Rural Rides Page 32

  When his maw was stuff’d with paper,

  How JOHN BULL did prance and caper!

  How he foam’d and how he roar’d:

  How his neighbours all he gored!

  How he scrap’d the ground and hurl’d

  Dirt and filth on all the world!

  But JOHN BULL of paper empty,

  Though in midst of peace and plenty,

  Is modest grown as worn-out sinner,

  As Scottish laird that wants a dinner;

  As WILBERFORCE, become content

  A rotten burgh to represent;

  As BLUE and BUFF, when, after hunting

  On Yankee coasts their ‘bits of bunting’,

  Came softly back across the seas,

  And silent were as mice in cheese.

  Yes, the whole world, and particularly the French and the Yankees, see very clearly the course of this fit of modesty and of liberality, into which we have so recendy fallen. They know well, that a war would play the very devil with our national faith. They know, in short, that no Ministers in their senses will think of supporting the paper system through another war. They know well, that no ministers that now exist, or are likely to exist, will venture to endanger the paper-system; and therefore they know that (for England) they may now do just what they please. When the French were about to invade Spain, Mr CANNING said that his last dispatch on the subject was to be understood as a protest, on the part of England, against permanent occupation of any part of Spain by France.9 There the French are, however; and at the end of two years and a half, he says that he knows nothing about any intention that they have to quit Spain, or any part of it!

  Why, Saint Domingo was independent.10 We had traded with it as an independent state. Is it not clear, that if we had said the word, (and had been known to be able to arm), France would not have attempted to treat that fine and rich country as a colony? Mark how wise this measure of France! How just, too; to obtain, by means of a tribute from the St Domingoians, compensation for the loyalists of that country! Was this done with regard to the loyalists of America, in the reign of the good jubilee George III? Oh, no! Those loyalists had to be paid, and many of them have even yet, at the end of more than half a century, to be paid out of taxes raised on us, for the losses occasioned by their disinterested loyalty! This was a master-stroke on the part of France; she gets about seven millions sterling in the way of tribute; she makes that rich island yield to her great commercial advantages; and she, at the same time, paves the way for effecting one of two objects; namely, getting the island back again, or throwing our islands into confusion, whenever it shall be her interest to do it.

  This might have been prevented by a word from us, if we had been ready for war. But we are grown modest; we are grown liberal; we do not want to engross that which fairly belongs to our neighbours! We have undergone a change, somewhat like that which marriage produces on a blustering fellow, who, while single, can but just clear his teeth. This change is quite surprising, and especially by the time that the second child comes, the man is loaded; he looks like a loaded man; his voice becomes so soft and gentle compared to what it used to be. Just such are the effects of our load: but the worst of it is, our neighbours are not thus loaded. However, far be it from me to regret this, or any part of it. The load is the people’s best friend. If that could, without reform; if that could be shaken off, leaving the seat-men and the parsons in their present state, I would not live in England another day! And I say this with as much seriousness as if I were upon my death-bed.

  The wise men of the newspapers are for a repeal of the Com Laws. With all my heart, I will join any body in a petition for their repeal.11 But, this will not be done. We shall stop short of this extent of ‘liberality’, let what may be the consequence to the manufacturers. The Cotton Lords must all go, to the last man, rather than a repeal, these laws will take place: and of this the newspaper wise men may be assured. The farmers can but just rub along now, with all their high prices and low wages. What would be their state, and that of their landlords, if the wheat were to come down again 4, 5, or even 6 shillings a bushel? Universal agricultural bankruptcy would be the almost instant consequence. Many of them are now deep in debt from the effects of 1820, 1821, and 1822. One more year like 1822 would have broken the whole mass up, and left the lands to be cultivated, under the overseers, for the benefit of the paupers. Society would have been nearly dissolved, and the state of nature would have returned. The Small-Note Bill, cooperating with the Corn Laws have given a respite, and nothing more. This Bill must remain efficient, paper-money must cover the country, and the corn-laws must remain in force; OR, an ‘equitable adjustment’ must take place; OR, to a state of nature this country must return. What, then, as I want a repeal of the corn-laws, and also want to get rid of the paper-money I must want to see this return to a state of nature? By no means. I want the ‘equitable adjustment’, and I am quite sure, that no adjustment can be equitable, which does not apply every penny’s worth of public property to the payment of the fund-holders and dead-weight and the like. Clearly just and reasonable as this is, however, the very mention of it makes the FIRE-SHOVELS, and some others, half mad. It makes them storm and rant and swear like Bedlamites. But it is curious to hear them talk of the impracticability of it; when they all know that, by only two or three acts of Parliament, Henry VIII did ten times as much as it would now, I hope, be necessary to do. If the duty were imposed on me, no statesman, legislator or lawyer, but a simple citizen, I think I could, in less than twenty-four hours, draw up an act, that would give satisfaction to, I will not say every man; but to, at least, ninety-nine out of every hundred; an act that would put all affairs of money and of religion to rights at once; but that would, I must confess, soon take from us that amiable modesty, of which I have spoken above, and which is so conspicuously shown in our works of free-trade and liberality.

