Chapter 1.)

In the Second Book and Twenty-sixth Chapter of _Blackstone_, the poacher might read as follows: "With regard likewise to wild animals, all mankind had by the original grant of the Creator a right to pursue and take away any fowl or insect of the air, any fish or inhabitant of the waters, and any beast or reptile of the field: and this natural right still continues in every individual, unless where it is restrained by the civil laws of the country. And when a man has once so seized them, they become, while living, his qualified property, or, if dead, are absolutely his own: so that to steal them, or otherwise invade this property, is, according to the respective values, sometimes a criminal offence, sometimes only a civil injury."

Poachers do not read this; but that reason which is common to all mankind tells them that this is true, and tells them, also, _what to think_ of any positive law that is made to restrain them from this right granted by the Creator. Before I proceed further in commenting upon the case immediately before me, let me once more quote this English Judge, who wrote fifty years ago, when the Game Code was mild indeed, compared to the one of the present day. "Another violent alteration," says he, "of the English Constitution consisted in the depopulation of whole countries, for the purposes of the King's royal diversion; and subjecting both them, and all the ancient forests of the kingdom, to the unreasonable severities of forest laws imported from the continent, whereby the slaughter of a beast was made almost as penal as the death of a man. In the Saxon times, though no man was allowed to kill or chase the King's deer, yet he might start any game, pursue and kill it upon his own estate. But the rigour of these new constitutions vested the sole property of all the game in England in the King alone; and no man was entitled to disturb any fowl of the air, or any beast of the field, of such kinds as were specially reserved for the royal amusement of the Sovereign, without express license from the King, by a grant of a chase or free warren: and those franchises were granted as much with a view to preserve the breed of animals, as to indulge the subject. From a similar principle to which, though the forest laws are now mitigated, and by degrees grown entirely obsolete, yet from this root has sprung up a bastard slip, known by the name of the Game-Law, now arrived to and wantoning in its highest vigour: both founded upon the same unreasonable notions of permanent property in wild creatures; and both productive of the same tyranny to the commons: but with this difference; that the forest laws established only one mighty hunter throughout the land, the game-laws have raised a little Nimrod in every manor." (Book 4, Chapter 33.)

When this was written nothing was known of the present severity of the law. Judge Blackstone says that the Game Law was then wantoning in its _highest vigour_; what, then, would he have said, if any one had proposed to make it _felony_ to resist a gamekeeper? He calls it tyranny to the commons, as it existed in his time; what would he have said of the present Code; which, so far from being thought a thing to be _softened_, is never so much as mentioned by those humane and gentle creatures, who are absolutely supporting a sort of reputation, and aiming at distinction in Society, in consequence of their incessant talk about softening the Criminal Code?

The Law may say what it will, but the feelings of mankind will never be in favour of this Code; and whenever it produces putting to death, it will, necessarily, excite horror. It is impossible to make men believe that any particular set of individuals should have a permanent property in wild creatures. That the owner of land should have a quiet possession of it is reasonable and right and necessary; it is also necessary that he should have the power of inflicting pecuniary punishment, in a moderate degree, upon such as trespass on his lands; but his right can go no further according to reason. If the law give him ample compensation for every damage that he sustains, in consequence of a trespass on his lands, what right has he to complain?

The law authorises the King, in case of invasion, or apprehended invasion, to call upon all his people to take up arms in defence of the country. The Militia Law compels every man, in his turn, to become a soldier. And upon what ground is this? There must be some reason for it, or else the law would be tyranny. The reason is, that every man has _rights_ in the country to which he belongs; and that, therefore, it is his duty to defend the country. Some rights, too, beyond that of merely living, merely that of breathing the air. And then, I should be glad to know, what rights an Englishman has, if the pursuit of even wild animals is to be the ground of transporting him from his country? There is a sufficient punishment provided by the law of trespass; quite sufficient means to keep men off your land altogether! how can it be necessary, then, to have a law to transport them for coming upon your land? No, it is not for coming upon the land, it is for coming after the wild animals, which nature and reason tells them, are as much theirs as they are yours.

It is impossible for the people not to contrast the treatment of these two men at Winchester with the treatment of some gamekeepers that have killed or maimed the persons they call poachers; and it is equally impossible for the people, when they see these two men hanging on a gallows, after being recommended to mercy, not to remember the almost instant pardon, given to the exciseman, who was not recommended to mercy, and who was found guilty of wilful murder in the County of Sussex!

It is said, and, I believe truly, that there are more persons imprisoned in England for offences against the game-laws, than there are persons imprisoned in France (with more than twice the population) for all sorts of offences put together. When there was a loud outcry against the cruelties committed on the priests and the seigneurs, by the people of France, Arthur Young bade them remember the cruelties committed on the people by the game-laws, and to bear in mind how many had been made galley-slaves for having killed, or tried to kill, partridges, pheasants, and hares!

However, I am aware that it is quite useless to address observations of this sort to you. I am quite aware of that; and yet, there are circumstances, in your present situation, which, one would think, ought to make you _not very gay_ upon the hanging of the two men at Winchester. It delights me, I assure you, to see the situation that you are in; and I shall, therefore, now, once more, and for the last time, address you upon that subject. We all remember how haughty, how insolent you have been. We all bear in mind your conduct for the last thirty-five years; and the feeling of pleasure at your present state is as general as it is just. In my _ten Letters_ to you, I told you that you would lose your estates. Those of you who have any capacity, except that which is necessary to enable you to kill wild animals, see this now, as clearly as I do; and yet you evince no intention to change your courses. You hang on with unrelenting grasp; and cry "pauper" and "poacher" and "radical" and "lower orders" with as much insolence as ever! It is always thus: men like you may be convinced of error, but they never change their conduct. They never become just because they are convinced that they have been unjust: they must have a great deal more than that conviction to make them just.

* * * * *

Such was what I _then_ addressed to the Landlords. How well it fits the _present_ time! They are just in the same sort of _mess_, now, that they were in 1822. But, there is this most important difference, that the paper-money cannot _now_ be put out, in a quantity sufficient to save them, without producing not only a "_late_ panic," worse than the last, but, in all probability, a total blowing up of the whole system, game-laws, new trespass-laws, tread-mill, Sunday tolls, six-acts, sun-set and sun-rise laws, apple-felony laws, select-vestry laws, and all the whole THING, root and trunk and branch! Aye, not sparing, perhaps, even the tent, or booth of induction, at Draycot Foliot! Good Lord! how should we be able to live without game-laws! And tread-mills, then? And Sunday-tolls? How should we get on without pensions, sinecures, tithes, and the other "glorious institutions" of this "mighty _empire_"? Let us turn, however, from the thought; but, bearing this in mind, if you please, Messieurs the game-people; that if, no matter in what shape and under what pretence; if, I tell you, paper be put out again, sufficient to raise the price of a Southdown ewe to the last year's mark, the whole system goes to atoms. I tell you that; mind it; and look sharp about you, O ye fat parsons; for tithes and half-pay will, be you assured, never, from that day, again go in company into parson's pocket.

In this North of Hampshire, as everywhere else, the churches and all other things exhibit indubitable marks of decay. There are along under the north side of that chain of hills, which divide Hampshire from Berkshire, in this part, taking into Hampshire about two or three miles wide of the low ground along under the chain, eleven churches along in a string in about fifteen miles, the chancels of which would contain a great many more than all the inhabitants, men, women, and children, sitting at their ease with plenty of room. How should this be otherwise, when, in the parish of Burghclere, one single farmer holds by lease, under Lord Carnarvon, as one farm, the lands that men, now living, can remember to have formed fourteen farms, bringing up, in a respectable way, fourteen families. In some instances these small farmhouses and homesteads are completely gone; in others the buildings remain, but in a tumble-down state; in others the house is gone, leaving the barn for use as a barn or as a cattle-shed; in others the out-buildings are gone, and the house, with rotten thatch, broken windows, rotten door-sills, and all threatening to fall, remains as the dwelling of a half-starved and ragged family of labourers, the grand-children, perhaps, of the decent family of small farmers that formerly lived happily in this very house.

This, with few exceptions, is the case all over England; and, if we duly consider the nature and tendency of the hellish system of taxing, of funding, and of paper-money, it must do so. Then, in this very parish of Burghclere, there was, until a few months ago, a famous cock-parson, the "Honourable and Reverend" George Herbert, who had grafted the _parson_ upon the _soldier_ and the _justice_ upon the parson; for he died, a little while ago, a half-pay officer in the army, rector of two parishes, and chairman of the quarter sessions of the county of Hants!! Mr. HONE gave us, in his memorable "_House that Jack built_," a portrait of the "Clerical Magistrate." Could not he, or somebody else, give us a portrait of the _military_ and of the _naval parson_? For such are to be found all over the kingdom. Wherever I go, I hear of them. And yet, there sits Burdett, and even Sir Bobby of the Borough, and say not a word upon the subject! This is the case: the King dismissed Sir Bobby from the half-pay list, scratched his name out, turned him off, stopped his pay. Sir Bobby complained, alleging, that the half-pay was a reward for past services. No, no, said the Ministers: it is a _retaining fee_ for _future_ services. Now, the law is, and the Parliament declared, in the case of parson Horne Tooke, that once a parson always a parson, and that a parson cannot, of course, again serve as an officer under the crown. Yet these military and naval parsons have "a retaining fee for future military and naval services!" Never was so barefaced a thing before heard of in the world. And yet there sits Sir Bobby, stripped of his "retaining fee," and says not a word about the matter; and there sit the _big Whigs_, who gave Sir Bobby the subscription, having sons, brothers, and other relations, military and naval parsons, and the _big Whigs_, of course, bid Sir Bobby (albeit given enough to twattle) hold his tongue upon the subject; and there sit Mr. Wetherspoon (I think it is), and the rest of Sir Bobby's Rump, toasting "the _independence_ of the Borough and its member!"

"That's our case," as the lawyers say: match it if you can, devil, in all your roamings up and down throughout the earth! I have often been thinking, and, indeed, expecting, to see Sir Bobby turn parson himself, as the likeliest way to get back his half-pay. If he should have "a call," I do hope we shall have him, for parson at Kensington; and, as an inducement, I promise him, that I will give him a good thumping Easter-offering.

In former RIDES, and especially in 1821 and 1822, I described very fully this part of Hampshire. The land is a chalk bottom, with a bed of reddish, stiff loam, full of flints, at top. In those parts where the bed of loam and flints is deep the land is arable or woods: where the bed of loam and flints is so shallow as to let the plough down to the chalk, the surface is downs. In the deep and long valleys, where there is constantly, or occasionally, a stream of water, the top soil is blackish, and the surface meadows. This has been the distribution from all antiquity, except that, in ancient times, part of that which is now downs and woods was _corn-land_, as we know from the _marks of the plough_. And yet the Scotch fellows would persuade us, that there were scarcely any inhabitants in England before it had the unspeakable happiness to be united to that fertile, warm, and hospitable country, where the people are so well off that they are _above_ having poor-rates!

The tops of the hills here are as good corn-land as any other part; and it is all excellent corn-land, and the fields and woods singularly beautiful. Never was there what may be called a more _hilly_ country, and _all in use_. Coming from Burghclere, you come up nearly a mile of steep hill, from the top of which you can see all over the country, even to the Isle of Wight; to your right a great part of Wiltshire; into Surrey on your left; and, turning round, you see, lying below you, the whole of Berkshire, great part of Oxfordshire, and part of Gloucestershire. This chain of lofty hills was a great favourite with Kings and rulers in ancient times. At Highclere, at Combe, and at other places, there are remains of great encampments, or fortifications; and Kingsclere was a residence of the Saxon Kings, and continued to be a royal residence long after the Norman Kings came. KING JOHN, when residing at Kingsclere, founded one of the charities which still exists in the town of Newbury, which is but a few miles from Kingsclere.

From the top of this lofty chain, you come to Uphusband (or the Upper Hurstbourn) over two miles or more of ground, descending in the way that the body of a snake descends (when he is going fast) from the high part, near the head, down to the tail; that is to say, over a series of hill and dell, but the dell part going constantly on increasing upon the hilly part, till you come down to this village; and then you, continuing on (southward) towards Andover, go up, directly, half a mile of hill so steep, as to make it very difficult for an ordinary team with a load to take that load up it. So this _Up_-hurstbourn (called so because _higher up the valley_ than the other Hurstbourns), the flat part of the road to which, from the north, comes in between two side-hills, is in as narrow and deep a dell as any place that I ever saw.

The houses of the village are, in great part, scattered about, and are amongst very lofty and fine trees; and, from many, many points round about, from the hilly fields, now covered with the young wheat, or with scarcely less beautiful sainfoin, the village is a sight worth going many miles to see. The lands, too, are pretty beyond description. These chains of hills make, below them, an endless number of lower hills, of varying shapes and sizes and aspects and of relative state as to each other; while the surface presents, in the size and form of the fields, in the woods, the hedgerows, the sainfoin, the young wheat, the turnips, the tares, the fallows, the sheep-folds and the flocks, and, at every turn of your head, a fresh and different set of these; this surface all together presents that which I, at any rate, could look at with pleasure for ever. Not a sort of country that I like so well as when there are _downs_ and a _broader valley_ and _more of meadow_; but a sort of country that I like next to that; for, here, as there, there are no ditches, no water-furrows, no dirt, and never any drought to cause inconvenience. The chalk is at bottom, and it takes care of all. The crops of wheat have been very good here this year, and those of barley not very bad. The sainfoin has given a fine crop of the finest sort of hay in the world, and, this year, without a drop of wet.

I wish, that, in speaking of this pretty village (which I always return to with additional pleasure), I could give _a good account_ of the state of _those, without whose labour there would be neither corn nor sainfoin nor sheep_. I regret to say, that my account of this matter, if I give it truly, must be a dismal account indeed! For I have, in no part of England, seen the labouring people so badly off as they are here. This has made so much impression on me, that I shall enter fully into the matter with names, dates, and all the particulars in the IVth Number of the "POOR MAN'S FRIEND." This is one of the great purposes for which I take these "Rides." I am persuaded, that, before the day shall come when my labours must cease, _I shall have mended the meals of millions_. I may over-rate the effects of my endeavours; but, this being my persuasion, I should be guilty of a great neglect of duty, were I not to use those endeavours.

_Andover, Sunday, 15th October._

I went to Weyhill, yesterday, to see the close of the hop and of the cheese fair; for, after the sheep, these are the principal articles. The crop of hops has been, in parts where they are grown, unusually large and of super-excellent quality. The average price of the Farnham _hops_ has been, as nearly as I can ascertain, seven pounds for a hundredweight; that of Kentish hops, five pounds, and that of the Hampshire and Surrey hops (other than those of Farnham), about five pounds also. The prices are, considering the great weight of the crop, very good; but, if it had not been for the effects of "_late_ panic" (proceeding, as Baring said, from a "plethora of money,") these prices would have been a full third, if not nearly one half, higher; for, though the crop has been so large and so good, there was hardly any stock on hand; the country was almost wholly without hops.

As to cheese, the price, considering the quantity, has been not one half so high as it was last year. The fall in the positive price has been about 20 per cent., and the quantity made in 1826 has not been above two-thirds as great as that made in 1825. So that, here is a fall of _one-half_ in real relative price; that is to say, the farmer, while he has the same rent to pay that he paid last year, has only half as much money to receive for cheese, as he received for cheese last year; and observe, on some farms, cheese is almost the only saleable produce.

After the fair was over, yesterday, I came down from the Hill (3 miles) to this town of Andover; which has, within the last 20 days, been more talked of, in other parts of the kingdom, than it ever was before from the creation of the world to the beginning of those 20 days. The Thomas Asheton Smiths and the Sir John Pollens, famous as they have been under the banners of the Old Navy Purser, George Rose, and his successors, have never, even since the death of poor Turner, been half so famous, they and this Corporation, whom they represent, as they have been since the Meeting which they held here, which ended in their defeat and confusion, pointing them out as worthy of that appellation of "Poor Devils," which Pollen thought proper to give to those labourers without whose toil his estate would not be worth a single farthing.

Having laid my plan to sleep at Andover last night, I went with two Farnham friends, Messrs. Knowles and West, to dine at the ordinary at the George Inn, which is kept by one Sutton, a rich old fellow, who wore a round-skirted sleeved fustian waistcoat, with a dirty white apron tied round his middle, and with no coat on; having a look the _eagerest_ and the _sharpest_ that I ever saw in any set of features in my whole life-time; having an air of authority and of mastership, which, to a stranger, as I was, seemed quite incompatible with the meanness of his dress and the vulgarity of his manners; and there being, visible to every beholder, constantly going on in him a pretty even contest between the servility of avarice and the insolence of wealth. A great part of the farmers and other fair-people having gone off home, we found preparations made for dining only about ten people. But, after we sat down, and it was seen that we designed to dine, guests came in apace, the preparations were augmented, and as many as could dine came and dined with us.

After the dinner was over, the room became fuller and fuller; guests came in from the other inns, where they had been dining, till, at last, the room became as full as possible in every part, the door being opened, the door-way blocked up, and the stairs, leading to the room, crammed from bottom to top. In this state of things, Mr. Knowles, who was our chairman, gave _my health_, which, of course, was followed by a _speech_; and, as the reader will readily suppose, to have an opportunity of making a speech was the main motive for my going to dine at _an inn_, at any hour, and especially at _seven o'clock_ at night. In this speech, I, after descanting on the present devastating ruin, and on those successive acts of the Ministers and the Parliament by which such ruin had been produced; after remarking on the shuffling, the tricks, the contrivances from 1797 up to last March, I proceeded to offer to the company _my reasons_ for believing, that no attempt would be made to relieve the farmers and others, by putting out the paper-money again, as in 1822, or by a bank-restriction. Just as I was stating these my reasons, on a prospective matter of such deep interest to my hearers, amongst whom were land-owners, land-renters, cattle and sheep dealers, hop and cheese producers and merchants, and even one, two or more, country bankers; just as I was engaged in stating _my reasons_ for my opinion on a matter of such vital importance to the parties present, who were all listening to me with the greatest attention; just at this time, a noise was heard, and a sort of row was taking place in the passage, the cause of which was, upon inquiry, found to be no less a personage than our landlord, our host Sutton, who, it appeared, finding that my speech-making had cut off, or, at least, suspended, all intercourse between the dining, now become a drinking, room and the _bar_; who, finding that I had been the cause of a great "restriction in the exchange" of our money for his "neat" "genuine" commodities downstairs, and being, apparently, an ardent admirer of the "liberal" system of "free trade"; who, finding, in short, or, rather, supposing, that, if my tongue were not stopped from running, his taps would be, had, though an old man, fought, or, at least, forced his way up the thronged stairs and through the passage and door-way, into the room, and was (with what breath the struggle had left him) beginning to bawl out to me, when some one called to him, and told him that he was causing an interruption, to which he answered, that that was what he had come to do! And then he went on to say, in so many words, that my speech injured his sale of liquor!

The disgust and abhorrence, which such conduct could not fail to excite, produced, at first, a desire to quit the room and the house, and even a proposition to that effect. But, after a minute or so, to reflect, the company resolved not to quit the room but to turn him out of it who had caused the interruption; and the old fellow, finding himself _tackled_, saved the labour of shoving, or kicking, him out of the room, by retreating out of the door-way with all the activity of which he was master. After this I proceeded with my speech-making; and, this being ended, the great business of the evening, namely, drinking, smoking, and singing, was about to be proceeded in by a company, who had just closed an arduous and anxious week, who had before them a Sunday morning to sleep in, and whose wives were, for the far greater part, at a convenient distance. An assemblage of circumstances more auspicious to "free trade" in the "neat" and "genuine," has seldom occurred! But, now behold, the old fustian-jacketed fellow, whose head was, I think, _powdered_, took it into that head not only to lay "restrictions" upon trade, but to impose an absolute embargo; cut off entirely all supplies whatever from his bar to the room, _as long as I remained in that room_. A message to this effect, from the old fustian man, having been, through the waiter, communicated to Mr. Knowles, and he having communicated it to the company, I addressed the company in nearly these words: "Gentlemen, born and bred, as you know I was, on the borders of this county, and fond, as I am of bacon, _Hampshire hogs_ have, with me, always been objects of admiration rather than of contempt; but that which has just happened here, induces me to observe, that this feeling of mine has been confined to hogs of _four legs_. For my part, I like your company too well to quit it. I have paid this fellow _six shillings_ for the wing of a fowl, a bit of bread, and a pint of small beer. I have a right to sit here; I want no drink, and those who do, being refused it here, have a right to send to other houses for it, and to drink it here."

However, Mammon soon got the upper hand downstairs, all the fondness for "free trade" returned, and up came the old fustian-jacketed fellow, bringing pipes, tobacco, wine, grog, sling, and seeming to be as pleased as if he had just sprung a mine of gold! Nay, he, soon after this, came into the room with two gentlemen, who had come to him to ask where I was. He actually came up to me, making me a bow, and, telling me that those gentlemen wished to be introduced to me, he, with a fawning look, laid his hand upon my knee! "Take away your _paw_," said I, and, shaking the gentlemen by the hand, I said, "I am happy to see you, gentlemen, even though introduced by this fellow." Things now proceeded without interruption; songs, toasts, and speeches filled up the time, until half-past two o'clock this morning, though in the house of a landlord who receives the sacrament, but who, from his manifestly ardent attachment to the "liberal principles" of "free trade," would, I have no doubt, have suffered us, if we could have found money and throats and stomachs, to sit and sing and talk and drink until two o'clock of a Sunday afternoon instead of two o'clock of a Sunday morning. It was not politics; it was not _personal_ dislike to me; for the fellow knew nothing of me. It was, as I told the company, just this: he looked upon their bodies as so many gutters to drain off the contents of his taps, and upon their purses as so many small heaps from which to take the means of augmenting his great one; and, finding that I had been, no matter how, the cause of suspending this work of "reciprocity," he wanted, and no matter how, to restore the reciprocal system to motion. All that I have to add is this: that the next time this old sharp-looking fellow gets _six shillings_ from me, for a dinner, he shall, if he choose, _cook me_, in any manner that he likes, and season me with hand so unsparing as to produce in the feeders thirst unquenchable.

To-morrow morning we set off for the New Forest; and, indeed, we have lounged about here long enough. But, as some apology, I have to state, that, while I have been in a sort of waiting upon this great fair, where one hears, sees, and learns so much, I have been writing No. IV. of the "_Poor Man's Friend_," which, price twopence, is published once a month.

I see, in the London newspapers, accounts of _dispatches from Canning_! I thought that he went solely "on a party of pleasure!" So, the "dispatches" come to tell the King how the pleasure party gets on! No: what he is gone to Paris for is to endeavour to prevent the "_Holy_ Allies" from doing anything which shall sink the English Government in the eyes of the world, and _thereby favour the radicals_, who are enemies of _all_ "regular Government," and whose success in England would _revive republicanism_ in France. This is my opinion. The subject, if I be right in my opinion, was too ticklish to be committed to paper: Granville Levison Gower (for that is the man that is now Lord Granville) was, perhaps, not thought quite a match for the French as _a talker_; and, therefore, the Captain of Eton, who, in 1817, said, that the "ever living luminary of British prosperity was only hidden behind a cloud;" and who, in 1819, said, that "Peel's Bill had set the currency question at rest for ever;" therefore the profound Captain is gone over to see what _he_ can do.

But, Captain, a word in your ear: we do not care for the Bourbons any more than we do for you! My real opinion is, that there is nothing that can put England to rights, that will not shake the Bourbon Government. This is my opinion; but I defy the Bourbons to save, or to assist in saving, the present system in England, unless they and their friends will subscribe and pay off your debt for you, Captain of toad-eating and nonsensical and shoe-licking Eton! Let them pay off your debt for you, Captain; let the Bourbons and their allies do that; or they cannot save you; no, nor can they help you, even in the smallest degree.

_Rumsey (Hampshire), Monday Noon, 16th Oct._

Like a very great fool, I, out of senseless complaisance, waited, this morning, to breakfast with the friends, at whose house we slept last night, at Andover. We thus lost two hours of dry weather, and have been justly punished by about an hour's ride in the rain. I settled on Lyndhurst as the place to lodge at to-night; so we are here, feeding our horses, drying our clothes, and writing the account of our journey. We came, as much as possible, all the way through the villages, and, almost all the way, avoided the turnpike-roads. From Andover to Stockbridge (about seven or eight miles) is, for the greatest part, an open corn and sheep country, a considerable portion of the land being downs. The wheat and rye and vetch and sainfoin fields look beautiful here; and, during the whole of the way from Andover to Rumsey, the early turnips of both kinds are not bad, and the stubble turnips very promising. The downs are green as meadows usually are in April. The grass is most abundant in all situations, where grass grows. From Stockbridge to Rumsey we came nearly by the river side, and had to cross the river several times. This, the River Teste, which, as I described, in my Ride of last November, begins at Uphusband, by springs, bubbling up, in March, out of the bed of that deep valley. It is at first a bourn, that is to say, a stream that runs only a part of the year, and is the rest of the year as dry as a road. About 5 miles from this periodical source, it becomes a stream all the year round. After winding about between the chalk hills, for many miles, first in a general direction towards the south-east, and then in a similar direction towards the south-west and south, it is joined by the little stream that rises just above and that passes through the town of Andover. It is, after this, joined by several other little streams, with names; and here, at Rumsey, it is a large and very fine river, famous, all the way down, for trout and eels, and both of the finest quality.

_Lyndhurst (New Forest), Monday Evening, 16th October._

I have just time, before I go to bed, to observe that we arrived here, about 4 o'clock, over about 10 or 11 miles of the best road in the world, having a choice too, for the great part of the way, between these smooth roads and green sward. Just as we came out of Rumsey (or Romsey), and crossed our River Teste once more, we saw to our left, the sort of park, called _Broadlands_, where poor Charles Smith, who (as mentioned above) was hanged for _shooting at_ (_not killing_) one Snellgrove, an assistant-gamekeeper of Lord Palmerston, who was then our Secretary at War, and who is in that office, I believe, now, though he is now better known as a Director of the grand Mining Joint-Stock Company, which shows the great _industry_ of this Noble and "Right Honourable person," and also the great scope and the various nature and tendency of his talents. What would our old fathers of the "dark ages" have said, if they had been told, that their descendants would, at last, become so enlightened as to enable Jews and loan-jobbers to take away noblemen's estates by mere "watching the turn of the market," and to cause members, or, at least, one Member, of that "most Honourable, Noble, and Reverend Assembly," the King's Privy Council, in which he himself sits: so _enlightened_, I say, as to cause one of this "most Honourable and Reverend body" to become a Director in a mining speculation? How one _pities_ our poor, "dark-age, bigoted" ancestors, who would, I dare say, have been as ready to _hang_ a man for proposing such a "liberal" system as this, as they would have been to hang him for _shooting at_ (not killing) an assistant game-keeper! Poor old fellows! How much they lost by not living in our enlightened times! I am here close by the Old Purser's son George Rose's!

RIDE: FROM LYNDHURST (NEW FOREST) TO BEAULIEU ABBEY; THENCE TO SOUTHAMPTON AND WESTON; THENCE TO BOTLEY, ALLINGTON, WEST END, NEAR HAMBLEDON; AND THENCE TO PETERSFIELD, THURSLEY, GODALMING.

But where is now the goodly audit ale? The purse-proud tenant, never known to fail? The farm which never yet was left on hand? The marsh reclaim'd to most improving land? The impatient hope of the expiring lease? The doubling rental? What an evil's peace! In vain the prize excites the ploughman's skill, In vain the Commons pass their patriot Bill; The _Landed Interest_--(you may understand The phrase much better leaving out the _Land_)-- The land self-interest groans from shore to shore, For fear that plenty should attain the poor. Up, up again, ye rents! exalt your notes, Or else the Ministry will lose their votes, And patriotism, so delicately nice, Her loaves will lower to the market price.

LORD BYRON, _Age of Bronze_.

_Weston Grove, Wednesday, 18 Oct., 1826._

Yesterday, from Lyndhurst to this place, was a ride, including our round-abouts, of more than forty miles; but the roads the best in the world, one half of the way green turf; and the day as fine an one as ever came out of the heavens. We took in a breakfast, calculated for a long day's work, and for no more eating till night. We had slept in a room, the access to which was only through another sleeping room, which was also occupied; and, as I had got up about _two o'clock_ at Andover, we went to bed, at Lyndhurst, about _half-past seven_ o'clock. I was, of course, awake by three or four; I had eaten little over night; so that here lay I, not liking (even after day-light began to glimmer) to go through a chamber, where, by possibility, there might be "a lady" actually _in bed_; here lay I, my bones aching with lying in bed, my stomach growling for victuals, imprisoned by my _modesty_. But, at last, I grew impatient; for, modesty here or modesty there, I was not to be penned up and starved: so, after having shaved and dressed and got ready to go down, I thrusted George out a little before me into the other room; and through we pushed, previously resolving, of course, not to look towards _the bed_ that was there. But, as the devil would have it, just as I was about the middle of the room, I, like Lot's wife, turned my head! All that I shall say is, first, that the consequences that befel her did not befal me, and, second, that I advise those, who are likely to be hungry in the morning, not to sleep in _inner rooms_; or, if they do, to take some bread and cheese in their pockets. Having got safe downstairs, I lost no time in inquiry after the means of obtaining a breakfast to make up for the bad fare of the previous day; and finding my landlady rather tardy in the work, and not, seemingly, having a proper notion of the affair, I went myself, and, having found a butcher's shop, bought a loin of small, fat, wether mutton, which I saw cut out of the sheep and cut into chops. These were brought to the inn; George and I ate about 2lb. out of the 5lb., and, while I was writing a letter, and making up my packet, to be ready to send from Southampton, George went out and found a poor woman to come and take away the rest of the loin of mutton; for our _fastings_ of the day before enabled us to do this; and, though we had about forty miles to go, to get to this place (through the route that we intended to take), I had resolved, that we would go without any more _purchase_ of victuals and drink this day also. I beg leave to suggest to my _well-fed_ readers; I mean, those who have at their command more victuals and drink than they can possibly swallow; I beg to suggest to such, whether this would not be a good way for them all to find the means of bestowing charity? Some poet has said, that that which is given in _charity_ gives a blessing on both sides; to the giver as well as the receiver. But I really think that if, _in general_, the food and drink given, came out of food and drink _deducted_ from the usual quantity swallowed by the giver, the _blessing_ would be still greater, and much more certain. I can speak for myself, at any rate. I hardly ever eat more than _twice_ a day; when at home, never; and I never, if I can well avoid it, eat any meat later than about one or two o'clock in the day. I drink a little tea, or milk and water at the usual tea-time (about 7 o'clock); I go to bed at eight, if I can; I write or read, from about four to about eight, and then hungry as a hunter, I go to breakfast, eating _as small a parcel_ of cold meat and bread as I can prevail upon my teeth to be satisfied with. I do just the same at dinner time. I very rarely taste _garden-stuff_ of any sort. If any man can show me, that he has done, or can do, _more work_, bodily and mentally united; I say nothing about good health, for of that the public can know nothing; but I refer to _the work_: the public know, they see, what I can do, and what I actually have done, and what I do; and when any one has shown the public, that he has done, or can do, more, then I will advise my readers attend to him, on the subject of diet, and not to me. As to _drink_, the less the better; and mine is milk and water, or _not-sour_ small beer, if I can get the latter; for the former I always can. I like the milk and water best; but I do not like much water; and, if I drink much milk, it loads and stupefies and makes me fat.

