Coming from Benenden to Rolvenden I saw some Swedish turnips, and,

strange as the reader will think it, the first I saw after leaving

Worth! The reason I take to be this: the farms are all furnished with

grass-fields as in Devonshire about Honiton. These grass-fields give hay

for the sheep and cattle in winter, or, at any rate, they do all that is

not done by the white turnips. It may be a question whether it would be

more _profitable_ to break up and sow Swedes; but this is the reason of

their not being cultivated along here. White turnips are more easily got

than Swedes; they may be sown later; and, with good hay, they will fat

cattle and sheep; but the Swedes will do this business without hay. In

Norfolk and Suffolk the land is not generally of a nature to make

hay-fields. Therefore the people there resort to Swedes. This has been a

sad time for these hay-farmers, however, all along here. They have but

just finished haymaking; and I see, all along my way, from East

Grinstead to this place, hay-ricks the colour of dirt and _smoking_ like

dung-heaps.

Just before I got to this place (Tenterden), I crossed a bit of marsh

land, which I found, upon inquiry, is a sort of little branch or spray

running out of that immense and famous tract of country called _Romney

Marsh_, which, I find, I have to cross to-morrow, in order to get to

Dover, along by the sea-side, through Hythe and Folkestone.

This Tenterden is a market town, and a singularly bright spot. It

consists of one street, which is, in some places, more, perhaps, than

two hundred feet wide. On one side of the street the houses have gardens

before them, from 20 to 70 feet deep. The town is upon a hill; the

afternoon was very fine, and, just as I rose the hill and entered the

street, the people had come out of church and were moving along towards

their houses. It was a very fine sight. _Shabbily-dressed people do not

go to church._ I saw, in short, drawn out before me, the dress and

beauty of the town; and a great many very, very pretty girls I saw; and

saw them, too, in their best attire. I remember the girls in the _Pays

de Caux_, and, really, I think those of Tenterden resemble them. I do

not know why they should not; for there is the _Pays de Caux_ only just

over the water, just opposite this very place.

The hops about here are not so very bad. They say that one man, near

this town, will have eight tons of hops upon ten acres of land! This is

a great crop any year: a very great crop. This man may, perhaps, sell

his hops for 1,600 pounds! What a _gambling_ concern it is! However,

such hop-growing always was and always must be. It is a thing of perfect

hazard.

The church at this place is a very large and fine old building. The

tower stands upon a base thirty feet square. Like the church at

Goudhurst, it will hold three thousand people. And let it be observed

that, when these churches were built, people had not yet thought of

cramming them with _pews_, as a stable is filled with stalls. Those who

built these churches had no idea that worshipping God meant going to

_sit_ to hear a man talk out what he called preaching. By _worship_ they

meant very different things; and, above all things, when they had made a

fine and noble building, they did not dream of disfiguring the inside of

it by filling its floor with large and deep boxes made of deal boards.

In short, the floor was the place for the worshippers to stand or to

kneel; and there was _no distinction_; no _high_ place and no _low_

place; all were upon a level _before God_ at any rate. Some were not

stuck into pews lined with green or red cloth, while others were crammed

into corners to stand erect or sit on the floor. These odious

distinctions are of Protestant origin and growth. This lazy lolling in

pews we owe to what is called the _Reformation_. A place filled with

benches and boxes looks like an eating or a drinking place; but

certainly not like a place of worship. A Frenchman, who had been driven

from St. Domingo to Philadelphia by the Wilberforces of France, went to

church along with me one Sunday. He had never been in a Protestant place

of _worship_ before. Upon looking round him, and seeing everybody

comfortably seated, while a couple of good stoves were keeping the place

as warm as a slack oven, he exclaimed: "_Pardi! On sert Dieu bien a son

aise ici?_" That is: "Egad! they serve God very much at their ease

here!" I always think of this, when I see a church full of pews; as,

indeed, is now always the case with our churches. Those who built these

churches had no idea of this: they made their calculations as to the

people to be contained in them, not making any allowance for _deal

boards_. I often wonder how it is that the present parsons are not

ashamed to call the churches _theirs_! They must know the origin of

them; and how they can look at them, and at the same time revile the

Catholics, is astonishing to me.

This evening I have been to the Methodist Meeting-house. I was

attracted, fairly drawn all down the street, by the _singing_. When I

came to the place the parson was got into prayer. His hands were

clenched together and held up, his face turned up and back so as to be

nearly parallel with the ceiling, and he was bawling away, with his "do

thou," and "mayest thou," and "may we," enough to stun one. Noisy,

however, as he was, he was unable to fix the attention of a parcel of

girls in the gallery, whose eyes were all over the place, while his eyes

were so devoutly shut up. After a deal of this rigmarole called prayer,

came the _preachy_, as the negroes call it; and a _preachy_ it really

was. Such a mixture of whining cant and of foppish affectation I

scarcely ever heard in my life. The text was (I speak from memory) one

of Saint Peter's epistles (if he have more than one) the 4th Chapter and

18th Verse. The words were to this amount: that, _as the righteous

would be saved with difficulty, what must become of the ungodly and the

sinner_! After as neat a dish of nonsense and of impertinences as one

could wish to have served up, came the distinction between the _ungodly_

and the _sinner_. The sinner was one who did moral wrong; the ungodly,

one who did no moral wrong, but who was not regenerated. _Both_, he

positively told us, were to be damned. One was just as bad as the other.

Moral rectitude was to do nothing in saving the man. He was to be damned

unless born again, and how was he to be born again unless he came to the

regeneration-shop and gave the fellows money? He distinctly told us that

a man perfectly moral might be damned; and that "the vilest of the vile

and the basest of the base" (I quote his very words) "would be saved if

they became regenerate; and that colliers, whose souls had been as black

as their coals, had by regeneration become bright as the saints that

sing before God and the Lamb." And will the _Edinburgh Reviewers_ again

find fault with me for cutting at this bawling, canting crew? Monstrous

it is to think that the Clergy of the Church really encourage these

roving fanatics. The Church seems aware of its loss of credit and of

power. It seems willing to lean even upon these men; who, be it

observed, seem, on their part, to have taken the Church under their

protection. They always pray for the _Ministry_; I mean the ministry at

_Whitehall_. They are most "loyal" souls. The THING _protects them_; and

they lend their aid _in upholding the_ THING. What silly; nay, what base

creatures those must be who really give their money, give their pennies,

which ought to buy bread for their own children; who thus give their

money to these lazy and impudent fellows, who call themselves ministers

of God, who prowl about the country living easy and jovial lives upon

the fruit of the labour of other people. However, it is, in some

measure, these people's fault. If they did not give, the others could

not receive. I wish to see every labouring man well fed and well clad;

but, really, the man who gives any portion of his earnings to these

fellows deserves to want: he deserves to be pinched with hunger: misery

is the just reward of this worst species of prodigality.

The _singing_ makes a great part of what passes in these meeting-houses.

A number of women and girls singing together make very sweet sounds. Few

men there are who have not felt _the power_ of sounds of this sort. Men

are sometimes pretty nearly bewitched without knowing how. _Eyes_ do a

good deal, but _tongues_ do more. We may talk of sparkling eyes and

snowy bosoms as long as we please; but what are these with a croaking,

masculine voice? The parson seemed to be fully aware of the importance

of this part of the "service." The subject of his hymn was something

about _love_: Christian love; love of Jesus; but still it was about

_love_; and the parson read, or gave out, the verses in a singularly

_soft_ and _sighing_ voice, with his head on one side, and giving it

rather a swing. I am satisfied that the singing forms great part of the

_attraction_. Young girls like to sing; and young men like to hear them.

Nay, old ones too; and, as I have just said, it was the singing that

_drew_ me three hundred yards down the street at Tenterden, to enter

this meeting-house. By-the-by, I wrote some Hymns myself, and published

them in "_Twopenny Trash_." I will give any Methodist parson leave to

put them into his hymn-book.

_Folkestone (Kent), Monday (Noon), 1 Sept._

I have had a fine ride, and, I suppose, the Quakers have had a fine time

of it at Mark Lane.

From Tenterden I set off at five o'clock, and got to Appledore after a

most delightful ride, the high land upon my right, and the low land on

my left. The fog was so thick and white along some of the low land, that

I should have taken it for water, if little hills and trees had not

risen up through it here and there. Indeed, the view was very much like

those which are presented in the deep valleys, near the great rivers in

New Brunswick (North America) at the time when the snows melt in the

spring, and when, in sailing over those valleys, you look down from the

side of your canoe and see the lofty woods beneath you! I once went in a

log-canoe across a _sylvan sea_ of this description, the canoe being

paddled by two Yankees. We started in a stream; the stream became a wide

water, and that water got deeper and deeper, as I could see by the trees

(all was woods), till we got to sail amongst the _top branches of the

trees_. By-and-by we got into a large open space; a piece of water a

mile or two, or three or four wide, with _the woods under us_! A fog,

with the tops of trees rising through it, is very much like this; and

such was the fog that I saw this morning in my ride to Appledore. The

church at Appledore is very large. Big enough to hold 3,000 people; and

the place does not seem to contain half a thousand old enough to go to

church.

In coming along I saw a wheat-rick making, though I hardly think the

wheat can be dry under the bands. The corn is all good here; and I am

told they give twelve shillings an acre for reaping wheat.

