RURAL RIDE: TO TRING, IN HERTFORDSHIRE.

Barn-Elm Farm, 23rd Sept. 1829.

As if to prove the truth of all that has been said inThe Woodlandsabout the impolicy of cheap planting, as it is called, Mr. Elliman has planted another and larger field with a mixture of ash, locusts, and larches; not upontrenchedground, but upon ground moved with the plough. The larches made great haste todepart this life, bequeathing to Mr. Elliman a very salutary lesson. The ash appeared to be alive, and that is all: the locusts, though they had to share in all the disadvantages of their neighbours, appeared, it seems, to be doing pretty well, and had made decent shoots, when a neighbour’s sheep invaded the plantation, and, being fond of the locust leaves and shoots, as all cattle are, reduced them to mere stumps, as it were to put them upon a level with the ash. InThe Woodlands, I have strongly pressed the necessity of effectual fences; without these, you plant and sow in vain: you plant and sow the plants and seeds of disappointment and mortification; and the earth, being always grateful, is sure to reward you with a plentiful crop. One half acre of Mr. Elliman’s plantation of locusts before-mentioned, time will tell him, is worth more than the whole of the six or seven acres of thischeaplyplanted field.

Besides the 25,000 trees which Mr. Elliman had from me, he had some (and a part of them fine plants) which he himself hadraised from seed, in the manner described inThe Woodlandsunder the head “Locust.” This seed he bought from me; and, as I shall sell but a very few more locust plants, I recommend gentlemen to sow the seed for themselves, according to the directions given inThe Woodlands, in paragraphs 383 to 386 inclusive. In that part ofThe Woodlandswill be found the most minute directions for the sowing of this seed, and particularly in the preparing of it for sowing; for, unless the proper precautions are taken here, one seed out of one hundred will not come up; and, with the proper precautions, one seed in one hundred will not fail to come up. I beg the reader, who intends to sow locusts, to read with great care the latter part of paragraph 368 ofThe Woodlands.

At this town of Tring, which is a very pretty and respectable place, I saw what reminded me of another of my endeavours to introduce useful things into this country. At the door of a shop I saw a largecase, with the lid taken off, containingbundles of straw for platting. It was straw of spring wheat, tied up in small bundles, with the ear on; just such as I myself have grown in England many times, and bleached for platting, according to the instructions so elaborately given in the last edition of myCottage Economy; and which instructions I was enabled to give from the information collected by my son in America. I asked the shopkeeper where he got this straw: he said, that it came from Tuscany; and that it was manufactured there at Tring, and other places, for, as I understood, some single individual master-manufacturer. I told the shopkeeper, that I wondered that they should send to Tuscany for the straw, seeing that it might be grown, harvested, and equally well bleached at Tring; that it was now, at this time, grown, bleached, and manufactured into bonnets in Kent; and I showed to several persons at Tring a bonnet, made in Kent, from the straw of wheat grown in Kent, and presented by that most public-spirited and excellent man, Mr. John Wood, of Wettersham, who died, to the great sorrow of the whole country round about him, three or four years ago. He had taken infinite pains with this matter, had brought a young woman from Suffolk at his own expense, to teach the children at Wettersham the whole of this manufacture from beginning to end; and, before he died, he saw as handsome bonnets made as ever came from Tuscany. At Benenden, the parish in which Mr. Hodges resides, there is now a manufactory of the same sort, begun, in the first place, under the benevolent auspices of that gentleman’s daughters, who began by teaching a poor fellow who had been a cripple from his infancy, who was living with a poor widowed mother, and who is now the master of a school of this description, inthe beautiful villages of Benenden and Rolvenden, in Kent. My wife, wishing to have her bonnet cleaned some time ago, applied to a person who performs such work, at Brighton, and got into a conversation with her about theEnglish Leghornbonnets. The woman told her that they looked very well at first, but that they would not retain their colour, and added, “They will not clean, ma’am, like this bonnet that you have.” She was left with a request to clean that; and the result being the same as with all Leghorn bonnets, she was surprised upon being told that that was an “English Leghorn.” In short, there is no difference at all in the two; and if these people at Tring choose to grow the straw instead of importing it from Leghorn; and if they choose to make plat, and to make bonnets just as beautiful and as lasting as those which come from Leghorn, they have nothing to do but to read my Cottage Economy, paragraph 224 to paragraph 234, inclusive, where they will find, as plain as words can make it, the whole mass of directions for taking the seed of the wheat, and converting the produce into bonnets. There they will find directions, first, as to the sort of wheat; second, as to the proper land for growing the wheat; third, season for sowing; fourth, quantity of seed to the acre, and manner of sowing; fifth, season for cutting the wheat; sixth, manner of cutting it; seventh, manner of bleaching; eighth, manner of housing the straw; ninth, platting; tenth, manner of knitting; eleventh, manner of pressing.

I request my correspondents to inform me, if any one can, where I can get some spring wheat. The botanical name of it is,Triticum Æstivum. It is sown in the spring, at the same time that barley is; these Latin words meansummer wheat. It is a small-grained, bearded wheat. I know, from experience, that the little brown-grained winter wheat is just as good for the purpose: but that must be sown earlier; and there is danger of its being thinned on the ground, by worms and other enemies. I should like to sow some this next spring, in order to convince the people of Tring, and other places, that they need not go to Tuscany for the straw.

Of “Cobbett’s Corn” there is no considerable piece in the neighbourhood of Tring; but I saw some plants, even upon the high hill where the locusts are growing, and which is very backward land, which appeared to be about as forward as my own is at this time. If Mr. Elliman were to have a patch of good corn by the side of his locust trees, and a piece of spring wheat by the side of the corn, people might then go and see specimens of the three great undertakings, or rather, great additions to the wealth of the nation, introduced under the name ofCobbett.

I am the more desirous of introducing this manufacture atTring on account of the very marked civility which I met with at that place. A very excellent friend of mine, who is professionally connected with that town, was, some time ago, apprised of my intention of going thither to see Mr. Elliman’s plantation. He had mentioned this intention to some gentlemen of that town and neighbourhood; and I, to my great surprise, found that adinner had been organized, to which I was to be invited. I never like to disappoint anybody; and, therefore, to this dinner I went. The company consisted of about forty-five gentlemen of the town and neighbourhood; and, certainly, though I have been at dinners in several parts of England, I never found, even in Sussex, where I have frequently been so delighted, a more sensible, hearty, entertaining, and hospitable company than this. From me, something in the way of speech was expected, as a matter of course; and though I was, from a cold, so hoarse as not to be capable of making myself heard in a large place, I was so pleased with the company, and with my reception, that, first and last, I dare say I addressed the company for an hour and a half. We dined at two, and separated at nine; and, as I declared at parting, for many, many years, I had not spent a happier day. There was present the editor, or some other gentleman, from the newspaper calledThe Bucks Gazette and General Advertiser, who has published in his paper the following account of what passed at the dinner. As far as the report goes, it is substantially correct; and, though this gentleman went away at a very early hour, that which he has given of my speech (which he has given very judiciously) contains matter which can hardly fail to be useful to great numbers of his readers.

MR. COBBETT AT TRING.