Having made all preparations for a day's ride, we set off, as our first point, for a station, in the Forest, called New Park, there to see something about _plantations_ and other matters connected with the affairs of our prime cocks, the Surveyors of Woods and Forests and Crown Lands and Estates. But, before I go forward any further, I must just step back again to Rumsey, which we passed rather too hastily through on the 16th, as noticed in the RIDE that was published last week. This town was, in ancient times, a very grand place, though it is now nothing more than a decent market-town, without anything to entitle it to particular notice, except its church, which was the church of an Abbey Nunnery (founded more, I think, than a thousand years ago), and which church was the burial place of several of the Saxon Kings, and of "Lady Palmerstone," who, a few years ago, "died in child-birth"! What a mixture! But there was another personage buried here, and who was, it would seem, a native of the place; namely, Sir William Petty, the ancestor of the present Marquis of Lansdown. He was the son of _a cloth-weaver_, and was, doubtless, himself a weaver when young. He became a surgeon, was first in the service of Charles I.; then went into that of Cromwell, whom he served as physician-general to his army in Ireland (alas! poor Ireland), and, in this capacity, he resided at Dublin till Charles II. came, when he came over to London (having become very rich), was knighted by that profligate and ungrateful King, and he died in 1687, leaving a fortune of 15,000_l._ a year! This is what his biographers say. He must have made pretty good use of his time while physician-general to Cromwell's army, in poor Ireland! _Petty_ by nature as well as by name, he got, from Cromwell, a "patent for _double-writing_, invented by him;" and he invented a "_double-bottomed ship to sail against wind and tide_, a model of which is still preserved in the library of the Royal Society," of which he was a most worthy member. His great art was, however, the amassing of money, and the getting of _grants of lands in poor Ireland_, in which he was one of the most successful of the English adventurers. I had, the other day, occasion to observe that the word _Petty_ manifestly is the French word _Petit_, which means _little_; and that it is, in these days of degeneracy, pleasing to reflect that there is _one family_, at any rate, that "Old England" still boasts one family, which retains the character designated by its pristine name; a reflection that rushed with great force into my mind, when, in the year 1822, I heard the present noble head of the family say, in the House of Lords, that he thought that a currency of paper, convertible into gold, was the best and most solid and safe, especially since _Platina_ had been discovered! "Oh, God!" exclaimed I to myself, as I stood listening and admiring "below the bar;" "Oh, great God! there it is, there it is, still running in the blood, that genius which discovered the art of double writing, and of making ships with double-bottoms to sail against wind and tide!" This noble and profound descendant of Cromwell's army-physician has now seen that "paper, convertible into gold," is not quite so "solid and safe" as he thought it was! He has now seen what a "late panic" is! And he might, if he were not so very well worthy of his family name, openly confess that he was deceived, when, in 1819, he, as one of the Committee, who reported in favour of Peel's Bill, said that the country could pay the interest of the debt in gold! Talk of a _change of Ministry_, indeed! What is to be _gained_ by putting this man in the place of any of those who are in power now?

To come back now to Lyndhurst, we had to go about three miles to New Park, which is a _farm_ in the New Forest, and nearly in the centre of it. We got to this place about nine o'clock. There is a good and large mansion-house here, in which the "Commissioners" of Woods and Forests reside, when they come into the Forest. There is a garden, a farm-yard, a farm, and a nursery. The place looks like a considerable gentleman's seat; the house stands in a sort of _park_, and you can see that a great deal of expense has been incurred in levelling the ground, and making it pleasing to the eye of my lords "the Commissioners." My business here was to see, whether anything had been done towards the making of _Locust plantations_. I went first to Lyndhurst to make inquiries; but I was there told that New Park was the place, and the only place, at which to get information on the subject; and I was told, further, that the Commissioners were now at New Park; that is to say those experienced tree planters, Messrs. Arbuthnot, Dawkins, and Company. Gad! thought I, I am here coming in close contact with a branch, or at least a twig, of the great THING itself! When I heard this, I was at breakfast, and, of course, dressed for the day. I could not, out of my extremely limited wardrobe, afford a clean shirt for the occasion; and so, off we set, just as we were, hoping that their worships, the nation's tree planters, would, if they met with us, excuse our dress, when they considered the nature of our circumstances. When we came to the house, we were stopped by a little fence and fastened gate. I got off my horse, gave him to George to hold, went up to the door, and rang the bell. Having told my business to a person, who appeared to be a foreman, or bailiff, he, with great civility, took me into a nursery which is at the back of the house; and I soon drew from him the disappointing fact that my lords, the tree-planters, had departed the day before! I found, as to _Locusts_, that a patch were sowed last spring, which I saw, which are from one foot to four feet high, and very fine and strong, and are, in number, about enough to plant two acres of ground, the plants at four feet apart each way. I found that, last fall, some few Locusts had been put out into plantations of other trees already made; but that they had _not thriven_, and had been _barked_ by the hares! But a little bunch of these trees (same age), which were planted in the nursery, ought to convince my lords, the tree-planters, that, if they were to do what they ought to do, the public would very soon be owners of fine plantations of Locusts, for the use of the navy. And, what are the _hares_ kept _for_ here? _Who_ eats them? What _right_ have these Commissioners to keep hares here, to eat up the trees? Lord Folkestone killed his hares before he made his plantation of Locusts; and, why not kill the hares in the _people's_ forest; for the _people's_ it is, and that these Commissioners ought always to remember. And then, again, why this farm? What is it _for_? Why, the pretence for it is this: that it is necessary to give the deer _hay_, in winter, because the lopping down of limbs of trees for them to _browse_ (as used to be the practice) is injurious to the growth of timber. That will be a very good reason for having a _hay-farm_, when my lords shall have proved two things; first, that hay, in quantity equal to what is raised here, could not be bought for a twentieth part of the money that this farm and all its trappings cost; and, second, that there ought to be any deer kept! What are these deer _for_? Who are to _eat_ them? Are they for the Royal Family? Why, there are more deer bred in Richmond Park alone, to say nothing of Bushy Park, Hyde Park, and Windsor Park; there are more deer bred in Richmond Park alone, than would feed all the branches of the Royal Family and all their households all the year round, if every soul of them ate as hearty as ploughmen, and if they never touched a morsel of any kind of meat but venison! For what, and _for whom_, then, are deer kept, in the New Forest; and why an expense of hay-farm, of sheds, of racks, of keepers, of lodges, and other things attending the deer and the game; an expense, amounting to more money annually than would have given relief to all the starving manufacturers in the North! And again I say, _who_ is all this venison and game _for_? There is more game even in Kew Gardens than the Royal Family can want! And, in short, do they ever taste, or even hear of, any game, or any venison, from the New Forest?

What a pretty thing here is, then! Here is another deep bite into us by the long and sharp-fanged Aristocracy, who so love Old Sarum! Is there a man who will say that this is right? And that the game should be kept, too, to eat up trees, to destroy plantations, to destroy what is first paid for the planting of! And that the public should pay keepers to preserve this game! And that the _people_ should be _transported_ if they go out by night to catch the game that they pay for feeding! Blessed state of an Aristocracy! It is pity that it has got a nasty, ugly, obstinate DEBT to deal with! It might possibly go on for ages, deer and all, were it not for this DEBT. This New Forest is a piece of property, as much belonging _to the public_ as the Custom-House at London is. There is no man, however poor, who has not a right in it. Every man is owner of a part of the deer, the game, and of the money that goes to the keepers; and yet, any man may be _transported_, if he go out by night to catch any part of this game! We are compelled to pay keepers for preserving game to eat up the trees that we are compelled to pay people to plant! Still however there is comfort; we _might_ be worse off; for the Turks made the Tartars pay a tax called _tooth-money_; that is to say, they eat up the victuals of the Tartars, and then made them pay for the _use of their teeth_. No man can say that we are come quite to that yet: and, besides, the poor Tartars had no DEBT, no blessed Debt to hold out hope to them.

The same person (a very civil and intelligent man) that showed me the nursery, took me, in my way, back, through some plantations of _oaks_, which have been made amongst fir-trees. It was, indeed, a plantation of Scotch firs, about twelve years old, in rows, at six feet apart. Every third row of firs was left, and oaks were (about six years ago) planted instead of the firs that were grubbed up; and the winter shelter, that the oaks have received from the remaining firs, has made them grow very finely, though the land is poor. Other oaks planted in the _open, twenty years_ ago, and in land deemed better, are not nearly so good. However, these oaks, between the firs, will take fifty or sixty good years to make them timber, and, until they be _timber_, they are of very little use; whereas the same ground, planted with Locusts (and the _hares_ of "my lords" kept down), would, at this moment, have been worth fifty pounds an acre. What do "my lords" care about this? _For them_, for "my lords," the New Forest would be no better than it is now; no, nor _so good_ as it is now; for there would be no hares for them.

From New Park, I was bound to Beaulieu Abbey, and I ought to have gone in a south-easterly direction, instead of going back to Lyndhurst, which lay in precisely the opposite direction. My guide through the plantations was not apprised of my intended route, and, therefore, did not instruct me. Just before we parted, he asked me _my name_: I thought it lucky that he had not asked it before! When we got nearly back to Lyndhurst, we found that we had come three miles out of our way; indeed, it made six miles altogether; for we were, when we got to Lyndhurst, three miles further from Beaulieu Abbey than we were when we were at New Park. We wanted, very much, to go to the site of this ancient and famous Abbey, of which the people of the New Forest seemed to know very little. They call the place _Bewley_, and even in the maps it is called _Bauley_. _Ley_, in the Saxon language, means _place_, or rather _open place_; so that they put _ley_ in place of _lieu_, thus beating the Normans out of some part of the name at any rate. I wished, besides, to see a good deal of this New Forest. I had been, before, from Southampton to Lyndhurst, from Lyndhurst to Lymington, from Lymington to Sway. I had now come in on the north of Minstead from Romsey, so that I had seen the north of the Forest and all the west side of it, down to the sea. I had now been to New Park and had got back to Lyndhurst; so that, if I rode across the Forest down to Beaulieu, I went right across the middle of it, from north-west to south-east. Then, if I turned towards Southampton, and went to Dipten and on to Ealing, I should see, in fact, the whole of this Forest, or nearly the whole of it.

We therefore started, or, rather, turned away from Lyndhurst, as soon as we got back to it, and went about six miles over a heath, even worse than Bagshot-Heath; as barren as it is possible for land to be. A little before we came to the village of Beaulieu (which, observe, the people call _Beuley_), we went through a wood, chiefly of beech, and that beech seemingly destined to grow food for pigs, of which we saw, during this day, many, many thousands. I should think that we saw at least a hundred hogs to one deer. I stopped, at one time, and counted the hogs and pigs just round about me, and they amounted to 140, all within 50 or 60 yards of my horse. After a very pleasant ride, on land without a stone in it, we came down to the Beaulieu river, the highest branch of which rises at the foot of a hill, about a mile and a half to the north-east of Lyndhurst. For a great part of the way down to Beaulieu it is a very insignificant stream. At last, however, augmented by springs from the different sand-hills, it becomes a little river, and has, on the sides of it, lands which were, formerly, very beautiful meadows. When it comes to the village of Beaulieu, it forms a large pond of a great many acres; and on the east side of this pond is the spot where this famous Abbey formerly stood, and where the external walls of which, or a large part of them, are now actually standing. We went down on the western side of the river. The Abbey stood, and the ruins stand, on the eastern side.

Happening to meet a man, before I got into the village, I, pointing with my whip across towards the Abbey, said to the man, "I suppose there is a bridge down here to get across to the Abbey." "That's not the Abbey, Sir," says he: "the Abbey is about four miles further on." I was astonished to hear this; but he was very positive; said that some people called it the Abbey; but that the Abbey was further on; and was at a farm occupied by farmer John Biel. Having chapter and verse for it, as the saying is, I believed the man; and pushed on towards farmer John Biel's, which I found, as he had told me, at the end of about four miles. When I got there (not having, observe, gone over the water to ascertain that the other was the spot where the Abbey stood), I really thought, at first, that this must have been the site of the Abbey of Beaulieu; because, the name meaning _fine place_, this was a thousand times finer place than that where the Abbey, as I afterwards found, really stood. After looking about it for some time, I was satisfied that it had not been an Abbey; but the place is one of the finest that ever was seen in this world. It stands at about half a mile's distance from the water's edge at high-water mark, and at about the middle of the space along the coast, from Calshot castle to Lymington haven. It stands, of course, upon a rising ground; it has a gentle slope down to the water. To the right, you see Hurst castle, and that narrow passage called the Needles, I believe; and, to the left, you see Spithead, and all the ships that are sailing or lie anywhere opposite Portsmouth. The Isle of Wight is right before you, and you have in view, at one and the same time, the towns of Yarmouth, Newton, Cowes and Newport, with all the beautiful fields of the island, lying upon the side of a great bank before, and going up the ridge of hills in the middle of the island. Here are two little streams, nearly close to the ruin, which filled ponds for fresh-water fish; while there was the Beaulieu river at about half a mile or three quarters of a mile to the left, to bring up the salt-water fish. The ruins consist of part of the walls of a building about 200 feet long and about 40 feet wide. It has been turned into a barn, in part, and the rest into cattle-sheds, cow-pens, and inclosures and walls to inclose a small yard. But there is another ruin, which was a church or chapel, and which stands now very near to the farm-house of Mr. John Biel, who rents the farm of the Duchess of Buccleugh, who is now the owner of the abbey-lands and of the lands belonging to this place. The little church or chapel, of which I have just been speaking, appears to have been a very beautiful building. A part only of its walls is standing; but you see, by what remains of the arches, that it was finished in a manner the most elegant and expensive of the day in which it was built. Part of the outside of the building is now surrounded by the farmer's garden: the interior is partly a pig-stye and partly a goose-pen. Under that arch which had once seen so many rich men bow their heads, we entered into the goose-pen, which is by no means one of the _nicest_ concerns in the world. Beyond the goose-pen was the pig-stye, and in it a hog, which, when fat, will weigh about 30 score, actually rubbing his shoulders against a little sort of column which had supported the font and its holy water. The farmer told us that there was a hole, which, indeed, we saw, going down into the wall, or rather, into the column where the font had stood. And he told us that many attempts had been made to bring water to fill that hole, but that it never had been done.

Mr. Biel was very civil to us. As far as related to us, he performed the office of hospitality, which was the main business of those who formerly inhabited the spot. He asked us to dine with him, which we declined, for want of time; but, being exceedingly hungry, we had some bread and cheese and some very good beer. The farmer told me that a great number of gentlemen had come there to look at that place; but that he never could find out what the place had been, or what the place at Beuley had been. I told him that I would, when I got to London, give him an account of it; that I would write the account down, and send it down to him. He seemed surprised that I should make such a promise, and expressed his wish not to give me so much trouble. I told him not to say a word about the matter, for that his bread and cheese and beer were so good that they deserved a full history to be written of the place where they had been eaten and drunk. "God bless me, Sir, no, no!" I said, I will, upon my soul, farmer. I now left him, very grateful on our part for his hospitable reception, and he, I dare say, hardly being able to believe his own ears, at the generous promise that I had made him, which promise, however, I am now about to fulfil. I told the farmer a little, upon the spot, to begin with. I told him that the name was all wrong: that it was no _Beuley_ but _Beaulieu_; and that Beaulieu meant _fine place_; and I proved this to him, in this manner. You know, said I, farmer, that when a girl has a sweet-heart, people call him her _beau_? Yes, said he, so they do. Very well. You know, also, that we say, sometimes, you shall have this in _lieu_ of that; and that when we say _lieu_, we mean in _place_ of that. Now the _beau_ means _fine_, as applied to the young man, and the _lieu_ means _place_; and thus it is, that the name of this place is _Beaulieu_, as it is so fine as you see it is. He seemed to be wonderfully pleased with the discovery; and we parted, I believe, with hearty good wishes on his part, and, I am sure, with very sincere thanks on my part.

The Abbey of Beaulieu was founded in the year 1204, by King John, for thirty monks of the reformed Benedictine Order. It was dedicated to the blessed Virgin Mary; it flourished until the year 1540, when it was suppressed, and the lands confiscated, in the reign of Henry VIII. Its revenues were, at that time, _four hundred and twenty-eight pounds, six shillings and eight pence a year_, making, in money of the present day, upwards of _eight thousand five hundred pounds_ a year. The lands and the abbey, and all belonging to it, were granted by the king, to one Thomas Wriothesley, who was a court-pander of that day. From him it passed by sale, by will, by marriage or by something or another, till, at last, it has got, after passing through various hands, into the hands of the Duchess of Buccleugh. So much for the abbey; and, now, as for the ruins on the farm of Mr. John Biel: they were the dwelling-place of Knights' Templars, or Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. The building they inhabited was called an Hospital, and their business was to relieve travellers, strangers, and persons in distress; and, if called upon, to accompany the king in his wars to uphold christianity. Their estate was also confiscated by Henry VIII. It was worth, at the time of being confiscated, upwards of _two thousand pounds a year_, money of the present day. This establishment was founded a little before the Abbey of Beaulieu was founded; and it was this foundation and not the other that gave the name of Beaulieu to both establishments. The Abbey is not situated in a very fine place. The situation is low; the lands above it rather a swamp than otherwise; pretty enough altogether; but by no means a fine place. The Templars had all the reason in the world to give the name of Beaulieu to their place. And it is by no means surprising that the monks were willing to apply it to their Abbey.

Now, farmer John Biel, I dare say that you are a very good Protestant; and I am a monstrous good Protestant too. We cannot bear the Pope, nor "they there priests that makes men confess their sins and go down upon their marrow-bones before them." But, master Biel, let us give the devil his due; and let us not act worse by those Roman Catholics (who by-the-bye were our forefathers) than we are willing to act by the devil himself. Now then, here were a set of monks, and also a set of Knights' Templars. Neither of them could marry; of course, neither of them could have wives and families. They could possess no private property; they could bequeath nothing; they could own nothing; but that which they owned in common with the rest of their body. They could hoard no money; they could save nothing. Whatever they received, as rent for their lands, they must necessarily spend upon the spot, for they never could quit that spot. They did spend it all upon the spot: they kept all the poor; Beuley, and all round about Beuley, saw no misery, and had never heard the damned name of pauper pronounced, as long as those monks and Templars continued! You and I are excellent Protestants, farmer John Biel; you and I have often assisted on the 5th of November to burn Guy Fawkes, the Pope and the Devil. But, you and I, farmer John Biel, would much rather be life holders under monks and Templars, than rack-renters under duchesses. The monks and the knights were the _lords_ of their manors; but the farmers under them were not rack-renters; the farmers under them held by lease of lives, continued in the same farms from father to son for hundreds of years; they were real yeomen, and not miserable rack-renters, such as now till the land of this once happy country, and who are little better than the drivers of the labourers, for the profit of the landlords. Farmer John Biel, what the Duchess of Buccleugh does, you know, and I do not. She may, for anything that I know to the contrary, leave her farms on lease of lives, with rent so very moderate and easy, as for the farm to be half as good as the farmer's own, at any rate. The Duchess may, for anything that I know to the contrary, feed all the hungry, clothe all the naked, comfort all the sick, and prevent the hated name of _pauper_ from being pronounced in the district of Beuley; her Grace may, for anything that I know to the contrary, make poor-rates to be wholly unnecessary and unknown in your country; she may receive, lodge, and feed the stranger; she may, in short, employ the rents of this fine estate of Beuley, to make the whole district happy; she may not carry a farthing of the rents away from the spot; and she may consume, by herself, and her own family and servants, only just as much as is necessary to the preservation of their life and health. Her Grace may do all this; I do not say or insinuate that she does not do it all; but, Protestant here or Protestant there, farmer John Biel, this I do say, that unless her Grace do all this, the monks and the Templars were better for Beuley than her Grace.

From the former station of the Templars, from real Beaulieu of the New Forest, we came back to the village of Beaulieu, and there crossed the water to come on towards Southampton. Here we passed close along under the old abbey walls, a great part of which are still standing. There is a mill here which appears to be turned by the fresh water, but the fresh water falls, here, into the salt water, as at the village of Botley. We did not stop to go about the ruins of the abbey; for you seldom make much out by minute inquiry. It is the political history of these places; or, at least, their connexion with political events, that is interesting. Just about the banks of this little river, there are some woods and coppices, and some corn-land; but, at the distance of half a mile from the water-side, we came out again upon the intolerable heath, and went on for seven or eight miles over that heath, from the village of Beaulieu to that of Marchwood. Having a list of trees and enclosed lands away to our right all the way along, which list of trees from the south-west side of that arm of the sea which goes from Chalshot castle to Redbridge, passing by Southampton, which lies on the north-east side. Never was a more barren tract of land than these seven or eight miles. We had come seven miles across the forest in another direction in the morning; so that a poorer spot than this New Forest, there is not in all England; nor, I believe, in the whole world. It is more barren and miserable than Bagshot heath. There are less fertile spots in it, in proportion to the extent of each. Still, it is so large, it is of such great extent, being, if moulded into a circle, not so little, I believe, as 60 or 70 miles in circumference, that it must contain some good spots of land, and, if properly and honestly managed, those spots must produce a prodigious quantity of timber. It is a pretty curious thing, that, while the admirers of the paper-system are boasting of our "_waust improvements Ma'am_," there should have been such a visible and such an enormous dilapidation in all the solid things of the country. I have, in former parts of this ride, stated, that, in some counties, while the parsons have been pocketing the amount of the tithes and of the glebe, they have suffered the parsonage-houses either to fall down and to be lost, brick by brick, and stone by stone, or to become such miserable places as to be unfit for anything bearing the name of a gentleman to live in; I have stated, and I am at any time ready to prove, that, in some counties, this is the case in more than one half of the parishes!

And now, amidst all these "waust improvements," let us see how the account of timber stands in the New Forest! In the year 1608, a survey of the timber, in the New Forest, was made, when there were loads of oak timber fit for the navy, 315,477. Mark that, reader. Another survey was taken in the year 1783; that is to say, in the glorious Jubilee reign. And, when there were, in this same New Forest, loads of oak timber fit for the navy, 20,830. "Waust improvements, Ma'am," under "the Pilot that weathered the storm," and in the reign of Jubilee! What the devil, some one would say, could have become of all this timber? Does the reader observe that there were three hundred and fifteen thousand, four hundred and seventy-seven _loads_? and does he observe that a load is _fifty-two cubic feet_? Does the reader know what is the price of this load of timber? I suppose it is now, taking in lop, top and bark, and bought upon the spot (timber fit for the navy, mind!), ten pounds a load at the least. But let us suppose that it has been, upon an average, since the year 1608, just the time that the Stuarts were mounting the throne; let us suppose that it has been, on an average, four pounds a load. Here is a pretty tough sum of money. This must have gone into the pockets of somebody. At any rate, if we had the same quantity of timber now that we had when the Protestant Reformation took place, or even when Old Betsy turned up her toes, we should be now three millions of money richer than we are; not in _bills_; not in notes payable to bearer on demand; not in Scotch "cash credits;" not, in short, in lies, falseness, impudence, downright blackguard cheatery and mining shares and "Greek cause" and the devil knows what.

I shall have occasion to return to this New Forest, which is, in reality, though, in general, a very barren district, a much more interesting object to Englishmen than are the services of my Lord Palmerston, and the warlike undertakings of Burdett, Galloway and Company; but I cannot quit this spot, even for the present, without asking the Scotch population-mongers and Malthus and his crew, and especially George Chalmers, if he should yet be creeping about upon the face of the earth, what becomes of all their notions of the scantiness of the ancient population of England; what becomes of all these notions, of all their bundles of ridiculous lies about the fewness of the people in former times; what becomes of them all, if historians have told us one word of truth, with regard to the formation of the New Forest, by William the Conqueror. All the historians say, every one of them says, that this King destroyed several populous towns and villages in order to make this New Forest.

RIDE: FROM WESTON, NEAR SOUTHAMPTON, TO KENSINGTON.

_Western Grove, 18th Oct. 1826._

I broke off abruptly, under this same date, in my last Register, when speaking of William the Conqueror's demolishing of towns and villages to make the New Forest; and I was about to show that all the historians have told us lies the most abominable about this affair of the New Forest; or, that the Scotch writers on population, and particularly Chalmers, have been the greatest of fools, or the most impudent of impostors. I, therefore, now resume this matter, it being, in my opinion, a matter of great interest, at a time, when, in order to account for the present notoriously _bad living_ of the people of England, it is asserted, that they are become greatly more numerous than they formerly were. This would be no defence of the Government, even if the fact were so; but, as I have, over and over again, proved, the fact is false; and, to this I challenge denial, that either churches and great mansions and castles were formerly made without hands; or, England was, seven hundred years ago, much more populous than it is now. But what has the formation of the New Forest to do with this? A great deal; for the historians tell us that, in order to make this Forest, William the Conqueror destroyed "many populous towns and villages, and thirty-six parish churches!" The devil he did! How _populous_, then, good God, must England have been at that time, which was about the year 1090; that is to say, 736 years ago! For, the Scotch will hardly contend that the _nature of the soil_ has been changed for the worse since that time, especially as it has not been cultivated. No, no; _brassy_ as they are, they will not do that. Come, then, let us see how this matter stands.

This Forest has been crawled upon by favourites, and is now much smaller than it used to be. A time may, and _will_ come, for inquiring HOW George Rose, and others, became _owners_ of some of the very best parts of this once-public property; a time for such inquiry _must_ come, before the people of England will ever give their consent to _a reduction of the interest of the debt_! But this we know, that the New Forest formerly extended, westward, from the Southampton Water and the River Oux, to the River Avon, and northward, from Lymington Haven to the borders of Wiltshire. We know that this was its utmost extent; and we know, also, that the towns of Christchurch, Lymington, Ringwood, and Fordingbridge, and the villages of Bolder, Fawley, Lyndhurst, Dipden, Eling, Minsted, and all the other villages that now have churches; we know, I say (and, pray mark it), that all these towns and villages existed before the Norman Conquest: because the _Roman names_ of several of them (all the towns) are in print, and because an account of them all is to be found in _Doomsday Book_, which was made by this very William the Conqueror. Well, then, now Scotch population-liars, and you Malthusian blasphemers, who contend that God has implanted in man a _principle_ that _leads him to starvation_; come, now, and face this history of the New Forest. Cooke, in his Geography of Hampshire, says, that the Conqueror destroyed here "many populous towns and villages, and thirty-six parish churches." The same writer says, that, in the time of Edward the Confessor (_just_ before the Conqueror came), "two-thirds of the Forest was inhabited and cultivated." Guthrie says nearly the same thing. But let us hear the two historians, who are now pitted against each other, Hume and Lingard. The former (vol. II. p. 277) says: "There was one pleasure to which William, as well as all the Normans and ancient Saxons, was extremely addicted, and that was hunting: but this pleasure he indulged more at the expense of his unhappy subjects, whose interests he always disregarded, than to the loss or diminution of his own revenue. Not content with those large forests, which former Kings possessed, in all parts of England, he resolved to make a new Forest, near Winchester, the usual place of his residence: and, for that purpose, he _laid waste_ the county of Hampshire, _for an extent of thirty miles, expelled the inhabitants_ from their houses, seized their property, even _demolished churches and convents_, and made the sufferers no compensation for the injury." Pretty well for a pensioned Scotchman: and now let us hear Dr. Lingard, to prevent his Society from _presenting whose work to me_, the sincere and pious Samuel Butler was ready to go down upon his _marrow bones_; let us hear the good Doctor upon this subject. He says (vol. I. pp. 452 and 453), "Though the King possessed sixty-eight forests, besides parks and chases, in different parts of England, he was not yet satisfied, but for the occasional accommodation of his court, afforested an _extensive tract of country_ lying between the city of Winchester and the sea coast. The _inhabitants were expelled_: the cottages and the _churches were burnt_; and more than _thirty square miles_ of a _rich and populous_ district were _withdrawn from cultivation_, and converted into a _wilderness_, to afford sufficient range for the deer, and ample space for the royal diversion. The memory of this act of despotism has been perpetuated in the name of the New Forest, which it retains at the present day, after the lapse of seven hundred and fifty years."

