"Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn; and,
The labourer is worthy of his reward."--Deuteronomy, ch. xxv, ver.
4; 1 Cor. ix, 9; 1 Tim. v, 9.
_Milton, Monday, 28th August._
I came off this morning on the Marlborough road about two miles, or
three, and then turned off, over the downs, in a north-westerly
direction, in search of the source of the Avon River, which goes down to
Salisbury. I had once been at Netheravon, a village in this valley; but
I had often heard this valley described as one of the finest pieces of
land in all England; I knew that there were about thirty parish
churches, standing in a length of about thirty miles, and in an average
width of hardly a mile; and I was resolved to see a little into the
_reasons_ that could have induced our fathers to build all these
churches, especially if, as the Scotch would have us believe, there were
but a mere handful of people in England _until of late years_.
The first part of my ride this morning was by the side of Sir John
Astley's park. This man is one of the members of the county (gallon-loaf
Bennet being the other). They say that he is good to the labouring
people; and he ought to be good for _something_, being a member of
Parliament of the Lethbridge and Dickenson stamp. However, he has got a
thumping estate; though it be borne in mind, the working-people and the
fund-holders and the dead-weight have each their separate mortgage upon
it; of which this Baronet has, I dare say, too much justice to complain,
seeing that the amount of these mortgages was absolutely necessary to
carry on Pitt and Perceval and Castlereagh Wars; to support Hanoverian
soldiers in England; to fight and beat the Americans on the Serpentine
River; to give Wellington a kingly estate; and to defray the expenses of
Manchester and other yeomanry cavalry; besides all the various charges
of Power-of-Imprisonment Bills and of Six-Acts. These being the cause of
the mortgages, the "worthy Baronet" has, I will engage, too much justice
to complain of them.
In steering across the down, I came to a large farm, which a shepherd
told me was Milton Hill Farm. This was upon the high land, and before I
came to the edge of this _Valley of Avon_, which was my land of promise;
or, at least, of great expectation; for I could not imagine that thirty
churches had been built _for nothing_ by the side of a brook (for it is
no more during the greater part of the way) thirty miles long. The
shepherd showed me the way towards Milton; and at the end of about a
mile, from the top of a very high part of the down, with a steep slope
towards the valley, I first saw this _Valley of Avon_; and a most
beautiful sight it was! Villages, hamlets, large farms, towers,
steeples, fields, meadows, orchards, and very fine timber trees,
scattered all over the valley. The shape of the thing is this: on each
side _downs_, very lofty and steep in some places, and sloping miles
back in other places; but each _outside_ of the valley are downs. From
the edge of the downs begin capital _arable fields_ generally of very
great dimensions, and, in some places, running a mile or two back into
little _cross-valleys_, formed by hills of downs. After the corn-fields
come _meadows_, on each side, down to the _brook_ or _river_. The
farm-houses, mansions, villages, and hamlets, are generally situated in
that part of the arable land which comes nearest the meadows.
Great as my expectations had been, they were more than fulfilled. I
delight in this sort of country; and I had frequently seen the vale of
the Itchen, that of the Bourn, and also that of the Teste, in Hampshire;
I had seen the vales amongst the South Downs; but I never before saw
anything to please me like this valley of the Avon. I sat upon my horse,
and looked over Milton and Easton and Pewsy for half an hour, though I
had not breakfasted. The hill was very steep. A road, going slanting
down it, was still so steep, and washed so very deep, by the rains of
ages, that I did not attempt to _ride_ down it, and I did not like to
lead my horse, the path was so narrow. So seeing a boy with a drove of
pigs, going out to the stubbles, I beckoned him to come up to me; and he
came and led my horse down for me. Endless is the variety in the shape
of the high lands which form this valley. Sometimes the slope is very
gentle, and the arable lands go back very far. At others, the downs come
out into the valley almost like piers into the sea, being very steep in
their sides, as well as their ends towards the valley. They have no
slope at their other ends: indeed they have no _back ends_, but run into
the main high land. There is also great variety in the width of the
valley; great variety in the width of the meadows; but the land appears
all to be of the very best; and it must be so, for the farmers confess
it.
It seemed to me, that one way, and that not, perhaps, the least
striking, of exposing the folly, the stupidity, the inanity, the
presumption, the insufferable emptiness and insolence and barbarity, of
those numerous wretches, who have now the audacity to propose to
_transport_ the people of England, upon the principle of the monster
Malthus, who has furnished the unfeeling oligarchs and their
toad-eaters with the pretence, that _man has a natural propensity to
breed faster than food can be raised for the increase_; it seemed to me,
that one way of exposing this mixture of madness and of blasphemy was to
take a look, now that the harvest is in, at the produce, the mouths, the
condition, and the changes that have taken place, in a spot like this,
which God has favoured with every good that he has had to bestow upon
man.
From the top of the hill I was not a little surprised to see, in every
part of the valley that my eye could reach, a due, a large portion of
fields of Swedish turnips, all looking extremely well. I had found the
turnips, of both sorts, by no means bad, from Salt Hill to Newbury; but
from Newbury through Burghclere, Highclere, Uphusband, and Tangley, I
had seen but few. At and about Ludgarshall and Everley, I had seen
hardly any. But when I came, this morning, to Milton Hill farm, I saw a
very large field of what appeared to me to be fine Swedish turnips. In
the valley, however, I found them much finer, and the fields were very
beautiful objects, forming, as their colour did, so great a contrast
with that of the fallows and the stubbles, which latter are, this year,
singularly clean and bright.
