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  In coming along yesterday, from Waltham Chase to Soberton Down, we passed by a big white house upon a hill that was, when I lived at Botley, occupied by one GOODLAD, who was a cock justice of the piece, and who had been a chap of some sort or other, in India. There was a man of the name of Singleton, who lived in Waltham Chase, and who was deemed to be a great poacher. This man, having been forcibly ousted by the order of this Goodlad and some others from an encroachment that he had made in the forest, threatened revenge. Soon after this, a horse (I forget to whom it belonged) was stabbed or shot in the night-time in a field. Singleton was taken up, tried at Winchester, convicted, and transported. I cannot relate exactly what took place. I remember that there were some curious circumstances attending the conviction of this man. The people in that neighbourhood were deeply impressed with these circumstances. Singleton was transported; but Goodlad and his wife were both dead and buried, in less, I believe, than three months after the departure of poor Singleton. I do not know that any injustice really was done; but I do know that a great impression was produced, and a very sorrowful impression, too, on the minds of the people in that neighbourhood. I cannot quit Waltham Chase without observing, that I heard, last year, that a Bill was about to be petitioned for, to enclose that Chase!4 Never was so monstrous a proposition in this world. The Bishop of Winchester is Lord of the Manor over this Chase. If the Chase be enclosed, the timber must be cut down, young and old; and here are a couple of hundred acres of land, worth ten thousand acres of land in the New Forest. This is as fine timber land as any in the wealds of Surrey, Sussex or Kent. There are two enclosures of about 40 acres each, perhaps, that were simply surrounded by a bank being thrown up about twenty years ago; only twenty years ago, and on the poorest part of the Chase, too; and these are now as beautiful plantations of young oak trees as man ever sat his eyes on; many of them as big or bigger round than my thigh! Therefore, besides the sweeping away of two or three hundred cottages; besides plunging into ruin and misery all these numerous families, here is one of the finest pieces of timber-land in the whole kingdom, going to be cut up into miserable clay fields, for no earthly purpose but that of gratifying the stupid greediness of those who think that they must gain, if they add to the breadth of their private fields. But, if a thing like this be permitted, we must be prettily furnished with Commissioners of wood and forests! I do not believe that they will sit in Parliament and see a Bill like this passed and hold their tongues; but, if they were to do it, there is no measure of reproach which they would not merit. Let them go and look at the two plantations of oaks, of which I have just spoken; and then let them give their consent to such a Bill if they can.

  Thursley, Monday Evening, 23rd October

  When I left Weston, my intention was, to go from Hambledon to Up Park, thence to Arundel, thence to Brighton, thence to East-bourne, thence to Wittersham in Kent, and then by Cranbrook, Tunbridge, Godstone and Reigate to London; but, when I got to Botley, and particularly when I got to Hambledon, I found my horse’s back so much hurt by the saddle, that I was afraid to take so long a stretch, and therefore resolved to come away straight to this place, to go hence to Reigate, and so to London. Our way, therefore, this morning, was over Butser-hill to Petersfield, in the first place; then to Lyphook and then to this place, in all about twenty-four miles. Butser-hill belongs to the back chain of the South-downs; and, indeed, it terminates that chain to the westward. It is the highest hill in the whole country. Some think that Hindhead, which is the famous sand-hill over which the Portsmouth road goes at sixteen miles to the north of this great chalk-hill; some think that Hindhead is the highest hill of the two. Be this as it may, Butser-hill, which is the right-hand hill of the two between which you go at three miles from Petersfield going towards Portsmouth; this Butser-hill, is, I say, quite high enough; and was more than high enough for us, for it took us up amongst clouds that wet us very nearly to the skin. In going from Mr Goldsmith’s to the hill, it is all up hill for five miles. Now and then a little stoop; not much; but regularly with these little exceptions, up hill for these five miles. The hill appears, at a distance, to be a sharp ridge on its top. It is, however, not so. It is, in some parts, half a mile wide or more. The road lies right along the middle of it from west to east, and, just when you are at the highest part of the hill, it is very narrow from north to south; not more, I think, than about a hundred or a hundred and thirty yards. This is as interesting a spot, I think, as the foot of man ever was placed upon. Here are two valleys, one to your right and the other to your left, very little less than half a mile down to the bottom of them, and much steeper than a tiled roof of a house. These valleys may be, where they join the hill, three or four hundred yards broad. They get wider as they get farther from the hill. On a clear day you see, all the north of Hampshire; nay, the whole county, together with a great part of Surrey and of Sussex. You see the whole of the South-Downs to the eastward as far as your eye can carry you; and, lastly, you see over Portsdown Hill, which lies before you