobbett, and the endless bale of papers and pamphlets put forth to check the progress of the Trash: and, when we take into view the immense sums expended in keeping down the spirit excited by the Trash, who of us is to tell, whether these endeavours, taken altogether, may not have added many millions to that debt, of which (without any hint at a concomitant measure) some men have now the audacity, the unprincipled, the profligate assurance to talk of reducing the interest. The Trash, Gentlemen, is now triumphant; its triumph we are now met to celebrate; proofs of its triumph I myself witnessed not many hours ago, in that scene where the best possible evidence was to be found. In walking through St. Andrew’s Hall, my mind was not so much engaged on the grandeur of the place, or on the gratifying reception I met with; those hearty shakes by the hand which I so much like, those smiles of approbation, which not to see with pride would argue an insensibility to honest fame: even these, I do sincerely assure you, engaged my mind much less than the melancholy reflection, that, of the two thousand or fifteen hundred farmers then in my view, there were probably three-fourths who came to the Hall with aching hearts, and who would leave it in a state of mental agony. What a thing to contemplate, Gentlemen! What a scene is here! A set of men, occupiers of the land; producers of all that we eat, drink, wear, and of all that forms the buildings that shelter us; a set of men industrious and careful by habit; cool, thoughtful, and sensible from the instructions of nature; a set of men provident above all others, and engaged in pursuits in their nature stable as the very earth they till: to see a set of men like this plunged into anxiety, embarrassment, jeopardy, not to be described; and when the particular individuals before me were famed for their superior skill in this great and solid pursuit, and were blessed with soil and other circumstances to make them prosperous and happy: to behold this sight would have been more than sufficient to sink my heart within me, had I not been upheld by the reflection, that I had done all in my power to prevent these calamities, and that I still had in reserve that which, with the assistance of the sufferers themselves, would restore them and the nation to happiness.”

SUSSEX JOURNAL: TO BATTLE, THROUGH BROMLEY, SEVEN-OAKS, AND TUNBRIDGE.

Battle,
Wednesday, 2 Jan. 1822.

Came here to-day from Kensington, in order to see what goes on at the Meeting to be held here to-morrow, of the “Gentry, Clergy, Freeholders, and Occupiers of Land in the Rape of Hastings, to take into consideration the distressed state of the Agricultural interest.” I shall, of course, give an account of this meeting after it has taken place.—You come through part of Kent to get to Battle from the Great Wen on the Surrey side of the Thames. The first town is Bromley, the next Seven-Oaks, the next Tunbridge, and between Tunbridge and this place you cross the boundaries of the two counties.—From the Surrey Wen to Bromley the land is generally a deep loam on a gravel, and you see few trees except elm. A very ugly country. On quitting Bromley the land gets poorer; clay at bottom; the wheat sown on five, or seven, turn lands; the furrows shining with wet; rushes on the wastes on the sides of the road. Here there is a common, part of which has been enclosed and thrown out again, or, rather, the fences carried away.—There is a frost this morning, some ice, and the women look rosy-cheeked.—There is a very great variety of soil along this road; bottom of yellow clay; then of sand; then of sand-stone; then of solider stone; then (for about five miles) of chalk; then of red clay; then chalk again; here (before you come to Seven-Oaks) is a most beautiful and rich valley, extending from east to west, with rich corn-fields and fine trees; then comes sand-stone again; and the hop-gardens near Seven-Oaks, which is a pretty little town with beautiful environs, part of which consists of the park of Knowle, the seat of the Duchess of Dorset. It is a very fine place. And there is another park, on the other side of the town. So that this is a delightful place, and the land appears to be very good. The gardens and houses all look neat and nice. On quitting Seven-Oaks you come to a bottom of gravel for a short distance, and to a clay for many miles. When I say that I saw teams carting gravel from this spot to a distance of nearly ten miles along the road, the reader will be at no loss to know what sort of bottom the land has all along here. The bottom then becomes sand-stone again. This vein of land runs all along through the county of Sussex, and the clay runs into Hampshire, across the forests of Bere and Waltham, then across the parishes of Ouslebury, Stoke, and passing between the sand hills of Southampton and chalk hills of Winchester, goes westward till stopped by the chalky downs between Romsey and Salisbury.—Tunbridge is a small but very nice town, and has some fine meadows and a navigable river.—The rest of the way to Battle presents, alternately, clay and sand-stone. Of course the coppices and oak woods are very frequent. There is now and then a hop-garden spot, and now and then an orchard of apples or cherries; but these are poor indeed compared with what you see about Canterbury and Maidstone. The agricultural state of the country or, rather, the quality of the land, from Bromley to Battle, may be judged of from the fact, that I did not see, as I came along, more than thirty acres of Swedes during the fifty-six miles! In Norfolk I should, in the same distance, have seen five hundred acres! However, man was not the maker of the land; and, as to human happiness, I am of opinion, that as much, and even more, falls to the lot of the leather-legged chaps that live in and rove about amongst those clays and woods as to the more regularly disciplined labourers of the rich and prime parts of England. As “God has made the back to the burthen,” so the clay and coppice people make the dress to the stubs and bushes. Under the sole of the shoe is iron; from the sole six inches upwards is a high-low; then comes a leather bam to the knee; then comes a pair of leather breeches; then comes a stout doublet; over this comes a smock-frock; and the wearer sets brush and stubs and thorns and mire at defiance. I have always observed, that woodland and forest labourers are best off in the main. The coppices give them pleasant and profitable work in winter. If they have not so great a corn-harvest, they have a three weeks’ harvest in April or May; that is to say, in the season of barking, which in Hampshire is called stripping, and in Sussex flaying, which employs women and children as well as men. And then in the great article of fuel! They buy none. It is miserable work, where this is to be bought, and where, as at Salisbury, the poor take by turns the making of fires at their houses to boil four or five tea-kettles. What a winter-life must those lead, whose turn it is not to make the fire! At Launceston in Cornwall a man, a tradesman too, told me, that the people in general could not afford to have fire in ordinary, and that he himself paid 3d. for boiling a leg of mutton at another man’s fire! The leather-legged-race know none of these miseries, at any rate. They literally get their fuel “by hook or by crook,” whence, doubtless, comes that old and very expressive saying, which is applied to those cases where people will have a thing by one means or another.

Battle,
Thursday (night), 3 Jan. 1822.

To-day there has been a Meeting here of the landlords and farmers in this part of Sussex, which is called the Rape of Hastings. The object was to agree on a petition to Parliament praying for relief! Good God! Where is this to end? We now see the effects of those rags which I have been railing against for the last twenty years. Here were collected together not less than 300 persons, principally landlords and farmers, brought from their homes by their distresses and by their alarms for the future! Never were such things heard in any country before; and, it is useless to hope, for terrific must be the consequences, if an effectual remedy be not speedily applied. The town, which is small, was in a great bustle before noon; and the Meeting (in a large room in the principal inn) took place about one o’clock. Lord Ashburnham was called to the chair, and there were present Mr. Curteis, one of the county members, Mr. Fuller, who formerly used to cut such a figure in the House of Commons, Mr. Lambe, and many other gentlemen of landed property within the Rape, or district, for which the Meeting was held. Mr. Curteis, after Lord Ashburnham had opened the business, addressed the Meeting.

Mr. Fuller then tendered some Resolutions, describing the fallen state of the landed interest, and proposing to pray, generally, for relief. Mr. Britton complained, that it was not proposed to pray for some specific measure, and insisted, that the cause of the evil was the rise in the value of money without a corresponding reduction in the taxes.—A Committee was appointed to draw up a petition, which was next produced. It merely described the distress, and prayed generally for relief. Mr. Holloway proposed an addition, containing an imputation of the distress to restricted currency and unabated taxation, and praying for a reduction of taxes. A discussion now arose upon two points: first, whether the addition were admissible at all! and, second, whether Mr. Holloway was qualified to offer it to the Meeting. Both the points having been, at last, decided in the affirmative, the addition, or amendment, was put, and lost; and then the original petition was adopted.

After the business of the day was ended, there was a dinner in the inn, in the same room where the Meeting had been held. I was at this dinner; and Mr. Britton having proposed my health, and Mr. Curteis, who was in the Chair, having given it, I thought it would have looked like mock-modesty, which is, in fact, only another term for hypocrisy, to refrain from expressing my opinions upon a point or two connected with the business of the day. I shall now insert a substantially correct sketch of what the company was indulgent enough to hear from me at the dinner; which I take from the report contained in the Morning Chronicle of Saturday last. The report in the Chronicle has all the pith of what I advanced relative to the inutility of Corn Bills, and relative to the cause of further declining prices; two points of the greatest importance in themselves, and which I was, and am, uncommonly anxious to press upon the attention of the public.

The following is a part of the speech so reported:—

“I am decidedly of opinion, Gentlemen, that a Corn Bill of no description, no matter what its principles or provisions, can do either tenant or landlord any good; and I am not less decidedly of opinion, that though prices are now low, they must, all the present train of public measures continuing, be yet lower, and continue lower upon an average of years and of seasons.—As to a Corn Bill; a law to prohibit or check the importation of human food is a perfect novelty in our history, and ought, therefore, independent of the reason, and the recent experience of the case, to be received and entertained with great suspicion. Heretofore, premiums have been given for the exportation, and at other times, for the importation, of corn; but of laws to prevent the importation of human food our ancestors knew nothing. And what says recent experience? When the present Corn Bill was passed, I, then a farmer, unable to get my brother farmers to join me, petitioned singly against this Bill; and I stated to my brother farmers, that such a Bill could do us no good, while it would not fail to excite against us the ill-will of the other classes of the community; a thought by no means pleasant. Thus has it been. The distress of agriculture was considerable in magnitude then; but what is it now? And yet the Bill was passed; that Bill which was to remunerate and protect is still in force; the farmers got what they prayed to have granted them; and their distress, with a short interval of tardy pace, has proceeded rapidly increasing from that day to this. What, in the way of Corn Bill, can you have, Gentlemen, beyond absolute prohibition? And, have you not, since about April, 1819, had absolute prohibition? Since that time no corn has been imported, and then only thirty millions of bushels, which, supposing it all to have been wheat, was a quantity much too insignificant to produce any sensible depression in the price of the immense quantity of corn raised in this kingdom since the last bushel was imported. If your produce had fallen in this manner, if your prices had come down very low, immediately after the importation had taken place, there might have been some colour of reason to impute the fall to the importation; but it so happens, and as if for the express purpose of contradicting the crude notions of Mr. Webb Hall, that your produce has fallen in price at a greater rate, in proportion as time has removed you from the point of importation; and, as to the circumstance, so ostentatiously put forward by Mr. Hall and others, that there is still some of the imported corn unsold, what does it prove but the converse of what those Gentlemen aim at, that is to say, that the holders cannot afford to sell it at present prices; for, if they could gain but ever so little by the sale, would they keep it wasting and costing money in warehouse? There appears with some persons to be a notion, that the importation of corn is a new thing. They seem to forget, that, during the last war, when agriculture was so prosperous, the ports were always open; that prodigious quantities of corn were imported during the war; that, so far from importation being prohibited, high premiums were given, paid out of the taxes, partly raised upon English farmers, to induce men to import corn. All this seems to be forgotten as much as if it had never taken place; and now the distress of the English farmer is imputed to a cause which was never before an object of his attention, and a desire is expressed to put an end to a branch of commerce which the nation has always freely carried on. I think, Gentlemen, that here are reasons quite sufficient to make any man but Mr. Webb Hall slow to impute the present distress to the importation of corn; but, at any rate, what can you have beyond absolute efficient prohibition? No law, no duty, however high; nothing that the Parliament can do can go beyond this; and this you now have, in effect, as completely as if this were the only country beneath the sky. For these reasons, Gentlemen, (and to state more would be a waste of your time and an affront to your understandings,) I am convinced, that, in the way of Corn Bill, it is impossible for the Parliament to afford you any, even the smallest, portion of relief. As to the other point, Gentlemen, the tendency which the present measures and course of things have to carry prices lower, and considerably lower than they now are, and to keep them for a permanency at that low rate, this is a matter worthy of the serious attention of all connected with the land, and particularly of that of the renting farmer. During the war no importations distressed the farmer. It was not till peace came that the cry of distress was heard. But, during the war, there was a boundless issue of paper money. Those issues were instantly narrowed by the peace, the law being, that the Bank should pay in cash six months after the peace should take place. This was the cause of that distress which led to the present Corn Bill. The disease occasioned by the preparations for cash-payments, has been brought to a crisis by Mr. Peel’s Bill, which has, in effect, doubled, if not tripled, the real amount of the taxes, and violated all contracts for time; given triple gains to every lender, and placed every borrower in jeopardy.

Kensington, Friday, 4 Jan. 1822.

Got home from Battle. I had no time to see the town, having entered the Inn on Wednesday in the dusk of the evening, having been engaged all day yesterday in the Inn, and having come out of it only to get into the coach this morning. I had not time to go even to see Battle Abbey, the seat of the Webster family, now occupied by a man of the name of Alexander! Thus they replace them! It will take a much shorter time than most people imagine to put out all the ancient families. I should think, that six years will turn out all those who receive nothing out of taxes. The greatness of the estate is no protection to the owner; for, great or little, it will soon yield him no rents; and, when the produce is nothing in either case, the small estate is as good as the large one. Mr. Curteis said, that the land was immovable; yes; but the rents are not. And, if freeholds cannot be seized for common contract debts, the carcass of the owner may. But, in fact, there will be no rents; and, without these, the ownership is an empty sound. Thus, at last, the burthen will, as I always said it would, fall upon the land-owner; and, as the fault of supporting the system has been wholly his, the burthen will fall upon the right back. Whether he will now call in the people to help him to shake it off is more than I can say; but, if he do not, I am sure that he must sink under it. And then, will revolution No. I. have been accomplished; but far, and very far indeed, will that be from being the close of the drama!—I cannot quit Battle without observing, that the country is very pretty all about it. All hill, or valley. A great deal of wood-land, in which the underwood is generally very fine, though the oaks are not very fine, and a good deal covered with moss. This shows, that the clay ends before the tap-root of the oak gets as deep as it would go; for, when the clay goes the full depth, the oaks are always fine.—The woods are too large and too near each other for hare-hunting; and, as to coursing it is out of the question here. But it is a fine country for shooting and for harbouring game of all sorts.—It was rainy as I came home; but the woodmen were at work. A great many hop-poles are cut here, which makes the coppices more valuable than in many other parts. The women work in the coppices, shaving the bark of the hop-poles, and, indeed, at various other parts of the business. These poles are shaved to prevent maggots from breeding in the bark and accelerating the destruction of the pole. It is curious that the bark of trees should generate maggots; but it has, as well as the wood, a sugary matter in it. The hickory wood in America sends out from the ends of the logs when these are burning, great quantities of the finest syrup that can be imagined. Accordingly, that wood breeds maggots, or worms as they are usually called, surprisingly. Our ash breeds worms very much. When the tree or pole is cut, the moist matter between the outer bark and the wood putrifies. Thence come the maggots, which soon begin to eat their way into the wood. For this reason the bark is shaved off the hop-poles, as it ought to be off all our timber trees, as soon as cut, especially the ash.—Little boys and girls shave hop-poles and assist in other coppice work very nicely. And it is pleasant work when the weather is dry overhead. The woods, bedded with leaves as they are, are clean and dry underfoot. They are warm too, even in the coldest weather. When the ground is frozen several inches deep in the open fields, it is scarcely frozen at all in a coppice where the underwood is a good plant, and where it is nearly high enough to cut. So that the woodman’s is really a pleasant life. We are apt to think that the birds have a hard time of it in winter. But we forget the warmth of the woods, which far exceeds anything to be found in farm yards. When Sidmouth started me from my farm, in 1817, I had just planted my farm yard round with a pretty coppice. But, never mind, Sidmouth and I shall, I dare say, have plenty of time and occasion to talk about that coppice, and many other things, before we die. And, can I, when I think of these things, now, pity those to whom Sidmouth owed his power of starting me!—But let me forget the subject for this time at any rate.—Woodland countries are interesting on many accounts. Not so much on account of their masses of green leaves, as on account of the variety of sights and sounds and incidents that they afford. Even in winter the coppices are beautiful to the eye, while they comfort the mind with the idea of shelter and warmth. In spring they change their hue from day to day during two whole months, which is about the time from the first appearance of the delicate leaves of the birch to the full expansion of those of the ash; and, even before the leaves come at all to intercept the view, what in the vegetable creation is so delightful to behold as the bed of a coppice bespangled with primroses and blue-bells? The opening of the birch leaves is the signal for the pheasant to begin to crow, for the blackbird to whistle, and the thrush to sing; and, just when the oak-buds begin to look reddish, and not a day before, the whole tribe of finches burst forth in songs from every bough, while the lark, imitating them all, carries the joyous sounds to the sky. These are amongst the means which Providence has benignantly appointed to sweeten the toils by which food and raiment are produced; these the English Ploughman could once hear without the sorrowful reflection that he himself was a pauper, and that the bounties of nature had, for him, been scattered in vain! And shall he never see an end to this state of things? Shall he never have the due reward of his labour? Shall unsparing taxation never cease to make him a miserable dejected being, a creature famishing in the midst of abundance, fainting, expiring with hunger’s feeble moans, surrounded by a carolling creation? O! accursed paper-money! Has hell a torment surpassing the wickedness of thy inventor?

SUSSEX JOURNAL: THROUGH CROYDON, GODSTONE, EAST-GRINSTEAD, AND UCKFIELD, TO LEWES, AND BRIGHTON; RETURNING BY CUCKFIELD, WORTH, AND RED-HILL.

Lewes,
Tuesday, 8 Jan., 1822.

Came here to-day, from home, to see what passes to-morrow at a Meeting to be held here of the Owners and Occupiers of Land in the Rapes of Lewes and Pevensey.—In quitting the great Wen we go through Surrey more than half the way to Lewes. From Saint George’s Fields, which now are covered with houses, we go, towards Croydon, between rows of houses, nearly half the way, and the whole way is nine miles. There are, erected within these four years, two entire miles of stock-jobbers’ houses on this one road, and the work goes on with accelerated force! To be sure; for, the taxes being, in fact, tripled by Peel’s Bill, the fundlords increase in riches; and their accommodations increase of course. What an at once horrible and ridiculous thing this country would become, if this thing could go on only for a few years! And these rows of new houses, added to the Wen, are proofs of growing prosperity, are they? These make part of the increased capital of the country, do they? But how is this Wen to be dispersed? I know not whether it be to be done by knife or by caustic; but, dispersed it must be! And this is the only difficulty, which I do not see the easy means of getting over.—Aye! these are dreadful thoughts! I know they are: but, they ought not to be banished from the mind; for they will return, and, at every return, they will be more frightful. The man who cannot coolly look at this matter is unfit for the times that are approaching. Let the interest of the Debt be once well reduced (and that must be sooner or later) and then what is to become of half a million at least of the people congregated in this Wen? Oh! precious “Great Man now no more!” Oh! “Pilot that weathered the Storm!” Oh! “Heaven-born” pupil of Prettyman! Who, but him who can number the sands of the sea, shall number the execrations with which thy memory will be loaded!—From London to Croydon is as ugly a bit of country as any in England. A poor spewy gravel with some clay. Few trees but elms, and those generally stripped up and villanously ugly.—Croydon is a good market-town; but is, by the funds, swelled out into a Wen.—Upon quitting Croydon for Godstone, you come to the chalk hills, the juniper shrubs and the yew trees. This is an extension westward of the vein of chalk which I have before noticed (see page 54) between Bromley and Seven-Oaks. To the westward here lie Epsom Downs, which lead on to Merrow Downs and St. Margaret’s Hill, then, skipping over Guildford, you come to the Hog’s Back, which is still of chalk, and at the west end of which lies Farnham. With the Hog’s Back this vein of chalk seems to end; for then the valleys become rich loam, and the hills sand and gravel till you approach the Winchester Downs by the way of Alresford.—Godstone, which is in Surrey also, is a beautiful village, chiefly of one street with a fine large green before it and with a pond in the green. A little way to the right (going from London) lies the vile rotten Borough of Blechingley; but, happily for Godstone, out of sight. At and near Godstone the gardens are all very neat, and at the Inn there is a nice garden well stocked with beautiful flowers in the season. I here saw, last summer, some double violets as large as small pinks, and the lady of the house was kind enough to give me some of the roots.—From Godstone you go up a long hill of clay and sand, and then descend into a level country of stiff loam at top, clay at bottom, corn-fields, pastures, broad hedgerows, coppices, and oak woods, which country continues till you quit Surrey about two miles before you reach East-Grinstead. The woods and coppices are very fine here. It is the genuine oak-soil; a bottom of yellow clay to any depth, I dare say, that man can go. No moss on the oaks. No dead tops. Straight as larches. The bark of the young trees with dark spots in it; sure sign of free growth and great depth of clay beneath. The wheat is here sown on five-turn ridges, and the ploughing is amongst the best that I ever saw.—At East-Grinstead, which is a rotten Borough and a very shabby place, you come to stiff loam at top with sand stone beneath. To the south of the place the land is fine, and the vale on both sides a very beautiful intermixture of woodland and corn-fields and pastures.—At about three miles from Grinstead you come to a pretty village, called Forest-Row, and then, on the road to Uckfield, you cross Ashurst Forest, which is a heath, with here and there a few birch scrubs upon it, verily the most villanously ugly spot I ever saw in England. This lasts you for five miles, getting, if possible, uglier and uglier all the way, till, at last, as if barren soil, nasty spewy gravel, heath and even that stunted, were not enough, you see some rising spots, which instead of trees, presents you with black, ragged, hideous rocks. There may be Englishmen who wish to see the coast of Nova Scotia. They need not go to sea; for here it is to the life. If I had been in a long trance (as our nobility seem to have been), and had been waked up here, I should have begun to look about for the Indians and the Squaws, and to have heaved a sigh at the thought of being so far from England.—From the end of this forest without trees you come into a country of but poorish wettish land. Passing through the village of Uckfield, you find an enclosed country, with a soil of a clay cast all the way to within about three miles of Lewes, when you get to a chalk bottom, and rich land. I was at Lewes at the beginning of last harvest, and saw the fine farms of the Ellmans, very justly renowned for their improvement of the breed of South-Down sheep, and the younger Mr. John Ellman not less justly blamed for the part he had taken in propagating the errors of Webb Hall, and thereby, however unintentionally, assisting to lead thousands to cherish those false hopes that have been the cause of their ruin. Mr. Ellman may say that he thought he was right; but if he had read my New Year’s Gift to the Farmers, published in the preceding January, he could not think that he was right. If he had not read it, he ought to have read it, before he appeared in print. At any rate, if no other person had a right to censure his publications, I had that right. I will here notice a calumny, to which the above visit to Lewes gave rise; namely, that I went into the neighbourhood of the Ellmans, to find out whether they ill-treated their labourers! No man that knows me will believe this. The facts are these: the Ellmans, celebrated farmers, had made a great figure in the evidence taken before the Committee. I was at Worth, about twenty miles from Lewes. The harvest was begun. Worth is a woodland country. I wished to know the state of the crops; for I was, at that very time, as will be seen by referring to the date, beginning to write my First Letter to the Landlords. Without knowing anything of the matter myself, I asked my host, Mr. Brazier, what good corn country was nearest to us. He said Lewes. Off I went, and he with me, in a post-chaise. We had 20 miles to go and 20 back in the same chaise. A bad road, and rain all the day. We put up at the White Hart, took another chaise, went round, and saw the farms, through the window of the chaise, having stopped at a little public-house to ask which were they, and having stopped now and then to get a sample out of the sheaves of wheat, came back to the White Hart, after being absent only about an hour and a half, got our dinner, and got back to Worth before it was dark; and never asked, and never intended to ask, one single question of any human being as to the conduct or character of the Ellmans. Indeed the evidence of the elder Mr. Ellman was so fair, so honest, and so useful, particularly as relating to the labourers, that I could not possibly suspect him of being a cruel or hard master. He told the Committee, that when he began business, forty-five years ago, every man in the parish brewed his own beer, and that now, not one man did it, unless he gave him the malt! Why, here was by far the most valuable part of the whole volume of evidence. Then, Mr. Ellman did not present a parcel of estimates and God knows what; but a plain and honest statement of facts, the rate of day wages, of job wages, for a long series of years, by which it clearly appeared how the labourer had been robbed and reduced to misery, and how the poor-rates had been increased. He did not, like Mr. George and other Bull-frogs, sink these interesting facts; but honestly told the truth. Therefore, whatever I might think of his endeavours to uphold the mischievous errors of Webb Hall, I could have no suspicion that he was a hard master.