Having gotten to the bottom of the hill, I proceeded on to the village
of Milton. I left Easton away at my right, and I did not go up to Watton
Rivers where the river Avon rises, and which lies just close to the
South-west corner of Marlborough Forest, and at about 5 or 6 miles from
the town of Marlborough. Lower down the river, as I thought, there lived
a friend, who was a great farmer, and whom I intended to call on. It
being my way, however, always to begin making enquiries soon enough, I
asked the pig-driver where this friend lived; and, to my surprise, I
found that he lived in the parish of Milton. After riding up to the
church, as being the centre of the village, I went on towards the house
of my friend, which lay on my road down the valley. I have many, many
times witnessed agreeable surprise; but I do not know, that I ever in
the whole course of my life, saw people so much surprised and pleased as
this farmer and his family were at seeing me. People often _tell_ you,
that they are _glad to see_ you; and in general they speak truth. I take
pretty good care not to approach any house, with the smallest appearance
of a design to eat or drink in it, unless I be _quite sure_ of a cordial
reception; but my friend at Fifield (it is in Milton parish) and all his
family really seemed to be delighted beyond all expression.
When I set out this morning, I intended to go all the way down to the
city of Salisbury _to-day_; but, I soon found, that to refuse to sleep
at Fifield would cost me a great deal more trouble than a day was
worth. So that I made my mind up to stay in this farm-house, which has
one of the nicest gardens, and it contains some of the finest flowers,
that I ever saw, and all is disposed with as much good taste as I have
ever witnessed. Here I am, then, just going to bed after having spent as
pleasant a day as I ever spent in my life. I have heard to-day, that
Birkbeck lost his life by attempting to cross a river on horse-back; but
if what I have heard besides be true, that life must have been hardly
worth preserving; for, they say, that he was reduced to a very
deplorable state; and I have heard, from what I deem unquestionable
authority, that his two beautiful and accomplished daughters are married
to two common labourers, one a Yankee and the other an Irishman, neither
of whom has, probably, a second shirt to his back, or a single pair of
shoes to put his feet into! These poor girls owe their ruin and misery
(if my information be correct), and, at any rate, hundreds besides
Birkbeck himself, owe their utter ruin, the most scandalous degradation,
together with great bodily suffering, to the vanity, the conceit, the
presumption of Birkbeck, who, observe, richly merited all that he
suffered, not excepting his death; for, he sinned with his eyes open; he
rejected all advice; he persevered after he saw his error; he dragged
thousands into ruin along with him; and he most vilely calumniated the
man, who, after having most disinterestedly, but in vain, endeavoured to
preserve him from ruin, endeavoured to preserve those who were in danger
of being deluded by him. When, in 1817, before he set out for America, I
was, in Catherine Street, Strand, London, so earnestly pressing him not
to go to the back countries, he had one of these daughters with him.
After talking to him for some time, and describing the risks and
disadvantages of the back countries, I turned towards the daughter and,
in a sort of joking way, said: "Miss Birkbeck, take my advice: don't let
anybody get _you_ more than twenty miles from Boston, New York,
Philadelphia, or Baltimore." Upon which he gave me a most _dignified_
look, and observed: "Miss Birkbeck has _a father_, Sir, whom she knows
it to be her duty to obey." This snap was enough for me. I saw, that
this was a man so full of self-conceit, that it was impossible to do
anything with him. He seemed to me to be bent upon his own destruction.
I thought it my duty to warn _others_ of their danger: some took the
warning; others did not; but he and his brother adventurer, Flower,
never forgave me, and they resorted to all the means in their power to
do me injury. They did me no injury, no thanks to them; and I have seen
them most severely, but most justly, punished.
_Amesbury, Tuesday, 29th August._
I set off from Fifield this morning, and got here about one o'clock,
with my clothes wet. While they are drying, and while a mutton chop is
getting ready, I sit down to make some notes of what I have seen since I
left Enford ... but, here comes my dinner: and I must put off my notes
till I have dined.
_Salisbury, Wednesday, 30th August._
My ride yesterday, from Milton to this city of Salisbury, was, without
any exception, the most pleasant; it brought before me the greatest
number of, to me, interesting objects, and it gave rise to more
interesting reflections, than I remember ever to have had brought before
my eyes, or into my mind, in any one day of my life; and therefore, this
ride was, without any exception, the most pleasant that I ever had in my
life, as far as my recollection serves me. I got a little wet in the
middle of the day; but I got dry again, and I arrived here in very good
time, though I went over the Accursed Hill (Old Sarum), and went across
to Laverstoke, before I came to Salisbury.
Let us now, then, look back over this part of Wiltshire, and see whether
the inhabitants ought to be "transported" by order of the "Emigration
Committee," of which we shall see and say more by-and-by. I have before
described this valley generally; let me now speak of it a little more in
detail. The farms are all large, and, generally speaking, they were
always large, I dare say; because _sheep_ is one of the great things
here; and sheep, in a country like this, must be kept in _flocks_, to be
of any profit. The sheep principally manure the land. This is to be done
only by _folding_; and, to fold, you must have a _flock_. Every farm has
its portion of down, arable, and meadow; and, in many places, the latter
are watered meadows, which is a great resource where sheep are kept in
flocks; because these meadows furnish grass for the suckling ewes, early
in the spring; and, indeed, because they have always food in them for
sheep and cattle of all sorts. These meadows have had no part of the
suffering from the drought, this year. They fed the ewes and lambs in
the spring, and they are now yielding a heavy crop of hay; for I saw men
mowing in them, in several places, particularly about Netheravon, though
it was raining at the time.