"_Historians_" should be careful how they make statements relative to _places_ which are within the scope of the reader's _inspection_. It is next to impossible not to believe that the Doctor has, in this case (a very interesting one), merely _copied_ from HUME. Hume says, that the King "_expelled_ the inhabitants;" and Lingard says "the inhabitants _were expelled_;" Hume says that the King "_demolished_ the churches;" and Lingard says that "the churches were _burnt_;" but Hume says, churches "and _convents_," and Lingard _knew_ that to be a lie. The Doctor was too learned upon the subject of "_convents_" to follow the Scotchman here. Hume says that the King "laid _waste_ the country for an _extent of thirty miles_." "The Doctor says that a district of _thirty square miles_ was withdrawn from cultivation, and converted into a _wilderness_." Now, what HUME meaned by the loose phrase, "an _extent of thirty miles_," I cannot say; but this I know, that Dr. Lingard's "thirty square miles" is a piece of ground only five and a half miles each way! So that the Doctor has got here a curious "_district_," and a not less curious "_wilderness_;" and what number of _churches_ could WILLIAM find to _burn_, in a space five miles and a half each way? If the Doctor meaned thirty _miles square_, instead of _square miles_, the falsehood is so monstrous as to destroy his credit for ever; for here we have Nine Hundred Square Miles, containing _five hundred and seventy-six thousand acres of land_; that is to say, 56,960 acres more than are contained in the whole of the county of Surrey, and 99,840 acres more than are contained in the whole of the county of Berks! This is "_history_," is it! And these are "_historians_."

The true statement is this: the New Forest, according to its ancient state, was bounded thus: by the line, going from the river Oux to the river Avon, and which line there separates Wiltshire from Hampshire; by the river Avon; by the sea from Christchurch to Calshot Castle; by the Southampton Water; and by the river Oux. These are the boundaries; and (as any one may, by scale and compass, ascertain), there are, within these boundaries, about 224 square miles, containing 143,360 acres of land. Within these limits there are now remaining eleven parish churches, all of which were in existence before the time of William the Conqueror; so that, if he destroyed thirty-six parish churches, what a populous country this must have been! There must have been forty-seven parish churches; so that there was, over this whole district, one parish church to every four and three quarters square miles! Thus, then, the churches must have stood, on an average, at within one mile and about two hundred yards of each other! And observe, the parishes could, on an average, contain no more, each, than 2,966 acres of land! Not a very large farm; so that here was a parish church to every large farm, unless these historians are all fools and liars.

I defy any one to say that I make hazardous assertions: I have plainly described the ancient boundaries: there are _the maps_: any one can, with scale and compass, measure the area as well as I can. I have taken the statements of historians, as they call themselves: I have shown that their histories, as they call them, are fabulous; OR (and mind this _or_) that England was, at one time, and that too, eight hundred years ago, _beyond all measure more populous than it is now_. For, observe, notwithstanding what Dr. Lingard asserts; notwithstanding that he describes this district as "_rich_," it is the very poorest in the whole kingdom. Dr. Lingard was, I believe, born and bred at Winchester; and how, then, could he be so careless; or, indeed, so regardless of truth (and I do not see why I am to mince the matter with him), as to describe this as a _rich district_? Innumerable persons have seen _Bagshot-Heath_; great numbers have seen the barren heaths between London and Brighton; great numbers, also, have seen that wide sweep of barrenness which exhibits itself between the Golden Farmer Hill and Black-water. Nine-tenths of each of these are less barren than four-fifths of the land in the New Forest. Supposing it to be credible that a man so prudent and so wise as William the Conqueror; supposing that such a man should have pitched upon a _rich_ and _populous_ district wherewith to make a chase; supposing, in short, these historians to have spoken the truth, and supposing this barren land to have been all inhabited and cultivated, and the people so numerous and so rich as to be able to build and endow a parish church upon every four and three quarters square miles upon this extensive district; supposing them to have been so rich in the produce of the soil as to want a priest to be stationed at every mile and 200 yards, in order to help them to eat it; supposing, in a word, these historians not to be the most farcical liars that ever put pen upon paper, this country must, at the time of the Norman conquest, have literally _swarmed_ with people; for, _there is the land now_, and all the land, too: neither Hume nor Dr. Lingard can change the nature of that. There it is, an acre of it not having, upon an average, so much of productive capacity in it as one single square rod, taking the average, of Worcestershire; and if I were to say one single _square yard_, I should be right; there is the land; and if that land were as these historians say it was, covered with people and with churches, what the devil must Worcestershire have been! To this, then, we come at last: having made out what I undertook to show; namely, that the historians, as they call themselves, are either the greatest fools or the greatest liars that ever existed, or that England was beyond all measure more populous eight hundred years ago than it is now.

Poor, however, as this district is, and culled about as it has been for the best spots of land by those favourites who have got grants of land or leases or something or other, still there are some spots here and there which would grow trees; but never will it grow trees, or anything else _to the profit of this nation_, until it become _private property_. Public property must, in some cases, be in the hands of public officers; but this is not an affair of that nature. This is too loose a concern; too little controllable by superiors. It is a thing calculated for jobbing, above all others; calculated to promote the success of favouritism. Who can imagine that the persons employed about plantations and farms for the public, are employed because _they are fit_ for the employment? Supposing the commissioners to hold in abhorrence the idea of paying for services to themselves under the name of paying for services to the public; supposing them never to have heard of such a thing in their lives, can they imagine that nothing of this sort takes place, while they are in London eleven months out of twelve in the year? I never feel disposed to cast much censure upon any of the persons engaged in such concerns. The temptation is too great to be resisted. The public must pay for everything _a pois d'or_. Therefore, no such thing should be in the hands of the public, or, rather, of the government; and I hope to live to see this thing completely taken out of the hands of this government.

It was night-fall when we arrived at Eling, that is to say, at the head of the Southampton Water. Our horses were very hungry. We stopped to bait them, and set off just about dusk to come to this place (Weston Grove), stopping at Southampton on our way, and leaving a letter to come to London. Between Southampton and this place, we cross a bridge over the Itchen river, and, coming up a hill into a common, which is called Town-hill Common, we passed, lying on our right, a little park and house, occupied by the Irish Bible-man, Lord Ashdown, I think they call him, whose real name is French, and whose family are so very _well known_ in the most unfortunate sister-kingdom. Just at the back of his house, in another sort of paddock-place, lives a man, whose name I forget, who was, I believe, a coachmaker in the East Indies, and whose father, or uncle, kept a turnpike gate at Chelsea, a few years ago. See the effects of "_industry_ and _enterprise_"! But even these would be nothing, were it not for this wondrous system by which money can be snatched away from the labourer in this very parish, for instance, sent off to the East Indies, there help to make a mass to put into the hands of an adventurer, and then the mass may be brought back in the pockets of the adventurer and cause him to be called a 'Squire by the labourer whose earnings were so snatched away! Wondrous system! Pity it cannot last for ever! Pity that it has got a Debt of a thousand millions to pay! Pity that it cannot turn paper into gold! Pity that it will make such fools of Prosperity Robinson and his colleagues!

The moon shone very bright by the time that we mounted the hill; and now, skirting the enclosures upon the edge of the common, we passed several of those cottages which I so well recollected, and in which I had the satisfaction to believe that the inhabitants were sitting comfortably with bellies full by a good fire. It was eight o'clock before we arrived at Mr. Chamberlayne's, whom I had not seen since, I think, the year 1816; for in the fall of that year I came to London, and I never returned to Botley (which is only about three miles and a half from Weston) to stay there for any length of time. To those who like water-scenes (as nineteen-twentieths of people do) it is the prettiest spot, I believe, in all England. Mr. Chamberlayne built the house about twenty years ago. He has been bringing the place to greater and greater perfection from that time to this. All round about the house is in the neatest possible order. I should think that, altogether, there cannot be so little as _ten acres of short grass_; and when I say _that_, those who know anything about gardens will form a pretty correct general notion as to the _scale_ on which the thing is carried on. Until of late, Mr. Chamberlayne was owner of only a small part, comparatively, of the lands hereabouts. He is now the owner, I believe, of the whole of the lands that come down to the water's edge and that lie between the ferry over the Itchen at Southampton, and the river which goes out from the Southampton Water at Hamble. And now let me describe, as well as I can, what this land and its situation are.

The Southampton Water begins at Portsmouth, and goes up by Southampton, to Redbridge, being, upon an average, about two miles wide, having, on the one side, the New Forest, and on the other side, for a great part of the way, this fine and beautiful estate of Mr. Chamberlayne. Both sides of this water have rising lands divided into hill and dale, and very beautifully clothed with trees, the woods and lawns and fields being most advantageously intermixed. It is very curious that, at the _back_ of each of these tracts of land, there are extensive heaths, on this side as well as on the New Forest side. To stand here and look across the water at the New Forest, you would imagine that it was really _a country of woods_; for you can see nothing of the heaths from here; those heaths over which we rode, and from which we could see a windmill down among the trees, which windmill is now to be seen just opposite this place. So that the views from this place are the most beautiful that can be imagined. You see up the water and down the water, to Redbridge one way and out to Spithead the other way. Through the trees, to the right, you see the spires of Southampton, and you have only to walk a mile, over a beautiful lawn and through a not less beautiful wood, to find, in a little dell, surrounded with lofty woods, the venerable ruins of _Netley Abbey_, which make part of Mr. Chamberlayne's estate.

The woods here are chiefly of oak; the ground consists of a series of hill and dale, as you go long-wise from one end of the estate to the other, _about six miles in length_. Down almost every little valley that divides these hills or hillocks, there is more or less of water, making the underwood, in those parts, very thick, and dark to go through; and these form the most delightful contrast with the fields and lawns. There are innumerable vessels of various sizes continually upon the water; and, to those that delight in water-scenes, this is certainly the very prettiest place that I ever saw in my life. I had seen it many years ago; and, as I intended to come here on my way home, I told George, before we set out, that I would show him _another Weston_ before we got to London. The parish in which his father's house is, is also called Weston, and a very beautiful spot it certainly is; but I told him I questioned whether I could not show him a still prettier Weston than that. We let him alone for the first day. He sat in the house, and saw great multitudes of pheasants and partridges upon the lawn before the window: he went down to the water-side by himself, and put his foot upon the ground to see the tide rise. He seemed very much delighted. The second morning, at breakfast, we put it to him, which he would rather have; this Weston or the Weston he had left in Herefordshire; but, though I introduced the question in a way almost to extort a decision in favour of the Hampshire Weston, he decided instantly and plump for the other, in a manner very much to the delight of Mr. Chamberlayne and his sister. So true it is that, when people are uncorrupted, they always _like home best_, be it, in itself, what it may.

Everything that nature can do has been done here; and money most judiciously employed has come to her assistance. Here are a thousand things to give pleasure to any rational mind; but there is one thing, which, in my estimation, surpasses, in pleasure, to contemplate, all the lawns and all the groves and all the gardens and all the game and everything else; and that is, the real, unaffected goodness of the owner of this estate. He is a member for Southampton; he has other fine estates; he has great talents; he is much admired by all who know him; but he has done more by his justice, by his just way of thinking with regard to the labouring people, than in all other ways put together. This was nothing new to me; for I was well informed of it several years ago, though I had never heard him speak of it in my life. When he came to this place, the common wages of day-labouring men were _thirteen shillings a week_, and the wages of carpenters, bricklayers, and other tradesmen, were in proportion. Those wages he _has given, from that time to this_, without any abatement whatever. With these wages, a man can live, having, at the same time, other advantages attending the working for such a man as Mr. Chamberlayne. He has got less money in his bags than he would have had, if he had ground men down in their wages; but if his sleep be not sounder than that of the hard-fisted wretch that can walk over grass and gravel, kept in order by a poor creature that is half-starved; if his sleep be not sounder than the sleep of such a wretch, then all that we have been taught is false, and there is no difference between the man who feeds and the man who starves the poor: all the Scripture is a bundle of lies, and instead of being propagated it ought to be flung into the fire.

It is curious enough that those who are the least disposed to give good wages to the labouring people, should be the most disposed to discover for them _schemes for saving their money_! I have lately seen, I saw it at Uphusband, a prospectus, or scheme, for establishing what they call a _County Friendly Society_. This is a scheme for getting from the poor a part of the wages that they receive. Just as if a poor fellow could _put anything by_ out of eight shillings a week! If, indeed, the schemers were to pay the labourers twelve or thirteen shillings a week; then these might have something to lay by at some times of the year; but then, indeed, there would be _no poor-rates wanted_; and it is to _get rid of the poor-rates_ that these schemers have invented their society. What wretched drivellers they must be: to think that they should be able to make the pauper keep the pauper; to think that they shall be able to make the man that is half-starved lay by part of his loaf! I know of no county where the poor are worse treated than in many parts of this county of Hants. It is happy to know of one instance in which they are well treated; and I deem it a real honour to be under the roof of him who has uniformly set so laudable an example in this most important concern. What are all his riches to me? They form no title to my respect. 'Tis not for me to set myself up in judgment as to his taste, his learning, his various qualities and endowments; but of these his unequivocal works I am a competent judge. I know how much good he must do; and there is a great satisfaction in reflecting on the great happiness that he must feel, when, in laying his head upon his pillow of a cold and dreary winter night, he reflects that there are scores, aye, scores upon scores, of his country-people, of his poor neighbours, of those whom the Scripture denominates his brethren, who have been enabled, through him, to retire to a warm bed after spending a cheerful evening and taking a full meal by the side of their own fire. People may talk what they will about _happiness_; but I can figure to myself no happiness surpassing that of the man who falls to sleep with reflections like these in his mind.

Now observe, it is a duty, on my part, to relate what I have here related as to the conduct of Mr. Chamberlayne; not a duty towards _him_; for I can do him no good by it, and I do most sincerely believe, that both he and his equally benevolent sister would rather that their goodness remained unproclaimed; but it is a duty towards my country, and particularly towards my readers. Here is a striking and a most valuable practical example. Here is a whole neighbourhood of labourers living as they ought to live; enjoying that happiness which is the just reward of their toil. And shall I suppress facts so honourable to those who are the cause of this happiness, facts so interesting in themselves, and so likely to be useful in the way of example; shall I do this, aye, and, besides this, _tacitly_ give a _false account_ of Weston Grove, and this, too, from the stupid and cowardly fear of being accused of flattering a rich man?

Netley Abbey ought, it seems, to be called Letley Abbey, the Latin name being Laetus Locus, or Pleasant Place. _Letley_ was made up of an abbreviation of the _Laetus_ and of the Saxon word _ley_, which meaned _place_, _field_, or _piece of ground_. This Abbey was founded by Henry III. in 1239, for 12 Monks of the Benedictine order; and when suppressed by the wife-killer, its revenues amounted to 3,200_l._ a year of our present money. The possessions of these monks were, by the wife-killing founder of the Church of England, given away (though they belonged to the public) to one of his court sycophants, Sir William Paulet, a man the most famous in the whole world for sycophancy, time-serving, and for all those qualities which usually distinguish the favourites of kings like the wife-killer. This Paulet changed from the Popish to Henry the Eighth's religion, and was a great actor in punishing the papists; when Edward VI. came to the throne, this Paulet turned protestant, and was a great actor in punishing those who adhered to Henry VIIIth's religion: when Queen Mary came to the throne, this Paulet turned back to papist, and was one of the great actors in sending protestants to be burnt in Smithfield: when Old Bess came to the throne, this Paulet turned back to protestant again, and was, until the day of his death, one of the great actors in persecuting, in fining, in mulcting, and in putting to death those who still had the virtue and the courage to adhere to the religion in which they and he had been born and bred. The _head_ of this family got, at last, to be Earl of Wiltshire, Marquis of Winchester, and Duke of Bolton. This last title is now _gone_; or, rather, it is changed to that of "Lord Bolton," which is now borne by a man of the name of Orde, who is the son of a man of that name, who died some years ago, and who married a daughter (I think it was) of the last "Duke of Bolton."

Pretty curious, and not a little interesting, to look back at the _origin_ of this Dukedom of Bolton, and, then, to look at the person now bearing the title of _Bolton_; and, then, to go to Abbotston, near Winchester, and survey the ruins of the proud palace, once inhabited by the Duke of Bolton, which ruins, and the estate on which they stand, are now the property of the Loan-maker, Alexander Baring! Curious turn of things! Henry the wife-killer and his confiscating successors _granted_ the estates of Netley, and of many other monasteries, to the head of these Paulets: to maintain these and other similar grants, a thing called a "Reformation" was made: to maintain the "Reformation," a "Glorious Revolution" was made: to maintain the "Glorious Revolution" a _Debt_ was made: to maintain the Debt, a large part of the rents must go to the Debt-Dealers, or Loan-makers: and thus, at last, the Barings, only in this one neighbourhood, have become the successors of the Wriothesleys, the Paulets, and the Russells, who, throughout all the reigns of confiscation, were constantly _in the way_, when a distribution of good things was taking place! Curious enough all this; but, the thing will not _stop here_. The Loan-makers think that they shall outwit the old grantee-fellows; and so they might, and the people too, and the devil himself; but they cannot out-wit _events_. Those events _will have a thorough rummaging_; and of this fact the "turn-of-the-market" gentlemen may be assured. Can it be _law_ (I put the question to _lawyers_), can it be _law_ (I leave reason and justice out of the inquiry), can it be _law_, that, if I, to-day, see dressed in good clothes, and with a full purse, a man who was notoriously penniless yesterday; can it be law, that I (being a justice of the peace) have a right to demand of that man _how he came by his clothes and his purse_? And, can it be _law_, that I, seeing with an estate a man who was notoriously not worth a crown piece a few years ago, and who is notoriously related to nothing more than one degree above beggary; can it be _law_, that I, a magistrate, seeing this, have not a right to demand of this man how he came by his estate? No matter, however; for, if both these be law now, they will not, I trust, be law in a few years from this time.

Mr. Chamberlayne has caused the ancient _fish-ponds_, at Netley Abbey, to be "reclaimed," as they call it. What a loss, what a national loss, there has been in this way, and in the article of water fowl! I am quite satisfied that, in these two articles and in that of _rabbits_, the nation has lost, has had annihilated (within the last 250 years) food sufficient for two days in the week, on an average, taking the year throughout. These are things, too, which cost so little labour! You can see the marks of old fish-ponds in thousands and thousands of places. I have noticed, I dare say, five hundred, since I left home. A trifling expense would, in most cases, restore them; but now-a-days all is looked for at shops: all is to be had by trafficking: scarcely any one thinks of providing for his own wants out of his own land and other his own domestic means. To buy the thing, _ready made_, is the taste of the day; thousands, who are housekeepers, buy their dinners ready cooked; nothing is so common as to rent breasts for children to suck: a man actually advertised, in the London papers, about two month ago, to supply childless husbands with heirs! In this case the articles were, of course, to be _ready made_; for to make them "to order" would be the devil of a business; though in desperate cases even this is, I believe, sometimes resorted to.

_Hambledon, Sunday, 22nd Oct. 1826._

We left Weston Grove on Friday morning, and came across to Botley, where we remained during the rest of the day, and until after breakfast yesterday. I had not seen "the Botley Parson" for several years, and I wished to have a look at him now, but could not get a sight of him, though we rode close before his house, at much about his breakfast time, and though we gave him the strongest of invitation that could be expressed by hallooing and by cracking of whips! The fox was too cunning for us, and do all we could, we could not provoke him to put even his nose out of kennel. From Mr. James Warner's at Botley we went to Mr. Hallett's, at Allington, and had the very great pleasure of seeing him in excellent health. We intended to go back to Botley, and then to go to Titchfield, and, in our way to this place, over Portsdown Hill, whence I intended to show George the harbour and the fleet, and (of still more importance) the spot on which we signed the "Hampshire Petition," in 1817; that petition which foretold that which the "Norfolk Petition" confirmed; that petition which will be finally acted upon, or.... That petition was the very _last thing that I wrote at Botley_. I came to London in November 1816; the Power-of-Imprisonment Bill was passed in February, 1817; just before it was passed, the Meeting took place on Portsdown Hill; and I, in my way to the hill from London, stopped at Botley and wrote the petition. We had one meeting afterwards at Winchester, when I heard parsons swear like troopers, and saw one of them hawk up his spittle, and spit it into Lord Cochrane's poll! Ah! my bucks, we have you _now_! You are got nearly to the end of your tether; and, what is more, _you know it_. Pay off the Debt, parsons! It is useless to swear and spit, and to present addresses applauding Power-of-Imprisonment Bills, unless you can pay off the Debt! Pay off the Debt, parsons! They say you can _lay_ the devil. Lay _this_ devil, then; or, confess that he is too many for you; aye, and for Sturges Bourne, or Bourne Sturges (I forget which), at your backs!

From Arlington, we, fearing that it would rain before we could get round by Titchfield, came across the country over Waltham Chase and Soberton Down. The chase was very green and fine; but the down was the very greenest thing that I have seen in the whole country. It is not a large down; perhaps not more than five or six hundred acres; but the land is good, the chalk is at a foot from the surface, or more; the mould is a hazel mould; and when I was upon the opposite hill, I could, though I knew the spot very well, hardly believe that it was a down. The green was darker than that of any pasture or even any sainfoin or clover that I had seen throughout the whole of my ride; and I should suppose that there could not have been many less than a thousand sheep in the three flocks that were feeding upon the down when I came across it. I do not speak with anything like positiveness as to the measurement of this down; but I do not believe that it exceeds six hundred and fifty acres. They must have had more rain in this part of the country than in most other parts of it. Indeed, no part of Hampshire seems to have suffered very much from the drought. I found the turnips pretty good, of both sorts, all the way from Andover to Rumsey. Through the New Forest, you may as well expect to find loaves of bread growing in fields as turnips, where there are any fields for them to grow in. From Redbridge to Weston, we had not light enough to see much about us; but when we came down to Botley, we there found the turnips as good as I had ever seen them in my life, as far I could judge from the time I had to look at them. Mr. Warner has as fine turnip fields as I ever saw him have, Swedish turnips and white also; and pretty nearly the same may be said of the whole of that neighbourhood for many miles round.

After quitting Soberton Down, we came up a hill leading to Hambledon, and turned off to our left to bring us down to Mr. Goldsmith's at West End, where we now are, at about a mile from the village of Hambledon. A village it _now_ is; but it was formerly a considerable market-town, and it had three fairs in the year. There is now not even the name of market left, I believe; and the fairs amount to little more than a couple or three gingerbread-stalls, with dolls and whistles for children. If you go through the place, you see that it has been a considerable town. The church tells the same story; it is now a tumble-down rubbishy place; it is partaking in the fate of all those places which were formerly a sort of rendezvous for persons who had things to buy and things to sell. _Wens_ have devoured market-towns and villages; and _shops_ have devoured _markets and fairs_; and this, too, to the infinite injury of the most numerous classes of the people. Shop-keeping, merely as shop-keeping, is injurious to any community. What are the shop and the shop-keeper for? To receive and distribute the produce of the land. There are other articles, certainly; but the main part is the produce of the land. The shop must be paid for; the shop-keeper must be kept; and the one must be paid for and the other must be kept by the consumer of the produce; or, perhaps, partly by the consumer and partly by the producer.

When fairs were very frequent, shops were not needed. A manufacturer of shoes, of stockings, of hats; of almost any thing that man wants, could manufacture at home in an obscure hamlet, with cheap house-rent, good air, and plenty of room. He need pay no heavy rent for shop; and no disadvantages from confined situation; and, then, by attending three or four or five or six fairs in a year, he sold the work of his hands, unloaded with a heavy expense attending the keeping of a shop. He would get more for ten shillings in a booth at a fair or market, than he would get in a shop for ten or twenty pounds. Of course he could afford to sell the work of his hands for less; and thus a greater portion of their earnings remained with those who raised the food and the clothing from the land. I had an instance of this in what occurred to myself at Weyhill fair. When I was at Salisbury, in September, I wanted to buy a whip. It was a common hunting-whip, with a hook to it to pull open gates with, and I could not get it for less than seven shillings and sixpence. This was more than I had made up my mind to give, and I went on with my switch. When we got to Weyhill fair, George had made shift to lose his whip some time before, and I had made him go without one by way of punishment. But now, having come to the fair, and seeing plenty of whips, I bought him one, just such a one as had been offered me at Salisbury for seven and sixpence, for four and sixpence; and, seeing the man with his whips afterwards, I thought I would have one myself; and he let me have it for three shillings. So that, here were two whips, precisely of the same kind and quality as the whip at Salisbury, bought for the money which the man at Salisbury asked me for one whip. And yet, far be it from me to accuse the man at Salisbury of an attempt at extortion: he had an expensive shop, and a family in a town to support, while my Weyhill fellow had been making his whips in some house in the country, which he rented, probably for five or six pounds a year, with a good garden to it. Does not every one see, in a minute, how this exchanging of fairs and markets for shops creates _idlers and traffickers_; creates those locusts, called middle-men, who create nothing, who add to the value of nothing, who improve nothing, but who live in idleness, and who live well, too, out of the labour of the producer and the consumer. The fair and the market, those wise institutions of our forefathers, and with regard to the management of which they were so scrupulously careful; the fair and the market bring the producer and the consumer in contact with each other. Whatever is gained is, at any rate, gained by one or the other of these. The fair and the market bring them together, and enable them to act for their mutual interest and convenience. The shop and the trafficker keeps them apart; the shop hides from both producer and consumer the real state of matters. The fair and the market lay everything open: going to either, you see the state of things at once; and the transactions are fair and just, not disfigured, too, by falsehood, and by those attempts at deception which disgrace traffickings in general.

Very wise, too, and very just, were the laws against _forestalling_ and _regrating_. They were laws to prevent the producer and the consumer from being cheated by the trafficker. There are whole bodies of men; indeed, a very large part of the community, who live in idleness in this country, in consequence of the whole current of the laws now running in favour of the trafficking monopoly. It has been a great object with all wise governments, in all ages, from the days of Moses to the present day, to confine trafficking, mere trafficking, to as few hands as possible. It seems to be the main object of this government to give all possible encouragement to traffickers of every description, and to make them swarm like the lice of Egypt. There is that numerous sect, the Quakers. This sect arose in England: they were engendered by the Jewish system of usury. Till _excises_ and _loanmongering_ began, these vermin were never heard of in England. They seem to have been hatched by that fraudulent system, as maggots are bred by putrid meat, or as the flounders come in the livers of rotten sheep. The base vermin do not pretend to work: all they talk about is dealing; and the government, in place of making laws that would put them in the stocks, or cause them to be whipped at the cart's tail, really seem anxious to encourage them and to increase their numbers; nay, it is not long since Mr. Brougham had the effrontery to move for leave to bring in a bill to make men liable to be hanged upon the bare word of these vagabonds. This is, with me, something never to be forgotten. But everything tends the same way: all the regulations, all the laws that have been adopted of late years, have a tendency to give encouragement to the trickster and the trafficker, and to take from the labouring classes all the honour and a great part of the food that fairly belonged to them.

In coming along yesterday, from Waltham Chase to Soberton Down, we passed by a big white house upon a hill that was, when I lived at Botley, occupied by one Goodlad, who was a cock justice of the peace, and who had been a chap of some sort or other, in _India_. There was a man of the name of Singleton, who lived in Waltham Chase, and who was deemed to be a great poacher. This man, having been forcibly ousted by the order of this Goodlad and some others from an encroachment that he had made in the forest, threatened revenge. Soon after this, a horse (I forget to whom it belonged) was stabbed or shot in the night-time in a field. Singleton was taken up, tried at Winchester, convicted and _transported_. I cannot relate exactly what took place. I remember that there were some curious circumstances attending the conviction of this man. The people in that neighbourhood were deeply impressed with these circumstances. Singleton was transported; but Goodlad and his wife were both dead and buried, in less, I believe, than three months after the departure of poor Singleton. I do not know that any injustice really was done; but I do know that a great impression was produced, and a very sorrowful impression, too, on the minds of the people in that neighbourhood.

I cannot quit Waltham Chase without observing, that I heard, last year, that a Bill was about to be petitioned for, to enclose that Chase! Never was so monstrous a proposition in this world. The Bishop of Winchester is Lord of the Manor over this Chase. If the Chase be enclosed, the timber must be cut down, young and old; and here are a couple of hundred acres of land, worth ten thousand acres of land in the New Forest. This is as fine timber land as any in the wealds of Surrey, Sussex or Kent. There are two enclosures of about 40 acres each, perhaps, that were simply surrounded by a bank being thrown up about twenty years ago, only twenty years ago, and on the poorest part of the Chase, too; and these are now as beautiful plantations of young oak trees as man ever set his eyes on; many of them as big or bigger round than my thigh! Therefore, besides the sweeping away of two or three hundred cottages; besides plunging into ruin and misery all these numerous families, here is one of the finest pieces of timber land in the whole kingdom, going to be cut up into miserable clay fields, for no earthly purpose but that of gratifying the stupid greediness of those who think that they must gain, if they add to the breadth of their private fields. But if a thing like this be permitted, we must be prettily furnished with Commissioners of woods and forests! I do not believe that they will sit in Parliament and see a Bill like this passed and hold their tongues; but if they were to do it, there is no measure of reproach which they would not merit. Let them go and look at the two plantations of oaks, of which I have just spoken; and then let them give their consent to such a Bill if they can.

_Thursley, Monday Evening, 23rd October._

When I left Weston, my intention was, to go from Hambledon to Up Park, thence to Arundel, thence, to Brighton, thence to East-bourne, thence to Wittersham in Kent, and then by Cranbrook, Tunbridge, Godstone and Reigate to London; but when I got to Botley, and particularly when I got to Hambledon, I found my horse's back so much hurt by the saddle, that I was afraid to take so long a stretch, and therefore resolved to come away straight to this place, to go hence to Reigate, and so to London. Our way, therefore, this morning, was over Butser-hill to Petersfield, in the first place; then to Lyphook and then to this place, in all about twenty-four miles. Butser-hill belongs to the back chain of the South Downs; and, indeed, it terminates that chain to the westward. It is the highest hill in the whole country. Some think that Hindhead, which is the famous sand-hill over which the Portsmouth road goes at sixteen miles to the north of this great chalk-hill; some think that Hindhead is the highest hill of the two. Be this as it may, Butser-hill, which is the right-hand hill of the two between which you go at three miles from Petersfield going towards Portsmouth; this Butser-hill, is, I say, quite high enough; and was more than high enough for us, for it took us up amongst clouds that wet us very nearly to the skin. In going from Mr. Goldsmith's to the hill, it is all up hill for five miles. Now and then a little stoop; not much; but regularly, with these little exceptions, up hill for these five miles. The hill appears, at a distance, to be a sharp ridge on its top. It is, however, not so. It is, in some parts, half a mile wide or more. The road lies right along the middle of it from west to east, and, just when you are at the highest part of the hill, it is very narrow from north to south; not more, I think, than about a hundred or a hundred and thirty yards.

