RURAL RIDE FROM PETERSFIELD TO KENSINGTON.

_Petworth, Saturday, 12th Nov. 1825._

I was at this town in the summer of 1823, when I crossed Sussex from

Worth to Huntington in my way to Titchfield in Hampshire. We came this

morning from Petersfield, with an intention to cross to Horsham, and go

thence to Worth, and then into Kent; but Richard's horse seemed not to

be fit for so strong a bout, and therefore we resolved to bend our

course homewards, and first of all to fall back upon our resources at

Thursley, which we intend to reach to-morrow, going through North

Chapel, Chiddingfold, and Brook.

At about four miles from Petersfield we passed through a village called

Rogate. Just before we came to it I asked a man who was hedging on the

side of the road how much he got a day. He said, 1_s._ 6_d._: and he

told me that the _allowed_ wages was 7_d._ a day for the man _and a

gallon loaf a week for the rest of his family_; that is to say, one

pound and two and a quarter ounces of bread for each of them; and

nothing more! And this, observe, is one-third short of the bread

allowance of gaols, to say nothing of the meat and clothing and lodging

of the inhabitants of gaols. If the man have full work; if he get his

eighteen-pence a day, the whole nine shillings does not purchase a

gallon loaf each for a wife and three children, and two gallon loaves

for himself. In the gaols the convicted felons have a pound and a half

each of bread a day to begin with: they have some meat generally, and it

has been found absolutely necessary to allow them meat when they work at

the tread-mill. It is impossible to make them work at the tread-mill

without it. However, let us take the bare allowance of bread allowed in

the gaols. This allowance is, for five people, fifty-two pounds and a

half in the week; whereas the man's nine shillings will buy but

fifty-two pounds of bread; and this, observe, is a vast deal better than

the state of things in the north of Hampshire, where the day-labourer

gets but eight shillings a week. I asked this man how much a day they

gave to a young able man who had no family, and who was compelled to

come to the parish-officers for work. Observe that there are a great

many young men in this situation, because the farmers will not employ

single men _at full wages_, these full wages being wanted for the

married man's family, just to keep them alive according to the

calculation that we have just seen. About the borders of the north of

Hampshire they give to these single men two gallon loaves a week, or, in

money, two shillings and eight-pence, and nothing more. Here, in this

part of Sussex, they give the single man seven-pence a day, that is to

say, enough to buy two pounds and a quarter of bread for six days in the

week, and as he does not work on the Sunday there is no seven-pence

allowed for the Sunday, and of course nothing to eat: and this is the

allowance, settled by the magistrates, for a young, hearty, labouring

man; and that, too, in the part of England where, I believe, they live

better than in any other part of it. The poor creature here has

seven-pence a day for six days in the week to find him food, clothes,

washing, and lodging! It is just seven-pence, less than one half of what

the meanest foot soldier in the standing army receives; besides that the

latter has clothing, candle, fire, and lodging into the bargain! Well

may we call our happy state of things the "envy of surrounding nations,

and the admiration of the world!" We hear of the efforts of Mrs. Fry,

Mr. Buxton, and numerous other persons, to improve the situation of

felons in the gaols; but never, no never, do we catch them ejaculating

one single pious sigh for these innumerable sufferers, who are doomed to

become felons or to waste away their bodies by hunger.

When we came into the village of Rogate, I saw a little group of persons

standing before a blacksmith's shop. The church-yard was on the other

side of the road, surrounded by a low wall. The earth of the church-yard

was about four feet and a half higher than the common level of the

ground round about it; and you may see, by the nearness of the church

windows to the ground, that this bed of earth has been made by the

innumerable burials that have taken place in it. The group, consisting

of the blacksmith, the wheelwright, perhaps, and three or four others,

appeared to me to be in a deliberative mood. So I said, looking

significantly at the church-yard, "It has taken a pretty many thousands

of your fore-fathers to raise that ground up so high." "Yes, Sir," said

one of them. "And," said I, "for about nine hundred years those who

built that church thought about religion very differently from what we

do." "Yes," said another. "And," said I, "do you think that all those

who made that heap there are gone to the devil?" I got no answer to

this. "At any rate," added I, "they never worked for a pound and a half

of bread a day." They looked hard at me, and then looked hard at one

another; and I, having trotted off, looked round at the first turning,

and saw them looking after us still. I should suppose that the church

was built about seven or eight hundred years ago, that is to say, the

present church; for the first church built upon this spot was, I dare

say, erected more than a thousand years ago. If I had had time, I should

have told this group that, before the Protestant Reformation, the

labourers of Rogate received four-pence a day from Michaelmas to

Lady-day; five-pence a day from Lady-day to Michaelmas, except in

harvest and grass-mowing time, when able labourers had seven-pence a

day; and that, at this time, bacon was _not so much as a halfpenny a

pound_: and, moreover, that the parson of the parish maintained out of

the tithes all those persons in the parish that were reduced to

indigence by means of old age or other cause of inability to labour. I

should have told them this, and, in all probability a great deal more,

but I had not time; and, besides, they will have an opportunity of

reading all about it in my little book called the _History of the

Protestant Reformation_.

From Rogate we came on to Trotten, where a Mr. Twyford is the squire,

and where there is a very fine and ancient church close by the squire's

house. I saw the squire looking at some poor devils who were making

"wauste improvements, ma'am," on the road which passes by the squire's

door. He looked uncommonly hard at me. It was a scrutinizing sort of

look, mixed, as I thought, with a little surprise, if not of jealousy,

as much as to say, "I wonder who the devil you can be?" My look at the

squire was with the head a little on one side, and with the cheek drawn

up from the left corner of the mouth, expressive of anything rather than

a sense of inferiority to the squire, of whom, however, I had never

heard speak before. Seeing the good and commodious and capacious church,

I could not help reflecting on the intolerable baseness of this

description of men, who have remained mute as fishes, while they have

been taxed to build churches for the convenience of the Cotton-Lords and

the Stock-Jobbers. First, their estates have been taxed to pay interest

of debts contracted with these Stock-jobbers, and to make wars for the

sale of the goods of the Cotton-Lords. This drain upon their estates has

collected the people into great masses, and now the same estates are

taxed to build churches for them in these masses. And yet the tame

fellows remain as silent as if they had been born deaf and dumb and

blind. As towards the labourers, they are sharp and vigorous and brave

as heart could wish; here they are bold as Hector. They pare down the

wretched souls to what is below gaol allowance. But, as towards the

taxers, they are gentle as doves. With regard, however, to this Squire

Twyford, he is not, as I afterwards found, without some little

consolation; for one of his sons, I understand, is, like squire

Rawlinson of Hampshire, _a police justice in London_! I hear that Squire

Twyford was always a distinguished champion of loyalty; what they call a

staunch friend of Government; and it is therefore natural that the

Government should be a staunch friend to him. By the taxing of his

estate, and paying the Stock-Jobbers out of the proceeds, the people

have been got together in great masses, and, as there are Justices

wanted to keep them in order in those masses, it seems but reasonable

that the squire should, in one way or another, enjoy some portion of the

profits of keeping them in order. However, this cannot be the case with

every loyal squire; and there are many of them who, for want of a share

in the distribution, have been totally extinguished. I should suppose

Squire Twyford to be in the second rank upwards (dividing the whole of

the proprietors of land into five ranks). It appears to me that pretty

nearly the whole of this second rank is gone; that the Stock-Jobbers

have eaten them clean up, having less mercy than the cannibals, who

usually leave the hands and the feet; so that this squire has had pretty

good luck.

