Being upon the subject of matter connected with the conduct of these

Parson-Justices, I will here mention what is now going on in Hampshire

respecting the accounts of the _Treasurer of the County_. At the last

Quarter Sessions, or at a Meeting of the Magistrates previous to the

opening of the Sessions, there was a discussion relative to this matter.

The substance of which appears to have been this; that the Treasurer,

Mr. George Hollis, whose accounts had been audited, approved of, and

passed every year by the Magistrates, is in arrear to the county to the

amount of about four thousand pounds. Sir Thomas Baring appears to have

been the great stickler against Mr. Hollis, who was but feebly defended

by his friends. The Treasurer of a county is compelled to find

securities. These securities have become _exempted_, in consequence of

the annual passing of the accounts by the Magistrates! Nothing can be

more just than this exemption. I am security, suppose, for a Treasurer.

The Magistrates do not pass his accounts on account of a deficiency. I

make good the deficiency. But the Magistrates are not to go on year

after year passing his accounts, and then, at the end of several years,

come and call upon me to make good the deficiencies. Thus say the

securities of Mr. Hollis. The Magistrates, in fact, are to blame. One of

the Magistrates, a Reverend Mr. Orde, said that the Magistrates were

more to blame than the Treasurer; and really I think so too; for, though

Mr. Hollis has been a tool for many many years, of Old George Rose and

the rest of that crew, it seems impossible to believe that he could have

intended anything dishonest, seeing that the detection arose out of an

account published by himself in the newspaper, which account he need not

have published until three months later than the time when he did

publish it. This is, as he himself states, the best possible proof that

he was unconscious of any error or any deficiency. The fact appears to

be this; that Mr. Hollis, who has for many years been Under Sheriff as

well as Treasurer of the County, who holds several other offices, and

who has, besides, had large pecuniary transactions with his bankers, has

for years had his accounts so blended that he has not known how this

money belonging to the county stood. His own statement shows that it was

all a mass of confusion. The errors, he says, have arisen entirely from

the negligence of his clerks, and from causes which produced a confusion

in his accounts. This is the fact; but he has been in good fat offices

too long not to have made a great many persons think that his offices

would be better in _their_ hands; and they appear resolved to oust him.

I, for my part, am glad of it; for I remember his coming up to me in the

Grand Jury Chamber, just after the people at St. Stephen's had passed

Power-of-Imprisonment Bill in 1817; I remember his coming up to me as

the Under Sheriff of Willis, the man that we now call Flemming, who has

_begun_ to build a house at North Stoneham; I remember his coming up to

me, and with all the base sauciness of a thorough-paced Pittite,

_telling me to disperse or he would take me into custody_! I remember

this of Mr. Hollis, and I am therefore glad that calamity has befallen

him; but I must say that after reading his own account of the matter;

after reading the debate of the Magistrates; and after hearing the

observations and opinions of well-informed and impartial persons in

Hampshire who dislike Mr. Hollis as much as I do; I must say that I

think him perfectly clear of all intention to commit anything like

fraud, or to make anything worthy of the name of false account; and I am

convinced that this affair, which will now prove extremely calamitous to

him, might have been laughed at by him at the time when wheat was

fifteen shillings a bushel. This change in the affairs of the

Government; this penury now experienced by the Pittites at Whitehall,

reaches, in its influence, to every part of the country. The Barings are

now the great men in Hampshire. They were not such in the days of George

Rose while George was able to make the people believe that it was

necessary to give their money freely to preserve the "blessed comforts

of religion." George Rose would have thrown his shield over Mr. Hollis;

his broad and brazen shield. In Hampshire the _Bishop_, too, is changed.

The present is doubtless as pious as the last, every bit; and has the

same Bishop-like views; but it is not the same family; it is not the

Garniers and Poulters and Norths and De Grays and Haygarths; it is not

precisely the same set who have the power in their hands. Things,

therefore, take another turn. The Pittite jolter-heads are all

broken-backed; and the Barings come forward with their well-known weight

of metal. It was exceedingly unfortunate for Mr. Hollis that Sir Thomas

Baring happened to be against him. However, the thing will do good

altogether. The county is placed in a pretty situation: its Treasurer

has had his accounts regularly passed by the Magistrates; and these

Magistrates come at last and discover that they have for a long time

been passing accounts that they ought not to pass. These Magistrates

have exempted the securities of Mr. Hollis, but not a word do they say

about making good the deficiencies. What redress, then, have the people

of the county? They have no redress, unless they can obtain it by

petitioning the Parliament; and if they do not petition, if they do not

state their case, and that boldly too, they deserve everything that can

befall them from similar causes. I am astonished at the boldness of the

Magistrates. I am astonished that they should think of calling Mr.

Hollis to account without being prepared for rendering an account of

their own conduct. However, we shall see what they will do in the end.

And when we have seen that, we shall see whether the county will rest

quietly under the loss which it is likely to sustain.

I must now go back to Itchen Abas, where, in the farm-yard of a farmer,

Courtenay, I saw another wheat-rick. From Itchen Abas I came up the

valley to Itchen Stoke. Soon after that I crossed the Itchen river, came

out into the Alresford turnpike road, and came on towards Alresford,

having the valley now upon my left. If the hay be down all the way to

Southampton in the same manner that it is along here, there are

thousands of acres of hay rotting on the sides of this Itchen river.

Most of the meadows are watered artificially. The crops of grass are

heavy, and they appear to have been cut precisely in the right time to

be spoiled. Coming on towards Alresford, I saw a gentleman (about a

quarter of a mile beyond Alresford) coming out of his gate with his hat

off, looking towards the south-west, as if to see what sort of weather

it was likely to be. This was no other than Mr. Rolleston or Rawlinson,

who, it appears, has a box and some land here. This gentleman was, when

I lived in Hampshire, one of those worthy men, who, in the several

counties of England, executed "without any sort of remuneration" such a

large portion of that justice which is the envy of surrounding nations

and admiration of the world. We are often told, especially in

Parliament, of the _disinterestedness_ of these persons; of their

worthiness, their piety, their loyalty, their excellent qualities of all

sorts, but particularly of their _disinterestedness_, in taking upon

them the office of Justice of the Peace; spending so much time, taking

so much trouble, and all for nothing at all, but for the pure love of

their King and country. And the worst of it is, that our Ministers

_impose_ upon this disinterestedness and generosity; and, as in the case

of Mr. Rawlinson, at the end of, perhaps, a dozen years of _services_

voluntarily rendered to "King and country," they force him, sorely

against his will, no doubt, to become a Police Magistrate in London! To

be sure there are five or six hundred pounds a-year of public money

attached to this; but what are these paltry pounds to a "country

gentleman," who so disinterestedly rendered us services for so many

years? Hampshire is fertile in persons of this disinterested stamp.

There is a _'Squire_ Greme, who lives across the country, not many miles

from the spot where I saw "Mr. Justice" Rawlinson. This 'Squire also has

served the country for nothing during a great many years; and of late

years, the 'Squire Junior, eager, apparently to emulate his sire, has

become a distributor of stamps for this famous county of Hants! What

_sons_ 'Squire Rawlinson may have is more than I know at present, though

I will endeavour to know it, and to find out whether they also be

_serving_ us. A great deal has been said about the debt of gratitude due

from the people to the Justices of the Peace. An account, containing the

names and places of abode of the Justices, and of the public money, or

titles, received by them and by their relations; such an account would

be a very useful thing. We should then know the real amount of this debt

of gratitude. We shall see such an account by-and-by; and we should have

seen it long ago if there had been, in a certain place, only one single

man disposed to do his duty.

I came through Alresford about eight o'clock, having loitered a good

deal in coming up the valley. After quitting Alresford you come (on the

road towards Alton) to the village of Bishop's Sutton; and then to a

place called Ropley Dean, where there is a house or two. Just before you

come to Ropley Dean, you see the beginning of the Valley of Itchen. The

_Itchen_ river falls into the salt water at Southampton. It rises, or

rather has its first rise, just by the road side at Ropley Dean, which

is at the foot of that very high land which lies between Alresford and

Alton. All along by the Itchen river, up to its very source, there are

meadows; and this vale of meadows, which is about twenty-five miles in

length, and is in some places a mile wide, is, at the point of which I

am now speaking, only about twice as wide as my horse is long! This vale

of Itchen is worthy of particular attention. There are few spots in

England more fertile or more pleasant; and none, I believe, more

healthy. Following the bed of the river, or, rather, the middle of the

vale, it is about five-and-twenty miles in length, from Ropley Dean to

the village of South Stoneham, which is just above Southampton. The

average width of the meadows is, I should think, a hundred rods at the

least; and if I am right in this conjecture, the vale contains about

five thousand acres of meadows, large part of which is regularly

watered. The sides of the vale are, until you come down to within about

six or eight miles of Southampton, hills or rising grounds of chalk,

covered more or less thickly with loam. Where the hills rise up very

steeply from the valley the fertility of the corn-lands is not so great;

but for a considerable part of the way the corn-lands are excellent, and

the farmhouses, to which those lands belong, are, for the far greater

part, under covert of the hills on the edge of the valley. Soon after

the rising of the stream, it forms itself into some capital ponds at

Alresford. These, doubtless, were augmented by art, in order to supply

Winchester with fish. The fertility of this vale, and of the surrounding

country, is best proved by the fact that, besides the town of Alresford

and that of Southampton, there are seventeen villages, each having its

parish church, upon its borders. When we consider these things we are

not surprised that a spot situated about half way down this vale should

have been chosen for the building of a city, or that that city should

have been for a great number of years a place of residence for the Kings

of England.