In quitting this Appledore I crossed a canal and entered on Romney

Marsh. This was grass-land on both sides of me to a great distance. The

flocks and herds immense. The sheep are of a breed that takes its name

from the marsh. They are called Romney Marsh sheep. Very pretty and

large. The wethers, when fat, weigh about twelve stone; or, one hundred

pounds. The faces of these sheep are white; and, indeed, the whole sheep

is as white as a piece of writing-paper. The wool does not look dirty

and oily like that of other sheep. The cattle appear to be all of the

_Sussex_ breed. Red, loosed-limbed, and, they say, a great deal better

than the Devonshire. How curious is the _natural economy_ of a country!

The _forests_ of Sussex; those miserable tracts of heath and fern and

bushes and sand, called Ashdown Forest and Saint Leonard's Forest, to

which latter Lord Erskine's estate belongs; these wretched tracts and

the not much less wretched farms in their neighbourhood, _breed the

cattle_, which we see _fatting_ in Romney Marsh! They are calved in the

spring; they are weaned in a little bit of grass-land; they are then put

into stubbles and about in the fallows for the first summer; they are

brought into the yard to winter on rough hay, peas-haulm, or

barley-straw; the next two summers they spend in the rough woods or in

the forest; the two winters they live on straw; they then pass another

summer on the forest or at _work_; and then they come here or go

elsewhere to be fatted. With cattle of this kind and with sheep such as

I have spoken of before, this Marsh abounds in every part of it; and the

sight is most beautiful.

At three miles from Appledore I came through Snargate, a village with

five houses, and with a church capable of containing two thousand

people! The vagabonds tell us, however, that we have a wonderful

increase of population! These vagabonds will be hanged by-and-by, or

else justice will have fled from the face of the earth.

At Brenzett (a mile further on) I with great difficulty got a rasher of

bacon for breakfast. The few houses that there are are miserable in the

extreme. The church here (only a _mile_ from the last) nearly as large;

and nobody to go to it. What! will the _vagabonds_ attempt to make us

believe that these churches were _built for nothing_! "_Dark ages_"

indeed those must have been, if these churches were erected without

there being any more people than there are now. But _who_ built them?

Where did the _means_, where did the hands come from? This place

presents another proof of the truth of my old observation: _rich land_

and _poor labourers_. From the window of the house, in which I could

scarcely get a rasher of bacon, and not an egg, I saw numberless flocks

and herds fatting, and the fields loaded with corn!

The next village, which was two miles further on, was Old Romney, and

along here I had, for great part of the way, corn-fields on one side of

me and grass-land on the other. I asked what the amount of the crop of

wheat would be. They told me better than five quarters to the acre. I

thought so myself. I have a sample of the red wheat and another of the

white. They are both very fine. They reap the wheat here nearly two feet

from the ground; and even then they cut it three feet long! I never saw

corn like this before. It very far exceeds the corn under Portsdown

Hill, that at Gosport and Tichfield. They have here about eight hundred

large, very large, sheaves to an acre. I wonder how long it will be

after the end of the world before Mr. Birbeck will see the American

"Prairies" half so good as this Marsh. In a garden here I saw some very

fine onions, and a prodigious crop; sure sign of most excellent land. At

this Old Romney there is a church (two miles only from the last, mind!)

fit to contain one thousand five hundred people, and there are, for the

people of the parish to live in, twenty-two, or twenty-three, houses!

And yet the _vagabonds_ have the impudence to tell us that the

population of England has vastly increased! Curious system that

depopulates Romney Marsh and peoples Bagshot Heath! It is an unnatural

system. It is the _vagabond's_ system. It is a system that must be

destroyed, or that will destroy the country.

The rotten borough of New Romney came next in my way; and here, to my

great surprise, I found myself upon the sea-beach; for I had not looked

at a map of Kent for years, and, perhaps, never. I had got a list of

places from a friend in Sussex, whom I asked to give me a route to

Dover, and to send me through those parts of Kent which he thought would

be most interesting to me. Never was I so much surprised as when I saw

_a sail_. This place, now that the _squanderings_ of the THING are over,

is, they say, become miserably poor.

From New Romney to Dimchurch is about four miles: all along I had the

sea-beach on my right, and, on my left, sometimes grass-land and

sometimes corn-land. They told me here, and also further back in the

Marsh, that they were to have 15s. an acre for reaping wheat.

From Dimchurch to Hythe you go on the sea-beach, and nearly the same

from Hythe to Sandgate, from which last place you come over the hill to

Folkestone. But let me look back. Here has been the squandering! Here

has been the pauper-making work! Here we see some of these causes that

are now sending some farmers to the workhouse and driving others to flee

the country or to cut their throats!

I had baited my horse at New Romney, and was coming jogging along very

soberly, now looking at the sea, then looking at the cattle, then the

corn, when my eye, in swinging round, lighted upon a great round

building standing upon the beach. I had scarcely had time to think about

what it could be when twenty or thirty others, standing along the

coast, caught my eye; and, if any one had been behind me, he might have

heard me exclaim, in a voice that made my horse bound, "The _Martello

Towers_ by ----!" Oh, Lord! To think that I should be destined to behold

these monuments of the wisdom of Pitt and Dundas and Perceval! Good God!

Here they are, piles of bricks in a circular form about three hundred

feet (_guess_) circumference at the base, about forty feet high, and

about one hundred and fifty feet circumference at the top. There is a

door-way, about midway up, in each, and each has two windows. Cannons

were to be fired from the top of these things in order to defend the

country against the French Jacobins!

I think I have counted along here upwards of thirty of these ridiculous

things, which, I dare say, cost five, perhaps ten, thousand pounds each;

and one of which was, I am told, _sold_ on the coast of Sussex the other

day for two hundred pounds! There is, they say, a chain of these things

all the way to Hastings! I dare say they cost millions. But far indeed

are these from being all, or half, or a quarter of the squanderings

along here. Hythe is half _barracks_; the hills are covered with

barracks; and barracks most expensive, most squandering, fill up the

side of the hill. Here is a canal (I crossed it at Appledore) made for

the length of thirty miles (from Hythe, in Kent, to Rye, in Sussex) to

_keep out the French_; for those armies who had so often crossed the

Rhine and the Danube were to be kept back by a canal, made by Pitt,

thirty feet wide at the most! All along the coast there are works of

some sort or other; incessant sinks of money; walls of immense

dimensions; masses of stone brought and put into piles. Then you see

some of the walls and buildings falling down; some that have never been

finished. The whole thing, all taken together, looks as if a spell had

been, all of a sudden, set upon the workmen; or, in the words of the

Scripture, here is the "_desolation of abomination, standing in high

places_." However, all is right. These things were made with the hearty

good will of those who are now coming to ruin in consequence of the

Debt, contracted for the purpose of making these things! This is all

_just_. The load will come, at last, upon the right shoulders.

Between Hythe and Sandgate (a village at about two miles from Hythe) I

first saw the French coast. The chalk cliffs at Calais are as plain to

the view as possible, and also the land, which they tell me is near

Boulogne.

Folkestone lies under a hill here, as Reigate does in Surrey, only here

the sea is open to your right as you come along. The corn is very early

here, and very fine. All cut, even the beans; and they will be ready to

cart in a day or two. Folkestone is now a little place; probably a

quarter part as big as it was formerly. Here is a church one hundred and

twenty feet long and fifty feet wide. It is a sort of little Cathedral.

The church-yard has evidently been three times as large as it is now.

Before I got into Folkestone I saw no less than eighty-four men, women,

and boys and girls gleaning or leasing, in a field of about ten acres.

The people all along here complain most bitterly of the _change of

times_. The truth is, that the squandered millions are gone! The nation

has now to suffer for this squandering. The money served to silence

some; to make others bawl; to cause the good to be oppressed; to cause

the bad to be exalted; to "crush the Jacobins:" and what is the

_result_? What is the _end_? The _end_ is not yet come; but as to the

result thus far, go, ask the families of those farmers who, after having

for so many years threatened to shoot Jacobins, have, in instances not a

few, shot themselves! Go, ask the ghosts of Pitt and of Castlereagh what

has thus far been the _result_! Go, ask the Hampshire farmer, who, not

many months since, actually blowed out his own brains with one of those

very pistols which he had long carried in his Yeomanry Cavalry holsters,

to be ready "to keep down the Jacobins and Radicals!" Oh, God!

inscrutable are Thy ways; but Thou art just, and of Thy justice what a

complete proof have we in the case of these very Martello Towers! They

were erected to keep out the Jacobin French, lest they should come and

assist the Jacobin English. The _loyal_ people of this coast were

fattened by the building of them. Pitt and his loyal _Cinque Ports_

waged interminable war against Jacobins. These very towers are now used

to keep these _loyal_ Cinque Ports themselves in order. These towers are

now used to lodge men, whose business it is to sally forth, not upon

Jacobins, but upon _smugglers_! Thus, after having sucked up millions of

the nation's money, these loyal Cinque Ports are squeezed again: kept in

order, kept down, by the very towers which they rejoiced to see rise to

keep down the Jacobins.

_Dover, Monday, Sept. 1st, Evening._

I got here this evening about six o'clock, having come to-day thirty-six

miles; but I must defer my remarks on the country between Folkestone and

this place; a most interesting spot, and well worthy of particular

attention. What place I shall date from after Dover I am by no means

certain; but be it from what place it may, the continuation of my

Journal shall be published in due course. If the Atlantic Ocean could

not cut off the communication between me and my readers, a mere strip

of water, not much wider than an American river, will hardly do it. I

am, in real truth, undecided, as yet, whether I shall go on to France or

back to the _Wen_. I think I shall, when I go out of this Inn, toss the

bridle upon my horse's neck, and let him decide for me. I am sure he is

more fit to decide on such a point than our Ministers are to decide on

any point connected with the happiness, greatness, and honour of this

kingdom.