From Trotten we came to Midhurst, and, having baited our horses, went

into Cowdry Park to see the ruins of that once noble mansion, from which

the Countess of Salisbury (the last of the Plantagenets) was brought by

the tyrant Henry the Eighth to be cruelly murdered, in revenge for the

integrity and the other great virtues of her son, Cardinal Pole, as we

have seen in Number Four, paragraph 115, of the "History of the

Protestant Reformation." This noble estate, one of the finest in the

whole kingdom, was seized on by the king, after the possessor had been

murdered on his scaffold. She had committed no crime. No crime was

proved against her. The miscreant Thomas Cromwell, finding that no form

of trial would answer his purpose, invented a new mode of bringing

people to their death; namely, a Bill, brought into Parliament,

condemning her to death. The estate was then granted to a Sir Anthony

Brown, who was physician to the king. By the descendants of this Brown,

one of whom was afterwards created Lord Montague, the estate has been

held to this day; and Mr. Poyntz, who married the sole remaining heiress

of this family, a Miss Brown, is now the proprietor of the estate,

comprising, I believe, _forty or fifty manors_, the greater part of

which are in this neighbourhood, some of them, however, extending more

than twenty miles from the mansion. We entered the park through a great

iron gateway, part of which being wanting, the gap was stopped up by a

hurdle. We rode down to the house and all round about and in amongst the

ruins, now in part covered with ivy, and inhabited by innumerable

starlings and jackdaws. The last possessor was, I believe, that Lord

Montague who was put an end to by the celebrated _nautical adventure_ on

the Rhine along with the brother of Sir Glory. These two sensible

worthies took it into their heads to go down a place something

resembling the waterfall of an overshot mill. They were drowned just as

two young kittens or two young puppies would have been. And as an

instance of the truth that it is an ill wind that blows nobody good, had

it not been for this sensible enterprise, never would there have been a

Westminster Rump to celebrate the talents and virtues of Westminster's

Pride and England's Glory. It was this Lord Montague, I believe, who had

this ancient and noble mansion completely repaired, and fitted up as a

place of residence: and a few days, or a very few weeks, at any rate,

after the work was completed, the house was set on fire (by accident, I

suppose), and left nearly in the state in which it now stands, except

that the ivy has grown up about it and partly hidden the stones from our

sight. You may see, however, the hour of the day or night at which the

fire took place; for there still remains the brass of the face of the

clock, and the hand pointing to the hour. Close by this mansion there

runs a little river which runs winding away through the valleys, and at

last falls into the Arron. After viewing the ruins, we had to return

into the turnpike road, and then enter another part of the park, which

we crossed, in order to go to Petworth. When you are in a part of this

road through the park you look down and see the house in the middle of a

very fine valley, the distant boundary of which, to the south and

south-west, is the South Down Hills. Some of the trees here are very

fine, particularly some most magnificent rows of the Spanish chestnut. I

asked the people at Midhurst where Mr. Poyntz himself lived; and they

told me at the _lodge_ in the park, which lodge was formerly the

residence of the head keeper. The land is very good about here. It is

fine rich loam at top, with clay further down. It is good for all sorts

of trees, and they seem to grow here very fast.

We got to Petworth pretty early in the day. On entering it you see the

house of Lord Egremont, which is close up against the park-wall, and

which wall bounds this little vale on two sides. There is a sort of

town-hall here, and on one side of it there is the bust of Charles the

Second, I should have thought; but they tell me it is that of Sir

William Wyndham, from whom Lord Egremont is descended. But there is

_another building_ much more capacious and magnificent than the

town-hall; namely, the Bridewell, which, from the modernness of its

structure, appears to be one of those "wauste improvements, Ma'am,"

which distinguish this _enlightened_ age. This structure vies, in point

of magnitude with the house of Lord Egremont itself, though that is one

of the largest mansions in the whole kingdom. The Bridewell has a wall

round it that I should suppose to be twenty feet high. This place was

not wanted, when the labourer got twice as much instead of half as much

as the common standing soldier. Here you see the true cause why the

young labouring man is "_content_" to exist upon 7_d._ a day, for six

days in the week, and nothing for Sunday. Oh! we are a most free and

enlightened people; our happy constitution in church and state has

supplanted Popery and slavery; but we go to a Bridewell unless we

quietly exist and work upon 7_d._ a day!

_Thursley, Sunday, 13th Nov._

To our great delight we found Richard's horse quite well this morning,

and off we set for this place. The first part of our road, for about

three miles and a half, was through Lord Egremont's Park. The morning

was very fine; the sun shining; a sharp frost after a foggy evening; the

grass all white, the twigs of the trees white, the ponds frozen over;

and everything looking exceedingly beautiful. The spot itself being one

of the very finest in the world, not excepting, I dare say, that of the

father of Saxe Cobourg itself, who has, doubtless, many such fine

places.

In a very fine pond, not far from the house and close by the road, there

are some little artificial islands, upon one of which I observed an

arbutus loaded with its beautiful fruit (quite ripe), even more thickly

than any one I ever saw even in America. There were, on the side of the

pond, a most numerous and beautiful collection of water-fowl, foreign as

well as domestic. I never saw so great a variety of water-fowl collected

together in my life. They had been ejected from the water by the frost,

and were sitting apparently in a state of great dejection: but this

circumstance has brought them into a comparatively small compass; and we

facing our horses about, sat and looked at them, at the pond, at the

grass, at the house, till we were tired of admiring. Everything here is

in the neatest and most beautiful state. Endless herds of deer, of all

the varieties of colours; and, what adds greatly to your pleasure in

such a case, you see comfortable retreats prepared for them in different

parts of the woods. When we came to what we thought the end of the park,

the gate-keeper told us that we should find other walls to pass through.

We now entered upon woods, we then came to another wall, and there we

entered upon farms to our right and to our left. At last we came to a

third wall, and the gate in that let us out into the turnpike road. The

gate-keeper here told us, that the whole enclosure was _nine miles

round_; and this, after all, forms, probably, not a quarter part of what

this nobleman possesses. And is it wrong that one man should possess so

much? By no means; but in my opinion it is wrong that a system should

exist which compels this man to have his estate taken away from him

unless he throw the junior branches of his family for maintenance upon

the public.

Lord Egremont bears an excellent character. Everything that I have ever

heard of him makes me believe that he is worthy of this princely estate.

But I cannot forget that his two brothers, who are now very old men,

have had, from their infancy, enormous revenues in sinecure places in

the West Indies, while the general property and labour of England is

taxed to maintain those West Indies in their state of dependence upon

England; and I cannot forget that the burden of these sinecures are

amongst the grievances of which the West Indians justly complain. True,

the taxing system has taken from the family of Wyndham, during the lives

of these two gentlemen, as much, and even more, than what that family

has gained by those sinecures; but then let it be recollected, that it

is not the helpless people of England who have been the cause of this

system. It is not the fault of those who receive 7_d._ a day. It is the

fault of the family of Wyndham and of such persons; and, if they have

chosen to suffer the Jews and jobbers to take away so large a part of

their income, it is not fair for them to come to the people at large to

make up for the loss.

Thus it has gone on. The great masses of property have, in general, been

able to take care of themselves: but the little masses have melted away

like butter before the sun. The little gentry have had not even any

disposition to resist. They merit their fate most justly. They have vied

with each other in endeavours to ingratiate themselves with power, and

to obtain compensation for their losses. The big fishes have had no

feeling for them; have seen them sink with a sneer, rather than with

compassion; but, at last, the cormorant threatens even themselves; and

they are struggling with might and main for their own preservation. They

everywhere "most liberally" take the Stock-jobber or the Jew by the

hand, though they hate him mortally at the same time for his power to

outdo them on the sideboard, on the table, and in the equipage. They

seem to think nothing of the extinguishment of the small fry; they hug

themselves in the thought that they escape; and yet, at times, their

minds misgive them, and they tremble for their own fate. The country

people really gain by the change; for the small gentry have been

rendered, by their miseries, so niggardly and so cruel, that it is quite

a blessing, in a village, to see a rich Jew or Jobber come to supplant

them. They come, too, with far less cunning than the half-broken gentry.

Cunning as the Stock-Jobber is in Change Alley, I defy him to be cunning

enough for the country people, brought to their present state of

duplicity by a series of cruelties which no pen can adequately describe.

The Stock-Jobber goes from London with the _cant of humanity_ upon his

lips, at any rate; whereas the half-broken Squire takes not the least

pains to disguise the hardness of his heart.

It is impossible for any just man to regret the sweeping away of this

base race of Squires; but the sweeping of them away is produced by

causes that have a wider extent. These causes reach the good as well as

the bad: all are involved alike: like the pestilence, this horrible

system is no respecter of persons; and decay and beggary mark the whole

face of the _country_.

North Chapel is a little town in the Weald of Sussex where there were

formerly post-chaises kept; but where there are none kept now. And here

is another complete revolution. In almost every country town the

post-chaise houses have been lessened in number, and those that remain

have become comparatively solitary and mean. The guests at inns are not

now gentlemen, but _bumpers_, who, from being called (at the inns)

"riders," became "travellers," and are now "commercial gentlemen," who

go about in _gigs_, instead of on horseback, and who are in such numbers

as to occupy a great part of the room in all the inns, in every part of

the country. There are, probably, twenty thousand of them always out,

who may perhaps have, on an average throughout the year, three or four

thousand "ladies" travelling with them. The expense of this can be

little short of fifteen millions a year, all to be paid by the

country-people who consume the goods, and a large part of it to be drawn

up to the Wen.

