For, in fact, it is not the _farmer_, but the _Landlord_ and _Parson_,
who wants relief from the "_Collective_." The tenant's remedy is,
quitting his farm or bringing down his rent to what he can afford to
give, wheat being 3 or 4 shillings a bushel. This is his remedy. What
should _he_ want high prices for? They can do _him_ no good; and this I
proved to the farmers last year. The fact is, the Landlords and Parsons
are urging the farmers on to get _something done_ to give them high
rents and high tithes.
At _Hertford_ there has been a meeting at which _some_ sense was
discovered, at any rate. The parties talked about the _fund-holder_, the
_Debt_, the _taxes_, and so on, and seemed to be in a very warm temper.
Pray, keep yourselves _cool_, gentlemen; for you have a great deal to
endure yet. I deeply regret that I have not room to insert the
resolutions of this meeting.
There is to be a meeting at _Battle_ (East Sussex) on the 3rd instant,
at which _I mean to be_. I want to _see_ my friends on the _South
Downs_. To see how they _look_ now.
[At a public dinner given to Mr. Cobbett at Norwich, on the market-day
above mentioned, the company drank the toast of _Mr. Cobbett and his
"Trash,"_ the name "two-penny trash," having being at one time applied
by Lord Castlereagh to the _Register_. In acknowledging this toast Mr.
Cobbett addressed the company in a speech, of which the following is a
passage:]
"My thanks to you for having drunk my health, are great and sincere; but
much greater pleasure do I feel at the approbation bestowed on that
_Trash_, which has, for so many years been a mark for the finger of
scorn to be pointed at by ignorant selfishness and arrogant and insolent
power. To enumerate, barely to name, all, or a hundredth part of, the
endeavours that have been made to stifle this _Trash_ would require a
much longer space of time than that which we have now before us. But,
gentlemen, those endeavours must have _cost money_; money must have been
expended in the circulation of Anti-Cobbett, and the endless bale of
papers and pamphlets put forth to check the progress of the _Trash_:
and, when we take into view the immense sums expended in keeping down
the spirit excited by the _Trash_, who of us is to tell, whether these
endeavours, taken altogether, may not have added _many millions_ to that
debt, of which (without any hint at a _concomitant measure_) some men
have now the audacity, the unprincipled, the profligate assurance to
talk of reducing the interest. The Trash, Gentlemen, is now triumphant;
its triumph we are now met to celebrate; proofs of its triumph I myself
witnessed not many hours ago, in that scene where the best possible
evidence was to be found. In walking through St. Andrew's Hall, my mind
was not so much engaged on the grandeur of the place, or on the
gratifying reception I met with; those hearty shakes by the hand which I
so much like, those smiles of approbation, which not to see with pride
would argue an insensibility to honest fame: even these, I do sincerely
assure you, engaged my mind much less than the melancholy reflection,
that, of the two thousand or fifteen hundred farmers then in my view,
there were probably _three-fourths_ who came to the Hall with aching
hearts, and who would leave it in a state of mental agony. What a thing
to contemplate, Gentlemen! What a scene is here! A set of men, occupiers
of the land; producers of all that we eat, drink, wear, and of all that
forms the buildings that shelter us; a set of men industrious and
careful by habit; cool, thoughtful, and sensible from the instructions
of nature; a set of men provident above all others, and engaged in
pursuits in their nature stable as the very earth they till: to see a
set of men like this plunged into anxiety, embarrassment, jeopardy, not
to be described; and when the particular individuals before me were
famed for their superior skill in this great and solid pursuit, and were
blessed with soil and other circumstances to make them prosperous and
happy: to behold this sight would have been more than sufficient to sink
my heart within me, had I not been upheld by the reflection, that I had
done all in my power to prevent these calamities, and that I still had
in reserve that which, with the assistance of the sufferers themselves,
would restore them and the nation to happiness."