Rural Rides Page 47
I cannot dismiss this militia-clothing affair, without remarking, that I do not agree with those who blame the Ministers for having let in the foreign corn out of fear. Why not do it from that motive? ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’4 And what is meant by ‘fear of the Lord’, but the fear of doing wrong, or of persevering in doing wrong? And whence is this fear to arise? From thinking of the consequences, to be sure: and, therefore if the Ministers did let in the foreign corn for fear of popular commotion, they acted rightly, and their motive was as good and reasonable as the act was wise and just. It would have been lucky for them if the same sort of motive had prevailed, when the Corn-Bill was passed; but that game-cock statesman, who, at last, sent a spur into his own throat, was then in high feather, and he, while soldiers were drawn up round the Honourable, Honourable, Honourable House, said, that he did not, for his part, care much about the Bill; but, since the mob had clamoured against it, he was resolved to support it! Alas! that such a cock statesman should have come to such an end! All the towns and cities in England petitioned against that odious Bill. Their petitions were rejected, and that rejection is amongst the causes of the present embarrassments. Therefore I am not for blaming the Ministers for acting from fear. They did the same in the case of the poor Queen.5 Fear taught them wisely, then, also. What! would you never have people act from fear? What but fear of the law restrains many men from committing crimes? What but fear of exposure prevents thousands upon thousands of offences, moral as well as legal? Nonsense about ‘acting from fear’. I always hear with great suspicion your eulogists of ‘vigorous government’. I do not like your ‘vigorous ‘governments; your game-cock governments. We saw enough of these, and felt enough of them too, under Pitt, Dundas, Perceval, Gibbs, Ellenborough, Sidmouth and Castlereagh. I prefer governments like those of EDWARD I of England and ST LOUIS of France; COCKS as towards their enemies and rivals, and CHICKENS as towards their own people: precisely the reverse of our modern ‘country gentlemen’, as they call themselves; very lions as towards their poor, robbed, famishing labourers, but more than lambs as towards tax-eaters, and especially as towards the fierce and whiskered dead-weight, in the presence of any of whom they dare not say that their souls are their own. This base race of men, called ‘country gentlemen’, must be speedily changed by almost a miracle; or they, big as well as little, must be swept away; and if it should be desirable for posterity to have a just idea of them, let posterity take this one fact; that the tithes are now, in part, received by men, who are RECTORS and VICARS, and who, at the same time receive half-pay as naval or military officers; and that not one English ‘country gentleman’ has had the courage even to complain of this, though many gallant half-pay officers have been dismissed and beggared, upon the ground, that the half-pay is not a reward for past services, but a retaining fee for future services; so that, put the two together, they amount to this: that the half-pay is given to church parsons, that they may be, when war comes, ready to serve as officers in the army or navy! Let the world match that if it can! And yet there are scoundrels to say, that we do not want a radical reform! Why there must be such a reform, in order to prevent us from becoming a mass of wretches too corrupt and profligate and base even to carry on the common transactions of life.
Ryall, near Upton on Severn (Worcestershire), Monday, 25th Sept.
I set off from Mr PALMER’S yesterday, after breakfast, having his son (about 13 years old) as my travelling companion. We came across the country, a distance of about 22 miles, and, having crossed the Severn at UPTON, arrived here, at Mr JOHN PRICE’S, about two o’clock. On our road we passed by the estate and park of another Ricardo! This is OSMOND; the other is DAVID. This one has ousted two families of Normans, the HONEYWOOD YATES, and the SCUDAMORES. They suppose him to have ten thousand pounds a year in rent, here! Famous ‘watching the turn of the market’! The BARINGS are at work down in this country too. They are every where, indeed, depositing their eggs about, like cunning old guinea-hens, in sly places, besides the great, open, showy nests that they have. The ‘instructor’ tells us, that the RICARDOS have received sixty-four thousand pounds COMMISSION on the ‘Greek Loans’, or, rather, ‘Loans to the Greeks’.6 Oh, brave GREEKS! to have such patriots to aid you with their financial skill; such patriots as Mr GALLOWAY to make engines of war for you, while his son is making them for the Turks; and such patriots as BURDETT and HOBHOUSE to talk of your political relations! Happy Greeks! Happy MEXICANS, too, it seems; for the ‘best instructor’ tells us, that the BARINGS, whose progenitors came from DUTCHLAND about the same time as, and perhaps in company with, the Ricardos; happy Mexicans too; for, the ‘instructor’ as good as swears, that the BARINGS will see that the dividends on your loans are paid in future! Now, therefore, the riches, the loads, the ship-loads of silver and gold are now to pour in upon us! Never was there a nation so foolish as this! But, and this ought to be well understood, it is not mere foolishness; not mere harmless folly; it is foolishness, the offspring of greediness and of a gambling, which is little short of a roguish disposition; and this disposition prevails to an enormous extent in the country, as I am told, more than in the monstrous WEN itself. Most delightfully, however, have the greedy, mercenary, selfish, unfeeling wretches, been bit by the loans and shares! The King of Spain gave the wretches a sharp bite, for which I always most cordially thank his Majesty. I dare say, that his sponging off of the roguish BONDS has reduced to beggary, or caused to cut their throats, many thousands of the greedy, fund-loving, stock-jobbing devils, who, if they regard it likely to raise their securities’ one per-cent, would applaud the murder of half the human race. These vermin all, without a single exception, approved of, and rejoiced at, SIDMOUTH’S Power-of-Imprisonment Bill,7 and they applauded his Letter of Thanks to the Manchester Yeomanry Cavalry. No matter what it is that puts an end to a system which engenders and breeds up vermin like these.