The turnips look pretty well all the way down the valley; but, I see
very few, except Swedish turnips. The early common turnips very nearly
all failed, I believe. But the stubbles are beautifully bright; and the
rick-yards tell us that the crops are good, especially of wheat. This is
not a country of pease and beans, nor of oats, except for home
consumption. The crops are wheat, barley, wool, and lambs, and these
latter not to be sold to butchers, but to be sold, at the great fairs,
to those who are going to keep them for some time, whether to breed
from, or finally to fat for the butcher. It is the pulse and the oats
that appear to have failed most this year; and therefore this Valley has
not suffered. I do not perceive that they have many _potatoes_; but what
they have of this base root seem to look well enough. It was one of the
greatest villains upon earth (Sir Walter Raleigh), who (they say) first
brought this root into England. He was hanged at last! What a pity,
since he was to be hanged, the hanging did not take place before he
became such a mischievous devil as he was in the latter two-thirds of
his life!
The stack-yards down this valley are beautiful to behold. They contain
from five to fifteen banging wheat-ricks, besides barley-ricks, and
hay-ricks, and also besides the contents of the barns, many of which
exceed a hundred, some two hundred, and I saw one at Pewsey, and another
at Fittleton, each of which exceeded two hundred and fifty feet in
length. At a farm, which, in the old maps, is called Chissenbury Priory,
I think I counted twenty-seven ricks of one sort and another, and
sixteen or eighteen of them wheat-ricks. I could not conveniently get to
the yard, without longer delay than I wished to make; but I could not be
much out in my counting. A very fine sight this was, and it could not
meet the eye without making one look round (and in vain) _to see the
people who were to eat all this food_; and without making one reflect on
the horrible, the unnatural, the base and infamous state, in which we
must be, when projects are on foot, and are openly avowed, for
_transporting_ those who raise this food, because they want to eat
enough of it to keep them alive; and when no project is on foot for
transporting the idlers who live in luxury upon this same food; when no
project is on foot for transporting pensioners, parsons, or dead-weight
people!
A little while before I came to this farm-yard, I saw, in one piece,
about four hundred acres of wheat-stubble, and I saw a sheep-fold,
which, I thought, contained an acre of ground, and had in it about four
thousand sheep and lambs. The fold was divided into three separate
flocks; but the piece of ground was one and the same; and I thought it
contained about an acre. At one farm, between Pewsey and Upavon, I
counted more than 300 hogs in one stubble. This is certainly the most
delightful farming in the world. No ditches, no water-furrows, no
drains, hardly any hedges, no dirt and mire, even in the wettest
seasons of the year: and though the downs are naked and cold, the
valleys are snugness itself. They are, as to the downs, what _ah-ahs!_
are, in parks or lawns. When you are going over the downs, you look
_over_ the valleys, as in the case of the _ah-ah_; and if you be not
acquainted with the country, your surprise, when you come to the edge of
the hill, is very great. The shelter, in these valleys, and particularly
where the downs are steep and lofty on the sides, is very complete.
Then, the trees are everywhere lofty. They are generally elms, with some
ashes, which delight in the soil that they find here. There are, almost
always, two or three large clumps of trees in every parish, and a
rookery or two (not _rag_-rookery) to every parish. By the water's edge
there are willows; and to almost every farm there is a fine orchard, the
trees being, in general, very fine, and, this year, they are, in
general, well loaded with fruit. So that, all taken together, it seems
impossible to find a more beautiful and pleasant country than this, or
to imagine any life more easy and happy than men might here lead, if
they were untormented by an accursed system that takes the food from
those that raise it, and gives it to those that do nothing that is
useful to man.
Here the farmer has always an abundance of straw. His farm-yard is never
without it. Cattle and horses are bedded up to their eyes. The yards are
put close under the shelter of a hill, or are protected by lofty and
thick-set trees. Every animal seems comfortably situated; and, in the
dreariest days of winter, these are, perhaps, the happiest scenes in the
world; or, rather, they would be such, if those, whose labour makes it
all, trees, corn, sheep and everything, had but _their fair share_ of
the produce of that labour. What share they really have of it one cannot
exactly say; but, I should suppose, that every labouring _man_ in this
valley raises as much food as would suffice for fifty, or a hundred
persons, fed like himself!