Winchester, which is at present a mere nothing to what it once was,

stands across the vale at a place where the vale is made very narrow by

the jutting forward of two immense hills. From the point where the river

passes through the city, you go, whether eastward or westward, a full

mile up a very steep hill all the way. The city is, of course, in one of

the deepest holes that can be imagined. It never could have been thought

of as a place to be defended since the discovery of gunpowder; and,

indeed, one would think that very considerable annoyance might be given

to the inhabitants even by the flinging of the flint-stones from the

hills down into the city.

At Ropley Dean, before I mounted the hill to come on towards Rotherham

Park, I baited my horse. Here the ground is precisely like that at

Ashmansworth on the borders of Berkshire, which, indeed, I could see

from the ground of which I am now speaking. In coming up the hill, I had

the house and farm of Mr. Duthy to my right. Seeing some very fine

Swedish turnips, I naturally expected that they belonged to this

gentleman, who is Secretary to the Agricultural Society of Hampshire;

but I found that they belonged to a farmer Mayhew. The soil is, along

upon this high land, a deep loam, bordering on a clay, red in colour,

and pretty full of large, rough, yellow-looking stones, very much like

some of the land in Huntingdonshire; but here is a bed of chalk under

this. Everything is backward here. The wheat is perfectly green in most

places; but it is everywhere pretty good. I have observed, all the way

along, that the wheat is good upon the stiff, strong land. It is so

here; but it is very backward. The greater part of it is full three

weeks behind the wheat under Portsdown Hill. But few farmhouses come

within my sight along here; but in one of them there was a wheat-rick,

which is the third I have seen since I quitted the Wen. In descending

from this high ground, in order to reach the village of East Tisted,

which lies on the turnpike road from the Wen to Gosport through Alton, I

had to cross Rotherham Park. On the right of the park, on a bank of land

facing the north-east, I saw a very pretty farmhouse, having everything

in excellent order, with fine corn-fields about it, and with a

wheat-rick standing in the yard. This farm, as I afterwards found,

belongs to the owner of Rotherham Park, who is also the owner of East

Tisted, who has recently built a new house in the park, who has quite

metamorphosed the village of Tisted within these eight years, who has,

indeed, really and truly improved the whole country just round about

here, whose name is Scot, well known as a brickmaker at North End,

Fulham, and who has, in Hampshire, supplanted a Norman of the name of

Powlet. The process by which this transfer has taken place is visible

enough, to all eyes but the eyes of the jolterheads. Had there been no

Debt created to crush liberty in France and to keep down reformers in

England, Mr. Scot would not have had bricks to burn to build houses for

the Jews and jobbers and other eaters of taxes; and the Norman Powlet

would not have had to pay in taxes, through his own hands and those of

his tenants and labourers, the amount of the estate at Tisted, first to

be given to the Jews, jobbers, and tax-eaters, and then by them to be

given to "'Squire Scot" for his bricks. However, it is not 'Squire Scot

who has assisted to pass laws to make people pay double toll on a

Sunday. 'Squire Scot had nothing to do with passing the New Game-laws

and Old Ellenborough's Act; 'Squire Scot never invented the New Trespass

law, in virtue of which John Cockbain of Whitehaven in the county of

Cumberland was, by two clergymen and three other magistrates of that

county, sentenced to pay one half-penny for damages and seven shillings

costs, for going upon a field, the property of William, Earl of

Lonsdale. In the passing of this Act, which was one of the first passed

in the present reign, 'Squire Scot, the brickmaker, had nothing to do.

Go on, good 'Squire, thrust out some more of the Normans: with the

fruits of the augmentations which you make to the Wen, go, and take from

them their mansions, parks, and villages!

At Tisted I crossed the turnpike road before mentioned, and entered a

lane which, at the end of about four miles, brought me to this village

of Selborne. My readers will recollect that I mentioned this Selborne

when I was giving an account of Hawkley Hanger, last fall. I was

desirous of seeing this village, about which I have read in the book of

Mr. White, and which a reader has been so good as to send me. From

Tisted I came generally up hill till I got within half a mile of this

village, when, all of a sudden, I came to the edge of a hill, looked

down over all the larger vale of which the little vale of this village

makes a part. Here Hindhead and Black-down Hill came full in my view.

When I was crossing the forest in Sussex, going from Worth to Horsham,

these two great hills lay to my west and north-west. To-day I am got

just on the opposite side of them, and see them, of course, towards the

east and the south-east, while Leith Hill lies away towards the

north-east. This hill, from which you descend down into Selborne, is

very lofty; but, indeed, we are here amongst some of the highest hills

in the island, and amongst the sources of rivers. The hill over which I

have come this morning sends the Itchen river forth from one side of it,

and the river Wey, which rises near Alton, from the opposite side of it.

Hindhead which lies before me, sends, as I observed upon a former

occasion, the Arun forth towards the south and a stream forth towards

the north, which meets the river Wey, somewhere above Godalming. I am

told that the springs of these two streams rise in the Hill of Hindhead,

or, rather, on one side of the hill, at not many yards from each other.

The village of Selborne is precisely what it is described by Mr. White.

A straggling irregular street, bearing all the marks of great antiquity,

and showing, from its lanes and its vicinage generally, that it was once

a very considerable place. I went to look at the spot where Mr. White

supposes the convent formerly stood. It is very beautiful. Nothing can

surpass in beauty these dells and hillocks and hangers, which last are

so steep that it is impossible to ascend them, except by means of a

serpentine path. I found here deep hollow ways, with beds and sides of

solid white stone; but not quite so white and so solid, I think, as the

stone which I found in the roads at Hawkley. The churchyard of Selborne

is most beautifully situated. The land is good, all about it. The trees

are luxuriant and prone to be lofty and large. I measured the yew-tree

in the churchyard, and found the trunk to be, according to my

measurement, twenty-three feet, eight inches, in circumference. The

trunk is very short, as is generally the case with yew-trees; but the

head spreads to a very great extent, and the whole tree, though probably

several centuries old, appears to be in perfect health. Here are several

hop-plantations in and about this village; but for this once the prayers

of the over-production men will be granted, and the devil of any hops

there will be. The bines are scarcely got up the poles; the bines and

the leaves are black, nearly, as soot; full as black as a sooty bag or

dingy coal-sack, and covered with lice. It is a pity that these

hop-planters could not have a parcel of Spaniards and Portuguese to

louse their hops for them. Pretty devils to have liberty, when a

favourite recreation of the Donna is to crack the lice in the head of

the Don! I really shrug up my shoulders thinking of the beasts. Very

different from such is my landlady here at Selborne, who, while I am

writing my notes, is getting me a rasher of bacon, and has already

covered the table with a nice clean cloth. I have never seen such

quantities of grapes upon any vines as I see upon the vines in this

village, badly pruned as all the vines have been. To be sure, this is a

year for grapes, such, I believe, as has been seldom known in England,

and the cause is the perfect ripening of the wood by the last beautiful

summer. I am afraid, however, that the grapes come in vain; for this

summer has been so cold, and is now so wet, that we can hardly expect

grapes which are not under glass to ripen. As I was coming into this

village, I observed to a farmer who was standing at his gateway, that

people ought to be happy here, for that God had done everything for

them. His answer was, that he did not believe there was a more unhappy

place in England: for that there were always quarrels of some sort or

other going on. This made me call to mind the King's proclamation,

relative to a reward for discovering the person who had recently _shot

at the parson of this village_. This parson's name is Cobbold, and it

really appears that there was a shot fired through his window. He has

had law-suits with the people; and I imagine that it was these to which

the farmer alluded. The hops are of considerable importance to the

village, and their failure must necessarily be attended with

consequences very inconvenient to the whole of a population so small as

this. Upon inquiry, I find that the hops are equally bad at Alton,

Froyle, Crondall, and even at Farnham. I saw them bad in Sussex; I hear

that they are bad in Kent; so that hop-planters, at any rate, will be,

for once, free from the dreadful evils of abundance. A correspondent

asks me what is meant by the statements which he sees in the _Register_,

relative to the _hop-duty_? He sees it, he says, continually falling in

amount; and he wonders what this means. The thing has not, indeed, been

properly explained. It is a _gamble_; and it is hardly right for me to

state, in a publication like the _Register_, anything relative to a

gamble. However, the case is this: a taxing system is necessarily a

system of gambling; a system of betting; stock-jobbing is no more than a

system of betting, and the wretched dogs that carry on the traffic are

little more, except that they are more criminal, than the waiters at an

_E O Table_, or the markers at billiards. The hop duty is so much per

pound. The duty was imposed at two separate times. One part of it,

therefore, is called the Old Duty, and the other part the New Duty. The

old duty was a penny to the pound of hops. The amount of this duty,

which can always be ascertained at the Treasury as soon as the hopping

season is over, is the surest possible guide in ascertaining the total

amount of the growth of hops for the year. If, for instance, the duty

were to amount to no more than eight shillings and fourpence, you would

be certain that only a hundred pounds of hops had been grown during the

year. Hence a system of gambling precisely like the gambling in the

funds. I bet you that the duty will not exceed so much. The duty has

sometimes exceeded two hundred thousand pounds. This year it is supposed

that it will not exceed twenty, thirty, or forty thousand. The gambling

fellows are betting all this time; and it is, in fact, an account of the

betting which is inserted in the _Register_.