RURAL RIDE FROM DOVER, THROUGH THE ISLE OF THANET, BY CANTERBURY AND

FAVERSHAM, ACROSS TO MAIDSTONE, UP TO TONBRIDGE, THROUGH THE WEALD OF

KENT, AND OVER THE HILLS BY WESTERHAM AND HAYS, TO THE WEN.

_Dover, Wednesday, Sept. 3, 1823 (Evening)._

On Monday I was balancing in my own mind whether I should go to France

or not. To-day I have decided the question in the negative, and shall

set off this evening for the Isle of Thanet, that spot so famous for

corn.

I broke off without giving an account of the country between Folkestone

and Dover, which is a very interesting one in itself, and was peculiarly

interesting to me on many accounts. I have often mentioned, in

describing the parts of the country over which I have travelled; I have

often mentioned the _chalk-ridge_ and also the _sand-ridge_, which I had

traced, running parallel with each other from about Farnham, in Surrey,

to Sevenoaks, in Kent. The reader must remember how particular I have

been to observe that, in going up from Chilworth and Albury, through

Dorking, Reigate, Godstone, and so on, the two chains, or ridges,

approach so near to each other, that, in many places, you actually have

a chalk-bank to your right and a sand-bank to your left, at not more

than forty yards from each other. In some places, these chains of hills

run off from each other to a great distance, even to a distance of

twenty miles. They then approach again towards each other, and so they

go on. I was always desirous to ascertain whether these chains, or

ridges, continued on thus _to the sea_. I have now found that they do.

And, if you go out into the channel, at Folkestone, there you see a

sand-cliff and a chalk-cliff. Folkestone stands upon the sand, in a

little dell about seven hundred or eight hundred yards from the very

termination of the ridge. All the way along, the chalk-ridge is the

most lofty, until you come to Leith Hill and Hindhead; and here, at

Folkestone, the sand-ridge tapers off in a sort of flat towards the sea.

The land is like what it is at Reigate, a very steep hill; a hill of

full a mile high, and bending exactly in the same manner as the hill at

Reigate does. The turnpike-road winds up it and goes over it in exactly

the same manner as that at Reigate. The land to the south of the hill

begins a poor, thin, white loam upon the chalk; soon gets to be a very

fine rich loam upon the chalk; goes on till it mingles the chalky loam

with the sandy loam; and thus it goes on down to the sea-beach, or to

the edge of the cliff. It is a beautiful bed of earth here, resembling

in extent that on the south side of Portsdown Hill rather than that of

Reigate. The crops here are always good if they are good anywhere. A

large part of this fine tract of land, as well as the little town of

Sandgate (which is a beautiful little place upon the beach itself), and

also great part of the town of Folkestone belong, they tell me, to Lord

Radnor, who takes his title of Viscount from Folkestone. Upon the hill

begins, and continues on for some miles, that stiff red loam,

approaching to a clay, which I have several times described as forming

the soil at the top of this chalk-ridge. I spoke of it in the Register

of the 16th of August last, page 409, and I then said, that it was like

the land on the top of this very ridge at Ashmansworth in the north of

Hampshire. At Reigate you find precisely the same soil upon the top of

the hill, a very red, clayey sort of loam, with big yellow flint stones

in it. Everywhere, the soil is the same upon the top of the high part of

this ridge. I have now found it to be the same, on the edge of the sea,

that I found it on the north-east corner of Hampshire.

From the hill, you keep descending all the way to Dover, a distance of

about six miles, and it is absolutely six miles of down hill. On your

right, you have the lofty land which forms a series of chalk cliffs,

from the top of which you look into the sea; on your left, you have

ground that goes rising up from you in the same sort of way. The

turnpike-road goes down the middle of a valley, each side of which, as

far as you can see, may be about a mile and a half. It is six miles

long, you will remember; and here, therefore, with very little

interruption, very few chasms, there are _eighteen square miles of

corn_. It is a patch such as you very seldom see, and especially of corn

so good as it is here. I should think that the wheat all along here

would average pretty nearly four quarters to the acre. A few oats are

sown. A great deal of barley, and that a very fine crop.

The town of Dover is like other sea-port towns; but really much more

clean, and with less blackguard people in it than I ever observed in any

sea-port before. It is a most picturesque place, to be sure. On one

side of it rises, upon the top of a very steep hill, the Old Castle,

with all its fortifications. On the other side of it there is another

chalk-hill, the side of which is pretty nearly perpendicular, and rises

up from sixty to a hundred feet higher than the tops of the houses,

which stand pretty nearly close to the foot of the hill.

I got into Dover rather late. It was dusk when I was going down the

street towards the quay. I happened to look up, and was quite astonished

to perceive cows grazing upon a spot apparently fifty feet above the

tops of the houses, and measuring horizontally not, perhaps, more than

ten or twenty feet from a line which would have formed a continuation

into the air. I went up to the same spot, the next day, myself; and you

actually look down upon the houses, as you look out of a window upon

people in the street. The valley that runs down from Folkestone is, when

it gets to Dover, crossed by another valley that runs down from

Canterbury, or, at least, from the Canterbury direction. It is in the

gorge of this cross valley that Dover is built. The two chalk-hills jut

out into the sea, and the water that comes up between them forms a

harbour for this ancient, most interesting, and beautiful place. On the

hill to the north stands the Castle of Dover, which is fortified in the

ancient manner, except on the sea-side, where it has the steep _Cliff_

for a fortification. On the south side of the town, the hill is, I

believe, rather more lofty than that on the north side; and here is that

Cliff which is described by Shakspeare in the Play of King Lear. It is

fearfully steep, certainly. Very nearly perpendicular for a considerable

distance. The grass grows well, to the very tip of the cliff; and you

see cows and sheep grazing there with as much unconcern as if grazing in

the bottom of a valley.

It was not, however, these natural curiosities that took me over _this_

hill; I went to see, with my own eyes, something of the sorts of means

that had been made use of to squander away countless millions of money.

Here is a hill containing, probably, a couple of square miles or more,

hollowed like a honeycomb. Here are line upon line, trench upon trench,

cavern upon cavern, bomb-proof upon bomb-proof; in short the very sight

of the thing convinces you that either madness the most humiliating, or

profligacy the most scandalous must have been at work here for years.

The question that every man of sense asks, is: What reason had you to

suppose that the _French could ever come to this hill_ to attack it,

while the rest of the country was so much more easy to assail? However,

let any man of good plain understanding go and look at the works that

have here been performed, and that are now all tumbling into ruin. Let

him ask what this cavern was for; what that ditch was for; what this

tank was for; and why all these horrible holes and hiding-places at an

expense of millions upon millions? Let this scene be brought and placed

under the eyes of the people of England, and let them be told that Pitt

and Dundas and Perceval had these things done to prevent the country

from being conquered; with voice unanimous the nation would instantly

exclaim: Let the French or let the devil take us, rather than let us

resort to means of defence like these. This is, perhaps, the only set of

fortifications in the world ever framed for mere _hiding_. There is no

appearance of any intention to annoy an enemy. It is a parcel of holes

made in a hill, to hide Englishmen from Frenchmen. Just as if the

Frenchmen would come to this hill! Just as if they would not go (if they

came at all) and land in Romney Marsh, or on Pevensey Level, or anywhere

else, rather than come to this hill; rather than come to crawl up

Shakspeare's cliff. All the way along the coast, from this very hill to

Portsmouth, or pretty nearly all the way, is a flat. What the devil

should they come to this hill for, then? And, when you ask this

question, they tell you that it is to have an army here _behind_ the

French, after they had marched into the country! And for a purpose like

this; for a purpose so stupid, so senseless, so mad as this, and withal,

so scandalously disgraceful, more brick and stone have been buried in

this hill than would go to build a neat new cottage for every labouring

man in the counties of Kent and of Sussex!