Mr HANFORD, of this county, and Mr CANNING of Gloucestershire, having dined at Mr PRICE’S yesterday, I went, to-day, with Mr PRICE to see Mr HANFORD at his house and estate at BREDON HILL, which is, I believe, one of the highest in England. The ridge, or, rather, the edge of it, divides, in this part, Worcestershire from Gloucestershire. At the very highest part of it there are the remains of an encampment, or rather, I should think, citadel. In many instances, in Wiltshire, these marks of fortifications are called castles still; and, doubtless, there were once castles on these spots. From Bredon Hill you see into nine or ten counties; and those curious bubblings-up, the Malvern Hills, are right before you, and only at about ten miles’ distance, in a straight line. As this hill looks over the counties of Worcester, Gloucester, Hereford and part of Warwick, and the rich part of Stafford; and, as it looks over the vales of Esham, Worcester, and Gloucester, having the AVON and the SEVERN, winding down them, you certainly see from this Bredon Hill one of the very richest spots of England, and I am fully convinced, a richer spot than is to be seen in any other country in the world; I mean Scotland excepted, of course, for fear Sawney should cut my throat, or, which is much the same thing squeeze me by the hand, from which last I pray thee to deliver me, O Lord!
The AVON (this is the third AVON that I have crossed in this Ride) falls into the SEVERN just below TEWKSBURY, through which town we went in our way to Mr HANFORD’S. These rivers, particularly the Severn, go through, and sometimes overflow, the finest meadows of which it is possible to form an idea. Some of them contain more than a hundred acres each; and the number of cattle and sheep, feeding in them, is prodigious. Nine-tenths of the land, in these extensive vales, appears to me to be pasture, and it is pasture of the richest kind. The sheep are chiefly of the Leicester breed, and the cattle of the Hereford, white face and dark red body, certainly the finest and most beautiful of all horn-cattle. The grass, after the fine rains that we have had, is in its finest possible dress; but, here, as in the parts of Gloucestershire and Herefordshire that I have seen, there are no turnips, except those which have been recently sow
n; and, though amidst all these thousands upon thousands of acres of the finest meadows and grass land in the world, hay is, I hear, seven pounds a ton at Worcester. However, unless we should have very early and even hard frosts, the grass will be so abundant, that the cattle and sheep will do better than people are apt to think. But, be this as it may, this summer has taught us, that our climate is the best for produce, after all; and that we cannot have Italian sun and English meat and cheese. We complain of the drip; but, it is the drip that makes the beef and the mutton.