This vile paper-money and funding-system; this system of Dutch descent,

begotten by Bishop Burnet, and born in hell; this system has turned

everything into a gamble. There are hundreds of men who live by being

the agents to carry on gambling. They reside here in the Wen; many of

the gamblers live in the country; they write up to their gambling agent,

whom they call their stockbroker; he gambles according to their order;

and they receive the profit or stand to the loss. Is it possible to

conceive a viler calling than that of an agent for the carrying on of

gambling? And yet the vagabonds call themselves gentlemen; or, at least,

look upon themselves as the superiors of those who sweep the kennels. In

like manner is the hop-gamble carried on. The gambling agents in the Wen

make the bets for the gamblers in the country; and, perhaps, millions

are betted during the year, upon the amount of a duty, which, at the

most, scarcely exceeds a quarter of a million. In such a state of things

how are you to expect young men to enter on a course of patient

industry? How are you to expect that they will seek to acquire fortune

and fame by study or by application of any kind?

Looking back over the road that I have come to-day, and perceiving the

direction of the road going from this village in another direction, I

perceive that this is a very direct road from Winchester to Farnham. The

road, too, appears to have been, from ancient times, sufficiently wide;

and when the Bishop of Winchester selected this beautiful spot whereon

to erect a monastery, I dare say the roads along here were some of the

best in the country.

_Thursley (Surrey), Thursday, 7th August._

I got a boy at Selborne to show me along the lanes out into Woolmer

forest on my way to Headley. The lanes were very deep; the wet _malme_

just about the colour of rye-meal mixed up with water, and just about as

clammy, came in many places very nearly up to my horse's belly. There

was this comfort, however, that I was sure that there was a bottom,

which is by no means the case when you are among clays or quick-sands.

After going through these lanes, and along between some fir-plantations,

I came out upon Woolmer Forest, and, to my great satisfaction, soon

found myself on the side of those identical plantations which have been

made under the orders of the smooth Mr. Huskisson, and which I noticed

last year in my ride from Hambledon to this place. These plantations are

of fir, or, at least, I could see nothing else, and they never can be of

any more use to the nation than the sprigs of heath which cover the rest

of the forest. Is there nobody to inquire what becomes of the income of

the Crown lands? No, and there never will be, until the whole system be

changed. I have seldom ridden on pleasanter ground than that which I

found between Woolmer Forest and this beautiful village of Thursley. The

day has been fine, too; notwithstanding I saw the Judges' terrific wigs

as I came up upon the turnpike road from the village of Itchen. I had

but one little scud during the day: just enough for St. Swithin to swear

by; but when I was upon the hills I saw some showers going about the

country. From Selborne, I had first to come to Headley, about five

miles. I came to the identical public-house where I took my blind guide

last year, who took me such a dance to the southward, and led me up to

the top of Hindhead at last. I had no business there. My route was

through a sort of hamlet called Churt, which lies along on the side and

towards the foot of the north of Hindhead, on which side, also, lies the

village of Thursley. A line is hardly more straight than is the road

from Headley to Thursley; and a prettier ride I never had in the course

of my life. It was not the less interesting from the circumstance of its

giving me all the way a full view of Crooksbury Hill, the grand scene of

my exploits when I was a taker of the nests of crows and magpies.

At Churt I had, upon my left, three hills out upon the common, called

the _Devil's Jumps_. The Unitarians will not believe in the Trinity,

because they cannot account for it. Will they come here to Churt, go and

look at these "Devil's Jumps," and account to me for the placing of

these three hills, in the shape of three rather squat sugar-loaves,

along in a line upon this heath, or the placing of a rock-stone upon the

top of one of them as big as a church tower? For my part, I cannot

account for this placing of these hills. That they should have been

formed by mere chance is hardly to be believed. How could waters rolling

about have formed such hills? How could such hills have bubbled up from

beneath? But, in short, it is all wonderful alike: the stripes of loam

running down through the chalk-hills; the circular parcels of loam in

the midst of chalk-hills; the lines of flint running parallel with each

other horizontally along the chalk-hills; the flints placed in circles

as true as a hair in the chalk-hills; the layers of stone at the bottom

of hills of loam; the chalk first soft, then some miles further on,

becoming chalk-stone; then, after another distance, becoming burr-stone,

as they call it; and at last becoming hard, white stone, fit for any

buildings; the sand-stone at Hindhead becoming harder and harder till it

becomes very nearly iron in Herefordshire, and quite iron in Wales; but,

indeed, they once dug iron out of this very Hindhead. The clouds, coming

and settling upon the hills, sinking down and creeping along, at last

coming out again in springs, and those becoming rivers. Why, it is all

equally wonderful, and as to not believing in this or that, because the

thing cannot be proved by logical deduction, why is any man to believe

in the existence of a God any more than he is to believe in the doctrine

of the Trinity? For my part, I think the "Devil's jumps," as the people

here call them, full as wonderful and no more wonderful than hundreds

and hundreds of other wonderful things. It is a strange taste which our

ancestors had, to ascribe no inconsiderable part of these wonders of

nature to the Devil. Not far from the Devil's jumps is that singular

place which resembles a sugar-loaf inverted, hollowed out, and an

outside rim only left. This is called the "_Devil's Punch Bowl_;" and it

is very well known in Wiltshire, that the forming, or, perhaps, it is

the breaking up, of Stonehenge is ascribed to the Devil, and that the

mark of one of his feet is now said to be seen in one of the stones.

I got to Thursley about sunset, and without experiencing any

inconvenience from the wet. I have mentioned the state of the corn as

far as Selborne. On this side of that village I find it much forwarder

than I found it between Selborne and Ropley Dean. I am here got into

some of the very best barley-land in the kingdom; a fine, buttery,

stoneless loam, upon a bottom of sand or sand-stone. Finer barley and

turnip-land it is impossible to see. All the corn is good here. The

wheat not a heavy crop; but not a light one; and the barley all the way

along from Headley to this place as fine, if not finer, than I ever saw

it in my life. Indeed I have not seen a bad field of barley since I left

the Wen. The corn is not so forward here as under Portsdown Hill; but

some farmers intend to begin reaping wheat in a few days. It is

monstrous to suppose that the price of corn will not come down. It must

come down, good weather or bad weather. If the weather be bad, it will

be so much the worse for the farmer, as well as for the nation at large,

and can be of no benefit to any human being but the Quakers, who must

now be pretty busy, measuring the crops all over the kingdom. It will be

recollected that in the Report of the Agricultural Committee of 1821, it

appeared, from the evidence of one Hodgson, a partner of Cropper,

Benson, and Co. Quakers, of Liverpool, that these Quakers sent a set of

corn-gaugers into the several counties, just before every harvest; that

these fellows stopped here and there, went into the fields, measured off

square yards of wheat, clipped off the ears, and carried them off. These

they afterwards packed up and sent off to Cropper and Co. at Liverpool.

When the whole of the packets were got together, they were rubbed out,

measured, weighed, and an estimate made of the amount of the coming

crop. This, according to the confession of Hodgson himself, enabled

these Quakers to speculate in corn, with the greater chance of gain.

This has been done by these men for many years. Their disregard of

worldly things; their desire to lay up treasures in heaven; their

implicit yielding to the Spirit; these have induced them to send their

corn-gaugers over the country regularly year after year; and I will

engage that they are at it at this moment. The farmers will bear in mind

that the New Trespass-law, though clearly not intended for any such

purpose, enables them to go and seize by the throat any of these gaugers

that they may catch in their fields. They could not do this formerly; to

cut off standing corn was merely a trespass, for which satisfaction was

to be attained by action at law. But now you can seize the caitiff who

is come as a spy amongst your corn. Before, he could be off and leave

you to find out his name as you could; but now you can lay hold of him,

as Mr. Deller did of the Duke's man, and bring him before a Magistrate

at once. I do hope that the farmers will look sharp out for these

fellows, who are neither more nor less than so many spies. They hold a

great deal of corn; they want blight, mildew, rain, hurricanes; but

happy I am to see that they will get no blight, at any rate. The grain

is formed; everywhere everybody tells me that there is no blight in any

sort of corn, except in the beans.

I have not gone through much of a bean country. The beans that I have

seen are some of them pretty good, more of them but middling, and still

more of them very indifferent.

I am very happy to hear that that beautiful little bird, the American

partridge, has been introduced with success to this neighbourhood, by

Mr. Leech at Lea. I am told that they have been heard whistling this

summer; that they have been frequently seen, and that there is no doubt

that they have broods of young ones. I tried several times to import

some of these birds; but I always lost them, by some means or other,

before the time arrived for turning them out. They are a beautiful

little partridge, and extremely interesting in all their manner. Some

persons call them _quail_. If any one will take a quail and compare it

with one of these birds, he will see that they cannot be of the same

sort. In my "Year's Residence in America," I have, I think, clearly

proved that these birds are partridges, and not quails. In the United

States, north of New Jersey, they are called quail: south and south-west

of New Jersey they are called partridges. They have been called quail

solely on account of their size; for they have none of the manners of

quail belonging to them. Quails assemble in flocks like larks,

starlings, or rooks. Partridges keep in distinct coveys; that is to say,

the brood lives distinct from all other broods until the ensuing spring,

when it forms itself into pairs and separates. Nothing can be a

distinction more clear than this. Our own partridges stick to the same

spot from the time that they are hatched to the time that they pair off,

and these American partridges do the same. Quails, like larks, get

together in flocks at the approach of winter, and move about according

to the season, to a greater or less distance from the place where they

were bred. These, therefore, which have been brought to Thursley, are

partridges; and if they be suffered to live quietly for a season or two,

they will stock the whole of that part of the country, where the

delightful intermixture of corn-fields, coppices, heaths, furze-fields,

ponds, and rivulets is singularly favourable to their increase.