  The weather is clearing up; our horses are saddled, and we are off.

  FROM BURGHCLERE TO PETERSFIELD

  Hurstbourne Tarrant (or Uphusband), Monday, 7th November, 1825

  We came off from Burghclere yesterday afternoon, crossing Lord Caernarvon’s park, going out of it on the west side of Beacon Hill, and sloping away to our right over the downs towards WOODCOTE. The afternoon was singularly beautiful. The downs (even the poorest of them) are perfectly green; the sheep on the downs look, this year, like fitting sheep; we came through a fine flock of ewes, and, looking round us, we saw, all at once, seven flocks, on different parts of the downs, each flock, on an average, containing at least 500 sheep.

  It is about six miles from Burghclere to this place; and, we made it about twelve; not in order to avoid the turnpike road; but, because we do not ride about to see turnpike roads; and, moreover, because I had seen this most monstrously hilly turnpike-road before. We came through a village called WOODCOTE, and another, called BINLEY. I never saw any inhabited places more recluse than these. Yet into these, the all-searching eye of the taxing THING reaches. Its Exciseman can tell what it is doing even in the little odd corner of BINLEY; for even there I saw, over the door of a place, not half so good as the place in which my fowls roost, ‘LICENSED TO DEAL IN TEA AND TOBACCO’. Poor, half-starved wretches of BINLEY! The hand of taxation, the collection for the sinecures and pensions, must fix its nails even in them, who really appeared too miserable to be called by the name of people. Yet there was one whom the taxing THING had licensed (good God! licensed!) to serve out cat-lap to these wretched creatures! And, our impudent and ignorant newspaper scribes talk of the degraded state of the people of Spain! Impudent impostors! Can they show a group so wretched, so miserable, so truly enslaved as this, in all Spain? No: and those of them who are not sheer fools know it well. But, there would have been misery equal to this in Spain, if the Jews and Jobbers could have carried the Bond-scheme into effect. The people of Spain were, through the instrumentality of patriot-loan makers, within an inch of being made as ‘enlightened’ as the poor, starving things of
Binley. They would soon have had people ‘licensed’ to make them pay the Jews for permission to chew tobacco, or to have a light in their dreary abodes. The people of Spain were preserved from this by the French army, for which the Jews cursed the French army; and the same army put an end to those ‘bonds’, by means of which pious Protestants hoped to be able to get at the convents in Spain, and thereby put down ‘idolatry’ in that country. These bonds seem now not to be worth a farthing; and so after all, the Spanish people will have no one ‘licensed’ by the Jews to make them pay for turning the fat of their sheep into candles and soap. These poor creatures, that I behold here, pass their lives amidst flocks of sheep; but, never does a morsel of mutton enter their lips. A labouring man told me, at Binley, that he had not tasted meat since harvest; and his looks vouched for the statement. Let the Spaniards come and look at this poor, shotten-herring of a creature; and then let them estimate what is due to a set of ‘enlightening’ and loan-making ‘patriots’. OLD FORTESCUE says that the ‘ENGLISH are cloathed in good woollens throughout’, and that they have plenty of flesh of all sorts to eat’. Yes; but at this time, the nation was not mortgaged. The ‘enlightening’ Patriots would have made Spain what England now is. The people must never more, after a few years, have tasted mutton, though living surrounded with flocks of sheep.

  Easton, near Winchester, Wednesday Evening, 9th Nov.

  I intended to go from UPHUSBAND to STONEHENGE, thence to Old SARUM, and thence, through the New Forest, to Southampton and Botley, and thence across into Sussex, to see Up-Park and Cowdry House. But, then, there must be no loss of time: I must adhere to a certain route as strictly as a regiment on a march. I had written the route; and Laverstock, after seeing Stonehenge and Old Sarum, was to be the resting place of yesterday (Tuesday); but when it came, it brought rain with it after a white frost on Monday. It was likely to rain again to-day. It became necessary to change the route, as I must get to London by a certain day; and as the first day, on the new route, brought us here.