“Mr. Elliman, a draper at Tring, has lately formed a considerable plantation of the locust tree, which Mr. Cobbett claims the merit of having introduced into this country. The number he has planted is about 30,000, on five acres and a half of very indifferent land, and they have thrived so uncommonly well, that not more than 500 of the whole number have failed. The success of the plantation being made known to Mr. Cobbett, induced him to pay a visit to Tring to inspect it, and during his sojourn it was determined upon by his friends to give him a dinner at the Rose and Crown Inn. Thursday was fixed for the purpose; when about forty persons, agriculturists and tradesmen of Tring and the neighbouring towns, assembled, and sat down to a dinner served up in very excellent style, by Mr. Northwood, the landlord: Mr. Faithful, solicitor, of Tring, is the chair.

“The usual routine toasts having been given,

“The Chairman said he was sure the company would drink the toast with which he should conclude what he was about to say, with every mark of respect. In addressing the company, he rose under feelings of no ordinary kind, for he was about to give the health of a gentleman who had the talent of communicating to his writings an energy and perspicuity which he had never met with elsewhere; who conveyed knowledge in a way so clear, that all who read could understand. He (the Chairman) had read the Political Register, from the first of them to the last, with pleasure and benefit to himself, and he would defy any man to put his finger upon a single line which was not in direct support of a kingly government. He advocated the rights of the people, but he always expressed himself favourable to our ancient form of government; he certainly had strongly, but not too strongly, attacked the corruption of the government; but had never attacked its form or its just powers. As a public writer, he considered him the most impartial that he knew. He well recollected—he knew not if Mr. Cobbett himself recollected it—a remarkable passage in his writings: he was speaking of the pleasure of passing from censure to praise, and thus expressed himself. ‘It is turning from the frowns of a surly winter, to welcome a smiling spring come dancing over the daisied lawn, crowned with garlands, and surrounded with melody.’ Nature had been bountiful to him; it had blessed him with a constitution capable of enduring the greatest fatigues; and a mind of superior order. Brilliancy, it was said, was a mere meteor; it was so: it was the solidity and depth of understanding such as he possessed, that were really valuable. He had visited this place in consequence of a gentleman having been wise and bold enough to listen to his advice, and to plant a large number of locust trees; and he trusted he would enjoy prosperity and happiness, in duration equal to that of the never-decaying wood of those trees. He concluded by giving Mr. Cobbett’s health.”

“Mr. Cobbett returned thanks for the manner in which his health had been drunk, and was certain that the trees which had been the occasion of their meeting would be a benefit to the children of the planter. Though it might appear like presumption to suppose that those who were assembled that day came solely in compliment to him, yet it would be affectation not to believe that it was expected he should say something on the subject of politics. Every one who heard him was convinced that there was something wrong, and that a change of some sort must take place, or ruin to the country would ensue. Though there was a diversity of opinions as to the cause of thedistress, and as to the means by which a change might be effected, and though some were not so deeply affected by it as others, all now felt that a change must take place before long, whether they were manufacturers, brewers, butchers, bakers, or of any other description of persons, they had all arrived at the conviction that there must be a change. It would be presumptuous to suppose that many of those assembled did not understand the cause of the present distress, yet there were many who did not; and those gentlemen who did, he begged to have the goodness to excuse him if he repeated what they already knew. Politics was a science which they ought not to have the trouble of studying; they had sufficient to do in their respective avocations, without troubling themselves with such matters. For what were the ministers, and a whole tribe of persons under them, paid large sums of money from the country but for the purpose of governing its political affairs. Their fitness for their stations was another thing. He had been told that Mr. Huskisson was so ignorant of the cause of the distress, that he had openly said, he should be glad if any practical man would tell him what it all meant. If any man present were to profess his ignorance of the cause of the distress it would be no disgrace to him; he might be a very good butcher, a very good farmer, or a very good baker: he might well understand the business by which he gained his living; and if any one should say to him, because he did not understand politics, ‘You are a very stupid fellow!’ he might fairly reply, ‘What is that to you?’ But it was another thing to those who were so well paid to manage the affairs of the country to plead ignorance of the cause of the prevailing distress.

********

“Mr. Goulburn, with a string of figures as long as his arm, had endeavoured to prove in the House of Commons that the withdrawal of the one-pound notes, being altogether so small an amount, little more than two millions, would be of no injury to the country, and that its only effect would be to make bankers more liberal in discounting with their fives. He would appeal to the company if they had found this to be the case. Mr. Goulburn had forgotten that the one-pound notes were the legs upon which the fives walked. He had heard the Duke of Wellington use the same language in the other House. Taught, as they now were, by experience, it would scarcely be believed, fifty years hence, that a set of men could have been found with so little foresight as to have devised measures so fraught with injury.

“He felt convinced that if he looked to the present company, or any other accidentally assembled, that he would find thirteen gentlemen more fit to manage the affairs of the kingdomthan were those who now presided at the head of Government; not that he imputed to them any desire to do wrong, or that they were more corrupt than others; it was clear, that with the eyes of the public upon them they must wish to do right; it was owing to their sheer ignorance, their entire unfitness to carry on the Government, that they did no better. Ignorance and unfitness were, however, pleas which they had no business to make. It was nothing to him if a man was ignorant and stupid, under ordinary circumstances; but if he entrusted a man with his money, thinking that he was intelligent, and was deceived, then it was something; he had a right to say, ‘You are not what I took you for, you are an ignorant fellow; you have deceived me, you are an impostor.’ Such was the language proper to all under such circumstances: never mind their titles!

