Rural Rides Read online

  N.B. Dry as the late summer was, I never had my Locust trees2 so fine as they are this year. I have some, they write me, five feet high, from seed sown just before I went to Preston the first time, that is to say, on the 13th of May. I shall advertise my trees in the next Register. I never had them so fine, though the great drought has made the number comparatively small. Lord FOLKESTONE bought of me 13,600 trees. They are, at this moment, worth the money, they cost him, and, in addition the cost of planting, and in addition to that, they are worth the fee simple of the ground (very good ground) on which they stand; and this I am able to demonstrate to any man in his senses. What a difference in the value of Wiltshire, if all its Elms were Locusts! As fuel, a foot of Locust-wood is worth four or five of any English wood. It will burn better green than almost any other wood will dry. If men want woods, beautiful woods, and in a hurry, let them go and see the clumps at Coleshill. Think of a wood 16 feet high, and I may say 20 feet high, in twenty-nine months from the day of planting; and the plants, on an average, not more than two feet high, when planted! Think of that: and any one may see it at Coleshill. See what efforts gentlemen make to get a wood! How they look at the poor slow-growing things for years; when they might if they would, have it at once: really almost at a wish; and, with due attention, in almost any soil; and the most valuable of woods into the bargain. Mr PALMER, the bailiff showed me, near the house at Coleshill, a Locust tree, which was planted about 35 years ago, or perhaps 40. He had measured it before. It is eight feet and an inch round at a foot from the ground. It goes off afterwards into two principal limbs; which too soon become six limbs, and each of these limbs is three feet round. So that here are six everlasting gate-posts to begin with. This tree is worth 20 pounds at the least farthing.

  I saw also at Coleshill, the most complete farm-yard that I ever saw, and that I believe there is in all England, many and complete as English farm-yards are. This was the contrivance of Mr PALMER, Lord Folkestone’s bailiff and steward. The master gives all the credit of plantation, and farm to the servant; but the servant ascribes a good deal of it to the master. Between them, at any rate, here are some most admirable objects in rural affairs. And here, too, there is no misery amongst those who do the work; those without whom there could have been no Locust-plantations and no farm-yard. Here all are comfortable; gaunt hunger here stares no man in the face. That same disposition which sent Lord FOLKESTONE to visit JOHN KNIGHT in the dungeons at Reading, keeps pinching hunger away from Coleshill. It is a very pretty spot all taken together. It is chiefly grazing land; and, though the making of cheese and bacon is, I dare say, the most profitable part of the farming here, Lord FOLKESTONE fats oxen, and has a stall for it, which ought to be shown to foreigners, instead of the spinning jennies. A fat ox is a finer thing than a cheese, however good. There is a dairy here too, and beautifully kept. When this stall is full of oxen, and they all fat, how it would make a French farmer stare! It would make even a Yankee think, that ‘Old England’ was a respectable ‘mother’ after all. If I had to show this village off to a Yankee, I would blindfold him all the way to, and after I got him out of, the village, lest he should see the scare-crows of paupers on the road.

  For a week or ten days before I came to Highworth, I had, owing to the uncertainty as to where I should be, had no newspapers sent me from London; so that, really, I began to feel, that I was in the ‘dark ages’. Arrived here, however, the light came bursting in upon me, flash after flash, from the WEN, from DUBLIN, and from MODERN ATHENS. I had, too, for several days, had nobody to enjoy the light with. I had no sharers in the ‘anteeluctual’ treat, and this sort of enjoyment, unlike that of some other sorts, is augmented by being divided. Oh! how happy we were, and how proud we were, to find (from the ‘instructor’), that we had a king, that we were the subjects of a sovereign, who had graciously sent twenty-five pounds to Sir RICHARD BIRNIE’S POOR BOX, there to swell the amount of the munificence of fined delinquents! Aye, and this, too, while (as the ‘instructor’ told us) this same sovereign had just bestowed, unasked for (Oh! the dear good man!), an annuity of Sool. a year on Mrs Fox, who, observe, and whose daughters, had already a banging pension, paid out of the taxes, raised, in part, and in the greatest part, upon a people who are half-starved and half-naked. And our admiration at the poor box affair was not at all lessened by the reflection, that more money than sufficient to pay all the poor-rates of Wiltshire and Berkshire will, this very year, have been expended on new palaces, on pullings down and alterations of palaces before existing, and on ornaments and decorations in, and about Hyde Park, where a bridge is building, which, I am told, must cost a hundred thousand pounds, though all the water, that has to pass under it, would go through a sugar hogshead; and DOES, a little while before it comes to this bridge, go through an arch which I believe to be smaller than a sugar-hogshead! besides, there was a bridge here before, and a very good one too.