From North Chapel we came to Chiddingfold, which is in the Weald of

Surrey; that is to say, the country of oak-timber. Between these two

places there are a couple of pieces of that famous commodity, called

"Government property." It seems that these places, which have extensive

buildings on them, were for the purpose of making gunpowder. Like most

other of these enterprises, they have been given up, after a time, and

so the ground and all the buildings, and the monstrous fences, erected

at enormous expense, have been sold. They were sold, it seems, some time

ago, in lots, with the intention of being pulled down and carried away,

though they are now nearly new, and built in the most solid,

substantial, and expensive manner; brick walls eighteen inches through,

and the buildings covered with lead and slate. It appears that they have

been purchased by a Mr. Stovell, a Sussex banker; but for some reason or

other, though the purchase was made long ago, "Government" still holds

the possession; and, what is more, it keeps people there to take care of

the premises. It would be curious to have a complete history of these

pretty establishments at Chiddingford; but this is a sort of history

that we shall never be treated with until there be somebody in

Parliament to rummage things to the bottom. It would be very easy to

call for a specific account of the cost of these establishments, and

also of the quantity of powder made at them. I should not be at all

surprised, if the concern, all taken together, brought the powder to a

hundred times the price at which similar powder could have been

purchased.

When we came through Chiddingfold, the people were just going to church;

and we saw a carriage and pair conveying an old gentleman and some

ladies to the churchyard steps. Upon inquiry, we found that this was

Lord Winterton, whose name, they told us, was Turnour. I thought I had

heard of all the Lords, first or last; but, if I had ever heard of this

one before, I had forgotten him. He lives down in the Weald, between the

gunpowder establishments and Horsham, and has the reputation of being a

harmless, good sort of man, and that being the case I was sorry to see

that he appeared to be greatly afflicted with the gout, being obliged to

be helped up the steps by a stout man. However, it is as broad, perhaps,

as it is long: a man is not to have all the enjoyments of making the

gout, and the enjoyments of abstinence too: that would not be fair play;

and I dare say that Lord Winterton is just enough to be content with the

consequences of his enjoyments.

This Chiddingfold is a very pretty place. There is a very pretty and

extensive green opposite the church; and we were at the proper time of

the day to perceive that the modern system of education had by no means

overlooked this little village. We saw _the schools_ marching towards

the church in military order. Two of them passed us on our road. The

boys looked very hard at us, and I saluted them with "There's brave

boys, you'll all be parsons or lawyers or doctors." Another school

seemed to be in a less happy state. The scholars were too much in

uniform to have had their clothes purchased by their parents; and they

looked, besides, as if a little more victuals and a little less

education would have done as well. There were about twenty of them

without one single tinge of red in their whole twenty faces. In short I

never saw more deplorable looking objects since I was born. And can it

be of any use to expend money in this sort of way upon poor creatures

that have not half a bellyful of food? We had not breakfasted when we

passed them. We felt, at that moment, what hunger was. We had some bits

of bread and meat in our pockets, however; and these, which, were merely

intended as stay-stomachs, amounted, I dare say, to the allowance of

any half-dozen of these poor boys for the day. I could, with all my

heart, have pulled the victuals out of my pocket and given it to them;

but I did not like to do that which would have interrupted the march,

and might have been construed into a sort of insult. To quiet my

conscience, however, I gave a poor man that I met soon afterwards

sixpence, under pretence of rewarding him for telling me the way to

Thursley, which I knew as well as he, and which I had determined, in my

own mind, not to follow.

We had now come on the Turnpike road from my Lord Egremont's Park to

Chiddingfold. I had made two or three attempts to get out of it, and to

bear away to the north-west, to get through the oak-woods to Thursley;

but I was constantly prevented by being told that the road which I

wished to take would lead me to Haslemere. If you talk to ostlers, or

landlords, or post-boys; or, indeed, to almost anybody else, they mean

by a _road_ a _turnpike road_; and they positively will not talk to you

about any other. Now, just after quitting Chiddingfold, Thursley lies

over fine woods and coppices, in a north-west direction, or thereabouts;

and the Turnpike road, which goes from Petworth to Godalming, goes in a

north-north-east direction. I was resolved, be the consequences what

they might, not to follow the Turnpike road one single inch further; for

I had not above three miles or thereabouts to get to Thursley, through

the woods; and I had, perhaps, six miles at least to get to it the other

way; but the great thing was to see the interior of these woods; to see

the stems of the trees, as well as the tops of them. I saw a lane

opening in the right direction; I saw indeed, that my horses must go up

to their knees in clay; but I resolved to enter and go along that lane,

and long before the end of my journey I found myself most amply

compensated for the toil that I was about to encounter. But talk of

toil! It was the horse that had the toil; and I had nothing to do but to

sit upon his back, turn my head from side to side and admire the fine

trees in every direction. Little bits of fields and meadows here and

there, shaded all over, or nearly all over, by the surrounding trees.

Here and there a labourer's house buried in the woods. We had drawn out

our luncheons and eaten them while the horses took us through the clay;

but I stopped at a little house, and asked the woman, who looked very

clean and nice, whether she would let us dine with her. She said "Yes,"

with all her heart, but that she had no place to put our horses in, and

that her dinner would not be ready for an hour, when she expected her

husband home from church. She said they had a bit of bacon and a pudding

and some cabbage; but that she had not much bread in the house. She had

only one child, and that was not very old, so we left her, quite

convinced that my old observation is true, that people in the woodland

countries are best off, and that it is absolutely impossible to reduce

them to that state of starvation in which they are in the corn-growing

part of the kingdom. Here is that great blessing, abundance of fuel at

all times of the year, and particularly in the winter.

We came on for about a mile further in these clayey lanes, when we

renewed our inquiries as to our course, as our road now seemed to point

towards Godalming again. I asked a man how I should get to Thursley? He

pointed to some fir-trees upon a hill, told me I must go by them, and

that there was no other way. "Where then," said I, "is Thursley?" He

pointed with his hand, and said, "Right over those woods; but there is

no road there, and it is impossible for you to get through those woods."

"Thank you," said I; "but through those woods we mean to go." Just at

the border of the woods I saw a cottage. There must be some way to that

cottage; and we soon found a gate that let us into a field, across which

we went to this cottage. We there found an old man and a young one. Upon

inquiry we found that it was _possible_ to get through these woods.

Richard gave the old man threepence to buy a pint of beer, and I gave

the young one a shilling to pilot us through the woods. These were

oak-woods with underwood beneath; and there was a little stream of water

running down the middle of the woods, the annual and long overflowings

of which has formed a meadow sometimes a rod wide, and sometimes twenty

rods wide, while the bed of the stream itself was the most serpentine

that can possibly be imagined, describing, in many places, nearly a

complete circle, going round for many rods together, and coming within a

rod or two of a point that it had passed before. I stopped the man

several times, to sit and admire this beautiful spot, shaded in great

part by lofty and wide-spreading oak trees. We had to cross this brook

several times, over bridges that the owner had erected for the

convenience of the fox-hunters. At last, we came into an ash-coppice,

which had been planted in regular rows, at about four feet distances,

which had been once cut, and which was now in the state of six years'

growth. A road through it, made for the fox-hunters, was as straight as

a line, and of so great a length, that, on entering it, the farther end

appeared not to be a foot wide. Upon seeing this, I asked the man whom

these coppices belonged to, and he told me to Squire Leech, at Lea. My

surprise ceased, but my admiration did not.

A piece of ordinary coppice ground, close adjoining this, and with no

timber in it, and upon just the same soil (if there had been such a

piece), would, at ten years' growth, be worth, at present prices, from

five to seven pounds the acre. This coppice, at ten years' growth, will

be worth twenty pounds the acre; and, at the next cutting, when the

stems will send out so many more shoots, it will be worth thirty pounds

the acre. I did not ask the question when I afterwards saw Mr. Leech,

but, I dare say, the ground was trenched before it was planted; but what

is that expense when compared with the great, the permanent profit of

such an undertaking? And, above all things, what a convenient species of

property does a man here create. Here are no tenants' rack, no anxiety

about crops and seasons; the rust and the mildew never come here; a man

knows what he has got, and he knows that nothing short of an earthquake

can take it from him, unless, indeed, by attempting to vie with the

stock-jobber in the expense of living, he enable the stock-jobber to

come and perform the office of the earthquake. Mr. Leech's father

planted, I think it was, forty acres of such coppice in the same manner;

and, at the same time, he _sowed the ground with acorns_. The acorns

have become oak trees, and have begun and made great progress in

diminishing the value of the ash, which have now to contend against the

shade and the roots of the oak. For present profit, and, indeed, for

permanent profit, it would be judicious to grub up the oak; but the

owner has determined otherwise. He cannot endure the idea of destroying

an oak wood.