Dreadful is the scourge of such Ministers. However, those who supported

them will now have to suffer. The money must have been squandered

purposely, and for the worst ends. Fool as Pitt was; unfit as an old

hack of a lawyer, like Dundas, was to judge of the means of defending

the country, stupid as both these fellows were, and as their brother

lawyer, Perceval, was too: unfit as these lawyers were to judge in any

such a case, they must have known that this was an useless expenditure

of money. They must have known that; and, therefore, their general

folly, their general ignorance, is no apology for their conduct. What

they wanted, was to prevent the landing, not of Frenchmen, but of French

principles; that is to say, to prevent the example of the French from

being alluring to the people of England. The devil a bit did they care

for the Bourbons. They rejoiced at the killing of the king. They

rejoiced at the atheistical decree. They rejoiced at everything

calculated to alarm the timid and to excite horror in the people of

England in general. They wanted to keep out of England those principles

which had a natural tendency to destroy borough-mongering, and to put an

end to peculation and plunder. No matter whether by the means of

Martello Towers, making a great chalk-hill a honey-comb, cutting a canal

thirty feet wide to stop the march of the armies of the Danube and the

Rhine: no matter how they squandered the money, so that it silenced some

and made others bawl to answer their great purpose of preventing French

example from having an influence in England. Simply their object was

this: to make the French people miserable; to force back the Bourbons

upon them as a _means_ of making them miserable; to degrade France, to

make the people wretched; and then to have to say to the people of

England, Look there: _see what they have got by their attempts to obtain

liberty_! This was their object. They did not want Martello Towers and

honey-combed chalk-hills, and mad canals: they did not want these to

keep out the French armies. The borough-mongers and the parsons cared

nothing about the French armies. It was the French example that the

lawyers, borough-mongers, and parsons wished to keep out. And what have

they done? It is impossible to be upon this honey-combed hill, upon this

enormous mass of anti-jacobin expenditure, without seeing the

chalk-cliffs of Calais and the corn-fields of France. At this season, it

is impossible to see those fields without knowing that the farmers are

getting in their corn there as well as here; and it is impossible to

think of that fact without reflecting, at the same time, on the example

which the farmers of France hold out to the farmers of England. Looking

down from this very anti-jacobin hill, this day, I saw the parsons'

shocks of wheat and barley, left in the field after the farmer had taken

his away. Turning my head, and looking across the Channel, "There," said

I, pointing to France, "There the spirited and sensible people have

ridded themselves of this burden, of which our farmers so bitterly

complain." It is impossible not to recollect here, that, in numerous

petitions, sent up, too, by the _loyal_, complaints have been made that

the English farmer has to carry on a competition against the French

farmer who has _no tithes to pay_! Well, _loyal gentlemen_, why do not

you petition, then, to be relieved from tithes? What do you mean else?

Do you mean to call upon our big gentlemen at Whitehall for them to

compel the French to pay tithes? Oh, you loyal fools! Better hold your

tongues about the French not paying tithes. Better do that, at any rate;

for never will they pay tithes again.

Here is a large tract of _land_ upon these hills at Dover, which is the

property of the public, having been purchased at an enormous expense.

This is now let out as pasture land to people of the town. I dare say

that the letting of this land is a curious affair. If there were a

Member for Dover who would do what he ought to do, he would soon get

before the public a list of the tenants, and of the rents paid by them.

I should like very much to see such list. Butterworth, the bookseller in

Fleet-street; he who is a sort of metropolitan of the methodists, is

one of the Members for Dover. The other is, I believe, that Wilbraham or

Bootle or Bootle Wilbraham, or some such name, that is a Lancashire

magistrate. So that Dover is prettily set up. However, there is nothing

of this sort, that can in the present state of things, be deemed to be

of any real consequence. As long as the people at Whitehall can go on

paying the interest of the Debt in full, so long will there be no change

worth the attention of any rational man. In the meanwhile, the French

nation will be going on rising over us; and our Ministers will be

cringing and crawling to every nation upon earth who is known to possess

a cannon or a barrel of powder.

This very day I have read Mr. Canning's Speech at Liverpool, with a

Yankee Consul sitting on his right hand. Not a word now about the bits

of bunting and the fir frigates; but now, America is the lovely

daughter, who, in a moment of excessive love, has gone off with a lover

(to wit, the French) and left the tender mother to mourn! What a fop!

And this is the man that talked so big and so bold. This is the clever,

the profound, the blustering, too, and, above all things, "the high

spirited" Mr. Canning. However, more of this, hereafter. I must get from

this Dover, as fast as I can.

_Sandwich, Wednesday, 3rd Sept. Night._

I got to this place about half an hour after the ringing of the eight

o'clock bell, or Curfew, which I heard at about two miles' distance from

the place. From the town of Dover you come up the Castle-Hill, and have

a most beautiful view from the top of it. You have the sea, the chalk

cliffs of Calais, the high land at Boulogne, the town of Dover just

under you, the valley towards Folkestone, and the much more beautiful

valley towards Canterbury; and, going on a little further, you have the

Downs and the Essex or Suffolk coast in full view, with a most beautiful

corn country to ride along through. The corn was chiefly cut between

Dover and Walmer. The barley almost all cut and tied up in sheaf.

Nothing but the beans seemed to remain standing along here. They are not

quite so good as the rest of the corn; but they are by no means bad.

When I came to the village of Walmer, I enquired for the Castle; that

famous place, where Pitt, Dundas, Perceval, and all the whole tribe of

plotters against the French Revolution had carried on their plots. After

coming through the village of Walmer, you see the entrance of the Castle

away to the right. It is situated pretty nearly on the water's edge, and

at the bottom of a little dell, about a furlong or so from the

turnpike-road. This is now the habitation of our Great Minister, Robert

Bankes Jenkinson, son of Charles of that name. When I was told, by a

girl who was leasing in a field by the road side, that that was Walmer

Castle, I stopped short, pulled my horse round, looked steadfastly at

the gateway, and could not help exclaiming: "Oh, thou who inhabitest

that famous dwelling; thou, who hast always been in place, let who might

be out of place! Oh, thou everlasting placeman! thou sage of

'over-production,' do but cast thine eyes upon this barley-field, where,

if I am not greatly deceived, there are from seven to eight quarters

upon the acre! Oh, thou whose _Courier_ newspaper has just informed its

readers that wheat will be seventy shillings the quarter, in the month

of November: oh, thou wise man, I pray thee come forth, from thy Castle,

and tell me what thou wilt do if wheat should happen to be, at the

appointed time, thirty-five shillings, instead of seventy shillings, the

quarter. Sage of over-production, farewell. If thou hast life, thou wilt

be Minister, as long as thou canst pay the interest of the Debt in full,

but not one moment longer. The moment thou ceasest to be able to squeeze

from the Normans a sufficiency to count down to the Jews their full

tale, that moment, thou great stern-path-of-duty man, thou wilt begin to

be taught the true meaning of the words _Ministerial Responsibility_."

Deal is a most villanous place. It is full of filthy-looking people.

Great desolation of abomination has been going on here; tremendous

barracks, partly pulled down and partly tumbling down, and partly

occupied by soldiers. Everything seems upon the perish. I was glad to

hurry along through it, and to leave its inns and public-houses to be

occupied by the tarred, and trowsered, and blue-and-buff crew whose very

vicinage I always detest. From Deal you come along to Upper Deal, which,

it seems, was the original village; thence upon a beautiful road to

Sandwich, which is a rotten Borough. Rottenness, putridity is excellent

for land, but bad for Boroughs. This place, which is as villanous a hole

as one would wish to see, is surrounded by some of the finest land in

the world. Along on one side of it, lies a marsh. On the other sides of

it is land which they tell me bears _seven quarters_ of wheat to an

acre. It is certainly very fine; for I saw large pieces of radish-seed

on the road side; this seed is grown for the seedsmen in London; and it

will grow on none but rich land. All the corn is carried here except

some beans and some barley.

_Canterbury, Thursday Afternoon, 4th Sept._

In quitting Sandwich, you immediately cross a river up which vessels

bring coals from the sea. This marsh is about a couple of miles wide. It

begins at the sea-beach, opposite the Downs, to my right hand, coming

from Sandwich, and it wheels round to my left and ends at the sea-beach,

opposite Margate roads. This marsh was formerly covered with the sea,

very likely; and hence the land within this sort of semi-circle, the

name of which is Thanet, was called an _Isle_. It is, in fact, an island

now, for the same reason that Portsea is an island, and that New York is

an island; for there certainly is the water in this river that goes

round and connects one part of the sea with the other. I had to cross

this river, and to cross the marsh, before I got into the famous Isle of

Thanet, which it was my intention to cross. Soon after crossing the

river, I passed by a place for making salt, and could not help

recollecting that there are no excisemen in these salt-making places in

France, that, before the Revolution, the French were most cruelly

oppressed by the duties on salt, that they had to endure, on that

account, the most horrid tyranny that ever was known, except, perhaps,

that practised in an _Exchequer_ that shall here be nameless; that

thousands and thousands of men and women were every year sent to the

galleys for what was called smuggling salt; that the fathers and even

the mothers were imprisoned or whipped if the children were detected in

smuggling salt: I could not help reflecting, with delight, as I looked

at these salt-pans in the Isle of Thanet; I could not help reflecting,

that in spite of Pitt, Dundas, Perceval, and the rest of the crew, in

spite of the caverns of Dover and the Martello Towers in Romney Marsh:

in spite of all the spies and all the bayonets, and the six hundred

millions of Debt and the hundred and fifty millions of dead-weight, and

the two hundred millions of poor-rates that are now squeezing the

borough-mongers, squeezing the farmers, puzzling the fellows at

Whitehall and making Mark-lane a scene of greater interest than the

Chamber of the Privy Council; with delight as I jogged along under the

first beams of the sun, I reflected, that, in spite of all the malignant

measures that had brought so much misery upon England, the gallant

French people had ridded themselves of the tyranny which sent them to

the galleys for endeavouring to use without tax the salt which God sent

upon their shores. Can any man tell why we should still be paying five,

or six, or seven shillings a bushel for salt, instead of one? We did pay

fifteen shillings a bushel, tax. And why is two shillings a bushel kept

on? Because, if they were taken off, the salt-tax-gathering crew must be

discharged! This tax of two shillings a bushel, causes the consumer to

pay five, at the least, more than he would if there were no tax at all!

When, great God! when shall we be allowed to enjoy God's gifts, in

freedom, as the people of France enjoy them?