  Now will JERRY CURTEIS, who complains so bitterly about the poor-rates, and who talks of the poor working people as if their poverty were the worst of crimes; will JERRY say any thing about this bridge, or about the enormous expenses at Hyde Park Corner and in St James’s Park? Jerry knows, or he ought to know, that this bridge alone will cost more money than half the poor-rates of the County of Sussex. JERRY knows, or he ought to know, that this bridge must be paid for out of the taxes. He must know, or else he must be what I dare not suppose him, that it is the taxes that make the paupers; and yet I am afraid that JERRY will not open his lips on the subject of this bridge. What they are going at, at HYDE PARK CORNER, nobody that I talk with seems to know. The ‘great Captain of the age’ as that nasty palaverer, Brougham, called him, lives close to this spot, where also the ‘English ladies’ ’ naked Achilles stands, having on the base of it, the word WELLINGTON in great staring letters, while all the other letters are very, very small; so that base tax-eaters and fund-gamblers from the country, when they go to crouch before this image, think it is the image of the Great Captain himself! The reader will recollect, that after the battle of WATERLOO, when we beat Napoleon with nearly a million of foreign bayonets in our pay, pay that came out of that borrowed money, for which we have now to wince and howl; the reader will recollect, that at that ‘glorious’ time, when the insolent wretches of tax-eaters were ready to trample us under foot; that, at that time, when the Yankees were defeated on the Serpentine River, and before they had thrashed Blue and Buff so unmercifully on the ocean and on the lakes; that, at that time, when the nasty creatures called ‘English ladies’ were flocking, from all parts of the country, to present rings, to ‘Old Blucher’ and to lick the snivel from his whiskers; that, at that time of exultation with the corrupt, and of mourning with the virtuous, the COLLECTIVE, in the hey-day, in the delirium, of its joy, resolved to expend three millions of money on triumphal arches, or columns or monuments of some sort or other, to commemorate the glories of the war! Soon after this, however, low prices came, and they drove triumphal arches out of the heads of the Ministers, until ‘prosperity, unparalleled prosperity’ came! This set them to work upon palaces and streets; and, I am told, that the triumphal-arch project is now going on at Hyde Park Corner! Good God! If this should be true, how apt will every thing be! Just about the time that the arch, or arches, will be completed; just about the time that the scaffolding will be knocked away, down will come the whole of the horrid borough-mongering system, for the upholding of which the vile tax-eating crew called for the war! All these palaces and other expensive projects were hatched two years ago; they were hatched in the days of ‘prosperity’, the plans and contracts were made, I dare say, two or three years ago! However, they will be completed much about in the nick of time! They will help to exhibit the system in its true light.

  The ‘best possible public instructor’ tells us, that CANNING is going to Paris. For what, I wonder? His brother, HUSKISSON, was there last year; and he did nothing. It is supposed, that the ‘revered and ruptured Ogden’ orator is going to try the force of his
oratory, in order to induce France and her allies to let Portugal alone. He would do better to arm some ships of war! Oh! no: never will that be done again; or, at least, there never will again be war for three months as long as this borough and paper system shall last! This system has run itself out. It has lasted a good while, and has done tremendous mischief to the people of England; but, it is over; it is done for; it will live for a while, but it will go about drooping its wings and half shutting its eyes, like a cock that has got the pip: it will NEVER CROW AGAIN; and for that I most humbly and fervently thank God! It has crowed over us long enough: it has pecked us and spurred us and slapped us about quite long enough. The nasty, insolent creatures, that it has sheltered under its wings, have triumphed long enough: they are now going to the work-house; and thither let them go.

  I know nothing of the politics of the BOURBONS; but, though I can easily conceive that they would not like to see an end of the paper-system and a consequent REFORM, in England; though I can see very good reasons for believing this, I do not believe, that CANNING will induce them to sacrifice their own obvious and immediate interests for the sake of preserving our funding system. He will not get them out of CADIZ, and he will not induce them to desist from interfering in the affairs of Portugal, if they find it their interest to interfere. They know, that we cannot go to war. They know this as well as we do; and every sane person in England seems to know it well. No war for us without Reform! We are come to this at last. No war with this Debt; and this Debt defies every power but that of Reform. Foreign nations were, as to our real state, a good deal enlightened by ‘late panic’. They had hardly any notion of our state before that. That opened their eyes, and led them to conclusions that they never before dreamed of. It made them see, that that which they had always taken for a mountain of solid gold, was only a great heap of rubbishy, rotten paper! And they now, of course, estimate us accordingly. But, it signifies not what they think, or what they do, unless they will subscribe and pay off this Debt for the people at Whitehall. The foreign governments (not excepting the American) all hate the English Reformers; those of Europe, because our example would be so dangerous to despots; and that of America, because we should not suffer it to build fleets and to add to its territories at pleasure. So that, we have not only our own borough-mongers and tax-eaters against us; but also all foreign governments. Not a straw, however, do we care for them all, so long as we have for us the ever-living, ever-watchful, ever-efficient, and all-subduing DEBT! Let our foes subscribe, I say, and pay off that DEBT; for until they do that, we snap our fingers at them.