Lewes,
Wednesday, 9 Jan. 1822.

The Meeting and the Dinner are now over. Mr. Davies Giddy was in the Chair: the place the County Hall. A Mr. Partington, a pretty little oldish smart truss nice cockney-looking gentleman, with a yellow and red handkerchief round his neck, moved the petition, which was seconded by Lord Chichester, who lives in the neighbourhood. Much as I had read of that great Doctor of virtual representation and Royal Commissioner of Inimitable Bank Notes, Mr. Davies Giddy, I had never seen him before. He called to my mind one of those venerable persons, who administer spiritual comfort to the sinners of the “sister-kingdom;” and, whether I looked at the dress or the person, I could almost have sworn that it was the identical Father Luke, that I saw about twenty-three years ago, at Philadelphia, in the farce of the Poor Soldier. Mr. Blackman (of Lewes I believe) disapproved of the petition, and, in a speech of considerable length, and also of considerable ability, stated to the meeting that the evils complained of arose from the currency, and not from the importation of foreign corn. A Mr. Donavon, an Irish gentleman, who, it seems, is a magistrate in this “disturbed county,” disapproved of discussing anything at such a meeting, and thought that the meeting should merely state its distresses, and leave it to the wisdom of Parliament to discover the remedy. Upon which Mr. Chatfield observed: “So, Sir, we are in a trap. We cannot get ourselves out though we know the way. There are others, who have got us in, and are able to get us out, but they do not know how. And we are to tell them, it seems, that we are in the trap; but are not to tell them the way to get us out. I don’t like long speeches, Sir; but I like common sense.” This was neat and pithy. Fifty professed orators could not, in a whole day, have thrown so much ridicule on the speech of Mr. Donavon.—A Mr. Mabbott proposed an amendment to include all classes of the community, and took a hit at Mr. Curteis for his speech at Battle. Mr. Curteis defended himself, and I thought very fairly. A Mr. Woodward, who said he was a farmer, carried us back to the necessity of the war against France; and told us of the horrors of plunder and murder and rape that the war had prevented. This gentleman put an end to my patience, which Mr. Donavon had put to an extremely severe test; and so I withdrew.—After I went away Mr. Blackman proposed some resolutions, which were carried by a great majority by show of hands. But, pieces of paper were then handed about, for the voters to write their names on for and against the petition. The greater part of the people were gone away by this time; but, at any rate, there were more signatures for the petition than for the resolutions. A farmer in Pennsylvania having a visitor, to whom he was willing to show how well he treated his negroes as to food, bid the fellows (who were at dinner) to ask for a second or third cut of pork if they had not enough. Quite surprised at the novelty, but emboldened by a repetition of the injunction, one of them did say, “Massa, I wants another cut.” He had it; but as soon as the visitor was gone away, “D—n you,” says the master, while he belaboured him with the “cowskin,” “I’ll make you know how to understand me another time!” The signers of this petition were in the dark while the show of hands was going on; but when it came to signing they knew well what Massa meant! This is a petition to be sure; but it is no more the petition of the farmers in the Rapes of Lewes and Pevensey than it is the petition of the Mermaids of Lapland.—There was a dinner after the meeting at the Star-Inn, at which there occurred something rather curious regarding myself. When at Battle, I had no intention of going to Lewes, till on the evening of my arrival at Battle, a gentleman, who had heard of the before-mentioned calumny, observed to me that I would do well not to go to Lewes. That very observation, made me resolve to go. I went, as a spectator, to the meeting; and I left no one ignorant of the place where I was to be found. I did not covet the noise of a dinner of from 200 to 300 persons, and I did not intend to go to it; but, being pressed to go, I finally went. After some previous common-place occurrences, Mr. Kemp, formerly a member for Lewes, was called to the chair; and he having given as a toast, “the speedy discovery of a remedy for our distresses,” Mr. Ebenezer Johnstone, a gentleman of Lewes, whom I had never seen or heard of until that day, but who, I understand, is a very opulent and most respectable man, proposed my health, as that of a person likely to be able to point out the wished-for remedy.—This was the signal for the onset. Immediately upon the toast being given, a Mr. Hitchins, a farmer of Seaford, duly prepared for the purpose, got upon the table, and, with candle in one hand and Register in the other, read the following garbled passage from my Letter to Lord Egremont.—“But, let us hear what the younger Ellman said: ‘He had seen them employed in drawing beach gravel, as had been already described. One of them, the leader, worked with a bell about his neck.’ Oh! the envy of surrounding nations and admiration of the world! Oh! what a ‘glorious Constitution!’ ‘Oh! what a happy country! Impudent Radicals, to want to reform a Parliament, under which men enjoy such blessings! On such a subject it is impossible (under Six-Acts) to trust one’s pen! However, this I will say; that here is much more than enough to make me rejoice in the ruin of the farmers; and I do, with all my heart, thank God for it; seeing, that it appears absolutely necessary, that the present race of them should be totally broken up, in Sussex at any rate, in order to put an end to this cruelty and insolence towards the labourers, who are by far the greater number and who are men, and a little better men too, than such employers as these, who are, in fact, monsters in human shape!’”

I had not the Register by me, and could not detect the garbling. All the words that I have put in Italics, this Hitchins left out in the reading. What sort of man he must be the public will easily judge.—No sooner had Hitchins done, than up started Mr. Ingram, a farmer of Rottendean, who was the second person in the drama (for all had been duly prepared), and moved that I should be put out of the room! Some few of the Webb Hallites, joined by about six or eight of the dark, dirty-faced, half-whiskered, tax-eaters from Brighton (which is only eight miles off) joined in this cry. I rose, that they might see the man that they had to put out. Fortunately for themselves, not one of them attempted to approach me. They were like the mice that resolved that a bell should be put round the cat’s neck!—However, a considerable hubbub took place. At last, however, the Chairman, Mr. Kemp, whose conduct was fair and manly, having given my health, I proceeded to address the company in substance as stated here below; and, it is curious enough, that even those who, upon my health being given, had taken their hats and gone out of the room (and amongst whom Mr. Ellman the younger was one) came back, formed a crowd, and were just as silent and attentive as the rest of the company!

[NOTE, written at Kensington, 13 Jan.—I must here, before I insert the speech, which has appeared in the Morning Chronicle, the Brighton papers, and in most of the London papers, except the base sinking Old Times and the brimstone-smelling Tramper, or Traveller, which is, I well know, a mere tool in the hands of two snap-dragon Whig-Lawyers, whose greediness and folly I have so often had to expose, and which paper is maintained by a contrivance which I will amply expose in my next; I must, before I insert this speech, remark, that Mr. Ellman the younger has, to a gentleman whom I know to be incapable of falsehood, disavowed the proceeding of Hitchins; on which I have to observe, that the disavowal, to have any weight, must be public, or be made to me.

As to the provocation that I have given the Ellmans, I am, upon reflection, ready to confess that I may have laid on the lash without a due regard to mercy. The fact is, that I have so long had the misfortune to be compelled to keep a parcel of badger-hided fellows, like Scarlett, in order, that I am, like a drummer that has been used to flog old offenders, become heavy handed. I ought to have considered the Ellmans as recruits and to have suited my tickler to the tenderness of their backs.—I hear that Mr. Ingram of Rottendean, who moved for my being turned out of the room, and who looked so foolish when he had to turn himself out, is an Officer of Yeomanry “Gavaltry.” A ploughman spoiled! This man would, I dare say, have been a very good husbandman; but the unnatural working of the paper-system has sublimated him out of his senses. That greater Doctor, Mr. Peel, will bring him down again.—Mr. Hitchins, I am told, after going away, came back, stood on the landing-place (the door being open), and, while I was speaking, exclaimed, “Oh! the fools! How they open their mouths! How they suck it all in.”—Suck what in, Mr. Hitchins? Was it honey that dropped from my lips? Was it flattery? Amongst other things, I said that I liked the plain names of farmer and husbandman better than that of agriculturist; and, the prospect I held out to them, was that of a description to catch their applause?—But this Hitchins seems to be a very silly person indeed.]

The following is a portion of the speech:—

“The toast having been opposed, and that, too, in the extraordinary manner we have witnessed, I will, at any rate, with your permission, make a remark or two on that manner. If the person who has made the opposition had been actuated by a spirit of fairness and justice, he would not have confined himself to a detached sentence of the paper from which he has read; but, would have taken the whole together; for, by taking a particular sentence, and leaving out all the rest, what writing is there that will not admit of a wicked interpretation? As to the particular part which has been read, I should not, perhaps, if I had seen it in print, and had had time to cool a little [it was in a Register sent from Norfolk], have sent it forth in terms so very general as to embrace all the farmers of this county; but, as to those of them who put the bell round the labourer’s neck, I beg leave to be now repeating, in its severest sense, every word of the passage that has been read.—Born in a farm-house, bred up at the plough-tail, with a smock-frock on my back, taking great delight in all the pursuits of farmers, liking their society, and having amongst them my most esteemed friends, it is natural, that I should feel, and I do feel, uncommonly anxious to prevent, as far as I am able, that total ruin which now menaces them. But the labourer, was I to have no feeling for him? Was not he my countryman too? And was I not to feel indignation against those farmers, who had had the hard-heartedness to put the bell round his neck, and thus wantonly insult and degrade the class to whose toils they owed their own ease? The statement of the fact was not mine; I read it in the newspaper as having come from Mr. Ellman the younger; he, in a very laudable manner, expressed his horror at it; and was not I to express indignation at what Mr. Ellman felt horror? That Gentleman and Mr. Webb Hall may monopolize all the wisdom in matters of political economy; but are they, or rather is Mr. Ellman alone, to engross all the feeling too? [It was here denied that Mr. Ellman had said the bell had been put on by farmers.] Very well, then, the complained of passage has been productive of benefit to the farmers of this county; for, as the thing stood in the newspapers, the natural and unavoidable inference was, that that atrocious, that inhuman act, was an act of Sussex farmers.”

Brighton,
Thursday, 10 Jan., 1822.

Lewes is in a valley of the South Downs, this town is at eight miles’ distance, to the south south-west or thereabouts. There is a great extent of rich meadows above and below Lewes. The town itself is a model of solidity and neatness. The buildings all substantial to the very out-skirts; the pavements good and complete; the shops nice and clean; the people well-dressed; and, though last not least, the girls remarkably pretty, as, indeed, they are in most parts of Sussex; round faces, features small, little hands and wrists, plump arms, and bright eyes. The Sussex men, too, are remarkable for their good looks. A Mr. Baxter, a stationer at Lewes, showed me a farmer’s account book which is a very complete thing of the kind. The Inns are good at Lewes, the people civil and not servile, and the charges really (considering the taxes) far below what one could reasonably expect.—From Lewes to Brighton the road winds along between the hills of the South Downs, which, in this mild weather, are mostly beautifully green even at this season, with flocks of sheep feeding on them.—Brighton itself lies in a valley cut across at one end by the sea, and its extension, or Wen, has swelled up the sides of the hills and has run some distance up the valley.—The first thing you see in approaching Brighton from Lewes is a splendid horse-barrack on one side of the road, and a heap of low, shabby, nasty houses, irregularly built, on the other side. This is always the case where there is a barrack. How soon a Reformed Parliament would make both disappear! Brighton is a very pleasant place. For a wen remarkably so. The Kremlin, the very name of which has so long been a subject of laughter all over the country, lies in the gorge of the valley, and amongst the old houses of the town. The grounds, which cannot, I think, exceed a couple or three acres, are surrounded by a wall neither lofty nor good-looking. Above this rise some trees, bad in sorts, stunted in growth, and dirty with smoke. As to the “palace” as the Brighton newspapers call it, the apartments appear to be all upon the ground floor; and, when you see the thing from a distance, you think you see a parcel of cradle-spits, of various dimensions, sticking up out of the mouths of so many enormous squat decanters. Take a square box, the sides of which are three feet and a half, and the height a foot and a half. Take a large Norfolk-turnip, cut off the green of the leaves, leave the stalks 9 inches long, tie these round with a string three inches from the top, and put the turnip on the middle of the top of the box. Then take four turnips of half the size, treat them in the same way, and put them on the corners of the box. Then take a considerable number of bulbs of the crown-imperial, the narcissus, the hyacinth, the tulip, the crocus, and others; let the leaves of each have sprouted to about an inch, more or less according to the size of the bulb; put all these, pretty promiscuously, but pretty thickly, on the top of the box. Then stand off and look at your architecture. There! That’s “a Kremlin”! Only you must cut some church-looking windows in the sides of the box. As to what you ought to put into the box, that is a subject far above my cut.—Brighton is naturally a place of resort for expectants, and a shifty ugly-looking swarm is, of course, assembled here. Some of the fellows, who had endeavoured to disturb our harmony at the dinner at Lewes, were parading, amongst this swarm, on the cliff. You may always know them by their lank jaws, the stiffeners round their necks, their hidden or no shirts, their stays, their false shoulders, hips, and haunches, their half-whiskers, and by their skins, colour of veal kidney-suet, warmed a little, and then powdered with dirty dust.—These vermin excepted, the people at Brighton make a very fine figure. The trades-people are very nice in all their concerns. The houses are excellent, built chiefly with a blue or purple brick; and bow-windows appear to be the general taste. I can easily believe this to be a very healthy place: the open downs on the one side and the open sea on the other. No inlet, cove, or river; and, of course, no swamps.—I have spent this evening very pleasantly in a company of reformers, who, though plain tradesmen and mechanics, know I am quite satisfied, more about the questions that agitate the country, than any equal number of Lords.

Kensington,
Friday, 11 January, 1822.

Came home by the way of Cuckfield, Worth, and Red-Hill, instead of by Uckfield, Grinstead and Godstone, and got into the same road again at Croydon. The roads being nearly parallel lines and at no great distance from each other, the soil is nearly the same, with the exception of the fine oak country between Godstone and Grinstead, which does not go so far westward as my homeward bound road, where the land, opposite the spot just spoken of, becomes more of a moor than a clay, and though there are oaks, they are not nearly so fine as those on the other road. The tops are flatter; the side shoots are sometimes higher than the middle shoot; a certain proof that the tap-root has met with something that it does not like.—I see (Jan. 15) that Mr. Curteis has thought it necessary to state in the public papers, that he had nothing to do with my being at the dinner at Battle! Who the Devil thought he had? Why, was it not an ordinary; and had I not as much right there as he? He has said, too, that he did not know that I was to be at the dinner. How should he? Why was it necessary to apprise him of it any more than the porter of the inn? He has said, that he did not hear of any deputation to invite me to the dinner, and, “upon inquiry,” cannot find that there was any. Have I said that there was any invitation at all? There was; but I have not said so. I went to the dinner for my half-crown like another man, without knowing, or caring, who would be at it. But, if Mr. Curteis thought it necessary to say so much, he might have said a little more. He might have said, that he twice addressed himself to me in a very peculiar manner, and that I never addressed myself to him except in answer; and, if he had thought “inquiry” necessary upon this subject also, he might have found that, though always the first to speak or hold out the hand to a hard-fisted artisan or labourer, I never did the same to a man of rank or riches in the whole course of my life. Mr. Curteis might have said, too, that unless I had gone to the dinner, the party would, according to appearances, have been very select; that I found him at the head of one of the tables, with less than thirty persons in the room; that the number swelled up to about one hundred and thirty; that no person was at the other table; that I took my seat at it; and that that table became almost immediately crowded from one end to the other. To these Mr. Curteis, when his hand was in, might have added, that he turned himself in his chair and listened to my speech with the greatest attention; that he bade me, by name, good night, when he retired; that he took not a man away with him; and that the gentleman who was called on to replace him in the chair (whose name I have forgotten) had got from his seat during the evening to come and shake me by the hand. All these things Mr. Curteis might have said; but the fact is, he has been bullied by the base newspapers, and he has not been able to muster up courage to act the manly part, and which, too, he would have found to be the wise part in the end. When he gave the toast “more money and less taxes,” he turned himself towards me, and said, “That is a toast that I am sure you approve of, Mr. Cobbett.” To which I answered, “It would be made good, Sir, if members of Parliament would do their duty.”—I appeal to all the gentlemen present for the truth of what I say. Perhaps Mr. Curteis, in his heart, did not like to give my health. If that was the case, he ought to have left the chair, and retired. Straight forward is the best course; and, see what difficulties Mr. Curteis has involved himself in by not pursuing it! I have no doubt that he was agreeably surprised when he saw and heard me. Why not say then: “After all that has been said about Cobbett, he is a devilish pleasant, frank, and clever fellow, at any rate.”—How much better this would have been, than to act the part that Mr. Curteis has acted.——The Editors of the Brighton Chronicle and Lewes Express have, out of mere modesty, I dare say, fallen a little into Mr. Curteis’s strain. In closing their account (in their paper of the 15th) of the Lewes Meeting, they say that I addressed the company at some length, as reported in their Supplement published on Thursday the 10th. And then they think it necessary to add: “For OURSELVES, we can say, that we never saw Mr. Cobbett until the meeting at Battle.” Now, had it not been for pure maiden-like bashfulness, they would, doubtless, have added, that when they did see me, they were profuse in expressions of their gratitude to me for having merely named their paper in my Register a thing, which, as I told them, I myself had forgotten. When, too, they were speaking, in reference to a speech made in the Hall, of “one of the finest specimens of oratory that has ever been given in any assembly,” it was, without doubt, out of pure compassion for the perverted taste of their Lewes readers, that they suppressed the fact, that the agent of the paper at Lewes sent them word, that it was useless for them to send any account of the meeting, unless that account contained Mr. Cobbett’s speech; that he, the agent, could have sold a hundred papers that morning, if they had contained Mr. Cobbett’s speech; but could not sell one without it. I myself, by mere accident, heard this message delivered to a third person by their agent at Lewes. And, as I said before, it must have been pure tenderness towards their readers that made the editors suppress a fact so injurious to the reputation of those readers in point of taste! However, at last, these editors seem to have triumphed over all feelings of this sort; for, having printed off a placard, advertising their Supplement, in which placard no mention was made of me, they, grown bold all of a sudden, took a painting brush, and in large letters put into their placard, “Mr. Cobbett’s Speech at Lewes;” so that, at a little distance, the placard seemed to relate to nothing else; and there was “the finest specimen of oratory” left to find its way into the world under the auspices of my rustic harangue. Good God! What will this world come to! We shall, by-and-bye, have to laugh at the workings of envy in the very worms that we breed in our bodies!—The fast-sinking Old Times news-paper, its cat-and-dog opponent the New Times, the Courier, and the Whig-Lawyer Tramper, called the “Traveller;” the fellows who conduct these vehicles; these wretched fellows, their very livers burning with envy, have hasted to inform their readers, that “they have authority to state that Lord Ashburnham and Mr. Fuller were not present at the dinner at Battle where Cobbett’s health was drunk.” These fellows have now “authority” to state, that there were no two men who dined at Battle, that I should not prefer as companions to Lord Ashburnham and Mr. Fuller, commonly called “Jack Fuller,” seeing that I am no admirer of lofty reserve, and that, of all things on earth, I abhor a head like a drum, all noise and emptiness. These scribes have also “authority” to state, that they amuse me and the public too by declining rapidly in their sale from their exclusion of my country lectures, which have only begun. In addition to this The Tramper editor has “authority” to state, that one of his papers of 5th Jan. has been sent to the Register-office by post, with these words written on it: “This scoundrel paper has taken no notice of Mr. Cobbett’s speech.” All these papers have “authority” to state beforehand, that they will insert no account of what shall take place, within these three or four weeks, at Huntingdon, at Lynn, at Chichester, and other places where I intend to be. And, lastly, the editors have full “authority” to state, that they may employ, without let or molestation of any sort, either private or public, the price of the last number that they shall sell in the purchase of hemp or ratsbane, as the sure means of a happy deliverance from their present state of torment.

