Bollitree, Tuesday, 13 Nov.
Rode to-day to see agrovebelonging to Mrs.Westphalin, which contains the very finest trees,oaks,chestnuts, andashes, 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 theold 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 sucha reform of the Parliamentas would have prevented the ruin of tenants.—This parish ofWestonis remarkable for having a Rectorwho 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 roadis 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 otherpublic forests! Are these thingsalwaysto 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 thisworth 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 yieldanything to the public, to whom it belongs? But it is useless to waste one’s breath in this way. We must have areform 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 givefuel; 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 literallystrippedof 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 inopen violation of positive law. The poor forger is hanged; but where is the prosecutor of the monopolizing farmer, though thelawis 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 40farms! Is it any wonder thatpaupers increase? And is there not here cause enough for the increase ofpoor, without resorting to the doctrine of the barbarous and impiousMalthusand his assistants, thefeelosofersof the Edinburgh Review, those eulogists and understrappers of the Whig-Oligarchy? “This farmer has done nothingunlawful,” 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 themedical way,” said he. And I find that vagabonds of this description are seen all over the country withtea-licencesin their pockets. They vendtea,drugs, andreligious 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 apaper-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 theringing of the bellsof 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:allis 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 toRoss-Market, and, thence, to this place. Ross is an old-fashioned town; but it is very beautifully situated, and if there is little offineryin the appearance of the inhabitants, there is also little ofmisery. 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 theborough-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 (forsomeare 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 nottheirfault.” 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 bribesequallyguilty? If we be so very lenient here, pray let us ascribe to theDevilall the acts of thieves and robbers: so we do; but wehangthe 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 whichPopehas 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 verydull. No wheat in demand. No buyers. It mustcome down. Lord Liverpool’sremedy, 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 toa 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. Theyput 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 thecruelty, 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 thetimethus spent, hunting is inseparable fromearly rising: and with habits of early rising, who ever wanted time for any business?
Oxford,Saturday, 17 Nov.
We leftOld 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 leaveHerefordshirewithout 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 ismy country to find a compensation?——AtGloucester(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.——FromGloucestertoCheltenhamthe 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 ofroofis 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.—Cheltenhamis 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 thatdishwhich 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, throughAbingdon(Berks) toMarket-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, bythesight 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 forteas,’ and ‘eighteen pence forcold meat,’ ‘two shillings formoulds and fire’ in this common coach-room, and ‘five shillings forbeds!’” This was a sort of grace before meat to the nuts and apples; and it had muchmoremerit 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 absolutelyfledfrom 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 isfolly: emptiness of head; want of talent; and one half of the fellows who are what they calleducatedhere, are unfit to be clerks in a grocer’s or mercer’s shop.—As I looked up at what they callUniversity 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 thana 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, yerichof that church whosepoorhave had given thema hundred thousand pounds a year, not out of your riches, but out of thetaxes, raised, in part, from thesaltof 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 theVale of Berkshire, where they growwheatandbeans, one after another, for many yearstogether. About three miles before we reached Ilsley we came todowns, 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 theslugs. The slugs, which commit their depredations in thenight, 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 aclodto creep under at every foot, and will not go five feet to get under a cabbage-leaf. Then again, if the day bewet, 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, andnot slaked. The slug is wet, he has hardly any skin, hisslimeis his covering; the smallest dust of hot lime kills him; and a few bushels to the acre are sufficient. You must sow the lime atdusk; 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 theFarm of Tull, atShalborne, in Berkshire. Mr. Budd did the same thing with Arthur Young twenty-seven years ago. It was a sort ofpilgrimage; but as the distance was ten miles, we thought it best to perform it on horseback.—We passed through the parish ofHighclere, where they haveenclosed 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, isnow, I hope, pretty nearly over.—AtEast Woodywe passed the house of a Mr. Goddard, which is uninhabited, he residing at Bath.—AtWest 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 proprietorlets it(it is, just now, empty), and resides in afarmhouseand 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 theradical 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 someauthor) calledInkpen, 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’sSermons. Why, I must confess that I have no recollection of them; but, then, do I notmake 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 fromwet; 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 andentertained 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 werefivepacks offoxhoundsandtenpacks ofharrierskept withinten milesof Newbury; and that now there isoneof the former (kept, too, bysubscription) andnoneof 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 residentnativegentry, 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,practicinghospitality 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 andblack listin 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 theconsequencesare before us; but they have not all yet arrived. A taxation that sucks up fifty millions a yearmustproduce 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 quitBurghclerewithout noticing Mr. Budd’sradicalSwedes 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 beendrilled. 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 plantstwo 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 aregreen savoysas 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.Blountat 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 isa pretty park and house, belonging to “’Squire” Portal, thepaper-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 theAgriculturassescall them, aboutHartley 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 thereal wealthof 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 isLady 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 herage. I beg a thousand pardons! I do not mean to say that her Ladyship isold; 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.——“Afterpleasurecomespain,” 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 thedrying-ground. Sheets, shirts, and all sorts of things were here spread upon lines, covering, perhaps, an acre of ground! We soon afterwards came to “YorkPlace” on “OsnaburgHill.” And is there never to be anendof these things? Away to the left, we see that immense building, which contains childrenbreeding 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 moneyraised 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 isunable to pay the interest in full?—Answer that question, Castlereagh, Sidmouth, Brougham, or Scarlett.