The turnips cannot fail to be good in such a season and in such land;

yet the farmers are most dreadfully tormented with the weeds, and with

the superabundant turnips. Here, my Lord Liverpool, is over production

indeed! They have sown their fields broad-cast; they have no means of

destroying the weeds by the plough; they have no intervals to bury them

in; and they _hoe_, or _scratch_, as Mr. Tull calls it; and then comes

St. Swithin and sets the weeds and the hoed-up turnips again. Then there

is another hoeing or scratching; and then comes St. Swithin again: so

that there is hoe, hoe, muddle, muddle, and such a fretting and stewing;

such a looking up to Hindhead to see when it is going to be fine; when,

if that beautiful field of twenty acres, which I have now before my

eyes, and wherein I see half a dozen men hoeing and poking and muddling,

looking up to see how long it is before they must take to their heels to

get under the trees to obtain shelter from the coming shower; when, I

say, if that beautiful field had been sowed upon ridges at four feet

apart, according to the plan in my _Year's Residence_, not a weed would

have been to be seen in the field, the turnip-plants would have been

three times the size that they now are, the expense would have not been

a fourth part of that which has already taken place, and all the

muddling and poking about of weeds, and all the fretting and all the

stewing would have been spared; and as to the amount of the crop, I am

now looking at the best land in England for Swedish turnips, and I have

no scruple to assert that if it had been sown after my manner, it would

have had a crop double the weight of that which it now will have. I

think I know of a field of turnips, sown much later than the field now

before me, and sown in rows at nearly four feet apart, which have a crop

double the weight of that which will be produced in yon beautiful field.

_Reigate (Surrey), Friday, 8th August._

At the end of a long, twisting-about ride, but a most delightful ride, I

got to this place about nine o'clock in the evening. From Thursley I

came to Brook, and there crossed the turnpike-road from London to

Chichester through Godalming and Midhurst. Thence I came on, turning

upon the left upon the sand-hills of Hambledon (in Surrey, mind). On one

of these hills is one of those precious jobs, called "_Semaphores_." For

what reason this pretty name is given to a sort of Telegraph house,

stuck up at public expense upon a high hill; for what reason this

outlandish name is given to the thing, I must leave the reader to guess;

but as to the thing itself; I know that it means this: a pretence for

giving a good sum of the public money away every year to some one that

the Borough-system has condemned this labouring and toiling nation to

provide for. The Dead Weight of nearly about six millions sterling a

year; that is to say, this curse entailed upon the country on account of

the late wars against the liberties of the French people, this Dead

Weight is, however, falling, in part, at least, upon the landed

jolterheads who were so eager to create it, and who thought that no part

of it would fall upon themselves. Theirs has been a grand mistake. They

saw the war carried on without any loss or any cost to themselves. By

the means of paper-money and loans, the labouring classes were made to

pay the whole of the expenses of the war. When the war was over, the

jolterheads thought they would get gold back again to make all secure;

and some of them really said, I am told, that it was high time to put an

end to the gains of the paper-money people. The jolterheads quite

overlooked the circumstance that, in returning to gold, they doubled and

trebled what they had to pay on account of the debt, and that, at last,

they were bringing the burden upon themselves. Grand, also, was the

mistake of the jolterheads when they approved of the squanderings upon

the Dead Weight. They thought that the labouring classes were going to

pay the whole of the expenses of the Knights of Waterloo, and of the

other heroes of the war. The jolterheads thought that they should have

none of this to pay. Some of them had relations belonging to the Dead

Weight, and all of them were willing to make the labouring classes toil

like asses for the support of those who had what was called "fought and

bled" for Gatton and Old Sarum. The jolterheads have now found, however,

that a pretty good share of the expense is to fall upon themselves.

Their mortagees are letting them know that _Semaphores_ and such pretty

things cost something, and that it is unreasonable for a loyal country

gentleman, a friend of "social order" and of the "blessed comforts of

religion" to expect to have Semaphores and to keep his estate too.

This Dead Weight is, unquestionably, a thing, such as the world never

saw before. Here are not only a tribe of pensioned naval and military

officers, commissaries, quartermasters, pursers, and God knows what

besides; not only these, but their wives and children are to be

pensioned, after the death of the heroes themselves. Nor does it

signify, it seems, whether the hero were married before he became part

of the Dead Weight or since. Upon the death of the man, the pension is

to begin with the wife, and a pension for each child; so that, if there

be a large family of children, the family, in many cases, actually gains

by the death of the father! Was such a thing as this ever before heard

of in the world? Any man that is going to die has nothing to do but to

marry a girl to give her a pension for life to be paid out of the sweat

of the people; and it was distinctly stated, during the Session of

Parliament before the last, that the widows and children of insane

officers were to have the same treatment as the rest! Here is the envy

of surrounding nations and the admiration of the world! In addition,

then, to twenty thousand parsons, more than twenty thousand

stock-brokers and stock-jobbers perhaps; forty or fifty thousand

tax-gatherers; thousands upon thousands of military and naval officers

in full pay; in addition to all these, here are the thousands upon

thousands of pairs of this Dead Weight, all busily engaged in breeding

gentlemen and ladies; and all while Malthus is wanting to put a check

upon the breeding of the labouring classes; all receiving a _premium for

breeding_! Where is Malthus? Where is this check-population parson?

Where are his friends, the Edinburgh Reviewers? Faith, I believe they

have given him up. They begin to be ashamed of giving countenance to a

man who wants to check the breeding of those who labour, while he says

not a word about those two hundred thousand breeding pairs, whose

offspring are necessarily to be maintained at the public charge. Well

may these fatteners upon the labour of others rail against the Radicals!

Let them once take the fan to their hand, and they will, I warrant it,

thoroughly purge the floor. However, it is a consolation to know, that

the jolterheads who have been the promoters of the measures that have

led to these heavy charges; it is a consolation to know that the

jolterheads have now to bear part of the charges, and that they cannot

any longer make them fall exclusively upon the shoulders of the

labouring classes. The disgust that one feels at seeing the whiskers,

and hearing the copper heels rattle, is in some measure compensated for

by the reflection, that the expense of them is now beginning to fall

upon the malignant and tyrannical jolterheads who are the principal

cause of their being created.

Bidding the _Semaphore_ good-bye, I came along by the church at

Hambledon, and then crossed a little common and the turnpike-road from

London to Chichester through Godalming and Petworth; not Midhurst, as

before. The turnpike-road here is one of the best that I ever saw. It is

like the road upon Horley Common, near Worth, and like that between

Godstone and East Grinstead; and the cause of this is, that it is made

of precisely the same sort of stone, which, they tell me, is brought, in

some cases, even from Blackdown Hill, which cannot be less, I should

think, than twelve miles distant. This stone is brought, in great lumps,

and then cracked into little pieces. The next village I came to after

Hambledon was Hascomb, famous for its _beech_, insomuch that it is

called _Hascomb Beech_.

There are two lofty hills here, between which you go out of the sandy

country down into the Weald. Here are hills of all heights and forms.

Whether they came in consequence of a boiling of the earth, I know not;

but, in form, they very much resemble the bubbles upon the top of the

water of a pot which is violently boiling. The soil is a beautiful loam

upon a bed of sand. Springs start here and there at the feet of the

hills; and little rivulets pour away in all directions. The roads are

difficult merely on account of their extreme unevenness; the bottom is

everywhere sound, and everything that meets the eye is beautiful; trees,

coppices, corn-fields, meadows; and then the distant views in every

direction. From one spot I saw this morning Hindhead, Blackdown Hill,

Lord Egremont's house and park at Petworth, Donnington Hill, over which

I went to go on the South Downs, the South Downs near Lewes; the forest

at Worth, Turner's Hill, and then all the way round into Kent and back

to the Surrey Hills at Godstone. From Hascomb I began to descend into

the low country. I had Leith Hill before me; but my plan was, not to go

over it or any part of it, but to go along below it in the real Weald of

Surrey. A little way back from Hascomb, I had seen _a field of carrots_;

and now I was descending into a country where, strictly speaking, only

three things will grow well,--grass, wheat, and oak trees. At Goose

Green I crossed a turnpike-road leading from Guildford to Horsham and

Arundel. I next came, after crossing a canal, to a common called

Smithwood Common. Leith Hill was full in front of me, but I turned away

to the right, and went through the lanes to come to Ewhurst, leaving

Crawley to my right. Before I got to Ewhurst, I crossed another

turnpike-road, leading from Guildford to Horsham, and going on to

Worthing or some of those towns.

At Ewhurst, which is a very pretty village, and the Church of which is

most delightfully situated, I treated my horse to some oats, and myself

to a rasher of bacon. I had now to come, according to my project, round

among the lanes at about a couple of miles distance from the foot of

Leith Hill, in order to get first to Ockley, then to Holmwood, and then

to Reigate. From Ewhurst the first three miles was the deepest clay that

I ever saw, to the best of my recollection. I was warned of the

difficulty of getting along; but I was not to be frightened at the sound

of clay. Wagons, too, had been dragged along the lanes by some means or

another; and where a wagon-horse could go, my horse could go. It took

me, however, a good hour and a half to get along these three miles. Now,

mind, this is the real _weald_, where the clay is _bottomless_; where

there is no stone of any sort underneath, as at Worth and all along from

Crawley to Billingshurst through Horsham. This clayey land is fed with

water soaking from the sand-hills; and in this particular place from the

immense hill of Leith. All along here the oak-woods are beautiful. I saw

scores of acres by the road-side, where the young oaks stood as

regularly as if they had been planted. The orchards are not bad along

here, and, perhaps, they are a good deal indebted to the shelter they

receive. The wheat very good, all through the weald, but backward.