“A friend had that morning taken him to view the beautiful vale of Aylesbury, which he had never before seen; and the first thought that struck him, on seeing the rich pasture, was this, ‘Good God! is a country like this to be ruined by the folly of those who govern it?’ When he was a naughty boy, he used to say that if he wanted to select Members for our Houses of Parliament, he would put a string across any road leadingintoLondon, and that the first 1000 men that ran against his string, he would choose for Members, and he would bet a wager that they would be better qualified than those who now filled those Houses. That was when he was a naughty boy; but since that time a Bill had been passed which made it banishment for life to use language that brought the Houses of Parliament into contempt, and therefore he did not say so now. The Government, it should be recollected, had passed all these Acts with the hearty concurrence of both Houses of Parliament; they were thus backed by these Houses, and they were backed by ninety-nine out of one hundred of the papers, which affected to see all their acts in rose-colour, for no one who was in the habit of reading the papers, could have anticipated, from what they there saw, the ruin which had fallen on the country. Thus we had an ignorant Government, an ignorant Parliament, and something worse than an ignorant press; the latter being employed (some of them with considerable talent) to assail and turn into ridicule those who had the boldness and honesty to declare their dissent from the opinion of the wisdom of the measures of Government. It was no easy task to stand, unmoved, their ridicule and sarcasms, and many were thus deterred from expressing the sentiments of their minds. In this country we had all the elements of prosperity; an industrious people, such as were nowhere else to be found; a country, too,which was once called the finest and greatest on the earth (for whatever might be said of the country in comparison with others, the turnips of England were worth more, this year, than all the vines of France). It was a glorious and a great country until the Government had made it otherwise; and it ought still to be what it once was, and to be capable to driving the Russians back from the country of our old and best ally—the Turks. During the time of war, we were told that it was necessary to make great sacrifices to save us from disgrace. The people made those sacrifices; they gave up their all. But had the Government done its part; had it saved us from disgrace? No: we were now the laughing-stock of all other countries. The French and all other nations derided us; and by and by it would be seen that they would make a partition of Turkey with the Russians, and make a fresh subject for laughter. Never since the time of Charles had such disgrace been brought upon the country; and why was this? When were we again to see the labourer receiving his wages from the farmer instead of being sent on the road to break stones? Some people, under this state of things, consoled themselves by saying things would come about again; they had come about before, and would come about again. They deceived themselves, things did not come about; the seasons came about, it was true; but something must bedoneto bring things about. Instead of theneuterverb (to speak as a grammarian) they should use theactive; they should not say things willcomeabout, but things must beputabout. He thought that the distress would shortly become so great, perhaps, about Christmas, that the Parliamentary gentlemen, finding they received but a small part of their rents, without which they could not do, any more than the farmer, without his crops, would endeavour to bring them about; and the measures they would propose for that purpose, as far as he could judge, would be Bank restriction, and the re-issue of one-pound notes, and what the effect of that would be they would soon see. One of those persons who were so profoundly ignorant, would come down to the House prepared to propose a return to Bank restriction and the issue of small notes, and a bill to that effect would be passed. If such a bill did pass, he would advise all persons to be cautious in their dealings; it would be perilous to make bargains under such a state of things. Money was the measure of value; but if this measure was liable to be three times as large at one time as at another, who could know what to do? how was any one to know how to purchase wheat, if the bushel was to be altered at the pleasure of the Government to three times its present size? The remedy for the evils of the country was not to befound in palliatives; it was not to be found in strong measures. The first step must be taken in the House of Commons, but that was almost hopeless; for although many persons possessed the right of voting, it was of little use to them; whilst a few great men could render their votes of no avail. If we had possessed a House of Commons that represented the feelings and wishes of the people, they would not have submitted to much of what had taken place; and until we had a reform we should never, he believed, see measures emanating from that House which would conduce to the glory and safety of the country. He feared that there would be no improvement until a dreadful convulsion took place, and that was an event which he prayed God to avert from the country.

“The Chairman proposed ‘Prosperity to Agriculture,’ when

“Mr. Cobbett again rose, and said the Chairman had told him he was entitled to give a sentiment. He would give prosperity to the towns of Aylesbury and Tring; but he would again advise those who calculated upon the return of prosperity, to be careful. Until there was an equitable adjustment, or Government took off part of the taxes, which was the same thing, there could be no return of prosperity.”

After the reporter went away, we had a great number of toasts, most of which were followed by more or less of speech; and, before we separated, I think that the seeds of common sense, on the subject of our distresses, were pretty well planted in the lower part of Hertfordshire, and in Buckinghamshire.

The gentlemen present were men of information, well able to communicate to others that which they themselves had heard; and I endeavoured to leave no doubt in the mind of any man that heard me, that the cause of the distress was the work of the Government and House of Commons, and that it was nonsense to hope for a cure until the people had a real voice in the choosing of that House. I think that these truths were well implanted; and I further think that if I could go to the capital of every county in the kingdom, I should leave no doubt in the minds of any part of the people. I must not omit to mention, in conclusion, that though I am no eater or drinker, and though I tasted nothing but the breast of a little chicken, and drank nothing but water, the dinner was the best that ever I saw called apublic dinner, and certainly unreasonably cheap. There were excellent joints of meat of the finest description, fowls and geese in abundance; and, finally, a very fine haunch of venison, with a bottle of wine for each person; and all forseven shillings and sixpence per head. Good waiting upon; civil landlord and landlady; and, in short, everything at this very pretty town pleased me exceedingly. Yet, what is Tringbut a fair specimen of English towns and English people? And is it right, and is it to be suffered, that such a people should be plunged into misery by the acts of those whom they pay so generously, and whom they so loyally and cheerfully obey?

As far as I had an opportunity of ascertaining the facts, the farmers feel all the pinchings of distress, and the still harsher pinchings of anxiety for the future; and the labouring people are suffering in a degree not to be described. The shutting of the male paupers up in pounds is common through Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire. Left at large during the day, they roam about and maraud. What are the farmers to do with them? God knows how long the peace is to be kept, if this state of things be not put a stop to. The natural course of things is, that an attempt to impound the paupers in cold weather will produce resistance in some place; that those of one parish will be joined by those of another; that a formidable band will soon be assembled; then will ensue the rummaging of pantries and cellars; that this will spread from parish to parish; and that, finally, mobs of immense magnitude will set the law at open defiance. Jails are next to useless in such a case: their want of room must leave the greater part of the offenders at large; the agonizing distress of the farmers will make them comparatively indifferent with regard to these violences; and, at last, general confusion will come. This is by no means an unlikely progress, or an unlikely result. It therefore becomes those who have much at stake, to join heartily in their applications to Government, for a timely remedy for these astounding evils.

Sheffield, 31st January 1830.

On the 26th instant I gave my third lecture at Leeds. I should in vain endeavour to give an adequate description of the pleasure which I felt at my reception, and at the effect which I produced in that fine and opulent capital of this great county of York; for thecapitalit is in fact, though not in name. On the first evening, the play-house, which is pretty spacious, was not completely filled in all its parts; but on the second and the third, it was filled brim full, boxes, pit and gallery; besides a dozen or two of gentlemen who were accommodated with seats on the stage. Owing to a cold which I took at Huddersfield, and which I spoke of before, I was, as the players call it, not invery goodvoice; but the audience made allowance for that, and very wisely preferred sense to sound. I never was more delighted than with my audience at Leeds; and what I set the highest value on, is, that I find I produced a prodigious effect in that important town.

There had been a meeting at Doncaster, a few days before I went to Leeds from Ripley, where one of the speakers, a Mr. Becket Denison, had said, speaking of the taxes, that there must be an application of thepruning hookor of thesponge. This gentleman is a banker, I believe; he is one of the Beckets connected with the Lowthers; and he is a brother, or very near relation of that Sir John Becket who is the Judge Advocate General. So that, at last, others can talk of the pruning hook and the sponge, as well as I.