At a farm at Milton there were, according to my calculation, 600
quarters of wheat and 1200 quarters of barley of the present year's
crop. The farm keeps, on an average, 1400 sheep, it breeds and rears an
usual proportion of pigs, fats the usual proportion of hogs, and, I
suppose, rears and fats the usual proportion of poultry. Upon inquiry, I
found that this farm was, in point of produce, about one-fifth of the
parish. Therefore, the land of this parish produces annually about 3000
quarters of wheat, 6000 quarters of barley, the wool of 7000 sheep,
together with the pigs and poultry. Now, then, leaving green, or moist,
vegetables out of the question, as being things that human creatures,
and especially _labouring_ human creatures, ought never to use _as
sustenance_, and saying nothing, at present, about milk and butter;
leaving these wholly out of the question, let us see how many people the
produce of this parish would keep, supposing the people to live all
alike, and to have plenty of food and clothing. In order to come at the
fact here, let us see what would be the consumption of one family; let
it be a family of five persons; a man, wife, and three children, one
child big enough to work, one big enough to eat heartily, and one a
baby; and this is a pretty fair average of the state of people in the
country. Such a family would want 5 lb. of bread a-day; they would want
a pound of mutton a-day; they would want two pounds of bacon a-day; they
would want, on an average, winter and summer, a gallon and a half of
beer a-day; for I mean that they should live without the aid of the
Eastern or the Western slave-drivers. If _sweets_ were absolutely
necessary for the baby, there would be quite _honey_ enough in the
parish. Now, then, to begin with the bread, a pound of good wheat makes
a pound of good bread; for, though the offal be taken out, the water is
put in; and, indeed, the fact is, that a pound of wheat will make a
pound of bread, leaving the offal of the wheat to feed pigs, or other
animals, and to produce other human food in this way. The family would,
then, use 1825 lb. of wheat in the year, which, at 60 lb. a bushel,
would be (leaving out a fraction) 30 bushels, or three quarters and six
bushels, _for the year_.
Next comes the mutton, 365 lb. for the year. Next the bacon, 730 lb. As
to the quantity of mutton produced; the sheep are bred here, and not
fatted in general; but we may fairly suppose, that each of the sheep
_kept_ here, each of the _standing-stock_, makes first, or last, half a
fat sheep; so that a farm that keeps, on an average, 100 sheep, produces
annually 50 fat sheep. Suppose the mutton to be 15 lb. a quarter, then
the family will want, within a trifle of, seven sheep a year. Of bacon
or pork, 36 score will be wanted. Hogs differ so much in their
propensity to fat, that it is difficult to calculate about them: but
this is a very good rule: when you see a fat hog, and know how many
_scores_ he will weigh, set down to his account a sack (half a quarter)
of barley for every score of his weight; for, let him have been
_educated_ (as the French call it) as he may, this will be about the
real cost of him when he is fat. A sack of barley will make a score of
bacon, and it will not make more. Therefore, the family would want 18
quarters of barley in the year for bacon.
As to the _beer_, 18 gallons to the bushel of malt is very good; but, as
we allow of no spirits, no wine, and none of the slave produce, we will
suppose that a _sixth_ part of the beer is _strong_ stuff. This would
require two bushels of malt to the 18 gallons. The whole would,
therefore, take 35 bushels of malt; and a bushel of barley makes a
bushel of malt, and, by the _increase_ pays the expense of malting.
Here, then, the family would want, for beer, four quarters and three
bushels of barley. The annual consumption of the family, in victuals and
drink, would then be as follows:
Qrs. Bush.
Wheat 3 6
Barley 22 3
----------
Sheep 7
This being the case, the 3000 quarters of wheat, which the parish
annually produces, would suffice for 800 families. The 6000 quarters of
barley, would suffice for 207 families. The 3500 fat sheep, being half
the number kept, would suffice for 500 families. So that here is,
produced in the parish of Milton, _bread_ for 800, _mutton_ for 500, and
_bacon and beer_ for 207 families. Besides victuals and drink, there are
clothes, fuel, tools, and household goods wanting; but there are milk,
butter, eggs, poultry, rabbits, hares, and partridges, which I have not
noticed, and these are all eatables, and are all eaten too. And as to
clothing, and, indeed, fuel and all other wants beyond eating and
drinking, are there not 7000 fleeces of Southdown wool, weighing, all
together, 21,000 lb., and capable of being made into 8400 yards of broad
cloth, at two pounds and a half of wool to the yard? Setting, therefore,
the wool, the milk, butter, eggs, poultry, and game against all the
wants beyond the solid food and drink, we see that the parish of Milton,
that we have under our eye, would give bread to 800 families, mutton to
580, and bacon and beer to 207. The reason why wheat and mutton are
produced in a proportion so much greater than the materials for making
bacon and beer, is, that the wheat and the mutton are more loudly
demanded _from a distance_, and are much more cheaply conveyed away in
proportion to their value. For instance, the wheat and mutton are wanted
in the infernal Wen, and some barley is wanted there in the shape of
malt; but hogs are not fatted in the Wen, and a larger proportion of the
barley is used where it is grown.
Here is, then, bread for 800 families, mutton for 500, and bacon and
beer for 207. Let us take the average of the three, and then we have 502
families, for the keeping of whom, and in this good manner too, the
parish of Milton yields a sufficiency. In the wool, the milk, butter,
eggs, poultry, and game, we have seen ample, and much more than ample,
provision for all wants other than those of mere food and drink. What I
have allowed in food and drink is by no means excessive. It is but a
pound of bread, and a little more than half-a-pound of meat a day to
each person on an average; and the beer is not a drop too much. There
are no green and moist vegetables included in my account; but, there
would be some, and they would not do any harm; but, no man can say, or,
at least, none but a base usurer, who would grind money out of the bones
of his own father; no other man can, or will, say, that I have been _too
liberal_ to this family; and yet, good God! what extravagance is here,
if the labourers of England be now treated justly!
Is there a family, even amongst those who live the hardest, in the Wen,
that would not shudder at the thought of living upon what I have allowed
to this family? Yet what do labourers' families get, compared to this?