If such be the profit of planting ash, what would be the profit of

planting locust, even for poles or stakes? The locust would outgrow the

ash, as we have seen in the case of Mr. Gunter's plantation, more than

three to one. I am satisfied that it will do this upon any soil, if you

give the trees fifteen years to grow in; and, in short, that the locusts

will be trees when the ash are merely poles, if both are left to grow up

in single stems. If in coppice, the locust will make as good poles; I

mean as large and as long poles in six years, as the ash will in ten

years: to say nothing of the superior durability of the locust. I have

seen locusts, at Mr. Knowles's, at Thursley, sufficient for a hop-pole,

for an ordinary hop-pole, with only five years' growth in them, and

leaving the last year's growth to be cut off, leaving the top of the

pole three-quarters of an inch through. There is nothing that we have

ever heard of, of the timber kind, equal to this in point of quickness

of growth. In parts of the county where hop-poles are not wanted,

espalier stakes, wood for small fencing, hedge stakes, hurdle stakes,

fold-shores, as the people call them, are always wanted; and is it not

better to have a thing that will last twenty years, than a thing that

will last only three? I know of no English underwood which gives a hedge

stake to last even _two years_. I should think that a very profitable

way of employing the locust would be this. Plant a coppice, the plants

two feet apart. Thus planted, the trees will protect one another against

the wind. Keep the side shoots pruned off. At the end of six years, the

coppice, if well planted and managed, will be, at the very least, twenty

feet high to the tips of the trees. Not if the grass and weeds are

suffered to grow up to draw all the moisture up out of the ground, to

keep the air from the young plants, and to intercept the gentle rains

and the dews; but trenched ground, planted carefully, and kept clean;

and always bearing in mind that hares and rabbits and young locust trees

will never live together; for the hares and rabbits will not only bite

them off, but will gnaw them down to the ground, and, when they have

done that, will scratch away the ground to gnaw into the very root. A

gentleman bought some locust trees of me last year, and brought me a

dismal account in the summer of their being all dead; but I have since

found that they were all eaten up by the hares. He saw some of my

refuse; some of those which were too bad to send to him, which were a

great deal higher than his head. His ground was as good as mine,

according to his account; but I had no hares to fight against; or else

mine would have been all dead too.

I say, then, that a locust plantation, in pretty good land, well

managed, would be twenty feet high in six years; suppose it, however, to

be only fifteen, there would be, at the bottom, wood to make two locust

PINS for ship-building; two locust pins at the bottom of each tree. Two

at the very least; and here would be twenty-two thousand locust pins to

the acre, probably enough for the building of a seventy-four gun ship.

These pins are about eighteen inches long, and, perhaps, an inch and

half through; and there is this surprising quality in the wood of the

locust, that it is just as hard and as durable at five or six years'

growth as it is at fifty years' growth. Of which I can produce an

abundance of instances. The _stake_ which I brought home from America,

and which is now at Fleet-street, had stood as a stake for about eight

and twenty years, as certified to me by Judge Mitchell, of North

Hampstead in Long Island, who gave me the stake, and who said to me at

the time, "Now are you really going to take that crooked miserable stick

to England!" Now it is pretty well known, at least, I have been so

informed, that our Government have sent to America in consequence of my

writings about the locust, to endeavour to get locust pins for the navy.

I have been informed that they have been told that the American

Government has bought them all up. Be this as it may, I know that a

waggon load of these pins is, in America itself, equal in value to a

waggon load of barrels of the finest flour. This being undeniable, and

the fact being undeniable that we can grow locust pins here, that I can

take a seed to-day, and say that it shall produce two pins in seven

years' time, will it not become an article of heavy accusation against

the Government if they neglect even one day to set about tearing up

their infernal Scotch firs and larches in Wolmer Forest and elsewhere,

and putting locust trees in their stead, in order, first to provide this

excellent material for ship-building; and next to have some fine

plantations in the Holt Forest, Wolmer Forest, the New Forest, the

Forest of Dean, and elsewhere, the only possible argument against doing

which being, that I may possibly take a ride round amongst their

plantations, and that it may be everlastingly recorded that it was I who

was the cause of the Government's adopting this wise and beneficial

measure?

I am disposed to believe, however, that the Government will not be

brutish enough, obstinately to reject the advice given to them on this

head, it being observed, however, that I wish to have no hand in their

proceedings, directly or indirectly. I can sell all the trees that I

have for sale to other customers. Let them look out for themselves; and

as to any reports that their creatures may make upon the subjects I

shall be able to produce proofs enough that such reports, if

unfavourable, are false. I wrote, in a Register from Long Island, that I

could if I would tell insolent Castlereagh, who was for making

Englishmen dig holes one day and fill them up the next, how he might

_profitably put something into those holes_, but that I would not tell

him as long as the Borough-mongers should be in the state in which they

then were. They are no longer in that state, I thank God. There has been

no positive law to alter their state, but it is manifest that there must

be such law before it be long. Events are working together to make the

country worth living in, which, for the great body of the people, is at

present hardly the case. Above all things in the world, it is the duty

of every man, who has it in his power, to do what he can to promote the

creation of materials for the building of ships in the best manner; and

it is now a fact of perfect notoriety, that, with regard to the building

of ships, it cannot be done in the best manner without the assistance of

this sort of wood.

I have seen a specimen of the locust wood used in the making of

furniture. I saw it in the posts of a bed-stead; and any thing more

handsome I never saw in my life. I had used it myself in the making of

rules; but I never saw it in this shape before. It admits of a polish

nearly as fine as that of box. It is a bright and beautiful yellow. And

in bedsteads, for instance, it would last for ever, and would not become

loose at the joints, like oak and other perishable wood; because, like

the live oak and the red cedar, no worm or insect ever preys upon it.

There is no fear of the quantity being too great. It would take a

century to make as many plantations as are absolutely wanted in England.

It would be a prodigious creation of real and solid wealth. Not such a

creation as that of paper money, which only takes the dinner from one

man and gives it to another, which only gives an unnatural swell to a

city or a watering place by beggaring a thousand villages; but it would

be a creation of money's worth things. Let any man go and look at a

farmhouse that was built a hundred years ago. He will find it, though

very well built with stone or brick, actually falling to pieces, unless

very frequently repaired, owing entirely to the rotten wood in the

window-sills, the door-sills, the plates, the pins, the door frames, the

window frames, and all those parts of the beams, the joists, and the

rafters, that come in contact with the rain or the moisture. The two

parts of a park pailing which give way first, are, the parts of the post

that meet the ground, and the pins which hold the rails to the post.

Both these rot long before the pailing rots. Now, all this is avoided by

the use of locust as sills, as joists, as posts, as frames, and as pins.

Many a roof has come down merely from the rotting of the pins. The best

of spine oak is generally chosen for these pins. But after a time, the

air gets into the pin-hole. The pin rots from the moist air, it gives

way, the wind shakes the roof, and down it comes, or it swags, the wet

gets in, and the house is rotten. In ships, the pins are the first

things that give way. Many a ship would last twenty years after it is

broken up, if put together with locust pins. I am aware that some

readers will become tired of this subject; and, nothing but my

conviction of its being of the very first importance to the whole

kingdom could make me thus dwell upon it.

We got to Thursley after our beautiful ride through Mr. Leech's

coppices, and the weather being pretty cold, we found ourselves most

happily situated here by the side of an _American fire-place_, making

extremely comfortable a room which was formerly amongst the most

uncomfortable in the world. This is another of what the malignant

parsons call Cobbett's Quackeries. But my real opinion is that the whole

body of them, all put together, have never, since they were born,

conferred so much benefit upon the country, as I have conferred upon it

by introducing this fire-place. Mr. Judson of Kensington, who is the

manufacturer of them, tells me that he has a great demand, which gives

me much pleasure; but really, coming to conscience, no man ought to sit

by one of these fire-places that does not go the full length with me

both in politics and religion. It is not fair for them to enjoy the

warmth without subscribing to the doctrines of the giver of the warmth.

However, as I have nothing to do with Mr. Judson's affair, either as to

the profit or the loss, he must sell the fire-places to whomsoever he

pleases.

_Kensington, Sunday, 20th Nov._

Coming to Godalming on Friday, where business kept us that night, we had

to experience at the inn the want of our American fire-place. A large

and long room to sit in, with a miserable thing called a screen to keep

the wind from our backs, with a smoke in the room half an hour after the

fire was lighted, we, consuming a full bushel of coals in order to keep

us warm, were not half so well off as we should have been in the same

room, and without any screen, and with two gallons of coals, if we had

our American fire-place. I gave the landlord my advice upon the subject,

and he said he would go and look at the fire-place at Mr. Knowles's.

That was precisely one of those rooms which stand in absolute need of

such a fire-place. It is, I should think, five-and-thirty, or forty feet

long, and pretty nearly twenty feet wide. I could sooner dine with a

labouring man upon his allowance of bread, such as I have mentioned

above, than I would, in winter time, dine in that room upon turbot and

sirloin of beef. An American fire-place, with a good fire in it, would

make every part of that room pleasant to dine in in the coldest day in

winter. I saw a public-house drinking-room, where the owner has tortured

his invention to get a little warmth for his guests, where he fetches

his coals in a waggon from a distance of twenty miles or thereabouts,

and where he consumes these coals by the bushel, to effect that which he

cannot effect at all, and which he might effect completely with about a

fourth part of the coals.