At Ockley I passed the house of a Mr. Steer, who has a great quantity of

hay-land, which is very pretty. Here I came along the turnpike-road that

leads from Dorking to Horsham. When I got within about two or three

miles of Dorking, I turned off to the right, came across the Holmwood

into the lanes leading down to Gadbrook Common, which has of late years

been enclosed. It is all clay here; but in the whole of my ride I have

not seen much finer fields of wheat than I saw here. Out of these lanes

I turned up to "Betchworth" (I believe it is), and from Betchworth came

along a chalk-hill to my left and the sand-hills to my right, till I got

to this place.

_Wen, Sunday, 10th August._

I stayed at Reigate yesterday, and came to the Wen to-day, every step of

the way in a rain; as good a soaking as any devotee of St. Swithin ever

underwent for his sake. I promised that I would give an account of the

effect which the soaking on the South Downs, on Saturday the 2nd

instant, had upon the hooping-cough. I do not recommend the remedy to

others; but this I will say, that I had a spell of the hooping-cough,

the day before I got that soaking, and that I have not had a single

spell since; though I have slept in several different beds, and got a

second soaking in going from Botley to Easton. The truth is, I believe,

that rain upon the South Downs, or at any place near the sea, is by no

means the same thing with rain in the interior. No man ever catches cold

from getting wet with sea-water; and, indeed, I have never known an

instance of a man catching cold at sea. The air upon the South Downs is

saltish, I dare say; and the clouds may bring something a little

partaking of the nature of sea-water.

At Thursley I left the turnip-hoers poking and pulling and muddling

about the weeds, and wholly incapable, after all, of putting the turnips

in anything like the state in which they ought to be. The weeds that had

been hoed up twice were growing again, and it was the same with the

turnips that had been hoed up. In leaving Reigate this morning, it was

with great pleasure that I saw a field of Swedish turnips, drilled upon

ridges at about four feet distance, the whole field as clean as the

cleanest of garden ground. The turnips standing at equal distances in

the row, and having the appearance of being, in every respect, in a

prosperous state. I should not be afraid to bet that these turnips, thus

standing in rows at nearly four feet distance, will be a crop twice as

large as any in the parish of Thursley, though there is, I imagine, some

of the finest turnip-land in the kingdom. It seems strange that men are

not to be convinced of the advantage of the row-culture for turnips.

They will insist upon believing that there is some _ground lost_. They

will also insist upon believing that the row-culture is the most

expensive. How can there be ground lost if the crop be larger? And as to

the expense, take one year with another, the broad-cast method must be

twice as expensive as the other. Wet as it has been to-day, I took time

to look well about me as I came along. The wheat, even in this

ragamuffin part of the country, is good, with the exception of one

piece, which lies on your left hand as you come down from Banstead Down.

It is very good at Banstead itself, though that is a country

sufficiently poor. Just on the other side of Sutton there is a little

good land, and in a place or two I thought I saw the wheat a little

blighted. A labouring man told me that it was where the heaps of dung

had been laid. The barley here is most beautiful, as, indeed, it is all

over the country.

Between Sutton and the Wen there is, in fact, little besides houses,

gardens, grass plats and other matters to accommodate the Jews and

jobbers, and the mistresses and bastards that are put out a-keeping.

But, in a dell, which the turnpike-road crosses about a mile on this

side of Sutton, there are two fields of as stiff land, I think, as I

ever saw in my life. In summer time this land bakes so hard that they

cannot plough it unless it be wet. When you have ploughed it, and the

sun comes again, it bakes again. One of these fields had been thus

ploughed and cross-ploughed in the month of June, and I saw the ground

when it was lying in lumps of the size of portmanteaus, and not very

small ones either. It would have been impossible to reduce this ground

to small particles, except by the means of sledge hammers. The two

fields, to which I alluded just now, are alongside of this ploughed

field, and they are now in wheat. The heavy rain of to-day, aided by the

south-west wind, made the wheat bend pretty nearly to lying down; but

you shall rarely see two finer fields of wheat. It is red wheat; a

coarsish kind, and the straw stout and strong; but the ears are long,

broad and full; and I did not perceive anything approaching towards a

speck in the straw. Such land as this, such very stiff land, seldom

carries a very large crop; but I should think that these fields would

exceed four quarters to an acre; and the wheat is by no means so

backward as it is in some places. There is no corn, that I recollect,

from the spot just spoken of, to almost the street of Kensington. I came

up by Earl's Court, where there is, amongst the market gardens, a field

of wheat. One would suppose that this must be the finest wheat in the

world. By no means. It rained hard, to be sure, and I had not much time

for being particular in my survey; but this field appears to me to have

some blight in it; and as to crop, whether of corn or of straw, it is

nothing to compare to the general run of the wheat in the wealds of

Sussex or of Surrey; what, then, is it, if compared with the wheat on

the South Downs, under Portsdown Hill, on the sea-flats at Havant and at

Tichfield, and along on the banks of the Itchen!

Thus I have concluded this "rural ride," from the Wen and back again to

the Wen, being, taking in all the turnings and windings, as near as can

be, two hundred miles in length. My objects were to ascertain the state

of the crops, both of hops and of corn. The hop-affair is soon settled,

for there will be no hops. As to the corn, my remark is this: that on

all the clays, on all the stiff lands upon the chalk; on all the rich

lands, indeed, but more especially on all the stiff lands, the wheat is

as good as I recollect ever to have seen it, and has as much straw. On

all the light lands and poor lands the wheat is thin, and, though not

short, by no means good. The oats are pretty good almost everywhere; and

I have not seen a bad field of barley during the whole of my ride;

though there is no species of soil in England, except that of the fens,

over which I have not passed. The state of the farmers is much worse

than it was last year, notwithstanding the ridiculous falsehoods of the

London newspapers, and the more ridiculous delusion of the jolterheads.

In numerous instances the farmers, who continue in their farms, have

ceased to farm for themselves, and merely hold the land for the

landlords. The delusion caused by the rise of the price of corn has

pretty nearly vanished already; and if St. Swithin would but get out of

the way with his drippings for about a month, this delusion would

disappear, never to return. In the meanwhile, however, the London

newspapers are doing what they can to keep up the delusion; and in a

paper called _Bell's Weekly Messenger_, edited, I am told, by a

place-hunting lawyer; in that stupid paper of this day I find the

following passage:--"So late as January last, the average price of wheat

was 39_s._ per quarter, and on the 29th ult. it was above 62_s._ As it

has been rising ever since, it may _now be quoted as little under 65s._

So that in this article alone there is a rise of more than _thirty-five_

per cent. Under these circumstances, it is not likely that we shall hear

anything of _agricultural distress_. A writer of considerable talents,

but no prophet, had _frightened_ the kingdom by a confident prediction

that wheat, after the 1st of May, would sink to 4_s._ per bushel, and

that under the effects of Mr. Peel's Bill, and the payments in cash by

the Bank of England, it would _never again exceed that price_! Nay, so

assured was Mr. Cobbett of the mathematical certainty of his deductions

on the subject, that he did not hesitate to make use of the following

language: 'And farther, if what I say do not come to pass, I will give

any one leave to broil me on a gridiron, and for that purpose I will get

one of the best gridirons I can possibly get made, and it shall be hung

out as near to my premises as possible, in the Strand, so that it shall

be seen by everybody as they pass along.' The 1st of May has now passed,

Mr. Peel's Bill has not been repealed, and the Bank of England has paid

its notes in cash, and yet wheat has risen nearly 40 per cent."

Here is a tissue of falsehoods! But only think of a country being

"_frightened_" by the prospect of a low price of provisions! When such

an idea can possibly find its way even into the shallow brain of a

cracked-skull lawyer; when such an idea can possibly be put into print

at any rate, there must be something totally wrong in the state of the

country. Here is this lawyer telling his readers that I had frightened

the kingdom by saying that wheat would be sold at four shillings a

bushel. Again I say that there must be something wrong, something

greatly out of place, some great disease at work in the community, or

such an idea as this could never have found its way _into print_. Into

the head of a cracked-skull lawyer it might, perhaps, have entered at

any time; but for it to find its way into print there must be something

in the state of society wholly out of joint. As to the rest of this

article, it is a tissue of downright lies. The writer says that the

price of wheat is sixty-five shillings a quarter. The fact is that, on

the second instant, the price was fifty-nine shillings and seven-pence:

and it is now about two shillings less than that. Then again, this

writer must know that I never said that wheat would not rise above four

shillings a bushel; but that, on the contrary, I always expressly said

that the price would be affected by the seasons, and that I thought that

the price would vibrate between three shillings a bushel and seven

shillings a bushel. Then again, Peel's Bill has, in part, been repealed;

if it had not, there could have been no small note in circulation at

this day. So that this lawyer is "_All Lie_." In obedience to the wishes

of a lady, I have been reading about the plans of Mr. Owen; and though I

do not as yet see my way clear as to how we can arrange matters with

regard to the young girls and the young fellows, I am quite clear that

his institution would be most excellent for the disposal of the lawyers.

One of his squares would be at a great distance from all other

habitations; in the midst of _Lord Erskine's estate_ for instance,

mentioned by me in a former ride; and nothing could be so fitting, his

Lordship long having been called _the father of the Bar_; in the midst

of this estate, with no town or village within miles of them, we might

have one of Mr. Owen's squares, and set the bob-tailed brotherhood most

effectually at work. Pray can any one pretend to say that a spade or

shovel would not become the hands of this blunder-headed editor of

_Bell's Messenger_ better than a pen? However, these miserable

falsehoods can cause the delusion to exist but for a very short space of

time.

The quantity of the harvest will be great. If the quality be bad, owing

to wet weather, the price will be still lower than it would have been in

case of dry weather. The price, therefore, must come down; and if the

newspapers were conducted by men who had any sense of honour or shame,

those men must be covered with confusion.