HUNTINGDON JOURNAL: THROUGH WARE AND ROYSTON, TO HUNTINGDON.

Royston,
Monday morning, 21st Jan., 1822.

Came from London, yesterday noon, to this town on my way to Huntingdon. My road was through Ware. Royston is just within the line (on the Cambridgeshire side), which divides Hertfordshire from Cambridgeshire. On this road, as on almost all the others going from it, the enormous Wen has swelled out to the distance of about six or seven miles.—The land till you come nearly to Ware which is in Hertfordshire, and which is twenty-three miles from the Wen, is chiefly a strong and deep loam, with the gravel a good distance from the surface. The land is good wheat-land; but I observed only three fields of Swedish turnips in the 23 miles, and no wheat drilled. The wheat is sown on ridges of great width here-and-there; sometimes on ridges of ten, at others on ridges of seven, on those of five, four, three, and even two, feet wide. Yet the bottom is manifestly not very wet generally; and that there is not a bottom of clay is clear from the poor growth of the oak trees. All the trees are shabby in this country; and the eye is incessantly offended by the sight of pollards, which are seldom suffered to disgrace even the meanest lands in Hampshire or Sussex. As you approach Ware the bottom becomes chalk of a dirtyish colour, and, in some parts, far below the surface. After you quit Ware, which is a mere market town, the land grows by degrees poorer; the chalk lies nearer and nearer to the surface, till you come to the open common-fields within a few miles of Royston. Along here the land is poor enough. It is not the stiff red loam mixed with large blue-grey flints, lying upon the chalk, such as you see in the north of Hampshire; but a whitish sort of clay, with little yellow flattish stones amongst it; sure signs of a hungry soil. Yet this land bears wheat sometimes.—Royston is at the foot of this high poor land; or, rather in a dell, the open side of which looks towards the North. It is a common market town. Not mean, but having nothing of beauty about it; and having on it, on three of the sides out of the four, those very ugly things, common-fields, which have all the nakedness, without any of the smoothness, of Downs.

Huntingdon,
Tuesday morning, 22nd Jan., 1822.

Immediately upon quitting Royston, you come along, for a considerable distance, with enclosed fields on the left and open common-fields on the right. Here the land is excellent. A dark, rich loam, free from stones, on chalk beneath at a great distance. The land appears, for a mile or two, to resemble that at and near Faversham in Kent, which I have before noticed. The fields on the left seem to have been enclosed by Act of Parliament; and they certainly are the most beautiful tract of fields that I ever saw. Their extent may be from ten to thirty acres each. Divided by quick-set hedges, exceedingly well planted and raised. The whole tract is nearly a perfect level. The cultivation neat, and the stubble heaps, such as remain out, giving a proof of great crops of straw, while, on land with a chalk bottom, there is seldom any want of a proportionate quantity of grain. Even here, however, I saw but few Swedish turnips, and those not good. Nor did I see any wheat drilled; and observed that, in many parts, the broad-cast sowing had been performed in a most careless manner, especially at about three miles from Royston, where some parts of the broad lands seemed to have had the seed flung along them with a shovel, while other parts contained only here and there a blade; or, at least, were so thinly supplied as to make it almost doubtful whether they had not been wholly missed. In some parts the middles only of the ridges were sown thickly. This is shocking husbandry. A Norfolk or a Kentish farmer would have sowed a bushel and a half of seed to the acre here, and would have had a far better plant of wheat.—About four miles, I think it is, from Royston you come to the estate of Lord Hardwicke. You see the house at the end of an avenue about two miles long, which, however, wants the main thing, namely, fine and lofty trees. The soil here begins to be a very stiff loam at top; clay beneath for a considerable distance; and, in some places, beds of yellow gravel with very large stones mixed in it. The land is generally cold; a great deal of draining is wanted; and yet the bottom is such as not to be favourable to the growth of the oak, of which sort I have not seen one handsome tree since I left London. A grove, such as I saw at Weston in Herefordshire, would, here, be a thing to attract the attention of all ranks and all ages. What, then, would they say, on beholding a wood of Oaks, Hickories, Chestnuts, Walnuts, Locusts, Gum-trees, and Maples in America!—Lord Hardwicke’s avenue appears to be lined with Elms chiefly. They are shabby. He might have had ash; for the ash will grow anywhere; on sand, on gravel, on clay, on chalk, or in swamps. It is surprising that those who planted these rows of trees did not observe how well the ash grows here! In the hedge-rows, in the plantations, everywhere the ash is fine. The ash is the hardiest of all our large trees. Look at trees on any part of the sea coast. You will see them all, even the firs, lean from the sea breeze, except the ash. You will see the oak shaved up on the side of the breeze. But the ash stands upright, as if in a warm woody dell. We have no tree that attains a greater height than the ash; and certainly none that equals it in beauty of leaf. It bears pruning better than any other tree. Its timber is one of the most useful; and as underwood and fire-wood it far exceeds all others of English growth. From the trees of an avenue like that of Lord Hardwicke a hundred pounds worth of fuel might, if the trees were ash, be cut every year in prunings necessary to preserve the health and beauty of the trees. Yet, on this same land, has his lordship planted many acres of larches and firs. These appear to have been planted about twelve years. If instead of these he had planted ash, four years from the seed bed and once removed; had cut them down within an inch of the ground the second year after planting; and had planted them at four feet apart, he would now have had about six thousand ash-poles, on an average twelve feet long, on each acre of land in his plantation; which, at three-halfpence each, would have been worth somewhere nearly forty pounds an acre. He might now have cut the poles, leaving about 600 to stand upon an acre to come to trees; and while these were growing to timber, the underwood would, for poles, hoops, broom-sticks, spars, rods, and faggots, have been worth twenty-five or thirty pounds an acre every ten years. Can beggarly stuff, like larches and firs, ever be profitable to this extent? Ash is timber, fit for the wheelwright, at the age of twenty years, or less. What can you do with a rotten fir thing at that age?——This estate of Lord Hardwicke appears to be very large. There is a part which is, apparently, in his own hands, as, indeed, the whole must soon be, unless he give up all idea of rent, or, unless he can choack off the fundholder or get again afloat on the sea of paper-money. In this part of his land there is a fine piece of Lucerne in rows at about eighteen inches distant from each other. They are now manuring it with burnt-earth mixed with some dung; and I see several heaps of burnt-earth hereabouts. The directions for doing this are contained in my Year’s Residence, as taught me by Mr. William Gauntlet, of Winchester.—The land is, all along here, laid up in those wide and high ridges, which I saw in Gloucestershire, going from Gloucester to Oxford, as I have already mentioned. These ridges are ploughed back or down; but they are ploughed up again for every sowing.—At an Inn near Lord Hardwicke’s I saw the finest parcel of dove-house pigeons I ever saw in my life.—Between this place and Huntingdon is the village of Caxton, which very much resembles almost a village of the same size in Picardy, where I saw the women dragging harrows to harrow in the corn. Certainly this village resembles nothing English, except some of the rascally rotten boroughs in Cornwall and Devonshire, on which a just Providence seems to have entailed its curse. The land just about here does seem to be really bad. The face of the country is naked. The few scrubbed trees that now-and-then meet the eye, and even the quick-sets, are covered with a yellow moss. All is bleak and comfortless; and, just on the most dreary part of this most dreary scene, stands almost opportunely, “Caxton Gibbet,” tendering its friendly one arm to the passers-by. It has recently been fresh-painted, and written on in conspicuous characters, for the benefit, I suppose, of those who cannot exist under the thought of wheat at four shillings a bushel.—Not far from this is a new house, which, the coachman says, belongs to a Mr. Cheer, who, if report speaks truly, is not, however, notwithstanding his name, guilty of the sin of making people either drunkards or gluttons. Certainly the spot, on which he has built his house, is one of the most ugly that I ever saw. Few spots have everything that you could wish to find; but this, according to my judgment, has everything that every man of ordinary taste would wish to avoid.—The country changes but little till you get quite to Huntingdon. The land is generally quite open, or in large fields. Strong, wheat-land, that wants a good deal of draining. Very few turnips of any sort are raised; and, of course, few sheep and cattle kept. Few trees, and those scrubbed. Few woods, and those small. Few hills, and those hardly worthy of the name. All which, when we see them, make us cease to wonder, that this country is so famous for fox-hunting. Such it has doubtless been in all times, and to this circumstance Huntingdon, that is to say, Huntingdun, or Huntingdown, unquestionably owes its name; because down does not mean unploughed land, but open and unsheltered land, and the Saxon word is dun.—When you come down near to the town itself, the scene suddenly, totally, and most agreeably, changes. The River Ouse separates Godmanchester from Huntingdon, and there is, I think, no very great difference in the population of the two. Both together do not make up a population of more than about five thousand souls. Huntingdon is a slightly built town, compared with Lewes, for instance. The houses are not in general so high, nor made of such solid and costly materials. The shops are not so large and their contents not so costly. There is not a show of so much business and so much opulence. But Huntingdon is a very clean and nice place, contains many elegant houses, and the environs are beautiful. Above and below the bridge, under which the Ouse passes, are the most beautiful, and by far the most beautiful, meadows that I ever saw in my life. The meadows at Lewes, at Guildford, at Farnham, at Winchester, at Salisbury, at Exeter, at Gloucester, at Hereford, and even at Canterbury, are nothing, compared with those of Huntingdon in point of beauty. Here are no reeds, here is no sedge, no unevennesses of any sort. Here are bowling-greens of hundreds of acres in extent, with a river winding through them, full to the brink. One of these meadows is the race-course; and so pretty a spot, so level, so smooth, so green, and of such an extent I never saw, and never expected to see. From the bridge you look across the valleys, first to the West and then to the East; the valleys terminate at the foot of rising ground, well set with trees, from amongst which church spires raise their heads here-and-there. I think it would be very difficult to find a more delightful spot than this in the world. To my fancy (and every one to his taste) the prospect from this bridge far surpasses that from Richmond Hill.—All that I have yet seen of Huntingdon I like exceedingly. It is one of those pretty, clean, unstenched, unconfined places that tend to lengthen life and make it happy.

JOURNAL: HERTFORDSHIRE, AND BUCKINGHAMSHIRE: TO ST. ALBANS, THROUGH EDGWARE, STANMORE, AND WATFORD, RETURNING BY REDBOURN, HEMPSTEAD, AND CHESHAM.

Saint Albans, June 19, 1822.

From Kensington to this place, through Edgware, Stanmore, and Watford, the crop is almost entirely hay, from fields of permanent grass, manured by dung and other matter brought from the Wen. Near the Wen, where they have had the first haul of the Irish and other perambulating labourers, the hay is all in rick. Some miles further down it is nearly all in. Towards Stanmore and Watford, a third, perhaps, of the grass remains to be cut. It is curious to see how the thing regulates itself. We saw, all the way down, squads of labourers, of different departments, migrating from tract to tract; leaving the cleared fields behind them and proceeding on towards the work to be yet performed; and then, as to the classes of labourers, the mowers, with their scythes on their shoulders, were in front, going on towards the standing crops, while the haymakers were coming on behind towards the grass already cut or cutting. The weather is fair and warm; so that the public-houses on the road are pouring out their beer pretty fast, and are getting a good share of the wages of these thirsty souls. It is an exchange of beer for sweat; but the tax-eaters get, after all, the far greater part of the sweat; for, if it were not for the tax, the beer would sell for three-halfpence a pot instead of fivepence. Of this threepence-halfpenny the Jews and Jobbers get about twopence-halfpenny. It is curious to observe how the different labours are divided as to the nations. The mowers are all English; the haymakers all Irish. Scotchmen toil hard enough in Scotland; but when they go from home it is not to work, if you please. They are found in gardens, and especially in gentlemen’s gardens. Tying up flowers, picking dead leaves off exotics, peeping into melon-frames, publishing the banns of marriage between the “male” and “female” blossoms, tap-tap-tapping against a wall with a hammer that weighs half an ounce. They have backs as straight and shoulders as square as heroes of Waterloo; and who can blame them? The digging, the mowing, the carrying of loads, all the break-back and sweat-extracting work, they leave to be performed by those who have less prudence than they have. The great purpose of human art, the great end of human study, is to obtain ease, to throw the burden of labour from our own shoulders, and fix it on those of others. The crop of hay is very large, and that part which is in, is in very good order. We shall have hardly any hay that is not fine and sweet; and we shall have it, carried to London, at less, I dare say, than 3l. a load, that is 18 cwt. So that here the evil of “over-production” will be great indeed! Whether we shall have any projects for taking hay into pawn is more than any of us can say; for, after what we have seen, need we be surprised if we were to hear it proposed to take butter and even milk into pawn. In after times, the mad projects of these days will become proverbial. The Oracle and the over-production men will totally supplant the March-hare.—This is, all along here, and especially as far as Stanmore, a very dull and ugly country: flat, and all grass-fields and elms. Few birds of any kind, and few constant labourers being wanted; scarcely any cottages and gardens, which form one of the great beauties of a country. Stanmore is on a hill; but it looks over a country of little variety, though rich. What a difference between the view here and those which carry the eye over the coppices, the corn-fields, the hop-gardens and the orchards of Kent! It is miserable land from Stanmore to Watford, where we get into Hertfordshire. Hence to Saint Albans there is generally chalk at bottom with a red tenacious loam at top, with flints, grey on the outside and dark blue within. Wherever this is the soil, the wheat grows well. The crops, and especially that of the barley, are very fine and very forward. The wheat, in general, does not appear to be a heavy crop; but the ears seem as if they would be full from bottom to top; and we have had so much heat, that the grain is pretty sure to be plump, let the weather, for the rest of the summer, be what it may. The produce depends more on the weather, previous to the coming out of the ear, than on the subsequent weather. In the Northern parts of America, where they have, some years, not heat enough to bring the Indian Corn to perfection, I have observed that, if they have about fifteen days with the thermometer at ninety, before the ear makes its appearance, the crop never fails, though the weather may be ever so unfavourable afterwards. This allies with the old remark of the country people in England, that “May makes or mars the wheat;” for it is in May that the ear and the grains are formed.

Kensington,
June 24, 1822.

Set out at four this morning for Redbourn, and then turned off to the Westward to go to High Wycombe, through Hempstead and Chesham. The wheat is good all the way. The barley and oats good enough till I came to Hempstead. But the land along here is very fine: a red tenacious flinty loam upon a bed of chalk at a yard or two beneath, which, in my opinion, is the very best corn land that we have in England. The fields here, like those in the rich parts of Devonshire, will bear perpetual grass. Any of them will become upland meadows. The land is, in short, excellent, and it is a real corn-country. The trees, from Redbourn to Hempstead are very fine; oaks, ashes, and beeches. Some of the finest of each sort, and the very finest ashes I ever saw in my life. They are in great numbers, and make the fields look most beautiful. No villanous things of the fir-tribe offend the eye here. The custom is in this part of Hertfordshire (and I am told it continues into Bedfordshire) to leave a border round the ploughed part of the fields to bear grass and to make hay from, so that, the grass being now made into hay, every corn field has a closely mowed grass walk about ten feet wide all round it, between the corn and the hedge. This is most beautiful! The hedges are now full of the shepherd’s rose, honeysuckles, and all sorts of wild flowers; so that you are upon a grass walk, with this most beautiful of all flower gardens and shrubberies on your one hand, and with the corn on the other. And thus you go from field to field (on foot or on horseback), the sort of corn, the sort of underwood and timber, the shape and size of the fields, the height of the hedge-rows, the height of the trees, all continually varying. Talk of pleasure-grounds indeed! What, that man ever invented, under the name of pleasure-grounds, can equal these fields in Hertfordshire?—This is a profitable system too; for the ground under hedges bears little corn, and it bears very good grass. Something, however, depends on the nature of the soil: for it is not all land that will bear grass, fit for hay, perpetually; and, when the land will not do that, these headlands would only be a harbour for weeds and couch-grass, the seeds of which would fill the fields with their mischievous race.—Mr. Tull has observed upon the great use of headlands.—It is curious enough, that these headlands cease soon after you get into Buckinghamshire. At first you see now-and-then a field without a grass headland; then it comes to now-and-then a field with one; and, at the end of five or six miles, they wholly cease. Hempstead is a very pretty town, with beautiful environs, and there is a canal that comes near it, and that goes on to London. It lies at the foot of a hill. It is clean, substantially built, and a very pretty place altogether. Between Hempstead and Chesham the land is not so good. I came into Buckinghamshire before I got into the latter place. Passed over two commons. But, still, the land is not bad. It is drier; nearer the chalk, and not so red. The wheat continues good, though not heavy; but the barley, on the land that is not very good, is light, begins to look blue, and the backward oats are very short. On the still thinner lands the barley and oats must be a very short crop.—People do not sow turnips, the ground is so dry, and, I should think, that the Swede-crop will be very short; for Swedes ought to be up at least by this time. If I had Swedes to sow, I would sow them now, and upon ground very deeply and finely broken. I would sow directly after the plough, not being half an hour behind it, and would roll the ground as hard as possible. I am sure the plants would come up, even without rain. And, the moment the rain came, they would grow famously.—Chesham is a nice little town, lying in a deep and narrow valley, with a stream of water running through it. All along the country that I have come the labourers’ dwellings are good. They are made of what they call brick-nog; that is to say, a frame of wood, and a single brick thick, filling up the vacancies between the timber. They are generally covered with tile. Not pretty by any means; but they are good; and you see here, as in Kent, Susses, Surrey, and Hampshire, and, indeed, in almost every part of England, that most interesting of all objects, that which is such an honour to England, and that which distinguishes it from all the rest of the world, namely, those neatly kept and productive little gardens round the labourers’ houses, which are seldom unornamented with more or less of flowers. We have only to look at these to know what sort of people English labourers are: these gardens are the answer to the Malthuses and the Scarletts. Shut your mouths, you Scotch Economists; cease bawling, Mr. Brougham, and you Edinburgh Reviewers, till you can show us something, not like, but approaching towards a likeness of this!