This is as interesting a spot, I think, as the foot of man ever was placed upon. Here are two valleys, one to your right and the other to your left, very little less than half a mile down to the bottom of them, and much steeper than a tiled roof of a house. These valleys may be, where they join the hill, three or four hundred yards broad. They get wider as they get farther from the hill. Of a clear day you see all the north of Hampshire; nay, the whole county, together with a great part of Surrey and of Sussex. You see the whole of the South Downs to the eastward as far as your eye can carry you; and, lastly, you see over Portsdown Hill, which lies before you to the south; and there are spread open to your view the isle of Portsea, Porchester, Wimmering, Fareham, Gosport, Portsmouth, the harbour, Spithead, the Isle of Wight and the ocean.

But something still more interesting occurred to me here in the year 1808, when I was coming on horseback over the same hill from Botley to London. It was a very beautiful day and in summer. Before I got upon the hill (on which I had never been before), a shepherd told me to keep on in the road in which I was, till I came to the London turnpike road. When I got to within a quarter of a mile of this particular point of the hill, I saw, at this point, what I thought was a cloud of dust; and, speaking to my servant about it, I found that he thought so too; but this cloud of dust disappeared all at once. Soon after, there appeared to arise another cloud of dust at the same place, and then that disappeared, and the spot was clear again. As we were trotting along, a pretty smart pace, we soon came to this narrow place, having one valley to our right and the other valley to our left, and, there, to my great astonishment, I saw the clouds come one after another, each appearing to be about as big as two or three acres of land, skimming along in the valley on the north side, a great deal below the tops of the hills; and successively, as they arrived at our end of the valley, rising up, crossing the narrow pass, and then descending down into the other valley and going off to the south; so that we who sate there upon our horses, were alternately in clouds and in sunshine. It is an universal rule, that if there be a fog in the morning, and that fog go from the valleys to the tops of the hills, there will be rain that day; and if it disappear by sinking in the valley, there will be no rain that day. The truth is, that fogs are clouds, and clouds are fogs. They are more or less full of water; but they are all water; sometimes a sort of steam, and sometimes water that falls in drops. Yesterday morning the fogs had ascended to the tops of the hills; and it was raining on all the hills round about us before it began to rain in the valleys. We, as I observed before, got pretty nearly wet to the skin upon the top of Butser-hill; but we had the pluck to come on and let the clothes dry upon our backs.

I must here relate something that appears very interesting to me, and something, which, though it must have been seen by every man that has lived in the country, or, at least, in any hilly country, has never been particularly mentioned by anybody as far as I can recollect. We frequently talk of clouds coming from _dews_; and we actually see the heavy fogs become clouds. We see them go up to the tops of hills, and, taking a swim round, actually come and drop down upon us and wet us through. But I am now going to speak of clouds coming out of the sides of hills in exactly the same manner that you see smoke come out of a tobacco pipe, and rising up, with a wider and wider head, like the smoke from a tobacco-pipe, go to the top of the hill or over the hill, or very much above it, and then come over the valleys in rain. At about a mile's distance from Mr. Palmer's house at Bollitree, in Herefordshire, there is a large, long beautiful wood, covering the side of a lofty hill, winding round in the form of a crescent, the bend of the crescent being towards Mr. Palmer's house. It was here that I first observed this mode of forming clouds. The first time I noticed it, I pointed it out to Mr. Palmer. We stood and observed cloud after cloud come out from different parts of the side of the hill, and tower up and go over the hill out of sight. He told me that that was a certain sign that it would rain that day, for that these clouds would come back again, and would fall in rain. It rained sure enough; and I found that the country people, all round about, had this mode of the forming of the clouds as a sign of rain. The hill is called Penyard, and this forming of the clouds they call Old Penyard's _smoking his pipe_; and it is a rule that it is sure to rain during the day if Old Penyard smokes his pipe in the morning. These appearances take place, especially in warm and sultry weather. It was very warm yesterday morning: it had thundered violently the evening before: we felt it hot even while the rain fell upon us at Butser-hill. Petersfield lies in a pretty broad and very beautiful valley. On three sides of it are very lofty hills, partly downs and partly covered with trees: and, as we proceeded on our way from the bottom of Butser-hill to Petersfield, we saw thousands upon thousands of clouds, continually coming puffing out from different parts of these hills and towering up to the top of them. I stopped George several times to make him look at them; to see them come puffing out of the chalk downs as well as out of the woodland hills; and bade him remember to tell his father of it when he should get home, to convince him that the hills of Hampshire could smoke their pipes as well as those of Herefordshire. This is a really curious matter. I have never read, in any book, anything to lead me to suppose that the observation has ever found its way into print before. Sometimes you will see only one or two clouds during a whole morning, come out of the side of a hill; but we saw thousands upon thousands, bursting out, one after another, in all parts of these immense hills. The first time that I have leisure, when I am in the high countries again, I will have a conversation with some old shepherd about this matter; if he cannot enlighten me upon the subject, I am sure that no philosopher can.

We came through Petersfield without stopping, and baited our horses at Lyphook, where we stayed about half an hour. In coming from Lyphook to this place, we overtook a man who asked for relief. He told me he was a weaver, and, as his accent was northern, I was about to give him the balance that I had in hand arising from our savings in the fasting way, amounting to about three shillings and sixpence; but, unfortunately for him, I asked him what place he had lived at as a weaver; and he told me that he was a Spitalfields weaver. I instantly put on my glove and returned my purse into my pocket, saying, go, then, to Sidmouth and Peel and the rest of them "and get relief; for I have this minute, while I was stopping at Lyphook, read in the _Evening Mail_ newspaper, an address to the King from the Spitalfields' weavers, for which address they ought to suffer death from starvation. In that address those base wretches tell the King, that they were loyal men: that they detested the designing men who were guilty of seditious practices in 1817; they, in short, express their approbation of the Power-of-imprisonment Bill, of all the deeds committed against the Reformers in 1817 and 1819; they, by fair inference, express their approbation of the thanks given to the Manchester Yeomanry. You are one of them; my name is William Cobbett, and I would sooner relieve a dog than relieve you." Just as I was closing my harangue, we overtook a country-man and woman that were going the same way. The weaver attempted explanations. He said that they only said it in order to get relief; but that they did not mean it in their hearts. "Oh, base dogs!" said I: "it is precisely by such men that ruin is brought upon nations; it is precisely by such baseness and insincerity, such scandalous cowardice, that ruin has been brought upon them. I had two or three shillings to give you; I had them in my hand: I have put them back into my purse: I trust I shall find somebody more worthy of them: rather than give them to you, I would fling them into that sand-pit and bury them for ever."

How curiously things happen! It was by mere accident that I took up a newspaper to read: it was merely because I was compelled to stay a quarter of an hour in the room without doing anything, and above all things it was miraculous that I should take up the _Evening Mail_, into which, I believe, I never before looked, in my whole life. I saw the royal arms at the top of the paper; took it for the _Old Times_, and, in a sort of lounging mood, said to George, "Give me hold of that paper, and let us see what that foolish devil Anna Brodie says." Seeing the words "_Spitalfields_," I read on till I got to the base and scoundrelly part of the address. I then turned over, and looked at the title of the paper and the date of it, resolving, in my mind, to have satisfaction, of some sort or other, upon these base vagabonds. Little did I think that an opportunity would so soon occur of showing my resentment against them, and that, too, in so striking, so appropriate, and so efficient a manner. I dare say, that it was some tax-eating scoundrel who drew up this address (which I will insert in the Register, as soon as I can find it); but that is nothing to me and my fellow sufferers of 1817 and 1819. This infamous libel upon us is published under the name of the Spitalfields weavers; and, if I am asked what the poor creatures were to do, being without bread as they were, I answer by asking whether they could find no knives to cut their throats with; seeing that they ought to have cut their throats ten thousand times over, if they could have done it, rather than sanction the publication of so infamous a paper as this.

It is not thus that the weavers in the north have acted. Some scoundrel wanted to inveigle them into an applauding of the Ministers; but they, though nothing so infamous as this address was proposed to them, rejected the proposition, though they were ten times more in want than the weavers of Spitalfields have ever been. They were only called upon to applaud the Ministers for the recent Orders in Council; but they justly said that the Ministers had a great deal more to do, before they would merit their applause. What would these brave and sensible men have said to a tax-eating scoundrel, who should have called upon them to present an address to the King, and in that address to applaud the terrible deeds committed against the people in 1817 and 1819! I have great happiness in reflecting that this baseness of the Spitalfields weavers will not bring them one single mouthful of bread. This will be their lot; this will be the fruit of their baseness: and the nation, the working classes of the nation, will learn, from this, that the way to get redress of their grievances, the way to get food and raiment in exchange for their labour, the way to ensure good treatment from the Government, is not to crawl to that Government, to lick its hands, and seem to deem it an honour to be its slaves.

Before we got to Thursley, I saw three poor fellows getting in turf for their winter fuel, and I gave them a shilling apiece. To a boy at the bottom of Hindhead, I gave the other sixpence, towards buying him a pair of gloves; and thus I disposed of the money which was, at one time, actually out of my purse, and going into the hand of the loyal Spitalfields weaver.

We got to this place (Mr. Knowles's of Thursley) about 5 o'clock in the evening, very much delighted with our ride.

_Kensington, Thursday, 26th Oct._

We left Mr. Knowles's on Thursday morning, came through Godalming, stopped at Mr. Rowland's at Chilworth, and then came on through Dorking to Colley Farm, near Reigate, where we slept. I have so often described the country from Hindhead to the foot of Reigate Hill, and from the top of Reigate Hill to the Thames, that I shall not attempt to do it again here. When we got to the river Wey, we crossed it from Godalming Pismarsh to come up to Chilworth. I desired George to look round the country, and asked him if he did not think it was very pretty. I put the same question to him when we got into the beautiful neighbourhood of Dorking, and when we got to Reigate, and especially when we got to the tip-top of Reigate Hill, from which there is one of the finest views in the whole world; but ever after our quitting Mr. Knowles's, George insisted that that was the prettiest country that we had seen in the course of our whole ride, and that he liked Mr. Knowles's place better than any other place that he had seen. I reminded him of Weston Grove; and I reminded him of the beautiful ponds and grass and plantations at Mr. Leach's; but he still persisted in his judgment in favour of Mr. Knowles's place, in which decision, however, the greyhounds and the beagles had manifestly a great deal to do.

From Thursley to Reigate inclusive, on the chalk-side as well as on the sand-side, the crops of turnips, of both kinds, were pretty nearly as good as I ever saw them in my life. On a farm of Mr. Drummond's at Aldbury, rented by a farmer Peto, I saw a piece of cabbages, of the large kind, which will produce, I should think, not much short of five and twenty tons to the acre; and here I must mention (I do not know _why_ I must, by the bye) an instance of my own skill in measuring land by the eye. The cabbages stand upon half a field and on the part of it furthest from the road where we were. We took the liberty to open the gate and ride into the field, in order to get closer to the cabbages to look at them. I intended to notice this piece of cabbages, and I asked George how much ground he thought there was in the piece. He said, _two acres_: and asked me how much I thought. I said that there were _above four acres_, and that I should not wonder if there were _four acres and a half_. Thus divided in judgment, we turned away from the cabbages to go out of the field at another gate, which pointed towards our road. Near this gate we found a man turning a heap of manure. This man, as it happened, had hoed the cabbages by the acre, or had had a hand in it. We asked him how much ground there was in that piece of cabbages, and he told us, _four acres and a half_! I suppose it will not be difficult to convince the reader that George looked upon me as a sort of conjuror. At Mr. Pym's, at Colley farm, we found one of the very finest pieces of mangel wurzel that I had ever seen in my life. We calculated that there would be little short of _forty tons to the acre_; and there being three acres to the piece, Mr. Pym calculates that this mangel wurzel, the produce of these three acres of land, will carry his ten or twelve milch-cows nearly, if not wholly, through the winter. There did not appear to be a spurious plant, and there was not one plant that had gone to seed, in the whole piece. I have never seen a more beautiful mass of vegetation, and I had the satisfaction to learn, after having admired the crop, that the seed came from my own shop, and that it had been saved by myself.

Talking of the shop, I came to it in a very few hours after looking at this mangel wurzel; and I soon found that it was high time for me to get home again; for here had been pretty devils' works going on. Here I found the "Greek cause," and all its appendages, figuring away in grand style. But I must make this matter of separate observation.

I have put an end to my Ride of August, September, and October, 1826, during which I have travelled five hundred and sixty-eight miles, and have slept in thirty different beds, having written three monthly pamphlets, called the "Poor Man's Friend," and have also written (including the present one) eleven Registers. I have been in three cities, in about twenty market towns, in perhaps five hundred villages; and I have seen the people nowhere so well off as in the neighbourhood of Weston Grove, and nowhere so badly off as in the dominions of the Select Vestry of Hurstbourn Tarrant, commonly called Uphusband. During the whole of this ride, I have very rarely been a-bed after day-light; I have drunk neither wine nor spirits. I have eaten no vegetables, and only a very moderate quantity of meat; and, it may be useful to my readers to know, that the riding of twenty miles was not so fatiguing to me at the end of my tour as the riding of ten miles was at the beginning of it. Some ill-natured fools will call this "_egotism_." Why is it egotism? Getting upon a good strong horse, and riding about the country has no merit in it; there is no conjuration in it; it requires neither talents nor virtues of any sort; but _health_ is a very valuable thing; and when a man has had the experience which I have had in this instance, it is his duty to state to the world and to his own countrymen and neighbours in particular, the happy effects of early rising, sobriety, abstinence and a resolution to be active. It is his duty to do this: and it becomes imperatively his duty, when he has seen, in the course of his life, so many men; so many men of excellent hearts and of good talents, rendered prematurely old, cut off ten or twenty years before their time, by a want of that early rising, sobriety, abstinence and activity from which he himself has derived so much benefit and such inexpressible pleasure. During this ride I have been several times wet to the skin. At some times of my life, after having indulged for a long while in codling myself up in the house, these soakings would have frightened me half out of my senses; but I care very little about them: I avoid getting wet if I can; but it is very seldom that rain, come when it would, has prevented me from performing the day's journey that I had laid out beforehand. And this is a very good rule: to stick to your intention whether it be attended with inconveniences or not; to look upon yourself as _bound_ to do it. In the whole of this ride, I have met with no one untoward circumstance, properly so called, except the wounding of the back of my horse, which grieved me much more on his account than on my own. I have a friend, who, when he is disappointed in accomplishing anything that he has laid out, says that he has been _beaten_, which is a very good expression for the thing. I was beaten in my intention to go through Sussex and Kent; but I will retrieve the affair in a very few months' time, or, perhaps, few weeks. The COLLECTIVE will be here now in a few days; and as soon as I have got the Preston Petition fairly before them, and find (as I dare say I shall) that the petition will not be _tried_ until February, I shall take my horse and set off again to that very spot, in the London turnpike-road, at the foot of Butser-hill, whence I turned off to go to Petersfield, instead of turning the other way to go to Up Park: I shall take my horse and go to this spot, and, with a resolution not to be beaten next time, go along through the whole length of Sussex, and sweep round through Kent and Surrey till I come to Reigate again, and then home to Kensington; for I do not like to be beaten by horse's sore back, or by anything else; and, besides that, there are several things in Sussex and Kent that I want to see and give an account of. For the present, however, farewell to the country, and now for the Wen and its villanous corruptions.

RURAL RIDE: TO TRING, IN HERTFORDSHIRE.

_Barn-Elm Farm, 23rd Sept. 1829._

As if to prove the truth of all that has been said in _The Woodlands_ about 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 upon _trenched_ ground, but upon ground moved with the plough. The larches made great haste to _depart 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. In _The 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 this _cheaply_ planted 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 had raised from seed, in the manner described in _The Woodlands_ under 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 in _The Woodlands_, in paragraphs 383 to 386 inclusive. In that part of _The Woodlands_ will 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 of _The 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 large _case_, with the lid taken off, containing _bundles 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 my _Cottage 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, in the 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 the _English Leghorn_ bonnets. 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 AEstivum_. It is sown in the spring, at the same time that barley is; these Latin words mean _summer 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 of _Cobbett_.

I am the more desirous of introducing this manufacture at Tring 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 a _dinner 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 called _The 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 the distress, 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 kingdom than 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 leading _into_ London, 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 be _done_ to bring things about. Instead of the _neuter_ verb (to speak as a grammarian) they should use the _active_; they should not say things will _come_ about, but things must be _put_ about. 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 be found 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 a _public 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 for _seven 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 Tring but 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.

NORTHERN TOUR.

_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 the _capital_ it 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 in very good _voice_; 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 the _pruning hook_ or of the _sponge_. 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 land all 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. A _gross_ of 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 to _cut_ their 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, called _Mosborough_, the whole of the people of which are employed in the making of _sickles_ and _scythes_; and where, as I was told, they are very well off even in these times. A prodigious quantity of these things go to the United States 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 word _fair_, 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 a _fair_ mansion, 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.

EASTERN TOUR.

"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 like _a report_ of 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 of _the degrees_ by which the established church had been losing its _legal influence_ since the peace. First, the _Unitarian Bill_, removing the penal act which forbade an impugning of the doctrine of the Trinity; second, the repeal of the _Test 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 the _Catholics_; and this last act, said I, does in effect declare that the thing called "the _Reformation_" was _unnecessary_. "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 it _to the vote_. Understand, gentlemen, that _I do not say_, whatever I may think, that the Reformation was unnecessary; but I say that _this act amounts to a declaration_ that it was unnecessary; 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 of _impostor_ to him whom _we 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 that _Christianity 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 of _the clergy_ of this church of ours, _if they remain silent_ while 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 that _petticoat 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 theatre was 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 no _other_ time 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 the _law of the land_, and on _Acts 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 fine _farming 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 the _new houses_ are, 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 20,000 _troops_ that 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 and _new_ and 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 of BLACKSTONE: "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, "such _were_ the laws of England when mass was said in those magnificent churches, and such they continued until a _septennial_ Parliament 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 very _highly-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 heap wealth 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, is _flat_: 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) that _ornamental 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 a _by 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 regard _to trees_ of 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 with _pollards_, that is to say, trees that have been _beheaded_, 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 acres of 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 praising _that 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 town _in 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 is _flat_, 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 to _be 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 of _English 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 we _admire_ most is not always that which would be _our 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 being _Down 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 in _Ely_, 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 the _tail_ of 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 without _feeling_ that 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 L18,000 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 of _two 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 in _charity_, 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, "Can you 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 of _pauper_, 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 only _safe_ place in the town, of sufficient dimensions and sufficiently strong. It was market-day; and this is a great cattle-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 the _seat 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 their _good_ neighbour, Lord Fitzwilliam, had acted with regard to the _French war_, with regard to _Burke and his pension_; with regard to the _dungeoning 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, to _finish_ the 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 more _interruption_ than 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 of _dead-weight_, the offspring, most likely, of the _rottenness of the borough_. Two or three, or even _one_ man, may, if not tossed out at once, disturb and interrupt everything in a case where constant attention to _fact_ and _argument_ is requisite, to insure utility to the meeting. There were but _three_ here; and though they were finally silenced, it was not without great loss of time, great noise and hubbub. Two, I was told, were _dead-weight_ men, and one a sort of _higgling merchant_.

On the 8th I went to Holbeach, in this noble county of Lincoln; and, gracious God! what a _contrast_ with the scene at Lynn! I knew not a soul in the place. Mr. Fields, a bookseller and printer, had invited me by letter, and had, in the nicest and most unostentatious manner, made all the preparations. Holbeach lies in the midst of some of the richest land in the world; a small market-town, but a parish more than twenty miles across, larger, I believe, than the county of Rutland, produced an audience (in a very nice room, with seats prepared) of 178, apparently all wealthy farmers, and men in that rank of life; and an audience so _deeply_ attentive to the dry matters on which I had to address it, I have very seldom met with. I was delighted with Holbeach; a neat little town; a most beautiful church with a spire, like that of "the man of Ross, pointing to the skies;" gardens very pretty; fruit-trees in abundance, with blossom-buds ready to burst; and land, dark in colour, and as fine in substance as flour, as fine as if sifted through one of the sieves with which we get the dust out of the clover seed; and when cut deep down into with a spade, precisely, as to substance, like a piece of hard butter; yet nowhere is the _distress_ greater than here. I walked on from Holbeach, six miles, towards Boston; and seeing the fatness of the land, and the fine grass and the never-ending sheep lying about like _fat hogs_, stretched in the sun, and seeing the abject state of the labouring people, I could not help exclaiming, "God has given us the best country in the world; our brave and wise and virtuous fathers, who built all these magnificent churches, gave us the best government in the world, and we, their cowardly and foolish and profligate sons, have made this once-paradise what we now behold!"

I arrived at Boston (where I am now writing) to-day, (Friday, 9th April) about ten o'clock. I must arrive at Louth before I can say _precisely_ what my future route will be. There is an immense fair at Lincoln next week; and a friend has been _here_ to point out the proper days to be there; as, however, this Register will not come from the press until after I shall have had an opportunity of writing something at Louth, time enough to be inserted in it. I will here go back, and speak of the country that I have travelled over, since I left Cambridge on the 29th of March.

From Cambridge to St. Ives the land is generally in open, unfenced fields, and some common fields; generally stiff land, and some of it not very good, and wheat, in many places, looking rather thin. From St. Ives to Chatteris (which last is in the Isle of Ely), the land is better, particularly as you approach the latter place. From Chatteris I came back to Huntingdon and once more saw its beautiful meadows, of which I spoke when I went thither in 1823. From Huntingdon, through Stilton, to Stamford (the two last in Lincolnshire), is a country of rich arable land and grass fields, and of beautiful meadows. The enclosures are very large, the soil red, with a whitish stone below; very much like the soil at and near Ross in Herefordshire, and like that near Coventry and Warwick. Here, as all over this country, everlasting fine sheep. The houses all along here are built of the stone of the country: you seldom see brick. The churches are large, lofty, and fine, and give proof that the country was formerly much more populous than it is now, and that the people had a vast deal more of wealth in their hands and at their own disposal. There are three beautiful churches at Stamford, not less, I dare say, than three [_quaere_] hundred years old; but two of them (I did not go to the other) are as perfect as when just finished, except as to the _images_, most of which have been destroyed by the ungrateful Protestant barbarians, of different sorts, but some of which (_out of the reach_ of their ruthless hands) are still in the niches.

From Stamford to Peterborough is a country of the same description, with the additional beauty of _woods_ here and there, and with meadows just like those at Huntingdon, and not surpassed by those on the Severn near Worcester, nor by those on the Avon at Tewkesbury. The cathedral at Peterborough is exquisitely beautiful, and I have great pleasure in saying, that, contrary to the _more magnificent_ pile at Ely, it is kept in good order; the Bishop (Herbert Marsh) residing a good deal on the spot; and though he _did_ write a pamphlet to justify and urge on the war, the ruinous war, and though he _did_ get a _pension_ for it, he is, they told me, very good to the poor people. My daughters had a great desire to see, and I had a great desire they should see, the burial-place of that ill-used, that savagely-treated, woman, and that honour to woman-kind, Catherine, queen of the ferocious tyrant, Henry the Eighth. To the infamy of that ruffian, and the shame of after ages, there is no _monument_ to record her virtues and her sufferings; and the remains of this daughter of the wise Ferdinand and of the generous Isabella, who sold her jewels to enable Columbus to discover the new world, lie under the floor of the cathedral, commemorated by a short inscription on a plate of brass. All men, Protestants or not Protestants, feel as I feel upon this subject; search the _hearts_ of the bishop and of his dean and chapter, and these feelings are there; but to do _justice_ to the memory of this illustrious victim of tyranny, would be to cast a reflection on that event to which they owe their rich possessions, and, at the same time, to suggest ideas not very favourable to the descendants of those who divided amongst them the plunder of the people arising out of that event, and which descendants are their patrons, and give them what they possess. From this cause, and no other, it is, that the memory of the virtuous Catherine is unblazoned, while that of the tyrannical, the cruel, and the immoral Elizabeth, is recorded with all possible veneration, and all possible varnishing-over of her disgusting amours and endless crimes.

They relate at Peterborough, that the same sexton who buried Queen Catherine, also buried here Mary, Queen of Scots. The remains of the latter, of very questionable virtue, or, rather, of unquestionable vice, were removed to Westminster Abbey by her son, James the First; but those of the virtuous Queen were suffered to remain unhonoured! Good God! what injustice, what a want of principle, what hostility to all virtuous feeling, has not been the fruit of this Protestant Reformation; what plunder, what disgrace to England, what shame, what misery, has that event not produced! There is nothing that I address to my hearers with more visible effect than a statement of _the manner in which the poor-rates and the church-rates came_. This, of course, includes an account of _how the poor were relieved in Catholic times_. To the far greater part of people this is information _wholly new_; they are _deeply interested_ in it; and the impression is very great. Always before we part, Tom Cranmer's church receives a considerable blow.

There is in the cathedral a very ancient monument, made to commemorate, they say, the murder of the abbot and his monks by the Danes. Its date is the year 870. Almost all the cathedrals, were, it appears, originally churches of monasteries. That of Winchester and several others, certainly were. There has lately died, in the garden of the bishop's palace, a tortoise that had been _there_ more, they say, than two hundred years; a fact very likely to be known; because, at the end of thirty or forty, people would begin to talk about it as something remarkable; and thus the record would be handed down from father to son.

From Peterborough to Wisbeach, the road, for the most part, lies through the _Fens_, and here we passed through the village of Thorney, where there was a famous abbey, which, together with its valuable domain, was given by the savage tyrant, Henry VIII., to John Lord Russell (made a lord by that tyrant), the founder of the family of that name. This man got also the abbey and estate at Woburn; the priory and its estate at Tavistock; and in the next reign he got Covent Garden and other parts adjoining; together with other things, all then _public property_. A history, a _true history_ of this family (which I hope I shall find time to write) would be a most valuable thing. It would be a nice little specimen of the way in which these families became possessed of a great part of their estates. It would show how the poor-rates and the church-rates came. It would set the whole nation _right_ at once. Some years ago I had a set of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ (Scotch), which contained an account of every other _great family_ in the kingdom; but I could find in it no account of _this_ family, either under the word Russell or the word Bedford. I got into a passion with the book, because it contained no account of the mode of raising the birch-tree; and it was sold to _a son_ (as I was told) of Mr. Alderman Heygate; and if that gentleman look into the book, he will find what I say to be true; but if I should be in error about this, perhaps he will have the goodness to let me know it. I shall be obliged to any one to point me out any printed account of this family; and particularly to tell me where I can get an old folio, containing (amongst other things) Bulstrode's argument and narrative in justification of the sentence and execution of Lord William Russell, in the reign of Charles the Second. It is impossible to look at the now-miserable village of Thorney, and to think of its once-splendid abbey; it is impossible to look at the _twenty thousand acres_ of land around, covered with fat sheep, or bearing six quarters of wheat or ten of oats to the acre, without any manure; it is impossible to think of these without feeling a desire that the whole nation should know all about the _surprising merits_ of the possessors.

Wisbeach, lying farther up the arm of the sea than Lynn, is, like the latter, a little town of commerce, chiefly engaged in exporting to the south, _the corn_ that grows in this productive country. It is a good solid town, though not handsome, and has a large market, particularly for corn.

To Crowland, I went, as before stated, from Wisbeach, staying two nights at St. Edmund's. Here I was in the heart of the Fens. The whole country as _level_ as the table on which I am now writing. The horizon like the sea in a dead calm: you see the morning sun come up, just as at sea; and see it go down over the rim, in just the same way as at sea in a calm. The land covered with beautiful grass, with sheep lying about upon it, as fat as hogs stretched out sleeping in a stye. The kind and polite friends, with whom we were lodged, had a very neat garden, and fine young orchard. Everything grows well here: earth without a stone so big as a pin's head; grass as thick as it can grow on the ground; immense bowling-greens separated by ditches; and not the sign of dock or thistle or other weed to be seen. What a contrast between these and the heath-covered sand-hills of Surrey, amongst which I was born! Yet the labourers, who spuddle about the ground in the little _dips_ between those sand-hills, are better off than those that exist in this fat of the land. _Here_ the grasping system takes _all_ away, because it has the means of coming at the value of all: _there_, the poor man enjoys _something_, because he is thought too poor to have anything: he is there allowed to have what is deemed _worth nothing_; but here, where every inch is valuable, not one inch is he permitted to enjoy.

At Crowland also (still in the Fens) was a great and rich _abbey_, a good part of the magnificent ruins of the church of which are still standing, one corner or part of it being used as the _parish church_, by the worms, which have crept out of the dead bodies of those who lived in the days of the founders;

"And wond'ring man could want the larger pile, Exult, and claim the corner with a smile."

They tell you, that all the country at and near Crowland was a mere swamp, a mere bog, _bearing nothing_, bearing nothing worth naming, until the _modern drainings_ took place! The thing called the "Reformation," has lied common sense out of men's minds. So _likely_ a thing to choose a barren swamp whereon, or wherein, to make the site of an abbey, and of a benedictine abbey too! It has been always observed, that the monks took care to choose for their places of abode, pleasant spots, surrounded by productive land. The likeliest thing in the world for these monks to choose a swamp for their dwelling-place, surrounded by land that produced nothing good! The thing gives the lie to itself: and it is impossible to reject the belief, that these Fens were as productive of corn and meat a thousand years ago, and more so, than they are at this hour. There is a curious triangular bridge here, on one part of which stands the statue of one of the ancient kings. It is all of great age; and everything shows that Crowland was a place of importance in the earliest times.