It looked like rain on Saturday morning, we therefore sent our horses on

from Godalming to Ripley, and took a post-chaise to convey us after

them. Being shut up in the post-chaise did not prevent me from taking a

look at a little snug house stuck under the hill on the road side, just

opposite the old chapel on St. Catherine's-hill, which house was not

there when I was a boy. I found that this house is now occupied by the

family Molyneux, for ages the owners of Losely Park, on the out-skirts

of which estate this house stands. The house at Losely is of great

antiquity, and had, or perhaps has, attached to it the great manors of

Godalming and Chiddingfold. I believe that Sir Thomas More lived at

Losely, or, at any rate, that the Molyneuxes are, in some degree,

descended from him. The estate is, I fancy, theirs yet; but here they

are, in this little house, while one Gunning (an East Indian, I

believe) occupies the house of their ancestors. At Send, or Sutton,

where Mr. Webb Weston inhabited, there is a Baron somebody, with a De

before his name. The name is German or Dutch, I believe. How the Baron

came there I know not; but as I have read his name amongst the _Justices

of the Peace_ for the county of Surrey, he must have been born in

England, or the law has been violated in making him a Justice of the

Peace, seeing that no person not born a subject of the king, and a

subject in this country too, can lawfully hold a commission under the

crown, either civil or military. Nor is it lawful for any man born

abroad of Scotch or Irish parents, to hold such commission under the

crown, though such commissions have been held, and are held, by persons

who are neither natural-born subjects of the king, nor born of English

parents abroad. It should also be known and borne in mind by the people,

that it is unlawful to grant any pension from the crown to any foreigner

whatever. And no naturalization act can take away this disability. Yet

the Whigs, as they call themselves, granted such pensions during the

short time that they were in power.

When we got to Ripley, we found the day very fine, and we got upon our

horses and rode home to dinner, after an absence of just one month,

agreeably to our original intention, having seen a great deal of the

country, having had a great deal of sport, and having, I trust, laid in

a stock of health for the winter, sufficient to enable us to withstand

the suffocation of this smoking and stinking Wen.

But Richard and I have done something else, besides ride, and hunt, and

course, and stare about us, during this month. He was eleven years old

last March, and it was now time for him to begin to know something about

letters and figures. He has learned to work in the garden, and having

been a good deal in the country, knows a great deal about farming

affairs. He can ride anything of a horse, and over anything that a horse

will go over. So expert at hunting, that his first teacher, Mr. Budd,

gave the hounds up to his management in the field; but now he begins to

talk about nothing but _fox-hunting_! That is a dangerous thing. When he

and I went from home, I had business at Reigate. It was a very wet

morning, and we went off long before daylight in a post-chaise,

intending to have our horses brought after us. He began to talk in

anticipation of the sport he was going to have, and was very inquisitive

as to the probability of our meeting with fox-hounds, which gave me

occasion to address him thus: "Fox-hunting is a very fine thing, and

very proper for people to be engaged in, and it is very desirable to be

able to ride well and to be in at the death; but that is not ALL; that

is not everything. Any fool can ride a horse, and draw a cover; any

groom or any stable-fellow, who is as ignorant as the horse, can do

these things; but all gentlemen that go a fox-hunting [I hope God will

forgive me for the lie] are scholars, Richard. It is not the riding, nor

the scarlet coats, that make them gentlemen; it is their scholarship."

What he thought I do not know; for he sat as mute as a fish, and I could

not see his countenance. "So," said I, "you must now begin to learn

something, and you must begin with arithmetic." He had learned from mere

play, to read, being first set to work of his own accord, to find out

what was said about Thurtell, when all the world was talking and reading

about Thurtell. This had induced us to give him Robinson Crusoe; and

that had made him a passable reader. Then he had scrawled down letters

and words upon paper, and had written letters to me, in the strangest

way imaginable. His knowledge of figures he had acquired from the

necessity of knowing the several numbers upon the barrels of seeds

brought from America, and the numbers upon the doors of houses. So that

I had pretty nearly a blank sheet of paper to begin upon; and I have

always held it to be stupidity to the last degree to attempt to put

book-learning into children who are too young to reason with.

I began with a pretty long lecture on the utility of arithmetic; the

absolute necessity of it, in order for us to make out our accounts of

the trees and seeds that we should have to sell in the winter, and the

utter impossibility of our getting paid for our pains unless we were

able to make out our accounts, which accounts could not be made out

unless we understood something about arithmetic. Having thus made him

understand the utility of the thing, and given him a very strong

instance in the case of our nursery affairs, I proceeded to explain to

him the meaning of the word arithmetic, the power of figures, according

to the place they occupied. I then, for it was still dark, taught him to

add a few figures together, I naming the figures one after another,

while he, at the mention of each new figure said the amount, and if

incorrectly, he was corrected by me. When we had got a sum of about 24,

I said now there is another line of figures on the left of this, and

therefore you are to put down the 4 and carry 2. "What is _carrying_?"

said he. I then explained to him the _why_ and the _wherefore_ of this,

and he perfectly understood me at once. We then did several other little

sums; and, by the time we got to Sutton, it becoming daylight, I took a

pencil and set him a little sum upon paper, which, after making a

mistake or two, he did very well. By the time we got to Reigate he had

done several more, and at last, a pretty long one, with very few errors.

We had business all day, and thought no more of our scholarship until

we went to bed, and then we did, in our post-chaise fashion, a great

many lines in arithmetic before we went to sleep. Thus we went on mixing

our riding and hunting with our arithmetic, until we quitted Godalming,

when he did a sum very nicely in _multiplication of money_, falling a

little short of what I had laid out, which was to make him learn the

four rules in whole numbers first, and then in money, before I got home.

Friends' houses are not so good as inns for executing a project like

this; because you cannot very well be by yourself; and we slept but four

nights at inns during our absence. So that we have actually stolen the

time to accomplish this job, and Richard's Journal records that he was

more than fifteen days out of the thirty-one coursing or hunting.

Nothing struck me more than the facility, the perfect readiness with

which he at once performed addition of money. There is a _pence table_

which boys usually learn, and during the learning of which they usually

get no small number of thumps. This table I found it wholly unnecessary

to set him. I had written it for him in one of the leaves of his journal

book. But, upon looking at it, he said, "I don't want this, because, you

know, I have nothing to do but to _divide by twelve_." That is right,

said I, you are a clever fellow, Dick; and I shut up the book.

Now, when there is so much talk about education, let me ask how many

pounds it generally costs parents to have a boy taught this much of

arithmetic; how much time it costs also; and, which is a far more

serious consideration, how much mortification, and very often how much

loss of health, it costs the poor scolded broken-hearted child, who

becomes dunder-headed and dull for all his life-time, merely because

that has been imposed upon him as a task which he ought to regard as an

object of pleasant pursuit. I never even once desired him to stay a

moment from any other thing that he had a mind to go at. I just wrote

the sums down upon paper, laid them upon the table, and left him to

tackle them when he pleased. In the case of the multiplication-table,

the learning of which is something of a job, and which it is absolutely

necessary to learn perfectly, I advised him to go up into his bed-room

and read it twenty times over out loud every morning before he went a

hunting, and ten times over every night after he came back, till it all

came as pat upon his lips as the names of persons that he knew. He did

this, and at the end of about a week he was ready to set on upon

multiplication. It is the irksomeness of the thing which is the great

bar to learning of every sort. I took care not to suffer irksomeness to

seize his mind for a moment, and the consequence was that which I have

described. I wish clearly to be understood as ascribing nothing to

extraordinary _natural_ ability. There are, as I have often said, as

many _sorts_ of men as there are of dogs; but I do not pretend to be of

any peculiarly excellent sort, and I have never discovered any

indications of it. There are, to be sure, sorts that are naturally

stupid; but, the generality of men are not so; and I believe that every

boy of the same age, equally healthy, and brought up in the same manner,

would (unless of one of the stupid kinds) learn in just the same sort of

way; but not if begun to be thumped at five or six years old, when the

poor little things have no idea of the utility of anything; who are

hardly sensible beings, and have but just understanding enough to know

that it will hurt them if they jump down a chalk pit. I am sure, from

thousands of instances that have come under my own eyes, that to begin

to teach children book-learning before they are capable of reasoning, is

the sure and certain way to enfeeble their minds for life; and, if they

have natural genius, to cramp, if not totally to destroy that genius.