The orchards all along this country are by no means bad. Not like those of Herefordshire and the north of Kent; but a great deal better than in many other parts of the kingdom. The cherry-trees are pretty abundant and particularly good. There are not many of the merries, as they call them in Kent and Hampshire; that is to say, the little black cherry, the name of which is a corruption from the French, merise, in the singular, and merises in the plural. I saw the little boys, in many places, set to keep the birds off the cherries, which reminded me of the time when I followed the same occupation, and also of the toll that I used to take in payment. The children are all along here, I mean the little children, locked out of the doors, while the fathers and mothers are at work in the fields. I saw many little groups of this sort; and this is one advantage of having plenty of room on the outside of a house. I never saw the country children better clad, or look cleaner and fatter than they look here, and I have the very great pleasure to add, that I do not think I saw three acres of potatoes in this whole tract of fine country, from St. Albans to Redbourn, from Redbourn to Hempstead, and from Hempstead to Chesham. In all the houses where I have been, they use the roasted rye instead of coffee or tea, and I saw one gentleman who had sown a piece of rye (a grain not common in this part of the country) for the express purpose. It costs about three farthings a pound, roasted and ground into powder.—The pay of the labourers varies from eight to twelve shillings a-week. Grass mowers get two shillings a-day, two quarts of what they call strong beer, and as much small beer as they can drink. After quitting Chesham, I passed through a wood, resembling, as nearly as possible, the woods in the more cultivated parts of Long Island, with these exceptions, that there the woods consist of a great variety of trees, and of more beautiful foliage. Here there are only two sorts of trees, beech and oak: but the wood at bottom was precisely like an American wood: none of that stuff which we generally call underwood: the trees standing very thick in some places: the shade so complete as never to permit herbage below: no bushes of any sort; and nothing to impede your steps but little spindling trees here and there grown up from the seed. The trees here are as lofty, too, as they generally are in the Long Island woods, and as straight, except in cases where you find clumps of the tulip-tree, which sometimes go much above a hundred feet high as straight as a line. The oaks seem here to vie with the beeches, in size as well as in loftiness and straightness. I saw several oaks which I think were more than eighty feet high, and several with a clear stem of more than forty feet, being pretty nearly as far through at that distance from the ground as at bottom; and I think I saw more than one, with a clear stem of fifty feet, a foot and a half through at that distance from the ground. This is by far the finest plank oak that I ever saw in England. The road through the wood is winding and brings you out at the corner of a field, lying sloping to the south, three sides of it bordered by wood and the field planted as an orchard. This is precisely what you see in so many thousands of places in America. I had passed through Hempstead a little while before, which certainly gave its name to the Township in which I lived in Long Island, and which I used to write Hampstead, contrary to the orthography of the place, never having heard of such a place as Hempstead in England. Passing through Hempstead I gave my mind a toss back to Long Island, and this beautiful wood and orchard really made me almost conceit that I was there, and gave rise to a thousand interesting and pleasant reflections. On quitting the wood I crossed the great road from London to Wendover, went across the park of Mr. Drake, and up a steep hill towards the great road leading to Wycombe. Mr. Drake’s is a very beautiful place, and has a great deal of very fine timber upon it. I think I counted pretty nearly 200 oak trees, worth, on an average, five pounds a-piece, growing within twenty yards of the road that I was going along. Mr. Drake has some thousands of these, I dare say, besides his beech; and, therefore, he will be able to stand a tug with the fundholders for some time. When I got to High Wycombe, I found everything a week earlier than in the rich part of Hertfordshire. High Wycombe, as if the name was ironical, lies along the bottom of a narrow and deep valley, the hills on each side being very steep indeed. The valley runs somewhere about from east to west, and the wheat on the hills facing the south will, if this weather continue, be fit to reap in ten days. I saw one field of oats that a bold farmer would cut next Monday. Wycombe is a very fine and very clean market town; the people all looking extremely well; the girls somewhat larger featured and larger boned than those in Sussex, and not so fresh-coloured and bright-eyed. More like the girls of America, and that is saying quite as much as any reasonable woman can expect or wish for. The Hills on the south side of Wycombe form a park and estate now the property of Smith, who was a banker or stocking-maker at Nottingham, who was made a Lord in the time of Pitt, and who purchased this estate of the late Marquis of Landsdowne, one of whose titles is Baron Wycombe. Wycombe is one of those famous things called Boroughs, and 34 votes in this Borough send Sir John Dashwood and Sir Thomas Baring to the “collective wisdom.” The landlord where I put up “remembered” the name of Dashwood, but had “forgotten” who the “other” was! There would be no forgettings of this sort, if these thirty-four, together with their representatives, were called upon to pay the share of the National Debt due from High Wycombe. Between High Wycombe and Beaconsfield, where the soil is much about that last described, the wheat continued to be equally early with that about Wycombe. As I approached Uxbridge I got off the chalk upon a gravelly bottom, and then from Uxbridge to Shepherd’s Bush on a bottom of clay. Grass-fields and elm-trees, with here and there a wheat or a bean-field, form the features of this most ugly country, which would have been perfectly unbearable after quitting the neighbourhoods of Hempstead, Chesham and High Wycombe, had it not been for the diversion I derived from meeting, in all the various modes of conveyance, the cockneys going to Ealing Fair, which is one of those things which nature herself would almost seem to have provided for drawing off the matter and giving occasional relief to the overcharged Wen. I have traversed to-day what I think may be called an average of England as to corn-crops. Some of the best, certainly; and pretty nearly some of the worst. My observation as to the wheat is, that it will be a fair and average crop, and extremely early; because, though it is not a heavy crop, though the ears are not long they will be full; and the earliness seems to preclude the possibility of blight, and to ensure plump grain. The barley and oats must, upon an average, be a light crop. The peas a light crop; and as to beans, unless there have been rains where beans are mostly grown, they cannot be half a crop; for they will not endure heat. I tried masagan beans in Long Island, and could not get them to bear more than a pod or two upon a stem. Beans love cold land and shade. The earliness of the harvest (for early it must be) is always a clear advantage. This fine summer, though it may not lead to a good crop of turnips, has already put safe into store such a crop of hay as I believe England never saw before. Looking out of the window, I see the harness of the Wiltshire wagon-horses (at this moment going by) covered with the chalk-dust of that county; so that the fine weather continues in the West. The saint-foin hay has all been got in, in the chalk countries, without a drop of wet; and when that is the case, the farmers stand in no need of oats. The grass crops have been large everywhere, as well as got in in good order. The fallows must be in excellent order. It must be a sloven indeed that will sow his wheat in foul ground next autumn; and the sun, where the fallows have been well stirred, will have done more to enrich the land than all the dung-carts and all the other means employed by the hand of man. Such a summer is a great blessing; and the only draw-back is, the dismal apprehension of not seeing such another for many years to come. It is favourable for poultry, for colts, for calves, for lambs, for young animals of all descriptions, not excepting the game. The partridges will be very early. They are now getting into the roads with their young ones, to roll in the dust. The first broods of partridges in England are very frequently killed by the wet and cold; and this is one reason why the game is not so plenty here as it is in countries more blest with sun. This will not be the case this year; and, in short, this is one of the finest years that I ever knew.

Wm. COBBETT.

RURAL RIDE, OF 104 MILES, FROM KENSINGTON TO UPHUSBAND; INCLUDING A RUSTIC HARANGUE AT WINCHESTER, AT A DINNER WITH THE FARMERS, ON THE 28TH SEPTEMBER.

Chilworth, near Guildford, Surrey,
Wednesday, 25th Sept., 1822.

This morning I set off, in rather a drizzling rain, from Kensington, on horseback, accompanied by my son, with an intention of going to Uphusband, near Andover, which is situated in the North West corner of Hampshire. It is very true that I could have gone to Uphusband by travelling only about 66 miles, and in the space of about eight hours. But my object was not to see inns and turnpike-roads, but to see the country; to see the farmers at home, and to see the labourers in the fields; and to do this you must go either on foot or on horse-back. With a gig you cannot get about amongst bye-lanes and across fields, through bridle-ways and hunting-gates; and to tramp it is too slow, leaving the labour out of the question, and that is not a trifle.

We went through the turnpike-gate at Kensington, and immediately turned down the lane to our left, proceeded on to Fulham, crossed Putney bridge into Surrey, went over Barnes Common, and then, going on the upper side of Richmond, got again into Middlesex by crossing Richmond bridge. All Middlesex is ugly, notwithstanding the millions upon millions which it is continually sucking up from the rest of the kingdom; and, though the Thames and its meadows now-and-then are seen from the road, the country is not less ugly from Richmond to Chertsey bridge, through Twickenham, Hampton, Sunbury, and Sheperton, than it is elsewhere. The soil is a gravel at bottom with a black loam at top near the Thames; further back it is a sort of spewy gravel; and the buildings consist generally of tax-eaters’ showy, tea-garden-like boxes, and of shabby dwellings of labouring people who, in this part of the country, look to be about half Saint Giles’s: dirty, and have every appearance of drinking gin.

At Chertsey, where we came into Surrey again, there was a Fair for horses, cattle, and pigs. I did not see any sheep. Everything was exceedingly dull. Cart colts, two and three years old, were selling for less than a third of what they sold for in 1813. The cattle were of an inferior description to be sure; but the price was low almost beyond belief. Cows, which would have sold for 15l. in 1813, did not get buyers at 3l. I had no time to inquire much about the pigs, but a man told me that they were dirt-cheap. Near Chertsey is Saint Anne’s Hill and some other pretty spots. Upon being shown this hill I was put in mind of Mr. Fox; and that brought into my head a grant that he obtained of Crown lands in this neighbourhood, in, I think, 1806. The Duke of York obtained, by Act of Parliament, a much larger grant of these lands, at Oatlands, in 1804, I think it was. But this was natural enough; this is what would surprise nobody. Mr. Fox’s was another affair; and especially when taken into view with what I am now going to relate. In 1804 or 1805, Fordyce, the late Duchess of Gordon’s brother, was Collector General (or had been) of taxes in Scotland, and owed a large arrear to the public. He was also Surveyor of Crown lands. The then Opposition were for hauling him up. Pitt was again in power. Mr. Creevey was to bring forward the motion in the House of Commons, and Mr. Fox was to support it, and had actually spoken once or twice, in a preliminary way on the subject. Notice of the motion was regularly given; it was put off from time to time, and, at last, dropped, Mr. Fox declining to support it. I have no books at hand; but the affair will be found recorded in the Register. It was not owing to Mr. Creevey that the thing did not come on. I remember well that it was owing to Mr. Fox. Other motives were stated; and those others might be the real motives; but, at any rate, the next year, or the year after, Mr. Fox got transferred to him a part of that estate, which belongs to the public, and which was once so great, called the Crown lands; and of these lands Fordyce long had been, and then was, the Surveyor. Such are the facts: let the reader reason upon them and draw the conclusion.

This county of Surrey presents to the eye of the traveller a greater contrast than any other county in England. It has some of the very best and some of the worst lands, not only in England, but in the world. We were here upon those of the latter description. For five miles on the road towards Guildford the land is a rascally common covered with poor heath, except where the gravel is so near the top as not to suffer even the heath to grow. Here we entered the enclosed lands, which have the gravel at bottom, but a nice light, black mould at top; in which the trees grow very well. Through bye-lanes and bridle-ways we came out into the London road, between Ripley and Guildford, and immediately crossing that road, came on towards a village called Merrow. We came out into the road just mentioned, at the lodge-gates of a Mr. Weston, whose mansion and estate have just passed (as to occupancy) into the hands of some new man. At Merrow, where we came into the Epsom road, we found that Mr. Webb Weston, whose mansion and park are a little further on towards London, had just walked out, and left it in possession of another new man. This gentleman told us, last year, at the Epsom Meeting, that he was losing his income; and I told him how it was that he was losing it! He is said to be a very worthy man; very much respected; a very good landlord; but, I dare say, he is one of those who approved of yeomanry cavalry to keep down the “Jacobins and Levellers;” but who, in fact, as I always told men of this description, have put down themselves and their landlords; for without them this thing never could have been done. To ascribe the whole to contrivance would be to give to Pitt and his followers too much credit for profundity; but if the knaves who assembled at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand, in 1793, to put down, by the means of prosecutions and spies, those whom they called “Republicans and Levellers;” if these knaves had said, “Let us go to work to induce the owners and occupiers of the land to convey their estates and their capital into our hands,” and if the Government had corresponded with them in views, the effect could not have been more complete than it has, thus far, been. The yeomanry actually, as to the effect, drew their swords to keep the reformers at bay, while the tax-eaters were taking away the estates and the capital. It was the sheep surrendering up the dogs into the hands of the wolves.

Lord Onslow lives near Merrow. This is the man that was, for many years, so famous as a driver of four-in-hand. He used to be called Tommy Onslow. He has the character of being a very good landlord. I know he called me “a d——d Jacobin” several years ago, only, I presume, because I was labouring to preserve to him the means of still driving four-in-hand, while he, and others like him, and their yeomanry cavalry, were working as hard to defeat my wishes and endeavours. They say here, that, some little time back, his Lordship, who has, at any rate, had the courage to retrench in all sorts of ways, was at Guildford in a gig with one horse, at the very moment, when Spicer, the Stock-broker, who was a Chairman of the Committee for prosecuting Lord Cochrane, and who lives at Esher, came rattling in with four horses and a couple of out-riders! They relate an observation made by his Lordship, which may, or may not, be true, and which therefore, I shall not repeat. But, my Lord, there is another sort of courage; courage other than that of retrenching, that would become you in the present emergency: I mean political courage, and especially the courage of acknowledging your errors; confessing that you were wrong when you called the reformers Jacobins and levellers; the courage of now joining them in their efforts to save their country, to regain their freedom, and to preserve to you your estate, which is to be preserved, you will observe, by no other means than that of a Reform of the Parliament. It is now manifest, even to fools, that it has been by the instrumentality of a base and fraudulent paper-money that loan-jobbers, stock-jobbers and Jews have got the estates into their hands. With what eagerness, in 1797, did the nobility, gentry, and clergy rush forward to give their sanction and their support to the system which then began, and which has finally produced, what we now behold! They assembled in all the counties, and put forth declarations that they would take the paper of the Bank, and that they would support the system. Upon this occasion the county of Surrey was the very first county; and on the list of signatures the very first name was Onslow! There may be sales and conveyances; there may be recoveries, deeds, and other parchments; but this was the real transfer; this was the real signing away of the estates.

To come to Chilworth, which lies on the south side of St. Martha’s Hill, most people would have gone along the level road to Guildford and come round through Shawford under the hills; but we, having seen enough of streets and turnpikes, took across over Merrow Down, where the Guildford race-course is, and then mounted the “Surrey Hills,” so famous for the prospects they afford. Here we looked back over Middlesex, and into Buckinghamshire and Berkshire, away towards the North-West, into Essex and Kent towards the East, over part of Sussex to the South, and over part of Hampshire to the West and South-West. We are here upon a bed of chalk, where the downs always afford good sheep food. We steered for St. Martha’s Chapel, and went round at the foot of the lofty hill on which it stands. This brought us down the side of a steep hill, and along a bridle-way, into the narrow and exquisitely beautiful vale of Chilworth, where we were to stop for the night. This vale is skirted partly by woodlands and partly by sides of hills tilled as corn fields. The land is excellent, particularly towards the bottom. Even the arable fields are in some places, towards their tops, nearly as steep as the roof of a tiled house; and where the ground is covered with woods the ground is still more steep. Down the middle of the vale there is a series of ponds, or small lakes, which meet your eye, here and there, through the trees. Here are some very fine farms, a little strip of meadows, some hop-gardens, and the lakes have given rise to the establishment of powder-mills and paper-mills. The trees of all sorts grow well here; and coppices yield poles for the hop-gardens and wood to make charcoal for the powder-mills.

They are sowing wheat here, and the land, owing to the fine summer that we have had, is in a very fine state. The rain, too, which, yesterday, fell here in great abundance, has been just in time to make a really good wheat-sowing season. The turnips, all the way that we have come, are good. Rather backward in some places; but in sufficient quantity upon the ground, and there is yet a good while for them to grow. All the fall fruit is excellent, and in great abundance. The grapes are as good as those raised under glass. The apples are much richer than in ordinary years. The crop of hops has been very fine here, as well as everywhere else. The crop not only large, but good in quality. They expect to get six pounds a hundred for them at Weyhill fair. That is one more than I think they will get. The best Sussex hops were selling in the Borough of Southwark at three pounds a hundred a few days before I left London. The Farnham hops may bring double that price; but that, I think, is as much as they will; and this is ruin to the hop-planter. The tax, with its attendant inconveniences, amounts to a pound a hundred; the picking, drying, and bagging, to 50s. The carrying to market not less than 5s. Here is the sum of 3l. 10s. of the money. Supposing the crop to be half a ton to the acre, the bare tillage will be 10s. The poles for an acre cannot cost less than 2l. a-year; that is another 4s. to each hundred of hops. This brings the outgoings to 82s. Then comes the manure, then come the poor-rates, and road-rates, and county rates; and if these leave one single farthing for rent I think it is strange.

I hear that Mr. Birkbeck is expected home from America! It is said that he is coming to receive a large legacy; a thing not to be overlooked by a person who lives in a country where he can have land for nothing! The truth is, I believe, that there has lately died a gentleman, who has bequeathed a part of his property to pay the creditors of a relation of his who some years ago became a bankrupt, and one of whose creditors Mr. Birkbeck was. What the amount may be I know not; but I have heard, that the bankrupt had a partner at the time of the bankruptcy; so that there must be a good deal of difficulty in settling the matter in an equitable manner. The Chancery would drawl it out (supposing the present system to continue) till, in all human probability, there would not be as much left for Mr. Birkbeck as would be required to pay his way back again to the Land of Promise. I hope he is coming here to remain here. He is a very clever man, though he has been very abusive and very unjust with regard to me.

Lea, near Godalming, Surrey, Thursday, 26 Sept.

We started from Chilworth this morning, came down the vale, left the village of Shawford to our right, and that of Wonersh to our left, and crossing the river Wey, got into the turnpike-road between Guildford and Godalming, went on through Godalming, and got to Lea, which lies to the north-east snugly under Hindhead, about 11 o’clock. This was coming only about eight miles, a sort of rest after the 32 miles of the day before. Coming along the road, a farmer overtook us, and as he had known me from seeing me at the Meeting at Epsom last year, I had a part of my main business to perform, namely, to talk politics. He was going to Haslemere fair. Upon the mention of that sink-hole of a Borough, which sends, “as clearly as the sun at noonday,” the celebrated Charles Long, and the scarcely less celebrated Robert Ward, to the celebrated House of Commons, we began to talk, as it were, spontaneously, about Lord Lonsdale and the Lowthers. The farmer wondered why the Lowthers, that were the owners of so many farms, should be for a system which was so manifestly taking away the estates of the landlords and the capital of the farmers, and giving them to Jews, loan-jobbers, stock-jobbers, placemen, pensioners, sinecure people, and people of the “dead weight.” But his wonder ceased; his eyes were opened; and “his heart seemed to burn within him as I talked to him on the way,” when I explained to him the nature of Crown lands and “Crown tenants,” and when I described to him certain districts of property in Westmoreland and other parts. I had not the book in my pocket, but my memory furnished me with quite a sufficiency of matter to make him perceive that, in supporting the present system, the Lowthers were by no means so foolish as he appeared to think them. From the Lowthers I turned to Mr. Poyntz, who lives at Midhurst in Sussex, and whose name as a “Crown tenant” I find in a Report lately laid before the House of Commons, and the particulars of which I will state another time for the information of the people of Sussex. I used to wonder myself what made Mr. Poyntz call me a Jacobin. I used to think that Mr. Poyntz must be a fool to support the present system. What I have seen in that Report convinces me that Mr. Poyntz is no fool, as far as relates to his own interest, at any rate. There is a mine of wealth in these “Crown lands.” Here are farms, and manors, and mines, and woods, and forests, and houses, and streets, incalculable in value. What can be so proper as to apply this public property towards the discharge of a part, at least, of that public debt, which is hanging round the neck of this nation like a mill-stone? Mr. Ricardo proposes to seize upon a part of the private property of every man, to be given to the stock-jobbing race. At an act of injustice like this the mind revolts. The foolishness of it, besides, is calculated to shock one. But in the public property we see the suitable thing. And who can possibly object to this, except those, who, amongst them, now divide the possession or benefit of this property? I have once before mentioned, but I will repeat it, that Marlborough House in Pall Mall, for which the Prince of Saxe Coburg pays a rent to the Duke of Marlborough of three thousand pounds a-year, is rented of this generous public by that most Noble Duke at the rate of less than forty pounds a-year. There are three houses in Pall Mall, the whole of which pay a rent to the public of about fifteen pounds a-year, I think it is. I myself, twenty-two years ago, paid three hundred pounds a-year for one of them, to a man that I thought was the owner of them; but I now find that these houses belong to the public. The Duke of Buckingham’s house in Pall Mall, which is one of the grandest in all London, and which is not worth less than seven or eight hundred pounds a-year, belongs to the public. The Duke is the tenant; and I think he pays for it much less than twenty pounds a-year. I speak from memory here all the way along; and therefore not positively; I will, another time, state the particulars from the books. The book that I am now referring to is also of a date of some years back; but I will mention all the particulars another time. Talk of reducing rents, indeed! Talk of generous landlords! It is the public that is the generous landlord. It is the public that lets its houses and manors and mines and farms at a cheap rate. It certainly would not be so good a landlord if it had a Reformed Parliament to manage its affairs, nor would it suffer so many snug Corporations to carry on their snugglings in the manner that they do, and therefore it is obviously the interest of the rich tenants of this poor public, as well as the interest of the snugglers in Corporations, to prevent the poor public from having such a Parliament.

We got into free-quarter again at Lea; and there is nothing like free-quarter, as soldiers well know. Lea is situated on the edge of that immense heath which sweeps down from the summit of Hindhead across to the north over innumerable hills of minor altitude and of an infinite variety of shapes towards Farnham, to the north-east, towards the Hog’s Back, leading from Farnham to Guildford, and to the east, or nearly so, towards Godalming. Nevertheless, the enclosed lands at Lea are very good and singularly beautiful. The timber of all sorts grows well; the land is light, and being free from stones, very pleasant to work. If you go southward from Lea about a mile you get down into what is called, in the old Acts of Parliament, the Weald of Surrey. Here the land is a stiff tenacious loam at top with blue and yellow clay beneath. This Weald continues on eastward, and gets into Sussex near East Grinstead: thence it winds about under the hills, into Kent. Here the oak grows finer than in any part of England. The trees are more spiral in their form. They grow much faster than upon any other land. Yet the timber must be better; for, in some of the Acts of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, it is provided, that the oak for the Royal Navy shall come out of the Wealds of Surrey, Sussex, or Kent.

Odiham, Hampshire, Friday, 27 Sept.

From Lea we set off this morning about six o’clock to get free-quarter again at a worthy old friend’s at this nice little plain market-town. Our direct road was right over the heath through Tilford to Farnham; but we veered a little to the left after we came to Tilford, at which place on the Green we stopped to look at an oak tree, which, when I was a little boy, was but a very little tree, comparatively, and which is now, take it altogether, by far the finest tree that I ever saw in my life. The stem or shaft is short; that is to say, it is short before you come to the first limbs; but it is full thirty feet round, at about eight or ten feet from the ground. Out of the stem there come not less than fifteen or sixteen limbs, many of which are from five to ten feet round, and each of which would, in fact, be considered a decent stick of timber. I am not judge enough of timber to say anything about the quantity in the whole tree, but my son stepped the ground, and as nearly as we could judge, the diameter of the extent of the branches was upwards of ninety feet, which would make a circumference of about three hundred feet. The tree is in full growth at this moment. There is a little hole in one of the limbs; but with that exception, there appears not the smallest sign of decay. The tree has made great shoots in all parts of it this last summer and spring; and there are no appearances of white upon the trunk, such as are regarded as the symptoms of full growth. There are many sorts of oak in England; two very distinct; one with a pale leaf, and one with a dark leaf: this is of the pale leaf. The tree stands upon Tilford-green, the soil of which is a light loam with a hard sand stone a good way beneath, and, probably, clay beneath that. The spot where the tree stands is about a hundred and twenty feet from the edge of a little river, and the ground on which it stands may be about ten feet higher than the bed of that river.

