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  Winchester, Saturday, 28th September

  Just after day-light we started for this place. By the turnpike we could have come through Basingstoke by turning off to the right, or through Alton and Alresford by turning off to the left. Being naturally disposed towards a middle course, we chose to wind down through Upton-Gray, Preston-Candover, Chilton-Candover, Brown-Candover, then down to Ovington, and into Winchester by the north entrance. From Wrecklesham to Winchester we have come over roads and lanes of flint and chalk. The weather being dry again, the ground under you, as solid as iron, makes a great rattling with the horses’ feet. The country where the soil is stiff loam upon chalk, is never bad for corn. Not rich, but never poor. There is at no time any thing deserving to be called dirt in the roads. The buildings last a long time, from the absence of fogs and also the absence of humidity in the ground. The absence of dirt makes the people habitually cleanly; and all along through this country the people appear in general to be very neat. It is a country for sheep, which are always sound and good upon this iron soil. The trees grow well, where there are trees. The woods and coppices are not numerous; but they are good, particularly the ash, which always grows well upon the chalk. The oaks, though they do not grow in the spiral form, as upon the clays, are by no means stunted; and some of them very fine trees; I take it, that they require a much greater number of years to bring them to perfection than in the Wealds. The wood, perhaps, may be harder; but I have heard, that the oak, which grows upon these hard bottoms, is very frequently what the carpenters call shaky. The underwoods here consist, almost entirely, of hazle, which is very fine, and much tougher and more durable than that which grows on soils with a moist bottom. This hazle is a thing of great utility here. It furnishes rods wherewith to make fences; but its principal use is, to make wattles for the folding of sheep in the fields. These things are made much more neatly here than in the south of Hampshire and in Sussex, or in any other part that I have seen. Chalk is the favourite soil of the yew-tree; and at Preston-Candover there is an avenue of yew-trees, probably a mile long, each tree containing, as nearly as I can guess, from twelve to twenty feet of timber, which, as the reader knows, implies a tree of considerable size. They have probably been a century or two in growing; but, in any way that timber can be used, the timber of the yew will last, perhaps, ten times as long as the timber of any other tree that we grow in England.

  Quitting the Candovers, we came along between the two estates of the two Barings. Sir Thomas, who has supplanted the Duke of Bedford, was to our right, while Alexander, who has supplanted Lord Northington, was on our left. The latter has enclosed, as a sort of outwork to his park, a pretty little down called Northington Down, in which he has planted, here and there, a clump of trees. But Mr Baring, not reflecting that woods are not like funds, to be made at a heat, has planted his trees too large; so that they are covered with moss, are dying at the top, and are literally growing downward instead of upward. In short, this enclosure and plantation have totally destroyed the beauty of this part of the estate. The down, which was before very beautiful, and formed a sort of glacis up to the park pales, is now a marred, ragged, ugly looking thing. The dying trees, which have been planted long enough for you not to perceive that they have been planted, excite the idea of sterility in the soil. They do injustice to it; for, as a down, it was excellent. Every thing that has been done here is to the injury of the estate, and discovers a most shocking want of taste in the projector. Sir Thomas’s plantations, or, rather, those of his father, have been managed more judiciously.

  I do not like to be a sort of spy in a man’s neighbourhood; but I will tell Sir Thomas Baring what I have heard; and if he be a man of sense I shall have his thanks, rather than his reproaches, for so doing. I may have been misinformed; but this is what I have heard, that he, and also Lady Baring are very charitable; that they are very kind and compassionate to their poor neighbours; but that they tack a sort of condition to this charity; that they insist upon the objects of it adopting their notions with regard to religion; or, at least, that, where the people are not what they deem pious, they are not objects of their benevolence. I do not say, that they are not perfectly sincere themselves, and that their wishes are not the best that can possibly be; but of this I am very certain, that, by pursuing this principle of action, where they make one good man or woman, they will make one hundred hypocrites. It is not little books that can make a people good; that can make them moral; that can restrain them from committing crimes. I believe that books, of any sort, never yet had that tendency. Sir Thomas does, I dare say, think me a very wicked man, since I aim at the destruction of the funding-system, and what he would call a robbery of what he calls the public creditor; and yet, God help me, I have read books enough, and amongst the rest, a great part of the religious tracts. Amongst the labouring people, the first thing you have to look after is, common honesty, speaking the truth and refraining from thieving; and to secure these, the labourer must have his belly full and be free from fear; and this belly full must come to him from out of his wages, and not from benevolence of any description. Such being my opinion, I think Sir Thomas Baring would do better, that he would discover more real benevolence, by using the influence which he must naturally have in his neighbourhood, to prevent a diminution in the wages of labour.