The answer to that question ought to make us shudder indeed. The amount
of my allowance, compared with the amount of the allowance that
labourers now have, is necessary to be stated here, before I proceed
further. The wheat 3 qrs. and 6 bushels at present price (56_s._ the
quarter) amounts to 10_l._ 10_s._ The barley (for bacon and beer) 22
qrs. 3 bushels, at present price (34_s._ the quarter), amounts to 37_l._
16_s._ 8_d._ The seven sheep, at 40_s._ each, amount to 14_l._ The total
is 62_l._ 6_s._ 8_d._; and this, observe, for _bare victuals and drink_;
just food and drink enough to keep people in working condition.
What then _do_ the labourers get? To what fare has this wretched and
most infamous system brought them! Why such a family as I have described
is allowed to have, _at the utmost_, only about 9_s._ a week. The parish
allowance is only about 7_s._ 6_d._ for the five people, including
clothing, fuel, bedding and everything! Monstrous state of things! But
let us suppose it to be _nine shillings_. Even that makes only 23_l._
8_s._ a year, for food, drink, clothing, fuel and everything, whereas I
allow 62_l._ 6_s._ 8_d._ a year for the bare eating and drinking; and
that is little enough. Monstrous, barbarous, horrible as this appears,
we do not, however, see it in half its horrors; our indignation and rage
against this infernal system is not half roused, till we see the small
number of labourers who raise all the food and the drink, and, of
course, the mere trifling portion of it that they are suffered to retain
for their own use.
The parish of Milton does, as we have seen, produce food, drink,
clothing, and all other things, enough for 502 families, or 2510 persons
upon my allowance, which is a great deal more than three times the
present allowance, because the present allowance includes clothing,
fuel, tools, and everything. Now, then, according to the "Population
Return," laid before Parliament, this parish contains 500 persons, or,
according to my division, one hundred families. So that here are about
_one hundred_ families to raise food and drink enough, and to raise
wool and other things to pay for all other necessaries, for _five
hundred_ and _two_ families! Aye, and five hundred and two families fed
and lodged, too, on my liberal scale. Fed and lodged according to the
present scale, this one hundred families raise enough to supply more,
and many more, than fifteen hundred families; or seven thousand five
hundred persons! And yet those who do the work are half starved! In the
100 families there are, we will suppose, 80 able working men, and as
many boys, sometimes assisted by the women and stout girls. What a
handful of people to raise such a quantity of food! What injustice, what
a hellish system it must be, to make those who raise it skin and bone
and nakedness, while the food and drink and wool are almost all carried
away to be heaped on the fund-holders, pensioners, soldiers,
dead-weight, and other swarms of tax-eaters! If such an operation do not
need putting an end to, then the devil himself is a saint.
Thus it must be, or much about thus, all the way down this fine and
beautiful and interesting valley. There are 29 agricultural parishes,
the two last being in town; being Fisherton and Salisbury. Now,
according to the "Population Return," the whole of these 29 parishes
contain 9,116 persons; or, according to my division, 1,823 families.
There is no reason to believe, that the proportion that we have seen in
the case of Milton does not hold good all the way through; that is,
there is no reason to suppose, that the produce does not exceed the
consumption in every other case in the same degree that it does in the
case of Milton. And indeed if I were to judge from the number of houses
and the number of ricks of corn, I should suppose that the excess was
still greater in several of the other parishes. But, supposing it to be
no greater; supposing the same proportion to continue all the way from
Watton Rivers to Stratford Dean, then here are 9,116 persons raising
food and raiment sufficient for 45,580 persons, fed and lodged according
to my scale; and sufficient for 136,740 persons, according to the scale
on which the unhappy labourers of this fine valley are now fed and
lodged!
And yet there is an "_Emigration Committee_" sitting to devise the means
of getting _rid_, not of the idlers, not of the pensioners, not of the
dead-weight, not of the parsons, (to "relieve" whom we have seen the
poor labourers taxed to the tune of a million and a half of money) not
of the soldiers; but to devise means of getting rid of _these working
people_, who are grudged even the miserable morsel that they get! There
is in the men calling themselves "English country gentlemen" something
superlatively base. They are, I sincerely believe, the most cruel, the
most unfeeling, the most brutally insolent: but I know, I can prove, I
can safely take my oath, that they are the most base of all the
creatures that God ever suffered to disgrace the human shape. The base
wretches know well, that the _taxes_ amount to more than _sixty
millions_ a year, and that the _poor-rates_ amount to about _seven
millions_; yet, while the cowardly reptiles never utter a word against
the taxes, they are incessantly railing against the poor-rates, though
it is, (and they know it) the taxes that make the paupers. The base
wretches know well, that the sum of money given, even to the fellows
that gather the taxes, is greater in amount than the poor-rates; the
base wretches know well, that the money, given to the dead-weight (who
ought not to have a single farthing), amounts to more than the poor
receive out of the rates; the base wretches know well, that the common
foot-soldier now receives more pay per week (7_s._ 7_d._) exclusive of
clothing, firing, candle, and lodging; the base wretches know, that the
common foot-soldier receives more to go down his own single throat, than
the overseers and magistrates allow to a working man, his wife and three
children; the base wretches know all this well; and yet their railings
are confined to the _poor_ and the _poor-rates_; and it is expected that
they will, next session, urge the Parliament to pass a law to enable
overseers and vestries and magistrates _to transport paupers beyond the
seas_! They are base enough for this, or for any thing; but the whole
system will go to the devil long before they will get such an act
passed; long before they will see perfected this consummation of their
infamous tyranny.