Mr HANFORD’S house is on the side of Bredon Hill; about a third part up it, and is a very delightful place. The house is of ancient date, and it appears to have been always inhabited by and the property of Roman Catholics; for there is, in one corner of the very top of the building; up in the very roof of it, a Catholic chapel, as ancient as the roof itself. It is about twenty-five feet long and ten wide. It has arch-work, to imitate the roof of a church. At the back of the altar there is a little room, which you enter through a door going out of the chapel; and, adjoining this little room, there is a closet, in which is a trap-door made to let the priest down into one of those hiding places, which were contrived for the purpose of evading the grasp of those greedy Scotch minions, to whom that pious and tolerant Protestant, JAMES I, delivered over those English gentlemen, who remained faithful to the religion of their fathers, and, to set his country free from which greedy and cruel grasp, that honest Englishman, GUY FAWKES, wished, as he bravely told the King and his Scotch council, ‘to blow the Scotch beggars back to their mountains again’. Even this King has, in his works (for JAMES was an author), had the justice to call him ‘the English SCÆVOLA’;8 and we Englishmen, fools set on by knaves, have the folly, or the baseness, to burn him in effigy on the 5th November, the anniversary of his intended exploit! In the hall of this house there is the portrait of SIR THOMAS WINTER, who was one of the accomplices of FAWKES, and who was killed in the fight with the sheriff and his party. There is also the portrait of his lady, who must have spent half her life-time in the working of some very curious sacerdotal vestments, which are preserved here with great care, and are as fresh and as beautiful as they were the day they were finished.
A parson said to me, once, by letter, ‘your religion, Mr Cobbett, seems to me to be altogether political’. ‘Very much so indeed,’ answered I, ‘and well it may, since I have been furnished with a creed which makes part of an Act of Parliament. ‘And, the fact is, I am no Doctor of Divinity, and like a religion, any religion, that tends to make men innocent and benevolent and happy, by taking the best possible means of furnishing them with plenty to eat and drink and wear. I am a Protestant of the Church of England, and, as such, blush to see, that more than half the parsonage-houses are wholly gone, or are become mere hovels. What I have written on the ‘PROTESTANT REFORMATION’, has proceeded entirely from a sense of justice towards our calumniated Catholic forefathers, to whom we owe all those of our institutions that are worthy of our admiration and gratitude. I have not written as a Catholic, but as an Englishman; yet, a sincere Catholic must feel some little gratitude towards me; and, if there was an ungrateful reptile in the neighbourhood of Preston, to give, as a toast, success to Stanley and Wood’,9 the conduct of those Catholics that I have seen here has, as far as I am concerned, amply compensated for his baseness.
This neighbourhood has witnessed some pretty thumping transfers from the Normans. HOLLAND, one of Baring’s partners, or clerks, has recently bought an estate of LORD SOMERS, called DUMBLETON, for, it is said, about eighty thousand pounds. Another estate of the same Lord, called STRENSHAM, has been bought by a Brummigeham Banker of the name of TAYLOR, for, it is said, seventy thousand pounds. ‘EASTNOR CASTLE’, just over the Malvern Hills, is still building, and LORD EASTNOR lives at that pretty little warm and snug place, the Priory of REIGATE, in Surrey, and close by the not less snug little borough of the same name! MEMORANDUM. When we were petitioning for reform, in 1817, my LORD SOMERS wrote and published a pamphlet, under his own name, condemning our conduct and our principles, and insisting that we, if let alone, should produce ’a revolution’, and endanger all property! The BARINGS are adding field to field and tract to tract in Herefordshire; and, as to the RICARDOS, they seem to be animated with the same laudable spirit. This OSMOND RICARDO has a park at one of his estates, called BROOMSBOROUGH, and that park has a new porter’s lodge, upon which there is A SPAN NEW CROSS as large as life! Aye, big enough and long enough to crucify a man upon! I had never seen such an one before; and I know not what sort of thought it was that seized me at the moment; but, though my horse is but a clumsy goer, I verily believe I got away from it at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour. My companion, who is always upon the look-out for cross-ditches, or pieces of timber, on the road-side, to fill up the time of which my jog-trot gives him so wearisome a surplus, seemed delighted at this my new pace; and, I dare say he has wondered ever since what should have given me wings just for that once and that once only.
Worcester, Tuesday, 26th Sept.
Mr PRICE rode with us to this city, which is one of the cleanest, neatest, and handsomest towns I ever saw: indeed I do not recollect to have seen any one equal to it. The cathedral is indeed, a poor thing, compared with any of the others, except that of Hereford; and I have seen them all but those of Carlisle, Durham, York, Lincoln, Chester, and Peterborough; but the town is, I think, the very best I ever saw; and which is, indeed, the greatest of all recommendations, the people are, upon the whole, the most suitably dressed and most decent looking people. The town is precisely in character with the beautiful and rich country, in the midst of which it lies. Every thing you see gives you the idea of real, solid wealth; aye! and thus it was, too, before, long before, Pitt, and even long before ‘good Queen Bess’ and her military law and her Protestant racks, were ever heard or dreamed of.