From Leeds I proceeded on to this place, not being able to stop at either Wakefield or Barnsley, except merely to change horses. The people in those towns were apprised of the time that I should pass through them; and, at each place, great numbers assembled to see me, to shake me by the hand, and to request me to stop. I was so hoarse as not to be able to make the post-boy hear me when I called to him; and, therefore, it would have been useless to stop; yet I promised to go back if my time and my voice would allow me. They do not; and I have written to the gentlemen of those places to inform them, that when I go to Scotland in the spring, I will not fail to stop in those towns, in order to express my gratitude to them. All the way along, from Leeds to Sheffield, it is coal and iron, and iron and coal. It was dark before we reached Sheffield; so that we saw the iron furnaces in all the horrible splendour of their everlasting blaze. Nothing can be conceived more grand or more terrific than the yellow waves of fire that incessantly issue from the top of these furnaces, some of which are close by the way-side. Nature has placed the beds of iron and the beds of coal alongside of each other, and art has taught man to make one to operate upon the other, as to turn the iron-stone into liquid matter, which is drained off from the bottom of the furnace, and afterwards moulded into blocks and bars, and all sorts of things. The combustibles are put into the top of the furnace, which stands thirty, forty, or fifty feet up in the air, and the ever blazing mouth of which is kept supplied with coal and coke and iron stone, from little iron wagons forced up by steam, and brought down again to be re-filled. It is a surprising thing to behold; and it is impossible to behold it without being convinced that, whatever other nations may do with cotton and with wool, they will never equal England with regard to things made of iron and steel. This Sheffield, and the landall about it, is one bed of iron and coal. They call it black Sheffield, and black enough it is; but from this one town and its environs go nine-tenths of the knives that are used in the whole world; there being, I understand, no knives made at Birmingham; the manufacture of which place consists of the larger sort of implements, of locks of all sorts, and guns and swords, and of all the endless articles of hardware which go to the furnishing of a house. As to the land, viewed in the way of agriculture, it really does appear to be very little worth. I have not seen, except at Harewood and Ripley, a stack of wheat since I came into Yorkshire; and even there, the whole I saw; and all that I have seen since I came into Yorkshire; and all that I saw during a ride of six miles that I took into Derbyshire the day before yesterday; all put together would not make the one-half of what I have many times seen in one single rick-yard of the vales of Wiltshire. But this is all very proper: these coal-diggers, and iron-melters, and knife-makers, compel us to send the food to them, which, indeed, we do very cheerfully, in exchange for the produce of their rocks, and the wondrous works of their hands.

The trade of Sheffield has fallen off less in proportion than that of the other manufacturing districts. North America, and particularly the United States, where the people have so much victuals to cut, form a great branch of the custom of this town. If the people of Sheffield could only receive a tenth part of what their knives sell for by retail in America, Sheffield might pave its streets with silver. Agrossof knives and forks is sold to the Americans for less than three knives and forks can be bought at retail in a country store in America. No fear of rivalship in this trade. The Americans may lay on their tariff, and double it, and triple it; but as long as they continue tocuttheir victuals, from Sheffield they must have the things to cut it with.

The ragged hills all round about this town are bespangled with groups of houses inhabited by the working cutlers. They have not suffered like the working weavers; for, to make knives, there must be the hand of man. Therefore, machinery cannot come to destroy the wages of the labourer. The home demand has been very much diminished; but still the depression has here not been what it has been, and what it is, where the machinery can be brought into play. We are here just upon the borders of Derbyshire, a nook of which runs up and separates Yorkshire from Nottinghamshire. I went to a village, the day before yesterday, calledMosborough, the whole of the people of which are employed in the making ofsicklesandscythes; and where, as I was told, they are very well off even in these times. A prodigious quantity of these things go to the UnitedStates of America. In short, there are about twelve millions of people there continually consuming these things; and the hardware merchants here have their agents and their stores in the great towns of America, which country, as far as relates to this branch of business, is still a part of old England.

Upon my arriving here on Wednesday night, the 27th instant, I by no means intended to lecture until I should be a little recovered from my cold; but, to my great mortification, I found that the lecture had been advertised, and that great numbers of persons had actually assembled. To send them out again, and give back the money, was a thing not to be attempted. I, therefore, went to the Music Hall, the place which had been taken for the purpose, gave them a specimen of the state of my voice, asked them whether I should proceed, and they, answering in the affirmative, on I went. I then rested until yesterday, and shall conclude my labours here to-morrow, and then proceed to “fair Nottingham,” as we used to sing when I was a boy, in celebrating the glorious exploits of “Robin Hood and Little John.” By the by, as we went from Huddersfield to Dewsbury, we passed by a hill which is celebrated as being the burial-place of the famed Robin Hood, of whom the people in this country talk to this day.

At Nottingham, they have advertised for my lecturing at the play-house, for the 3rd, 4th, and 5th of February, and for a public breakfast to be given to me on the first of those days, I having declined a dinner agreeably to my original notification, and my friends insisting upon something or other in that sort of way. It is very curious that I have always had a very great desire to see Nottingham. This desire certainly originated in the great interest that I used to take, and that all country boys took, in the history of Robin Hood, in the record of whose achievements, which were so well calculated to excite admiration in the country boys, this Nottingham, with the word “fair” always before it, was so often mentioned. The wordfair, as used by our forefathers, meant fine; for we frequently read in old descriptions of parts of the country of such a district or such a parish, containing afairmansion, and the like; so that this town appears to have been celebrated as a very fine place, even in ancient times; but within the last thirty years, Nottingham has stood high in my estimation, from the conduct of its people; from their public spirit; from their excellent sense as to public matters; from the noble struggle which they have made from the beginning of the French war to the present hour: if only forty towns in England equal in size to Nottingham had followed its bright example, there would have been no French war against liberty; the Debt would have been now nearly paid off,and we should have known nothing of those manifold miseries which now afflict, and those greater miseries which now menace, the country. The French would not have been in Cadiz; the Russians would not have been at Constantinople; the Americans would not have been in the Floridas; we should not have had to dread the combined fleets of America, France, and Russia; and, which is the worst of all, we should not have seen the jails four times as big as they were; and should not have seen Englishmen reduced to such a state of misery as for the honest labouring man to be fed worse than the felons in the jails.

“You permit the Jews openly to preach in their synagogues, and call Jesus Christ an impostor; and you send women to jail (to be brought to bed there, too), for declaring their unbelief in Christianity.”—King of Bohemia’s Letter to Canning, published in the Register, 4th of January, 1823.

“You permit the Jews openly to preach in their synagogues, and call Jesus Christ an impostor; and you send women to jail (to be brought to bed there, too), for declaring their unbelief in Christianity.”—King of Bohemia’s Letter to Canning, published in the Register, 4th of January, 1823.

Hargham, 22nd March, 1830.

I set off from London on the 8th of March, got to Bury St. Edmund’s that evening; and, to my great mortification, saw the county-election and the assizes both going on at Chelmsford, where, of course, a great part of the people of Essex were met. If I had been aware of that, I should certainly have stopped at Chelmsford in order to address a few words of sense to the unfortunate constituents of Mr. Western. At Bury St. Edmund’s I gave a lecture on the ninth and another on the tenth of March, in the playhouse, to very crowded audiences. I went to Norwich on the 12th, and gave a lecture there on that evening, and on the evening of the 13th. The audience here was more numerous than at Bury St. Edmund’s, but not so numerous in proportion to the size of the place; and, contrary to what has happened in most other places, it consisted more of town’s people than of country people.

During the 14th and 15th, I was at a friend’s house at Yelverton, half way between Norwich and Bungay, which last is in Suffolk, and at which place I lectured on the 16th to an audience consisting chiefly of farmers, and was entertained there in a most hospitable and kind manner at the house of a friend.

The next day, being the 17th, I went to Eye, and there lectured in the evening in the neat little playhouse of the place,which was crowded in every part, stage and all. The audience consisted almost entirely of farmers, who had come in from Diss, from Harleston, and from all the villages round about, in this fertile and thickly-settled neighbourhood. I stayed at Eye all the day of the 18th, having appointed to be at Ipswich on the 19th. Eye is a beautiful little place, though an exceedingly rotten borough.

