Rural Rides Page 20

  ‘So late as January last, the average price of wheat was 39s. per quarter, and on the 29th ult. it was above 62s. As it has been rising ever since, it may now be quoted as little under 65s. So that in this article alone, there is a rise of more than thirty-five per cent. Under these circumstances, it is not likely that we shall hear any thing of agricultural distress. A writer of considerable talents, but no prophet, had FRIGHTENED the kingdom by a confident prediction, that wheat, after the 1st of May, would sink to 4s. per bushel, and that under the effects of Mr Peel’s bill, and the payments in cash by the Bank of England, it would never again exceed that price! Nay, so assured was Mr Cobbett of the mathematical certainty of his deductions on the subject, that he did not hesitate to make use of the following language: “And farther, if what I say do not come to pass, I will give any one leave to broil me on a gridiron, and for that purpose I will get one of the best gridirons I can possibly get made, and it shall be hung out as near to my premises as possible, in the Strand, so that it shall be seen by every body as they pass along.” The 1st of May has now passed, Mr Peel’s bill has not been repealed, and the Bank of England has paid its notes in cash, and yet wheat has risen nearly 40 per cent.’

  Here is a tissue of falsehoods! But, only think of a country being ‘FRIGHTENED’ by the prospect of a low price of provisions! When such an idea can possibly find its way even into the shallow brain of a cracked-skull lawyer; when such an idea can possibly be put into print at any rate, there must be something totally wrong in the state of the country. Here is this lawyer telling his readers that I had frightened the kingdom, by saying that wheat would be sold at four shillings a bushel. Again I say, that there must be something wrong, something greatly out of place, some great disease at work in the community, or such an idea as this could never have found its way into print. Into the head of a cracked-skull lawyer, it might, perhaps, have entered at any time; but for it to find its way into print, there must be something in the state of society wholly out of joint. As to the rest of this article, it is a tissue of downright lies. The writer says that the price of wheat is sixty-five shillings a quarter. The fact is, that, on the second instant, the price was fifty-nine shillings and seven-pence: and it is now about two shillings less than that. Then again, this writer must know, that I never said that wheat would not rise above four shillings a bushel; but that, on the contrary, I always expressly said that the price would be affected by the seasons, and that I thought, that the price would vibrate between three shillings a bushel and seven shillings a bushel. Then again, Peel’s Bill, has, in part, been repealed; if it had not, there could have been no small note in circulation at this day. So that this lawyer is ‘All Lie’. In obedience to the wishes of a lady, I have been reading about the plans of Mr Owen; and though, I do not as yet see my way clear as to how we can arrange matters with regard to the young girls and the young fellows, I am quite clear that his institution would be most excellent for the disposal of the lawyers. One of his squares would be, at a great distance from all other habitations; in the midst of Lord Erskine’s estate for instance, mentioned by me in a former ride; and nothing could be so fitting, his Lordship long having been called the father of the bar; in the midst of this estate, with no town or village within miles of them, we might have one of Mr Owen’s squares, and set the bob-tailed brotherhood most effectually at work. Pray, can any one pretend to say that a spade or shovel would not become the hands of this blunderheaded editor of Bell’s Messenger better than a pen? However, these miserable falsehoods can cause the delusion to exist but for a very short space of time.

  The quantity of the harvest will be great. If the quality be bad, owing to wet weather, the price will be still lower than it would have been in case of dry weather. The price, therefore, must come down; and if the newspapers were conducted by men who had any sense of honour or shame, those men must be covered with confusion.

  THROUGH THE NORTH EAST PART OF SUSSEX,

  AND ALL ACROSS KENT, FROM THE WEALD OF SUSSEX,

  TO DOVER

  Worth (Sussex), Friday, 29 August, 1823

  I have so often described the soil and other matters, appertaining to the country between the WEN and this place, that my readers will rejoice at being spared the repetition here. As to the harvest, however, I find, that they were deluged here on Tuesday last, though we got but little, comparatively, at Kensington. Between Mitcham and Sutton they were making wheat-ricks. The corn has not been injured here worth notice. Now and then an ear in the butts grown; and grown wheat is a sad thing! You may almost as well be without wheat altogether. However, very little harm has been done here as yet.

