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  I think I shall be tempted to mould into a little book these lessons of arithmetic given to Richard. I think that a boy of sense, and of age equal to that of my scholar, would derive great profit from such a little book. It would not be equal to my verbal explanations, especially accompanied with the other parts of my conduct towards my scholar; but, at any rate, it would be plain; it would be what a boy could understand; it would encourage him by giving him a glimpse at the reasons for what he was doing; it would contain principles; and the difference between principles and rules is this, that the former are persuasions and the latter are commands. There is a great deal of difference between carrying 2 for such and such a reason, and carrying 2 because you must carry 2. You see boys that can cover reams of paper with figures, and do it with perfect correctness too; and at the same time, can give you not a single reason for any part of what they have done. Now this is really doing very little. The rule is soon forgotten, and then all is forgotten. It would be the same with a lawyer that understood none of the principles of law. As far as he could find and remember cases exactly similar in all their parts to the case which he might have to manage, he would be as profound a lawyer as any in the world; but, if there was the slightest difference between his case and the cases he had found upon record, there would be an end of this law.

  Some people will say, here is a monstrous deal of vanity and egotism; and if they will tell me, how such a story is to be told without exposing a man to this imputation, I will adopt their mode another time. I get nothing by telling the story. I should get full as much by keeping it to myself; but it may be useful to others, and therefore I tell it. Nothing is so dangerous as supposing that you have eight wonders of the world. I have no pretensions to any such possession. I look upon my boy as being like other boys in general. Their fathers can teach arithmetic as well as I; and if they have not a mind to pursue my mediod, they must pursue their own. Let them apply to the outside of the head and to the back, if they like; let them bargain for thumps and the birch rod; it is their affair and not mine. I never yet saw in my house a child that was afraid; that was in any fear whatever; that was ever for a moment under any sort of apprehension, on account of the learning of any thing; and I never in my life gave a command, an order, a request, or even advice, to look into any book; and I am quite satisfied that the way to make children dunces, to make them detest books, and justify that detestation, is to teaze them and bother them upon the subject.

  As to the age at which children ought to begin to be taught, it is very curious, that, while I was at a friend’s house during my ride, I looked into, by mere accident, a little child’s abridgment of the History of England: a little thing about twice as big as a crown-piece. Even into this abridgment the historian had introduced the circumstances of Alfred’s father, who, ‘through a mistaken notion of kindness to his son, had suffered him to live to the age of twelve years without any attempt being made to give him education’. How came this writer to know that it was a mistaken notion? Ought he not rather, when he looked at the result, when he considered the astonishing knowledge and great deeds of Alfred – ought he not to have hesitated before he thus criticised the notions of the father? It appears from the result, that if they had begun to thump the head of Alfred when he was a child, we should not at this day have heard talk of Alfred the Great.

  FROM KENSINGTON TO EAST EVERLEY

  Burghclere, Hants., Monday, 21st August, 1826

  I set off from Kensington on Friday morning, on my way to the WEST, and got to SUNNING, near Reading, on Friday afternoon. On Saturday we (two sons and myself) stopped at Reading, it being market-day, to take a look about us. Wheat about 6s. 6d. the Winchester bushel on an average. Barley and oats dearer in proportion. Pease, there appears to be none; and very few beans. I went to the pig-market. A store-pig, six months old, was worth 201. and no more; and that is very cheap. A hog, a year old, not worth more than 40s. The farmers are in a devilish fright! It is touch and go with them now. In short, it is only by a merciless grinding of the labourers that they are now enabled to pay any rent at all; and, this grinding does not, in the end, answer its purpose; for, the labourers fall upon the poor-rates; and, if, by means of STURGES BOURNE’s Bills, and of other grinding contrivances, the labourers be pushed to the verge of starvation, they TAKE without money and without leave. That sends them to gaol, and there they have, in this part of the country, MEAT THREE TIMES A WEEK, which, generally speaking, is three times a week OFTENER than they can get it by honest labour/ So that the fanners and landowners get nothing, in the end, by pushing the thing too far.

  But, this is not all: there are ricks, bams, plantations, heatks, and moors; and there is FIRE! The newspapers are full of accounts of destruction in this way. They daily tell us of these ‘works of some wicked incendiary’. But to call these fire-makers names is of no use. It would be much more rational to go coolly to work to find out the motives of such evil-doers; for, observe, they must have a motive It is impossible that they should not have a motive. They do not stay to warm themselves by the fires. Indeed, the weather is, at this time, but too hot. Why, not endeavour, then, to find out the motive, and to remove the grounds of such motive, since the motive produces consequences so very serious? The MOORS and PLANTATIONS,which have been recently burned in the North, were, the newspapers tell us, set on fire by poachers! Indeed! But, what is a poacher? For that is a question worth asking. Why, a poacher is a man, who goes in search of, and either catches, or endeavours to catch; or, who picks up in a field, or in a road; or who has on his person or in his house, any one of those wild animals which are nobody’s property, and which are called, hares, pheasants, or partridges. That is ‘a poacher’, to punish whom there have, of late years, been many new and most cruel laws passed. Now, in order to prevent the plantations and moors from being set fire to, would it not be as well to try a little what a repeal of these new laws would do?