to the south; and there are spread open to your view the isle of Portsea, Porchester, Wimmering, Fareham, Gosport, Portsmouth, the harbour, Spithead, the Isle of Wight and the ocean. But, something still more interesting occurred to me here in the year 1808, when I was coming on horseback over the same hill from Botley to London. It was a very beautiful day and in summer. Before I got upon the hill (on which I had never been before), a shepherd told me to keep on in the road in which I was, till I came to the London turnpike road. When I got to within a quarter of a mile of this particular point of the hill, I saw, at this point, what I thought was a cloud of dust; and, speaking to my servant about it, I found that he thought so too; but this cloud of dust disappeared all at once. Soon after, there appeared to arise another cloud of dust at the same place, and then that disappeared, and the spot was clear again. As we were trotting along, a pretty smart pace, we soon came to this narrow place, having one valley to our right and the other valley to our left, and diere, to my great astonishment, I saw the clouds come one after another, each appearing to be about as big as two or three acres of land, skimming along in the valley on the north side, a great deal below the tops of the hills; and successively, as they arrived at our end of the valley, rising up, crossing the narrow pass, and then descending down into the other valley and going off to the south; so that we who sate there upon our horses, were alternately in clouds and in sunshine. It is an universal rule, that if there be a fog in the morning, and that fog go from the valleys to the tops of the hills, there will be rain that day; and if it disappear by sinking in the valley, there will be no rain that day. The truth is, that fogs are clouds, and clouds are fogs. They are more or less full of water; but, they are all water; sometimes a sort of steam, and sometimes water that falls in drops. Yesterday morning the fogs had ascended to the tops of the hills; and it was raining on all the hills round about us before it began to rain in the valleys. We, as I observed before, got pretty nearly wet to the skin upon the top of Butser-hill; but, we had the pluck to come on and let the clothes dry upon our backs. I must here relate something that appears very interesting to me, and something which, though it must have been seen by every man that has lived in the country, or, at least, in any hilly country, has never been particularly mentioned by any body as far as I can recollect. We frequently talk of clouds coming from dews; and we actually see the heavy fogs become clouds. We see them go up to the tops of hills, and, taking a swim round, actually come and drop down upon us and wet us through; but, I am now going to speak of clouds coming out of the sides of hills in exacdy the same manner that you see smoke come out of a tobacco-pipe, and, rising up, with a wider and wider head, like the smoke from a tobacco-pipe, go to the top of the hill, or over the hill, or very much above it, and then come over the valleys in rain. At about a mile’s distance from Mr Palmer’s house at Bollitree, in Herefordshire, there is a large, long beautiful wood, covering the side of a lofty hill, winding round in the form of a crescent, the bend of the crescent being towards
Mr Palmer’s house. It was here that I first observed this mode of forming clouds. The first time I noticed it, I pointed it out to Mr Palmer. We stood and observed cloud after cloud come out from different parts of the side of the hill, and tower up and go over the hill out of sight. He told me that that was a certain sign that it would rain that day, for that these clouds would come back again and would fall in rain. It rained sure enough; and I found that the country people, all round about, had this mode of the forming of the clouds as a sign of rain. The hill is called Penyard, and this forming of the clouds they call Old Penyard’s smoking his pipe; and it is a rule that it is sure to rain during the day if Old Penyard smokes his pipe in the morning. These appearances take place, especially in warm and sultry weather. It was very warm yesterday morning: it had thundered violently the evening before: we felt it hot even while the rain fell upon us at Butser-hill. Petersfield lies in a pretty broad and very beautiful valley. On three sides of it are very lofty hills, partly downs and partly covered with trees; and, as we proceeded on our way from the bottom of Butser-hill to Petersfield, we saw thousands upon thousands of clouds, continually coming puffing out from different parts of these hills and towering up to the top of them. I stopped George several times to make him look at them; to see them come puffing out of the chalk downs as well as out of the woodland hills; and bade him remember to tell his father of it when he should get home, to convince him that the hills of Hampshire could smoke their pipes as well as those of Herefordshire. This is a really curious matter. I have never read, in any book, any thing to lead me to suppose that the observation has ever found its way into print before. Sometimes you will see only one or two clouds during a whole morning, come out of the side of a hill; but we saw thousands upon thousands, bursting out, one after another, in all parts of these immense hills. The first time that I have leisure, when I am in the high countries again, I will have a conversation with some old shepherd about this matter: if he cannot enlighten me upon the subject, I am sure that no philosopher can.