  At WALTON HEATH I saw a man who had suffered most terribly from the game-laws. He saw me going by, and came out to tell me his story; and a horrible story it is, as the public will find, when it shall come regularly and fully before them. Apropos of game-works: I asked who was the Judge at the Somersetshire Assizes, the other day. A correspondent tells me that it was JUDGE BURROUGH. I am well aware, that, as this correspondent observes, ‘gamekeepers ought not to be shot at’. This is not the point. It is not a gamekeeper in the usual sense of that word; it is a man seizing another without a warrant. That is what it is; and this, and old Ellenborough’s Act, are new things in England, and things of which the laws of England, ‘the birthright of Englishmen’, knew nothing. Yet farmer VOKE ought not to have shot at the gamekeeper, or seizer, without warrant: he ought not to have shot at him; and he would not had it not been for the law that put him in danger of being transported on the evidence of this man. So that it is, clearly, the terrible law, that, in these cases, produces the violence. Yet, admire with me, reader, the singular turn of the mind of SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH, whose whole soul appears to have been long bent on the ‘amelioration of the Penal Code’, and who has never said one single word about this new and most terrible part of it! SIR JAMES, after years of incessant toil, has, I believe, succeeded in getting a repeal of the laws for the punishment of ‘witchcraft’, of the very existence of which laws the nation was unacquainted. But, the devil a word has he said about the game-laws, which put into the gaols a full third part of the prisoners, and to hold which prisoners the gaols have actually been enlarged in all parts of the country! Singular turn of mind! Singular ‘humanity’! Ah! SIR JAMES knows very well what he is at. He understands the state of his constituents at Knaresborough too well to meddle with game-laws. He has a ‘friend’, I dare say, who knows more about game-laws than he does. However, the poor witches are safe: thank SIR JAMES for that. Mr CARLILE’S SISTER1 and Mrs Wright are in gaol, and may be there for life! But, the poor witches are safe. No hypocrite; no base pretender to religion; no atrocious, savage, black-hearted wretch, who would murder half mankind rather than not live on the labours of others; no monster of this kind can now persecute the poor witches, thanks to SIR JAMES who has obtained security for them in all their rides through the air, and in all their sailings upon the horseponds!

  Tonbridge Wells (Kent), Saturday, 30 August

  I came from Worth about seven this morning, passed through EAST GRINSTEAD, over HOLTHIGH COMMON, through ASHURST, and thence to this place. The morning was very fine, and I left them at WORTH, making a wheat-rick. There was no show for rain till about one o’clock, as I was approaching ASHURST. The spattering that came at first I thought nothing of; but the clouds soon grew up all round, and the rain set in for the afternoon. The buildings at ASHURST (which is the first parish in Kent on quitting Sussex) are a mill, an alehouse, a church, and about six or seven other houses. I stopped at the alehouse to bait my horse; and, for want of bacon, was compelled to put up with bread and cheese for myself. I waited in vain for the rain to cease or to slacken, and the want of bacon made me fear as to a bed. So, about five o’clock, I, without great coat, got upon my horse, and came to this place, just as fast and no faster than if it had been fine weather. A very fine soaking! If the South Downs have left any little remnant of the hooping-cough, this will take it away to be su
re. I made not the least haste to get out of the rain. I stopped, here and there, as usual, and asked questions about the corn, the hops, and other things. But, the moment I got in I got a good fire, and set about the work of drying in good earnest. It costing me nothing for drink, I can afford to have plenty of fire. I have not been in the house an hour; and all my clothes are now as dry as if they had never been wet. It is not getting wet that hurts you, if you keep moving, while you are wet. It is the suffering of yourself to be inactive, while the wet clothes are on your back.

  The country that I have come over to-day is a very pretty one. The soil is a pale yellow loam, looking like brick earth, but rather sandy; but the bottom is a softish stone. Now-and-then, where you go through hollow ways (as at East Grinstead) the sides are solid rock. And, indeed, the rocks sometimes (on the sides of hills) show themselves above ground, and, mixed amongst the woods, make very interesting objects. On the road from the WEN to BRIGHTON, through GODSTONE, and over TURNER’S HILL, and which road I crossed this morning in coming from WORTH to EAST GRINSTEAD; on that road, which goes through LINDFIELD, and which is by far the pleasantest coach-road from the WEN to Brighton; on the side of this road, on which coaches now go from the WEN to Brighton, there is a long chain of rocks, or, rather, rocky hills, with trees growing amongst the rocks, or, apparently out of them, as they do in the woods near Ross in Herefordshire, and as they do in the Blue Mountains in America, where you can see no earth at all; where all seems rock, and yet where the trees grow most beautifully. At the place, of which I am now speaking, that is to say, by the side of this pleasant road to Brighton, and between TURNER’S HILL and LINDFIELD, there is a rock, which they call ‘Big-upon-little’: that is to say, a rock upon another, having nothing else to rest upon, and the top one being longer and wider than the top of the one it lies on. This big rock is no trifling concern, being as big, perhaps, as a not very small house. How, then, came this big upon little? What lifted up the big? It balances itself naturally enough; but, what tossed it up? I do not like to pay a parson for teaching me, while I have ‘God’s own word’ to teach me; but, if any parson will tell me how big came upon little, I do not know that I shall grudge him a trifle. And, if he cannot tell me this: if he say, All that we have to do is to admire and adore; then I tell him, that I can admire and adore without his aid, and that I will keep my money in my pocket.