  In short, there is no safety for property of any sort, if you push severity and pinching beyond a certain point. They have long been pushed to the utmost extent that they will bear. They can go no further: it is even now matter of taste with the labourers, which is best, gaol or the fields; Botany Bay, or England. As to character and love of country: these have no existence in company with thoughts constantly bent on the means of satisfying the cravings of hunger.

  The farmers, who know that they cannot screw down the labourers any lower, are now in a great fright. They are scared at the thought of a repeal of the Corn-laws; for, as to a relief from a repeal of taxes, they never think of it, and a great part of the richer ones of them would dislike that mode of relief. If they can get high prices, they do not object to high taxes; for these have a tendency to keep up the present system; and this is a system that they like. This is what I mean to say: That, if one of these bull-frog farmers could clear 500l. a year, with taxes so high as to make beer 6d. a pot, he would RATHER DO IT, than clear the same sum with taxes so low as to make beer 2d. a pot. This may, at first sight, seem strange to those who are unacquainted with this race of men; but it is impossible for any thing to be more correct. Therefore, we ought to think a long while, before we feel sorrow for the fall of such men. In fact, the present horrible state of things never could have come upon us, had it not been for the horses and sabres of these very men! They are dreadfully frightened now; they see what is going on about the Corn Bill; they think of nothing but price: they will pay rent to the last moment: and, though they will be more spiteful towards the labourers, they MUST KEEP THEM, even if the thought burst, or rather crack, their callous hearts.

  To my great surprise, I have, in these sixty odd miles, from London to this place, found the TURNIPS, of both sorts, by no means bad; and I really expected to find hardly any! There is a great quantity of stubble-land sown with turnips, the crops being off so early. So that, as far as I have yet seen [of] the country, I think that there will be no deficiency in the winter food; and when the rains come the grass will grow at a great rate
, and will make food abundant till Christmas. I hear no complaints about the crops, except as to oats, pease, and beans. Apples, all the way that I have come, are a very good crop; and wherever there are grapes, they are abundant in crop and nearly ripe, while the filberts are ripe a fall month earlier than usual.

  This is, surely, the finest year that ever was known. Near Newbury, they are now making the second crop of meadow hay! There will not be a handful of spoiled hay, or a gallon of spoiled corn, in the whole kingdom. They have finished harvest in Scotland about a month sooner than the usual time of finishing in England! Yet will this year be a most terrible one for the labourers. The work is now done. The farmer has his crops in, and the labourer has to live as he can. He must come to the poor-book, that is to say, to the smallest possible means of keeping him alive and enabling him to crack stones; or, in other words, to as little as he can be induced to regard as making his hovel preferable to a gaol, and as making England preferable to Botany Bay! Oh! ‘Envy of surrounding nations’! Oh! ‘Admiration of the world’!

  Uphusband (Hampshire), Thursday, 24th Aug. 1826

  We left Burghclere last evening, in the rain; but, as our distance was only about seven miles, the consequence was little. The crops of corn, except oats, have been very fine hereabouts; and, there are never any pease, nor any beans, grown here. The sainfoin fields, though on these high lands, and though the dry weather has been of such long continuance, look as green as watered meadows, and a great deal more brilliant and beautiful. I have often described this beautiful village (which lies in a deep dell) and its very variously shaped environs, in my Register of November, 1822. This is one of those countries of chalk and flint and dry-top soil and hard roads and high and bare hills and deep dells, with clumps of lofty trees, here and there, which are so many rookeries: this is one of those countries, or rather, approaching towards those countries, of downs an Aflocks of sheep, which I like so much, which I always get to when I can, and which many people seem to flee from as naturally as men flee from pestilence. They call such countries naked and barren, though they are, in the summer months, actually covered with meat and with corn.

  I saw, the other day, in the MORNING HERALD, London’s ‘best public instructor’, that all those had deceived themselves, who had expected to see the price of agricultural produce brought down by the lessening of the quantity of paper-money. Now, in the first place, corn is, on an average, a seventh lower in price than it was last year at this time; and, what would it have been, if the crop and the stock had now been equal to what they were last year? All in good time, therefore, good Mr THWAITES. Let us have a little time. The ‘best public instructors’ have, as yet, only fallen, in number sold, about a third, since this time last year. Give them a little time, good Mr THWAITES, and you will see them come down to your heart’s content. Only let us fairly see an end to small notes, and there will soon be not two daily ‘best public instructors’ left in all the entire’ great ‘British Empire’.