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 ofShooters’ 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 dwellvanityandpoverty.” 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; nowetat 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;Rochesteritself, andChatham, 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, Ienlisted 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 beso prettyas 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 monstrouswensstuck 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 byCorruptionand 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 itmustbe; 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 theWen, 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 andHouse, 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 assoilgoes, 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.Birkbeckneed not have crossed the Atlantic, and Alleghany into the bargain, to look for landtoo 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-sethedges. But, alas! what, in point ofbeauty, 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 tolive 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. TheWebb Hallitesseem 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 moresuddenin its destructive effects at last than at first.Sir Edward KnatchbullandMr. Honeywoodare the members of the “Collective Wisdom” for this county. The former was, till of late, aTax-Collector. I hear that he is a great advocate forcorn-bills! I suppose he does not wish to let people who haveleasessee 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 issmuggled ineven 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 throughFaversham. A very pretty little town, and just ten minutes’ walk from the market-place up to the Dover turnpike-road. Here are thepowder-affairsthat Mr.Humeso 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 areformed Parliament. Pretty littleVan, that beauty of all beauties; that orator of all orators; that saint of all saints; that financier of all financiers, said that if Mr.Humewere to pare down the expenses of government tohiswish, there would be others “the Hunts, Cobbetts, and Carliles, who would still want the expense to be less.” I do not knowhow lowMr. 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 asVanmay 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 ofinjusticeto 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 anyVans, 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.Kentis in a deplorable way. The farmers are skilful and intelligent, generally speaking. But there is infinitecorruptionin 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. Thefruitin Kent is moreselectthan in Herefordshire, where it is raised forcyder, while, in Kent, it is raised for sale in its fruit state, a great deal being sent to theWen, 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 thereceiverof immense sums, raised on the other counties. Thishas puffed itsrentsto 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, theWensonly excepted. SirEdward 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?
Bergh-Apton, near Norwich,Monday, 10 Dec. 1821.
From theWento Norwich, from which I am now distant seven miles, there is nothing in Essex, Suffolk, or this county, that can be called ahill. 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 ofclay; notsoft 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 whatclayis. 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 toSudburythat 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 thebottom of all the lands of these two fine counties of Suffolk and Norfolk.—Sudburyhas 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 (youngones I mean) very pretty and very neatly dressed.—On this side of Bury, a considerable distance lower, I saw a field ofRape, 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 ofSwedesin 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, thetransplanted, 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 onseven 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 afly-year, he might have hadnonein the drilled part, while, in all probability, the crop in the transplanted part would have been better than it now is, seeing that awetsummer, 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 youploughthe 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. ThroughNorwichtoAylshamand then toHolt. On our road we passed the house of the lateLord 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 “theBook 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 outCatherine! 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 presentLord Suffieldis 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, whenhisinterference in this way can be at allnecessary, 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 groundI 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 avalleyin 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 wasout 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 theash, which no wind willshave, 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 thecause 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 themof 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 ofMr. Coke. It is well known to my readers, that I think nothing of him as apublicman; 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 ashoe-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 famousBotley Parson, all the history of whom we now learned, and, if we could have gone to the village, they were prepared toring the bells, and show us the old woman who nursed theBotley Parson! These Norfolkbawsnever 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 ofBecclesin 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.” Thiswasa place of most ardent and blazingloyalty, 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 asystemit must be to make people wretched in a country like this! Could he beheaven-bornthat invented such a system?Gaffer Gooch’sfather, 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 aProvincial 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 theparsonsnot excepted; for, if they did not come to welcome me, they collected in a group toseeme, 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 finecity, 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, onlytherethe 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 andbibs(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 manyfairsare 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.Curwendescribed in such glowing colours when he was talking of the Norfolk farmers, each worth so many thousands of pounds. Bear me witness, reader, thatI never was dazzledby such sights; that the false glare never put my eyes out; and that, even then, twelve years ago, I warned Mr.Curwenof theresult! Bear witness to this, my Disciples, and justify the doctrines of him for whose sakes you have endured persecution. How different would Mr.Curwenfind the scenenow! 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 ofexcellent farmers, and hearty, open and spirited men. The Norfolk people are quick and smart in their motions and in their speaking. Very neat andtrimin 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 thehighestspots to be found near where they stand; and, it is curious enough, that the contrary practice should have prevailed inhillycountries, 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 thefarmer, but theLandlordandParson, 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 shouldhewant high prices for? They can dohimno good; and this I proved to the farmers last year. The fact is, the Landlords and Parsons are urging the farmers on to getsomething doneto give them high rents and high tithes.
AtHertfordthere has been a meeting at whichsomesense was discovered, at any rate. The parties talked about thefund-holder, theDebt, thetaxes, and so on, and seemed to be in a very warm temper. Pray, keep yourselvescool, 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 atBattle(East Sussex) on the 3rd instant, at whichI mean to be. I want toseemy friends on theSouth Downs. To see how theylooknow.
[At a public dinner given to Mr. Cobbett at Norwich, on the market-day above mentioned, the company drank the toast ofMr. Cobbett and his “Trash,”the name “two-penny trash,” having being at one time applied by Lord Castlereagh to theRegister. 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 theapprobation bestowed on thatTrash, 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 thisTrashwould require a much longer space of time than that which we have now before us. But, gentlemen, those endeavours must havecost 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 theTrash: and, when we take into view the immense sums expended in keeping down the spirit excited by theTrash, who of us is to tell, whether these endeavours, taken altogether, may not have addedmany millionsto that debt, of which (without any hint at aconcomitant 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 probablythree-fourthswho 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.”