  To return to the soil of this country, it is such a loam as I have described with this stone beneath; sometimes the top soil is lighter and sometimes heavier; sometimes the stone is harder and sometimes softer; but this is the general character of it all the way from WORTH to TONBRIDGE WELLS. This land is what may be called the middle kind. The wheat crop about 20 to 24 bushels to an acre, on an average of years. The grass fields not bad, and all the fields will grow grass; I mean make upland-meadows. The woods good, though not of the finest. The land seems to be about thus divided: 3-tenths woods, 2-tenths grass, a tenth of a tenth hops, and the rest corn-land. These make very pretty surface, especially as it is a rarity to see a pollard tree, and as nobody is so beastly as to trim trees up like the elms near the WEN. The country has no flat spot in it; yet the hills are not high. My road was a gentle rise or a gentle descent all the way. Continual new views strike the eye; but there is little variety in them: all is pretty, but nothing strikingly beautiful. The labouring people look pretty well. They have pigs. They invariably do best in the woodland and forest and wild countries. Where the mighty grasper has all under his eye, they can get but little. These are cross-roads, mere parish roads; but they are very good. While I was at the alehouse at ASHURST, I heard some labouring men talking about the roads; and, they having observed, that the parish roads had become so wonderfully better within the last seven or eight years, I put in my word, and said: ‘It is odd enough, too, that the parish roads should become better and better as the farmers become poorer and poorer!’ They looked at one another, and put on a sort of expecting look; for my observation seemed to ask for information. At last one of them said, ‘Why, it is because the farmers have not the money to employ men, and so they are put on the roads.’ ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘but they must pay them there.’ They said no more, and only looked hard at one another. They had probably, never thought about this before. They seemed puzzled by it, and well they might, for it has bothered the wigs of boroughmongers, parsons and lawyers, and will bother them yet. Yet, this country now contains a body of occupiers of the land, who suffer the land to go to decay for want of means to pay a sufficiency of labourers; and, at the same time, are compelled to pay those labourers for doing that which is of no use to the occupiers! There, Collective Wisdom! Go: brag of that! Call that the envy of surrounding nations and the admiration of the world.

  This is a great nut year. I saw them hanging very thick on the way-side during a great part of this day’s ride; and they put me in mind of the old saying, ‘A great nut year a great bastard year.’ That is to say, the succeeding year is a great year for bastards. I once asked a farmer, who had often been overseer of the poor, whether he really thought, that there was any ground for this old saying, or whether he thought it was mere banter? He said, that he was sure that there were good grounds for it; and he even cited instances in proof, and mentioned one particular year, when there were four times as many bastards as ever had been born in a year in the parish before; an effect which he ascribed solely to the crop of nuts of the year before. Now, if this be the case, ought not PARSON MALTHUS, LAWYER SCARLETT, and the rest of that tribe, to turn their attention to the nut-trees? The Vice Society too, with that holy man WILBERFORCE at its head, ought to look out sharp after these mischievous nut-trees. A law to cause them all to be grubbed up, and thrown into the fire, would, certainly, be far less unreasonable than many things which we have seen and heard of.

  The corn from Worth to this place is pretty good. The farmers say it is a small crop; other people, and especially the labourers, say that it is a good crop. I think it is not large and not small; about an average crop; perhaps rather less, for the land is rather light, and this is not a year for light lands. But there is no blight, no mildew, in spite of all the prayers of the ‘loyal’. The wheat about a third cut, and none carried. No other corn begun upon. Hops very bad till I came within a few miles of this place, when I saw some, which I should suppose, would bear about six hundred weight to the acre. The orchards no great things along here. Some apples here and there; but small and stunted. I do not know that I have seen to-day any one tree well loaded with fine apples.