It is manifest enough, that the _population_ of this valley was, at one
time, many times over what it is now; for, in the first place, what were
the twenty-nine churches built _for_? The population of the 29 parishes
is now but little more than one-half of that of the single parish of
Kensington; and there are several of the churches bigger than the church
at Kensington. What, then, should all these churches have been built
_for_? And besides, where did the hands come from? And where did the
money come from? These twenty-nine churches would now not only hold all
the inhabitants, men, women, and children, but all the household goods,
and tools, and implements, of the whole of them, farmers and all, if you
leave out the wagons and carts. In three instances, Fifield, Milston,
and Roach-Fen, the _church-porches_ will hold all the inhabitants, even
down to the bed-ridden and the babies. What then? will any man believe
that these churches were built for such little knots of people? We are
told about the _great_ superstition of our fathers, and of their
readiness to gratify the priests by building altars and other religious
edifices. But we must think those priests to have been most devout
creatures indeed, if we believe that they chose to have the money laid
out in _useless_ churches, rather than have it put into their own
pockets! At any rate, we all know that Protestant Priests have no whims
of _this sort_; and that they never lay out upon churches any money that
they can, by any means, get hold of.
But, suppose that we were to believe that the Priests had, in old times,
this unaccountable taste; and suppose we were to believe that a knot of
people, who might be crammed into a church-porch, were seized, and very
frequently too, with the desire of having a big church to go to; we
must, after all this, believe that this knot of people were more than
_giants_, or that they had surprising _riches_, else we cannot believe
that they had _the means_ of gratifying the strange wishes of their
Priests and their own not less strange _piety_ and _devotion_. Even if
we could believe that they thought that they were paving their way to
heaven, by building churches which were a hundred times too large for
the population, still we cannot believe, that the building could have
been effected without bodily force; and, where was this force to come
from, if the people were not more numerous than they now are? What,
again, I ask, were these twenty-nine churches stuck up, not a mile from
each other; what were twenty-nine churches made _for_, if the population
had been no greater than it is now?
But, in fact, you plainly see all the traces of a great ancient
population. The churches are almost all large, and built in the best
manner. Many of them are very fine edifices; very costly in the
building; and, in the cases where the body of the church has been
altered in the repairing of it, so as to make it smaller, the _tower_,
which everywhere defies the hostility of time, shows you what the church
must formerly have been. This is the case in several instances; and
there are two or three of these villages which must formerly have been
_market-towns_, and particularly Pewsy and Upavon. There are now no less
than nine of the parishes out of the twenty-nine, that have either no
parsonage-houses, or have such as are in such a state that a Parson will
not, or cannot, live in them. Three of them are without any
parsonage-houses at all, and the rest are become poor, mean,
falling-down places. This latter is the case at Upavon, which was
formerly a very considerable place. Nothing can more clearly show, than
this, that all, as far as buildings and population are concerned, has
been long upon the decline and decay. Dilapidation after dilapidation
have, at last, almost effaced even the parsonage-houses, and that too in
_defiance of the law_, ecclesiastical as well as civil. The land
remains; and the crops and the sheep come as abundantly as ever; but
they are now sent almost wholly away, instead of remaining, as
formerly, to be, in great part, consumed in these twenty-nine parishes.
The _stars_, in my map, mark the spots where manor-houses, or
gentlemen's mansions, formerly stood, and stood, too, only about sixty
years ago. Every parish had its manor house in the first place; and then
there were, down this Valley, twenty-one others; so that, in this
distance of about thirty miles, there stood fifty mansion houses. Where
are they _now_? I believe there are but eight that are at all worthy of
the name of mansion houses; and even these are but poorly kept up, and,
except in two or three instances, are of no benefit to the labouring
people; they employ but few persons; and, in short, do not half supply
the place of any eight of the old mansions. All these mansions, all
these parsonages, aye, and their goods and furniture, together with the
clocks, the brass kettles, the brewing-vessels, the good bedding and
good clothes and good furniture, and the stock in pigs, or in money, of
the inferior classes, in this series of once populous and gay villages
and hamlets; all these have been by the accursed system of taxing and
funding and paper-money, by the well-known exactions of the state, and
by the not less real, though less generally understood, extortions of
the _monopolies_ arising out of paper-money; all these have been, by
these accursed means, conveyed away, out of this Valley, to the haunts
of the tax-eaters and the monopolizers. There are many of the _mansion
houses_, the ruins of which you yet behold. At Milton there are two
mansion houses, the walls and the roofs of which yet remain, but which
are falling gradually to pieces, and the garden walls are crumbling
down. At Enford, Bennet, the Member for the county, had a large mansion
house, the stables of which are yet standing. In several places, I saw,
still remaining, indubitable traces of an ancient manor house, namely a
dove-cote or pigeon-house. The poor pigeons have kept possession of
their heritage, from generation to generation, and so have the rooks, in
their several rookeries, while the paper-system has swept away, or
rather swallowed-up, the owners of the dove-cotes and of the lofty
trees, about forty families of which owners have been ousted in this one
Valley, and have become dead-weight creatures, tax-gatherers,
barrack-fellows, thief-takers, or, perhaps, paupers or thieves.
Senator Snip congratulated, some years ago, that preciously honourable
"Collective _Wisdom_" of which he is a most worthy Member; Snip
congratulated it on the success of the late war in creating capital!