  Winchester, Sunday morning, 29 Sept.

  Yesterday was market-day here. Every thing cheap and falling instead of rising. If it were over-production last year that produced the distress, when are our miseries to have an end! They will end when these men cease to have sway; and not before.

  I had not been in Winchester long before I heard something very interesting about the manifesto, concerning the poor, which was lately issued here, and upon which I remarked in my last Register but one, in my Letter to Sir Thomas Baring. Proceeding upon the true military principle, I looked out for free-quarter, which the reader will naturally think difficult for me to find in a town containing a Cathedral. Having done this, I went to the Swan Inn to dine with the Farmers. This is the manner that I like best of doing the thing. Six-Acts do not, to be sure, prevent us from dining together. They do not authorize Justices of the Peace to kill us, because we meet to dine without their permission. But, I do not like Dinner-Meetings on my account. I like much better to go and fall in with the lads of the land, or with any body else, at their own places of resort; and I am going to place myself down at Uphusband, in excellent free-quarter, in the midst of all the great fairs of the West, in order, before the winter campaign begins, that I may see as many farmers as possible, and that they may hear my opinions and I theirs. I shall be at Weyhill Fair on the 10th of October, and, perhaps, on some of the succeeding days; and, on one or more of those days, I intend to dine at the White Hart at Andover. What other fairs or places I shall go to I shall notify hereafter. And this I think the frankest and fairest way. I wish to see many people, and to talk to them; and there are a great many people who wish to see and to talk to me. What better reason can be given for a man’s going about the country and dining at Fairs and Markets?

  At the dinner at Winchester we had a good number of opulent yeomen, and many gentlemen joined us after the dinner. The state of the country was well talked over; and, during the session (much more sensible than some other sessions that I have had to remark on) I made the following

  RUSTIC HARANGUE

  Gentlemen, – Though many here are, I am sure, glad to see me, I am not vain enough to suppose that any thing other than that of wishing to hear my opinions on the prospects before us can have induced many to choose to be here to dine with me to-day. I shall, before I sit down, propose to you a toast, which you will drink, or not, as you choose; but, I shall state one particular wish in that shape, that it may be the more distinctly understood, and the better remembered.

  The wish to which I allude, relates to the tithes. Under that word I mean to speak of all that mass of wealth which is vulgarly called Church property; but which is, in fact, public property,
and may, of course, be disposed of as the Parliament shall please. There appears at this moment an uncommon degree of anxiety on the part of the parsons to see the farmers enabled to pay rents. The business of the parsons being only with tithes, one naturally, at first sight, wonders why they should care so much about rents. The fact is this; they see clearly enough, that the landlords will never long go without rents, and suffer them to enjoy the tithes. They see, too, that there must be a struggle between the land and the funds: they see that there is such a struggle. They see, that it is the taxes that are taking away the rent of the landlord and the capital of the farmer. Yet the parsons are afraid to see the taxes reduced. Why? Because, if the taxes be reduced in any great degree (and nothing short of a great degree will give relief), they see that the interest of the Debt cannot be paid; and they know well, that the interest of the Debt can never be reduced, until their tithes have been reduced. Thus, then, they find themselves in a great difficulty. They wish the taxes to be kept up and rents to be paid too. Both cannot be, unless some means or other be found out of putting into, or keeping in, the fanner’s pocket, money that is not now there.