From Crowland to Lynn, through Thorney and Wisbeach, is all Fens, well besprinkled, formerly, with monasteries of various descriptions, and still well set with magnificent churches. From Lynn to Holbeach you get out of the real Fens, and into the land that I attempted to describe, when, a few pages back, I was speaking of Holbeach. I say attempted; for I defy tongue or pen to make the description adequate to the matter: to know what the thing is, you must _see_ it. The same land continues all the way on to Boston: endless grass and endless fat sheep; not a stone, not a weed.

_Boston, Sunday, 11th April, 1830._

Last night, I made a speech at the playhouse to an audience, whose appearance was sufficient to fill me with pride. I had given notice that I should perform _on Friday_, overlooking the circumstance that it was Good Friday. In apologising for this inadvertence, I took occasion to observe, that even if I had persevered, the clergy of the church could have nothing to object, seeing that they were now silent while a bill was passing in Parliament to put _Jews_ on a level with _Christians_; to enable Jews, the blasphemers of the Redeemer, to sit on the bench, to sit in both Houses of Parliament, to sit in council with the King, and to be kings of England, if entitled to the Crown, which, by possibility, they might become, if this bill were to pass; that to this bill _the clergy had offered no opposition_; and that, therefore, how could they hold sacred the anniversary appointed to commemorate the crucifixion of Christ by the hands of the blaspheming and bloody Jews? That, at any rate, if this bill passed; if those who called Jesus Christ an _impostor_ were thus declared to be _as good_ as those who adored him, there was not, I hoped, a man in the kingdom who would pretend, that it would be just to compel the people to pay tithes, and fees, and offerings, to men for _teaching Christianity_. This was a _clincher_; and as such it was received.

This morning I went out at six, looked at the town, walked three miles on the road to Spilsby, and back to breakfast at nine. Boston (_bos_ is Latin for _ox_) though not above a fourth or fifth part of the size of its _daughter_ in New England, which got its name, I dare say, from some persecuted native of this place, who had quitted England and all her wealth and all her glories, to preserve that _freedom_, which was still more dear to him; though not a town like New Boston, and though little to what it formerly was, when agricultural produce was the great staple of the kingdom and the great subject of foreign exchange, is, nevertheless, a very fine town; good houses, good shops, pretty gardens about it, a fine open place, nearly equal to that of Nottingham, in the middle of it a river and a canal passing through it, each crossed by a handsome and substantial bridge, a fine market for sheep, cattle, and pigs, and another for meat, butter, and fish; and being, like Lynn, a great place for the export of corn and flour, and having many fine mills, it is altogether a town of very considerable importance; and, which is not to be overlooked, inhabited by people none of whom appear to be in misery.

The great pride and glory of the Bostonians, is _their church_, which is, I think, 400 feet long, 90 feet wide, and has a tower (or steeple, as they call it) 300 feet high, which is both a land-mark and a sea-mark. To describe the richness, the magnificence, the symmetry, the exquisite beauty of this pile, is wholly out of my power. It is impossible to look at it without feeling, first, admiration and reverence and gratitude to the memory of our fathers who reared it; and next, indignation at those who affect to believe, and contempt for those who do believe, that, when this pile was reared, the age was _dark_, the people rude and ignorant, and the country _destitute of wealth_ and _thinly peopled_. Look at this church, then; look at the heaps of white rubbish that the parsons have lately stuck up under the "_New-church Act_," and which, after having been built with money forced from the nation by odious taxes, they have stuffed full of _locked-up pens_, called _pews_, which they let for money, as cattle- and sheep- and pig-pens are let at fairs and markets; nay, after having looked at this work of the "_dark_ ages," look at that great, heavy, ugly, unmeaning mass of stone called St. PAUL'S, which an American friend of mine, who came to London from Falmouth and had seen the cathedrals at Exeter and Salisbury, swore to me, that when he first saw it, he was at a loss to guess whether it were a _court-house_ or a _jail_; after looking at Boston Church, go and look at that great, gloomy lump, created by a Protestant Parliament, and by taxes wrung by force from the whole nation; and then say which is the age really meriting the epithet _dark_.

St. Botolph, to whom this church is dedicated, while he (if saints see and hear what is passing on earth) must lament that the piety-inspiring mass has been, in this noble edifice, supplanted by the monotonous hummings of an oaken hutch, has not the mortification to see his church treated in a manner as if the new possessors sighed for the hour of its destruction. It is taken great care of; and though it has cruelly suffered from _Protestant repairs_; though the images are gone and the stained glass; and though the glazing is now in squares instead of lozenges; though the nave is stuffed with _pens_ called pews; and though other changes have taken place detracting from the beauty of the edifice, great care is taken of it as it now is, and the inside is not disfigured and disgraced by a _gallery_, that great and characteristic mark of Protestant taste, which, as nearly as may be, makes a church like a playhouse. Saint Botolph (on the supposition before mentioned) has the satisfaction to see, that the base of his celebrated church is surrounded by an iron fence, to keep from it all offensive and corroding matter, which is so disgusting to the sight round the magnificent piles at Norwich, Ely and other places; that the churchyard, and all appertaining to it, are kept in the neatest and most respectable state; that no money has been spared for these purposes; that here the eye tells the heart, that gratitude towards the fathers of the Bostonians is not extinguished in the breasts of their sons; and this the Saint will know that he owes to the circumstances, that the parish is a poor vicarage, and that the care of his church is in the hands of _the industrious people_, and not in those of a fat and luxurious dean and chapter, wallowing in wealth derived from the people's labour.

_Horncastle, 12th April._

A fine, soft, showery morning saw us out of Boston, carrying with us the most pleasing reflections as to our reception and treatment there by numerous persons, none of whom we had ever seen before. The face of the country, for about half the way, the soil, the grass, the endless sheep, the thickly-scattered and magnificent churches, continue as on the other side of Boston; but, after that, we got out of the low and level land. At Sibsey, a pretty village five miles from Boston, we saw, for the first time since we left Peterborough, land rising above the level of the horizon; and, not having seen such a thing for so long, it had struck my daughters, who overtook me on the road (I having walked on from Boston), that the sight had an effect like that produced by the first _sight of land_ after a voyage across the Atlantic.

We now soon got into a country of hedges and dry land and gravel and clay and stones; the land not bad, however; pretty much like that of Sussex, lying between the forest part and the South Downs. A good proportion of woodland also; and just before we got to Horncastle, we passed the park of that Mr. Dymock who is called "the Champion of England," and to whom, it is said hereabouts, that we pay out of the taxes eight thousand pounds a year! This never can be, to be sure; but if we pay him only a hundred a year, I will lay down my _glove_ against that of the "Champion," that we do not pay him even _that_ for five years longer.

It is curious, that the moment you get out of the _rich land_, the churches become _smaller_, _mean_, and with scarcely anything in the way of _tower_ or _steeple_. This town is seated in the middle of a large valley, not, however, remarkable for anything of peculiar value or beauty; a purely agricultural town; well built, and not mean in any part of it. It is a great rendezvous for horses and cattle, and sheep-dealers, and for those who sell these; and accordingly, it suffers severely from the loss of the small paper-money.

_Horncastle, 13th April, Morning._

I made a speech last evening to from 130 to 150, almost all farmers, and most men of apparent wealth to a certain extent. I have seldom been better pleased with my audience. It is not the clapping and huzzaing that I value so much as the _silent attention_, the _earnest look_ at me from _all eyes_ at once, and then when the point is concluded, the _look and nod at each other_, as if the parties were saying, "_Think of that!_" And of these I had a great deal at Horncastle. They say that there are _a hundred parish churches within six miles of this town_. I dare say that there was one farmer from almost every one of those parishes. This is sowing the seeds of truth in a very sure manner: it is not scattering broadcast; it is really _drilling the country_.

There is one deficiency, and that, with me, a great one, throughout this country of corn and grass and oxen and sheep, that I have come over during the last three weeks; namely, the want of _singing birds_. We are now just in that season when they sing most. Here, in all this country, I have seen and heard only about four sky-larks, and not one other singing bird of any description, and, of the small birds that do not sing, I have seen only one _yellow-hammer_, and it was perched on the rail of a pound between Boston and Sibsey. Oh! the thousands of linnets all singing together on one tree, in the sand-hills of Surrey! Oh! the carolling in the coppices and the dingles of Hampshire and Sussex and Kent! At this moment (5 o'clock in the morning) the groves at Barn Elm are echoing with the warblings of thousands upon thousands of birds. The _thrush_ begins a little before it is light; next the _black-bird_; next the _larks_ begin to rise; all the rest begin the moment the sun gives the signal; and, from the hedges, the bushes, from the middle and the topmost twigs of the trees, comes the singing of endless variety; from the long dead grass comes the sound of the sweet and soft voice of the _white-throat_ or _nettle-tom_, while the loud and merry song of the _lark_ (the songster himself out of sight) seems to descend from the skies. MILTON, in his description of paradise, has not omitted the "song of earliest birds." However, everything taken together, here, in Lincolnshire, are more good things than man could have had the conscience to _ask_ of God.

And now, if I had time and room to describe the state of _men's affairs_ in the country through which I have passed, I should show that the people at Westminster would have known, how to turn paradise itself into hell. I must, however, defer this until my next, when I shall have been at Hull and Lincoln, and have had a view of the whole of this rich and fine country. In the meanwhile, however, I cannot help congratulating that _sensible_ fellow, Wilmot Horton, and his co-operator, Burdett, that Emigration is going on at a swimming rate. Thousands are going, and that, too, _without mortgaging the poor-rates_. But, _sensible_ fellows! it is not the _aged_, the _halt_, the _ailing_; it is not the _paupers_ that are going; but men with from 200_l._ to 2,000_l._ in their pocket! This very year, from two to five millions of pounds sterling will actually be carried _from England_ to the United States. The Scotch, who have money to pay their passages, go to New York; those who have none get carried to Canada, that they may thence get into the United States. I will inquire, one of these days, what _right_ Burdett has to live in England more than those whom he proposes to send away.

_Spittal, near Lincoln, 19th April 1830._

Here we are, at the end of a pretty decent trip since we left Boston. The next place, on our way to Hull, was Horncastle, where I preached politics in the playhouse to a most respectable body of farmers, who had come in the wet to meet me. Mr. John Peniston, who had invited me to stop there, behaved in a very obliging manner, and made all things very pleasant.

The country _from_ Boston continued, as I said before, flat for about half the way to Horncastle, and we then began to see the high land. From Horncastle I set off two hours before the carriage, and going through a very pretty village called Ashby, got to another at the foot of a hill, which, they say, forms part of the _Wolds_; that is, a ridge of hills. This second village is called Scamblesby. The vale in which it lies is very fine land. A hazel mould, rich and light too. I saw a man here ploughing for barley, after turnips, with _one horse_: the horse did not seem to work hard, and the man was _singing_: I need not say that he was young; and I dare say he had the good sense to keep his legs under another man's table, and to stretch his body on another man's bed.

This is a very fine _corn country_: chalk at bottom: stony near the surface, in some places: here and there a chalk-pit in the hills: the shape of the ground somewhat like that of the broadest valleys in Wiltshire; but the fields not without fences as they are there: fields from fifteen to forty acres: the hills not downs, as in Wiltshire; but cultivated all over. The houses white and thatched, as they are in all chalk countries. The valley at Scamblesby has a little rivulet running down it, just as in all the chalk countries. The land continues nearly the same to Louth, which lies in a deep dell, with beautiful pastures on the surrounding hills, like those that I once admired at Shaftesbury, in Dorsetshire, and like that near St. Austle, in Cornwall, which I described in 1808.

At Louth the wise corporation had _refused_ to let us have the playhouse; but my friends had prepared a very good place; and I had an opportunity of addressing crowded audiences two nights running. At no place have I been better pleased than at Louth. Mr. Paddison, solicitor, a young gentleman whom I had the honour to know slightly before, and to know whom, whether I estimate by character or by talent, would be an honour to any man, was particularly attentive to us. Mr. Naull, ironmonger, who had had the battle to fight for me for twenty years, expressed his exultation at my triumph in a manner that showed that he justly participated it with me. I breakfasted at Mr. Naull's with a gentleman 88 or 89 years of age, whose joy at shaking me by the hand was excessive. "Ah!" said he, "where are _now_ those savages who, at Hull, threatened to kill me for raising my voice against this system?" This is a very fine town, and has a beautiful church, nearly equal to that at Boston.

We left Louth on the morning of Thursday the 15th, and got to Barton on the Humber by about noon, over a very fine country, large fields, fine pastures, flocks of those great sheep, of from 200 to 1,000 in a flock; and here at Barton, we arrived at the northern point of this noble county, having never seen one single acre of waste land, and not one acre that would be called bad land, in the south of England. The _Wolds_, or high-lands, lie away to our right, from Horncastle to near Barton; and on the other side of the Wolds lie the _Marshes of Lincolnshire_, which extend along the coast from Boston to the mouth of the Humber, on the bank of which we were at Barton, Hull being on the opposite side of the river, which is here about five miles wide, and which we had to cross in a steam-boat.

But let me not forget Great Grimsby, at which we changed horses, and breakfasted, in our way from Louth to Barton. "What the devil!" the reader will say, "should you want to recollect _that_ place for? Why do you want not to forget that sink of corruption? What could you find there to be snatched from everlasting oblivion, except for the purpose of being execrated?" I did, however, find something there worthy of being made known, not only to every man in England but to every man in the world; and not to mention it here would be to be guilty of the greatest injustice.

To my surprise I found a good many people assembled at the inn-door, evidently expecting my arrival. While breakfast was preparing, I wished to speak to the bookseller of the place, if there were one, and to give him a list of my books and writings, that he might place it in his shop. When he came, I was surprised to find that he had it already, and that he, occasionally, sold my books. Upon my asking him how he got it, he said that it was brought down from London and given to him by a Mr. Plaskitt, who, he said, had all my writings, and who, he said, he was sure would be very glad to see me; but that he lived above a mile from the town. A messenger, however, had gone off to carry the news, and Mr. Plaskitt arrived before we had done breakfast, bringing with him a son and a daughter. And from the lips of this gentleman, a man of as kind and benevolent appearance and manners as I ever beheld in my life, I had the following facts; namely, "that one of his sons sailed for New York some years ago; that the ship was cast away on the shores of Long Island; that the captain, crew, and passengers all perished; that the wrecked vessel was taken possession of by people on the coast; that his son had a watch in his trunk, or chest, a purse with fourteen shillings in it, and divers articles of wearing apparel; that the Americans, who searched the wreck, _sent all these articles safely to England to him_"; "and," said he, "I keep the purse and the money at home, and _here is the watch in my pocket_"!

It would have been worth the expense of coming from London to Grimsby, if for nothing but to learn this fact, which I record, not only in justice to the free people of America, and particularly in justice to my late neighbours in Long Island, but in justice to the character of mankind. I publish it as something to counterbalance the conduct of the atrocious monsters who plunder the wrecks on the coast of Cornwall, and, as I am told, on the coasts here in the east of the island.

Away go, then, all the accusations upon the character of the Yankees. People may call them _sharp_, _cunning_, _overreaching_; and when they have exhausted the vocabulary of their abuse, the answer is found in this one fact, stated by Mr. Joshua Plaskitt, of Great Grimsby, in Lincolnshire, Old England. The person who sent the things to Mr. Plaskitt was named Jones. It did not occur to me to ask his christian name, nor to inquire what was the particular place where he lived in Long Island. I request Mr. Plaskitt to contrive to let me know these particulars; as I should like to communicate them to friends that I have on the north side of that island. However, it would excite no surprise there, that one of their countrymen had acted this part; for every man of them, having the same opportunity, would do the same. Their forefathers carried to New England the nature and character of the people of Old England, before national debts, paper-money, septennial bills, standing armies, dead-weights, and jubilees, had beggared and corrupted the people.

At Hull I _lectured_ (I laugh at the word) to about seven hundred persons on the same evening that I arrived from Louth, which was on Thursday the 15th. We had what they call the summer theatre, which was crowded in every part except on the stage; and the next evening the stage was crowded too. The third evening was merely accidental, no previous notice having been given of it. On the Saturday I went in the middle of the day to Beverley; saw there the beautiful minster, and some of the fine horses which they show there at this season of the year; dined with about fifty farmers; made a speech to them and about a hundred more, perhaps; and got back to Hull time enough to go to the theatre there.

The country round Hull appears to exceed even that of Lincolnshire. The three mornings that I was at Hull I walked out in three different directions, and found the country everywhere fine. To the east lies the Holderness country. I used to wonder that Yorkshire, to which I, from some false impression in my youth, had always attached the idea of _sterility_, should send us of the south those beautiful cattle with short horns and straight and deep bodies. You have only to see the country to cease to wonder at this. It lies on the north side of the mouth of the Humber; is as flat and fat as the land between Holbeach and Boston, without, as they tell me, the necessity of such numerous ditches. The appellation "Yorkshire _bite_"; the acute sayings ascribed to Yorkshiremen; and their quick manner, I remember, in the army. When speaking of what country a man was, one used to say, in defence of the party, "York, but honest." Another saying was that it was a bare common that a Yorkshireman would go over without taking a bite. Every one knows the story of the gentleman who, upon finding that a boot-cleaner in the south was a Yorkshireman, and expressing his surprise that he was not become master of the inn, received for answer, "Ah, sir, but master is York too!" And that of the Yorkshire boy who, seeing a gentleman eating some eggs, asked the cook to give him a little _salt_; and upon being asked what he could want with salt, he said, "Perhaps that gentleman may give me an egg presently."

It is surprising what effect sayings like these produce upon the mind. From one end to the other of the kingdom, Yorkshiremen are looked upon as being keener than other people; more eager in pursuit of their own interests; more sharp and more selfish. For my part, I was cured with regard to the _people_ long before I saw Yorkshire. In the army, where we see men of all counties, I always found Yorkshiremen distinguished for their frank manners and generous disposition. In the United States, my kind and generous friends of Pennsylvania were the children and descendants of Yorkshire parents; and, in truth, I long ago made up my mind that this hardness and sharpness ascribed to Yorkshiremen arose from the sort of envy excited by that quickness, that activity, that buoyancy of spirits, which bears them up through adverse circumstances, and their conquent success in all the situations of life. They, like the people of Lancashire, are just the very reverse of being _cunning_ and _selfish_; be they farmers, or be they what they may, you get at the bottom of their hearts in a minute. Everything they think soon gets to the tongue, and out it comes, heads and tails, as fast as they can pour it. Fine materials for Oliver to work on! If he had been sent to the _west_ instead of the north, he would have found people there on whom he would have exercised his powers in vain. You are not to have every valuable quality in the same man and the same people: you are not to have prudent caution united with quickness and volubility.

But though, as to the character of the _people_, I, having known so many hundreds of Yorkshiremen, was perfectly enlightened, and had quite got the better of all prejudices many years ago, I still, in spite of the matchless horses and matchless cattle, had a general impression that Yorkshire was a _sterile_ county, compared with the counties in the south and the west; and this notion was confirmed in some measure by my seeing the moory and rocky parts in the West Riding last winter. It was necessary for me to come and see the country on the banks of the Humber. I have seen the vale of Honiton, in Devonshire, that of Taunton and of Glastonbury, in Somersetshire: I have seen the vales of Gloucester and Worcester, and the banks of the Severn and the Avon: I have seen the vale of Berkshire, that of Aylesbury, in Buckinghamshire: I have seen the beautiful vales of Wiltshire; and the banks of the Medway, from Tunbridge to Maidstone, called the Garden of Eden: I was born at one end of Arthur Young's "finest ten miles in England:" I have ridden my horse across the Thames at its two sources; and I have been along every inch of its banks, from its sources, to Gravesend, whence I have sailed out of it into the channel; and having seen and had ability to judge of the goodness of the land in all these places, I declare that I have never seen any to be compared with the land on the banks of the Humber, from the Holderness country included, and with the exception of the land from Wisbeach to Holbeach, and Holbeach to Boston. Really, the single parish of Holbeach, or a patch of the same size in the Holderness country, seems to be equal in value to the whole of the county of Surrey, if we leave out the little plot of hop-garden at Farnham.

Nor is the town of Hull itself to be overlooked. It is a little city of London: streets, shops, everything like it; clean as the best parts of London, and the people as bustling and attentive. The town of Hull is _surrounded_ with commodious docks for shipping. These docks are separated, in three or four places, by draw-bridges; so that, as you walk round the town, you walk by the side of the docks and the ships. The town on the outside of the docks is pretty considerable, and the walks from it into the country beautiful. I went about a good deal, and I nowhere saw marks of beggary or filth, even in the outskirts: none of those nasty, shabby, thief-looking sheds that you see in the approaches to London: none of those off-scourings of pernicious and insolent luxury. I hate commercial towns in general: there is generally something so loathsome in the look, and so stern and unfeeling in the manners of seafaring people, that I have always, from my very youth, disliked sea-ports; but really the sight of this nice town, the manners of its people, the civil, and kind and cordial reception that I met with, and the clean streets, and especially the pretty gardens in every direction, as you walk into the country, has made Hull, though a sea-port, a place that I shall always look back to with delight.

Beverley, which was formerly a very considerable city, with three or four gates, one of which is yet standing, had a great college, built in the year 700 by the Archbishop of York. It had three famous hospitals and two friaries. There is one church, a very fine one, and the minster still left; of which a bookseller in the town was so good as to give me copper-plate representations. It is still a very pretty town; the market large; the land all round the country good; and it is particularly famous for horses; those for speed being shown off here on the market-days at this time of the year. The farmers and gentlemen assemble in a very wide street, on the outside of the western gate of the town; and at a certain time of the day the grooms come from their different stables to show off their beautiful horses; blood horses, coach horses, hunters, and cart horses; sometimes, they tell me, forty or fifty in number. The day that I was there (being late in the season) there were only seven or eight, or ten at the most. When I was asked at the inn to go and see "_the horses_," I had no curiosity, thinking it was such a parcel of horses as we see at a market in the south; but I found it a sight worth going to see; for besides the beauty of the horses, there were the adroitness, the agility, and the boldness of the grooms, each running alongside of his horse, with the latter trotting at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour, and then swinging him round, and showing him off to the best advantage. In short, I was exceedingly gratified by the trip to Beverley: the day was fair and mild; we went by one road and came back by another, and I have very seldom passed a pleasanter day in my life.

I found, very much to my surprise, that at Hull I was very nearly as far north as at Leeds, and, at Beverley, a little farther north. Of all things in the world, I wanted to speak to Mr. Foster of the _Leeds Patriot_; but was not aware of the relative situation till it was too late to write to him. Boats go up the Humber and the Ouse to within a few miles of Leeds. The Holderness country is that piece of land which lies between Hull and the sea: it appears to be a perfect flat; and is said to be, and I dare say is, one of the very finest spots in the whole kingdom. I had a very kind invitation to go into it; but I could not stay longer on that side of the Humber without neglecting some duty or other. In quitting Hull, I left behind me but one thing, the sight of which had not pleased me; namely, a fine gilded equestrian statue of the Dutch "_Deliverer_," who gave to England the national debt, that fruitful mother of mischief and misery. Until this statue be replaced by that of Andrew Marvell, that real honour of this town, England will never be what it ought to be.

We came back to Barton by the steam-boat on Sunday in the afternoon of the 18th, and in the evening reached this place, which is an inn, with three or four houses near it, at the distance of ten miles from Lincoln, to which we are going on Wednesday, the 21st. Between this place and Barton we passed through a delightfully pretty town called Brigg. The land in this, which is called the high part of Lincolnshire, has generally stone, a solid bed of stone of great depth, at different distances from the surface. In some parts this stone is of a yellowish colour, and in the form of very thick slate; and in these parts the soil is not so good; but, generally speaking, the land is excellent; easily tilled; no surface water; the fields very large; not many trees; but what there are, particularly the ash, very fine, and of free growth; and innumerable flocks of those big, long-woolled sheep, from one hundred to a thousand in a flock, each having from eight to ten pounds of wool upon its body. One of the finest sights in the world is one of these thirty or forty-acre fields, with four or five or six hundred ewes, each with her one or two lambs skipping about upon grass, the most beautiful that can be conceived, and on lands as level as a bowling-green. I do not recollect having seen a mole-hill or an ant-hill since I came into the country; and not one acre of waste land, though I have gone the whole length of the country one way, and am now got nearly half way back another way.

Having seen this country, and having had a glimpse at the Holderness country, which lies on the banks of the sea, and to the east and north-east of Hull, can I cease to wonder that those devils, the Danes, found their way hither so often. There were the fat sheep then, just as there are now, depend upon it; and these numbers of noble churches, and these magnificent minsters, were reared because the wealth of the country remained _in the country_, and was not carried away to the south, to keep swarms of devouring tax-eaters, to cram the maws of wasteful idlers, and to be transferred to the grasp of luxurious and blaspheming Jews.

You always perceive that the churches are large and fine and lofty, in proportion to the richness of the soil and the extent of the parish. In many places where there are _now_ but a very few houses, and those comparatively miserable, there are churches that look like cathedrals. It is quite curious to observe the difference in the style of the churches of Suffolk and Norfolk, and those of Lincolnshire, and of the other bank of the Humber. In the former two counties the churches are good, large, and with a good, plain, and pretty lofty tower. And in a few instances, particularly at Ipswich and Long Melford, you find magnificence in these buildings; but in Lincolnshire the magnificence of the churches is surprising. These churches are the indubitable proof of great and solid wealth, and formerly of great population. From everything that I have heard, the _Netherlands_ is a country very much resembling Lincolnshire; and they say that the church at Antwerp is like that at Boston; but my opinion is, that Lincolnshire alone contains more of these fine buildings than the whole of the continent of Europe.

Still, however, there is the almost total want of the _singing birds_. There had been a shower a little while before we arrived at this place; it was about six o'clock in the evening; and there is a thick wood, together with the orchards and gardens, very near to the inn. We heard a little twittering from one thrush; but at that very moment, if we had been as near to just such a wood in Surrey, or Hampshire, or Sussex, or Kent, we should have heard ten thousand birds singing altogether; and the thrushes continuing their song till twenty minutes after sunset. When I was at Ipswich, the gardens and plantations round that beautiful town began in the morning to ring with the voices of the different birds. The nightingale is, I believe, _never heard_ anywhere on the eastern side of Lincolnshire; though it is sometimes heard in the same latitude in the dells of Yorkshire. How ridiculous it is to suppose that these frail birds, with their slender wings and proportionately heavy bodies, _cross the sea_, and come back again! I have not yet heard more than half a dozen skylarks; and I have, only last year, heard ten at a time make the air ring over one of my fields at Barn-Elm. This is a great drawback from the pleasure of viewing this fine country.

It is time for me now, withdrawing myself from these objects visible to the eye, to speak of the state of _the people_, and of the manner in which their affairs are affected by the workings of the system. With regard to the labourers, they are, everywhere, miserable. The wages for those who are employed on the land are, through all the counties that I have come, twelve shillings a week for married men, and less for single ones; but a large part of them are not even at this season employed on the land. The farmers, for want of means of profitable employment, suffer the men to fall upon the parish; and they are employed in digging and breaking stone for the roads; so that the roads are nice and smooth for the sheep and cattle to walk on in their way to the all-devouring jaws of the Jews and other tax-eaters in London and its vicinity. None of the best meat, except by mere accident, is consumed here. To-day (the 20th of April) we have seen hundreds upon hundreds of sheep, as fat as hogs, go by this inn door, their toes, like those of the foot-marks at the entrance of the lion's den, all pointing towards the Wen; and the landlord gave us for dinner a little skinny, hard leg of old ewe mutton! Where the man got it I cannot imagine. Thus it is: every good thing is literally driven or carried away out of the country. In walking out yesterday, I saw three poor fellows digging stone for the roads, who told me that they never had anything but bread to eat, and water to wash it down. One of them was a widower with three children; and his pay was eighteen-pence a-day; that is to say, about three pounds of bread a day each, for six days in the week; nothing for Sunday, and nothing for lodging, washing, clothing, candle-light, or fuel! Just such was the state of things in France at the eve of the revolution! Precisely such; and precisely the same were the _causes_. Whether the effect will be the same I do not take upon myself positively to determine. Just on the other side of the hedge, while I was talking to these men, I saw about two hundred fat sheep in a rich pasture. I did not tell them what I might have told them; but I explained to them why the farmers were unable to give them a sufficiency of wages. They listened with great attention; and said that they did believe that the farmers were in great distress themselves.

With regard to the farmers, it is said here that the far greater part, if sold up, would be found to be insolvent. The tradesmen in country towns are, and must be, in but little better state. They all tell you they do not sell half so many goods as they used to sell; and, of course, the manufacturers must suffer in the like degree. There is a diminution and deterioration, every one says, in the stocks upon the farms. _Sheep-washing_ is a sort of business in this country; and I heard at Boston that the sheep-washers say that there is a gradual falling off in point of the numbers of sheep washed.

The farmers are all gradually sinking in point of property. The very rich ones do not feel that ruin is absolutely approaching; but they are all alarmed; and as to the poorer ones, they are fast falling into the rank of paupers. When I was at Ely a gentleman who appeared to be a great farmer told me, in presence of fifty farmers at the White Hart inn, that he had seen that morning _three men_ cracking stones on the road as paupers of the parish of Wilbarton; and that all these men had been _overseers of the poor of that same parish within the last seven years_. Wheat keeps up in price to about an average of seven shillings a bushel; which is owing to our two successive bad harvests; but fat beef and pork are at a very low price, and mutton not much better. The beef was selling at Lynn for five shillings the stone of fourteen pounds, and the pork at four and sixpence. The wool (one of the great articles of produce in these countries) selling for less than half of its former price.