Snip is, you must know, a great _feelosofer_, and a not less great
_feenanceer_. Snip cited, as a proof of the great and glorious effects
of paper-money, the new and fine houses in London, the new streets and
squares, the new roads, new canals and bridges. Snip was not, I dare
say, aware that this same paper-money had destroyed forty mansion houses
in this Vale of Avon, and had taken away all the goods, all the
substance, of the little gentry and of the labouring class. Snip was
not, I dare say, aware that this same paper-money had, in this one Vale
of only thirty miles long, dilapidated, and, in some cases, wholly
demolished, nine out of twenty-nine even of the parsonage houses. I told
Snip at the time (1821), that paper-money could create no valuable
thing. I begged Snip to bear this in mind. I besought all my readers,
and particularly Mr. Mathias Atwood (one of the members for
_Lowther_-town), not to believe that paper-money ever did, or ever
could, _create_ anything of any value. I besought him to look well into
the matter, and assured him that he would find that though paper-money
could _create_ nothing of value, it was able to _transfer_ everything of
value; able to strip a little gentry; able to dilapidate even parsonage
houses; able to rob gentlemen of their estates, and labourers of their
Sunday-coats and their barrels of beer; able to snatch the dinner from
the board of the reaper or the mower, and to convey it to the
barrack-table of the Hessian or Hanoverian grenadier; able to take away
the wool, that ought to give warmth to the bodies of those who rear the
sheep, and put it on the backs of those who carry arms to keep the poor,
half-famished shepherds in order!
I have never been able clearly to comprehend what the beastly Scotch
_feelosofers_ mean by their "national wealth;" but, as far as I can
understand them, this is their meaning: that national wealth means that
which is _left_ of the products of the country over and above what is
_consumed_, or _used_, by those whose labour causes the products to be.
This being the notion, it follows, of course, that the _fewer_ poor
devils you can screw the products out of, the _richer_ the nation is.
This is, too, the notion of Burdett as expressed in his silly and most
nasty, musty aristocratic speech of last session. What, then, is to be
done with this _over-produce_? Who is to have it? Is it to go to
pensioners, placemen, tax-gatherers, dead-weight people, soldiers,
gendarmerie, police-people, and, in short, to whole millions _who do no
work at all_? Is this a cause of "national wealth"? Is a nation made
_rich_ by taking the food and clothing from those who create them, and
giving them to those who do nothing of any use? Aye, but this
over-produce may be given to _manufacturers_, and to those who supply
the food-raisers with what they want besides food. Oh! but this is
merely an _exchange_ of one valuable thing for another valuable thing;
it is an exchange of labour in Wiltshire for labour in Lancashire; and,
upon the whole, here is no _over-production_. If the produce be
exported, it is the same thing: it is an exchange of one sort of labour
for another. But _our course_ is, that there is not an exchange; that
those who labour, no matter in what way, have a large part of the fruit
of their labour taken away, and receive nothing in exchange. If the
over-produce of this Valley of Avon were given, by the farmers, to the
weavers in Lancashire, to the iron and steel chaps of Warwickshire, and
to other makers or sellers of useful things, there would come an
abundance of all these useful things into this valley from Lancashire
and other parts: but if, as is the case, the over-produce goes to the
fund-holders, the dead-weight, the soldiers, the lord and lady and
master and miss pensioners and sinecure people; if the over-produce go
to them, as a very great part of it does, nothing, not even the parings
of one's nails, can come back to the valley in exchange. And, can this
operation, then, add to the "national wealth"? It adds to the "wealth"
of those who carry on the affairs of state; it fills their pockets,
those of their relatives and dependents; it fattens all tax-eaters; but
it can give no wealth to the "nation," which means the whole of the
people. National Wealth means the Commonwealth or Commonweal; and these
mean, the general good, or happiness, of the people, and the safety and
honour of the state; and these are not to be secured by robbing those
who labour, in order to support a large part of the community in
idleness. Devizes is the market-town to which the corn goes from the
greater part of this Valley. If, when a wagon-load of wheat goes off in
the morning, the wagon came back at night loaded with cloth, salt, or
something or other, equal in value to the wheat, except what might be
necessary to leave with the shopkeeper as his profit; then, indeed, the
people might see the wagon go off without tears in their eyes. But now
they see it go to carry away, and to bring next to nothing in return.
What a _twist_ a head must have before it can come to the conclusion
that the nation gains in wealth by the government being able to cause
the work to be done by those who have hardly any share in the fruit of
the labour! What a _twist_ such a head must have! The Scotch
_feelosofers_, who seem all to have been, by nature, formed for
negro-drivers, have an insuperable objection to all those establishments
and customs which occasion _holidays_. They call them a great hindrance,
a great bar to industry, a great drawback from "national wealth." I wish
each of these unfeeling fellows had a spade put into his hand for ten
days, only ten days, and that he were compelled to dig only just as much
as one of the common labourers at Fulham. The metaphysical gentlemen
would, I believe, soon discover the _use of holidays_! But _why_ should
men, why should _any_ men, work _hard_? Why, I ask, should they work
incessantly, if working part of the days of the week be sufficient? Why
should the people at Milton, for instance, work incessantly, when they
now raise food and clothing and fuel and every necessary to maintain
well five times their number? Why should they not have some holidays?
And, pray, say, thou conceited Scotch feelosofer, how the "national
wealth" can be increased by making these people work incessantly, that
they may raise food and clothing, to go to feed and clothe people who do
not work at all?