In quitting Tilford we came on to the land belonging to Waverly Abbey, and then, instead of going on to the town of Farnham, veered away to the left towards Wrecklesham, in order to cross the Farnham and Alton turnpike-road, and to come on by the side of Crondall to Odiham. We went a little out of the way to go to a place called the Bourn, which lies in the heath at about a mile from Farnham. It is a winding narrow valley, down which, during the wet season of the year, there runs a stream beginning at the Holt Forest, and emptying itself into the Wey just below Moor-Park, which was the seat of Sir William Temple when Swift was residing with him. We went to this Bourn in order that I might show my son the spot where I received the rudiments of my education. There is a little hop-garden in which I used to work when from eight to ten years old; from which I have scores of times run to follow the hounds, leaving the hoe to do the best that it could to destroy the weeds; but the most interesting thing was a sand-hill, which goes from a part of the heath down to the rivulet. As a due mixture of pleasure with toil, I, with two brothers, used occasionally to desport ourselves, as the lawyers call it, at this sand-hill. Our diversion was this: we used to go to the top of the hill, which was steeper than the roof of a house; one used to draw his arms out of the sleeves of his smock-frock, and lay himself down with his arms by his sides; and then the others, one at head and the other at feet, sent him rolling down the hill like a barrel or a log of wood. By the time he got to the bottom, his hair, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, were all full of this loose sand; then the others took their turn, and at every roll there was a monstrous spell of laughter. I had often told my sons of this while they were very little, and I now took one of them to see the spot. But that was not all. This was the spot where I was receiving my education; and this was the sort of education; and I am perfectly satisfied that if I had not received such an education, or something very much like it; that, if I had been brought up a milksop, with a nursery-maid everlastingly at my heels, I should have been at this day as great a fool, as inefficient a mortal, as any of those frivolous idiots that are turned out from Winchester and Westminster Schools, or from any of those dens of dunces called Colleges and Universities. It is impossible to say how much I owe to that sand-hill; and I went to return it my thanks for the ability which it probably gave me to be one of the greatest terrors, to one of the greatest and most powerful bodies of knaves and fools, that ever were permitted to afflict this or any other country.

From the Bourn we proceeded on to Wrecklesham, at the end of which we crossed what is called the river Wey. Here we found a parcel of labourers at parish-work. Amongst them was an old playmate of mine. The account they gave of their situation was very dismal. The harvest was over early. The hop-picking is now over; and now they are employed by the Parish; that is to say, not absolutely digging holes one day and filling them up the next; but at the expense of half-ruined farmers and tradesmen and landlords, to break stones into very small pieces to make nice smooth roads lest the jolting, in going along them, should create bile in the stomachs of the overfed tax-eaters. I call upon mankind to witness this scene; and to say, whether ever the like of this was heard of before. It is a state of things, where all is out of order; where self-preservation, that great law of nature, seems to be set at defiance; for here are farmers unable to pay men for working for them, and yet compelled to pay them for working in doing that which is really of no use to any human being. There lie the hop-poles unstripped. You see a hundred things in the neighbouring fields that want doing. The fences are not nearly what they ought to be. The very meadows, to our right and our left in crossing this little valley, would occupy these men advantageously until the setting in of the frost; and here are they, not, as I said before, actually digging holes one day and filling them up the next; but, to all intents and purposes, as uselessly employed. Is this Mr. Canning’s “Sun of Prosperity?” Is this the way to increase or preserve a nation’s wealth? Is this a sign of wise legislation and of good government? Does this thing “work well,” Mr. Canning? Does it prove that we want no change? True, you were born under a Kingly Government; and so was I as well as you; but I was not born under Six-Acts; nor was I born under a state of things like this. I was not born under it, and I do not wish to live under it; and, with God’s help, I will change it if I can.

We left these poor fellows, after having given them, not “religious Tracts,” which would, if they could, make the labourer content with half starvation, but something to get them some bread and cheese and beer, being firmly convinced that it is the body that wants filling and not the mind. However, in speaking of their low wages, I told them that the farmers and hop-planters were as much objects of compassion as themselves, which they acknowledged.

We immediately, alter this, crossed the road, and went on towards Crondall upon a soil that soon became stiff loam and flint at top with a bed of chalk beneath. We did not go to Crondall; but kept along over Slade Heath, and through a very pretty place called Well. We arrived at Odiham about half after eleven, at the end of a beautiful ride of about seventeen miles, in a very fine and pleasant day.

Winchester,
Saturday, 28th September.

Just after daylight we started for this place. By the turnpike we could have come through Basingstoke by turning off to the right, or through Alton and Alresford by turning off to the left. Being naturally disposed towards a middle course, we chose to wind down through Upton-Gray, Preston-Candover, Chilton-Candover, Brown-Candover, then down to Ovington, and into Winchester by the north entrance. From Wrecklesham to Winchester we have come over roads and lanes of flint and chalk. The weather being dry again, the ground under you, as solid as iron, makes a great rattling with the horses’ feet. The country where the soil is stiff loam upon chalk is never bad for corn. Not rich, but never poor. There is at no time anything deserving to be called dirt in the roads. The buildings last a long time, from the absence of fogs and also the absence of humidity in the ground. The absence of dirt makes the people habitually cleanly; and all along through this country the people appear in general to be very neat. It is a country for sheep, which are always sound and good upon this iron soil. The trees grow well, where there are trees. The woods and coppices are not numerous; but they are good, particularly the ash, which always grows well upon the chalk. The oaks, though they do not grow in the spiral form, as upon the clays, are by no means stunted; and some of them very fine trees; I take it that they require a much greater number of years to bring them to perfection than in the Wealds. The wood, perhaps, may be harder; but I have heard that the oak, which grows upon these hard bottoms, is very frequently what the carpenters call shaky. The underwoods here consist, almost entirely, of hazle, which is very fine, and much tougher and more durable than that which grows on soils with a moist bottom. This hazle is a thing of great utility here. It furnishes rods wherewith to make fences; but its principal use is, to make wattles for the folding of sheep in the fields. These things are made much more neatly here than in the south of Hampshire and in Sussex, or in any other part that I have seen. Chalk is the favourite soil of the yew-tree; and at Preston-Candover there is an avenue of yew-trees, probably a mile long, each tree containing, as nearly as I can guess, from twelve to twenty feet of timber, which, as the reader knows, implies a tree of considerable size. They have probably been a century or two in growing; but, in any way that timber can be used, the timber of the yew will last, perhaps, ten times as long as the timber of any other tree that we grow in England.

Quitting the Candovers, we came along between the two estates of the two Barings. Sir Thomas, who has supplanted the Duke of Bedford, was to our right, while Alexander, who has supplanted Lord Northington, was on our left. The latter has enclosed, as a sort of outwork to his park, a pretty little down called Northington Down, in which he has planted, here and there, a clump of trees. But Mr. Baring, not reflecting that woods are not like funds, to be made at a heat, has planted his trees too large; so that they are covered with moss, are dying at the top, and are literally growing downward instead of upward. In short, this enclosure and plantation have totally destroyed the beauty of this part of the estate. The down, which was before very beautiful, and formed a sort of glacis up to the park pales, is now a marred, ragged, ugly-looking thing. The dying trees, which have been planted long enough for you not to perceive that they have been planted, excite the idea of sterility in the soil. They do injustice to it; for, as a down, it was excellent. Everything that has been done here is to the injury of the estate, and discovers a most shocking want of taste in the projector. Sir Thomas’s plantations, or, rather, those of his father, have been managed more judiciously.

I do not like to be a sort of spy in a man’s neighbourhood; but I will tell Sir Thomas Baring what I have heard; and if he be a man of sense I shall have his thanks, rather than his reproaches, for so doing. I may have been misinformed; but this is what I have heard, that he, and also Lady Baring, are very charitable; that they are very kind and compassionate to their poor neighbours; but that they tack a sort of condition to this charity; that they insist upon the objects of it adopting their notions with regard to religion; or, at least, that where the people are not what they deem pious, they are not objects of their benevolence. I do not say, that they are not perfectly sincere themselves, and that their wishes are not the best that can possibly be; but of this I am very certain, that, by pursuing this principle of action, where they make one good man or woman, they will make one hundred hypocrites. It is not little books that can make a people good; that can make them moral; that can restrain them from committing crimes. I believe that books of any sort never yet had that tendency. Sir Thomas does, I dare say, think me a very wicked man, since I aim at the destruction of the funding system, and what he would call a robbery of what he calls the public creditor; and yet, God help me, I have read books enough, and amongst the rest, a great part of the religious tracts. Amongst the labouring people, the first thing you have to look after is, common honesty, speaking the truth, and refraining from thieving; and to secure these, the labourer must have his belly-full and be free from fear; and this belly-full must come to him from out of his wages, and not from benevolence of any description. Such being my opinion, I think Sir Thomas Baring would do better, that he would discover more real benevolence, by using the influence which he must naturally have in his neighbourhood, to prevent a diminution in the wages of labour.

Winchester,
Sunday Morning, 29 Sept.

Yesterday was market-day here. Everything cheap and falling instead of rising. If it were over-production last year that produced the distress, when are our miseries to have an end! They will end when these men cease to have sway, and not before.

I had not been in Winchester long before I heard something very interesting about the manifesto, concerning the poor, which was lately issued here, and upon which I remarked in my last Register but one, in my Letter to Sir Thomas Baring. Proceeding upon the true military principle, I looked out for free-quarter, which the reader will naturally think difficult for me to find in a town containing a Cathedral. Having done this, I went to the Swan Inn to dine with the farmers. This is the manner that I like best of doing the thing. Six-Acts do not, to be sure, prevent us from dining together. They do not authorize Justices of the Peace to kill us, because we meet to dine without their permission. But I do not like Dinner-Meetings on my account. I like much better to go and fall in with the lads of the land, or with anybody else, at their own places of resort; and I am going to place myself down at Uphusband, in excellent free-quarter, in the midst of all the great fairs of the West, in order, before the winter campaign begins, that I may see as many farmers as possible, and that they may hear my opinions, and I theirs. I shall be at Weyhill fair on the 10th of October, and, perhaps, on some of the succeeding days; and, on one or more of those days, I intend to dine at the White Hart, at Andover. What other fairs or places I shall go to I shall notify hereafter. And this I think the frankest and fairest way. I wish to see many people, and to talk to them: and there are a great many people who wish to see and to talk to me. What better reason can be given for a man’s going about the country and dining at fairs and markets?

At the dinner at Winchester we had a good number of opulent yeomen, and many gentlemen joined us after the dinner. The state of the country was well talked over; and, during the session (much more sensible than some other sessions that I have had to remark on), I made the following

RUSTIC HARANGUE.

Gentlemen,—Though many here are, I am sure, glad to see me, I am not vain enough to suppose that anything other than that of wishing to hear my opinions on the prospects before us can have induced many to choose to be here to dine with me to-day. I shall, before I sit down, propose to you a toast, which you will drink, or not, as you choose: but I shall state one particular wish in that shape, that it may be the more distinctly understood, and the better remembered.

The wish to which I allude relates to the tithes. Under that word I mean to speak of all that mass of wealth which is vulgarly called Church property: but which is, in fact, public property, and may, of course, be disposed of as the Parliament shall please. There appears at this moment an uncommon degree of anxiety on the part of the parsons to see the farmers enabled to pay rents. The business of the parsons being only with tithes, one naturally, at first sight, wonders why they should care so much about rents. The fact is this: they see clearly enough, that the landlords will never long go without rents, and suffer them to enjoy the tithes. They see, too, that there must be a struggle between the land and the funds: they see that there is such a struggle. They see, that it is the taxes that are taking away the rent of the landlord and the capital of the farmer. Yet the parsons are afraid to see the taxes reduced. Why? Because, if the taxes be reduced in any great degree (and nothing short of a great degree will give relief), they see that the interest of the Debt cannot be paid; and they know well, that the interest of the Debt can never be reduced, until their tithes have been reduced. Thus, then, they find themselves in a great difficulty. They wish the taxes to be kept up and rents to be paid too. Both cannot be, unless some means or other be found out of putting into, or keeping in, the farmer’s pocket, money that is not now there.

The scheme that appears to have been fallen upon for this purpose is the strangest in the world, and it must, if attempted to be put into execution, produce something little short of open and general commotion; namely, that of reducing the wages of labour to a mark so low as to make the labourer a walking skeleton. Before I proceed further, it is right that I communicate to you an explanation, which, not an hour ago, I received from Mr. Poulter, relative to the manifesto, lately issued in this town by a Bench of Magistrates of which that gentleman was Chairman. I have not the honour to be personally acquainted with Mr. Poulter, but certainly, if I had misunderstood the manifesto, it was right that I should be, if possible, made to understand it. Mr. Poulter, in company with another gentleman, came to me in this Inn, and said, that the bench did not mean that their resolutions should have the effect of lowering the wages: and that the sums, stated in the paper, were sums to be given in the way of relief. We had not the paper before us, and, as the paper contained a good deal about relief, I, in recollection, confounded the two, and said, that I had understood the paper agreeably to the explanation. But upon looking at the paper again, I see, that, as to the words, there was a clear recommendation to make the wages what is there stated. However, seeing that the Chairman himself disavows this, we must conclude that the bench put forth words not expressing their meaning. To this I must add, as connected with the manifesto, that it is stated in that document, that such and such justices were present, and a large and respectable number of yeomen who had been invited to attend. Now, Gentlemen, I was, I must confess, struck with this addition to the bench. These gentlemen have not been accustomed to treat farmers with so much attention. It seemed odd, that they should want a set of farmers to be present, to give a sort of sanction to their acts. Since my arrival in Winchester, I have found, however, that having them present was not all; for that the names of some of these yeomen were actually inserted in the manuscript of the manifesto, and that those names were expunged at the request of the parties named. This is a very singular proceeding, then, altogether. It presents to us a strong picture of the diffidence, or modesty (call it which you please) of the justices; and it shows us, that the yeomen present did not like to have their names standing as giving sanction to the resolutions contained in the manifesto. Indeed, they knew well, that those resolutions never could be acted upon. They knew that they could not live in safety even in the same village with labourers, paid at the rate of 3, 4, and 5 shillings a-week.

To return, now, Gentlemen, to the scheme for squeezing rents out of the bones of the labourer, is it not, upon the face of it, most monstrously absurd, that this scheme should be resorted to, when the plain and easy and just way of insuring rents must present itself to every eye, and can be pursued by the Parliament whenever it choose? We hear loud outcries against the poor-rates; the enormous poor-rates; the all-devouring poor-rates; but what are the facts? Why, that, in Great Britain, six millions are paid in poor-rates, seven millions (or thereabouts) in tithes, and sixty millions to the fund-people, the army, placemen, and the rest. And yet nothing of all this seems to be thought of but the six millions. Surely the other and so much larger sums might to be thought of. Even the six millions are, for the far greater part, wages and not poor-rates. And yet all this outcry is made about these six millions, while not a word is said about the other sixty-seven millions.

Gentlemen, to enumerate all the ways, in which the public money is spent, would take me a week. I will mention two classes of persons who are receivers of taxes: and you will then see with what reason it is, that this outcry is set up against the poor-rates and against the amount of wages. There is a thing called the Dead Weight. Incredible as it may seem, that such a vulgar appellation should be used in such a way and by such persons, it is a fact, that the Ministers have laid before the Parliament an account, called the account of the Dead Weight. This account tells how five millions three hundred thousand pounds are distributed annually amongst half-pay officers, pensioners, retired commissaries, clerks, and so forth, employed during the last war. If there were nothing more entailed upon us by that war, this is pretty smart-money. Now unjust, unnecessary as that war was, detestable as it was in all its principles and objects, still, to every man, who really did fight, or who performed a soldier’s duty abroad, I would give something: he should not be left destitute. But, Gentlemen, is it right for the nation to keep on paying for life crowds of young fellows such as make up the greater part of this dead weight? This is not all, however, for, there are the widows and the children, who have, and are to have, pensions too. You seem surprised, and well you may; but this is the fact. A young fellow who has a pension for life, aye, or an old fellow either, will easily get a wife to enjoy it with him, and he will, I’ll warrant him, take care that she shall not be old. So that here is absolutely a premium for entering into the holy state of matrimony. The husband, you will perceive, cannot prevent the wife from having the pension after his death. She is our widow, in this respect, not his. She marries, in fact, with a jointure settled on her. The more children the husband leaves the better for the widow; for each child has a pension for a certain number of years. The man, who, under such circumstances, does not marry, must be a woman-hater. An old man actually going into the grave, may, by the mere ceremony of marriage, give any woman a pension for life. Even the widows and children of insane officers are not excluded. If an officer, now insane, but at large, were to marry, there is nothing, as the thing now stands, to prevent his widow and children from having pensions. Were such things as these ever before heard of in the world? Were such premiums ever before given for breeding gentlemen and ladies, and that, too, while all sorts of projects are on foot to check the breeding of the labouring classes? Can such a thing go on? I say it cannot; and, if it could, it must inevitably render this country the most contemptible upon the face of the earth. And yet, not a word of complaint is heard about these five millions and a quarter, expended in this way, while the country rings, fairly resounds, with the outcry about the six millions that are given to the labourers in the shape of poor-rates, but which, in fact, go, for the greater part, to pay what ought to be called wages. Unless, then, we speak out here; unless we call for redress here; unless we here seek relief, we shall not only be totally ruined, but we shall deserve it.

The other class of persons, to whom I have alluded, as having taxes bestowed on them, are the poor clergy. Not of the church as by law established, to be sure, you will say! Yes, Gentlemen, even to the poor clergy of the established Church. We know well how rich that Church is; we know well how many millions it annually receives; we know how opulent are the bishops, how rich they die; how rich, in short, a body it is. And yet fifteen hundred thousand pounds have, within the same number of years, been given, out of the taxes, partly raised on the labourers, for the relief of the poor clergy of that Church, while it is notorious that the livings are given in numerous cases by twos and threes to the same person, and while a clamour, enough to make the sky ring, is made about what is given in the shape of relief to the labouring classes! Why, Gentlemen, what do we want more than this one fact? Does not this one fact sufficiently characterize the system under which we live? Does not this prove that a change, a great change, is wanted? Would it not be more natural to propose to get this money back from the Church, than to squeeze so much out of the bones of the labourers? This the Parliament can do if it pleases; and this it will do, if you do your duty.

Passing over several other topics, let me, Gentlemen, now come to what, at the present moment, most nearly affects you; namely, the prospect as to prices. In the first place, this depends upon whether Peel’s Bill will be repealed. As this depends a good deal upon the Ministers, and as I am convinced, that they know no more what to do in the present emergency than the little boys and girls that are running up and down the street before this house, it is impossible for me, or for any one, to say what will be done in this respect. But my opinion is decided, that the Bill will not be repealed. The Ministers see, that, if they were now to go back to the paper, it would not be the paper of 1819; but a paper never to be redeemed by gold; that it would be assignats to all intents and purposes. That must of necessity cause the complete overthrow of the Government in a very short time. If, therefore, the Ministers see the thing in this light, it is impossible, that they should think of a repeal of Peel’s Bill. There appeared, last winter, a strong disposition to repeal the Bill; and I verily believe, that a repeal in effect, though not in name, was actually in contemplation. A Bill was brought in, which was described beforehand as intended to prolong the issue of small notes, and also to prolong the time for making Bank of England notes a legal tender. This would have been a repealing of Peel’s Bill in great part. The Bill, when brought in, and when passed, as it finally was, contained no clause relative to legal tender; and without that clause it was perfectly nugatory. Let me explain to you, Gentlemen, what this Bill really is. In the seventeenth year of the late King’s reign, an act was passed for a time limited, to prevent the issue of notes payable to bearer on demand, for any sums less than five pounds. In the twenty-seventh year of the late King’s reign, this Act was made perpetual; and the preamble of the Act sets forth, that it is made perpetual, because the preventing of small notes being made has been proved to be for the good of the nation. Nevertheless, in just ten years afterwards; that is to say, in the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven, when the Bank stopped payment, this salutary Act was suspended; indeed, it was absolutely necessary, for there was no gold to pay with. It continued suspended until 1819, when Mr. Peel’s Bill was passed, when a Bill was passed to suspend it still further, until the year 1825. You will observe, then, that, last winter there were yet three years to come, during which the banks might make small notes if they would. Yet this new Bill was passed last winter to authorize them to make small notes until the year 1833. The measure was wholly uncalled for. It appeared to be altogether unnecessary; but, as I have just said, the intention was to introduce into this Bill a clause to continue the legal tender until 1833; and that would, indeed, have made a great alteration in the state of things; and, if extended to the Bank of England, would have been, in effect, a complete repeal of Peel’s Bill.

It was fully expected by the country bankers, that the legal tender clause would have been inserted; but, before it came to the trial, the Ministers gave way, and the clause was not inserted. The reason for their giving way, I do verily believe, had its principal foundation in their perceiving, that the public would clearly see, that such a measure would make the paper-money merely assignats. The legal tender not having been enacted, the Small-note Bill can do nothing towards augmenting the quantity of circulating medium. As the law now stands, Bank of England notes are, in effect, a legal tender. If I owe a debt of twenty pounds, and tender Bank of England notes in payment, the law says that you shall not arrest me; that you may bring your action, if you like; that I may pay the notes into Court; that you may go on with your action; that you shall pay all the costs, and I none. At last you gain your action; you obtain judgment and execution, or whatever else the everlasting law allows of. And what have you got then? Why the notes; the same identical notes the Sheriff will bring you. You will not take them. Go to law with the Sheriff then. He pays the notes into Court. More costs for you to pay. And thus you go on; but without ever touching or seeing gold!

Now, Gentlemen, Peel’s Bill puts an end to all this pretty work on the first day of next May. If you have a handful of a country banker’s rags now, and go to him for payment, he will tender you Bank of England notes; and if you like the paying of costs you may go to law for gold. But when the first of next May comes, he must put gold into your hands in exchange for your notes, if you choose it; or you may clap a bailiff’s hand upon his shoulder: and if he choose to pay into Court, he must pay in gold, and pay your costs also as far as you have gone.

This makes a strange alteration in the thing! And everybody must see, that the Bank of England, and the country bankers; that all, in short, are preparing for the first of May. It is clear that there must be a farther diminution of the paper-money. It is hard to say the precise degree of effect that this will have upon prices; but that it must bring them down is clear; and, for my own part, I am fully persuaded, that they will come down to the standard of prices in France, be those prices what they may. This, indeed, was acknowledged by Mr. Huskisson in the Agricultural Report of 1821. That two countries so near together, both having gold as a currency or standard, should differ very widely from each other, in the prices of farm-produce, is next to impossible; and therefore, when our legal tender shall be completely done away, to the prices of France you must come; and those prices cannot, I think, in the present state of Europe, much exceed three or four shillings a bushel for good wheat.