All was harmony and good humour: everybody appeared to be of one mind; and as these friends observed to me, so I thought, that more effect had been produced by this one lecture in that neighbourhood, than could have been produced in a whole year, if the Register had been put into the hands of every one of the hearers during that space of time; for though I never attempt to put forth that sort of stuff which the “intense” people on the other side of St. George’s Channel call “eloquence,” I bring out strings of very interesting facts; I use pretty powerful arguments; and I hammer them down so closely upon the mind, that they seldom fail to produce a lasting impression.

On the 19th I proceeded to Ipswich, not imagining it to be the fine, populous, and beautiful place that I found it to be. On that night, and on the night of the 20th, I lectured to boxes and pit, crowded principally with opulent farmers, and to a gallery filled, apparently, with journeymen tradesmen and their wives. On the Sunday before I came away, I heard, from all quarters, that my audiences had retired deeply impressed with the truths which I had endeavoured to inculcate. One thing, however, occurred towards the close of the lecture of Saturday, the 20th, that I deem worthy of particular attention. In general it would be useless for me to attempt to give anything likea reportof these speeches of mine, consisting as they do of words uttered pretty nearly as fast as I can utter them, during a space of never less than two, and sometimes of nearly three hours. But there occurred here something that I must notice. I was speaking ofthe degreesby which the established church had been losing itslegal influencesince the peace. First, theUnitarian Bill, removing the penal act which forbade an impugning of the doctrine of the Trinity; second, the repeal of theTest Act, which declared, in effect, that the religion of any of the Dissenters was as good as that of the church of England; third, the repeal of the penal and excluding laws with regard to theCatholics; and this last act, said I, does in effect declare that the thing called “theReformation” wasunnecessary. “No,” said one gentleman, in a very loud voice, and he was followed by four or five more, who said “No, No.” “Then,” said I, “we will, if you like, put itto the vote. Understand, gentlemen, thatI do not say, whatever I may think, that the Reformation was unnecessary; but I say thatthis act amounts to a declarationthat it wasunnecessary; and, without losing our good humour, we will, if that gentleman choose, put this question to the vote.” I paused a little while, receiving no answer, and perceiving that the company were with me, I proceeded with my speech, concluding with the complete demolishing blow which the church would receive by the bill for giving civil and political power for training to the bar, and seating on the bench, for placing in the commons and amongst the peers, and for placing in the council, along with the King himself,those who deny that there ever existed a Redeemer; who give the name ofimpostorto him whomwe worship as God, and who boast of having hanged him upon the cross. “Judge you, gentlemen,” said I, “of the figure which England will make, when its laws will seat on the bench, from which people have been sentenced to suffer most severely for denying the truth of Christianity; from which bench it has been held thatChristianity is part and parcel of the law of the land; judge you of the figure which England will make amongst Christian nations, when a Jew, a blasphemer of Christ, a professor of the doctrines of those who murdered him, shall be sitting upon that bench; and judge, gentlemen, what we must think ofthe clergyof this church of ours,if they remain silentwhile such a law shall be passed.”

We were entertained at Ipswich by a very kind and excellent friend, whom, as is generally the case, I had never seen or heard of before. The morning of the day of the last lecture, I walked about five miles, then went to his house to breakfast, and stayed with him and dined. On the Sunday morning, before I came away, I walked about six miles, and repeated the good cheer at breakfast at the same place. Here I heard the first singing of the birds this year; and I here observed an instance of thatpetticoat government, which, apparently, pervades the whole of animated nature. A lark, very near to me in a ploughed field, rose from the ground, and was saluting the sun with his delightful song. He was got about as high as the dome of St. Paul’s, having me for a motionless and admiring auditor, when the hen started up from nearly the same spot whence the cock had risen, flew up and passed close by him. I could not hear what she said; but supposed that she must have given him a pretty smart reprimand; for down she came upon the ground, and he, ceasing to sing, took a twirl in the air, and came down after her. Others have, I dare say, seen this a thousand times over; but I never observed it before.

About twelve o’clock, my son and I set off for this place (Hargham), coming through Needham Market, Stowmarket, Bury St. Edmund’s, and Thetford, at which latter place I intended to have lectured to-day and to-morrow, where the theatrewas to have been the scene, but the mayor of the town thought it best not to give his permission until the assizes (which commence to-day the 22nd) should be over, lest the judge should take offence, seeing that it is the custom, while his Lordship is in the town, to give up the civil jurisdiction to him. Bless his worship! what in all the world should he think would take me to Thetford,except it being a time for holding the assizes? At noothertime should I have dreamed of finding an audience in so small a place, and in a country so thinly inhabited. I was attracted, too, by the desire of meeting some of my “learned friends” from the Wen; for I deal in arguments founded on thelaw of the land, and onActs of Parliament. The deuce take this mayor for disappointing me; and, now, I am afraid that I shall not fall in with this learned body during the whole of my spring tour.

Finding Thetford to be forbidden ground, I came hither to Sir Thomas Beevor’s, where I had left my two daughters, having, since the 12th inclusive, travelled 120 miles, and delivered six lectures. Those 120 miles have been through a finefarming country, and without my seeing, until I came to Thetford, but one spot of waste or common land, and that not exceeding, I should think, from fifty to eighty acres. From this place to Norwich, and through Attleborough and Wymondham, the land is all good, and the farming excellent. It is pretty nearly the same from Norwich to Bungay, where we enter Suffolk. Bungay is a large and fine town, with three churches, lying on the side of some very fine meadows. Harleston, on the road to Eye, is a very pretty market-town: of Eye, I have spoken before. From Eye to Ipswich, we pass through a series of villages, and at Ipswich, to my great surprise, we found a most beautiful town, with a population of about twelve thousand persons; and here our profound Prime Minister might have seen most abundant evidence of prosperity; for thenew housesare, indeed, very numerous. But if our famed and profound Prime Minister, having Mr. Wilmot Horton by the arm, and standing upon one of the hills that surround this town, and which, each hill seeming to surpass the other hill in beauty, command a complete view of every house, or, at least, of the top of every house, in this opulent town; if he, thus standing, and thus accompanied, were to hold up his hands, clap them together, and bless God for the proofs of prosperity contained in the new and red bricks, and were to cast his eye southward of the town, and see the numerous little vessels upon the little arm of the sea which comes up from Harwich, and which here finds its termination; and were, in those vessels, to discover an additional proof of prosperity; if he were to be thus situated, and to be thus feeling, would not some doubts be awakened in his mind; if I, standing behind him,were to whisper in his ear, “Do you not think that the greater part of these new houses have been created by taxes, which went to pay the about 20,000troopsthat were stationed here for pretty nearly 20 years during the war, and some of which are stationed here still? Look at that immense building, my Lord Duke: it is fresh andnewand fine and splendid, and contains indubitable marks of opulence; but it is a BARRACK; aye, and the money to build that barrack, and to maintain the 20,000 troops, has assisted to beggar, to dilapidate, to plunge into ruin and decay, hundreds upon hundreds of villages and hamlets in Wiltshire, in Dorsetshire, in Somersetshire, and in other counties who shared not in the ruthless squanderings of the war. But,” leaning my arm upon the Duke’s shoulder, and giving Wilmot a poke in the poll to make him listen and look, and pointing with my fore-finger to the twelve large, lofty, and magnificent churches, each of them at least 700 years old, and saying, “Do you think Ipswich was not larger and far more populous 700 years ago than it is at this hour?” Putting this question to him, would it not check his exultation, and would it not make even Wilmot begin to reflect?