I think I shall be tempted to mould into a little book these lessons of

arithmetic given to Richard. I think that a boy of sense, and of age

equal to that of my scholar, would derive great profit from such a

little book. It would not be equal to my verbal explanations, especially

accompanied with the other parts of my conduct towards my scholar; but

at any rate, it would be plain; it would be what a boy could understand;

it would encourage him by giving him a glimpse at the reasons for what

he was doing: it would contain principles; and the difference between

principles and rules is this, that the former are persuasions and the

latter are commands. There is a great deal of difference between

carrying 2 for such and such a reason, and carrying 2 because you _must_

carry 2. You see boys that can cover reams of paper with figures, and do

it with perfect correctness too; and at the same time, can give you not

a single reason for any part of what they have done. Now this is really

doing very little. The rule is soon forgotten, and then all is

forgotten. It would be the same with a lawyer that understood none of

the principles of law. As far as he could find and remember cases

exactly similar in all their parts to the case which he might have to

manage, he would be as profound a lawyer as any in the world; but if

there was the slightest difference between his case and the cases he had

found upon record, there would be an end of his law.

Some people will say, here is a monstrous deal of vanity and egotism;

and if they will tell me, how such a story is to be told without

exposing a man to this imputation, I will adopt their mode another

time. I get nothing by telling the story. I should get full as much by

keeping it to myself; but it may be useful to others, and therefore I

tell it. Nothing is so dangerous as supposing that you have eight

wonders of the world. I have no pretensions to any such possession. I

look upon my boy as being like other boys in general. Their fathers can

teach arithmetic as well as I; and if they have not a mind to pursue my

method, they must pursue their own. Let them apply to the outside of the

head and to the back, if they like; let them bargain for thumps and the

birch rod; it is their affair and not mine. I never yet saw in my house

a child that was _afraid_; that was in any fear whatever; that was ever

for a moment under any sort of apprehension, on account of the learning

of anything; and I never in my life gave a command, an order, a request,

or even advice, to look into any book; and I am quite satisfied that the

way to make children dunces, to make them detest books, and justify that

detestation, is to tease them and bother them upon the subject.

As to the _age_ at which children ought to begin to be taught, it is

very curious, that, while I was at a friend's house during my ride, I

looked into, by mere accident, a little child's abridgment of the

History of England: a little thing about twice as big as a crown-piece.

Even into this abridgment the historian had introduced the circumstance

of Alfred's father, who, "through a _mistaken notion_ of kindness to his

son, had suffered him to live to the age of twelve years without any

attempt being made to give him education." How came this writer to know

that it was a _mistaken notion_? Ought he not rather, when he looked at

the result, when he considered the astonishing knowledge and great deeds

of Alfred--ought he not to have hesitated before he thus criticised the

notions of the father? It appears from the result that the notions of

the father were perfectly correct; and I am satisfied, that if they had

begun to thump the head of Alfred when he was a child, we should not at

this day have heard talk of Alfred the Great.

* * * * *

Great apologies are due to the OLD LADY from me, on account of my

apparent inattention towards her, during her recent, or rather, I may

say, her present, fit of that tormenting disorder which, as I observed

before, comes upon her by _spells_. Dr. M'CULLOCH may say what he

pleases about her being "_wi' bairn_." I say it's the wet gripes; and I

saw a poor old mare down in Hampshire in just the same way; but God

forbid the catastrophe should be the same, for they shot poor old Ball

for the hounds. This disorder comes by spells. It sometimes seems as if

it were altogether going off; the pulse rises, and the appetite returns.

By-and-by a fresh grumbling begins to take place in the bowels. These

are followed by acute pains; the patient becomes tremulous; the pulse

begins to fall, and the most gloomy apprehensions begin again to be

entertained. At every spell the pulse does not cease falling till it

becomes lower than it was brought to by the preceding spell; and thus,

spell after spell, finally produces the natural result.

It is useless at present to say much about the equivocating and

blundering of the newspapers, relative to the cause of the fall. They

are very shy, extremely cautious; become wonderfully _wary_, with regard

to this subject. They do not know what to make of it. They all remember,

that I told them that their prosperity was delusive; that it would soon

come to an end, while they were telling me of the falsification of all

my predictions. I told them the Small-note Bill had only given a

_respite_. I told them that the foreign loans, and the shares, and all

the astonishing enterprises, arose purely out of the Small-note Bill;

and that a short time would see the Small-note Bill driving the gold out

of the country, and bring us back to another restriction, OR, to wheat

at four shillings a bushel. They remember that I told them all this; and

now, some of them begin to _regard me as the principal cause of the

present embarrassments_! This is pretty work indeed! What! I! The poor

deluded creature, whose predictions were all falsified, who knew nothing

at all about such matters, who was a perfect pedlar in political

economy, who was "a conceited and obstinate old dotard," as that polite

and enlightened paper, the _Morning Herald_, called me: is it possible

that such a poor miserable creature can have had the power to produce

effects so prodigious? Yet this really appears to be the opinion of one,

at least, of these Mr. Brougham's best possible public instructors. The

_Public Ledger_, of the 16th of November, has the following passage:--

"It is fully ascertained that the Country Banking Establishments in

England have latterly been compelled to limit their paper circulation,

for the writings of Mr. COBBETT are widely circulated in the

Agricultural districts, and they have been so successful as to induce

the _Boobies_ to call for gold in place of country paper, a circumstance

which has _produced a greater effect on the currency than any

exportation of the precious metals_ to the Continent, either of Europe

or America, could have done, although it too must have contributed to

render money for a season scarce."

And, so, the "_boobies_" call for gold instead of country bank-notes!

Bless the "_boobies_"! I wish they would do it to a greater extent,

which they would, if they were not so dependent as they are upon the

ragmen. But, does the _Public Ledger_ think that those unfortunate

creatures who suffered the other day at Plymouth, would have been

"_boobies_," if they had gone and got sovereigns before the banks broke?

This brother of the broad sheet should act justly and fairly as I do. He

should ascribe these demands for gold to Mr. Jones of Bristol and not to

me. Mr. Jones taught the "boobies" that they might have gold for asking

for, or send the ragmen to jail. It is Mr. Jones, therefore, that they

should blame, and not me. But, seriously speaking, what a mess, what a

pickle, what a horrible mess, must the thing be in, if any man, or any

thousand of men, or any hundred thousand of men, can change the value of

money, unhinge all contracts and all engagements, and plunge the

pecuniary affairs of a nation into confusion? I have been often accused

of wishing to be thought the cleverest man in the country; but surely it

is no vanity (for vanity means unjust pretension) for me to think myself

the cleverest man in the country, if I can of my own head, and at my own

pleasure, produce effects like these. Truth, however, and fair dealing

with my readers, call upon me to disclaim so haughty a pretension. I

have no such power as this public instructor ascribes to me. Greater

causes are at work to produce such effects; causes wholly uncontrollable

by me, and, what is more, wholly uncontrollable in the long run by the

Government itself, though heartily co-operating with the bank directors.

These united can do nothing to arrest the progress of events. Peel's

Bill produced the horrible distresses of 1822; the part repeal of that

bill produced a respite, that respite is now about to expire; and

neither Government nor bank, nor both joined together, can prevent the

ultimate consequences. They may postpone them for a little; but mark,

every postponement will render the catastrophe the more dreadful.

I see everlasting attempts by the "Instructor" to cast blame upon the

bank. I can see no blame in the bank. The bank has issued no small

notes, though it has liberty to do it. The bank pays in gold agreeably

to the law. What more does anybody want with the bank. The bank lends

money I suppose when it chooses; and is not it to be the judge when it

shall lend and when it shall not? The bank is blamed for putting out

paper and causing high prices; and blamed at the same time for not

putting out paper to accommodate merchants and keep them from breaking.

It cannot be to blame for both, and, indeed, it is blameable for

neither. It is the fellows that put out the paper and then break that do

the mischief. However, a breaking merchant, whom the bank will no

longer prop up, will naturally blame the bank, just as every insolvent

blames a solvent that will not lend him money.