You know, as well as I do, that it is impossible, with the present taxes and rates and tithes, to pay any rent at all with prices upon that scale. Let loan-jobbers, stock-jobbers, Jews, and the whole tribe of tax-eaters say what they will, you know that it is impossible, as you also know it would be cruelly unjust to wring from the labourer the means of paying rent, while those taxes and tithes remain. Something must be taken off. The labourers’ wages have already been reduced as low as possible. All public pay and salaries ought to be reduced; and the tithes also ought to be reduced, as they might be to a great amount without any injury to religion. The interest of the debt ought to be largely reduced; but, as none of the others can, with any show of justice, take place, without a reduction of the tithes, and as I am for confining myself to one object at present, I will give you as a Toast, leaving you to drink it or not, as you please, A large Reduction of Tithes.

Somebody proposed to drink this Toast with three times three, which was accordingly done, and the sound might have been heard down to the close.—Upon some Gentleman giving my health, I took occasion to remind the company that the last time I was at Winchester we had the memorable fight with Lockhart “the Brave” and his sable friends. I reminded them that it was in that same room that I told them that it would not be long before Mr. Lockhart and those sable gentlemen would become enlightened; and I observed that, if we were to judge from a man’s language, there was not a land-owner in England that more keenly felt than Mr. Lockhart the truth of those predictions which I had put forth at the Castle on the day alluded to. I reminded the company that I sailed for America in a few days after that meeting; that they must be well aware that, on the day of the meeting, I knew that I was taking leave of the country, but, I observed, that I had not been in the least depressed by that circumstance; because I relied, with perfect confidence, on being in this same place again, to enjoy, as I now did, a triumph over my adversaries.

After this, Mr. Hector gave a Constitutional Reform in the Commons’ House of Parliament, which was drunk with great enthusiasm; and Mr. Hector’s health having been given, he, in returning thanks, urged his brother yeomen and freeholders to do their duty by coming forward in county meeting and giving their support to those noblemen and gentlemen that were willing to stand forward for a reform and for a reduction of taxation. I held forth to them the example of the county of Kent, which had done itself so much honour by its conduct last spring. What these gentlemen in Hampshire will do it is not for me to say. If nothing be done by them, they will certainly be ruined, and that ruin they will certainly deserve. It was to the farmers that the Government owed its strength to carry on the war. Having them with it, in consequence of a false and bloated prosperity, it cared not a straw for anybody else. If they, therefore, now do their duty; if they all, like the yeomen and farmers of Kent, come boldly forward, everything will be done necessary to preserve themselves and their country; and if they do not come forward, they will, as men of property, be swept from the face of the earth. The noblemen and gentlemen who are in Parliament, and who are disposed to adopt measures of effectual relief, cannot move with any hope of success unless backed by the yeomen and farmers, and the middling classes throughout the country generally. I do not mean to confine myself to yeomen and farmers, but to take in all tradesmen and men of property. With these at their back, or rather, at the back of these, there are men enough in both Houses of Parliament to propose and to urge measures suitable to the exigency of the case. But without the middling classes to take the lead, those noblemen and gentlemen can do nothing. Even the Ministers themselves, if they were so disposed (and they must be so disposed at last) could make none of the reforms that are necessary, without being actually urged on by the middle classes of the community. This is a very important consideration. A new man, as Minister, might indeed propose the reforms himself; but these men, Opposition as well as Ministry, are so pledged to the things that have brought all this ruin upon the country, that they absolutely stand in need of an overpowering call from the people to justify them in doing that which they themselves may think just, and which they may know to be necessary for the salvation of the country. They dare not take the lead in the necessary reforms. It is too much to be expected of any men upon the face of the earth, pledged and situated as these Ministers are; and therefore, unless the people will do their duty, they will have themselves, and only themselves, to thank for their ruin, and for that load of disgrace, and for that insignificance worse than disgrace which seems, after so many years of renown, to be attaching themselves to the name of England.

Uphusband,
Sunday Evening, 29 Sept. 1822.

We came along the turnpike-road, through Wherwell and Andover, and got to this place about 2 o’clock. This country, except at the village and town just mentioned, is very open, a thinnish soil upon a bed of chalk. Between Winchester and Wherwell we came by some hundreds of acres of ground that was formerly most beautiful down, which was broken up in dear-corn times, and which is now a district of thistles and other weeds. If I had such land as this I would soon make it down again. I would for once (that is to say if I had the money) get it quite clean, prepare it as for sowing turnips, get the turnips if possible, feed them off early, or plough the ground if I got no turnips; sow thick with Saint-foin and meadow-grass seeds of all sorts, early in September; let the crop stand till the next July; feed it then slenderly with sheep, and dig up all thistles and rank weeds that might appear; keep feeding it, but not too close, during the summer and the fall; and keep on feeding it for ever after as a down. The Saint-foin itself would last for many years; and as it disappeared, its place would be supplied by the grass; that sort which was most congenial to the soil, would at last stifle all other sorts, and the land would become a valuable down as formerly.

I see that some plantations of ash and of hazle have been made along here; but, with great submission to the planters, I think they have gone the wrong way to work, as to the mode of preparing the ground. They have planted small trees, and that is right; they have trenched the ground, and that is also right; but they have brought the bottom soil to the top; and that is wrong, always; and especially where the bottom soil is gravel or chalk, or clay. I know that some people will say that this is a puff; and let it pass for that; but if any gentleman that is going to plant trees will look into my Book on Gardening, and into the Chapter on Preparing the Soil, he will, I think, see how conveniently ground may be trenched without bringing to the top that soil in which the young trees stand so long without making shoots.

This country, though so open, has its beauties. The homesteads in the sheltered bottoms with fine lofty trees about the houses and yards form a beautiful contrast with the large open fields. The little villages, running straggling along the dells (always with lofty trees and rookeries) are very interesting objects, even in the winter. You feel a sort of satisfaction, when you are out upon the bleak hills yourself, at the thought of the shelter which is experienced in the dwellings in the valleys.

Andover is a neat and solid market-town. It is supported entirely by the agriculture around it; and how the makers of population returns ever came to think of classing the inhabitants of such a town as this under any other head than that of “persons employed in agriculture,” would appear astonishing to any man who did not know those population return makers as well as I do.

The village of Uphusband, the legal name of which is Hurstbourn Tarrant, is, as the reader will recollect, a great favourite with me, not the less so certainly on account of the excellent free-quarter that it affords.

THROUGH HAMPSHIRE, BERKSHIRE, SURREY, AND SUSSEX, BETWEEN 7th OCTOBER AND 1ST DECEMBER, 1822, 327 MILES.

7th to 10th Oct. 1822.

At Uphusband, a little village in a deep dale, about five miles to the North of Andover, and about three miles to the South of the Hills at Highclere. The wheat is sown here, and up, and, as usual, at this time of the year, looks very beautiful. The wages of the labourers brought down to six shillings a week! a horrible thing to think of; but, I hear, it is still worse in Wiltshire.

11th October.

Went to Weyhill fair, at which I was about 46 years ago, when I rode a little pony, and remember how proud I was on the occasion; but I also remember that my brothers, two out of three of whom were older than I, thought it unfair that my father selected me; and my own reflections upon the occasion have never been forgotten by me. The 11th of October is the Sheep-fair. About 300,000l. used, some few years ago, to be carried home by the sheep-sellers. To-day, less, perhaps, than 70,000l., and yet the rents of these sheep-sellers are, perhaps, as high, on an average, as they were then. The countenances of the farmers were descriptive of their ruinous state. I never, in all my life, beheld a more mournful scene. There is a horse-fair upon another part of the down; and there I saw horses keeping pace in depression with the sheep. A pretty numerous group of the tax-eaters, from Andover and the neighbourhood, were the only persons that had smiles on their faces. I was struck with a young farmer trotting a horse backward and forward to show him off to a couple of gentlemen, who were bargaining for the horse, and one of whom finally purchased him. These gentlemen were two of our “dead-weight,” and the horse was that on which the farmer had pranced in the Yeomanry Troop! Here is a turn of things! Distress; pressing distress; dread of the bailiffs alone could have made the farmer sell his horse. If he had the firmness to keep the tears out of his eyes, his heart must have paid the penalty. What, then, must have been his feelings, if he reflected, as I did, that the purchase-money for the horse had first gone from his pocket into that of the dead-weight! And, further, that the horse had pranced about for years for the purpose of subduing all opposition to those very measures, which had finally dismounted the owner!

From this dismal scene, a scene formerly so joyous, we set off back to Uphusband pretty early, were overtaken by the rain, and got a pretty good soaking. The land along here is very good. This whole country has a chalk bottom; but, in the valley on the right of the hill over which you go from Andover to Weyhill, the chalk lies far from the top, and the soil has few flints in it. It is very much like the land about Malden and Maidstone. Met with a farmer who said he must be ruined, unless another “good war” should come! This is no uncommon notion. They saw high prices with war, and they thought that the war was the cause.

12 to 16 of October.

The fair was too dismal for me to go to it again. My sons went two of the days, and their account of the hop-fair was enough to make one gloomy for a month, particularly as my townsmen of Farnham were, in this case, amongst the sufferers. On the 12th I went to dine with and to harangue the farmers at Andover. Great attention was paid to what I had to say. The crowding to get into the room was a proof of nothing, perhaps, but curiosity; but there must have been a cause for the curiosity, and that cause would, under the present circumstances, be matter for reflection with a wise government.

17 October.

Went to Newbury to dine with and to harangue the farmers. It was a fair-day. It rained so hard that I had to stop at Burghclere to dry my clothes, and to borrow a great coat to keep me dry for the rest of the way; so as not to have to sit in wet clothes. At Newbury the company was not less attentive or less numerous than at Andover. Some one of the tax-eating crew had, I understand, called me an “incendiary.” The day is passed for those tricks. They deceive no longer. Here, at Newbury, I took occasion to notice the base accusation of Dundas, the Member for the County. I stated it as something that I had heard of, and I was proceeding to charge him conditionally, when Mr. Tubb of Shillingford rose from his seat, and said, “I myself, Sir, heard him say the words.” I had heard of his vile conduct long before; but I abstained from charging him with it till an opportunity should offer for doing it in his own country. After the dinner was over I went back to Burghclere.

18 to 20 October.

At Burghclere, one half the time writing, and the other half hare-hunting.

21 October.

Went back to Uphusband.

22 October.

Went to dine with the farmers at Salisbury, and got back to Uphusband by ten o’clock at night, two hours later than I have been out of bed for a great many months.

In quitting Andover to go to Salisbury (17 miles from each other) you cross the beautiful valley that goes winding down amongst the hills to Stockbridge. You then rise into the open country that very soon becomes a part of that large tract of downs, called Salisbury Plain. You are not in Wiltshire, however, till you are about half the way to Salisbury. You leave Tidworth away to your right. This is the seat of Asheton Smith; and the fine coursing that I once saw there I should have called to recollection with pleasure, if I could have forgotten the hanging of the men at Winchester last Spring for resisting one of this Smith’s game-keepers! This Smith’s son and a Sir John Pollen are the members for Andover. They are chosen by the Corporation. One of the Corporation, an Attorney, named Etwall, is a Commissioner of the Lottery, or something in that way. It would be a curious thing to ascertain how large a portion of the “public services” is performed by the voters in Boroughs and their relations. These persons are singularly kind to the nation. They not only choose a large part of the “representatives of the people;” but they come in person, or by deputy, and perform a very considerable part of the “public services.” I should like to know how many of them are employed about the Salt-Tax, for instance. A list of these public-spirited persons might be produced to show the benefit of the Boroughs.

Before you get to Salisbury, you cross the valley that brings down a little river from Amesbury. It is a very beautiful valley. There is a chain of farmhouses and little churches all the way up it. The farms consist of the land on the flats on each side of the river, running out to a greater or less extent, at different places, towards the hills and downs. Not far above Amesbury is a little village called Netherhaven, where I once saw an acre of hares. We were coursing at Everly, a few miles off; and one of the party happening to say, that he had seen “an acre of hares” at Mr. Hicks Beech’s at Netherhaven, we, who wanted to see the same, or to detect our informant, sent a messenger to beg a day’s coursing, which being granted, we went over the next day. Mr. Beech received us very politely. He took us into a wheat stubble close by his paddock; his son took a gallop round, cracking his whip at the same time; the hares (which were very thickly in sight before) started all over the field, ran into a flock like sheep; and we all agreed, that the flock did cover an acre of ground. Mr. Beech had an old greyhound, that I saw lying down in the shrubbery close by the house, while several hares were sitting and skipping about, with just as much confidence as cats sit by a dog in a kitchen or a parlour. Was this instinct in either dog or hares? Then, mind, this same greyhound went amongst the rest to course with us out upon the distant hills and lands; and then he ran as eagerly as the rest, and killed the hares with as little remorse. Philosophers will talk a long while before they will make men believe, that this was instinct alone. I believe that this dog had much more reason than half of the Cossacks have; and I am sure he had a great deal more than many a Negro that I have seen.

In crossing this valley to go to Salisbury, I thought of Mr. Beech’s hares; but I really have neither thought of nor seen any game with pleasure, since the hanging of the two men at Winchester. If no other man will petition for the repeal of the law, under which those poor fellows suffered, I will. But let us hope, that there will be no need of petitioning. Let us hope, that it will be repealed without any express application for it. It is curious enough that laws of this sort should increase, while Sir James Mackintosh is so resolutely bent on “softening the criminal code!” The company at Salisbury was very numerous; not less than 500 farmers were present. They were very attentive to what I said, and, which rather surprised me, they received very docilely what I said against squeezing the labourers. A fire in a farmyard had lately taken place near Salisbury; so that the subject was a ticklish one. But it was my very first duty to treat of it, and I was resolved, be the consequence what it might, not to neglect that duty.

23 to 26 October.

At Uphusband. At this village, which is a great thoroughfare for sheep and pigs, from Wiltshire and Dorsetshire to Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and away to the North and North East, we see many farmers from different parts of the country; and, if I had had any doubts before, as to the deplorableness of their state, those would now no longer exist. I did, indeed, years ago, prove, that if we returned to cash payments without a reduction of the Debt, and without a rectifying of contracts, the present race of farmers must be ruined. But still, when the thing actually comes, it astounds one. It is like the death of a friend or relation. We talk of its approach without much emotion. We foretell the when without much seeming pain. We know it must be. But, when it comes, we forget our foretellings, and feel the calamity as acutely as if we had never expected it. The accounts we hear, daily, and almost hourly, of the families of farmers actually coming to the parish-book, are enough to make any body but a Boroughmonger feel. That species of monster is to be moved by nothing but his own pecuniary sufferings; and, thank God, the monster is now about to be reached. I hear, from all parts, that the parsons are in great alarm! Well they may, if their hearts be too much set upon the treasures of this world; for I can see no possible way of settling this matter justly, without resorting to their temporalities. They have long enough been calling upon all the industrious classes for “sacrifices for the good of the country.” The time seems to be come for them to do something in this way themselves. In a short time there will be, because there can be, no rents. And, we shall see, whether the landlords will then suffer the parsons to continue to receive a tenth part of the produce of the land! In many places the farmers have had the sense and the spirit to rate the tithes to the poor-rates. This they ought to do in all cases, whether the tithes be taken up in kind or not. This, however, sweats the fire-shovel hat gentleman. It “bothers his wig.” He does not know what to think of it. He does not know who to blame; and, where a parson finds things not to his mind, the first thing he always does is, to look about for somebody to accuse of sedition and blasphemy. Lawyers always begin, in such cases, to hunt the books, to see if there be no punishment to apply. But the devil of it is, neither of them have now any body to lay on upon! I always told them, that there would arise an enemy, that would laugh at all their anathemas, informations, dungeons, halters and bayonets. One positive good has, however, arisen out of the present calamities, and that is, the parsons are grown more humble than they were. Cheap corn and a good thumping debt have greatly conduced to the producing of the Christian virtue, humility, necessary in us all, but doubly necessary in the priesthood. The parson is now one of the parties who is taking away the landlord’s estate and the farmer’s capital. When the farmer’s capital is gone, there will be no rents; but, without a law upon the subject, the parson will still have his tithe, and a tithe upon the taxes too, which the land has to bear! Will the landlords stand this? No matter. If there be no reform of the Parliament, they must stand it. The two sets may, for aught I care, worry each other as long as they please. When the present race of farmers are gone (and that will soon be) the landlord and the parson may settle the matter between them. They will be the only parties interested; and which of them shall devour the other appears to be of little consequence to the rest of the community. They agreed most cordially in creating the Debt. They went hand in hand in all the measures against the Reformers. They have made, actually made, the very thing that now frightens them, which now menaces them with total extinction. They cannot think it unjust, if their prayers be now treated as the prayers of the Reformers were.

27 to 29 October.

At Burghclere. Very nasty weather. On the 28th the fox-hounds came to throw off at Penwood, in this parish. Having heard that Dundas would be out with the hounds, I rode to the place of meeting, in order to look him in the face, and to give him an opportunity to notice, on his own peculiar dunghill, what I had said of him at Newbury. He came. I rode up to him and about him; but he said not a word. The company entered the wood, and I rode back towards my quarters. They found a fox, and quickly lost him. Then they came out of the wood and came back along the road, and met me, and passed me, they as well as I going at a foot pace. I had plenty of time to survey them all well, and to mark their looks. I watched Dundas’s eyes, but the devil a bit could I get them to turn my way. He is paid for the present. We shall see, whether he will go, or send an ambassador, or neither, when I shall be at Reading on the 9th of next month.

30 October.

Set off for London. Went by Alderbridge, Crookham, Brimton, Mortimer, Strathfield Say, Heckfield Heath, Eversley, Blackwater, and slept at Oakingham. This is, with trifling exceptions, a miserably poor country. Burghclere lies along at the foot of a part of that chain of hills, which, in this part, divide Hampshire from Berkshire. The parish just named is, indeed, in Hampshire, but it forms merely the foot of the Highclere and Kingsclere Hills. These hills, from which you can see all across the country, even to the Isle of Wight, are of chalk, and with them, towards the North, ends the chalk. The soil over which I have come to-day, is generally a stony sand upon a bed of gravel. With the exception of the land just round Crookham and the other villages, nothing can well be poorer or more villanously ugly. It is all first cousin to Hounslow Heath, of which it is, in fact, a continuation to the Westward. There is a clay at the bottom of the gravel; so that you have here nasty stagnant pools without fertility of soil. The rushes grow amongst the gravel; sure sign that there is clay beneath to hold the water; for, unless there be water constantly at their roots, rushes will not grow. Such land is, however, good for oaks wherever there is soil enough on the top of the gravel for the oak to get hold, and to send its tap-root down to the clay. The oak is the thing to plant here; and, therefore, this whole country contains not one single plantation of oaks! That is to say, as far as I observed. Plenty of fir-trees and other rubbish have been recently planted; but no oaks.

At Strathfield Say is that everlasting monument of English Wisdom Collective, the Heir Loom Estate of the “greatest Captain of the Age!” In his peerage it is said, that it was wholly out of the power of the nation to reward his services fully; but, that “she did what she could!” Well, poor devil! And what could any body ask for more? It was well, however, that she give what she did while she was drunk; for, if she had held her hand till now, I am half disposed to think, that her gifts would have been very small. I can never forget that we have to pay interest on 50,000l. of the money merely owing to the coxcombery of the late Mr. Whitbread, who actually moved that addition to one of the grants proposed by the Ministers! Now, a great part of the grants is in the way of annuity or pension. It is notorious, that, when the grants were made, the pensions would not purchase more than a third part of as much wheat as they will now. The grants, therefore, have been augmented threefold. What right, then, has any one to say, that the labourers’ wages ought to fall, unless he say, that these pensions ought to be reduced! The Hampshire Magistrates, when they were putting forth their manifesto about the allowances to labourers, should have noticed these pensions of the Lord Lieutenant of the County. However, real starvation cannot be inflicted to any very great extent. The present race of farmers must give way, and the attempts to squeeze rents out of the wages of labour must cease. And the matter will finally rest to be settled by the landlords, parsons, and tax-eaters. If the landlords choose to give the greatest captain three times as much as was granted to him, why, let him have it. According to all account, he is no miser at any rate; and the estates that pass through his hands may, perhaps, be full as well disposed of as they are at present. Considering the miserable soil I have passed over to-day, I am rather surprised to find Oakingham so decent a town. It has a very handsome market-place, and is by no means an ugly country-town.

31 October.

Set off at daylight and got to Kensington about noon. On leaving Oakingham for London, you get upon what is called Windsor Forest; that is to say, upon as bleak, as barren, and as villanous a heath as ever man set his eyes on. However, here are new enclosures without end. And here are houses too, here and there, over the whole of this execrable tract of country. “What!” Mr. Canning will say, “will you not allow that the owners of these new enclosures and these houses know their own interests? And are not these improvements, and are they not a proof of an addition to the national capital?” To the first I answer, May be so; to the two last, No. These new enclosures and houses arise out of the beggaring of the parts of the country distant from the vortex of the funds. The farmhouses have long been growing fewer and fewer; the labourers’ houses fewer and fewer; and it is manifest to every man who has eyes to see with, that the villages are regularly wasting away. This is the case all over the parts of the kingdom where the tax-eaters do not haunt. In all the really agricultural villages and parts of the kingdom, there is a shocking decay; a great dilapidation and constant pulling down or falling down of houses. The farmhouses are not so many as they were forty years ago by three-fourths. That is to say, the infernal system of Pitt and his followers has annihilated three parts out of four of the farm houses. The labourers’ houses disappear also. And all the useful people become less numerous. While these spewy sands and gravel near London are enclosed and built on, good lands in other parts are neglected. These enclosures and buildings are a waste; they are means misapplied; they are a proof of national decline and not of prosperity. To cultivate and ornament these villanous spots the produce and the population are drawn away from the good lands. There all manner of schemes have been resorted to to get rid of the necessity of hands; and, I am quite convinced, that the population, upon the whole, has not increased, in England, one single soul since I was born; an opinion that I have often expressed, in support of which I have as often offered arguments, and those arguments have never been answered. As to this rascally heath, that which has ornamented it has brought misery on millions. The spot is not far distant from the Stock-Jobbing crew. The roads to it are level. They are smooth. The wretches can go to it from the ’Change without any danger to their worthless necks. And thus it is “vastly improved, Ma’am!” A set of men who can look upon this as “improvement,” who can regard this as a proof of the “increased capital of the country,” are pretty fit, it must be allowed, to get the country out of its present difficulties! At the end of this blackguard heath you come (on the road to Egham) to a little place called Sunning Hill, which is on the Western side of Windsor Park. It is a spot all made into “grounds” and gardens by tax-eaters. The inhabitants of it have beggared twenty agricultural villages and hamlets.