Even at this hour, with all the unnatural swellings of the war, there are not two thousand people,including the bed-ridden and the babies, to each of the magnificent churches. Of adults, there cannot be more than about 1400 to a church; and there is one of the churches which, being well filled, as in ancient times, would contain from four to seven thousand persons, for the nave of it appears to me to be larger than St. Andrew’s Hall at Norwich, which Hall was formerly the church of the Benedictine Priory. And, perhaps, the great church here might have belonged to some monastery; for here were three Augustine priories, one of them founded in the reign of William the Conqueror, another founded in the reign of Henry the Second, another in the reign of King John, with an Augustine friary, a Carmelite friary, an hospital founded in the reign of King John; and here, too, was the college founded by Cardinal Wolsey, the gateway of which, though built in brick, is still preserved, being the same sort of architecture as that of Hampton Court, and St. James’s Palace.

There is no doubt but that this was a much greater place than it is now. It is the great outlet for the immense quantities of corn grown in this most productive county, and by farmers the most clever that ever lived. I am told that wheat is worth six shillings a quarter more, at some times, at Ipswich than at Norwich, the navigation to London being so much more speedy and safe. Immense quantities of flour are sent from this town. The windmills on the hills in the vicinage are so numerous that I counted, whilst standing in one place, no less than seventeen.They are all painted or washed white; the sails are black; it was a fine morning, the wind was brisk, and their twirling altogether added greatly to the beauty of the scene, which, having the broad and beautiful arm of the sea on the one hand, and the fields and meadows, studded with farm-houses, on the other, appeared to me the most beautiful sight of the kind that I had ever beheld. The town and its churches were down in the dell before me, and the only object that came to disfigure the scene was THE BARRACK, and made me utter involuntarily the words ofBlackstone: “The laws of England recognise no distinction between the citizen and the soldier; they know of no standing soldier: no inland fortresses; no barracks.” “Ah!” said I to myself, but loud enough for any one to have heard me a hundred yards, “suchwerethe laws of England when mass was said in those magnificent churches, and such they continued until aseptennialParliament came and deprived the people of England of their rights.”

I know of no town to be compared with Ipswich, except it be Nottingham; and there is this difference in the two; that Nottingham stands high, and, on one side, looks over a very fine country; whereas Ipswich is in a dell, meadows running up above it, and a beautiful arm of the sea below it. The town itself is substantially built, well paved, everything good and solid, and no wretched dwellings to be seen on its outskirts. From the town itself, you can see nothing; but you can, in no direction, go from it a quarter of a mile without finding views that a painter might crave, and then, the country round about it, so well cultivated; the land in such a beautiful state, the farm-houses all white, and all so much alike; the barns, and everything about the homesteads so snug: the stocks of turnips so abundant everywhere; the sheep and cattle in such fine order; the wheat all drilled; the ploughman so expert; the furrows, if a quarter of a mile long, as straight as a line, and laid as truly as if with a level: in short, here is everything to delight the eye, and to make the people proud of their country; and this is the case throughout the whole of this county. I have always found Suffolk farmers great boasters of their superiority over others; and I must say that it is not without reason.

But, observe, this has been a veryhighly-favoured county: it has had poured into it millions upon millions of money, drawn from Wiltshire, and other inland counties. I should suppose that Wiltshire alone has, within the last forty years, had two or three millions of money drawn from it,to be given to Essex and Suffolk. At one time there were not less than sixty thousand men kept on foot in these counties. The increase of London, too, the swellings of the immortal Wen, have assisted to heapwealth upon these counties; but, in spite of all this, the distress pervades all ranks and degrees, except those who live on the taxes. At Eye, butter used to sell for eighteen-pence a pound: it now sells for nine-pence halfpenny, though the grass has not yet begun to spring; and eggs were sold at thirty for a shilling. Fine times for me, whose principal food is eggs, and whose sole drink is milk, but very bad times for those who sell me the food and the drink.

Coming from Ipswich to Bury St. Edmund’s, you pass through Needham-market and Stowmarket, two very pretty market towns; and, like all the other towns in Suffolk, free from the drawback of shabby and beggarly houses on the outskirts. I remarked that I did not see in the whole county one single instance of paper or rags supplying the place of glass in any window, and did not see one miserable hovel in which a labourer resided. The county, however, isflat: with the exception of the environs of Ipswich, there is none of that beautiful variety of hill and dale, and hanging woods, that you see at every town in Hampshire, Sussex, and Kent. It is curious, too, that though the people, I mean the poorer classes of people, are extremely neat in their houses, and though I found all their gardens dug up and prepared for cropping, you do not see about their cottages (and it is just the same in Norfolk) thatornamental gardening; the walks, and the flower borders, and the honey-suckles, and roses, trained over the doors, or over arched sticks, that you see in Hampshire, Sussex, and Kent, that I have many a time sitten upon my horse to look at so long and so often, as greatly to retard me on my journey. Nor is this done for show or ostentation. If you find a cottage in those counties, by the side of aby lane, or in the midst of a forest, you find just the same care about the garden and the flowers. In those counties, too, there is great taste with regardto treesof every description, from the hazel to the oak. In Suffolk it appears to be just the contrary: here is the great dissight of all these three eastern counties. Almost every bank of every field is studded withpollards, that is to say, trees that have beenbeheaded, at from six to twelve feet from the ground, than which nothing in nature can be more ugly. They send out shoots from the head, which are lopped off once in ten or a dozen years for fuel, or other purposes. To add to the deformity, the ivy is suffered to grow on them, which, at the same time, checks the growth of the shoots. These pollards become hollow very soon, and, as timber, are fit for nothing but gate-posts, even before they be hollow. Upon a farm of a hundred acres these pollards, by root and shade, spoil at least six acres of the ground, besides being most destructive to the fences. Why not plant six acresof the ground with timber and underwood? Half an acre a year would most amply supply the farm with poles and brush, and with everything wanted in the way of fuel; and why not plant hedges to be unbroken by these pollards? I have scarcely seen a single farm of a hundred acres without pollards, sufficient to find the farm-house in fuel, without any assistance from coals, for several years.

However, the great number of farm-houses in Suffolk, the neatness of those houses, the moderation in point of extent which you generally see, and the great store of the food in the turnips, and the admirable management of the whole, form a pretty good compensation for the want of beauties. The land is generally as clean as a garden ought to be; and, though it varies a good deal as to lightness and stiffness, they make it all bear prodigious quantities of Swedish turnips; and on them pigs, sheep, and cattle, all equally thrive. I did not observe a single poor miserable animal in the whole county.

To conclude an account of Suffolk, and not to sing the praises of Bury St. Edmund’s, would offend every creature of Suffolk birth; even at Ipswich, when I was praisingthat place, the very people of that town asked me if I did not think Bury St. Edmund’s the nicest town in the world. Meet them wherever you will, they have all the same boast; and indeed, as a townin itself, it is the neatest place that ever was seen. It is airy, it has several fine open places in it, and it has the remains of the famous abbey walls and the abbey gate entire; and it is so clean and so neat that nothing can equal it in that respect. It was a favourite spot in ancient times; greatly endowed with monasteries and hospitals. Besides the famous Benedictine Abbey, there were once a college and a friary; and as to the abbey itself, it was one of the greatest in the kingdom; and was so ancient as to have been founded only about forty years after the landing of Saint Austin in Kent. The land all round about it is good; and the soil is of that nature as not to produce much dirt at any time of the year; but the country about it isflat, and not of that beautiful variety that we find at Ipswich.