When the foreign loans first began to go on, Peter M'Culloch and all the

Scotch were cock o' whoop. They said that there were prodigious

advantages in lending money to South America, that the interest would

come home to enrich us; that the amount of the loans would go out

chiefly in English manufactures; that the commercial gains would be

enormous; and that this country would thus be made rich, and powerful,

and happy, by employing in this way its "surplus capital," and thereby

contributing at the same time to the uprooting of despotism and

superstition, and the establishing of freedom and liberality in their

stead. Unhappy and purblind, I could not for the life of me see the

matter in this light. My perverted optics could perceive no _surplus

capital_ in bundles of bank-notes. I could see no gain in sending out

goods which somebody in England was to pay for, without, as it appeared

to me, the smallest chance of ever being paid again. I could see no

chance of gain in the purchase of a bond, nominally bearing interest at

six per cent., and on which, as I thought, no interest at all would ever

be paid. I despised the idea of paying bits of paper by bits of paper. I

knew that a bond, though said to bear six per cent. interest, was not

worth a farthing, unless some interest were paid upon it. I declared,

when Spanish bonds were at seventy-five, that I would not give a crown

for a hundred pounds in them, if I were compelled to keep them unsold

for seven years; and I now declare, as to South American bonds, I think

them of less value than the Spanish bonds now are, if the owner be

compelled to keep them unsold for a year. It is very true, that these

opinions agree with my _wishes_; but they have not been created by those

wishes. They are founded on my knowledge of the state of things, and

upon my firm conviction of the folly of expecting that the interest of

these things will ever come from the respective countries to which they

relate.

Mr. Canning's despatch, which I shall insert below, has, doubtless, had

a tendency (whether expected or not) to prop up the credit of these

sublime speculations. The propping up of the credit of them can,

however, do no sort of good. The keeping up the price of them for the

present may assist some of the actual speculators, but it can do nothing

for the speculation in the end, and this speculation, which was wholly

an effect of the Small-note Bill, will finally have a most ruinous

effect. How is it to be otherwise? Have we ever received any evidence,

or anything whereon to build a belief, that the interest on these bonds

will be paid? Never; and the man must be mad; mad with avarice or a love

of gambling, that could advance his money upon any such a thing as these

bonds. The fact is, however, that it was not _money_: it was paper: it

was borrowed, or created, for the purpose of being advanced. Observe,

too, that when the loans were made, money was at a lower value than it

is now; therefore, those who would have to pay the interest, would have

too much to pay if they were to fulfil their engagement. Mr. Canning's

State Paper clearly proves to me, that the main object of it is to make

the loans to South America finally be paid, because, if they be not

paid, not only is the amount of them lost to the bond-holders, but there

is an end, at once, to all that brilliant _commerce_ with which that

shining Minister appears to be so much enchanted. All the silver and

gold, all the Mexican and Peruvian dreams vanish in an instant, and

leave behind the wretched Cotton-Lords and wretched Jews and Jobbers to

go to the workhouse, or to Botany Bay. The whole of the loans are said

to amount to about twenty-one or twenty-two millions. It is supposed,

that twelve millions have actually been sent out in goods. These goods

have perhaps been paid for here, but they have been paid for out of

English money or by English promises. The money to pay with has come

from those who gave money for the South American bonds, and these

bond-holders are to be repaid, if repaid at all, _by the South

Americans_. If not paid at all, then England will have sent away twelve

millions worth of goods for nothing; and this would be the Scotch way of

obtaining enormous advantages for the country by laying out its

"_surplus capital_" in foreign loans. I shall conclude this subject by

inserting a letter which I find in the _Morning Chronicle_, of the 18th

instant. I perfectly agree with the writer. The Editor of the _Morning

Chronicle_ does not, as appears by the remark which he makes at the head

of it; but I shall insert the whole, his remark and all, and add a

remark or two of my own.--[See _Register_, vol. 56, p. 556.]

"This is a pretty round sum--a sum, the very naming of which would make

anybody but half-mad Englishmen stare. To make comparisons with _our own

debt_ would have little effect, that being so monstrous that every other

sum shrinks into nothingness at the sight of it. But let us look at the

United States, for they have _a debt_, and a debt is a debt; and this

debt of the United States is often cited as an apology for ours, even

the parsons having at last come to cite the United States as presenting

us with a system of perfection. What, then, is this debt of the United

States? Why, it was on the 1st of January, 1824, this 90,177,962; that

is to say dollars; that is to say, at four shillings and sixpence the

dollar, just _twenty millions sterling_; that is to say, 594,000 pounds

_less_ than our 'surplus capital' men have lent to the South Americans!

But now let us see what is the net revenue of this same United States.

Why, 20,500,755, that is to say, in sterling money, three millions,

three hundred and thirty thousand, and some odd hundreds; that is to

say, almost to a mere fraction, a _sixth part_ of the whole gross amount

of the debt. Observe this well, that the whole of the debt amounts to

only six times as much as one single year's net revenue. Then, again,

look at the exports of the United States. These exports, in one single

year, amount to 74,699,030 dollars, and in pounds sterling L16,599,783.

Now, what can the South American State show in this way? Have they any

exports? Or, at least, have they any that any man can speak of with

certainty? Have they any revenue wherewith to pay the interest of a

debt, when they are borrowing the very means of maintaining themselves

now against the bare name of their king? We are often told that the

Americans borrowed their money to carry on their Revolutionary war with.

_Money!_ Aye; a farthing is money, and a double sovereign is no more

than money. But surely some regard is to be had to the _quantity_; some

regard is to be had to the amount of the money; and is there any man in

his senses that will put the half million, which the Americans borrowed

of the Dutch, in competition, that will name on the same day, this half

million, with the twenty-one millions and a half borrowed by the South

Americans as above stated? In short, it is almost to insult the

understandings of my readers, to seem to institute any comparison

between the two things; and nothing in the world, short of this

gambling, this unprincipled, this maddening paper-money system, could

have made men look with patience for one single moment at loans like

these, tossed into the air with the hope and expectation of re-payment.

However, let the bond-owners keep their bonds. Let them feel the sweets

of the Small-note Bill, and of the consequent puffing up of the English

funds. The affair is theirs. They have rejected my advice; they have

listened to the broad sheet; and let them take all the consequences. Let

them, with all my heart, die with starvation, and as they expire, let

them curse Mr. BROUGHAM'S best possible public Instructor."

_Uphusband (Hampshire), Thursday, 24th Aug. 1826._

We left Burghclere last evening, in the rain; but as our distance was

only about seven miles, the consequence was little. The crops of corn,

except oats, have been very fine hereabouts; and there are never any

pease, nor any beans, grown here. The sainfoin fields, though on these

high lands, and though the dry weather has been of such long

continuance, look as green as watered meadows, and a great deal more

brilliant and beautiful. I have often described this beautiful village

(which lies in a deep dell) and its very variously shaped environs, in

my _Register_ of November, 1822. This is one of those countries of chalk

and flint and dry-top soil and hard roads and high and bare hills and

deep dells, with clumps of lofty trees, here and there, which are so

many rookeries: this is one of those countries, or rather, approaching

towards those countries, of downs and flocks of sheep, which I like so

much, which I always get to when I can, and which many people seem to

flee from as naturally as men flee from pestilence. They call such

countries _naked_ and _barren_, though they are, in the summer months,

actually covered with meat and with corn.

I saw, the other day, in the Morning Herald London "best public

instructor," that all those had _deceived themselves_, who had expected

to see the price of agricultural produce brought down by the lessening

of the quantity of paper-money. Now, in the first place, corn is, on an

average, a seventh lower in price than it was last year at this time;

and what would it have been, if the crop and the stock had now been

equal to what they were last year? All in good time, therefore, good Mr.

Thwaites. Let us have a little time. The "best public instructors" have,

as yet, only fallen, in number sold, about a third, since this time last

year. Give them a little time, good Mr. Thwaites, and you will see them

come down to your heart's content. Only let us fairly see an end to

small notes, and there will soon be not two daily "best public

instructors" left in all the "entire" great "British Empire."

But, as man is not to live on bread alone, so corn is not the _only_

thing that the owners and occupiers of the land have to look to. There

are timber, bark, underwood, wool, hides, pigs, sheep, and cattle. All

those together make, in amount, four times the corn, at the very least.

I know that _all_ these have greatly fallen in price since last year;

but I am in a sheep and wool country, and can speak positively as to

them, which are two articles of very great importance. As to sheep; I am

speaking of Southdowns, which are the great stock of these counties; as

to sheep they have fallen one-third in price since last August, lambs as

well as ewes. And, as to the wool, it sold, in 1824, at 40_s._ a tod: it

sold last year, at 35_s._ a tod; and it now sells at 19_s._ a tod! A tod

is 28lb. avoirdupois weight; so that the price of Southdown wool now is

8_d._ a pound and a fraction over; and this is, I believe, cheaper than

it has ever been known within the memory of the oldest man living! The

"best public instructor" may, perhaps, think, that sheep and wool are a

trifling affair. There are many thousands of farmers who keep each a

flock of at least a thousand sheep. An ewe yields about 3lb. of wool, a

wether 4lb., a ram 7lb. Calculate, good Mr. Thwaites, what a difference

it is when this wool becomes 8_d._ a pound instead of 17_d._, and

instead of 30_d._ as it was not many years ago! In short, every middling

sheep farmer receives, this year, about 250_l._ less, as the produce of

sheep and wool, than he received last year; and, on an average, 250_l._

is more than half his rent.