And here let me stop to observe that I was well informed before I left London that merchants were exporting our long wool to France, where it paid _thirty per cent. duty_. Well, say the landowners, but we have to thank Huskisson for this at any rate; and that is true enough; for the law was most rigid against the export of wool; but what will the _manufacturers_ say? Thus the collective goes on, smashing one class and then another; and, resolved to adhere to the taxes, it knocks away, one after another, the props of the system itself. By every measure that it adopts for the sake of obtaining security, or of affording relief to the people, it does some act of crying injustice. To save itself from the natural effects of its own measures, it knocked down the country bankers, in direct violation of the law in 1822. It is now about to lay its heavy hand on the big brewers and the publicans, in order to pacify the call for a reduction of taxes, and with the hope of preventing such reduction in reality. It is making a trifling attempt to save the West Indians from total ruin, and the West India colonies from revolt; but by that same attempt it reflects injury on the British distillers, and on the growers of barley. Thus it cannot do justice without doing injustice; it cannot do good without doing evil; and thus it must continue to do, until it take off, in reality, more than one half of the taxes.

One of the great signs of the poverty of people in the middle rank of life is the falling off of the audiences at the playhouses. There is a playhouse in almost every country town, where the players used to act occasionally; and in large towns almost always. In some places they have of late abandoned acting altogether. In others they have acted, very frequently, to not more than _ten or twelve persons_. At Norwich the playhouse had been shut up for a long time. I heard of one manager who has become a porter to a warehouse, and his company dispersed. In most places the insides of the buildings seem to be tumbling to pieces; and the curtains and scenes that they let down seem to be abandoned to the damp and the cobwebs. _My_ appearance on the boards seemed to give new life to the drama. I was, until the birth of my third son, a constant haunter of the playhouse, in which I took great delight; but when _he_ came into the world I said, "Now, Nancy, it is time for us to leave off going to the play." It is really melancholy to look at things now, and to think of things then. I feel great sorrow on account of these poor players; for, though they are made the tools of the Government and the corporations and the parsons, it is not their fault, and they have uniformly, whenever I have come in contact with them, been very civil to me. I am not sorry that they are left out of the list of vagrants in the new Act; but in this case, as in so many others, the men have to be grateful to the _women_; for who believes that this merciful omission would have taken place, if so many of the peers had not contracted matrimonial alliances with players; if so many playeresses had not become peeresses. We may thank God for disposing the hearts of our law-makers to be guilty of the same sins and foibles as ourselves; for when a lord had been sentenced to the pillory, the use of that ancient mode of punishing offences was abolished: when a lord (CASTLEREAGH), who was also a minister of state, had cut his own throat, the degrading punishment of burial in cross-roads was abolished; and now, when so many peers and great men have taken to wife play-actresses, which the law termed _vagrants_, that term, as applied to the children of Melpomene and Thalia, is abolished! Laud we the Gods that our rulers cannot after all divest themselves of flesh and blood! For the Lord have mercy upon us if their great souls were once to soar above that tenement!

Lord Stanhope cautioned his brother peers a little while ago against the angry feeling which was _rising up in the poor against the rich_. His Lordship is a wise and humane man, and this is evident from all his conduct. Nor is this angry feeling confined to the counties in the south, where the rage of the people, from the very nature of the local circumstances, is more formidable; woods and coppices and dingles and bye-lanes and sticks and stones ever at hand, being resources unknown in counties like this. When I was at St. Ives, in Huntingdonshire, an open country, I sat with the farmers, and smoked a pipe by way of preparation for evening service, which I performed on a carpenter's bench in a wheelwright's shop; my friends, the players, never having gained any regular settlement in that grand mart for four-legged fat meat, coming from the Fens, and bound to the Wen. While we were sitting, a hand-bill was handed round the table, advertising _farming stock_ for sale; and amongst the implements of husbandry "an _excellent fire-engine, several steel traps, and spring guns_"! And that is the life, is it, of an _English farmer_? I walked on about six miles of the road from Holbeach to Boston. I have before observed upon the inexhaustible riches of this land. At the end of about five miles and three quarters I came to a public-house, and thought I would get some breakfast; but the poor woman, with a tribe of children about her, had not a morsel of either meat or bread! At a house called an inn, a little further on, the landlord had no meat except a little bit of chine of bacon; and though there were a good many houses near the spot, the landlord told me that the people were become so poor that the butchers had left off killing meat in the neighbourhood. Just the state of things that existed in France on the eve of the Revolution. On that very spot I looked round me, and counted more than two thousand fat sheep in the pastures! How long; how long, good God! is this state of things to last? How long will these people starve in the midst of plenty? How long will fire-engines, steel traps, and spring guns be, in such a state of things, a protection to property? When I was at Beverley a gentleman told me, it was Mr. Dawson of that place, that some time before a farmer had been sold up by his landlord; and that, in a few weeks afterwards, the farmhouse was on fire, and that when the servants of the landlord arrived to put it out they found the handle of the pump taken away, and that the homestead was totally destroyed. This was told me in the presence of several gentlemen, who all spoke of it as a fact of perfect notoriety.

Another respect in which our situation so exactly resembles that of France on the eve of the Revolution is the _fleeing from the country_ in every direction. When I was in Norfolk there were four hundred persons, generally young men, labourers, carpenters, wheelwrights, millwrights, smiths, and bricklayers; most of them with some money, and some farmers and others with good round sums. These people were going to Quebec in timber-ships, and from Quebec by land into the United States. They had been told that they would not be suffered to land in the United States from on board of ship. The roguish villains had deceived them: but no matter; they will get into the United States; and going through Canada will do them good, for it will teach them to detest everything belonging to it. From Boston, two great barge loads had just gone off by canal to Liverpool, most of them farmers; all carrying some money, and some as much as two thousand pounds each. From the North and West Riding of Yorkshire numerous wagons have gone carrying people to the canals leading to Liverpool; and a gentleman, whom I saw at Peterboro', told me that he saw some of them; and that the men all appeared to be respectable farmers. At Hull the scene would delight the eyes of the wise Burdett; for here the emigration is going on in the "Old Roman Plan." Ten large ships have gone this spring, laden with these fugitives from the fangs of taxation; some bound direct to the ports of the United States; others, like those at Yarmouth, for Quebec. Those that have most money go direct to the United States. The single men, who are taken for a mere trifle in the Canada ships, go that way, have nothing but their carcasses to carry over the rocks and swamps, and through the myriads of place-men and pensioners in that miserable region; there are about fifteen more ships going from this one port this spring. The ships are fitted up with berths as transports for the carrying of troops. I went on board one morning, and saw the people putting their things on board and stowing them away. Seeing a nice young woman, with a little baby in her arms, I told her that she was going to a country where she would be sure that her children would never want victuals; where she might make her own malt, soap, and candles without being half put to death for it, and where the blaspheming Jews would not have a mortgage on the life's labour of her children.

There is at Hull one farmer going who is seventy years of age; but who takes out five sons and fifteen hundred pounds! Brave and sensible old man! and good and affectionate father! He is performing a truly parental and sacred duty; and he will die with the blessing of his sons on his head for having rescued them from this scene of slavery, misery, cruelty, and crime. Come, then, Wilmot Horton, with your sensible associates, Burdett and Poulett Thomson; come into Lincolnshire, Norfolk, and Yorkshire; come and bring Parson Malthus along with you; regale your sight with this delightful "stream of emigration"; congratulate the "greatest captain of the age," and your brethren of the Collective: congratulate the "noblest assembly of free men," on these the happy effects of their measures. Oh! no, Wilmot! Oh! no, generous and sensible Burdett, it is not the aged, the infirm, the halt, the blind, and the idiots that go: it is the youth, the strength, the wealth, and the spirit, that will no longer brook hunger and thirst in order that the maws of tax-eaters and Jews may be crammed. You want the Irish to go, and so they will _at our expense_, and all the bad of them, to be kept at our expense on the rocks and swamps of Nova Scotia and Canada. You have no money to send them away with: the tax-eaters want it all; and thanks to the "improvements of the age," the steam-boats will continue to bring them in shoals in pursuit of the orts of the food that their task-masters have taken away from them.

After evening lecture at Horncastle a very decent farmer came to me and asked me about America, telling me that he was resolved to go, for that if he stayed much longer he should not have a shilling to go with. I promised to send him a letter from Louth to a friend at New York, who might be useful to him there and give him good advice. I forgot it at Louth; but I will do it before I go to bed. From the Thames, and from the several ports down the Channel, about two thousand have gone this spring. All the flower of the labourers of the east of Sussex and west of Kent will be culled out and sent off in a short time. From Glasgow the sensible Scotch are pouring out amain. Those that are poor and cannot pay their passages, or can rake together only a trifle, are going to a rascally heap of sand and rock and swamp, called Prince Edward's Island, in the horrible Gulf of St. Lawrence; but when the American vessels come over with Indian corn and flour and pork and beef and poultry and eggs and butter and cabbages and green pease and asparagus for the soldier-officers and other tax-eaters, that we support upon that lump of worthlessness; for the lump itself bears nothing but potatoes; when these vessels come, which they are continually doing, winter and summer; towards the fall, with apples and pears and melons and cucumbers; and, in short, everlastingly coming and taking away the amount of taxes raised in England; when these vessels return, the sensible Scotch will go back in them for a dollar a head, till at last not a man of them will be left but the bed-ridden. Those villanous colonies are held for no earthly purpose but that of furnishing a pretence of giving money to the relations and dependents of the aristocracy; and they are the nicest channels in the world through which to send English taxes to enrich and strengthen the United States. Withdraw the English taxes, and, except in a small part in Canada, the whole of those horrible regions would be left to the bears and the savages in the course of a year.

This emigration is a famous blow given to the borough-mongers. The way to New York is now as well known and as easy, and as little expensive as from old York to London. First, the Sussex parishes sent their paupers; they invited over others that were not paupers; they invited over people of some property; then persons of greater property; now substantial farmers are going; men of considerable fortune will follow. It is the letters written across the Atlantic that do the business. Men of fortune will soon discover that to secure to their families their fortunes, and to take these out of the grasp of the inexorable tax-gatherer, they must get away. Every one that goes will take twenty after him; and thus it will go on. There can be no interruption but _war_; and war the Thing dares not have. As to France or the Netherlands, or any part of that hell called Germany, Englishmen can never settle there. The United States form another England without its unbearable taxes, its insolent game-laws, its intolerable dead-weight, and its tread-mills.

EASTERN TOUR ENDED, MIDLAND TOUR BEGUN.

_Lincoln, 23rd April 1830._

From the inn at Spittal we came to this famous ancient Roman station, and afterwards grand scene of Saxon and Gothic splendour, on the 21st. It was the third or fourth day of the _Spring fair_, which is one of the greatest in the kingdom, and which lasts for a whole week. Horses begin the fair; then come sheep; and to-day, the horned-cattle. It is supposed that there were about 50,000 sheep, and I think the whole of the space in the various roads and streets, covered by the cattle, must have amounted to ten acres of ground or more. Some say that they were as numerous as the sheep. The number of horses I did not hear; but they say that there were 1,500 fewer in number than last year. The sheep sold 5_s._ a head, on an average, lower than last year; and the cattle in the same proportion. High-priced horses sold well; but the horses which are called tradesmen's horses were very low. This is the natural march of the Thing: those who live on the taxes have money to throw away; but those who _pay_ them are ruined, and have, of course, no money to lay out on horses.

The country from Spittal to Lincoln continued to be much about the same as from Barton to Spittal. Large fields, rather light loam at top, stone under, about half corn-land and the rest grass. Not so many sheep as in the richer lands, but a great many still. As you get on towards Lincoln, the ground gradually rises, and you go on the road made by the Romans. When you come to the city you find the ancient castle and the magnificent cathedral on the _brow_ of a sort of ridge which ends here; for you look all of a sudden down into a deep valley, where the greater part of the remaining city lies. It once had _fifty-two churches_; it has now only eight, and only about 9,000 inhabitants! The cathedral is, I believe, the _finest building in the whole world_. All the others that I have seen (and I have seen all in England except Chester, York, Carlisle, and Durham) are little things compared with this. To the task of describing a thousandth-part of its striking beauties I am inadequate; it surpasses greatly all that I had anticipated; and oh! how loudly it gives the lie to those brazen Scotch historians who would have us believe that England was formerly a _poor_ country! The whole revenue raised from Lincolnshire, even by this present system of taxation, would not rear such another pile in two hundred years. Some of the city gates are down; but there is one standing, the arch of which is said to be two thousand years old; and a most curious thing it is. The sight of the cathedral fills the mind alternately with wonder, admiration, melancholy, and rage: wonder at its grandeur and magnificence; admiration of the zeal and disinterestedness of those who here devoted to the honour of God those immense means which they might have applied to their own enjoyments; melancholy at its present neglected state; and indignation against those who now enjoy the revenues belonging to it, and who creep about it merely as a pretext for devouring a part of the fruit of the people's labour. There are no men in England who ought to wish for _reform_ so anxiously as the working clergy of the church of England; we are all oppressed; but they are oppressed and insulted more than any men that ever lived in the world. The clergy in America; I mean in free America, not in our beggarly colonies, where clerical insolence and partiality prevail still more than here; I mean in the United States, where every man gives what he pleases, and no more: the clergy of the episcopal church are a hundred times better off than the working clergy are here. They are, also, much more respected, because their _order_ has not to bear the blame of enormous exactions; which exactions here are swallowed up by the aristocracy and their dependents; but which swallowings are imputed to every one bearing the name of parson. Throughout the whole country I have maintained the necessity and the justice of resuming the church property; but I have never failed to say that I know of no more meritorious and ill-used men than the working clergy of the established church.

_Leicester, 26th April 1830._

At the famous ancient city of Lincoln I had crowded audiences, principally consisting of farmers, on the 21st and 22nd; exceedingly well-behaved audiences; and great impression produced. One of the evenings, in pointing out to them the wisdom of explaining to their labourers the cause of their distress, in order to ward off the effects of the resentment which the labourers now feel everywhere against the farmers, I related to them what my labourers at Barn-Elm had been doing since I left home: and I repeated to them the complaints that my labourers made, stating to them, from memory, the following parts of that spirited petition:

"That your petitioners have recently observed that many great sums of the money, part of which we pay, have been voted to be given to persons who render no services to the country; some of which sums we will mention here; that the sum of 94,900_l._ has been voted for disbanded _foreign_ officers, their _widows_ and _children_; that your petitioners know that ever since the peace this charge has been annually made; that it has been on an average 110,000_l._ a-year, and that, of course, this band of foreigners have actually taken away out of England, since the peace, one million and seven hundred thousand pounds; partly taken from the fruit of our labour; and if our dinners were actually taken from our table and carried over to Hanover, the process could not be to our eyes more visible than it now is; and we are astonished that those who fear that we, who make the land bring forth crops, and who make the clothing and the houses, shall swallow up the rental, appear to think nothing at all of the swallowings of these Hanoverian men, women, and children, who may continue thus to swallow for half a century to come.

"That the advocates of the project for sending us out of our country to the rocks and snows of Nova Scotia, and the swamps and wilds of Canada, have insisted on the necessity of _checking marriages_ amongst us, in order to cause a decrease in our numbers; that, however, while this is insisted on in your honourable House, we perceive a part of our own earnings voted away to encourage marriage amongst those who do not work, and who live at our expense; and that to your petitioners it does seem most wonderful, that there should be persons to fear that we, the labourers, shall, on account of our numbers, swallow up the rental, while they actually vote away our food and raiment to increase the numbers of those who never have produced, and who never will produce, anything useful to man.

"That your petitioners know that more than one-half of the whole of their wages is taken from them by the taxes; that these taxes go chiefly into the hands of idlers; that your petitioners are the bees, and that the tax-receivers are the drones; and they know, further, that while there is a project for sending the bees out of the country, no one proposes to send away the drones; but that your petitioners hope to see the day when the checking of the increase of the drones, and not of the bees, will be the object of an English Parliament.

"That, in consequence of taxes, your petitioners pay six-pence for a pot of worse beer than they could make for one penny; that they pay ten shillings for a pair of shoes that they could have for five shillings; that they pay seven-pence for a pound of soap or candles that they could have for three-pence; that they pay seven-pence for a pound of sugar that they could have for three-pence; that they pay six shillings for a pound of tea that they could have for two shillings; that they pay double for their bread and meat of what they would have to pay if there were no idlers to be kept out of the taxes; that, therefore, it is the taxes that make their wages insufficient for their support, and that compel them to apply for aid to the poor-rates; that, knowing these things, they feel indignant at hearing themselves described as _paupers_, while so many thousands of idlers, for whose support they pay taxes, are called _noble Lords_ and _Ladies_, _honourable Gentlemen_, _Masters_, and _Misses_; that they feel indignant at hearing themselves described as a nuisance to be got rid of, while the idlers who live upon their earnings are upheld, caressed and cherished, as if they were the sole support of the country."

Having repeated to them these passages, I proceeded: "My workmen were induced thus to petition in consequence of the information which I, their master, had communicated to them; and, Gentlemen, why should not your labourers petition in the same strain? Why should you suffer them to remain in a state of ignorance relative to the cause of their misery? The eye sweeps over in this county more riches in one moment than are contained in the whole county in which I was born, and in which the petitioners live. Between Holbeach and Boston, even at a public-house, neither bread nor meat was to be found; and while the landlord was telling me that the people were become so poor that the butchers killed no meat in the neighbourhood. I counted more than two thousand fat sheep lying about in the pastures in that richest spot in the whole world. Starvation in the midst of plenty; the land covered with food, and the working people without victuals: everything taken away by the tax-eaters of various descriptions: and yet you take no measures for redress; and your miserable labourers seem to be doomed to expire with hunger, without an effort to obtain relief. What! cannot you point out to them the real cause of their sufferings; cannot you take a piece of paper and write out a petition for them; cannot your labourers petition as well as mine; are God's blessings bestowed on you without any spirit to preserve them; is the fatness of the land, is the earth teeming with food for the body and raiment for the back, to be an apology for the want of that courage for which your fathers were so famous; is the abundance which God has put into your hands, to be the excuse for your resigning yourselves to starvation? My God! is there no spirit left in England except in the miserable sand-hills of Surrey?" These words were not uttered without effect I can assure the reader. The assemblage was of that stamp in which thought goes before expression; but the effect of this example of my men in Surrey will, I am sure, be greater than anything that has been done in the petitioning way for a long time past.

We left Lincoln on the 23rd about noon, and got to Newark, in Nottinghamshire, in the evening, where I gave a lecture at the theatre to about three hundred persons. Newark is a very fine town, and the Castle Inn, where we stopped, extraordinarily good and pleasantly situated. Here I was met by a parcel of the printed petitions of the labourers at Barn-Elm.

I shall continue to _sow these_, as I proceed on my way. It should have been stated at the head of the printed petition that it was presented to the House of Lords by his Grace the Duke of Richmond, and by Mr. Pallmer to the House of Commons.

The country from Lincoln to Newark (sixteen miles) is by no means so fine as that which we have been in for so many weeks. The land is clayey in many parts. A pleasant country; a variety of hill and valley; but not that richness which we had so long had under our eye: fields smaller; fewer sheep, and those not so large, and so manifestly loaded with flesh. The roads always good. Newark is a town very much like Nottingham, having a very fine and spacious market-place; the buildings everywhere good; but it is in the villages that you find the depth of misery.

Having appointed positively to be at Leicester in the evening of Saturday, the 24th, we could not stop either at Grantham or at Melton Mowbray, not even long enough to view their fine old magnificent churches. In going from Newark to Grantham, we got again into Lincolnshire, in which last county Grantham is. From Newark nearly to Melton Mowbray, the country is about the same as between Lincoln and Newark; by no means bad land, but not so rich as that of Lincolnshire, in the middle and eastern parts; not approaching to the Holderness country in point of riches; a large part arable land, well tilled; but not such large homesteads, such numerous great stacks of wheat, and such endless flocks of lazy sheep.

Before we got to Melton Mowbray the beautiful pastures of this little verdant county of Leicester began to appear. Meadows and green fields, with here and there a corn field, all of smaller dimensions than those of Lincolnshire, but all very beautiful; with gentle hills and woods too; not beautiful woods, like those of Hampshire and of the wilds of Surrey, Sussex and Kent; but very pretty, all the country around being so rich. At Mowbray we began to get amongst the Leicestershire sheep, those fat creatures which we see the butchers' boys battering about so unmercifully in the streets and the outskirts of the Wen. The land is warmer here than in Lincolnshire; the grass more forward, and the wheat, between Mowbray and Leicester, six inches high, and generally looking exceedingly well. In Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire I found the wheat in general rather thin, and frequently sickly; nothing like so promising as in Suffolk and Norfolk.

We got to Leicester on the 24th at about half-after five o'clock; and the time appointed for the lecture was six. Leicester is a very fine town; spacious streets, fine inns, fine shops, and containing, they say, thirty or forty thousand people. It is well stocked with jails, of which a new one, in addition to the rest, has just been built, covering three acres of ground! And, as if _proud_ of it, the grand portal has little turrets in the castle style, with _embrasures_ in miniature on the caps of the turrets. Nothing speaks the want of reflection in the people so much as the self-gratulation which they appear to feel in these edifices in their several towns. Instead of expressing shame at these indubitable proofs of the horrible increase of misery and of crime, they really boast of these "improvements," as they call them. Our forefathers built abbeys and priories and churches, and they made such use of them that jails were nearly unnecessary. We, their sons, have knocked down the abbeys and priories; suffered half the parsonage-houses and churches to pretty nearly tumble down, and make such uses of the remainder, that jails and tread-mills and dungeons have now become the most striking edifices in every county in the kingdom.

Yesterday morning (Sunday the 25th) I walked out to the village of Knighton, two miles on the Bosworth road, where I breakfasted, and then walked back. This morning I walked out to Hailstone, nearly three miles on the Lutterworth road, and got my breakfast there. You have nothing to do but to walk through these villages, to see the cause of the increase of the jails. Standing on the hill at Knighton, you see the three ancient and lofty and beautiful spires rising up at Leicester; you see the river winding down through a broad bed of the most beautiful meadows that man ever set his eyes on; you see the bright verdure covering all the land, even to the tops of the hills, with here and there a little wood, as if made by God to give variety to the beauty of the scene, for the river brings the coal in abundance, for fuel, and the earth gives the brick and the tile in abundance. But go down into the villages; invited by the spires, rising up amongst the trees in the dells, at scarcely ever more than a mile or two apart; invited by these spires, go down into these villages, view the large, and once the most beautiful, churches; see the parson's house, large, and in the midst of pleasure-gardens; and then look at the miserable sheds in which the labourers reside! Look at these hovels, made of mud and of straw; bits of glass, or of old off-cast windows, without frames or hinges, frequently, but merely stuck in the mud wall. Enter them, and look at the bits of chairs or stools; the wretched boards tacked together to serve for a table; the floor of pebble, broken brick, or of the bare ground; look at the thing called a bed; and survey the rags on the backs of the wretched inhabitants; and then wonder, if you can, that the jails and dungeons and tread-mills increase, and that a standing army and barracks are become the favourite establishments of England!

At the village of Hailstone, I got into the purlieu, as they call it in Hampshire, of a person well known in the Wen; namely, the Reverend Beresford, rector of that fat affair, St. Andrew's, Holborn! In walking through the village, and surveying its deplorable dwellings, so much worse than the cow-sheds of the cottagers on the skirts of the forests in Hampshire, my attention was attracted by the surprising contrast between them and the house of their religious teacher. I met a labouring man. Country people _know everything_. If you have ever made a _faux pas_, of any sort of description; if you have anything about you of which you do not want all the world to know, never retire to a village, keep in some great town; but the Wen, for your life, for there the next-door neighbour will not know even your name; and the vicinage will judge of you solely by the quantity of money that you have to spend. This labourer seemed not to be in a very great hurry. He was digging in his garden; and I, looking over a low hedge, _pitched him up_ for a gossip, commencing by asking him whether that was the parson's house. Having answered in the affirmative, and I, having asked the parson's name, he proceeded thus: "His name is Beresford; but though he lives there, he has not this living now, he has got the living of St. Andrew's, Holborn; and they say it is worth a great many thousands a year. He could not, they say, keep this living and have that too, because they were so far apart. And so this living was given to Mr. Brown, who is the rector of Hobey, about seven miles off." "Well," said I, "but _how comes Beresford to live here now_, if the living be given to another man?" "Why, Sir," said he, "this Beresford married a daughter of Brown; and so, you know (smiling and looking very archly), Brown comes and takes the payment for the tithes, and pays a curate that lives in that house there in the field; and Beresford lives at that fine house still, just as he used to do." I asked him what the living was worth, and he answered twelve hundred pounds a year. It is a rectory, I find, and of course the parson has great tithes as well as small.

The people of this village know a great deal more about Beresford than the people of St. Andrew's, Holborn, know about him. In short, the country people know all about the whole thing. They will be long before they act; but they will make no noise as a signal for action. They will be moved by nothing but actual want of food. This the Thing seems to be aware of; and hence all the innumerable schemes for keeping them quiet: hence the endless jails and all the terrors of hardened law: hence the schemes for coaxing them, by letting them have bits of land: hence the everlasting bills and discussions of committees about the state of the poor, and the state of the poor-laws: all of which will fail; and at last, unless reduction of taxation speedily take place, the schemers will find what the consequences are of reducing millions to the verge of starvation.

The labourers here, who are in need of parochial relief, are formed into what are called _roundsmen_; that is to say, they are sent round from one farmer to another, each maintaining a certain number for a certain length of time; and thus they go round from one to the other. If the farmers did not pay three shillings in taxes out of every six shillings that they give in the shape of wages, they could afford to give the men four and sixpence in wages, which would be better to the men than the six. But as long as this burden of taxes shall continue, so long the misery will last, and it will go on increasing with accelerated pace. The march of circumstances is precisely what it was in France, just previous to the French revolution. If the aristocracy were wise, they would put a stop to that march. The middle class are fast sinking down to the state of the lower class. _A community of feeling_ between these classes, and that feeling an angry one, is what the aristocracy has to dread. As far as the higher clergy are concerned, this community of feeling is already complete. A short time will extend the feeling to every other branch; and then, the hideous consequences make their appearance. Reform; a radical reform of the Parliament; this reform _in time_; this reform, which would reconcile the middle class to the aristocracy, and give renovation to that which has now become a mass of decay and disgust; this reform, given with a good grace, and not taken by force, is the only refuge for the aristocracy of this kingdom. Just as it was in France. All the tricks of financiers have been tried in vain; and by-and-by some trick more pompous and foolish than the rest; Sir Henry Parnell's trick, perhaps, or something equally foolish, would blow the whole concern into the air.

_Worcester, 18th May, 1830._

In tracing myself from Leicester to this place, I begin at Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, one of the prettiest country towns that I ever saw; that is to say, prettiest _situated_. At this place they have, in the church (they say), the identical _pulpit_ from which Wickliffe preached! This was not his birth-place; but he was, it seems, priest of this parish.

I set off from Lutterworth early on the 29th of April, stopped to breakfast at Birmingham, got to Wolverhampton by two o'clock (a distance altogether of about 50 miles), and lectured at six in the evening. I repeated, or rather continued, the lecturing, on the 30th, and on the 3rd of May. On the 6th of May went to Dudley, and lectured there: on the 10th of May, at Birmingham; on the 12th and 13th, at Shrewsbury; and on the 14th, came here.

Thus have I come through countries of corn and meat and iron and coal; and from the banks of the Humber to those of the Severn, I find all the people, who do not share in the taxes, in a state of distress, greater or less, _Mortgagers_ all frightened out of their-wits; _fathers_ trembling for the fate of their children; and _working people_ in the most miserable state, and, as they ought to be, in the _worst of temper_. These will, I am afraid, be the _state-doctors_ at last! The farmers are cowed down: the poorer they get, the more cowardly they are. Every one of them sees the cause of his suffering, and sees general ruin at hand; but every one hopes that by some trick, some act of meanness, some contrivance, _he shall escape_. So that there is no hope of any change for the better but from the _working people_. The farmers will sink to a very low state; and thus the Thing (barring _accidents_) may go on, until neither farmer nor tradesman will see a joint of meat on his table once in a quarter of a year. It appears likely to be precisely as it was in France: it is now just what France was at the close of the reign of Louis XV. It has been the fashion to ascribe the _French Revolution_ to the writings of Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and others. These writings had _nothing at all_ to do with the matter: no, _nothing at all_. The _Revolution_ was produced by _taxes_, which at last became unbearable; by debts of the State; but, in fact, by the despair of the people, produced by the weight of the taxes.

It is curious to observe how ready the supporters of tyranny and taxation are to ascribe rebellions and revolutions to disaffected leaders; and particularly to writers; and, as these supporters of tyranny and taxation have had the press at their command; have had generally the absolute command of it, they have caused this belief to go down from generation to generation. It will not do for them to ascribe revolutions and rebellions to the true cause; because then the rebellions and revolutions would be justified; and it is their object to cause them to be condemned. Infinite delusion has prevailed in this country, in consequence of the efforts of which I am now speaking. Voltaire was just as much a cause of the French Revolution as I have been the cause of imposing these sixty millions of taxes. The French Revolution was produced by the grindings of taxation; and this I will take an opportunity very soon of proving, to the conviction of every man in the kingdom who chooses to read.

In the iron country, of which Wolverhampton seems to be a sort of central point, and where thousands, and perhaps two or three hundred thousand people, are assembled together, the _truck_ or _tommy_ system generally prevails; and this is a very remarkable feature in the state of this country. I have made inquiries with regard to the origin, or etymology, of this word _tommy_, and could find no one to furnish me with the information. It is certainly, like so many other good things, to be ascribed to _the army_; for, when I was a recruit at Chatham barracks, in the year 1783, we had brown bread served out to us twice in the week. And, for what reason God knows, we used to call it _tommy_. And the sergeants, when they called us out to get our bread, used to tell us to come and get our _tommy_. Even the officers used to call it tommy. Any one that could get white bread, called it bread; but the brown stuff that we got in lieu of part of our pay was called _tommy_; and so we used to call it when we got abroad. When the soldiers came to have bread served out to them in the several towns in England, the name of "tommy" went down by tradition; and, doubtless, it was taken up and adapted to the truck system in Staffordshire and elsewhere.