RIDE THROUGH THE NORTH-EAST PART OF SUSSEX, AND ALL ACROSS KENT, FROM

THE WEALD OF SUSSEX, TO DOVER.

_Worth (Sussex), Friday, 29 August 1823._

I have so often described the soil and other matters appertaining to the

country between the Wen and this place that my readers will rejoice at

being spared the repetition here. As to the harvest, however, I find

that they were deluged here on Tuesday last, though we got but little,

comparatively, at Kensington. Between Mitcham and Sutton they were

making wheat-ricks. The corn has not been injured here worth notice. Now

and then an ear in the butts _grown_; and grown wheat is a sad thing!

You may almost as well be without wheat altogether. However, very little

harm has been done here as yet.

At Walton Heath I saw a man who had suffered most terribly from the

_game-laws_. He saw me going by, and came out to tell me his story; and

a horrible story it is, as the public will find, when it shall come

regularly and fully before them. Apropos of game-works: I asked who was

_the Judge_ at the Somersetshire Assizes the other day. A correspondent

tells me that it was Judge Burrough. I am well aware that, as this

correspondent observes, "gamekeepers ought not to be _shot at_." This is

not the point. It is not a _gamekeeper_ in the usual sense of that word;

it is a man seizing another without a warrant. That is what it is; and

this, and Old Ellenborough's Act, are _new things_ in England, and

things of which the laws of England, "the birthright of Englishmen,"

knew nothing. Yet farmer Voke ought not to have shot at the gamekeeper,

or seizer, without warrant: he ought not to have shot at him; and he

would not had it not been for the law that put him in danger of being

transported on the evidence of this man. So that it is clearly the

terrible law that, in these cases, produces the violence. Yet, admire

with me, reader, the singular turn of the mind of Sir James Mackintosh,

whose whole soul appears to have been long bent on the "amelioration of

the Penal Code," and who has never said one single word about this new

and most terrible part of it! Sir James, after years of incessant toil,

has, I believe, succeeded in getting a repeal of the laws for the

punishment of "witchcraft," of the very existence of which laws the

nation was unacquainted. But the devil a word has he said about the

_game-laws_, which put into the gaols a full third part of the

prisoners, and to hold which prisoners the gaols have actually been

enlarged in all parts of the country! Singular turn of mind! Singular

"humanity!" Ah! Sir James knows very well what he is at. He understands

the state of his constituents at Knaresborough too well to meddle with

game-laws. He has a "friend," I dare say, who knows more about game-laws

than he does. However, the poor _witches_ are safe: thank Sir James for

that. Mr. Carlile's sister and Mrs. Wright are in gaol, and may be there

for life! But the poor witches are safe. No hypocrite: no base pretender

to religion; no atrocious, savage, _black_-hearted wretch, who would

murder half mankind rather than not live on the labours of others; no

monster of this kind can now persecute the poor witches, thanks to Sir

James who has obtained security for them in all their rides through the

air, and in all their sailings upon the horseponds!

_Tonbridge Wells (Kent), Saturday, 30 August._

I came from Worth about seven this morning, passed through East

Grinstead, over Holthigh Common, through Ashurst, and thence to this

place. The morning was very fine, and I left them at Worth, making a

wheat-rick. There was no show for rain till about one o'clock, as I was

approaching Ashurst. The shattering that came at first I thought nothing

of; but the clouds soon grew up all round, and the rain set in for the

afternoon. The buildings at Ashurst (which is the first parish in Kent

on quitting Sussex) are a mill, an alehouse, a church, and about six or

seven other houses. I stopped at the alehouse to bait my horse; and, for

want of bacon, was compelled to put up with bread and cheese for myself.

I waited in vain for the rain to cease or to slacken, and the _want of

bacon_ made me fear as to a _bed_. So, about five o'clock, I, without

great coat, got upon my horse, and came to this place, just as fast and

no faster than if it had been fine weather. A very fine soaking! If the

South Downs have left any little remnant of the hooping-cough, _this_

will take it away to be sure. I made not the least haste to get out of

the rain, I stopped, here and there, as usual, and asked questions about

the corn, the hops, and other things. But the moment I got in I got a

good fire, and set about the work of drying in good earnest. It costing

me nothing for drink, I can afford to have plenty of fire. I have not

been in the house an hour; and all my clothes are now as dry as if they

had never been wet. It is not getting wet that hurts you, if you keep

moving while you are wet. It is the suffering of yourself to be

_inactive_ while the wet clothes are on your back.

The country that I have come over to-day is a very pretty one. The soil

is a pale yellow loam, looking like brick earth, but rather sandy; but

the bottom is a softish stone. Now-and-then, where you go through hollow

ways (as at East Grinstead) the sides are solid rock. And, indeed, the

rocks sometimes (on the sides of hills) show themselves above ground,

and, mixed amongst the woods, make very interesting objects. On the road

from the Wen to Brighton, through Godstone and over Turner's Hill, and

which road I crossed this morning in coming from Worth to East

Grinstead; on that road, which goes through Lindfield, and which is by

far the pleasantest coach-road from the Wen to Brighton; on the side of

this road, on which coaches now go from the Wen to Brighton, there is a

long chain of rocks, or, rather, rocky hills, with trees growing

amongst the rocks, or apparently out of them, as they do in the woods

near Ross in Herefordshire, and as they do in the Blue Mountains in

America, where you can see no earth at all; where all seems rock, and

yet where the trees grow most beautifully. At the place of which I am

now speaking, that is to say, by the side of this pleasant road to

Brighton, and between Turner's Hill and Lindfield, there is a rock,

which they call "_Big-upon-Little_;" that is to say, a rock upon

another, having nothing else to rest upon, and the top one being longer

and wider than the top of the one it lies on. This big rock is no

trifling concern, being as big, perhaps, as a not very small house. How,

then, _came_ this big upon little? What lifted up the big? It balances

itself naturally enough; but what tossed it up? I do not like to _pay_ a

parson for teaching me, while I have "_God's own word_" to teach me;

but, if any parson will tell me _how_ big _came_ upon little, I do not

know that I shall grudge him a trifle. And if he cannot tell me this: if

he say, All that we have to do is to _admire_ and _adore_; then I tell

him that I can admire and adore without his _aid_, and that I will keep

my money in my pocket.

To return to the soil of this country, it is such a loam as I have

described with this stone beneath; sometimes the top soil is lighter and

sometimes heavier; sometimes the stone is harder and sometimes softer;

but this is the general character of it all the way from Worth to

Tonbridge Wells. This land is what may be called the _middle kind_. The

wheat crop about 20 to 24 bushels to an acre, on an average of years.

The grass fields not bad, and all the fields will grow grass; I mean

make upland meadows. The woods good, though not of the finest. The land

seems to be about thus divided: 3-tenths _woods_, 2-tenths _grass_, a

tenth of a tenth _hops_, and the rest _corn-land_. These make very

pretty surface, especially as it is a rarity to see a _pollard tree_,

and as nobody is so beastly as to _trim trees up_ like the elms near the

Wen. The country has no _flat_ spot in it; yet the hills are not high.

My road was a gentle rise or a gentle descent all the way. Continual new

views strike the eye; but there is little variety in them: all is

pretty, but nothing strikingly beautiful. The labouring people look

pretty well. They have pigs. They invariably do best in the _woodland_

and _forest_ and _wild_ countries. Where the mighty grasper has _all

under his eye_, they can get but little. These are cross-roads, mere

parish roads; but they are very good. While I was at the alehouse at

Ashurst, I heard some labouring men talking about the roads; and they

having observed that the parish roads had become so wonderfully better

within the last seven or eight years, I put in my word, and said: "It is

odd enough, too, that the parish roads should become _better and

better_ as the farmers become _poorer and poorer_!" They looked at one

another, and put on a sort of _expecting_ look; for my observation

seemed to _ask for information_. At last one of them said, "Why, it is

because the farmers _have not the money to employ men_, and so they are

put on the roads." "Yes," said I, "but they must pay them there." They

said no more, and only _looked hard at one another_. They had, probably,

never thought about this before. They seemed puzzled by it, and well

they might, for it has bothered the wigs of boroughmongers, parsons and

lawyers, and will bother them yet. Yes, this country now contains a body

of occupiers of the land, who suffer the land to go to decay for want of

means to pay a sufficiency of labourers; and, at the same time, are

compelled to pay those labourers for doing that which is of no use to

the occupiers! There, Collective Wisdom! Go: brag of that! Call that

"the envy of surrounding nations and the admiration of the world."

This is a great _nut_ year. I saw them hanging very thick on the

way-side during a great part of this day's ride; and they put me in mind

of the old saying, "That a great _nut_ year is a great year for that

class whom the lawyers, in their Latin phrase, call the 'sons and

daughters of nobody.'" I once asked a farmer, who had often been

overseer of the poor, whether he really thought that there was any

ground for this old saying, or whether he thought it was mere banter? He

said that he was sure that there were good grounds for it; and he even

cited instances in proof, and mentioned one particular year, when there

were four times as many of this class as ever had been born in a year in

the parish before; an effect which he ascribed solely to the crop of

nuts of the year before. Now, if this be the case, ought not Parson

Malthus, Lawyer Scarlett, and the rest of that tribe, to turn their

attention to the nut-trees? The _Vice Society_, too, with that holy man

Wilberforce at its head, ought to look out sharp after these mischievous

nut-trees. A law to cause them all to be grubbed up, and thrown into the

fire, would, certainly, be far less unreasonable than many things which

we have seen and heard of.