There is a great falling off in the price of horses, and of all cattle

except fat cattle; and, observe, when the prospect is good, it shows a

rise in the price of lean cattle; not in that of the meat which is just

ready to go into the mouth. Prices will go on gradually falling, as they

did from 1819 to 1822 inclusive, unless upheld by untoward seasons, or

by an issue of assignats; for, mind, it would be no joke, no sham, _this

time_; it would be an issue of as real, as _bona fide_ assignats as ever

came from the mint of any set of rascals that ever robbed and enslaved a

people in the names of "liberty and law."

_East Everley (Wiltshire), Sunday, 27th August, Evening._

We set off from Uphusband on Friday, about ten o'clock, the morning

having been wet. My sons came round, in the chaise, by Andover and

Weyhill, while I came right across the country towards Ludgarshall,

which lies in the road from Andover to this place. I never knew the

_flies_ so troublesome, in England, as I found them in this ride. I was

obliged to carry a great bough, and to keep it in constant motion, in

order to make the horse peaceable enough to enable me to keep on his

back. It is a country of fields, lanes, and high hedges; so that no

_wind_ could come to relieve my horse; and, in spite of all I could do,

a great part of him was covered with foam from the sweat. In the midst

of this, I got, at one time, a little out of my road, in, or near, a

place called Tangley. I rode up to the garden-wicket of a cottage, and

asked the woman, who had two children, and who seemed to be about thirty

years old, which was the way to Ludgarshall, which I knew could not be

more than about _four miles_ off. She did _not know_! A very neat,

smart, and pretty woman; but she did not know the way to this rotten

borough, which was, I was sure, only about four miles off! "Well, my

dear good woman," said I, "but you _have been_ at

LUDGARSHALL?"--"No."--"Nor at Andover?" (six miles another

way)--"No."--"Nor at Marlborough?" (nine miles another

way)--"No."--"Pray, were you born in this house?"--"Yes."--"And how far

have you ever been from this house?"--"Oh! I have been _up in the

parish_ and over _to Chute_." That is to say, the utmost extent of her

voyages had been about two and a half miles! Let no one laugh at her,

and, above all others, let not me, who am convinced, that the

_facilities_, which now exist, of _moving human bodies from place to

place_, are amongst the _curses_ of the country, the destroyers of

industry, of morals, and, of course, of happiness. It is a great error

to suppose, that people are rendered stupid by remaining always in the

same place. This was a very acute woman, and as well behaved as need to

be. There was, in July last (last month) a Preston-man, who had never

been further from home than Chorley (about eight or ten miles), and who

started off, _on foot_, and went, _alone_, to Rouen, in France, and back

again to London, in the space of about ten days; and that, too, without

being able to speak, or to understand, a word of French. N.B. Those

gentlemen, who, at Green-street, in Kent, were so kind to this man,

_upon finding that he had voted for me_, will be pleased to accept of my

best thanks. Wilding (that is the man's name) was full of expressions of

gratitude towards these gentlemen. He spoke of others who were good to

him on his way; and even at Calais he found friends on my account; but

he was particularly loud in his praises of the gentlemen in Kent, who

had been so good and so kind to him, that he seemed quite in an extasy

when he talked of their conduct.

Before I got to the rotten-borough, I came out upon a Down, just on the

border of the two counties, Hampshire and Wiltshire. Here I came up with

my sons, and we entered the rotten-borough together. It contained some

rashers of bacon and a very civil landlady; but it is one of the most

mean and beggarly places that man ever set his eyes on. The curse

attending corruption seems to be upon it. The look of the place would

make one swear, that there never was a clean shirt in it, since the

first stone of it was laid. It must have been a large place once, though

it now contains only 479 persons, men, women, and children. The borough

is, as to all practical purposes, as much private property as this pen

is my private property. Aye, aye! Let the petitioners of Manchester

bawl, as long as they like, against all other evils; but, until they

touch this _master-evil_, they do nothing at all.

Everley is but about three miles from Ludgarshall, so that we got here

in the afternoon of Friday: and, in the evening a very heavy storm came

and drove away all flies, and made the air delightful. This is a real

_Down_-country. Here you see miles and miles square without a tree, or

hedge, or bush. It is country of green-sward. This is the most famous

place in all England for _coursing_. I was here, at this very inn, with

a party eighteen years ago; and the landlord, who is still the same,

recognized me as soon as he saw me. There were forty brace of greyhounds

taken out into the field on one of the days, and every brace had one

course, and some of them two. The ground is the finest in the world;

from two to three miles for the hare to run to cover, and not a stone

nor a bush nor a hillock. It was here proved to me, that the hare is, by

far, the swiftest of all English animals; for I saw three hares, in one

day, _run away_ from the dogs. To give dog and hare a fair trial, there

should be but _one_ dog. Then, if that dog got so close as to compel the

hare _to turn_, that would be a proof that the dog ran fastest. When the

dog, or dogs, never get near enough to the hare to induce her to _turn_,

she is said, and very justly, to "_run away_" from them; and, as I saw

three hares do this in one day, I conclude, that the hare is the

swiftest animal of the two.

This inn is one of the nicest, and, in summer, one of the pleasantest,

in England; for, I think, that my experience in this way will justify me

in speaking thus positively. The house is large, the yard and the

stables good, the landlord _a farmer_ also, and, therefore, no cribbing

your horses in hay or straw and yourself in eggs and cream. The garden,

which adjoins the south side of the house, is large, of good shape, has

a terrace on one side, lies on the slope, consists of well-disposed

clumps of shrubs and flowers, and of short-grass very neatly kept. In

the lower part of the garden there are high trees, and, amongst these,

the tulip-tree and the live-oak. Beyond the garden is a large clump of

lofty sycamores, and in these a most populous rookery, in which, of all

things in the world, I delight. The village, which contains 301 souls,

lies to the north of the inn, but adjoining its premises. All the rest,

in every direction, is bare down or open arable. I am now sitting at one

of the southern windows of this inn, looking across the garden towards

the rookery. It is nearly sun-setting; the rooks are skimming and

curving over the tops of the trees; while, under the branches, I see a

flock of several hundred sheep, coming nibbling their way in from the

Down, and going to their fold.

Now, what ill-natured devil could bring Old Nic Grimshaw into my head in

company with these innocent sheep? Why, the truth is this: nothing is

_so swift_ as _thought_: it runs over a life-time in a moment; and,

while I was writing the last sentence of the foregoing paragraph,

_thought_ took me up at the time when I used to wear a smock-frock and

to carry a wooden bottle like that shepherd's boy; and, in an instant,

it hurried me along through my no very short life of adventure, of toil,

of peril, of pleasure, of ardent friendship and not less ardent enmity;

and after filling me with wonder, that a heart and mind so wrapped up in

everything belonging to the gardens, the fields and the woods, should

have been condemned to waste themselves away amidst the stench, the

noise, and the strife of cities, it brought me _to the present moment_,

and sent my mind back to what I have yet to perform about Nicholas

Grimshaw and his _ditches_!

My sons set off about three o'clock to-day, on their way to

Herefordshire, where I intend to join them, when I have had a pretty

good ride in this country. There is no pleasure in travelling, except on

horse-back, or on foot. Carriages take your body from place to place;

and if you merely want to be _conveyed_, they are very good; but they

enable you to see and to know nothing at all of the country.

_East Everley, Monday Morning, 5 o'clock, 28th Aug. 1826._

A very fine morning; a man, _eighty-two years of age_, just beginning to

mow the short-grass, in the garden: I thought it, even when I was young,

the _hardest work_ that man had to do. To _look on_, this work seems

nothing; but it tries every sinew in your frame, if you go upright and

do your work well. This old man never knew how to do it well, and he

stoops, and he hangs his scythe wrong; but, with all this, it must be a

surprising man to mow short-grass, as well as he does, at _eighty_. _I

wish I_ may be able to mow short-grass at eighty! That's all I have to

say of the matter. I am just setting off for the source of the Avon,

which runs from near Marlborough to Salisbury, and thence to the sea;

and I intend to pursue it as far as Salisbury. In the distance of thirty

miles, here are, I see by the books, more than thirty churches. I wish

to see, with my own eyes, what evidence there is that those thirty

churches were built without hands, without money, and without a

congregation; and thus to find matter, if I can, to justify the mad

wretches, who, from Committee-Rooms and elsewhere, are bothering this

half-distracted nation to death about a "surplus popalashon, mon."

My horse is ready; and the rooks are just gone off to the

stubble-fields. These rooks rob the pigs; but they have _a right_ to do

it. I wonder (upon my soul I do) that there is no lawyer, Scotchman, or

Parson-Justice, to propose a law to punish the rooks for _trespass_.