  The scheme that appears to have been fallen upon for this purpose is the strangest in the world, and it must, if attempted to be put into execution, produce something little short of open and general commotion; namely, that of reducing the wages of labour to a mark so low as to make the labourer a walking skeleton. Before I proceed further, it is right that I communicate to you an explanation, which, not an hour ago, I received from Mr POULTER, relative to the manifesto, lately issued in this town by a Bench of Magistrates of which that gentleman was Chairman. I have not the honour to be personally acquainted with Mr POULTER; but, certainly, if I had misunderstood the manifesto, it was right that I should be, if possible, made to understand it. Mr POULTER, in company with another gentleman, came to me in this Inn, and said, that the bench did not mean that their resolutions should have the effect of lowering the wages; and that the sums, stated in the paper, were sums to be given in the way of relief. We had not the paper before us, and, as the paper contained a good deal about relief, I, in recollection, confounded the two, and said, that I had understood the paper agreeably to the explanation. But, upon looking at the paper again, I see, that, as to the words, there was a clear recommendation to make the wages what is there stated. However, seeing that the Chairman himself disavows this, we must conclude that the bench put forth words not expressing their meaning. To this I must add, as connected with the manifesto, that it is stated in that document, that such and such justices were present, and a large and respectable number of yeomen who had been invited to attend. Now, Gentlemen, I was, I must confess, struck with this addition to the bench. These gentlemen have not been accustomed to treat fanners with so much attention. It seemed odd, that they should want a set of farmers to be present, to give a sort of sanction to their acts. Since my arrival in Winchester, I have found, however, that having them present was not all; for, that the names of some of these yeomen were actually inserted in the manuscript of the manifesto, and that those names were expunged at the request of the parties named. This is a very singular proceeding, then, altogether. It presents to us a strong picture of the diffidence, or modesty (call it which you please) of the justices; and it shows us, that the yeomen present did not like to have their names standing as giving sanction to the resolutions contained in the manifesto. Indeed, they knew well, that those resolutions never could be acted upon. They knew that they could not live in safety even in the same village with labourers, paid at the rate of 3, 4, and 5 shillings a-week.

  To return, now, Gentlemen, to the scheme for squeezing rents out of the bones of the labourer, is it not, upon the face of it, most monstrously absurd, that this scheme should be resorted to, when the plain and easy and just way of insuring rents must present itself to every eye, and can be pursued by the Parliament whenever it choose? We hear loud outcries against the poor-rates; the enormous poor-rates; the all-devouring poor-rates; but, what are the facts? Why, that, in Great Britain, six millions are paid in poor-rates, seven millions(or thereabouts) in tithes, and sixty millions to the fund-people, the army, placemen, and the rest. And yet, nothing of all this seems to be thought of but the six millions. Surely the other and so much larger sums ought to be thought of. Even the six millions are, for the greater part, wages and not poor-rates. And yet all this outcry is made about these six millions, while not a word is said about the other sixty-seven millions.

  Gentlemen, to enumerate all the ways, in which the public money is spent, would take me a week. I will mention two classes of persons who are receivers of taxes; and you will then see with what reason it is, that this outcry is set up against the poor-rates and against the amount of wages. There is a thing called the Dead Weight. Incredible as it may seem, that such a vulgar appellation should be used in such a way and by such persons, it is a fact, that the Ministers have laid before the Parliament an account, called the account of the Dead Weight. This account tells how five millions three hundred thousand pounds are distributed annually amongst half-pay officers, pensioners, retired commissaries, clerks, and so forth, employed during the last war. If there were nothing more entailed upon us by that war, this is pretty smart-money. Now, unjust, unnecessary as that war was, detestable as it was in all its principles and objects, still, to every man, who really did fight, or who performed a soldier’s duty abroad, I would give something: he should not be left destitute. But, Gentlemen, is it right for the nation to keep on paying for life crowds of young fellows such as make up the greater part of this dead weight? This is not all, however, for, there are the widows and the children, who have, and are to have, pensions too. You seem surprised, and well you may; but this is the fact. A young fellow who has a pension for life, aye, or an old fellow either, will easily get a wife to enjoy it with him, and he will, I’ll warrant him, take care that she shall not be old. So that here is absolutely a premium for entering into the holy state of matrimony. The husband, you will perceive, cannot prevent the wife from having the pension after his death. She is our widow, in this respect, not his. She marries, in fact, with a jointure settled on her. The more children the husband leaves the better for the widow; for each child has a pension for a certain number of years. The man, who, under such circumstances, does not marry, must be a woman-hater. An old man actually going into the grave, may, by the mere ceremony of marriage, give any woman a pension for life. Even the widows and children of insane officers are not excluded. If an officer, now insane, but at large, were to marry, there is nothing, as the dung now stands, to prevent his widow and children from having pensions. Were such things as these ever before heard of in the world? Were such premiums ever before given for breeding gentlemen and ladies, and that, too, while all sorts of projects are on foot to check the breeding of the labouring classes? Can such a thing go on? I say it cannot; and, if it could, it must inevitably render this country the most contemptible upon the face of the earth. And yet, not a word of complaint is heard about these five millions and a quarter, expended in this way, while the country rings, fairly resounds, with the outcry about the six millions that are given to the labourers in the shape of poor-rates, but which, in fact, go, for the greater part, to pay what ought to be called wages. Unless, then, we speak out here; unless we call for redress here; unless we here seek relief, we shall not only be totally ruined, but we shall deserve it.