On the marsh I found the same sort of sheep as on Romney Marsh; but the

cattle here are chiefly Welsh; black, and called runts. They are nice

hardy cattle; and, I am told, that this is the description of cattle

that they fat all the way up on this north side of Kent.----When I got

upon the corn land in the Isle of Thanet, I got into a garden indeed.

There is hardly any fallow; comparatively few turnips. It is a country

of corn. Most of the harvest is in; but there are some fields of wheat

and of barley not yet housed. A great many pieces of lucerne, and all of

them very fine. I left Ramsgate to my right about three miles, and went

right across the island to Margate; but that place is so thickly settled

with stock-jobbing cuckolds, at this time of the year, that, having no

fancy to get their horns stuck into me, I turned away to my left when I

got within about half a mile of the town. I got to a little hamlet,

where I breakfasted; but could get no corn for my horse, and no bacon

for myself! All was corn around me. Barns, I should think, two hundred

feet long; ricks of enormous size and most numerous; crops of wheat,

five quarters to an acre, on the average; and a public-house without

either bacon or corn! The labourers' houses, all along through this

island, beggarly in the extreme. The people dirty, poor-looking; ragged,

but particularly _dirty_. The men and boys with dirty faces, and dirty

smock-frocks, and dirty shirts; and, good God! what a difference between

the wife of a labouring man here, and the wife of a labouring man in the

forests and woodlands of Hampshire and Sussex! Invariably have I

observed, that the richer the soil, and the more destitute of woods;

that is to say, the more purely a corn country, the more miserable the

labourers. The cause is this, the great, the big bull frog grasps all.

In this beautiful island every inch of land is appropriated by the rich.

No hedges, no ditches, no commons, no grassy lanes: a country divided

into great farms; a few trees surround the great farm-house. All the

rest is bare of trees; and the wretched labourer has not a stick of

wood, and has no place for a pig or cow to graze, or even to lie down

upon. The rabbit countries are the countries for labouring men. There

the ground is not so valuable. There it is not so easily appropriated by

the few. Here, in this island, the work is almost all done by the

horses. The horses plough the ground; they sow the ground; they hoe the

ground; they carry the corn home; they thresh it out; and they carry it

to market: nay, in this island, they _rake_ the ground; they rake up the

straggling straws and ears; so that they do the whole, except the

reaping and the mowing. It is impossible to have an idea of anything

more miserable than the state of the labourers in this part of the

country.

After coming by Margate, I passed a village called Monckton, and another

called Sarr. At Sarr there is a bridge, over which you come out of the

island, as you go into it over the bridge at Sandwich. At Monckton they

had _seventeen men working on the roads_, though the harvest was not

quite in, and though, of course, it had all to be threshed out; but, at

Monckton, they had _four threshing machines_; and they have three

threshing machines at Sarr, though there, also, they have several men

upon the roads! This is a shocking state of things; and, in spite of

everything that the Jenkinsons and the Scots can do, this state of

things must be changed.

At Sarr, or a little way further back, I saw a man who had just begun to

reap a field of canary seed. The plants were too far advanced to be cut

in order to be bleached for the making of plat; but I got the reaper to

select me a few green stalks that grew near a bush that stood on the

outside of the piece. These I have brought on with me, in order to give

them a trial. At Sarr I began to cross the marsh, and had, after this,

to come through the village of Up-street, and another village called

Steady, before I got to Canterbury. At Up-street I was struck with the

words written upon a board which was fastened upon a pole, which pole

was standing in a garden near a neat little box of a house. The words

were these. "PARADISE PLACE. _Spring guns and steel traps are set

here._" A pretty idea it must give us of Paradise to know that spring

guns and steel traps are set in it! This is doubtless some

stock-jobber's place; for, in the first place, the name is likely to

have been selected by one of that crew; and, in the next place, whenever

any of them go to the country, they look upon it that they are to begin

a sort of warfare against everything around them. They invariably look

upon every labourer as a thief.

As you approach Canterbury, from the Isle of Thanet, you have another

instance of the squanderings of the lawyer Ministers. Nothing equals the

ditches, the caverns, the holes, the tanks, and hiding-places of the

hill at Dover; but, considerable as the City of Canterbury is, that city

within its gates stands upon less ground than those horrible erections,

the barracks of Pitt, Dundas, and Perceval. They are perfectly enormous;

but thanks be unto God, they begin to crumble down. They have a sickly

hue: all is lassitude about them: endless are their lawns, their gravel

walks, and their ornaments; but their lawns are unshaven, their gravel

walks grassy, and their ornaments putting on the garments of ugliness.

You see the grass growing opposite the door-ways. A hole in the window

strikes you here and there. Lamp-posts there are, but no lamps. Here are

horse-barracks, foot-barracks, artillery-barracks, engineer-barracks: a

whole country of barracks; but, only here and there a soldier. The thing

is actually perishing. It is typical of the state of the great Thing of

things. It gave me inexpressible pleasure to perceive the gloom that

seemed to hang over these barracks, which once swarmed with soldiers and

their blithe companions, as a hive swarms with bees. These barracks now

look like the environs of a hive in winter. Westminster Abbey Church is

not the place for the monument of Pitt; the statue of the great snorting

bawler ought to be stuck up here, just in the midst of this hundred or

two of acres covered with barracks. These barracks, too, were erected in

order to compel the French to return to the payment of tithes; in order

to bring their necks again under the yoke of the lords and the clergy.

That has not been accomplished. The French, as Mr. Hoggart assures us,

have neither tithes, taxes, nor rates; and the people of Canterbury know

that they have a _hop-duty_ to pay, while Mr. Hoggart, of Broad-street,

tells them that he has farms to let, in France, where there are

hop-gardens and where there is no hop-duty. They have lately had races

at Canterbury; and the Mayor and Aldermen, in order to get the Prince

Leopold to attend them, presented him with the Freedom of the City; but

it rained all the time and he did not come! The Mayor and Aldermen do

not understand things half so well as this German Gentleman, who has

managed his matters as well, I think, as any one that I ever heard of.

This fine old town, or, rather, city, is remarkable for cleanliness and

niceness, notwithstanding it has a Cathedral in it. The country round it

is very rich, and this year, while the hops are so bad in most other

parts, they are not so very bad just about Canterbury.

_Elverton Farm, near Faversham, Friday Morning, Sept. 5._

In going through Canterbury, yesterday, I gave a boy six-pence to hold

my horse, while I went into the Cathedral, just to thank St. Swithin for

the trick that he had played my friends, the Quakers. Led along by the

wet weather till after the harvest had actually begun, and then to find

the weather turn fine, all of a sudden! This must have soused them

pretty decently; and I hear of one, who, at Canterbury, has made a

bargain by which he will certainly lose two thousand pounds. The land

where I am now is equal to that of the Isle of Thanet. The harvest is

nearly over, and all the crops have been prodigiously fine. In coming

from Canterbury, you come to the top of a hill, called Baughton Hill,

at four miles from Canterbury on the London road; and you there look

down into one of the finest flats in England. A piece of marsh comes up

nearly to Faversham; and, at the edge of that marsh lies the farm where

I now am. The land here is a deep loam upon chalk; and this is also the

nature of the land in the Isle of Thanet and all the way from that to

Dover. The orchards grow well upon this soil. The trees grow finely, the

fruit is large and of fine flavour.

In 1821 I gave Mr. William Waller, who lives here, some American

apple-cuttings; and he has now some as fine Newtown Pippins as one would

wish to see. They are very large of their sort; very free in their

growth; and they promise to be very fine apples of the kind. Mr. Waller

had cuttings from me off several sorts, in 1822. These were cut down

last year; they have, of course, made shoots this summer; and great

numbers of these shoots have fruit-spurs, which will have blossom, if

not fruit, next year. This very rarely happens, I believe; and the state

of Mr. Waller's trees clearly proves to me that the introduction of

these American trees would be a great improvement.

My American apples, when I left Kensington, promised to be very fine;

and the apples, which I have frequently mentioned as being upon cuttings

imported last Spring, promised to come to perfection; a thing which, I

believe, we have not an instance of before.

_Merryworth, Friday Evening, 5th Sept._

A friend at Tenterden told me that, if I had a mind to know Kent, I must

go through Romney Marsh to Dover, from Dover to Sandwich, from Sandwich

to Margate, from Margate to Canterbury, from Canterbury to Faversham,

from Faversham to Maidstone, and from Maidstone to Tonbridge. I found

from Mr. Waller, this morning, that the regular turnpike route, from his

house to Maidstone, was through Sittingbourne. I had been along that

road several times; and besides, to be covered with dust was what I

could not think of, when I had it in my power to get to Maidstone

without it. I took the road across the country, quitting the London

road, or rather, crossing it, in the dell, between Ospringe and

Green-street. I instantly began to go up hill, slowly, indeed; but up

hill. I came through the villages of Newnham, Doddington, Ringlestone,

and to that of Hollingbourne. I had come up hill for thirteen miles,

from Mr. Waller's house. At last, I got to the top of this hill, and

went along, for some distance, upon level ground. I found I was got upon

just the same sort of land as that on the hill at Folkestone, at

Reigate, at Ropley, and at Ashmansworth. The red clayey loam, mixed up

with great yellow flint stones. I found fine meadows here, just such as

are at Ashmansworth (that is to say, on the north Hampshire hills.) This

sort of ground is characterized by an astonishing depth that they have

to go for the water. At Ashmansworth, they go to a depth of more than

three hundred feet. As I was riding along upon the top of this hill in

Kent, I saw the same beautiful sort of meadows that there are at

Ashmansworth; I saw the corn backward; I was just thinking to go up to

some house, to ask how far they had to go for water, when I saw a large

well-bucket, and all the chains and wheels belonging to such a concern;