From this place you go across a corner of Windsor Park, and come out at Virginia Water. To Egham is then about two miles. A much more ugly country than that between Egham and Kensington would with great difficulty be found in England. Flat as a pancake, and, until you come to Hammersmith, the soil is a nasty stony dirt upon a bed of gravel. Hounslow-heath, which is only a little worse than the general run, is a sample of all that is bad in soil and villanous in look. Yet this is now enclosed, and what they call “cultivated.” Here is a fresh robbery of villages, hamlets, and farm and labourers’ buildings and abodes! But here is one of those “vast improvements, Ma’am,” called Barracks. What an “improvement!” What an “addition to the national capital!” For, mind, Monsieur de Snip, the Surrey Norman, actually said, that the new buildings ought to be reckoned an addition to the national capital! What, Snip! Do you pretend that the nation is richer, because the means of making this barrack have been drawn away from the people in taxes? Mind, Monsieur le Normand, the barrack did not drop down from the sky nor spring up out of the earth. It was not created by the unhanged knaves of paper-money. It came out of the people’s labour; and, when you hear Mr. Ellman tell the Committee of 1821, that forty-five years ago every man in his parish brewed his own beer, and that now not one man in that same parish does it; when you hear this, Monsieur de Snip, you might, if you had brains in your skull, be able to estimate the effects of what has produced the barrack. Yet, barracks there must be, or Gatton and Old Sarum must fall; and the fall of these would break poor Mr. Canning’s heart.

8 November.

From London to Egham in the evening.

9 November.

Started at day-break in a hazy frost, for Reading. The horses’ manes and ears covered with the hoar before we got across Windsor Park, which appeared to be a blackguard soil, pretty much like Hounslow Heath, only not flat. A very large part of the Park is covered with heath or rushes, sure sign of execrable soil. But the roads are such as might have been made by Solomon. “A greater than Solomon is here!” some one may exclaim. Of that I know nothing. I am but a traveller; and the roads in this park are beautiful indeed. My servant, whom I brought from amongst the hills and flints of Uphusband, must certainly have thought himself in Paradise as he was going through the Park. If I had told him that the buildings and the labourers’ clothes and meals, at Uphusband, were the worse for those pretty roads with edgings cut to the line, he would have wondered at me, I dare say. It would, nevertheless, have been perfectly true; and this is feelosofee of a much more useful sort than that which is taught by the Edinburgh Reviewers.

When you get through the Park you come to Winkfield, and then (bound for Reading) you go through Binfield, which is ten miles from Egham and as many from Reading. At Binfield I stopped to breakfast, at a very nice country inn called the Stag and Hounds. Here you go along on the North border of that villanous tract of country that I passed over in going from Oakingham to Egham. Much of the land even here is but newly enclosed; and it was really not worth a straw before it was loaded with the fruit of the labour of the people living in the parts of the country distant from the Fund-Wen. What injustice! What unnatural changes! Such things cannot be, without producing convulsion in the end! A road as smooth as a die, a real stock-jobber’s road, brought us to Reading by eleven o’clock. We dined at one; and very much pleased I was with the company. I have seldom seen a number of persons assembled together, whose approbation I valued more than that of the company of this day. Last year the prime Minister said, that his speech (the grand speech) was rendered necessary by the “pains that had been taken, in different parts of the country,” to persuade the farmers, that the distress had arisen out of the measures of the government, and not from over-production! To be sure I had taken some pains to remove that stupid notion about over-production, from the minds of the farmers; but did the stern-path-man succeed in counteracting the effect of my efforts? Not he, indeed. And, after his speech was made, and sent forth cheek by jowl with that of the sane Castlereagh, of hole-digging memory, the truths inculcated by me were only the more manifest. This has been a fine meeting at Reading! I feel very proud of it. The morning was fine for me to ride in, and the rain began as soon as I was housed.

I came on horse-back 40 miles, slept on the road, and finished my harangue at the end of twenty-two hours from leaving Kensington; and, I cannot help saying, that is pretty well for “Old Cobbett.” I am delighted with the people that I have seen at Reading. Their kindness to me is nothing in my estimation compared with the sense and spirit which they appear to possess. It is curious to observe how things have worked with me. That combination, that sort of instinctive union, which has existed for so many years, amongst all the parties, to keep me down generally, and particularly, as the County-Club called it, to keep me out of Parliament “at any rate,” this combination has led to the present haranguing system, which, in some sort, supplies the place of a seat in Parliament. It may be said, indeed, that I have not the honour to sit in the same room with those great Reformers, Lord John Russell, Sir Massey Lopez, and his guest, Sir Francis Burdett; but man’s happiness here below is never perfect; and there may be, besides, people to believe, that a man ought not to break his heart on account of being shut out of such company, especially when he can find such company as I have this day found at Reading.

10 November.

Went from Reading, through Aldermaston for Burghclere. The rain has been very heavy, and the water was a good deal out. Here, on my way, I got upon Crookham Common again, which is a sort of continuation of the wretched country about Oakingham. From Highclere I looked, one day, over the flat towards Marlborough; and I there saw some such rascally heaths. So that this villanous tract, extends from East to West, with more or less of exceptions, from Hounslow to Hungerford. From North to South it extends from Binfield (which cannot be far from the borders of Buckinghamshire) to the South Downs of Hampshire, and terminates somewhere between Liphook and Petersfield, after stretching over Hindhead, which is certainly the most villanous spot that God ever made. Our ancestors do, indeed, seem to have ascribed its formation to another power; for the most celebrated part of it is called “the Devil’s Punch Bowl.” In this tract of country there are certainly some very beautiful spots. But these are very few in number, except where the chalk-hills run into the tract. The neighbourhood of Godalming ought hardly to be considered as an exception; for there you are just on the outside of the tract, and begin to enter on the Wealds; that is to say, clayey woodlands. All the part of Berkshire, of which I have been recently passing over, if I except the tract from Reading to Crookham, is very bad land and a very ugly country.

11 November.

Uphusband once more, and, for the sixth time this year, over the North Hampshire Hills, which, notwithstanding their everlasting flints, I like very much. As you ride along, even in a green lane, the horses’ feet make a noise like hammering. It seems as if you were riding on a mass of iron. Yet the soil is good, and bears some of the best wheat in England. All these high, and indeed, all chalky lands, are excellent for sheep. But, on the top of some of these hills, there are as fine meadows as I ever saw. Pasture richer, perhaps, than that about Swindon in the North of Wiltshire. And the singularity is, that this pasture is on the very tops of these lofty hills, from which you can see the Isle of Wight. There is a stiff loam, in some places twenty feet deep, on a bottom of chalk. Though the grass grows so finely, there is no apparent wetness in the land. The wells are more than three hundred feet deep. The main part of the water, for all uses, comes from the clouds; and, indeed, these are pretty constant companions of these chalk hills, which are very often enveloped in clouds and wet, when it is sunshine down at Burghclere or Uphusband. They manure the land here by digging wells in the fields, and bringing up the chalk, which they spread about on the land; and which, being free-chalk, is reduced to powder by the frosts. A considerable portion of the land is covered with wood; and as, in the clearing of the land, the clearers followed the good soil, without regard to shape of fields, the forms of the woods are of endless variety, which, added to the never-ceasing inequalities of the surface of the whole, makes this, like all the others of the same description, a very pleasant country.

17 November.

Set off from Uphusband for Hambledon. The first place I had to get to was Whitchurch. On my way, and at a short distance from Uphusband, down the valley, I went through a village called Bourn, which takes its name from the water that runs down this valley. A bourn, in the language of our forefathers, seems to be a river, which is, part of the year, without water. There is one of these bourns down this pretty valley. It has, generally, no water till towards Spring, and then it runs for several months. It is the same at the Candovers, as you go across the downs from Odiham to Winchester.

The little village of Bourn, therefore, takes its name from its situation. Then there are two Hurstbourns, one above and one below this village of Bourn. Hurst means, I believe, a Forest. There were, doubtless, one of those on each side of Bourn; and when they became villages, the one above was called Up-hurstbourn, and the one below, Down-hurstbourn; which names have become Uphusband and Downhusband. The lawyers, therefore, who, to the immortal honour of high-blood and Norman descent, are making such a pretty story out for the Lord Chancellor, relative to a Noble Peer who voted for the Bill against the Queen, ought to leave off calling the seat of the noble person Hursperne; for it is at Downhurstbourn where he lives, and where he was visited by Dr. Bankhead!

Whitchurch is a small town, but famous for being the place where the paper has been made for the Borough-Bank! I passed by the mill on my way out to get upon the downs to go to Alresford, where I intended to sleep. I hope the time will come, when a monument will be erected where that mill stands, and when on that monument will be inscribed the curse of England. This spot ought to be held accursed in all time henceforth and for evermore. It has been the spot from which have sprung more and greater mischiefs than ever plagued mankind before. However, the evils now appear to be fast recoiling on the merciless authors of them; and, therefore, one beholds this scene of paper-making with a less degree of rage than formerly. My blood used to boil when I thought of the wretches who carried on and supported the system. It does not boil now, when I think of them. The curse, which they intended solely for others, is now falling on themselves; and I smile at their sufferings. Blasphemy! Atheism! Who can be an Atheist, that sees how justly these wretches are treated; with what exact measure they are receiving the evils which they inflicted on others for a time, and which they intended to inflict on them for ever! If, indeed, the monsters had continued to prosper, one might have been an Atheist. The true history of the rise, progress and fall of these monsters, of their power, their crimes and their punishment, will do more than has been done before to put an end to the doubts of those who have doubts upon this subject.

Quitting Whitchurch, I went off to the left out of the Winchester-road, got out upon the high-lands, took an “observation,” as the sailors call it, and off I rode, in a straight line, over hedge and ditch, towards the rising ground between Stratton Park and Micheldever-Wood; but, before I reached this point, I found some wet meadows and some running water in my way in a little valley running up from the turnpike road to a little place called West Stratton. I, therefore, turned to my left, went down to the turnpike, went a little way along it, then turned to my left, went along by Stratton Park pales down East Stratton-street, and then on towards the Grange Park. Stratton Park is the seat of Sir Thomas Baring, who has here several thousands of acres of land; who has the living of Micheldever, to which, I think, Northington and Swallowfield are joined. Above all, he has Micheldever Wood, which, they say, contains a thousand acres, and which is one of the finest oak-woods in England. This large and very beautiful estate must have belonged to the Church at the time of Henry the Eighth’s “reformation.” It was, I believe, given by him to the family of Russell; and it was, by them, sold to Sir Francis Baring about twenty years ago. Upon the whole, all things considered, the change is for the better. Sir Thomas Baring would not have moved, nay, he did not move, for the pardon of Lopez, while he left Joseph Swann in gaol for four years and a half, without so much as hinting at Swann’s case! Yea, verily, I would rather see this estate in the hands of Sir Thomas Baring than in those of Lopez’s friend. Besides, it seems to be acknowledged that any title is as good as those derived from the old wife-killer. Castlereagh, when the Whigs talked in a rather rude manner about the sinecure places and pensions, told them, that the title of the sinecure man or woman was as good as the titles of the Duke of Bedford! this was plagiarism, to the sure; for Burke had begun it. He called the Duke the Leviathan of grants; and seemed to hint at the propriety of over-hauling them a little. When the men of Kent petitioned for a “just reduction of the National Debt,” Lord John Russell, with that wisdom for which he is renowned, reprobated the prayer; but, having done this in terms not sufficiently unqualified and strong, and having made use of a word of equivocal meaning, the man, that cut his own throat at North Cray, pitched on upon him and told him, that the fundholder had as much right to his dividends, as the Duke of Bedford had to his estates. Upon this the noble reformer and advocate for Lopez mended his expressions; and really said what the North Cray philosopher said he ought to say! Come, come: Micheldever Wood is in very proper hands! A little girl, of whom I asked my way down into East Stratton, and who was dressed in a camlet gown, white apron and plaid cloak (it was Sunday), and who had a book in her hand, told me that Lady Baring gave her the clothes, and had her taught to read and to sing hymns and spiritual songs.

As I came through the Strattons, I saw not less than a dozen girls clad in this same way. It is impossible not to believe that this is done with a good motive; but it is possible not to believe that it is productive of good. It must create hypocrites, and hypocrisy is the great sin of the age. Society is in a queer state when the rich think, that they must educate the poor in order to insure their own safety: for this, at bottom, is the great motive now at work in pushing on the education scheme, though in this particular case, perhaps, there may be a little enthusiasm at work. When persons are glutted with riches; when they have their fill of them; when they are surfeited of all earthly pursuits, they are very apt to begin to think about the next world; and, the moment they begin to think of that, they begin to look over the account that they shall have to present. Hence the far greater part of what are called “charities.” But it is the business of governments to take care that there shall be very little of this glutting with riches, and very little need of “charities.”

From Stratton I went on to Northington Down; then round to the South of the Grange Park (Alex. Baring’s), down to Abbotson, and over some pretty little green hills to Alresford, which is a nice little town of itself, but which presents a singularly beautiful view from the last little hill coming from Abbotson. I could not pass by the Grange Park without thinking of Lord and Lady Henry Stuart, whose lives and deaths surpassed what we read of in the most sentimental romances. Very few things that I have met with in my life ever filled me with sorrow equal to that which I felt at the death of this most virtuous and most amiable pair.

It began raining soon after I got to Alresford, and rained all the evening. I heard here, that a Requisition for a County Meeting was in the course of being signed in different parts of the county. They mean to petition for Reform, I hope. At any rate, I intend to go to see what they do. I saw the parsons at the county meeting in 1817. I should like, of all things, to see them at another meeting now. These are the persons that I have most steadily in my eye. The war and the debt were for the tithes and the boroughs. These must stand or fall together now. I always told the parsons, that they were the greatest fools in the world to put the tithes on board the same boat with the boroughs. I told them so in 1817; and, I fancy, they will soon see all about it.

November 18.

Came from Alresford to Hambledon, through Titchbourn, Cheriton, Beauworth, Kilmston, and Exton. This is all a high, hard, dry, fox-hunting country. Like that, indeed, over which I came yesterday. At Titchbourn, there is a park, and “great house,” as the country-people call it. The place belongs, I believe, to a Sir somebody Titchbourne, a family, very likely half as old as the name of the village, which, however, partly takes its name from the bourn that runs down the valley. I thought, as I was riding alongside of this park, that I had heard good of this family of Titchbourne, and, I therefore saw the park pales with sorrow. There is not more than one pale in a yard, and those that remain, and the rails and posts and all, seem tumbling down. This park-paling is perfectly typical of those of the landlords who are not tax-eaters. They are wasting away very fast. The tax-eating landlords think to swim out the gale. They are deceived. They are “deluded” by their own greediness.

Kilmston was my next place after Titchbourn, but I wanted to go to Beauworth, so that I had to go through Cheriton; a little, hard, iron village, where all seems to be as old as the hills that surround it. In coming along you see Titchbourn church away to the right, on the side of the hill, a very pretty little view; and this, though such a hard country, is a pretty country.

At Cheriton I found a grand camp of Gipsys, just upon the move towards Alresford. I had met some of the scouts first, and afterwards the advanced guard, and here the main body was getting in motion. One of the scouts that I met was a young woman, who, I am sure, was six feet high. There were two or three more in the camp of about the same height; and some most strapping fellows of men. It is curious that this race should have preserved their dark skin and coal-black straight and coarse hair, very much like that of the American Indians. I mean the hair, for the skin has nothing of the copper-colour as that of the Indians has. It is not, either, of the Mulatto cast; that is to say, there is no yellow in it. It is a black mixed with our English colours of pale, or red, and the features are small, like those of the girls in Sussex, and often singularly pretty. The tall girl that I met at Titchbourn, who had a huckster basket on her arm, had most beautiful features. I pulled up my horse, and said, “Can you tell me my fortune, my dear?” She answered in the negative, giving me a look at the same time, that seemed to say, it was too late; and that if I had been thirty years younger she might have seen a little what she could do with me. It is, all circumstances considered, truly surprising, that this race should have preserved so perfectly all its distinctive marks.

I came on to Beauworth to inquire after the family of a worthy old farmer, whom I knew there some years ago, and of whose death I had heard at Alresford. A bridle road over some fields and through a coppice took me to Kilmston, formerly a large village, but now mouldered into two farms, and a few miserable tumble-down houses for the labourers. Here is a house, that was formerly the residence of the landlord of the place, but is now occupied by one of the farmers. This is a fine country for fox-hunting, and Kilmston belonged to a Mr. Ridge who was a famous fox-hunter, and who is accused of having spent his fortune in that way. But what do people mean? He had a right to spend his income, as his fathers had done before him. It was the Pitt-system, and not the fox-hunting, that took away the principal. The place now belongs to a Mr. Long, whose origin I cannot find out.

From Kilmston I went right over the downs to the top of a hill called Beacon Hill, which is one of the loftiest hills in the country. Here you can see the Isle of Wight in detail, a fine sweep of the sea; also away into Sussex, and over the New Forest into Dorsetshire. Just below you, to the East, you look down upon the village of Exton; and you can see up this valley (which is called a Bourn too) as far as West Meon, and down it as far as Soberton. Corhampton, Warnford, Meon-Stoke and Droxford come within these two points; so that here are six villages on this bourn within the space of about five miles. On the other side of the main valley down which the bourn runs, and opposite Beacon Hill, is another such a hill, which they call Old Winchester Hill. On the top of this hill there was once a camp, or, rather fortress; and the ramparts are now pretty nearly as visible as ever. The same is to be seen on the Beacon Hill at Highclere. These ramparts had nothing of the principles of modern fortification in their formation. You see no signs of salliant angles. It was a ditch and a bank, and that appears to have been all. I had, I think, a full mile to go down from the top of Beacon Hill to Exton. This is the village where that Parson Baines lives who, as described by me in 1817, bawled in Lord Cochrane’s ear at Winchester in the month of March of that year. Parson Poulter lives at Meon-Stoke, which is not a mile further down. So that this valley has something in it besides picturesque views! I asked some countrymen how Poulter and Baines did; but their answer contained too much of irreverence for me to give it here.

At Exton I crossed the Gosport turnpike road, came up the cross valley under the South side of Old Winchester Hill, over Stoke down, then over West-End down, and then to my friend’s house at West-End in the parish of Hambledon.

Thus have I crossed nearly the whole of this country from the North-West to the South-East, without going five hundred yards on a turnpike road, and, as nearly as I could do it, in a straight line.

The whole country that I have crossed is loam and flints, upon a bottom of chalk. At Alresford there are some watered meadows, which are the beginning of a chain of meadows that goes all the way down to Winchester, and hence to Southampton; but even these meadows have, at Alresford, chalk under them. The water that supplies them comes out of a pond, called Alresford Pond, which is fed from the high hills in the neighbourhood. These counties are purely agricultural; and they have suffered most cruelly from the accursed Pitt-system. Their hilliness, bleakness, roughness of roads, render them unpleasant to the luxurious, effeminate, tax-eating crew, who never come near them, and who have pared them down to the very bone. The villages are all in a state of decay. The farm-buildings dropping down, bit by bit. The produce is, by a few great farmers, dragged to a few spots, and all the rest is falling into decay. If this infernal system could go on for forty years longer, it would make all the labourers as much slaves as the negroes are, and subject to the same sort of discipline and management.

November 19 to 23.

At West End. Hambledon is a long, straggling village, lying in a little valley formed by some very pretty but not lofty hills. The environs are much prettier than the village itself, which is not far from the North side of Portsdown Hill. This must have once been a considerable place; for here is a church pretty nearly as large as that at Farnham in Surrey, which is quite sufficient for a large town. The means of living has been drawn away from these villages, and the people follow the means. Cheriton and Kilmston and Hambledon and the like have been beggared for the purpose of giving tax-eaters the means of making “vast improvements, Ma’am,” on the villanous spewy gravel of Windsor Forest! The thing, however, must go back. Revolution here or revolution there: bawl, bellow, alarm, as long as the tax-eaters like, back the thing must go. Back, indeed, it is going in some quarters. Those scenes of glorious loyalty, the sea-port places, are beginning to be deserted. How many villages has that scene of all that is wicked and odious, Portsmouth, Gosport, and Portsea; how many villages has that hellish assemblage beggared! It is now being scattered itself! Houses which there let for forty or fifty pounds a-year each, now let for three or four shillings a-week each; and thousands, perhaps, cannot be let at all to any body capable of paying rent. There is an absolute tumbling down taking place, where, so lately, there were such “vast improvements, Ma’am!” Does Monsieur de Snip call those improvements, then? Does he insist, that those houses form “an addition to the national capital?” Is it any wonder that a country should be miserable when such notions prevail? And when they can, even in the Parliament, be received with cheering?

Nov. 24, Sunday.