  But, as man is not to live on bread alone, so corn is not the only thing that the owners and occupiers of the land have to look to. There are timber, bark, underwood, wool, hides, pigs, sheep, and cattle. All these together make, in amount, four times the corn, at the very least. I know that all these have greatly fallen in price since last year; but, I am in a sheep and wool country, and can speak positively as to them, which are two articles of very great importance. As to sheep; I am speaking of South Downs, which are the great stock of these counties; as to sheep they have fallen one-third in price since last August, lambs as well as ewes. And, as to the wool, it sold, in 1824, at 40s. a tod; it sold last year, at 35s. a tod; and it now sells at 19s. a tod! A tod is 28lb. avoirdupois weight; so that the price of South Down wool now is, 8d. a pound and a fraction over; and this is, I believe, cheaper than it has ever been known within the memory of the oldest man living! The ‘best public instructor’ may, perhaps, think, that sheep and wool are a trifling affair. There are many thousands of farmers who keep each a flock of at least a thousand sheep. An ewe yields about 31b. of wool, a wether 4lb., a ram 7lb. Calculate, good Mr Thwaites, what a difference it is when this wool becomes 8d. a pound instead of 17d. and instead of 30d. as it was not many years ago! In short, every middling sheep fanner receives, this year, about 250l. less, as the produce of sheep and wool, than he received last year; and, on an average, 250l. is more than half his rent.

  There is a great falling off in the price of horses, and of all cattle except fat cattle; and, observe, when the prospect is good, it shows a rise in the price of lean cattle; not in that of the meat, which is just ready to go into the mouth. Prices will go on gradually falling, as they did from 1819 to 1822 inclusive, unless upheld by untoward seasons, or by an issue of assignats; for, mind, it would be no joke, no sham, this times; it would be an issue of as real, as bona fide assignats as ever came from the mint of any set of rascals that ever robbed and enslaved a people, in the names of ‘liberty and law’.

  East Everley (Wiltshire), Sunday, 2yth August. Evening

  We set off from Uphusband on Friday, about ten o’clock, the morning having been wet. My sons came round, in the chaise, by ANDOVER and WEYHILL, while I came right across the country towards LUDGARSHALL, which lies in the road from Andover to this place. I never knew tine, flies so troublesome, in England, as I found them in this ride. I was obliged to carry a great bough, and to keep it in constant motion, in order to make the horse peaceable enough to enable me to keep on his back. It is a country of fields, lanes, and high hedges; so that no wind could come to relieve my horse; and, in spite of all I could do, a great part of him was covered with foam from the sweat. In the midst of this, I got, at one time, a little out of my road, in, or near, a place called TANGLEY. I rode up to the garden-wicket of a cottage, and asked the woman, who had two children, and who seemed to be about thirty years old, which was the way to LUDGARSHALL, which I knew could not be more than about four miles off. She did not know! A very neat, smart, and pretty woman; but, she did not know the way to this rotten-borough, which was, I was sure, only about four miles off! ‘Well, my dear good woman,’ said I, ‘but you have been at LUDGARSHALL?’ – ‘No.’ – ‘Nor at ANDOVER?’(six miles another way) – ‘No.’ – ‘Nor at MARLBOROUGH?’ (nine miles another way) – ‘No.’ – ‘Pray, were you born in this house?’ – ‘Yes.’ – ‘And, how far have you ever been from this house?’ – ‘Oh! I have been up in the parish, and over to Chute’. That is to say, the utmost extent of her voyages had been about two and a half miles! Let no one laugh at her, and, above all others, let not me, who am convinced, that the facilities, which now exist of moving human bothes from place to place, are amongst the curses of the country, the destroyers of industry, of morals, and, of course, of happiness. It is a great error to suppose, that people are rendered stupid by remaining always in the same place. This was a very acute woman, and as well behaved as need to be. There was, in July last (last month) a PRESTON-MAN, who had never been further from home than CHORLEY(about eight or ten miles), and who started off, on foot, and went, alone, to ROUEN, in France, and back again to London, in the space of about ten days; and that, too, without being able to speak, or to understand, a word of French! N.B. Those gentlemen, who, at GREEN-STREET, in Kent, were so kind to this man, upon finding that he had voted for me, will be pleased to accept of my best thanks. WILDING (that is the man’s name) was full of expressions of gratitude towards these gentlemen. He spoke of others who were good to him on his way; and even at CALAIS he found friends on my account; but, he was particularly loud in his praises of the gentlemen in KENT, who had been so good and so kind to him, that he seemed quite in an extacy when he talked of their conduct.