The corn, from Worth to this place, is pretty good. The farmers say it

is a small crop; other people, and especially the labourers, say that it

is a good crop. I think it is not large and not small; about an average

crop; perhaps rather less, for the land is rather light, and this is not

a year for light lands. But there is no blight, no mildew, in spite of

all the prayers of the "loyal." The wheat about a third cut, and none

carried. No other corn begun upon. Hops very bad till I came within a

few miles of this place, when I saw some which I should suppose would

bear about six hundredweight to the acre. The orchards no great things

along here. Some apples here and there; but small and stunted. I do not

know that I have seen to-day any one _tree_ well loaded with fine

apples.

_Tenterden (Kent), Sunday, 31 August._

Here I am after a most delightful ride of twenty-four miles, through

Frant, Lamberhurst, Goudhurst, Milkhouse Street, Benenden, and

Rolvenden. By making a great stir in rousing waiters and "boots" and

maids, and by leaving behind me the name of "a d--d noisy, troublesome

fellow," I got clear of "_the Wells_," and out of the contagion of its

Wen-engendered inhabitants, time enough to meet the first rays of the

sun, on the hill that you come up in order to get to Frant, which is a

most beautiful little village at about two miles from "_the Wells_."

Here the land belongs, I suppose, to Lord Abergavenny, who has a mansion

and park here. A very pretty place, and kept, seemingly, in very nice

order. I saw here what I never saw before: the bloom of the _common

heath_ we wholly overlook; but it is a very pretty thing; and here, when

the plantations were made, and as they grew up, heath was _left to grow_

on the sides of the roads in the plantations. The heath is not so much

of a dwarf as we suppose. This is four feet high; and, being in full

bloom, it makes the prettiest border that can be imagined. This place of

Lord Abergavenny is, altogether, a very pretty place; and, so far from

grudging him the possession of it, I should feel pleasure at seeing it

in his possession, and should pray God to preserve it to him, and from

the unholy and ruthless touch of the Jews and jobbers; but I cannot

forget this Lord's _sinecure_! I cannot forget that he has, for doing

nothing, received of the public money more than sufficient to buy such

an estate as this. I cannot forget that this estate may, perhaps, have

actually been bought with that money. Not being able to forget this, and

with my mind filled with reflections of this sort, I got up to the

church at Frant, and just by I saw a _School-house_ with this motto on

it: "_Train up a child as he should walk_," &c. That is to say, try to

breed up the Boys and Girls of this village in such a way that they may

never know anything about Lord Abergavenny's sinecure; or, knowing about

it, that they may think it _right_ that he should roll in wealth coming

to him in such a way. The projectors deceive nobody but themselves! They

are working for the destruction of their own system. In looking back

over "_the Wells_" I cannot but admire the operation of the gambling

system. This little _toad-stool_ is a thing created entirely by the

gamble; and the means have, hitherto, come out of the wages of labour.

These means are _now_ coming out of the farmer's capital and out of the

landlord's estate; the labourers are stripped; they can give no more:

the saddle is now fixing itself upon the right back.

In quitting Frant I descended into a country more woody than that behind

me. I asked a man whose fine woods those were that I pointed to, and I

fairly gave _a start_ when he said the Marquis Camden's. Milton talks of

the _Leviathan_ in a way to make one draw in one's shoulders with fear;

and I appeal to any one, who has been at sea when a whale has come near

the ship, whether he has not, at the first sight of the monster, made a

sort of involuntary movement, as if to _get out of the way_. Such was

the movement that I now made. However, soon coming to myself, on I

walked my horse by the side of my pedestrian informant. It is Bayham

Abbey that this great and awful sinecure placeman owns in this part of

the county. Another great estate he owns near Sevenoaks. But here alone

he spreads his length and breadth over more, they say, than ten or

twelve thousand acres of land, great part of which consists of

oak-woods. But, indeed, what estates might he not purchase? Not much

less than thirty years he held a place, a sinecure place, that yielded

him about thirty thousand pounds a-year! At any rate, he, according to

Parliamentary accounts, has received, of public money, little short of a

million of guineas. These, at 30 guineas an acre, would buy thirty

thousand acres of land. And what did he have all this money _for_?

Answer me that question, Wilberforce, you who called him a "bright

star," when he gave up _a part_ of his enormous sinecure. He gave up all

but the _trifling_ sum of nearly three thousand pounds a-year! What a

bright star! And _when_ did he give it up? When the _Radical_ had made

the country ring with it. When his name was, by their means, getting

into every mouth in the kingdom; when every Radical speech and petition

contained the name of Camden. Then it was, and not till then, that this

"bright star" let fall part of its "brilliancy." So that Wilberforce

ought to have thanked the _Radicals_, and not Camden. When he let go his

grasp, he talked of the merits of his father. His father was a lawyer,

who was exceedingly well paid for what he did without a million of money

being given to his son. But there is something rather out of

common-place to be observed about this father. This father was the

contemporary of Yorke, who became Lord Hardwicke. Pratt and Yorke, and

the merit of Pratt was that he was constantly opposed to the principles

of Yorke. Yorke was called a _Tory_ and Pratt a _Whig_; but the devil of

it was, both got to be Lords; and, in one shape or another, the families

of both have, from that day to this, been receiving great parcels of the

public money! Beautiful system! The Tories were for _rewarding Yorke_;

the Whigs were for _rewarding Pratt_. The Ministers (all in good time!)

humoured both parties; and the stupid people, divided into _tools of two

factions_, actually applauded, now one part of them, and now the other

part of them, the squandering away of their substance. They were like

the man and his wife in the fable, who, to spite one another, gave away

to the cunning mumper the whole of their dinner bit by bit. _This

species_ of folly is over at any rate. The people are no longer fools

enough to be _partisans_. They make no distinctions. The nonsense about

"court party" and "country party" is at an end. Who thinks anything more

of the name of _Erskine_ than of that of _Scott_? As the people told the

two factions at Maidstone when they, with Camden at their head, met to

congratulate the Regent on the marriage of his daughter, "they are all

tarred with the same brush;" and tarred with the same brush they must

be, until there be a real reform of the Parliament. However, the people

are no longer deceived. They are not duped. They _know_ that the thing

is that which it is. The people of the present day would laugh at

disputes (carried on with so much gravity!) about the _principles_ of

Pratt and the _principles_ of Yorke. "You are all tarred with the same

brush," said the sensible people of Maidstone; and, in those words, they

expressed the opinion of the whole country, borough-mongers and

tax-eaters excepted.

The country from Frant to Lamberhurst is very woody. I should think

five-tenths woods and three grass. The corn, what there is of it, is

about the same as farther back. I saw a hop-garden just before I got to

Lamberhurst, which will have about two or three hundredweight to the

acre. This Lamberhurst is a very pretty place. It lies in a valley with

beautiful hills round it. The pastures about here are very fine; and the

roads are as smooth and as handsome as those in Windsor Park.

From the last-mentioned place I had three miles to come to Goudhurst,

the tower of the church of which is pretty lofty of itself, and the

church stands upon the very summit of one of the steepest and highest

hills in this part of the country. The church-yard has a view of about

twenty-five miles in diameter; and the whole is over a very fine

country, though the character of the country differs little from that

which I have before described.

Before I got to Goudhurst, I passed by the side of a village called

Horsenden, and saw some very large hop-grounds away to my right. I

should suppose there were fifty acres; and they appeared to me to look

pretty well. I found that they belonged to a Mr. Springate, and people

say that it will grow half as many hops as he grew last year, while

people in general will not grow a tenth part so many. This hop growing

and dealing have always been a _gamble_; and this puts me in mind of

the horrible treatment which Mr. Waddington received on account of what

was called his _forestalling_ in hops! It is useless to talk: as long as

that gentleman remains uncompensated for his sufferings there can be no

hope of better days. Ellenborough was his counsel; he afterwards became

Judge; but nothing was ever done to undo what Kenyon had done. However,

Mr. Waddington will, I trust, yet live to obtain justice. He has, in the

meanwhile, given the thing now-and-then a blow; and he has the

satisfaction to see it reel about like a drunken man.

I got to Goudhurst to breakfast, and as I heard that the Dean of

Rochester was to preach a sermon in behalf of the _National Schools_, I

stopped to hear him. In waiting for his Reverence I went to the

Methodist Meeting-house, where I found the Sunday School boys and girls

assembled, to the almost filling of the place, which was about thirty

feet long and eighteen wide. The "Minister" was not come, and the

Schoolmaster was reading to the children out of a _tract-book_, and

shaking the brimstone bag at them most furiously. This schoolmaster was

a _sleek_-looking young fellow: his skin perfectly tight: well fed, I'll

warrant him: and he has discovered the way of living, without work, on

the labour of those that do work. There were 36 little fellows in

smock-frocks, and about as many girls listening to him; and I dare say

he eats as much meat as any ten of them. By this time the _Dean_, I

thought, would be coming on; and, therefore, to the church I went; but

to my great disappointment I found that the parson was operating

_preparatory_ to the appearance of the Dean, who was to come on in the

afternoon, when I, agreeably to my plan, must be off. The sermon was

from 2 Chronicles, ch. 31. v. 21., and the words of this text described

King Hezekiah as a most _zealous man_, doing whatever he did _with all

his heart_. I write from _memory_, mind, and, therefore, I do not

pretend to quote exact words; and I may be a little in error, perhaps,

as to chapter or verse. The object of the preacher was to hold up to his

hearers the example of Hezekiah, and particularly in the case of the

school affair. He called upon them to subscribe with all their hearts;

but, alas! how little of _persuasive power_ was there in what he said!