After all, what is the reflection now called for? It is that this fine county, for which nature has done all that she can do, soil, climate, sea-ports, people; everything that can be done, and an internal government, civil and ecclesiastical, the most complete in the world, wanting nothing but tobe let alone, to make every soul in it as happy as people can be upon earth; the peace provided for by the county rates; property protected by the law of the land; the poor provided for by the poor-rates; religion provided for by the tithes and the church-rates; easy and safe conveyance provided for by the highway-rates;extraordinary danger provided against by the militia-rates; a complete government in itself;but having to pay a portion of sixty millions a year in taxes, over and above all this; and that, too, on account of wars carried on, not for the defence of England, not for the upholding ofEnglish liberty and happiness, but for the purpose of crushing liberty and happiness in other countries; and all this because, and only because, a septennial Parliament has deprived the people of their rights.

That which weadmiremost is not always that which would beour choice. One might imagine, that after all that I have said about this fine county, I should certainly prefer it as a place of residence. I should not, however: my choice has been always very much divided between the woods of Sussex and the downs of Wiltshire. I should not like to be compelled to decide; but if I were compelled, I do believe that I should fix on some vale in Wiltshire. Water meadows at the bottom, corn-land going up towards the hills, those hills beingDown land, and a farm-house, in a clump of trees, in some little cross vale between the hills, sheltered on every side but the south. In short, if Mr. Bennet would give me a farm, the house of which lies on the right-hand side of the road going from Salisbury to Warminster, in the parish of Norton Bovant, just before you enter that village; if he would but be so good as to do that, I would freely give up all the rest of the world to the possession of whoever may get hold of it. I have hinted this to him once or twice before, but I am sorry to say that he turns a deaf ear to my hinting.

Cambridge, 28th March, 1830.

I went from Hargham to Lynn on Tuesday, the 23rd; but owing to the disappointment at Thetford, everything was deranged. It was market-day at Lynn, but no preparations of any sort had been made, and no notification given. I therefore resolved, after staying at Lynn on Wednesday, to make a short tour, and to come back to it again. This tour was to take inEly, Cambridge, St. Ives, Stamford, Peterborough, Wisbeach, and was to bring me back to Lynn, after a very busy ten days. I was particularly desirous to have a little political preaching at Ely, the place where the flogging of the English local militia under a guard of German bayonets cost me so dear.

I got there about noon on Thursday, the 25th, being market-day; but I had been apprised even before I left Lynn, that no place had been provided for my accommodation. A gentleman at Lynn gave me the name of one at Ely, who, as he thought, would be glad of an opportunity of pointing out a proper place, and of speaking about it; but just before I set off from Lynn,I received a notification from this gentleman, that he could do nothing in the matter. I knew that Ely was a small place, but I was determined to go and see the spot where the militia-men were flogged, and also determined to find some opportunity or other of relating that story as publicly as I could at Ely, and of describing thetailof the story; of which I will speak presently. Arrived at Ely, I first walked round the beautiful cathedral, that honour to our Catholic forefathers, and that standing disgrace to our Protestant selves. It is impossible to look at that magnificent pile withoutfeelingthat we are a fallen race of men. The cathedral would, leaving out the palace of the bishop, and the houses of the dean, canons, and prebendaries, weigh more, if it were put into a scale, than all the houses in the town, and all the houses for a mile round the neighbourhood if you exclude the remains of the ancient monasteries. You have only to open your eyes to be convinced that England must have been a far greater and more wealthy country in those days than it is in these days. The hundreds of thousands of loads of stone, of which this cathedral and the monasteries in the neighbourhood were built, must all have been brought by sea from distant parts of the kingdom. These foundations were laid more than a thousand years ago; and yet there are vagabonds who have the impudence to say that it is the Protestant religion that has made England a great country.

Ely is what one may call a miserable little town: very prettily situated, but poor and mean. Everything seems to be on the decline, as, indeed, is the case everywhere, where the clergy are the masters. They say that this bishop has an income of £18,000 a year. He and the dean and chapter are the owners of all the land and tithes, for a great distance round about, in this beautiful and most productive part of the country; and yet this famous building, the cathedral, is in a state of disgraceful irrepair and disfigurement. The great and magnificent windows to the east have been shortened at the bottom, and the space plastered up with brick and mortar, in a very slovenly manner, for the purpose of saving the expense of keeping the glass in repair. Great numbers of the windows in the upper part of the building have been partly closed up in the same manner, and others quite closed up. One door-way, which apparently had stood in need of repair, has been rebuilt in modern style, because it was cheaper; and the churchyard contained a flock of sheep acting as vergers for those who live upon the immense income, not a penny of which ought to be expended upon themselves while any part of this beautiful building is in a state of irrepair. This cathedral was erected “to the honour of God and the Holy Church.” My daughters went to the service in the afternoon,in the choir of which they saw God honoured by the presence oftwo old men, forming the whole of the congregation. I dare say, that in Catholic times, five thousand people at a time have been assembled in this church. The cathedral and town stand upon a little hill, about three miles in circumference, raised up, as it were, for the purpose, amidst the rich fen land by which the hill is surrounded, and I dare say that the town formerly consisted of houses built over a great part of this hill, and of, probably, from fifty to a hundred thousand people. The people do not now exceed above four thousand, including the bedridden and the babies.

Having no place provided for lecturing, and knowing no single soul in the place, I was thrown upon my own resources. The first thing I did was to walk up through the market, which contained much more than an audience sufficient for me; but, leaving the market people to carry on their affairs, I picked up a sort of labouring man, asked him if he recollected when the local militia-men were flogged under the guard of the Germans; and, receiving an answer in the affirmative, I asked him to go and show me the spot, which he did; he showed me a little common along which the men had been marched, and into a piece of pasture-land, where he put his foot upon the identical spot where the flogging had been executed. On that spot, I told him what I had suffered for expressing my indignation at that flogging. I told him that a large sum of English money was now every year sent abroad to furnish half pay and allowances to the officers of those German troops, and to maintain the widows and children of such of them as were dead; and I added, “You have to work to help to pay that money; part of the taxes which you pay on your malt, hops, beer, leather, soap, candles, tobacco, tea, sugar, and everything else, goes abroad every year to pay these people: it has thus been going abroad ever since the peace; and it will thus go abroad for the rest of your life, if this system of managing the nation’s affairs continue;” and I told him that about one million seven hundred thousand pounds had been sent abroad on this account,since the peace.

When I opened, I found that this man was willing to open too; and he uttered sentiments that would have convinced me, if I had not before been convinced of the fact, that there are very few, even amongst the labourers, who do not clearly understand the cause of their ruin. I discovered that there were two Ely men flogged upon that occasion, and that one of them was still alive and residing near the town. I sent for this man, who came to me in the evening when he had done his work, and who told me that he had lived seven years with the same master when he was flogged, and was bailiff or head man to his master. He has now a wife and several children; is a very nice-looking,and appears to be a hard-working, man, and to bear an excellent character.