but here was also the tackle for a _horse_ to work in drawing up the

water! I asked about the depth of the well; and the information I

received must have been incorrect; because I was told it was three

hundred yards. I asked this of a public-house keeper farther on, not

seeing anybody where the farm-house was. I make no doubt that the depth

is, as near as possible, that of Ashmansworth. Upon the top of this

hill, I saw the finest field of beans that I have seen this year, and,

by very far, indeed, the _finest piece of hops_. A beautiful piece of

hops, surrounded by beautiful plantations of young ash, producing poles

for hop-gardens. My road here pointed towards the west. It soon wheeled

round towards the south; and, all of a sudden, I found myself upon the

edge of a hill, as lofty and as steep as that at Folkestone, at Reigate,

or at Ashmansworth. It was the same famous chalk-ridge that I was

crossing again. When I got to the edge of the hill, and before I got off

my horse to lead him down this more than mile of hill, I sat and

surveyed the prospect before me, and to the right and to the left. This

is what the people of Kent call the _Garden of Eden_. It is a district

of meadows, corn-fields, hop-gardens, and orchards of apples, pears,

cherries and filberts, with very little if any land which cannot, with

propriety, be called good. There are plantations of Chestnut and of Ash

frequently occurring; and as these are cut when long enough to make

poles for hops, they are at all times objects of great beauty.

At the foot of the hill of which I have been speaking, is the village of

Hollingbourne; thence you come on to Maidstone. From Maidstone to this

place (Merryworth) is about seven miles, and these are the finest seven

miles that I have ever seen in England or anywhere else. The Medway is

to your left, with its meadows about a mile wide. You cross the Medway,

in coming out of Maidstone, and it goes and finds its way down to

Rochester, through a break in the chalk-ridge. From Maidstone to

Merryworth I should think that there were hop-gardens on one half of

the way on both sides of the road. Then looking across the Medway, you

see hop-gardens and orchards two miles deep, on the side of a gently

rising ground: and this continues with you all the way from Maidstone to

Merryworth. The orchards form a great feature of the country; and the

plantations of Ashes and of Chestnuts that I mentioned before, add

greatly to the beauty. These gardens of hops are kept very clean, in

general, though some of them have been neglected this year owing to the

bad appearance of the crop. The culture is sometimes mixed: that is to

say, apple-trees or cherry-trees or filbert-trees and hops, in the same

ground. This is a good way, they say, of raising an orchard. I do not

believe it; and I think that nothing is gained by any of these mixtures.

They plant apple-trees or cherry-trees in rows here; they then plant a

filbert-tree close to each of these large fruit-trees; and then they

cultivate the middle of the ground by planting potatoes. This is being

too greedy. It is impossible that they can gain by this. What they gain

one way they lose the other way; and I verily believe, that the most

profitable way would be, never to mix things at all. In coming from

Maidstone I passed through a village called Teston, where Lord Basham

has a seat.

_Tonbridge, Saturday morning, 6th Sept._

I came off from Merryworth a little before five o'clock, passed the seat

of Lord Torrington, the friend of Mr. Barretto. This Mr. Barretto ought

not to be forgotten so soon. In 1820 he sued for articles of the peace

against Lord Torrington, for having menaced him, in consequence of his

having pressed his Lordship about some money. It seems that Lord

Torrington had known him in the East Indies; that they came home

together, or soon after one another; that his Lordship invited Mr.

Barretto to his best parties in India; that he got him introduced at

Court in England by Sidmouth; that he got him made a _Fellow of the

Royal Society_; and that he tried to get him introduced into Parliament.

His Lordship, when Barretto rudely pressed him for his money, reminded

him of all this, and of the many difficulties that he had had to

overcome with regard to his _colour_ and so forth. Nevertheless, the

dingy skinned Court visitant pressed in such a way that Lord Torrington

was obliged to be pretty smart with him, whereupon the other sued for

articles of the peace against his Lordship; but these were not granted

by the Court. This Barretto issued a hand-bill at the last election as a

candidate for St. Albans. I am truly sorry that he was not elected. Lord

Camelford threatened to put in his black fellow; but he was a sad

swaggering fellow; and had, at last, too much of the borough-monger in

him to do a thing so meritorious. Lord Torrington's is but an

indifferent looking place.

I here began to see Southdown sheep again, which I had not seen since

the time I left Tenterden. All along here the villages are at not more

than two miles' distance from each other. They have all large churches,

and scarcely anybody to go to them. At a village called Hadlow, there is

a house belonging to a Mr. May, the most singular looking thing I ever

saw. An immense house stuck all over with a parcel of chimneys, or

things like chimneys; little brick columns, with a sort of caps on them,

looking like carnation sticks, with caps at the top to catch the

earwigs. The building is all of brick, and has the oddest appearance of

anything I ever saw. This Tonbridge is but a common country town, though

very clean, and the people looking very well. The climate must be pretty

warm here; for in entering the town, I saw a large Althea Frutex in

bloom, a thing rare enough, any year, and particularly a year like this.

_Westerham, Saturday, Noon, 6th Sept._

Instead of going on to the Wen along the turnpike road through

Sevenoaks, I turned to my left when I got about a mile out of Tonbridge,

in order to come along that tract of country called the Weald of Kent;

that is to say, the solid clays, which have no bottom, which are unmixed

with chalk, sand, stone, or anything else; the country of dirty roads

and of oak trees. I stopped at Tonbridge only a few minutes; but in the

Weald I stopped to breakfast at a place called Leigh. From Leigh I came

to Chittingstone causeway, leaving Tonbridge Wells six miles over the

hills to my left. From Chittingstone I came to Bough-beach, thence to

Four Elms, and thence to this little market-town of Westerham, which is

just upon the border of Kent. Indeed, Kent, Surrey, and Sussex form a

joining very near to this town. Westerham, exactly like Reigate and

Godstone, and Sevenoaks, and Dorking, and Folkestone, lies between the

sand-ridge and the chalk-ridge. The valley is here a little wider than

at Reigate, and that is all the difference there is between the places.

As soon as you get over the sand hill to the south of Reigate, you get

into the Weald of Surrey; and here, as soon as you get over the sand

hill to the south of Westerham, you get into the Weald of Kent.

I have now, in order to get to the Wen, to cross the chalk-ridge once

more, and, at a point where I never crossed it before. Coming through

the Weald I found the corn very good; and, low as the ground is, wet as

it is, cold as it is, there will be very little of the wheat which will

not be housed before Saturday night. All the corn is good, and the

barley excellent. Not far from Bough-beach, I saw two oak trees, one of

which was, they told me, more than thirty feet round, and the other more

than twenty-seven; but they have been hollow for half a century. They

are not much bigger than the oak upon Tilford Green, if any. I mean in

the trunk; but they are hollow, while that tree is sound in all its

parts, and growing still. I have had a most beautiful ride through the

Weald. The day is very hot; but I have been in the shade; and my horse's

feet very often in the rivulets and wet lanes. In one place I rode above

a mile completely arched over by the boughs of the underwood, growing in

the banks of the lane. What an odd taste that man must have who prefers

a turnpike-road to a lane like this.

Very near to Westerham there are hops: and I have seen now and then a

little bit of hop garden, even in the Weald. Hops will grow well where

lucerne will grow well; and lucerne will grow well where there is a rich

top and a dry bottom. When therefore you see hops in the Weald, it is on

the side of some hill, where there is sand or stone at bottom, and not

where there is real clay beneath. There appear to be hops, here and

there, all along from nearly at Dover to Alton, in Hampshire. You find

them all along Kent; you find them at Westerham; across at Worth, in

Sussex; at Godstone, in Surrey; over to the north of Merrow Down, near

Guildford; at Godalming; under the Hog's-back, at Farnham; and all along

that way to Alton. But there, I think, they end. The whole face of the

country seems to rise, when you get just beyond Alton, and to keep up.

Whether you look to the north, the south, or west, the land seems to

rise, and the hops cease, till you come again away to the north-west, in

Herefordshire.

_Kensington, Saturday night, 6 Sept._

Here I close my day, at the end of forty-four miles. In coming up the

chalk hill from Westerham, I prepared myself for the red stiff clay-like

loam, the big yellow flints and the meadows; and I found them all. I

have now gone over this chalk-ridge in the following places: at Coombe

in the north-west of Hampshire; I mean the north-west corner, the very

extremity of the county. I have gone over it at Ashmansworth, or

Highclere, going from Newbury to Andover; at King's Clere, going from

Newbury to Winchester; at Ropley, going from Alresford to Selborne; at

Dippinghall, going from Crondall to Thursly; at Merrow, going from

Chertsey to Chilworth; at Reigate; at Westerham, and then, between

these, at Godstone; at Sevenoaks, going from London to Battle; at

Hollingbourne, as mentioned above, and at Folkestone. In all these

places I have crossed this chalk-ridge. Everywhere, upon the top of it,

I have found a flat, and the soil of all these flats I have found to be

a red stiff loam mingled up with big yellow flints. A soil difficult to

work; but by no means bad, whether for wood, hops, grass, orchards, or

corn. I once before mentioned that I was assured that the pasture upon

these bleak hills was as rich as that which is found in the north of

Wiltshire, in the neighbourhood of Swindon, where they make some of the

best cheese in the kingdom. Upon these hills I have never found the

labouring people poor and miserable, as in the rich vales. All is not

appropriated where there are coppices and wood, where the cultivation is

not so easy and the produce so very large.