Set off from Hambledon to go to Thursley in Surrey, about five miles from Godalming. Here I am at Thursley, after as interesting a day as I ever spent in all my life. They say that “variety is charming,” and this day I have had of scenes and of soils a variety indeed!

To go to Thursley from Hambledon the plain way was up the downs to Petersfield, and then along the turnpike-road through Liphook, and over Hindhead, at the north-east foot of which Thursley lies. But, I had been over that sweet Hindhead, and had seen too much of turnpike-road and of heath, to think of taking another so large a dose of them. The map of Hampshire (and we had none of Surrey) showed me the way to Headley, which lies on the West of Hindhead, down upon the flat. I knew it was but about five miles from Headley to Thursley; and I, therefore, resolved to go to Headley, in spite of all the remonstrances of friends, who represented to me the danger of breaking my neck at Hawkley and of getting buried in the bogs of Woolmer Forest. My route was through East-Meon, Froxfield, Hawkley, Greatham, and then over Woolmer Forest (a heath if you please), to Headley.

Off we set over the downs (crossing the bottom sweep of Old Winchester Hill) from West-End to East-Meon. We came down a long and steep hill that led us winding round into the village, which lies in a valley that runs in a direction nearly east and west, and that has a rivulet that comes out of the hills towards Petersfield. If I had not seen anything further to-day, I should have dwelt long on the beauties of this place. Here is a very fine valley, in nearly an eliptical form, sheltered by high hills sloping gradually from it; and not far from the middle of this valley there is a hill nearly in the form of a goblet-glass with the foot and stem broken off and turned upside down. And this is clapped down upon the level of the valley, just as you would put such goblet upon a table. The hill is lofty, partly covered with wood, and it gives an air of great singularity to the scene. I am sure that East-Meon has been a large place. The church has a Saxon Tower, pretty nearly equal, as far as I recollect, to that of the Cathedral at Winchester. The rest of the church has been rebuilt, and, perhaps, several times; but the tower is complete; it has had a steeple put upon it; but it retains all its beauty, and it shows that the church (which is still large) must, at first, have been a very large building. Let those, who talk so glibly of the increase of the population in England, go over the country from Highclere to Hambledon. Let them look at the size of the churches, and let them observe those numerous small enclosures on every side of every village, which had, to a certainty, each its house in former times. But let them go to East-Meon, and account for that church. Where did the hands come from to make it? Look, however, at the downs, the many square miles of downs near this village, all bearing the marks of the plough, and all out of tillage for many many years; yet, not one single inch of them but what is vastly superior in quality to any of those great “improvements” on the miserable heaths of Hounslow, Bagshot, and Windsor Forest. It is the destructive, the murderous paper-system, that has transferred the fruit of the labour, and the people along with it, from the different parts of the country to the neighbourhood of the all-devouring Wen. I do not believe one word of what is said of the increase of the population. All observation and all reason is against the fact; and, as to the parliamentary returns, what need we more than this: that they assert, that the population of Great Britain has increased from ten to fourteen millions in the last twenty years! That is enough! A man that can suck that in will believe, literally believe, that the moon is made of green cheese. Such a thing is too monstrous to be swallowed by any body but Englishmen, and by any Englishman not brutified by a Pitt-system.

to Mr. Canning.

Worth (Sussex),
10 December, 1822.

Sir,

The agreeable news from France, relative to the intended invasion of Spain, compelled me to break off, in my last Letter, in the middle of my Rural Ride of Sunday, the 24th of November. Before I mount again, which I shall do in this Letter, pray let me ask you what sort of apology is to be offered to the nation, if the French Bourbons be permitted to take quiet possession of Cadiz and of the Spanish naval force? Perhaps you may be disposed to answer, when you have taken time to reflect; and, therefore, leaving you to muse on the matter, I will resume my ride.

November 24.

(Sunday.) From Hambledon to Thursley (continued).

From East-Meon, I did not go on to Froxfield church, but turned off to the left to a place (a couple of houses) called Bower. Near this I stopped at a friend’s house, which is in about as lonely a situation as I ever saw. A very pleasant place however. The lands dry, a nice mixture of woods and fields, and a great variety of hill and dell.

Before I came to East-Meon, the soil of the hills was a shallow loam with flints, on a bottom of chalk; but on this side of the valley of East-Meon; that is to say, on the north side, the soil on the hills is a deep, stiff loam, on a bed of a sort of gravel mixed with chalk; and the stones, instead of being grey on the outside and blue on the inside, are yellow on the outside and whitish on the inside. In coming on further to the North, I found, that the bottom was sometimes gravel and sometime chalk. Here, at the time when whatever it was that formed these hills and valleys, the stuff of which Hindhead is composed seems to have run down and mixed itself with the stuff of which Old Winchester Hill is composed. Free chalk (which is the sort found here) is excellent manure for stiff land, and it produces a complete change in the nature of clays. It is, therefore, dug here, on the North of East-Meon, about in the fields, where it happens to be found, and is laid out upon the surface, where it is crumbled to powder by the frost, and thus gets incorporated with the loam.

At Bower I got instructions to go to Hawkley, but accompanied with most earnest advice not to go that way, for that it was impossible to get along. The roads were represented as so bad; the floods so much out; the hills and bogs so dangerous; that, really, I began to doubt; and, if I had not been brought up amongst the clays of the Holt Forest and the bogs of the neighbouring heaths, I should certainly have turned off to my right, to go over Hindhead, great as was my objection to going that way. “Well, then,” said my friend at Bower, “if you will go that way, by G—, you must go down Hawkley Hanger;” of which he then gave me such a description! But, even this I found to fall short of the reality. I inquired simply, whether people were in the habit of going down it; and, the answer being in the affirmative, on I went through green lanes and bridle-ways till I came to the turnpike-road from Petersfield to Winchester, which I crossed, going into a narrow and almost untrodden green lane, on the side of which I found a cottage. Upon my asking the way to Hawkley, the woman at the cottage said, “Right up the lane, Sir: you’ll come to a hanger presently: you must take care, Sir: you can’t ride down: will your horses go alone?”

On we trotted up this pretty green lane; and indeed, we had been coming gently and generally up hill for a good while. The lane was between highish banks and pretty high stuff growing on the banks, so that we could see no distance from us, and could receive not the smallest hint of what was so near at hand. The lane had a little turn towards the end; so that, out we came, all in a moment, at the very edge of the hanger! And never, in all my life, was I so surprised and so delighted! I pulled up my horse, and sat and looked; and it was like looking from the top of a castle down into the sea, except that the valley was land and not water. I looked at my servant, to see what effect this unexpected sight had upon him. His surprise was as great as mine, though he had been bred amongst the North Hampshire hills. Those who had so strenuously dwelt on the dirt and dangers of this route, had said not a word about beauties, the matchless beauties of the scenery. These hangers are woods on the sides of very steep hills. The trees and underwood hang, in some sort, to the ground, instead of standing on it. Hence these places are called Hangers. From the summit of that which I had now to descend, I looked down upon the villages of Hawkley, Greatham, Selborne and some others.

From the south-east, round, southward, to the north-west, the main valley has cross-valleys running out of it, the hills on the sides of which are very steep, and, in many parts, covered with wood. The hills that form these cross-valleys run out into the main valley, like piers into the sea. Two of these promontories, of great height, are on the west side of the main valley, and were the first objects that struck my sight when I came to the edge of the hanger, which was on the south. The ends of these promontories are nearly perpendicular, and their tops so high in the air, that you cannot look at the village below without something like a feeling of apprehension. The leaves are all off, the hop-poles are in stack, the fields have little verdure; but, while the spot is beautiful beyond description even now, I must leave to imagination to suppose what it is, when the trees and hangers and hedges are in leaf, the corn waving, the meadows bright, and the hops upon the poles!

From the south-west, round, eastward, to the north, lie the heaths, of which Woolmer Forest makes a part, and these go gradually rising up to Hindhead, the crown of which is to the north-west, leaving the rest of the circle (the part from north to north-west) to be occupied by a continuation of the valley towards Headley, Binstead, Frensham and the Holt Forest. So that even the contrast in the view from the top of the hanger is as great as can possibly be imagined. Men, however, are not to have such beautiful views as this without some trouble. We had had the view; but we had to go down the hanger. We had, indeed, some roads to get along, as we could, afterwards; but we had to get down the hanger first. The horses took the lead, and crept partly down upon their feet and partly upon their hocks. It was extremely slippery too; for the soil is a sort of marle, or, as they call it here, maume, or mame, which is, when wet, very much like grey soap. In such a case it was likely that I should keep in the rear, which I did, and I descended by taking hold of the branches of the underwood, and so letting myself down. When we got to the bottom, I bade my man, when he should go back to Uphusband, tell the people there, that Ashmansworth Lane is not the worst piece of road in the world. Our worst, however, was not come yet, nor had we by any means seen the most novel sights.

After crossing a little field and going through a farm-yard, we came into a lane, which was, at once, road and river. We found a hard bottom, however; and when we got out of the water, we got into a lane with high banks. The banks were quarries of white stone, like Portland-stone, and the bed of the road was of the same stone; and, the rains having been heavy for a day or two before, the whole was as clean and as white as the steps of a fund-holder or dead-weight door-way in one of the Squares of the Wen. Here were we, then, going along a stone road with stone banks, and yet the underwood and trees grew well upon the tops of the banks. In the solid stone beneath us, there were a horse-track and wheel-tracks, the former about three and the latter about six inches deep. How many many ages it must have taken the horses’ feet, the wheels, and the water, to wear down this stone, so as to form a hollow way! The horses seemed alarmed at their situation; they trod with fear; but they took us along very nicely, and, at last, got us safe into the indescribable dirt and mire of the road from Hawkley Green to Greatham. Here the bottom of all the land is this solid white stone, and the top is that mame, which I have before described. The hop-roots penetrate down into this stone. How deep the stone may go I know not; but, when I came to look up at the end of one of the piers, or promontories, mentioned above, I found that it was all of this same stone.

At Hawkley Green, I asked a farmer the way to Thursley. He pointed to one of two roads going from the green; but it appearing to me, that that would lead me up to the London road and over Hindhead, I gave him to understand that I was resolved to get along, somehow or other, through the “low countries.” He besought me not to think of it. However, finding me resolved, he got a man to go a little way to put me into the Greatham road. The man came, but the farmer could not let me go off without renewing his entreaties, that I would go away to Liphook, in which entreaties the man joined, though he was to be paid very well for his trouble.

Off we went, however, to Greatham. I am thinking, whether I ever did see worse roads. Upon the whole, I think, I have; though I am not sure that the roads of New Jersey, between Trenton and Elizabeth-Town, at the breaking up of winter, be worse. Talk of shows, indeed! Take a piece of this road; just a cut across, and a rod long, and carry it up to London. That would be something like a show!

Upon leaving Greatham we came out upon Woolmer Forest. Just as we were coming out of Greatham, I asked a man the way to Thursley. “You must go to Liphook, Sir,” said he. “But,” I said, “I will not go to Liphook.” These people seemed to be posted at all these stages to turn me aside from my purpose, and to make me go over that Hindhead, which I had resolved to avoid. I went on a little further, and asked another man the way to Headley, which, as I have already observed, lies on the western foot of Hindhead, whence I knew there must be a road to Thursley (which lies at the North East foot) without going over that miserable hill. The man told me, that I must go across the forest. I asked him whether it was a good road: “It is a sound road,” said he, laying a weighty emphasis upon the word sound. “Do people go it?” said I. “Ye-es,” said he. “Oh then,” said I, to my man, “as it is a sound road, keep you close to my heels, and do not attempt to go aside, not even for a foot.” Indeed, it was a sound road. The rain of the night had made the fresh horse tracks visible. And we got to Headley in a short time, over a sand-road, which seemed so delightful after the flints and stone and dirt and sloughs that we had passed over and through since the morning! This road was not, if we had been benighted, without its dangers, the forest being full of quags and quicksands. This is a tract of Crown lands, or, properly speaking, public lands, on some parts of which our Land Steward, Mr. Huskisson, is making some plantations of trees, partly fir, and partly other trees. What he can plant the fir for, God only knows, seeing that the country is already over-stocked with that rubbish. But this public land concern is a very great concern.

If I were a Member of Parliament, I would know what timber has been cut down, and what it has been sold for, since year 1790. However, this matter must be investigated, first or last. It never can be omitted in the winding up of the concern; and that winding up must come out of wheat at four shillings a bushel. It is said, hereabouts, that a man who lives near Liphook, and who is so mighty a hunter and game pursuer, that they call him William Rufus; it is said that this man is Lord of the Manor of Woolmer Forest. This he cannot be without a grant to that effect; and, if there be a grant, there must have been a reason for the grant. This reason I should very much like to know; and this I would know if I were a Member of Parliament. That the people call him the Lord of the Manor is certain; but he can hardly make preserves of the plantations; for it is well known how marvellously hares and young trees agree together! This is a matter of great public importance; and yet, how, in the present state of things, is an investigation to be obtained? Is there a man in Parliament that will call for it? Not one. Would a dissolution of Parliament mend the matter? No; for the same men would be there still. They are the same men that have been there for these thirty years; and the same men they will be, and they must be, until there be a reform. To be sure when one dies, or cuts his throat (as in the case of Castlereagh), another one comes; but it is the same body. And, as long as it is that same body, things will always go on as they now go on. However, as Mr. Canning says the body “works well,” we must not say the contrary.

The soil of this tract is, generally, a black sand, which, in some places, becomes peat, which makes very tolerable fuel. In some parts there is clay at bottom; and there the oaks would grow; but not while there are hares in any number on the forest. If trees be to grow here, there ought to be no hares, and as little hunting as possible.

We got to Headly, the sign of the Holly-Bush, just at dusk, and just as it began to rain. I had neither eaten nor drunk since eight o’clock in the morning; and as it was a nice little public-house, I at first intended to stay all night, an intention that I afterwards very indiscreetly gave up. I had laid my plan, which included the getting to Thursley that night. When, therefore, I had got some cold bacon and bread, and some milk, I began to feel ashamed of stopping short of my plan, especially after having so heroically persevered in the “stern path,” and so disdainfully scorned to go over Hindhead. I knew that my road lay through a hamlet called Churt, where they grow such fine bennet-grass seed. There was a moon; but there was also a hazy rain. I had heaths to go over, and I might go into quags. Wishing to execute my plan, however, I at last brought myself to quit a very comfortable turf-fire, and to set off in the rain, having bargained to give a man three shillings to guide me out to the Northern foot of Hindhead. I took care to ascertain, that my guide knew the road perfectly well; that is to say, I took care to ascertain it as far as I could, which was, indeed, no farther than his word would go. Off we set, the guide mounted on his own or master’s horse, and with a white smock frock, which enabled us to see him clearly. We trotted on pretty fast for about half an hour; and I perceived, not without some surprise, that the rain, which I knew to be coming from the South, met me full in the face, when it ought, according to my reckoning, to have beat upon my right cheek. I called to the guide repeatedly to ask him if he was sure that he was right, to which he always answered “Oh! yes, Sir, I know the road.” I did not like this, “I know the road.” At last, after going about six miles in nearly a Southern direction, the guide turned short to the left. That brought the rain upon my right cheek, and, though I could not very well account for the long stretch to the South, I thought, that, at any rate, we were now in the right track; and, after going about a mile in this new direction, I began to ask the guide how much further we had to go; for I had got a pretty good soaking, and was rather impatient to see the foot of Hindhead. Just at this time, in raising my head and looking forward as I spoke to the guide, what should I see, but a long, high, and steep hanger arising before us, the trees along the top of which I could easily distinguish! The fact was, we were just getting to the outside of the heath, and were on the brow of a steep hill, which faced this hanging wood. The guide had begun to descend, and I had called to him to stop; for the hill was so steep, that, rain as it did and wet as my saddle must be, I got off my horse in order to walk down. But, now behold, the fellow discovered, that he had lost his way!—Where we were I could not even guess. There was but one remedy, and that was to get back, if we could. I became guide now; and did as Mr. Western is advising the Ministers to do, retraced my steps. We went back about half the way that we had come, when we saw two men, who showed us the way that we ought to go. At the end of about a mile, we fortunately found the turnpike-road; not, indeed, at the foot, but on the tip-top of that very Hindhead, on which I had so repeatedly vowed I would not go! We came out on the turnpike some hundred yards on the Liphook side of the buildings called the Hut; so that we had the whole of three miles of hill to come down at not much better than a foot pace, with a good pelting rain at our backs.

It is odd enough how differently one is affected by the same sight, under different circumstances. At the “Holly Bush” at Headly there was a room full of fellows in white smock frocks, drinking and smoking and talking, and I, who was then dry and warm, moralized within myself on their folly in spending their time in such a way. But, when I got down from Hindhead to the public-house at Road-Lane, with my skin soaking and my teeth chattering, I thought just such another group, whom I saw through the window sitting round a good fire with pipes in their mouths, the wisest assembly I had ever set my eyes on. A real Collective Wisdom. And, I most solemnly declare, that I felt a greater veneration for them than I have ever felt even for the Privy Council, notwithstanding the Right Honorable Charles Wynn and the Right Honorable Sir John Sinclair belong to the latter.

It was now but a step to my friend’s house, where a good fire and a change of clothes soon put all to rights, save and except the having come over Hindhead after all my resolutions. This mortifying circumstance; this having been beaten, lost the guide the three shillings that I had agreed to give him. “Either,” said I, “you did not know the way well, or you did: if the former, it was dishonest in you to undertake to guide me: if the latter, you have wilfully led me miles out of my way.” He grumbled; but off he went. He certainly deserved nothing; for he did not know the way, and he prevented some other man from earning and receiving the money. But, had he not caused me to get upon Hindhead, he would have had the three shillings. I had, at one time, got my hand in my pocket; but the thought of having been beaten pulled it out again.

Thus ended the most interesting day, as far as I know, that I ever passed in all my life. Hawkley-hangers, promontories, and stone-roads will always come into my mind when I see, or hear of, picturesque views. I forgot to mention, that, in going from Hawkley to Greatham, the man, who went to show me the way, told me at a certain fork, “That road goes to Selborne.” This put me in mind of a book, which was once recommended to me, but which I never saw, entitled “The History and Antiquities of Selborne,” (or something of that sort) written, I think, by a parson of the name of White, brother of Mr. White, so long a Bookseller in Fleet-street. This parson had, I think, the living of the parish of Selborne. The book was mentioned to me as a work of great curiosity and interest. But, at that time, the THING was biting so very sharply that one had no attention to bestow on antiquarian researches. Wheat at 39s. a quarter, and Southdown ewes at 12s. 6d. have so weakened the THING’S jaws and so filed down its teeth, that I shall now certainly read this book if I can get it. By-the-bye if all the parsons had, for the last thirty years, employed their leisure time in writing the histories of their several parishes, instead of living, as many of them have, engaged in pursuits that I need not here name, neither their situation nor that of their flocks would, perhaps, have been the worse for it at this day.

Thursley (Surrey), Nov. 25.

In looking back into Hampshire, I see with pleasure the farmers bestirring themselves to get a County Meeting called. There were, I was told, nearly five hundred names to a Requisition, and those all of land-owners or occupiers.—Precisely what they mean to petition for I do not know; but (and now I address myself to you, Mr. Canning,) if they do not petition for a reform of the Parliament, they will do worse than nothing. You, Sir, have often told us, that the HOUSE, however got together, “works well.” Now, as I said in 1817, just before I went to America to get out of the reach of our friend, the Old Doctor, and to use my long arm; as I said then, in a Letter addressed to Lord Grosvenor, so I say now, show me the inexpediency of reform, and I will hold my tongue. Show us, prove to us, that the House “works well,” and I, for my part, give the matter up. It is not the construction or the motions of a machine that I ever look at: all I look after is the effect. When, indeed, I find that the effect is deficient or evil, I look to the construction. And, as I now see, and have for many years seen, evil effect, I seek a remedy in an alteration in the machine. There is now nobody; no, not a single man, out of the regions of Whitehall, who will pretend, that the country can, without the risk of some great and terrible convulsion, go on, even for twelve months longer, unless there be a great change of some sort in the mode of managing the public affairs.

Could you see and hear what I have seen and heard during this Rural Ride, you would no longer say, that the House “works well.” Mrs. Canning and your children are dear to you; but, Sir, not more dear than are to them the wives and children of, perhaps, two hundred thousand men, who, by the Acts of this same House, see those wives and children doomed to beggary, and to beggary, too, never thought of, never regarded as more likely than a blowing up of the earth or a falling of the sun. It was reserved for this “working well” House to make the fire-sides of farmers scenes of gloom. These fire-sides, in which I have always so delighted, I now approach with pain. I was, not long ago, sitting round the fire with as worthy and as industrious a man as all England contains. There was his son, about 19 years of age; two daughters from 15 to 18; and a little boy sitting on the father’s knee. I knew, but not from him, that there was a mortgage on his farm. I was anxious to induce him to sell without delay. With this view I, in an hypothetical and round-about way, approached his case, and at last I came to final consequences. The deep and deeper gloom on a countenance, once so cheerful, told me what was passing in his breast, when turning away my looks in order to seem not to perceive the effect of my words, I saw the eyes of his wife full of tears. She had made the application; and there were her children before her! And am I to be banished for life if I express what I felt upon this occasion! And does this House, then, “work well?” How many men, of the most industrious, the most upright, the most exemplary, upon the face of the earth, have been, by this one Act of this House, driven to despair, ending in madness or self-murder, or both! Nay, how many scores! And, yet, are we to be banished for life, if we endeavour to show, that this House does not “work well?”—However, banish or banish not, these facts are notorious: the House made all the Loans which constitute the debt: the House contracted for the Dead Weight: the House put a stop to gold-payments in 1797: the House unanimously passed Peel’s Bill. Here are all the causes of the ruin, the misery, the anguish, the despair, and the madness and self-murders. Here they are all. They have all been Acts of this House; and yet, we are to be banished if we say, in words suitable to the subject, that this House does not “work well!”