But how was I to harangue? For I was determined not to quit Ely without something of that sort. I told this labouring man who showed me the flogging spot, my name, which seemed to surprise him very much, for he had heard of me before. After I had returned to my inn, I walked back again through the market amongst the farmers; then went to an inn that looked out upon the market-place, went into an up-stairs room, threw up the sash, and sat down at the window, and looked out upon the market. Little groups soon collected to survey me, while I sat in a very unconcerned attitude. The farmers had dined, or I should have found out the most numerous assemblage, and have dined with them. The next best thing was, to go and sit down in the room where they usually dropped in to drink after dinner; and, as they nearly all smoke, to take a pipe with them. This, therefore, I did; and, after a time, we began to talk.

The room was too small to contain a twentieth part of the people that would have come in if they could. It was hot to suffocation; but, nevertheless, I related to them the account of the flogging, and of my persecution on that account; and I related to them the account above stated with regard to the English money now sent to the Germans, at which they appeared to be utterly astonished. I had not time sufficient for a lecture, but I explained to them briefly the real cause of the distress which prevailed; I warned the farmers particularly against the consequences of hoping that this distress would remove itself. I portrayed to them the effects of the taxes; and showed them that we owe this enormous burden to the want of being fairly represented in the Parliament. Above all things, I did that which I never fail to do, showed them the absurdity of grumbling at the six millions a year given in relief to the poor, while they were silent, and seemed to think nothing of the sixty millions of taxes collected by the Government at London, and I asked them how any man of property could have the impudence to call upon the labouring man to serve in the militia, and to deny that that labouring man had, in case of need, a clear right to a share of the produce of the land. I explained to them how the poor were originally relieved; told them that the revenues of the livings, which had their foundation incharity, were divided amongst the poor. The demands for repair of the churches, and the clergy themselves; I explained to them how church-rates and poor-rates came to be introduced; how the burden of maintaining the poor came to be thrown upon the people at large; how the nation had sunk by degrees ever since the event called the Reformation; and, pointing towards the cathedral, I said, “Canyou believe, gentlemen, that when that magnificent pile was reared, and when all the fine monasteries, hospitals, schools, and other resorts of piety and charity, existed in this town and neighbourhood; can you believe, that Ely was the miserable little place that it now is; and that that England which had never heard of the name ofpauper, contained the crowds of miserable creatures that it now contains, some starving at stone-cracking by the way-side, and others drawing loaded wagons on that way?”

A young man in the room (I having come to a pause) said: “But, Sir, were there no poor in Catholic times?” “Yes,” said I, “to be sure there were. The Scripture says, that the poor shall never cease out of the land; and there are five hundred texts of Scripture enjoining on all men to be good and kind to the poor. It is necessary to the existence of civil society, that there should be poor. Men have two motives to industry and care in all the walks of life: one, to acquire wealth; but the other and stronger, to avoid poverty. If there were no poverty, there would be no industry, no enterprise. But this poverty is not to be made a punishment unjustly severe. Idleness, extravagance, are offences against morality; but they are not offences of that heinous nature to justify the infliction of starvation by way of punishment. It is, therefore, the duty of every man that is able; it is particularly the duty of every government, and it was a duty faithfully executed by the Catholic Church, to take care that no human being should perish for want in a land of plenty; and to take care, too, that no one should be deficient of a sufficiency of food and raiment, not only to sustain life, but also to sustain health.” The young man said: “I thank you, Sir; I am answered.”

I strongly advised the farmers to be well with their work-people; for that, unless their flocks were as safe in their fields as their bodies were in their beds, their lives must be lives of misery; that if their sacks and barns were not places of as safe deposit for their corn as their drawers were for their money, the life of the farmer was the most wretched upon earth, in place of being the most pleasant, as it ought to be.

Boston, Friday, 9th April, 1830.

Quitting Cambridge and Dr. Chafy and Serjeant Frere, on Monday, the 29th of March, I arrived at St. Ives, in Huntingdonshire, about one o’clock in the day. In the evening I harangued to about 200 persons, principally farmers, in a wheelwright’s shop, that being the onlysafeplace in the town, of sufficient dimensions and sufficiently strong. It was market-day; and this is a greatcattle-market. As I was not to be at Stamford in Lincolnshire till the 31st, I went from St. Ives to my friend Mr. Wells’s, near Huntingdon, and remained there till the 31st in the morning, employing the evening of the 30th in going to Chatteris, in the Isle of Ely, and there addressing a good large company of farmers.

On the 31st, I went to Stamford, and, in the evening, spoke to about 200 farmers and others, in a large room in a very fine and excellent inn, called Standwell’s Hotel, which is, with few exceptions, the nicest inn that I have ever been in. On the 1st of April, I harangued here again, and had amongst my auditors some most agreeable, intelligent, and public-spirited yeomen, from the little county of Rutland, who made, respecting theseat in Parliament, the proposition, the details of the purport of which I communicated to my readers in the last Register.

On the 2nd of April, I met my audience in the playhouse at Peterborough; and though it had snowed all day, and was very wet and sloppy, I had a good large audience; and I did not let this opportunity pass without telling my hearers of the part that theirgoodneighbour, Lord Fitzwilliam, had acted with regard to theFrench war, with regard toBurke and his pension; with regard to thedungeoning law, which drove me across the Atlantic in 1817, and with regard to the putting into the present Parliament, aye, and for that very town, that very Lawyer Scarlett, whose state prosecutions are now become so famous. “Never,” said I, “did I say that behind a man’s back that I would not say to his face. I wish I had his face before me: but I am here as near to it as I can get: I am before the face of his friends: here, therefore, I will say what I think of him.” When I had described his conduct, and given my opinion on it, many applauded, and not one expressed disapprobation.

On the 3rd, I speechified at Wisbeach, in the playhouse, to about 220 people, I think it was; and that same night, went to sleep at a friend’s (a total stranger to me, however) at St. Edmund’s, in the heart of the Fens. I stayed there on the 4th (Sunday), the morning of which brought a hard frost: ice an inch thick, and the total destruction of the apricot blossoms.

After passing Sunday and the greater part of Monday (the 5th) at St. Edmund’s, where my daughters and myself received the greatest kindness and attention, we went, on Monday afternoon, to Crowland, where we were most kindly lodged and entertained at the houses of two gentlemen, to whom also we were personally perfect strangers; and in the evening, I addressed a very large assemblage of most respectable farmers and others, in this once famous town. There was another hard frost on the Monday morning; just, as it were, tofinishthe apricot bloom.

On the 6th I went to Lynn, and on that evening and on the evening of the 7th, I spoke to about 300 people in the playhouse. And here there was moreinterruptionthan I have ever met with at any other place. This town, though containing as good and kind friends as I have met with in any other, and though the people are generally as good, contains also, apparently, a large proportion ofdead-weight, the offspring, most likely, of therottenness of the borough. Two or three, or evenoneman, may, if not tossed out at once, disturb and interrupt everything in a case where constant attention tofactandargumentis requisite, to insure utility to the meeting. There were butthreehere; and though they were finally silenced, it was not without great loss of time, great noise and hubbub. Two, I was told, weredead-weightmen, and one a sort ofhiggling merchant.

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