After getting up the hill from Westerham, I had a general descent to

perform all the way to the Thames. When you get to Beckenham, which is

the last parish in Kent, the country begins to assume a cockney-like

appearance; all is artificial, and you no longer feel any interest in

it. I was anxious to make this journey into Kent, in the midst of

harvest, in order that I might _know_ the real state of the crops. The

result of my observations and my inquiries, is, that the crop is a _full

average_ crop of everything except barley, and that the barley yields a

great deal more than an average crop. I thought that the beans were very

poor during my ride into Hampshire; but I then saw no real bean

countries. I have seen such countries now; and I do not think that the

beans present us with a bad crop. As to the quality, it is, in no case

(except perhaps the barley), equal to that of last year. We had, last

year, an Italian summer. When the wheat, or other grain has to _ripen in

wet weather_, it will not be _bright_, as it will when it has to ripen

in fair weather. It will have a dingy or clouded appearance; and perhaps

the flour may not be quite so good. The wheat, in fact, will not be so

heavy. In order to enable others to judge, as well as myself, I took

samples from the fields as I went along. I took them very fairly, and as

often as I thought that there was any material change in the soil or

other circumstances. During the ride I took sixteen samples. These are

now at the Office of the Register, in Fleet-street, where they may be

seen by any gentleman who thinks the information likely to be useful to

him. The samples are numbered, and there is a reference pointing out the

place where each sample was taken. The opinions that I gather amount to

this: that there is an average crop of everything, and a little more of

barley.

Now then we shall see how all this tallies with the schemes, with the

intentions and expectations of our matchless gentlemen at Whitehall.

These wise men have put forth their views in the _Courier_ of the 27th

of August, and in words which ought never to be forgotten, and which, at

any rate, shall be recorded here.

"GRAIN.--During the present unsettled state of the weather, it is

impossible for the best informed persons to anticipate upon good grounds

what will be the future price of agricultural produce. Should the season

even yet prove favourable for the operations of the harvest, there is

every probability of the average price of grain continuing at that exact

price which will prove most conducive to the interests of the corn

growers, and at the same time encouraging to the agriculture of our

colonial possessions. We do not speak lightly on this subject, for we

are aware that His Majesty's Ministers have been fully alive to the

inquiries from all qualified quarters as to the effect likely to be

produced on the markets from the addition of the present crops to the

stock of wheat already on hand. The result of these inquiries is, that

in the highest quarters there exists the full expectation, that towards

the month of November, the price of wheat will nearly approach to

seventy shillings, a price which, while it affords the extent of

remuneration to the British farmer recognized by the corn laws, will at

the same time admit of the sale of the Canadian bonded wheat; and the

introduction of this foreign corn, grown by British colonists, will

contribute to keeping down our markets, and exclude foreign grain from

other quarters."

There's nice gentlemen of Whitehall! What pretty gentlemen they are!

"_Envy of surrounding nations_," indeed, to be under command of pretty

gentlemen who can make calculations so nice, and put forth predictions

so positive upon such a subject! "_Admiration of the world_," indeed, to

live under the command of men who can so control seasons and markets;

or, at least, who can so dive into the secrets of trade, and find out

the contents of the fields, barns, and ricks, as to be able to balance

things so nicely as to cause the Canadian corn to find a market, without

injuring the sale of that of the British farmer, and without admitting

that of the French farmer and the other farmers of the continent! Happy,

too happy, rogues that we are, to be under the guidance of such pretty

gentlemen, and right just is it that we should be banished for life, if

we utter a word _tending_ to bring such pretty gentlemen into contempt.

Let it be observed, that this paragraph _must_ have come from Whitehall.

This wretched paper is the demi-official organ of the Government. As to

the owners of the paper, Daniel Stewart, that notorious fellow, Street,

and the rest of them, not excluding the brother of the great Oracle,

which brother bought, the other day, a share of this vehicle of

baseness and folly; as to these fellows, they have no control other than

what relates to the expenditure and the receipts of the vehicle. They

get their news from the offices of the Whitehall people, and their paper

is the mouth-piece of those same people. Mark this, I pray you, reader;

and let the French people mark it, too, and then take their revenge for

the Waterloo insolence. This being the case, then; this paragraph

proceeding from the pretty gentlemen, what a light it throws on their

expectations, their hopes, and their fears. They see that wheat at

seventy shillings a quarter is _necessary_ to them! Ah! pray mark that!

They see that wheat at seventy shillings a quarter is necessary to them;

and, therefore, they say that wheat will be at seventy shillings a

quarter, the price, as they call it, necessary to remunerate the British

farmer. And how do the conjurers at Whitehall know this? Why, they have

made full inquiries "in qualified quarters." And the qualified quarters

have satisfied the "highest quarters," that, "towards the month of

November, the price of wheat will nearly approach to seventy shillings

the quarter!" I wonder what the words towards the "end of November," may

mean. Devil's in't if middle of September is not "_towards_ November;"

and the wheat, instead of going on towards seventy shillings, is very

fast coming down to forty. The beast who wrote this paragraph; the

pretty beast; this "envy of surrounding nations" wrote it on the 27th of

August, _a soaking wet Saturday_! The pretty beast was not aware, that

the next day was going to be fine, and that we were to have only the

succeeding Tuesday and half the following Saturday of wet weather until

the whole of the harvest should be in. The pretty beast wrote while the

rain was spattering against the window; and he did "not speak lightly,"

but was fully aware that the highest quarters, having made inquiries of

the qualified quarters, were sure that wheat would be at seventy

shillings during the ensuing year. What will be the price of wheat it is

impossible for any one to say. I know a gentleman, who is a very good

judge of such matters, who is of opinion that the average price of wheat

will be thirty-two shillings a quarter, or lower, before Christmas; this

is not quite half what the _highest quarters_ expect, in consequence of

the inquiries which they have made of the _qualified quarters_. I do not

say, that the average of wheat will come down to thirty-two shillings;

but this I know, that at Reading, last Saturday, about forty-five

shillings was the price; and, I hear, that, in Norfolk, the price is

forty-two. The _highest quarters_, and the infamous London press, will,

at any rate, be prettily exposed, before Christmas. Old Sir Thomas

Lethbridge, too, and Gaffer Gooch, and his base tribe of Pittites at

Ipswich; Coke and Suffield, and their crew; all these will be prettily

laughed at; nor will that "tall soul," Lord Milton, escape being

reminded of his profound and patriotic observation relative to "this

self-renovating country." No sooner did he see the wheat get up to sixty

or seventy shillings than he lost all his alarms; found that all things

were right, turned his back on Yorkshire Reformers, and went and toiled

for Scarlett at Peterborough: and discovered, that there was nothing

wrong, at last, and that the "self-renovating country" would triumph

over all its difficulties!--So it will, "tall soul;" it will triumph

over all its difficulties; it will renovate itself; it will purge itself

of rotten boroughs, of vile borough-mongers, their tools and their

stopgaps; it will purge itself of all the villanies which now corrode

its heart; it will, in short, free itself from those curses, which the

expenditure of eight or nine hundred millions of English money took

place in order to make perpetual: it will, in short, become free from

oppression, as easy and as happy as the gallant and sensible nation on

the other side of the Channel. This is the sort of renovation, but not

renovation by the means of wheat at seventy shillings a quarter.

Renovation it will have: it will rouse and will shake from itself curses

like the pension which is paid to Burke's executors. This is the sort of

renovation, "tall soul;" and not wheat at 70_s._ a quarter, while it is

at twenty-five shillings a quarter in France. Pray observe, reader, how

the "tall soul" _catched_ at the rise in the price of wheat: how he

_snapped_ at it: how quickly he ceased his attacks upon the Whitehall

people and upon the System. He thought he had been deceived: he thought

that things were coming about again; and so he drew in his horns, and

began to talk about the self-renovating country. This was the tone of

them _all_. This was the tone of all the borough-mongers; all the

friends of the System; all those, who, like Lethbridge, had begun to be

staggered. They had deviated, for a moment, into our path! but they

popped back again the moment they saw the price of wheat rise! All the

enemies of Reform, all the calumniators of Reformers, all the friends of

the System, most anxiously desired a rise in the price of wheat. Mark

the curious fact, that all the vile press of London; the whole of that

infamous press; that newspapers, magazines, reviews: the whole of the

base thing; and a baser surely this world never saw; that the whole of

this base thing rejoiced, exulted, crowed over me, and told an impudent

lie, in order to have the crowing; crowed, for what? _Because wheat and

bread were become dear!_ A newspaper hatched under a corrupt Priest, a

profligate Priest, and recently espoused to the hell of Pall Mall; even

this vile thing crowed because wheat and bread had become dear! Now, it

is notorious, that, heretofore, every periodical publication in this

kingdom was in the constant habit of lamenting, when bread became dear,

and of rejoicing, when it became cheap. This is notorious. Nay, it is

equally notorious, that this infamous press was everlastingly assailing

bakers, and millers, and butchers, for not selling bread, flour, and

meat cheaper than they were selling them. In how many hundreds of

instances has this infamous press caused attacks to be made by the mob

upon tradesmen of this description! All these things are notorious.