  Tenterden (Kent), Sunday, 31 August

  Here I am after a most delightful ride of 24 miles, through FRANT, LAMBERHURST, GOUDHURST, MILKHOUSE-STREET, BENENDEN and ROLVENDEN. By making a great stir in rousing waiters and ‘boots’ and maids, and by leaving behind me the name of ‘a d–d noisy, troublesome fellow’, I got clear of ‘the Wells’, and out of the contagion of its Wen-engendered inhabitants, time enough to meet the first rays of the sun, on the hill that you come up in order to get to FRANT, which is a most beautiful little village at about two miles from ‘the Wells’. Here the land belongs, I suppose, to LORD ABERGAVENNY, who has a mansion and park here. A very pretty place, and kept, seemingly, in very nice order. I saw here what I never saw before: the bloom of the common heath we wholly overlook; but, it is a very pretty thing; and here, when the plantations were made, and as they grew up, heath was left to grow on the sides of the roads in the plantations. The heath is not so much of a dwarf as we suppose. This is four feet high; and, being in full bloom, it makes the prettiest border that can be imagined. This place of Lord ABERGAVENNY is, altogether, a very pretty place; and, so far from grudging him the possession of it, I should feel pleasure at seeing it in his possession, and should pray God to preserve it to him, and from the unholy and ruthless touch of the Jews and jobbers; but, I cannot forget this LORD’S SINECURE! I cannot forget that he has, for doing nothing, received of the public money more than sufficient to buy such an estate as this. I cannot forget, that this
estate may, perhaps, have actually been bought with that money. Not being able to forget this, and with my mind filled with reflections of this sort, I got up to the church at FRANT, and just by I saw a School-house with this motto on it: ‘Train up a child as he should walk,’2 &c. That is to say, try to breed up the Boys and Girls of this village in such a way, that they may never know any thing about Lord Abergavenny’s sinecure; or, knowing about it, they may think it right that he should roll in wealth coming to him in such a way. The projectors deceive nobody but themselves! They are working for the destruction of their own system. In looking back over ‘the Wells’ I cannot but admire the operation of the gambling system. This little toad-stool is a thing created entirely by the gamble; and the means have, hitherto, come out of the wages of labour. These means are now coming out of the farmer’s capital and out of the landlord’s estate; the labourers are stripped; they can give no more: the saddle is now fixing itself upon the right back.

  In quitting FRANT I descended into a country more woody than that behind me. I asked a man whose fine woods those were that I pointed to, and I fairly gave a start, when he said, the MARQUIS CAMDEN’S! Milton talks of the Leviathan3 in a way to make one draw in one’s shoulders with fear; and I appeal to any one, who has been at sea when a whale has come near the ship, whether he has not, at the first sight of the monster, made a sort of involuntary movement, as if to get out of the way. Such was the movement that I now made. However, soon coming to myself, on I walked my horse by the side of my pedestrian informant. It is BAYHAM ABBEY that this great and awful sinecure placeman owns in this part of the county. Another great estate he owns near Sevenoaks. But here alone he spreads his length and breadth over more, they say, than ten or twelve thousand acres of land, great part of which consists of oak-woods. But, indeed, what estates might he not purchase? Not much less than thirty years he held a place, a sinecure place, that yielded him about THIRTY THOUSAND POUNDS A-YEAR! At any rate, he, according to Parliamentary accounts, has received, of public money, LITTLE SHORT OF A MILLION OF GUINEAS. These, at 30 guineas an acre, would buy thirty thousand acres of land. And, what did he have all this money for? Answer me that question, WILBERFORCE, you who called him a ‘bright star’, when he gave up a part of his enormous sinecure. He gave up all but the trifling sum of nearly three thousand pounds a-year! What a bright star! And when did he give it up? When the radicals had made the country ring with it. When his name was, by their means, getting into every mouth in the kingdom; when every radical speech and petition contained the name of CAMDEN. Then it was, and not till then, that this ‘bright star’ let fall part of its ‘brilliancy’. So that WILBERFORCE ought to have thanked the radicals, and not CAMDEN. When he let go his grasp, he talked of the merits of his father. His father was a lawyer, who was exceedingly well paid for what he did without a million of money being given to his son. But, there is something rather out of commonplace to be observed about this father. This father was the contemporary of YORKE, who became LORD HARDWICKE. PRATT and YORKE, and the merit of PRATT was, that he was constantly opposed to the principles of YORKE. YORKE was called a Tory and Pratt a Whig; but, the devil of it was, both got to be Lords; and, in one shape or another, the families of both have, from that day to this, been receiving great parcels of the public money! Beautiful system! The Tories were for rewarding Yorke; the Whigs were for rewarding Pratt. The Ministers (all in good time!) humoured both parties; and the stupid people, divided into tools of two factions, actually applauded, now one part of them, now the other part of them, the squandering away of their substance. They were like the man and his wife, in the fable, who, to spite one another, gave away to the cunning mumper the whole of their dinner, bit by bit. This species of folly is over at any rate. The people are no longer fools enough to be partisans. They make no distinctions. The nonsense about ‘court party’ and ‘country party’ is at an end. Who thinks any thing more of the name of Erskine than of that of Scott? As the people told the two factions at MAIDSTONE, when they, with Camden at their head, met to congratulate the Regent on the marriage of his daughter, ‘they are all tarred with the same brush’; and tarred with the same brush they must be, until there be a real reform of the Parliament. However, the people are no longer deceived. They are not duped. They know that the thing is that which it is. The people of the present day would laugh at disputes (carried on with so much gravity!) about the principles of PRATT and the principles of YORKE. ‘You are all tarred with the same brush,’ said the sensible people of Maidstone; and, in those words, they expressed the opinion of the whole country, boroughmongers and tax-eaters excepted.