At Worcester, as every where else, I find a group of cordial and sensible friends, at the house of one of whom, Mr GEORGE BROOKE, I have just spent a most pleasant evening, in company with several gentlemen, whom he had had the goodness to invite to meet me. I here learned a fact, which I must put upon record before it escape my memory. Some few years ago (about seven, perhaps), at the public sale by auction of the goods of a then recently deceased attorney of the name of HYDE, in this city, there were, amongst the goods to be sold, the portraits of Pitt, Burden, and Paine, all framed and glazed. PITT, with hard driving and very lofty praises, fetched fifteen shillings; BURDETT fetched twenty-seven shillings. PAINE was, in great haste, knocked down at five pounds; and my informant was convinced, that the lucky purchaser might have had fifteen pounds for it. I hear COLONEL DAVIES spoken of here with great approbation: he will soon have an opportunity of showing us whether he deserve it.
The hop-picking and bagging is over here. The crop, as in the other hop-countries, has been very great, and the quality as good as ever was known. The average price appears to be about 75s. the hundred weight. The reader (if he do not belong to a hop-country) should be told, that hop-planters, and even all their neighbours, are, as hop-ward, mad, though the most sane and reasonable people as to all other matters. They are ten times more jealous upon this score than men ever are of their wives; aye, and than they are of their mistresses, which is going a great deal farther. I, who am a Farnham man, was well aware of this foible; and therefore, when a gentleman told me, that he would not brew with Farnham hops, if he could have them as a gift, I took special care not to ask him, how it came to pass, that the Farnham hops always sold at about double the price of the Worcester; but, if he had said the same thing to any other Farnham man that I ever saw, I should have preferred being absent from the spot: the hops are bitter, but nothing is their bitterness compared to the language that my townsman would have put forth.
This city, or this neighbourhood, at least, being the birth-place of what I have called, the ‘LITTLE-SHILLING PROJECT’,10 and MESSRS ATWOOD and SPOONER being the originators of the project, and the project having b
een adopted by Mr WESTERN, and having been by him now again recently urged upon the Ministers, in a Letter to Lord Liverpool, and it being possible that some worthy persons may be misled, and even ruined, by the confident assertions and the pertinacity of the projectors; this being the case, and I having half an hour to spare, will here endeavour to show, in as few words as I can, that this project, if put into execution, would produce injustice the most crying that the world ever heard of, and would, in the present state of things, infallibly lead to a violent revolution. The project is to ‘lower the standard’, as they call it; that is to say, to make a sovereign pass for more than 20s. In what degree they would reduce the standard, they do not say; but, a vile pamphlet writer, whose name is CRUTWELL, and who is a beneficed parson, and who has most foully abused me, because I laugh at the project, says that he would reduce it one half; that is to say, that he would make a sovereign pass for two pounds. Well, then, let us, for plainness’ sake, suppose that the present sovereign is, all at once, to pass for two pounds. What will the consequences be? Why, here is a parson, who receives his tithes in kind, and whose tithes are, we will suppose, a thousand bushels of wheat in a year, on an average; and he owes a thousand pounds to somebody. He will pay his debt with 500 sovereigns, and he will still receive his thousand bushels of wheat a year! I let a farm for 100l. a year, by the year; and I have a mortgage of 2,000l. upon it, the interest just taking away the rent. Pass the project, and then I, of course, raise my rent to 200l. a year, and I still pay the mortgagee 100l, a year! What can be plainer than this? But, the Banker’s is the fine case. I deposit with a banker a thousand whole sovereigns to-day. Pass the project to-morrow; and the banker pays me my deposit with a thousand half sovereigns! If, indeed, you could double the quantity of corn and meat and all goods by the same act of parliament; then, all would be right; but, that quantity will remain what it was before you passed the project; and, of course, the money being doubled in nominal amount, the price of the goods would be doubled. There needs not another word upon the subject; and whatever may be the national inference respecting the intellects of Messrs ATWOOD and SPOONER I must say, that I do most sincerely believe, that there is not one of my readers, who will not feel astonishment, that any men, having the reputation of men of sound mind, should not clearly see, that such a project must almost instantly produce a revolution of the most dreadful character.