Moreover, notorious it is that, long previous to every harvest, this

infamous, this execrable, this beastly press, was engaged in stunning

the public with accounts of the _great crop_ which was just coming

forward! There was always, with this press, a prodigiously large crop.

This was invariably the case. It was never known to be the contrary.

Now these things are perfectly well known to every man in England. How

comes it, then, reader, that the profligate, the trading, the lying, the

infamous press of London, has now totally changed its tone and bias. The

base thing never now tells us that there is a great crop or even a good

crop. It never now wants cheap bread and cheap wheat and cheap meat. It

never now finds fault of bakers and butchers. It now always endeavours

to make it appear that corn is dearer than it is. The base _Morning

Herald_, about three weeks ago, not only suppressed the fact of the fall

of wheat, but asserted that there had been a rise in the price. Now _why

is all this_? That is a great question, reader. That is a very

interesting question. Why has this infamous press, which always pursues

that which it thinks its own interest; why has it taken this strange

turn? This is the reason: stupid as the base thing is, it has arrived at

a conviction, that if the price of the produce of the land cannot be

kept up to something approaching ten shillings a bushel for good wheat,

the hellish system of funding must be blown up. The infamous press has

arrived at a conviction, that that cheating, that fraudulent system by

which this press lives, must be destroyed unless the price of corn can

be kept up. The infamous traders of the press are perfectly well

satisfied, that the interest of the Debt must be reduced, unless wheat

can be kept up to nearly ten shillings a bushel. Stupid as they are, and

stupid as the fellows down at Westminster are, they know very well, that

the whole system, stock-jobbers, Jews, cant and all, go to the devil at

once, as soon as a deduction is made from the interest of the Debt.

Knowing this, they want wheat to sell high; because it has, at last,

been hammered into their skulls, that the interest cannot be paid in

full, if wheat sells low. Delightful is the dilemma in which they are.

Dear bread does not suit their manufactories, and cheap bread does not

suit their Debt. "_Envy of surrounding nations_," how hard it is that

Providence will not enable your farmers to sell dear and the consumers

to buy cheap! These are the things that you want. Admiration of the

world you are; but have these things you will not. There may be those,

indeed, who question whether you yourself know what you want; but, at

any rate, if you want these things, you will not have them.

Before I conclude, let me ask the reader to take a look at the

_singularity_ of the tone and tricks of this Six-Acts Government. Is it

not a novelty in the world to see a Government, and in ordinary seasons,

too, having its whole soul absorbed in considerations relating to the

price of corn? There are our neighbours, the French, who have got a

Government engaged in taking military possession of a great neighbouring

kingdom to free which from these very French, we have recently expended

a _hundred and fifty millions of money_. Our neighbours have got a

Government that is thus engaged, and we have got a Government that

employs itself in making incessant "inquiries in all the qualified

quarters" relative to the price of wheat! Curious employment for a

Government! Singular occupation for the Ministers of the Great George!

They seem to think nothing of Spain, with its eleven millions of people,

being in fact added to France. Wholly insensible do they appear to

concerns of this sort, while they sit thinking, day and night, upon the

price of the bushel of wheat!

However, they are not, after all, such fools as they appear to be.

Despicable, indeed, must be that nation, whose safety or whose happiness

does, in any degree, depend on so fluctuating a thing as the price of

corn. This is a matter that we must take as it comes. The seasons will

be what they will be; and all the calculations of statesmen must be made

wholly independent of the changes and chances of seasons. This has

always been the case, to be sure. What nation could ever carry on its

affairs, if it had to take into consideration the price of corn?

Nevertheless, such is the situation of _our Government_, that its very

existence, in its present way, depends upon the price of corn. The

pretty fellows at Whitehall, if you may say to them: Well, but look at

Spain; look at the enormous strides of the French; think of the

consequences in case of another war; look, too, at the growing marine of

America. See, Mr. Jenkinson, see, Mr. Canning, see, Mr. Huskisson, see,

Mr. Peel, and all ye tribe of Grenvilles, see, what tremendous dangers

are gathering together about us! "_Us!_" Aye, about _you_; but pray

think what tremendous dangers wheat at four shillings a bushel will

bring about _us_! This is the git. Here lies the whole of it. We laugh

at a Government employing itself in making calculations about the price

of corn, and in employing its press to put forth market puffs. We laugh

at these things; but we should not laugh, if we considered, that it is

on the price of wheat that the duration of the power and the profits of

these men depends. They know what they want; and they wish to believe

themselves, and to make others believe, that they shall have it. I have

observed before, but it is necessary to observe again, that all those

who are for the System, let them be Opposition or not Opposition, feel

as Whitehall feels about the price of corn. I have given an instance, in

the "tall soul;" but it is the same with the whole of them, with the

whole of those who do not wish to see this infernal System changed. I

was informed, and I believe it to be true, that the Marquis of Lansdowne

said, last April, when the great rise took place in the price of corn,

that he had always thought that the cash-measures had but little effect

on prices; but that he was now satisfied that those measures had no

effect at all on prices! Now, what is our situation; what is the

situation of this country, if we must have the present Ministry, or a

Ministry of which the Marquis of Lansdowne is to be a Member, if the

Marquis of Lansdowne did utter these words? And again, I say, that I

verily believe he did utter them.

Ours is a Government that now seems to depend very much upon the

_weather_. The old type of a ship at sea will not do now, ours is a

weather Government; and to know the state of it, we must have recourse

to those glasses that the Jews carry about. Weather depends upon the

winds, in a great measure; and I have no scruple to say, that the

situation of those two Right Honourable youths, that are now gone to the

Lakes in the north; that their situation, next winter, will be rendered

very irksome, not to say perilous, by the present easterly wind, if it

should continue about fifteen days longer. Pitt, when he had just made a

monstrous issue of paper, and had, thereby, actually put the match which

blowed up the old She Devil in 1797--Pitt, at that time, congratulated

the nation, that the wisdom of Parliament had established a solid system

of finance. Anything but solid it assuredly was; but his system of

finance was as worthy of being called solid, as that system of

Government which now manifestly depends upon the weather and the winds.

Since my return home (it is now Thursday, 11th September), I have

received letters from the east, from the north, and from the west. All

tell me that the harvest is very far advanced, and that the crops are

free from blight. These letters are not particular as to the weight of

the crop; except that they all say that the barley is excellent. The

wind is now coming from the east. There is every appearance of the fine

weather continuing. Before Christmas, we shall have the wheat down to

what will be a fair average price in future. I always said that the late

rise was a mere puff. It was, in part, a scarcity rise. The wheat of

1821 was grown and bad. That of 1822 had to be begun upon in July. The

crop has had to last thirteen months and a half. The present crop will

have to last only eleven months, or less. The crop of barley, last year,

was so very bad; so very small; and the crop of the year before so very

bad in quality that wheat was malted, last year, in great quantities,

instead of barley. This year, the crop of barley is prodigious. All

these things considered wheat, if the cash-measures had had no effect,

must have been a hundred and forty shillings a quarter, and barley

eighty. Yet the first never got to seventy, and the latter never got to

forty! And yet there was a man who calls himself a statesman to say that

that mere puff of a rise satisfied him that the cash-measures had never

had any effect! Ah! they are all _afraid_ to believe in the effect of

those cash-measures: they tremble like children at the sight of the rod,

when you hold up before them the effect of those cash-measures. Their

only hope, is, that I am wrong in my opinions upon that subject;

because, if I am right, their System is condemned to speedy destruction!

I thus conclude, for the present, my remarks relative to the harvest and

the price of corn. It is the great subject of the day; and the comfort

is, that we are now speedily to see whether I be right or whether the

Marquis of Lansdowne be right. As to the infamous London press, the

moment the wheat comes down to forty shillings; that is to say, an

average Government return of forty shillings, I will spend ten pounds in

placarding this infamous press, after the manner in which we used to

placard the base and detestable enemies of the QUEEN. This infamous

press has been what is vulgarly called "running its rigs," for several

months past. The _Quakers_ have been urging it on, under-handed. They

have, I understand, been bribing it pretty deeply, in order to

calumniate me, and to favour their own monopoly, but, thank God, the

cunning knaves have outwitted themselves. They won't play at cards; but

they will play at _Stocks_; they will play at Lottery Tickets, and they

will play at Mark-lane. They have played a silly game, this time. Saint

Swithin, that good old Roman Catholic Saint, seemed to have set a trap

for them: he went on, wet, wet, wet, even until the harvest began. Then,

after two or three days' sunshine, shocking wet again. The ground

soaking, the wheat growing, and the "_Friends_;" the gentle Friends,

seeking the Spirit, were as busy amongst the sacks at Mark-lane as the

devil in a high wind. In short they bought away, with all the gain of

Godliness, _and a little more_, before their eyes. All of a sudden,

Saint Swithin took away his clouds; out came the sun; the wind got

round to the east; just sun enough and just wind enough; and as the

wheat ricks everywhere rose up, the long jaws of the Quakers dropped

down; and their faces of slate became of a darker hue. That sect will

certainly be punished, this year; and, let us hope, that such a change

will take place in their concerns as will compel a part of them to

labour, at any rate; for, at present, their sect is a perfect monster in

society; a whole sect, not one man of whom earns his living by the sweat

of his brow. A sect a great deal worse than the Jews; for some of them

do work. However, GOD send us the easterly wind, for another fortnight,

and we shall certainly see some of this sect at work.