  The other class of persons, to whom I have alluded, as having taxes bestowed on them, are the poor clergy. Not of the church as by law established, to be sure, you will say! Yes, Gentlemen, even to the poor clergy of the established Church. We know well how rich that Church is; we know well how many millions it annually receives; we know how opulent are the bishops, how rich they the; how rich, in short, a body it is. And yet fifteen hundred thousand pounds have, within the same number of years, been given, out of the taxes, partly raised on the labourers, for the relief of the poor clergy of that Church, while it is not
orious that the livings are given in numerous cases by twos and threes to the same person, and while a clamour, enough to make the sky ring, is made about what is given in the shape of relief to the labouring classes! Why, Gentlemen, what do we want more than this one fact? Does not this one fact sufficiently characterize the system under which we live? Does not this prove that a change, a great change, is wanted? Would it not be more natural to propose to get this money back from the Church, than to squeeze so much out of the bones of the labourers? This the Parliament can do if it pleases; and this it will do, if you do your duty.

  Passing over several other topics, let me, Gentlemen, now come to what, at the present moment, most nearly affects you; namely, the prospect as to prices. In the first place, this depends upon whether Peel’s Bill will be repealed.8 As this depends a good deal upon the Ministers, and as I am convinced, that they know no more what to do in the present emergency than the little boys and girls that are running up and down the street before this house, it is impossible for me, or for any one, to say what will be done in this respect. But, my opinion is decided, that the Bill will not be repealed. The Ministers see, that, if they were now to go back to the paper, it would not be the paper of 1819; but a paper never to be redeemed by gold; that it would be assignats to all intents and purposes. That must of necessity cause the complete overthrow of the Government in a very short time. If, therefore, the ministers see the thing in this light, it is impossible, that they should think of a repeal of Peel’s Bill. There appeared, last winter, a strong disposition to repeal the Bill; and I verily believe, that a repeal in effect, though not in name, was actually in contemplation. A Bill was brought in, which was described beforehand as intended to prolong the issue of small notes, and also to prolong the time for making Bank of England notes a legal tender. This would have been a repealing of Peel’s Bill in great part. The Bill, when brought in, and when passed, as it finally was, contained no clause relative to legal tender; and without that clause it was perfectly nugatory. Let me explain to you, Gentlemen, what this Bill really is. In the seventeenth year of the late King’s reign, an Act was passed for a time limited, to prevent the issue of notes payable to bearer on demand, for any sums less than five pounds. In the twenty-seventh year of the late King’s reign, this Act was made perpetual; and the preamble of the Act sets forth, that it is made perpetual, because, the preventing of small notes being made has been proved to be for the good of the nation. Nevertheless, in just ten years afterwards; that is to say, in the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven, when the Bank stopped payment, this salutary Act was suspended; indeed, it was absolutely necessary, for there was no gold to pay with. It continued suspended, until 1819, when Mr Peel’s Bill was passed, when a Bill was passed to suspend it still further, until the year 1825. You will observe, then, that, last winter there were yet three years to come, during which the banks might make small notes if they would. Yet this new Bill was passed last winter to authorize them to make small notes until the year 1833. The measure was wholly uncalled for. It appeared to be altogether unnecessary; but, as I have just said, the intention was to introduce into this Bill a clause to continue the legal under until 1833; and that would, indeed, have made a great alteration in the state of things; and, if extended to the Bank of England, would have been, in effect, a complete repeal of Peel’s Bill.