  We came through Petersfield without stopping, and baited our horses at Lyphook, where we stayed about half an hour. In coming from Lyphook to this place, we overtook a man who asked for relief. He told me he was a weaver, and, as his accent was northern, I was about to give him the balance that I had in hand arising from our savings in the fasting way, amounting to about three shillings and sixpence; but, unfortunately for him, I asked him what place he had lived at as a weaver; and he told me that he was a Spitalfields weaver. I instantly put on my glove and returned my purse into my pocket, saying, ‘Go, then, to Sidmouth and Peel and the rest of them and get relief; for I have this minute, while I was stopping at Lyphook, read in the Evening Mail newspaper, an address to the king from the Spitalfields weavers, for which address they ought to suffer death from starvation. In that address those base wretches tell the King, that they were loyal men: that they detested the designing men who were guilty of seditious practices in 1817; they, in short, express their approbation of the Power-of-imprisonment Bill, of all the deeds committed against the Reformers in 1817 and 1819; they by fair inference, express their approbation of the thanks given to the Manchester yeomanry. You are one of them; my name is William Cobbett, and I would sooner relieve a dog than relieve you.’ Just as I was closing my harangue, we overtook a country-man and woman that were going the same way. The weaver attempted explanations. He said that they only said it in order to get relief; but that they did not mean it in their hearts. ‘Oh, base dogs!’ said I: ‘it is precisely by such men that ruin is brought upon nations; it is precisely by such baseness and insincerity, such scandalous cowardice, that ruin has been brought upon them. I had two or three shillings to give you; I had them in my hand: I have put them back into my purse: I trust I shall find somebody more worthy of them: rather than give them to you, I would fling them into that sand-pit and bury them for ever.’ How curiously things happen! It was by mere accident that I took up a newspaper to read: it was merely because I was compelled to stay a quarter of an hour in the room without doing any thing, and above all things it was miraculous that I should take up the Evening Mail, into which, I believe I never before looked, in my whole life. I saw the royal arms at the top of the paper; took it for the Old Times, and, in a sort of lounging mood, said to George, ‘Give me hold of that paper, and let us see what that foolish devil Anna Brodie says.’ Seeing the words ‘Spitalfields’, I read on till I got to the base and scoundrelly part of the address. I then turned over, and looked at the title of the paper and the date of it, resolving, in my mind, to have satisfaction, of some sort or other, upon these base vagabonds. Little did I think that an opportunity would so soon occur of showing my resentment against them, and that, too, in so striking, so appropriate, and so efficient a manner. I dare say, that it was some tax-eating scoundrel who drew up this address (which I will insert in the Register, as soon as I can find it); but, that is nothing to me and my fellow sufferers of 1817 and 1819. This infamous libel upon us is published under the name of the Spitalfields weavers; and, if I am asked what the poor creatures were to do, being without bread as they were, I answer by asking whether they could find no knives to cut their throats with; seeing that they ought to have cut their throats ten thousand times over, if they could have done it, rather than sanction the publication of so infamous a paper as this. It is not thus that the weavers in the north have acted. Some scoundrel wanted to inveigle them into an applauding of the Ministers; but they, though nothing so infamous as this address was proposed to them, rejected the proposition, though they were ten times more in want than the weavers of Spitalfields have ever been. They were only called upon to applaud the Ministers for the recent Orders in Council; but they justly said that the Ministers had a great deal more to do, before they would merit their applause. What would these brave and sensible men have said to a tax-eating scoundrel, who should have called upon them to present an address to the King, and in that address to applaud the terrible deeds committed against the people in 1817 and 1819! I have great happiness in reflecting that this baseness of the Spitalfields weavers will not bring them one single mouthful of bread. This will be their lot; this will be the fruit of their baseness; and the nation, the working classes of the nation, will learn, from this, that the way to get redress of their grievances, the way to get food and raiment in exchange for their labour, the way to ensure good treatment from the Government, is not to crawl to that Government to lick its hands, and seem to deem it an honour to be its slaves.5