  I had been three times at UPHUSBAND before, and had, as my readers will, perhaps, recollect, described the BOURNE here, or the Brook. It has, in general, no water at all in it, from August to March. There is the bed of a little river; but no water. In March, or thereabouts, the water begins to boil up, in thousands upon thousands of places, in the little narrow meadows, just above the village; that is to say, a little higher up the valley. When the chalk hills axe full; when the chalk will hold no more water; then it comes out at the lowest spots near these immense hills and becomes a rivulet first, and then a river. But, until this visit to Uphusband (or Hurstbourne Tarrant, as the map calls it), little did I imagine, that this rivulet, dry half the year, was the head of the RIVER TESTE, which, after passing through Stockbridge and Rumsey, falls into the sea near Southampton.

  We had to follow the bed of this river to BOURNE; but there the water begins to appear; and it runs all the year long about a mile lower down. Here it crosses LORD PORTSMOUTH’S out-park, and our road took us the same way to the village called DOWN HUSBAND, the scene (as the broad-sheet tells us) of so many of that Noble Lord’s ringing and cart-driving exploits. Here we crossed the London and Andover road, and leaving Andover to our right and Whitchurch to our left, we came on to LONG PARISH, where, crossing the water, we came up again on that high country, which continues all across to Winchester. After passing Bullington, Sutton, and Wonston, we veered away from Stoke-Charity, and came across the fields to the high down, whence you see Winchester or rather the Cathedral; for, at this distance, you can distinguish nothing else clearly.

  As we had to come to this place, which is three miles up the river Itchen from Winchester, we crossed the Winchester and Basingstoke road at King’s Worthy. This brought us, before we crossed the river, along through Martyrs Worthy, so long the seat of the OGLES, and now, as I observed in my last Register, sold to a general, or colonel. These OGLES had been deans, I believe; or prebends, or something of that sort: and the one that used to live here had been, and was when he died, an ‘admiral’. However, this last one, ‘Sir Charles’, the loyal address mover, is my man for the present. We saw, down by the water-side, opposite to ‘Sir Charles’s late family mansion, a beautiful strawberry garden, capable of being watered by a branch of the Itchen which comes close by it, and which is, I suppose, brought there on purpose. Just by, on the greensward, under the shade of very fine trees, is an alcove, wherein to sit to eat the strawberries, coming from the little garden just mentioned, and met by bowls of cream coming from a little milk-house, shaded by another clump a little lower down the stream. What delight! What a terrestrial paradise! ‘Sir Charles’ might be very frequently in this paradise, while that SIDMOUTH, whose Bill he so applauded, had many men shut up in loathsome dungeons! Ah, well! ‘Sir Charles’, those very men may, perhaps, at this moment, envy neither you nor SIDMOUTH; no, nor SIDMOUTH ’S SON AND HEIR, even though Clerk of the Pells. At any rate, it is not likely that ‘Sir Charles’ will sit again in this paradise, contemplating another loyal address, to carry to a county meeting ready engrossed on parchment, to be presented by Fleming and supported by Lockhart and the ‘HAMPSHIRE PARSONS’.1

  I think I saw, as I came along, the new owner of the estate. It seems that he bought it ‘stock and fluke’, as the sailors call it; that is to say, that he bought moveables and the whole. He appeared to me to be a keen man. I can’t find out where he comes from, or what he, or his father, has been. I like to see the revolution going on; but I like to be able to trace the parties a little more closely. ‘Sir Charles’, the loyal address gentleman, lives in London, I hear. I will, I think, call upon him (if I can find him out) when I get back, and ask how he does now? There is one HOLLET, a GEORGE HOLLET, who figured pretty bigly on that same loyal address day. This man is become quite an inoffensive harmless creature. If we were to have another county meeting, he would not, I think, direaten to put the sash down upon any body’s head! Oh! Peel, Peel, Peel! Thy bill, oh, Peel, did sicken them so! Let us, oh, diou offspring of the great Spinning Jenny2 promoter who subscribed ten thousand pounds towards the late ‘glorious’ war; who was, after diat, made a Baronet, and whose biographers (in the Baronetage) tell the world, that he had a presentiment diat he should be the founder of a family’. Oh, thou, diou great Peel, do diou let us have only two more years of diy Bill! Or, oh, great Peel, Minister of the interior, do diou let us have repeal of Corn Bill! Either will do, great Peel. We shall then see such modest ‘squires, and parsons looking so queer! However, if diou wilt not listen to us, great Peel, we must, perhaps, (and only perhaps) wait a little longer. It is sure to come at last, and to come, too, in the most efficient way.