  Highworth, Friday, 8th Sept.

  ‘The best public instructor’ of yesterday (arrived to-day) informs us, that ‘A number of official gentlemen, connected with finance, have waited upon LORD LIVERPOOL’! Connected with finance! And ‘a number’ of them, too! Bless their numerous and united noddles! Good God! what a state of things it is altogether! There never was the like of it seen in this world before. Certainly never; and the end must be what the far greater part of the people anticipate. It was this very Lord Liverpool that ascribed the sufferings of the country to a surplus of food; and that, too, at the very time when he was advising the King to put forth a begging proclamation to raise money to prevent, or, rather, put a stop to, starvation in Ireland; and when, at the same time, public money was granted for the causing of English people to emigrate to Africa! Ah! Good God! who is to record or recount the endless blessings of a Jubilee-Government! – The ‘instructor’ gives us a sad account of the state of the working classes in Scotland. I am not glad that these poor people suffer: I am very sorry for it; and, if I could relieve them, out of my own means, without doing good to and removing danger from, the insolent borough-mongers and tax-eaters of Scotland, I would share my last shilling with the poor fellows. But, I must be glad that something has happened to silence the impudent Scotch quacks, who have been, for six years past, crying up the doctrine of MALTHUS, and railing against the English, poor-laws?3 Let us now see what they will do with their poor. Let us see whether they will have the impudence to call upon us to maintain their poor! Well, amidst all this suffering, there is one good thing; the Scotch political economy is blown to the devil, and the Edinburgh Review and Adam Smith along with it.

  Malmsbury (Wilts), Monday, 11th Sept.

  I was detained at Highworth partly by the rain and partly by company that I liked very much. I left it at six o’clock yesterday morning, and got to this town about three or four o’clock in the afternoon after a ride, including my deviations, of 34 miles; and as pleasant a ride as man ever had. I got to a farm-house in the neighbourhood of CRICKLADE, to breakfast, at which house I was very near to the source of the river ISIS, which is, they say, the first branch of the THAMES. They call it the ‘OLD THAMES’, and I rode through it here, it not being above four or five yards wide, and not deeper than the knees of my horse.

  The land here, and all round CRICKLADE, is very fine. Here are some of the very finest pastures in all England, and some of the finest dairies of cows, from 40 to 60 in a dairy, grazing in them. Was not this always so? Was it created by the union with Scotland; or was it begotten by Pitt and his crew? Aye, it was always so; and there were formerly two churches here, where there is now only one, and five, six or ten times as many people. I saw in one single farm-yard here more food than enough for four times the inhabitants of the parish; and this yard did not contain a tenth, perhaps, of the produce of the parish; but, while the poor creatures that raise the wheat and the barley and cheese and the mutton and the beef are living upon potatoes, an accursed Canal comes kindly through the parish to convey away the wheat and all the good food to the tax-eaters and their attendants in the WEN! What, then, is this ‘an improvement’? is a nation richer for the carrying away of the food from those who raise it, and giving it to bayonet men and others, who are assembled in great masses? I could broom-stick the fellow who would look me in the face and call this ‘an improvement’. What! was it not better for the consumers of the food to live near to the places where it was grown? We have very nearly come to the system of HINDOOSTAN, where the farmer is allowed by the AUMIL, or tax-contractor, only so much of the produce of his farm to eat in the year! The thing is not done in so undisguised a manner here; here are assessor, collector, exciseman, supervisor, informer, constable, justice, sheriff, jailor, judge, jury, jack-ketch, barrack-man. Here is a great deal of ceremony about it; all is done according to law; it is the free-est country in the world: but, some how or other, the produce is, at last, carried away; and it is eaten, for the main part, by those who do not work.

  I observed, some pages back, that, when I got to MALMSBURY, I should have to explain my main object in coming to the NORTH OF WILTSHIRE. In the year 1818, the parliament, by an act, ordered the bishops to cause the beneficed clergy to give in an account of their livings, which account was to contain the following particulars, relating to each parish:

  1. Whether a Rectory, Vicarage, or what.

  2. In what rural Deanery.