No effort to make them see _the use of the schools_. No inducement

_proved_ to exist. No argument, in short, nor anything to move. No

appeal either to the _reason_, or to the _feeling_. All was general,

common-place, cold observation; and that, too, in language which the far

greater part of the hearers could not understand. This church is about

110 feet long and 70 feet wide in the clear. It would hold _three

thousand people_, and it had in it 214, besides 53 Sunday School or

National School boys; and these sat together, in a sort of lodge, up in

a corner, 16 feet long and 10 feet wide. Now, will any Parson Malthus,

or anybody else, have the impudence to tell me that this church was

built for the use of a population not more numerous than the present? To

be sure, when this church was built, there could be no idea of a

Methodist meeting coming to _assist_ the church, and as little, I dare

say, was it expected that the preachers in the church would ever call

upon the faithful to subscribe money to be sent up to one Joshua Watson

(living in a Wen) to be by him laid out in "promoting Christian

knowledge;" but, at any rate, the Methodists cannot take away above four

or five hundred; and what, then, was this great church built _for_, if

there were no more people, in those days, at Goudhurst, than there are

now? It is very true that the _labouring_ people have, in a great

measure, ceased to go to church. There were scarcely any of that class

at this great country church to-day. I do not believe there were _ten_.

I can remember when they were so numerous that the parson could not

attempt to begin till the rattling of their nailed shoes ceased. I have

seen, I am sure, five hundred boys and men in smock-frocks coming out of

church at one time. To-day has been a fine day: there would have been

many at church to-day, if ever there are; and here I have another to add

to the many things that convince me that the labouring classes have, in

great part, ceased to go to church; that their way of thinking and

feeling with regard to both church and clergy are totally changed; and

that there is now very little _moral hold_ which the latter possess.

This preaching for money to support the schools is a most curious affair

altogether. The King sends a _circular letter_ to the bishops (as I

understand it) to cause subscriptions for the schools; and the bishops

(if I am rightly told) tell the parish clergy to send the money, when

collected, to Joshua Watson, the Treasurer of a Society in the Wen, "for

promoting Christian Knowledge!" What! the church and all its clergy put

into motion to get money from the people to send up to one Joshua

Watson, a wine-merchant, or, late a wine-merchant, in Mincing Lane,

Fenchurch Street, London, in order that the said wine-merchant may apply

the money to the "promoting of Christian Knowledge!" What! all the

deacons, priests, curates perpetual, vicars, rectors, prebends, doctors,

deans, archdeacons and fathers in God, right reverend and most reverend;

all! yea all, engaged in getting money together to send to a

wine-merchant that he may lay it out in the promoting of Christian

knowledge _in their own flocks_! Oh, brave wine-merchant! What a prince

of godliness must this wine-merchant be! I say wine-merchant, or late

wine-merchant, of Mincing Lane, Fenchurch Street, London. And, for God's

sake, some good parson, do send me up a copy of the King's circular,

and also of the bishop's order to send the money to Joshua Watson; for

some precious sport we will have with Joshua and his "Society" before we

have done with them!

After "service" I mounted my horse and jogged on through Milkhouse

Street to Benenden, where I passed through the estate, and in sight of

the house of Mr. Hodges. He keeps it very neat and has planted a good

deal. His _ash_ do very well; but the _chestnut_ do not, as it seems to

me. He ought to have the American chestnut, if he have any. If I could

discover _an everlasting hop-pole_, and one, too, that would grow faster

even than the ash, would not these Kentish hop-planters put me in the

Kalendar along with their famous Saint Thomas of Canterbury? We shall

see this one of these days.

Coming through the village of Benenden, I heard a man at my right

talking very loud about _houses! houses! houses!_ It was a Methodist

parson, in a house close by the roadside. I pulled up, and stood still,

in the middle of the road, but looking, in silent soberness, into the

window (which was open) of the room in which the preacher was at work. I

believe my stopping rather disconcerted him; for he got into shocking

_repetition_. "Do you _know_," said he, laying great stress on the word

_know_: "do you _know_, that you have ready for you houses, houses I

say; I say do you know; do you know that you have houses in the heavens

not made with hands? Do you know this from _experience_? Has the blessed

Jesus _told you so_?" And on he went to say that, if Jesus had told them

so, they would be saved, and that if He had not, and did not, they would

be damned. Some girls whom I saw in the room, plump and rosy as could

be, did not seem at all daunted by these menaces; and, indeed, they

appeared to me to be thinking much more about getting houses for

themselves _in this world first_; just to _see a little_ before they

entered, or endeavoured to enter, or even thought much about, those

"_houses_" of which the parson was speaking: _houses_ with pig-styes and

little snug gardens attached to them, together with all the other

domestic and conjugal circumstances, these girls seemed to me to be

preparing themselves for. The truth is, these fellows have no power on

the minds of any but the miserable.

Scarcely had I proceeded a hundred yards from the place where this

fellow was bawling, when I came to the very situation which he ought to

have occupied, I mean the _stocks_, which the people of Benenden have,

with singular humanity, fitted up with a _bench_, so that the patient,

while he is receiving the benefit of the remedy, is not exposed to the

danger of catching cold by sitting, as in other places, upon the ground,

always damp, and sometimes actually wet. But I would ask the people of

Benenden what is the _use_ of this humane precaution, and, indeed, what

is the use of the stocks themselves, if, while a fellow is ranting and

bawling in the manner just described, at the distance of a hundred yards

from the stocks, the stocks (as is here actually the case) are almost

hidden by grass and nettles? This, however, is the case all over the

country; not nettles and grass indeed smothering the stocks, but I never

see any feet peeping through the holes anywhere, though I find Methodist

parsons everywhere, and though _the law compels the parishes to keep up_

all the pairs of stocks that exist in all parts of them; and, in some

parishes, they have to keep up several pairs. I am aware that a good

part of the use of the stocks is the _terror_ they ought to produce. I

am not supposing that they are of no use because not continually

furnished with legs. But there is a wide difference between _always_ and

_never_; and it is clear that a fellow who has had the stocks under his

eye all his lifetime, and has _never_ seen a pair of feet peeping

through them, will stand no more in awe of the stocks than rooks do of

an old shoyhoy, or than the Ministers or their agents do of Hobhouse and

Burdett. Stocks that never pinch a pair of ankles are like Ministerial

responsibility; a thing to talk about, but for no other use; a mere

mockery; a thing laughed at by those whom it is intended to keep in

check. It is time that the stocks were again _in use_, or that the

expense of keeping them up were put an end to.

This mild, this gentle, this good-humoured sort of correction is _not

enough_ for our present rulers. But mark the consequence; gaols ten

times as big as formerly; houses of correction; tread-mills; the hulks;

and the country filled with _spies_ of one sort and another,

_game-spies_, or other spies, and if a hare or pheasant come to an

untimely death, _police-officers_ from the Wen are not unfrequently

called down to find out and secure the bloody offender! _Mark this_,

Englishmen! Mark how we take to those things which we formerly ridiculed

in the French; and take them up too just as that brave and spirited

people have shaken them off! I saw, not long ago, an account of a Wen

police-officer being sent into the country, where he assumed _a

disguise_, joined some poachers (as they are called), got into their

secrets, went out in the night with them, and then (having laid his

plans with the game-people) assisted to take them and convict them.

What! is this _England_! Is this the land of "manly hearts?" Is this the

country that laughed at the French for their submissions? What! are

police-officers kept for this? Does the law say so? However, thank God

Almighty, the estates are passing away into the hands of those who have

had borrowed from them the money to uphold this monster of a system. The

Debt! The blessed Debt, will, at last, restore to us freedom.

Just after I quitted Benenden, I saw some bunches of _straw_ lying upon

the quickset hedge of a cottage garden. I found upon inquiry, that they

were bunches of the straw of grass. Seeing a face through the window of

the cottage, I called out and asked what that straw was for. The person

within said, it was to make _Leghorn-plat_ with. I asked him (it was a

young man) how he knew how to do it. He said he had got a little book

that had been made by Mr. Cobbett. I told him that I was the man, and

should like to see some of his work; and asked him to bring it out to

me, I being afraid to tie my horse. He told me that he was a _cripple_,

and that he could not come out. At last I went in, leaving my horse to

be held by a little girl. I found a young man, who has been a cripple

for fourteen years. Some ladies in the neighbourhood had got him the

book, and his family had got him the grass. He had made some very nice

plat, and he had knitted the greater part of the crown of a bonnet, and

had done the whole very nicely, though, as to the knitting, he had

proceeded in a way to make it very tedious. He was knitting upon a

block. However, these little matters will soon be set to rights. There

will soon be persons to teach knitting in all parts of the country. I

left this unfortunate young man with the pleasing reflection that I had,

in all likelihood, been the cause of his gaining a good living, by his

labour, during the rest of his life. How long will it be before my

calumniators, the false and infamous London press, will, take the whole

of it together, and leave out its evil, do as much good as my pen has

done in this one instance! How long will it be ere the ruffians, the

base hirelings, the infamous traders who own and who conduct that press;

how long ere one of them, or all of them together, shall cause a cottage

to smile; shall add one ounce to the meal of the labouring man!

Rolvenden was my next village, and thence I could see the lofty church

of Tenterden on the top of a hill at three miles distance. This

Rolvenden is a very beautiful village; and, indeed, such are all the

places along here. These villages are not like those in the _iron_

counties, as I call them; that is, the counties of flint and chalk. Here

the houses have gardens in front of them as well as behind; and there is

a good deal of show and finery about them and their gardens. The high

roads are without a stone in them; and everything looks like

_gentility_. At this place I saw several _arbutuses_ in one garden, and

much finer than we see them in general; though, mind, this is no proof

of a mild climate; for the arbutus is a native of one much colder than

that of England, and indeed than that of Scotland.