Now, there is nothing wrong, nothing _essentially_ wrong, in this system of barter. Barter is in practice in some of the happiest communities in the world. In the new settled parts of the United States of America, to which money has scarcely found its way, to which articles of wearing apparel are brought from a great distance, where the great and almost sole occupations are, the rearing of food, the building of houses, and the making of clothes, barter is the rule and money payment the exception. And this is attended with no injury and with very little inconvenience. The bargains are made, and the accounts kept _in money_; but the payments are made in produce or in goods, the price of these being previously settled on. The store-keeper (which we call shop-keeper) receives the produce in exchange for his goods, and exchanges that produce for more goods; and thus the concerns of the community go on, every one living in abundance, and the sound of misery never heard.

But when this tommy system; this system of barter; when this makes its appearance where money has for ages been the medium of exchange, and of payments for labour; when this system makes its appearance in such a state of society, there is something wrong; things are out of joint; and it becomes us to inquire into the real cause of its being resorted to; and it does not become us to join in an outcry against the employers who resort to it, until we be perfectly satisfied that those employers are guilty of oppression.

The manner of carrying on the tommy system is this: suppose there to be a master who employs a hundred men. That hundred men, let us suppose, to earn a pound a week each. This is not the case in the iron-works; but no matter, we can illustrate our meaning by one sum as well as by another. These men lay out weekly the whole of the hundred pounds in victuals, drink, clothing, bedding, fuel, and house-rent. Now, the master finding the profits of his trade fall off very much, and being at the same time in want of money to pay the hundred pounds weekly, and perceiving that these hundred pounds are carried away at once, and given to shopkeepers of various descriptions; to butchers, bakers, drapers, hatters, shoemakers, and the rest; and knowing that, on an average, these shopkeepers must all have a profit of thirty _per cent._, or more, he determines to _keep this thirty per cent. to himself_; and this is thirty pounds a week gained as a shop-keeper, which amounts to 1,560_l._ a year. He, therefore, sets up a tommy shop: a long place containing every commodity that the workman can want, liquor and house-room excepted. Here the workman takes out his pound's worth; and his house-rent he pays in truck, if he do not rent of his master; and if he will have liquor, beer, or gin, or anything else, he must get it by trucking with the goods that he has got at the tommy shop.

Now, there is nothing essentially unjust in this. There is a little inconvenience as far as the house-rent goes; but not much. The tommy is easily turned into money; and if the single saving man does experience some trouble in the sale of his goods, that is compensated for in the more important case of the married man, whose wife and children generally experience the benefit of this payment in kind. It is, to be sure, a sorrowful reflection, that such a check upon the drinking propensities of the fathers should be necessary; but _the necessity exists_; and, however sorrowful the fact, the fact, I am assured, is, that thousands upon thousands of mothers have to bless this system, though it arises from a loss of trade and the poverty of the masters.

I have often had to observe on the cruel effects of the suppression of markets and fairs, and on the consequent power of extortion possessed by the country shop-keepers. And what a thing it is to reflect on, that these shopkeepers have the whole of the labouring men of England constantly in their debt; have on an average a mortgage on their wages to the amount of five or six weeks, and make them pay any price that they choose to extort. So that, in fact, there is a tommy system in every village, the difference being, that the shop-keeper is the tommy man instead of the farmer.

The only question is in this case of the manufacturing tommy work, whether the master charges a higher price than the shop-keepers would charge; and, while I have not heard that the masters do this, I think it improbable that they should. They must desire to avoid the charge of such extortion; and they have little temptation to it; because they buy at best hand and in large quantities; because they are sure of their customers, and know to a certainty the quantity that they want; and because the distribution of the goods is a matter of such perfect regularity, and attended with so little expense, compared with the expenses of the shopkeeper. Any farmer who has a parcel of married men working for him, might supply them with meat for four-pence the pound, when the butcher must charge them seven-pence, or lose by his trade; and to me, it has always appeared astonishing, that farmers (where they happen to have the power completely in their hands) do not compel their married labourers to have a sufficiency of bread and meat for their wives and children. What would be more easy than to reckon what would be necessary for house-rent, fuel, and clothing; to pay that in money once a month, or something of that sort, and to pay the rest in meat, flour, and malt? I may never occupy a farm again; but if I were to do it, to any extent, the East and West Indies, nor big brewer, nor distiller, should ever have one farthing out of the produce of my farm, except he got it through the throats of those who made the wearing apparel. If I had a village at my command, not a tea-kettle should sing in that village: there should be no extortioner under the name of country shop-keeper, and no straight-backed, bloated fellow, with red eyes, unshaven face, and slip-shod till noon, called a publican, and generally worthy of the name of _sinner_. Well-covered backs and well-lined bellies would be my delight; and as to talking about controlling and compelling, what a controlling and compelling are there now! It is everlasting control and compulsion. My bargain should be so much in money, and so much in bread, meat, and malt.

And what is the bargain, I want to know, _with yearly servants_? Why, so much in money and the rest in bread, meat, beer, lodging and fuel. And does any one affect to say that this is wrong? Does any one say that it is wrong to exercise control and compulsion over these servants; such control and compulsion is not only the master's right, but they are included in his bounden _duties_. It is his duty to make them rise early, keep good hours, be industrious, and careful, be cleanly in their persons and habits, be civil in their language. These are amongst the uses of the means which God has put into his hands; and are these means to be neglected towards married servants any more than towards single ones?

Even in the well-cultivated and thickly-settled parts of the United States of America, it is the general custom, and a very good custom it is, to pay the wages of labour _partly in money and partly in kind_; and this practice is extended to carpenters, bricklayers, and other workmen about buildings, and even to tailors, shoemakers, and weavers, who go (a most excellent custom) to farm-houses to work. The bargain is, so much money _and found_; that is to say, found in food and drink, and sometimes in lodging. The money then used to be, for a common labourer, in Long Island, at common work (not haying or harvesting), three York shillings a day, and found; that is to say, three times seven-pence halfpenny of our money; and three times seven-pence halfpenny a day, which is eleven shillings and three-pence a week, and found. This was the wages of the commonest labourer at the commonest work. And the wages of a good labourer now, in Worcestershire, _is eight shillings a week, and not found_. Accordingly, they are miserably poor and degraded.

Therefore, there is in this mode of payment nothing _essentially_ degrading; but the tommy system of Staffordshire, and elsewhere, though not unjust in itself, indirectly inflicts great injustice on the whole race of shop-keepers, who are necessary for the distribution of commodities in great towns, and whose property is taken away from them by this species of monopoly, which the employers of great numbers of men have been compelled to adopt for their own safety. It is not the fault of the masters, who can have no pleasure in making profit in this way: it is the fault of the taxes, which, by lowering the price of their goods, have compelled them to resort to this means of diminishing their expenses, or to quit their business altogether, which a great part of them cannot do without being left without a penny; and if a law could be passed and enforced (which it cannot) to put an end to the tommy system, the consequence would be, that instead of a fourth part of the furnaces being let out of blast in this neighbourhood, one-half would be let out of blast, and additional thousands of poor creatures would be left solely dependent on parochial relief.

A view of the situation of things at Shrewsbury, will lead us in a minute to the real cause of the tommy system. Shrewsbury is one of the most interesting spots that man ever beheld. It is the capital of the county of Salop, and Salop appears to have been the original name of the town itself. It is curiously enclosed by the river Severn, which is here large and fine, and which, in the form of a _horse-shoe_, completely surrounds it, leaving, of the whole of the two miles round, only one little place whereon to pass in and out on land. There are two bridges, one on the east, and the other on the west; the former called the English, and the other, the Welsh bridge. The environs of this town, especially on the Welsh side, are the most beautiful that can be conceived. The town lies in the midst of a fine agricultural country, of which it is the great and almost only mart. Hither come the farmers to sell their produce, and hence they take, in exchange, their groceries, their clothing, and all the materials for their implements and the domestic conveniences. It was fair-day when I arrived at Shrewsbury. Everything was on the decline. Cheese, which four years ago sold at sixty shillings the six-score pounds, would not bring forty. I took particular pains to ascertain the fact with regard to the cheese, which is a great article here. I was assured that shop-keepers in general did not now sell half the quantity of goods in a month that they did in that space of time four or five years ago. The _ironmongers_ were not selling a fourth-part of what they used to sell five years ago.

Now, it is impossible to believe that a somewhat similar falling off in the sale of iron must not have taken place all over the kingdom; and need we then wonder that the iron in Staffordshire has fallen, within these five years, from thirteen pounds to five pounds a ton, or perhaps a great deal more; and need we wonder that the _iron-masters_, who have the same rent and taxes to pay that they had to pay before, have resorted to the tommy system, in order to assist in saving themselves from ruin! Here is the real cause of the tommy system; and if Mr. Littleton really wishes to put an end to it, let him prevail upon the Parliament to take off taxes to the amount of forty millions a year.

Another article had experienced a still greater falling off at Shrewsbury; I mean the article of corn-sacks, of which there has been a falling off of _five-sixths_. The sacks are made by weavers in the North; and need we wonder, then, at the low wages of those industrious people, whom I used to see weaving sacks in the miserable cellars at Preston!

Here is the true cause of the tommy system, and of all the other evils which disturb and afflict the country. It is a great country; an immense mass of industry and resources of all sorts, _breaking up_; a prodigious mass of enterprise and capital diminishing and dispersing. The enormous taxes co-operating with the Corn-bill, which those taxes have engendered, are driving skill and wealth out of the country in all directions; are causing iron-masters to make France, and particularly Belgium, blaze with furnaces, in the lieu of those which have been extinguished here; and that have established furnaces and cotton-mills in abundance. These same taxes and this same Corn-bill are sending the long wool from Lincolnshire to France, there to be made into those blankets which, for ages, were to be obtained nowhere but in England.

This is the true state of the country, and here are the true causes of that state; and all that the corrupt writers and speakers say about over-population and poor-laws, and about all the rest of their shuffling excuses, is a heap of nonsense and of lies.

I cannot quit Shrewsbury without expressing the great satisfaction that I derived from my visit to that place. It is the only town into which I have gone, in all England, without knowing, beforehand, something of some person in it. I could find out no person that took the Register; and could discover but one person who took the _Advice to Young Men_. The number of my auditors was expected to be so small, that I doubled the price of admission, in order to pay the expense of the room. To my great surprise, I had a room full of gentlemen, at the request of some of whom I repeated the dose the next night; and if my audience were as well pleased with me as I was with them, their pleasure must have been great indeed. I saw not one single person in the place that I had ever seen before; yet I never had more cordial shakes by the hand; in proportion to their numbers, not more at Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Halifax, Leeds, or Nottingham, or even Hull. I was particularly pleased with the conduct of the _young_ gentlemen at Shrewsbury, and especially when I asked them, whether they were prepared to act upon the insolent doctrine of Huskisson, and quietly submit to this state of things "_during the present generation_"?

TOUR IN THE WEST.

_3rd July, 1830._

Just as I was closing my third Lecture (on Saturday night), at Bristol, to a numerous and most respectable audience, the news of the above event [the death of George IV.] arrived. I had advertised, and made all the preparations, for lecturing at Bath on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday; but, under the circumstances, I thought it would not be proper to proceed thither, for that purpose, until after the burial of the King. When that has taken place, I shall, as soon as may be, return to Bath, taking Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire in my way; from Bath, through Somerset, Devon, and into Cornwall; and back through Dorset, South Wilts, Hants, Sussex, Kent, and then go into Essex, and, last of all, into my native county of Surrey. I shall then have seen all England with my own eyes, except Rutland, Westmoreland, Durham, Cumberland, and Northumberland; and these, if I have life and health till next spring, I shall see, in my way to Scotland. But never shall I see another place to interest me, and so pleasing to me, as Bristol and its environs, taking the whole together. A good and solid and wealthy city: a people of plain and good manners; private virtue and public spirit united; no empty noise, no insolence, no flattery; men very much like the Yorkers and Lancastrians. And as to the seat of the city and its environs, it surpasses all that I ever saw. A great commercial city in the midst of corn-fields, meadows and woods, and the ships coming into the centre of it, miles from anything like sea, up a narrow river, and passing between two clefts of a rock probably a hundred feet high; so that from the top of these clefts, you _look down_ upon the main-top gallant masts of lofty ships that are gliding along!

PROGRESS IN THE NORTH.

_Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 23rd September, 1832._

From Bolton, in Lancashire, I came, through Bury and Rochdale, to Todmorden, on the evening of Tuesday, the 18th September. I have formerly described the valley of Todmorden as the most curious and romantic that was ever seen, and where the water and the coal seemed to be engaged in a struggle for getting foremost in point of utility to man. On the 19th I staid all day at Todmorden to write and to sleep. On the 20th I set off for Leeds by the stage coach, through Halifax and Bradford; and as to _agriculture_, certainly the poorest country that I have ever set my eyes on, except that miserable _Nova Scotia_, where there are the townships of Horton and of Wilmot, and whither the sensible suckling statesman, Lord Howick, is wanting to send English country girls, lest they should breed if they stay in England! This country, from Todmorden to Leeds, is, however, covered over with population, and the two towns of Halifax and Bradford are exceedingly populous. There appears to be nothing produced by the earth but the natural grass of the country, which, however, is not bad. The soil is a sort of yellow-looking, stiffish stuff, lying about a foot thick, upon a bed of rocky stone, lying upon solid rock beneath. The grass does not seem to burn here; nor is it bad in quality; and all the grass appears to be wanted to rear milk for this immense population, that absolutely covers the whole face of the country. The only grain crops that I saw were those of very miserable oats; some of which were cut and carried; some standing in _shock_, the sheaves not being more than about a foot and a half long; some still standing, and some yet _nearly green_. The land is very high from Halifax to Bradford, and proportionably cold. Here are some of those "Yorkshire Hills" that they see from Lancashire and Cheshire.

I got to Leeds about four o'clock, and went to bed at eight precisely. At five in the morning of the 21st, I came off by the coach to Newcastle, through Harrowgate, Ripon, Darlington, and Durham. As I never was in this part of the country before, and can, therefore, never have described it upon any former occasion, I shall say rather more about it now than I otherwise should do. Having heard and read so much about the "Northern Harvest," about the "Durham ploughs," and the "Northumberland system of husbandry," what was my surprise at finding, which I verily believe to be the fact, that there is not as much corn grown in the North-Riding of Yorkshire, which begins at Ripon, and in the whole county of Durham, as is grown in the Isle of Wight alone. A very small part, comparatively speaking, is _arable_ land; and all the outward appearances show that that which is arable was formerly pasture. Between Durham and Newcastle there is a pretty general division of the land into grass fields and corn fields; but, even here, the absence of _homesteads_, the absence of barns, and of labourers' cottages, clearly show that agriculture is a sort of novelty; and that nearly all was pasturage not many years ago, or at any rate only so much of the land was cultivated as was necessary to furnish straw for the horses kept for other purposes than those of agriculture, and oats for those horses, and bread corn sufficient for the graziers and their people. All along the road from Leeds to Durham I saw hardly any wheat at all, or any wheat stubble, no barley, the chief crops being oats and beans mixed with peas. These everywhere appeared to be what we should deem most miserable crops. The oats, tied up in sheaves, or yet uncut, were scarcely ever more than two feet and a half long, the beans were about the same height, and in both cases the land so full of grass as to appear to be _a pasture_, after the oats and the beans were cut.

The land appears to be divided into very extensive farms. The corn, when cut, you see put up into little stacks of a circular form, each containing about _three_ of our southern wagon-loads of sheaves, which stacks are put up round about the stone house and the buildings of the farmer. How they thrash them out I do not know, for I could see nothing resembling a barn or a barn's door. By the corn being put into such small stacks, I should suppose the thrashing places to be very small, and capable of holding only one stack at a time. I have many times seen one single rick containing a greater quantity of sheaves than fifteen or twenty of these stacks; and I have seen more than twenty stacks, each containing a number of sheaves equal to, at least, fifteen of these stacks; I have seen more than twenty of these large stacks, standing at one and the same time, in one single homestead in Wiltshire. I should not at all wonder if Tom Baring's farmers at Micheldever had a greater bulk of wheat-stacks standing now than any one would be able to find of that grain, especially, in the whole of the North-Riding of Yorkshire, and in one half of Durham.

But this by no means implies that these are beggarly counties, even exclusive of their waters, coals, and mines. They are not _agricultural_ counties; they are not counties for the producing of bread, but they are counties made for the express purpose of producing meat; in which respect they excel the southern counties, in a degree beyond all comparison. I have just spoken of the _beds of grass_ that are everywhere seen after the oats and the beans have been out. Grass is the natural produce of this land, which seems to have been made on purpose to produce it; and we are not to call land _poor_ because it will produce nothing but meat. The size and shape of the fields, the sort of fences, the absence of all homesteads and labourers' cottages, the thinness of the country churches, everything shows that this was always a country purely of pasturage. It is curious, that, belonging to every farm, there appears to be a large quantity of turnips. They are sowed in drills, cultivated between, beautifully clean, very large in the bulb, even now, and apparently having been sowed early in June, if not in May. They are generally the white globe turnip, here and there a field of the Swedish kind. These turnips are not fed off by sheep and followed by crops of barley and clover, as in the South, but are raised, I suppose, for the purpose of being carried in and used in the feeding of oxen, which have come off the grass lands in October and November. These turnip lands seem to take all the manure of the farm; and, as the reader will perceive, they are merely an adjunct to the pasturage, serving, during the winter, instead of hay, wherewith to feed the cattle of various descriptions.

This, then, is not a country of farmers, but a country of graziers; a country of pasture, and not a country of the plough; and those who formerly managed the land here were not husbandmen, but herdsmen. Fortescue was, I dare say, a native of this country; for he describes England as a country of shepherds and of herdsmen, not working so very hard as the people of France did, having more leisure for contemplation, and, therefore, more likely to form a just estimate of their rights and duties; and he describes them as having, at all times, in their houses, plenty of flesh to eat, and plenty of woollen to wear. St. Augustine, in writing to the Pope an account of the character and conduct of his converts in England, told him that he found the English an exceedingly good and generous people; but they had one fault, their fondness for flesh-meat was so great, and their resolution to have it so determined, that he could not get them to abstain from it, even on the fast-days; and that he was greatly afraid that they would return to their state of horrible heathenism, rather than submit to the discipline of the church in this respect. The Pope, who had more sense than the greater part of bishops have ever had, wrote for answer: "Keep them within the pale of the church, at any rate, even if they slaughter their oxen in the churchyards: let them make shambles of the churches, rather than suffer the devil to carry away their souls." The taste of our fathers was by no means for the potato; for the "nice _mealy_ potato." The Pope himself would not have been able to induce them to carry "cold potatoes in their bags" to the plough-field, as was, in evidence before the special commissions, proved to have been the common practice in Hampshire and Wiltshire, and which had been before proved by evidence taken by unfeeling committees of the boroughmonger House of Commons. Faith! these old papas of ours would have burnt up not only the stacks, but the ground itself, rather than have lived upon miserable roots, while those who raised none of the food were eating up all the bread and the meat.

Brougham and Birkbeck, and the rest of the Malthusian crew, are constantly at work preaching _content to the hungry and naked_. To be sure, they themselves, however, are not content to be hungry and naked. Amongst other things, they tell the working-people that the working-folks, especially in the North, used to have no bread, except such as was made of oats and of barley. That was better than potatoes, even the "nice mealy ones;" especially when carried cold to the field in a bag. But these literary impostors, these deluders, as far as they are able to delude; these vagabond authors, who thus write and publish for the purpose of persuading the working-people to be quiet, while they sack luxuries and riches out of the fruit of their toil; these literary impostors take care not to tell the people, that these oatcakes and this barley-bread were always associated with great lumps of flesh-meat; they forget to tell them this, or rather these half-mad, perverse, and perverting literary impostors suppress the facts, for reasons far too manifest to need stating.

The cattle here are the most beautiful by far that I ever saw. The sheep are very handsome; but the horned cattle are the prettiest creatures that my eyes ever beheld. My sons will recollect that when they were little boys I took them to see the "Durham Ox," of which they drew the picture, I dare say, a hundred times. That was upon a large scale, to be sure, the model of all these beautiful cattle: short horns, strait back, a taper neck, very small in proportion where it joins on the small and handsome head, deep dewlap, small-boned in the legs, hoop-ribbed, square-hipped, tail slender. A great part of them are white, or approaching very nearly to white: they all appear to be half fat, cows and oxen and all; and the meat from them is said to be, and I believe it is, as fine as that from Lincolnshire, Herefordshire, Romney Marsh, or Pevensey Level; and I am ready, at any time, to swear, if need be, that one pound of it fed upon this grass is worth more, to me at least, than any ten pounds or twenty pounds fed upon oil-cake, or the stinking stuff of distilleries; aye, or even upon turnips. This is all _grass-land_, even from Staffordshire to this point. In its very nature it produces grass that fattens. The little producing-land that there is even in Lancashire and the West-Riding of Yorkshire, produces grass that would fatten an ox, though the land be upon the tops of hills. Everywhere, where there is a sufficiency of grass, it will fatten an ox; and well do we Southern people know that, except in mere vales and meadows, we have no land that will do this; we know that we might put an ox up to his eyes in our grass, and that it would only just keep him from growing worse: we know that we are obliged to have turnips and meal and cabbages and parsnips and potatoes, and then, with some of our hungry hay for them to _pick their teeth with_, we make shift to put fat upon an ox.

Yet, so much are we like the beasts which, in the fable, came before Jupiter to ask him to endow them with faculties incompatible with their divers frames and divers degrees of strength, that we, in this age of "_waust improvements, Ma'um_," are always hankering after laying fields down in pasture, in the South, while these fellows in the North, as if resolved to rival us in "improvement" and perverseness, must needs break up their pasture-lands, and proclaim defiance to the will of Providence, and, instead of rich pasture, present to the eye of the traveller half-green starveling oats and peas, some of them in blossom in the last week of September. The land itself, the earth, of its own accord, as if resolved to vindicate the decrees of its Maker, sends up grass under these miserable crops, as if to punish them for their intrusion; and, when the crops are off, there comes a pasture, at any rate, in which the grass, like that of Herefordshire and Lincolnshire, is not (as it is in our Southern countries) mixed with weeds; but, standing upon the ground as thick as the earth can bear it, and fattening everything that eats of it, it forbids the perverse occupier to tear it to pieces. Such is the land of this country; all to the North of Cheshire, at any rate, leaving out the East-Riding of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, which are adapted for corn in some spots and for cattle in others.

These Yorkshire and Durham cows are to be seen in great numbers in and about London, where they are used for the purpose of giving milk, of which I suppose they give great quantities; but it is always an observation that if you have these cows you must _keep them exceedingly well_: and this is very true; for, upon the food which does very well for the common cows of Hampshire and Surrey, they would dwindle away directly and be good for nothing at all; and these sheep, which are as beautiful as even imagination could make them, so round and so loaded with flesh, would actually perish upon those downs and in those folds where our innumerable flocks not only live but fatten so well, and with such facility are made to produce us such quantities of fine mutton and such bales of fine wool. There seems to be something in the soil and climate, and particularly in the soil, to create everywhere a sort of cattle and of sheep fitted to it; Dorsetshire and Somersetshire have sheep different from all others, and the nature of which it is to have their lambs in the fall instead of having them in the spring. I remember when I was amongst the villages on the Cotswold-hills, in Gloucestershire, they showed me their sheep in several places, which are a stout big-boned sheep. They told me that many attempts had been made to cross them with the small-boned Leicester breed, but that it had never succeeded, and that the race always got back to the Cotswold breed immediately.

Before closing these rural remarks, I cannot help calling to the mind of the reader an observation of LORD JOHN SCOTT ELDON, who, at a time when there was a great complaint about "agricultural distress" and about the fearful increase of the poor-rates, said, "that there was no such distress _in Northumberland_, and no such increase of the poor-rates:" and so said my dignitary, Dr. Black, at the same time: and this, this wise lord, and this not less wise dignitary of mine, ascribed to "the bad practice of the farmers o' the Sooth paying the labourers their wages out of the poor-rates, which was not the practice in the North." I thought that they were telling what the children call _stories_; but I now find that these observations of theirs arose purely from that want of knowledge of the country which was, and is, common to them both. Why, Lord John, there are no such persons here as we call farmers, and no such persons as we call farm-labourers. From Cheshire to Newcastle, I have never seen _one single labourer's cottage by the side of the road_! Oh, Lord! if the good people of this country could but see the endless strings of vine-covered cottages and flower-gardens of the labourers of Kent, Sussex, Surrey, and Hampshire; if they could go down the vale of the Avon in Wiltshire, from Marlborough Forest to the city of Salisbury, and there see _thirty_ parish churches in a distance of thirty miles; if they could go up from that city of Salisbury up the valley of Wylly to Warminster, and there see one-and-thirty churches in the space of twenty-seven miles; if they could go upon the top of the down, as I did, not far (I think it was) from St. Mary Cotford, and there have under the eye, in the valley below, _ten parish churches within the distance of eight miles_, see the downs covered with innumerable flocks of sheep, water meadows running down the middle of the valley, while the sides rising from it were covered with corn, sometimes a hundred acres of wheat in one single piece, while the stack-yards were still well stored from the previous harvest; if John Scott Eldon's countrymen could behold those things, their quick-sightedness would soon discover why poor-rates should have increased in the South and not in the North; and, though their liberality would suggest an apology for my dignitary, Dr. Black, who was freighted to London in a smack, and has ever since been impounded in the Strand, relieved now and then by an excursion to Blackheath or Clapham Common; to find an apology for their countryman, Lord John, would be putting their liberality to an uncommonly severe test; for he, be it known to them, has chosen his country abode, not in the Strand like my less-informed dignitary, Dr. Black, nor in his native regions in the North; but has, in the beautiful county of Dorset, amidst valleys and downs precisely like those of Wiltshire, got as near to the sun as he could possibly get, and there, from the top of his mansion he can see a score of churches, and from his lofty and ever-green downs, and from his fat valleys beneath, he annually sends his flocks of long-tailed ewes to Appleshaw fair, thence to be sold to all the southern parts of the kingdom, having L. E. marked upon their beautiful wool; and, like the two factions at Maidstone, all tarred with the same brush. It is curious, too, notwithstanding the old maxim, that we all try to get as nearly as possible in our old age to the spot whence we first sprang. Lord John's brother William (who has some title that I have forgotten) has taken up his quarters on the healthy and I say beautiful Cotswold of Gloucestershire, where, in going in a postchaise from Stowe-in-the-Wold to Cirencester, I thought I should never get by the wall of his park; and I exclaimed to Mr. Dean, who was along with me, "Curse this Northumbrian ship-broker's son, he has got one half of the county;" and then all the way to Cirencester I was explaining to Mr. Dean _how the man had got his money_, at which Dean, who is a Roman Catholic, seemed to me to be ready to cross himself several times.

No, there is no apology for Lord John's observations on the difference between the poor-rates of the South and the North. To go from London to his country-houses he must go across Surrey and Hampshire, along one of the vales of Wiltshire, and one of the vales of Dorsetshire, in which latter county he has many a time seen in one single large field _a hundred wind-rows_ (stacks made in the field in order that the corn may get quite dry before it be put into great stacks); he has many a time seen, on one farm, two or three hundred of these, each of which was very nearly as big as the stacks which you see in the stack-yards of the North Riding of Yorkshire and of Durham, where a large farm seldom produces more than ten or a dozen of these stacks, and where the farmer's property consists of his cattle and sheep, and where little, very little, agricultural labour is wanted. Lord John ought to have known the cause of the great difference, and not to have suffered such nonsense to come out of a head covered with so very large a wig.

I looked with particular care on the sides of the road all the way through Yorkshire and Durham. The distance, altogether, from Oldham in Lancashire, to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, is about a hundred and fifty miles; and, leaving out the _great_ towns, I did not see so many churches as are to be seen in any twenty miles of any of the valleys of Wiltshire. All these things prove that these are by nature counties of pasturage, and that they were formerly used solely for that purpose. It is curious that there are none of those lands here which we call "meadows." The rivers run in _deep beds_, and have generally very steep sides; no little rivulets and occasional overflowings that make the meadows in the South, which are so very beautiful, but the grass in which is not of the rich nature that the grass is in these counties in the North: it will produce milk enough, but it will not produce beef. It is hard to say which part of the country is the most valuable gift of God; but every one must see how perverse and injurious it is to endeavour to produce in the one that which nature has intended to confine to the other. After all the unnatural efforts that have been made here to ape the farming of Norfolk and Suffolk, it is only _playing at farming_, as stupid and "loyal" parents used to set their children _to play at soldiers during the last war_.

If any of these sensible men of Newcastle were to see the farming in the South Downs, and to see, as I saw in the month of July last, four teams of large oxen, six in a team, all ploughing in one field in preparation for wheat, and several pairs of horses, in the same field, dragging, harrowing, and rolling, and had seen on the other side of the road from five to six quarters of wheat standing upon the acre, and from nine to ten quarters of oats standing alongside of it, each of the two fields from fifty to a hundred statute acres; if any of these sensible men of Newcastle could see these things, they would laugh at the childish work that they see going on here under the name of farming; the very sight would make them feel how imperious is the duty on the law-giver to prevent distress from visiting the fields, and to take care that those whose labour produced all the food and all the raiment, shall not be fed upon potatoes and covered with rags; contemplating the important effects of their labour, each man of them could say as I said when this mean and savage faction had me at my trial, "I would see all these labourers hanged, and be hanged along with them, rather than see them live upon potatoes."

_Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 24th September, 1832._

Since writing the above I have had an opportunity of receiving information from a very intelligent gentleman of this county, who tells me, that in Northumberland there are some lands which bear very heavy crops of wheat; that the agriculture in this county is a great deal better than it is farther south; that, however, it was a most lamentable thing that the paper-money price of corn tempted so many men to break up these fine pastures; that the turf thus destroyed cannot be restored probably in a whole century; that the land does not now, with present prices, yield a clear profit, anything like what it would have yielded in the pasture; and that thus was destroyed the _goose with the golden eggs_. Just so was it with regard to the _downs_ in the south and the west of England, where there are hundreds of thousands of acres, where the turf was the finest in the world, broken up for the sake of the paper-money prices, but now left to be _downs again_; and which will not be _downs_ for more than a century to come. Thus did this accursed paper-money cause even the fruitful qualities of the earth to be anticipated, and thus was the soil made _worth less_ than it was before the accursed invention appeared! This gentleman told me that this breaking up of the pasture-land in this country had made the land, though covered again with artificial grasses, unhealthy for sheep; and he gave as an instance the facts, that three farmers purchased a hundred and fifty sheep each, out of the same flock; that two of them, who put their sheep upon these recently broken-up lands, lost their whole flocks by the rot, with the exception of four in the one case and four in the other, out of the three hundred: and that the third farmer, who put his sheep upon the old pastures, and kept them there, lost not a single sheep out of the hundred and fifty! These, ever accursed paper-money, are amongst thy destructive effects!

I shall now, laying aside for the present these rural affairs, turn to the politics of this fine, opulent, solid, beautiful, and important town; but as this would compel me to speak of particular transactions and particular persons, and as this _Register_ will come back to Newcastle before I am likely to quit it, the reader will see reasons quite sufficient for my refraining to go into matters of this sort, until the next _Register_, which will in all probability be dated from Edinburgh.

While at Manchester, I received an invitation to lodge while here at the house of a friend, of whom I shall have to speak more fully hereafter; but every demonstration of respect and kindness met me at the door of the coach in which I came from Leeds, on Friday, the 21st September. In the early part of Saturday, the 22nd, a deputation waited upon me with _an address_. Let the readers, in my native county and parish, remember that I am now at the end of thirty years of calumnies poured out incessantly upon me from the poisonous mouths and pens of three hundred mercenary villains, called newspaper editors and reporters; that I have written and published more than a hundred volumes in those thirty years; and that more than a thousand volumes (chiefly paid for out of the taxes) have been written and published for the sole purpose of impeding the progress of those truths that dropped from my pen; that my whole life has been a life of sobriety and labour; that I have invariably shown that I loved and honoured my country, and that I preferred its greatness and happiness far beyond my own; that, at four distinct periods, I might have rolled in wealth derived from the public money, which I always refused on any account to touch; that, for having thwarted this Government in its wastefulness of the public resources, and particularly for my endeavours to produce that Reform of the Parliament which the Government itself has at last been compelled to resort to; that, for having acted this zealous and virtuous part, I have been twice stripped of all my earnings by the acts of this Government; once lodged in a felon's jail for two years, and once driven into exile for two years and a half; and that, after all, here I am on a spot within a hundred miles of which I never was before in my life; and here I am receiving the unsolicited applause of men amongst the most intelligent in the whole kingdom, and the names of some of whom have been pronounced accompanied with admiration, even to the southernmost edge of the kingdom.

_Hexham, 1st Oct., 1832._

I left Morpeth this morning pretty early, to come to this town, which lies on the banks of the Tyne, at thirty-four miles distant from Morpeth, and at twenty distant from Newcastle. Morpeth is a great market-town, for cattle especially. It is a solid old town; but it has the disgrace of seeing an enormous new jail rising up in it. From cathedrals and monasteries we are come to be proud of our jails, which are built in the grandest style, and seemingly as if to imitate the Gothic architecture.

From Morpeth to within about four miles of Hexham, the land is but very indifferent; the farms of an enormous extent. I saw in one place more than a hundred corn-stacks in one yard, each having from six to seven Surrey wagon-loads of sheaves in a stack; and not another house to be seen within a mile or two of the farmhouse. There appeared to be no such thing as barns, but merely a place to take in a stack at a time, and thrash it out by a machine. The country seems to be almost wholly destitute of people. Immense tracks of corn-land, but neither cottages nor churches. There is here and there a spot of good land, just as in the deep valleys that I crossed; but, generally speaking, the country is poor; and its bleakness is proved by the almost total absence of the oak tree, of which we see scarcely one all the way from Morpeth to Hexham. Very few trees of any sort, except in the bottom of the warm valleys; what there are, are chiefly the _ash_, which is a very hardy tree, and will live and thrive where the _oak_ will not grow at all, which is very curious, seeing that it comes out into leaf so late in the spring, and sheds its foliage so early in the fall. The trees which stand next in point of hardiness are the _sycamore_, the _beech_, and the _birch_, which are all seen here; but none of them fine. The _ash_ is the most common tree, and even it flinches upon the hills, which it never does in the South. It has generally become yellow in the leaf already; and many of the trees are now bare of leaf before any frost has made its appearance.

The cattle all along here are of a coarse kind; the cows swag-backed and badly shaped; Kiloe oxen, except in the dips of good land by the sides of the bourns which I crossed. Nevertheless, even here, the fields of turnips, of both sorts, are very fine. Great pains seem to be taken in raising the crops of these turnips: they are all cultivated in rows, are kept exceedingly clean, and they are carried in as winter food for all the animals of a farm, the horses excepted.

As I approached Hexham, which, as the reader knows, was formerly the seat of a famous abbey, and the scene of a not less famous battle, and was, indeed, at one time the _see_ of a bishop, and which has now churches of great antiquity and cathedral-like architecture; as I approached this town, along a valley down which runs a small river that soon after empties itself into the Tyne, the land became good, the ash trees more lofty, and green as in June; the other trees proportionably large and fine; and when I got down into the vale of Hexham itself, there I found the _oak_ tree, certain proof of a milder atmosphere; for the _oak_, though amongst the hardest _woods_, is amongst the tenderest of plants known as natives of our country. Here everything assumes a different appearance. The Tyne, the southern and northern branches of which meet a few miles above Hexham, runs close by this ancient and celebrated town, all round which the ground rises gradually away towards the hills, crowned here and there with the remains of those castles which were formerly found necessary for the defence of this rich and valuable valley, which, from tip of hill to tip of hill, varies, perhaps, from four to seven miles wide, and which contains as fine corn-fields as those of Wiltshire, and fields of turnips, of both kinds, the largest, finest, and best cultivated, that my eyes ever beheld. As a proof of the goodness of the land and the mildness of the climate here, there is, in the grounds of the gentleman who had the kindness to receive and to entertain me (and that in a manner which will prevent me from ever forgetting either him or his most amiable wife); there is, standing in his ground, _about an acre of my corn_, which will ripen perfectly well; and in the same grounds, which, together with the kitchen-garden and all the appurtenances belonging to a house, and the house itself, are laid out, arranged, and contrived, in a manner so judicious, and to me so original, as to render them objects of great interest, though, in general, I set very little value on the things which appertain merely to the enjoyments of the rich. In these same grounds (to come back again to the climate), I perceived that the rather tender evergreens not only lived but throve perfectly well, and (a criterion infallible) the _biennial stocks_ stand the winter without any covering or any pains taken to shelter them; which, as every one knows, is by no means always the case, even at Kensington and Fulham.

At night I gave a lecture at an inn, at Hexham, in the midst of the domains of that impudent and stupid man, Mr. Beaumont, who, not many days before, in what he called a speech, I suppose, made at Newcastle, thought proper, as was reported in the newspapers, to utter the following words with regard to me, never having, in his life, received the slightest provocation for so doing. "The liberty of the press had nothing to fear from the Government. It was the duty of the administration to be upon their guard to prevent extremes. There was a crouching servility on the one hand, and an excitement to disorganization and to licentiousness on the other, which ought to be discountenanced. The company, he believed, as much disapproved of that political traveller who was now going through the country--he meant Cobbett--as they detested the servile effusions of the Tories." Beaumont, in addition to his native stupidity and imbecility, might have been drunk when he said this, but the servile wretch who published it was not drunk; and, at any rate, Beaumont was my mark, it not being my custom to snap at the stick, but at the cowardly hand that wields it.

Such a fellow cannot be an object of what is properly called _vengeance_ with any man who is worth a straw; but, I say, with SWIFT, "If a _flea_ or a _bug_ bite me, I will kill it if I can;" and, acting upon that principle, I, being at Hexham, put my foot upon this contemptible creeping thing, who is offering himself as a candidate for the southern division of the county, being so eminently fitted to be a maker of the laws!

The newspapers have told the whole country that Mr. John Ridley, who is a tradesman at Hexham, and occupies some land close by, has made a stand against the demand for tithes; and that the tithe-owner recently broke open, in the night, the gate of his field, and carried away what he deemed to be the tithe; that Mr. Ridley applied to the magistrates, who could only refer him to a court of law to recover damages for the trespass. When I arrived at Hexham, I found this to be the case. I further found that Beaumont, that impudent, silly and slanderous Beaumont, is the _lay-owner_ of the tithes in and round about Hexham; he being, in a right line, doubtless, the heir or successor of the abbot and monks of the Abbey of Hexham; or, the heir of the donor, Egfrid, _king of Northumberland_. I found that Beaumont had leased out his tithes to _middle men_, as is the laudable custom with the pious bishops and clergy of the law-church in Ireland.

_North Shields, 2nd Oct., 1832._

These sides of the Tyne are very fine: corn-fields, woods, pastures, villages; a church every four miles, or thereabouts; cows and sheep beautiful; oak trees, though none very large; and, in short, a fertile and beautiful country, wanting only the gardens and the vine-covered cottages that so beautify the counties in the South and the West. All the buildings are of stone. Here are coal-works and railways every now and then. The working people seem to be very well off; their dwellings solid and clean, and their furniture good; but the little gardens and orchards are wanting. The farms are all large; and the people who work on them either live in the farmhouse, or in buildings appertaining to the farmhouse; and they are all well fed, and have no temptation to acts like those which sprang up out of the ill-treatment of the labourers in the South. Besides, the mere country people are so few in number, the state of society is altogether so different, that a man who has lived here all his life-time, can form no judgment at all with regard to the situation, the wants, and the treatment of the working people in the counties of the South.

They have begun to make a railway from Carlisle to Newcastle; and I saw them at work at it as I came along. There are great _lead mines_ not far from Hexham; and I saw a great number of little one-horse carts bringing down the _pigs of lead_ to the point where the Tyne becomes navigable to Newcastle; and sometimes I saw loads of these _pigs_ lying by the road-side, as you see parcels of timber lying in Kent and Sussex, and other timber counties. No fear of their being stolen: their weight is their security, together with their value compared with that of the labour of carrying. Hearing that Beaumont was, somehow or other, connected with this lead-work, I had got it into my head that he was a pig of lead himself, and half expected to meet with him amongst these groups of his fellow-creatures; but, upon inquiry, I found that some of the lead-mines belonged to him; descending, probably, in that same right line in _which the tithes descended to him_; and as the Bishop of Durham is said to be the owner of great lead-mines, Beaumont and the bishop may possibly be in the _same boat_ with regard to the subterranean estate as well as that upon the surface; and if this should be the case, it will, I verily believe, require all the piety of the bishop, and all the wisdom of Beaumont, to keep the boat above water for another five years.

_North Shields, 3rd Oct., 1832._

I lectured at South Shields last evening, and here this evening. I came over the river from South Shields about eleven o'clock last night, and made a very firm bargain with myself never to do the like again. This evening, after my lecture was over, some gentlemen presented an address to me upon the stage, before the audience, accompanied with the valuable and honourable present of the late Mr. Eneas Mackenzie's _History of the County of Northumberland_; a very interesting work, worthy of every library in the kingdom.

From Newcastle to Morpeth; from Morpeth to Hexham; and then all the way down the Tyne; though everywhere such abundance of fine turnips, and in some cases of mangel-wurzel, you see scarcely any _potatoes_: a certain sign that the working people do not live like hogs. This root is raised in Northumberland and Durham, to be used merely as garden stuff; and, used in that way, it is very good; the contrary of which I never thought, much less did I ever say it. It is the using of it as a _substitute_ for bread and for meat, that I have deprecated it; and when the Irish poet, Dr. Drennen, called it "the lazy root, and the root of misery," he gave it its true character. Sir Charles Wolseley, who has travelled a great deal in France, Germany and Italy, and who, though Scott-Eldon scratched him out of the commission of the peace, and though the sincere patriot Brougham will not put him in again, is a very great and accurate observer as to these interesting matters, has assured me that, in whatever proportion the cultivation of potatoes prevails in those countries, in that same proportion the working-people are wretched.

From this degrading curse; from sitting round a dirty board, with potatoes trundled out upon it, as the Irish do: from going to the field with cold potatoes in their bags, as the working-people of Hampshire and Wiltshire _did_, but which they have not done since the appearance of certain _coruscations_, which, to spare the feelings of the "Lambs, the Broughams, the Greys, and the Russells," and their dirty bill-of-indictment-drawer Denman, I will not describe, much less will I eulogize; from this degrading curse the county of Northumberland is yet happily free!

_Sunderland, 4th Oct., 1832._

This morning I left North Shields in a post-chaise, in order to come hither through Newcastle and Gateshead, this affording me the only opportunity that I was likely to have of seeing a plantation of Mr. Annorer Donkin, close in the neighbourhood of Newcastle; which plantation had been made according to the method prescribed in my book, called the "Woodlands;" and to see which plantation I previously communicated a request to Mr. Donkin. That gentleman received me in a manner which will want no describing to those who have had the good luck to visit Newcastle. The plantation is most advantageously circumstanced to furnish proof of the excellence of my instructions as to planting. The predecessor of Mr. Donkin also made plantations upon the same spot, and consisting precisely of the same sort of trees. The two plantations are separated from each other merely by a road going through them. Those of the predecessor have been made _six-and-twenty years_; those of Mr. Donkin _six years_; and, incredible as it may appear, the trees in the latter are full as lofty as those in the former; and, besides the equal loftiness, are vastly superior in point of shape, and, which is very curious, retain all their freshness at this season of the year, while the old plantations are brownish and many of the leaves falling off the trees, though the sort of trees is precisely the same. As a sort of reward for having thus contributed to this very rational source of his pleasure, Mr. Donkin was good enough to give me an elegant copy of the fables of the celebrated Bewick, who was once a native of Newcastle and an honour to the town, and whose books I had had from the time that my children began to look at books, until taken from me by that sort of rapine which I had to experience at the time of my memorable flight across the Atlantic, in order to secure the use of that long arm which I caused to reach them from Long Island to London.

In Mr. Donkin's kitchen-garden (my eyes being never closed in such a scene) I saw what I had never seen before in any kitchen-garden, and which it may be very useful to some of my readers to have described to them. _Wall-fruit_ is, when destroyed in the spring, never destroyed by _dry-cold_; but ninety-nine times out of a hundred, by wet-frosts, which descend always perpendicularly, and which are generally fatal if they come between the expansion of the blossom and the setting of the fruit; that is to say, if they come after the bloom is quite open, and before it has disentangled itself from the fruit. The great thing, therefore, in getting _wall-fruit_, is to keep off these frosts. The French make use of boards, in the neighbourhood of Paris, projecting from the tops of the walls and supported by poles; and some persons contrive to have curtains to come over the whole tree at night and to be drawn up in the morning. Mr. Donkin's walls have a top of stone; and this top, or cap, projects about eight inches beyond the face of the wall, which is quite sufficient to guard against the wet-frosts which always fall perpendicularly. This is a country of stone to be sure; but those who can afford to build walls for the purpose of having wall-fruit, can afford to cap them in this manner: to rear the wall, plant the trees, and then to save the expense of the cap, is really like the old proverbial absurdity, "of losing the ship for the sake of saving a pennyworth of tar."

At Mr. Donkin's I saw a portrait of Bewick, which is said to be a great likeness, and which, though imagination goes a great way in such a case, really bespeaks that simplicity, accompanied with that genius, which distinguished the man. Mr. Wm. Armstrong was kind enough to make me a present of a copy of the last performance of this so justly celebrated man. It is entitled "_Waits for Death_," exhibiting a poor old horse just about to die, and preceded by an explanatory writing, which does as much honour to the heart of Bewick as the whole of his designs put together do to his genius. The sight of the picture, the reading of the preface to it, and the fact that it was the last effort of the man; altogether make it difficult to prevent tears from starting from the eyes of any one not uncommonly steeled with insensibility.

You see nothing here that is pretty; but everything seems to be abundant in value; and one great thing is, the working people live well. Theirs is not a life of ease to be sure, but it is not a life of hunger. The pitmen have twenty-four shillings a week; they live rent-free, their fuel costs them nothing, and their doctor cost them nothing. Their work is terrible, to be sure; and, perhaps, they do not have what they ought to have; but, at any rate, they live well, their houses are good and their furniture good; and though they live not in a beautiful scene, they are in the scene where they were born, and their lives seem to be as good as that of the working part of mankind can reasonably expect. Almost the whole of the country hereabouts is owned by that curious thing called the _Dean and Chapter_ of Durham. Almost the whole of South Shields is theirs, granted upon leases with fines at stated periods. This Dean and Chapter are the _lords of the Lords_. Londonderry, with all his huffing and strutting, is but a tenant of the Dean and Chapter of Durham, who souse him so often with their _fines_ that it is said that he has had to pay them more than a hundred thousand pounds within the last ten or twelve years. What will Londonderry bet that, he is not the _tenant of the public_ before this day five years? There would be no difficulty in these cases, but on the contrary a very great convenience; because all these tenants of the Dean and Chapter might then purchase out-and-out, and make that property freehold, which they now hold by a tenure so uncertain and so capricious.

_Alnwick, 7th Oct., 1832._

From Sunderland I came, early in the morning of the 5th of October, once more (and I hope not for the last time) to Newcastle, there to lecture on the paper-money, which I did, in the evening. But before I proceed further, I must record something that I heard at Sunderland respecting that babbling fellow Trevor! My readers will recollect the part which this fellow acted with regard to the "liberal Whig prosecution;" they will recollect that it was he who first mentioned the thing in the House of Commons, and suggested to the wise Ministers the propriety of prosecuting me; that Lord Althorp and Denman _hummed_ and _ha'd_ about it; that the latter had _not read it_, and that the former would offer no opinion upon it; that Trevor came on again, encouraged by the works of the curate of Crowhurst, and by the bloody old _Times_, whose former editor and now printer is actually a candidate for Berkshire, supported by that unprincipled political prattler, Jephthah Marsh, whom I will call to an account as soon as I get back to the South. My readers will further recollect that the bloody old _Times_ then put forth another document as a confession of Goodman, made to Burrell, Tredcroft, and Scawen Blunt, while the culprit was in Horsham jail with a halter actually about his neck. My readers know the _result_ of this affair; but they have yet to learn some circumstances belonging to its progress, which circumstances are not to be stated here. They recollect, however, that from the very first I treated this TREVOR with the utmost disdain; and that at the head of the articles which I wrote about him I put these words, "TREVOR AND POTATOES;" meaning that he hated me because I was resolved, fire or fire not, that working men should not live upon potatoes in my country. Now, mark; now, chopsticks of the South, mark the sagacity, the justice, the promptitude, and the excellent taste of these lads of the North! At the last general election, which took place after the "liberal Whig prosecution" had been begun, Trevor was a candidate for the city of Durham, which is about fourteen miles from this busy town of Sunderland. The freemen of Durham are the voters in that city, and some of these freemen reside at Sunderland. Therefore this fellow (I wish to God you could _see_ him!) went to Sunderland to canvass these freemen residing there; and they pelted him out of the town; and (oh appropriate missiles!) pelted him out with the "accursed root," hallooing and shouting after him--"_Trevor and potatoes!_" Ah! stupid coxcomb! little did he imagine, when he was playing his game with Althorp and Denman, what would be the ultimate effect of that game!

From Newcastle to Morpeth (the country is what I before described it to be). From Morpeth to this place (Alnwick), the country, generally speaking, is very poor as to land, scarcely any trees at all; the farms enormously extensive; only two churches, I think, in the whole of the twenty miles; scarcely anything worthy the name of a tree, and not one single dwelling having the appearance of a labourer's house. Here appears neither hedging nor ditching; no such thing as a sheep-fold or a hurdle to be seen; the cattle and sheep very few in number; the farm servants living in the farm-houses, and very few of them; the thrashing done by machinery and horses; a country without people. This is a pretty country to take a minister from to govern the South of England! A pretty country to take a Lord Chancellor from to prattle about _Poor Laws_ and about _surplus population_! My Lord Grey has, in fact, spent his life here, and Brougham has spent his life in the Inns of Court, or in the botheration of speculative books. How should either of them know anything about the eastern, southern, or western counties? I wish I had my dignitary Dr. Black here; I would soon make him see that he has all these number of years been talking about the bull's horns instead of his tail and his buttocks. Besides the indescribable pleasure of having seen Newcastle, the Shieldses, Sunderland, Durham, and Hexham, I have now discovered the true ground of all the errors of the Scotch _feelosofers_ with regard to population, and with regard to poor-laws. The two countries are as different as any two things of the same nature can possibly be; that which applies to the one does not at all apply to the other. The agricultural counties are covered all over with parish churches, and with people thinly distributed here and there.

Only look at the two counties of Dorset and Durham. Dorset contains 1,005 square miles; Durham contains 1,061 square miles. Dorset has 271 _parishes_; Durham has 75 parishes. The population of Dorset is scattered over the whole of the county, there being no town of any magnitude in it. The population of Durham, though larger than that of Dorset, is almost all gathered together at the mouths of the Tyne, the Wear, and the Tees. Northumberland has 1,871 square miles; and Suffolk has 1,512 square miles. Northumberland has _eighty-eight parishes_; and Suffolk has _five hundred and ten parishes_. So that here is a county one third part smaller than that of Northumberland with six times as many villages in it! What comparison is there to be made between states of society so essentially different? What rule is there, with regard to population and poor-laws, which can apply to both cases? And how is my Lord Howick, born and bred up in Northumberland, to know how to judge of a population suitable to Suffolk? Suffolk is a county teeming with production, as well as with people; and how brutal must that man be who would attempt to reduce the agricultural population of Suffolk to that of the number of Northumberland! The population of Northumberland, larger than Suffolk as it is, does not equal it in total population by nearly one-third, notwithstanding that one half of its whole population have got together on the banks of the Tyne. And are we to get rid of our people in the South, and supply the places of them by horses and machines? Why not have the people in the fertile counties of the South, where their very existence causes their food and their raiment to come? Blind and thoughtless must that man be who imagines that all but _farms_ in the South are unproductive. I much question whether, taking a strip three miles each way from the road, coming from Newcastle to Alnwick, an equal quantity of what is called _waste ground_, together with the cottages that skirt it, do not exceed such strip of ground in point of produce. Yes, the cows, pigs, geese, poultry, gardens, bees and fuel that arise from those _wastes_, far exceed, even in the capacity of sustaining people, similar breadths of ground, distributed into these large farms in the poorer parts of Northumberland. I have seen not less than ten thousand geese in one tract of common, in about six miles, going from Chobham towards Farnham in Surrey. I believe these geese alone, raised entirely by care and by the common, to be worth more than the clear profit that can be drawn from any similar breadth of land between Morpeth and Alnwick. What folly is it to talk, then, of applying to the counties of the South, principles and rules applicable to a country like this!

To-morrow morning I start for "Modern Athens"! My readers will, I dare say, perceive how much my "_antalluct_" has been improved since I crossed the Tyne. What it will get to when I shall have crossed the Tweed, God only knows. I wish very much that I could stop a day at Berwick, in order to find some _feelosofer_ to ascertain, by some chemical process, the exact degree of the improvement of the "_antalluct_." I am afraid, however, that I shall not be able to manage this; for I must get along; beginning to feel devilishly home-sick since I have left Newcastle.

* * * * *

They tell me that Lord Howick, who is just married by-the-by, made a speech here the other day, during which he said, "that the Reform was only the means to an end; and that the end was cheap government." Good! stand to that, my Lord, and, as you are now married, pray let the country fellows and girls marry too: let us have _cheap government_, and I warrant you that there will be room for us all, and plenty for us to eat and drink. It is the drones, and not the bees, that are too numerous; it is the vermin who live upon the taxes, and not those who work to raise them, that we want to get rid of. We are keeping fifty thousand tax-eaters to breed gentlemen and ladies for the industrious and laborious to keep. These are the opinions which I promulgate; and whatever your flatterers may say to the contrary, and whatever _feelosofical_ stuff Brougham and his rabble of writers may put forth, these opinions of mine will finally prevail. I repeat my anxious wish (I would call it a _hope_ if I could) that your father's resolution may be equal to his sense, and that he will do that which is demanded by the right which the people have to insist upon measures necessary to restore the greatness and happiness of the country; and, if he show a disposition to do this, I should deem myself the most criminal of all mankind, if I were to make use of any influence that I possess to render his undertaking more difficult than it naturally must be; but, if he show not that disposition, it will be my bounden duty to endeavour to drive him from the possession of power; for, be the consequences to individuals what they may, the greatness, the freedom, and the happiness of England must be restored.

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1. A Tale of Two Cities. 2. Tom Brown's Schooldays. 3. The Deerslayer. 4. Henry Esmond. 5. Hypatia. 6. The Mill on the Floss. 7. Uncle Tom's Cabin. 8. The Last of the Mohicans. 9. Adam Bede. 10. The Old Curiosity Shop. 11. Oliver Twist. 12. Kenilworth. 13. Robinson Crusoe. 14. The Last Days of Pompeii. 15. Cloister and the Hearth. 16. Ivanhoe. 17. East Lynne. 18. Cranford. 19. John Halifax, Gentleman. 20. The Pathfinder. 21. Westward Ho! 22. The Three Musketeers. 23. The Channings. 24. The Pilgrim's Progress. 25. Pride and Prejudice. 26. Quentin Durward. 27. Villette. 28. Hard Times. 29. Child's History of England. 30. The Bible in Spain. 31. Gulliver's Travels. 32. Sense and Sensibility. 33. Kate Coventry. 34. Silas Marner. 35. Notre Dame. 36. Old St. Paul's. 37. Waverley. 38. 'Ninety-Three. 39. Eothen. 40. Toilers of the Sea. 41. Children of the New Forest. 42. The Laughing Man. 43. A Book of Golden Deeds. 44. Great Expectations. 45. Guy Mannering. 46. Modern Painters (Selections) 47. Les Miserables--I. 48. Les Miserables--II. 49. Monastery. 50. Romola. 51. The Vicar of Wakefield. 52. Emma. 53. Lavengro. 54. Emerson's Essays. 55. The Bride of Lammermoor. 56. The Abbot. 57. Tom Cringle's Log. 58. Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare. 59. The Scarlet Letter. 60. Old Mortality. 61. The Romany Rye. 62. Hans Andersen. 63. The Black Tulip. 64. Little Women. 65. The Talisman. 66. Scottish Life and Character. 67. The Woman in White. 68. Tales of Mystery. 69. Fair Maid of Perth. 70. Parables from Nature. 71. Peg Woffington. 72. Windsor Castle. 73. Edmund Burke. 74. Ingoldsby Legends. 75. Pickwick Papers--I. 76. Pickwick Papers--II. 77. Verdant Green. 78. The Heir of Redclyffe. 79. Wild Wales. 80. Two Years Before the Mast. 81. Jane Eyre. 82. David Copperfield--I. 83. David Copperfield--II. 84. Hereward the Wake. 85. Wide Wide World. 86. Michael Strogoff. 87. Shirley. 88. Jack Sheppard. 89. Masterman Ready. 90. Martin Chuzzlewit--I. 91. Martin Chuzzlewit--II. 92. Twenty Years After. 93. Lorna Doone--I. 94. Lorna Doone--II. 95. Marguerite de Valois. 96. The Old Lieutenant and his Son. 97. Sylvia's Lovers. 98. Rob Roy. 99. Shakespeare--I. 100. Shakespeare--II. 101. Shakespeare--III. 102. Shakespeare--IV. 103. Shakespeare--V. 104. Shakespeare--VI. 105. Sybil. 106. Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World. 107. Nicholas Nickleby--I. 108. Nicholas Nickleby--II. 109. Christmas Books. 110. Book of Snobs, and Barry Lyndon. 111. The Golden Treasury. 112. The Fortunes of Nigel. 113. Scenes of Clerical Life. 114. Tales of the Gods and Heroes. 115. Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles. 116. House of the Seven Gables. 117. Barchester Towers. 118. Tales of the West. 119. Lays of Ancient Rome, and other Poems. 120. Coral Island. 121. First Love and Last Love. 122. Count of Monte-Cristo--I. 123. Count of Monte-Cristo--II. 124. Dombey and Son--I. 125. Dombey and Son--II. 126. Vanity Fair--I. 127. Vanity Fair--II. 128. The Antiquary. 129. Martin Rattler. 130. The Smuggler. 131. Ravenshoe. 132. Ecce Homo. 133. Framley Parsonage. 134. Coningsby. 135. Chronicles of the Schoenberg-Cotta Family. 136. Rural Rides. 137. Anna Karenina--I. 138. Anna Karenina--II. 139. Voyage of the "Beagle." 140. The Daisy Chain. 141. Eugenie Grandet. 142. Elsie Venner. 143. The Phantom Regiment. 144. Salem Chapel. 145. Longfellow's Poems--I. 146. Longfellow's Poems--II. 147. Tom Brown at Oxford. 148. The Essays of Elia.

THOMAS NELSON AND SONS.

Footnotes:

[1] I will not swear to the very _words_; but this is the meaning of Voltaire: "Representatives of the people, the Lords and the King: _Magnificent_ spectacle! _Sacred_ source of the Laws!"

[2] "Representatives of the people, of whom the people know nothing, must be miraculously well calculated to have the care of their money! Oh! People too happy! overwhelmed with blessings! The _envy_ of _your neighbours_, and _admired_ by the _whole world_!"

Transcriber's Notes:

Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.

Punctuation has been corrected without note.

The following misprints have been corrected: "nore" corrected to "more" (page 34) "practi ing" corrected to "practicing" (page 37) "1852" corrected to "1822" (page 68) "grews" corrected to "grows" (page 79) "shillings-day" corrected to "shillings a-day" (page 82) "turnip" corrected to "turnips" (page 164) "then" corrected to "them" (page 246) "orginally" corrected to "originally" (page 347) "conmissioners" corrected to "commissioners" (page 466) "Lincolshire" corrected to "Lincolnshire" (page 555) "laboureres" corrected to "labourers" (page 558)

Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original.