  The water in the Itchen is, they say, famed for its clearness. As I was crossing the river the other day, at AVINGTON, I told Richard to look at it, and I asked him if he did not think it very clear. I now find, that this has been remarked by very ancient writers. I see, in a newspaper just received, an account of dreadful fires in new Brunswick. It is curious, that, in my Register of the 29th October, (dated from Chilworth in Surrey,) I should have put a question, relative to the WHITE-CLOVER, the HUCKLEBERRIES, or the RASPBERRIES, which start up after the burning down of woods in America. These fires have been at two places which I saw when there were hardly any people in the whole country; and, if there never had been any people there to this day, it would have been a good thing for England. Those colonies are a dead expense, without a possibility of their ever being of any use. There are, I see, a church and a barrack destroyed. And, why a barrack? What! were there bayonets wanted already to keep the people in order? For, as to an enemy, where was he to come from? And, if there really be an enemy any where there about, would it not be a wise way to leave the worthless country to him, to use it after his own way? I was at that very FREDERICTON, where they say thirty houses and thirty-nine barns have now been burnt. I can remember, when there was no more thought of there ever being a barn there, than there is now thought of there being economy in
our Government. The English money used to be spent prettily in that country. What do we want with armies, and barracks and chaplains in those woods? What does any body want with them; but WE, above all the rest of the world? There is nothing there, no house, no barrack, no wharf, nothing, but what is bought with taxes raised on the half-starving people of England. What do WE want with these wildernesses? Ah! but, they are wanted by creatures who will not work in England, and whom this fine system of ours sends out into those woods to live in idleness upon the fruit of English labour. The soldier, the commissary, the barrack-master, all the whole tribe, no matter under what name; what keeps them? They are paid ‘by Government’; and I wish, that we constantly bore in mind, that the ‘Government’ pays OUR money. It is, to be sure, sorrowful to hear of such fires and such dreadful effects proceeding from them; but to me, it is beyond all measure more sorrowful to see the labourers of England worse fed than the convicts in the gaols; and, I know very well, that these worthless and jobbing colonies have assisted to bring England into this horrible state. The honest labouring man is allowed (aye, BY THE MAGISTRATES) less food than the felon in the gaol; and the felon is clothed and has fuel; and the labouring man has nothing allowed for these. These worthless colonies, which find places for people that the THING provides for, have helped to produce this dreadful state in England. Therefore, any assistance the sufferers should never have from me, while I could find an honest and industrious English labourer (unloaded with a family too) fed worse than a felon in the gaols; and this I can find in every part of the country.

  Petersfield, Friday Evening, 11th November

  We lost another day at Easton; the whole of yesterday, it having rained the whole day; so that we could not have come an inch but in the wet. We started, therefore, this morning, coming through the Duke of Buckingham’s Park, at AVINGTON, which is close by EASTON, and on the same side of the Itchen. This is a very beautiful place. The house is close down at the edge of the meadow land; there is a lawn before it, and a pond, supplied by the Itchen, at the end of the lawn, and bounded by the park on the other side. The high road, through the park, goes very near to this water; and we saw thousands of wild-ducks in the pond, or sitting round on the green edges of it, while, on one side of the pond, the hares and pheasants were moving about upon a gravel-walk, on the side of a very fine plantation. We looked down upon all this from a rising ground, and the water, like a looking-glass, showed us the trees, and even the animals. This is certainly one of the very prettiest spots in the world. The wild water-fowl seem to take particular delight in this place. There are a great many at Lord CAERNARVON’S but, there the water is much larger, and the ground and wood about it comparatively rude and coarse. Here, at AVINGTON, every dung is in such beautiful order; the lawn, before the house, is of the finest green, and most neatly kept; and, the edge of the pond (which is of several acres) is as smooth as if it formed part of a bowling-green. To see so many wild-fowl, in a situation where every thing is in the parterre-order, has a most pleasant effect on the mind; and Richard and I, like POPE’S cock in the farm-yard, could not help thanking the DUKE and DUCHESS for having generously made such ample provision for our pleasure, and that, too, merely to please us as we were passing along. Now, this is the advantage of going about on horseback. On foot, the fatigue is too great, and you go too slowly. In any sort of carriage, you cannot get into the real country places. To travel in stage coaches is to be hurried along by force, in a box, with an air-hole in it, and constantly exposed to broken limbs, the danger being much greater than that of ship-board, and the noise much more disagreeable, while the company is frequently not a great deal more to one’s liking.