The state of this Valley seems to illustrate the infamous and really
diabolical assertion of Malthus, which is, that the human kind have a
natural tendency _to increase beyond the means of sustenance for them_.
Hence, all the schemes of this and the other Scotch writers for what
they call checking population. Now, look at this Valley of Avon. Here
the people raise nearly twenty times as much food and clothing as they
consume. They raise five times as much, even according to my scale of
living. They have been doing this for many, many years. They have been
doing it for several generations. Where, then, is their natural tendency
to increase beyond the means of sustenance for them? Beyond, indeed, the
means of that sustenance which a system like this will leave them. Say
that, Sawneys, and I agree with you. Far beyond the means that the
taxing and monopolizing system will leave in their hands: that is very
true; for it leaves them nothing but the scale of the poor-book; they
must cease to breed at all, or they must exceed this mark; but the
_earth_, give them their fair share of its products, will always give
sustenance in sufficiency to those who apply to it by skilful and
diligent labour.
The villages down this Valley of Avon, and, indeed, it was the same in
almost every part of this county, and in the North and West of Hampshire
also, used to have great employment for the women and children in the
carding and spinning of wool for the making of broad-cloth. This was a
very general employment for the women and girls; but it is now wholly
gone; and this has made a vast change in the condition of the people,
and in the state of property and of manners and of morals. In 1816, I
wrote and published a _Letter to the Luddites_, the object of which was
to combat their hostility to the use of machinery. The arguments I there
made use of were general. I took the matter in the abstract. The
_principles_ were all correct enough; but their application cannot be
universal; and we have a case here before us, at this moment, which, in
my opinion, shows that the mechanic inventions, pushed to the extent
that they have been, have been productive of great calamity to this
country, and that they will be productive of still greater calamity;
unless, indeed, it be their brilliant destiny to be the immediate cause
of putting an end to the present system.
The greater part of manufactures consists of _clothing_ and _bedding_.
Now, if by using a machine, we can get our coat with less labour than we
got it before, the machine is a desirable thing. But, then, mind, we
must have the machine at home, and we ourselves must have the profit of
it; for, if the machine be elsewhere; if it be worked by other hands; if
other persons have the profit of it; and if, in consequence of the
existence of the machine, we have hands at home, who have nothing to do,
and whom we must keep, then the machine is an injury to us, however
advantageous it may be to those who use it, and whatever traffic it may
occasion with foreign States.
Such is the case with regard to this cloth-making. The machines are at
Upton-Level, Warminster, Bradford, Westbury, and Trowbridge, and here
are some of the hands in the Valley of Avon. This Valley raises food and
clothing; but, in order to raise them, it must have _labourers_. These
are absolutely necessary; for without them this rich and beautiful
Valley becomes worth nothing except to wild animals and their pursuers.
The labourers are _men_ and _boys_. Women and girls occasionally; but
the men and the boys are as necessary as the light of day, or as the air
and the water. Now, if beastly Malthus, or any of his nasty disciples,
can discover a mode of having men and boys without having women and
girls, then, certainly, the machine must be a good thing; but if this
Valley must absolutely have the women and the girls, then the machine,
by leaving them with nothing to do, is a mischievous thing; and a
producer of most dreadful misery. What, with regard to the poor, is the
great complaint now? Why, that the _single man_ does not receive the
same, or anything like the same, wages as the _married_ man. Aye, it is
the wife and girls that are the burden; and to be sure a burden they
must be, under a system of taxation like the present, and with no work
to do. Therefore, whatever may be saved in labour by the machine is no
benefit, but an injury to the mass of the people. For, in fact, all that
the women and children earned was so much clear addition to what the
family earns now. The greatest part of the clothing in the United States
of America is made by the farm women and girls. They do almost the whole
of it; and all that they do is done at home. To be sure, they might buy
cheap; but they must buy for less than nothing, if it would not answer
their purpose to _make_ the things.
The survey of this Valley is, I think, the finest answer in the world to
the "Emigration Committee" fellows, and to Jerry Curteis (one of the
Members for Sussex), who has been giving "evidence" before it. I shall
find out, when I can get to see the _report_, what this "Emigration
Committee" would be _after_. I remember that, last winter, a young woman
complained to one of the Police Justices that the Overseers of some
parish were going to transport her orphan brother to Canada, because he
became chargeable to their parish! I remember, also, that the Justice
said, that the intention of the Overseers was "premature," for that "the
Bill had not yet passed"! This was rather an ugly story; and I do think
that we shall find that there have been, and are, some pretty
propositions before this "Committee." We shall see all about the matter,
however, by-and-by; and, when we get the transporting project fairly
before us, shall we not then loudly proclaim "the envy of surrounding
nations and admiration of the world"!
But, what ignorance, impudence, and insolence must those base wretches
have, who propose to transport the labouring people, as being too
numerous, while the produce, which is obtained by their labour, is more
than sufficient for three, four, or five, or even ten times their
numbers! Jerry Curteis, who has, it seems, been a famous witness on this
occasion, says that the poor-rates, in many cases, amount to as much as
the rent. Well: and what then, Jerry? The rent may be high enough too,
and the farmer may afford to pay them both; for a very large part of
what you call _poor-rates_ ought to be called _wages_. But, at any rate,
what has all this to do with the necessity of emigration? To make out
such necessity, you must make out that you have more mouths than the
produce of the parish will feed. Do then, Jerry, tell us, another time,
a little about the quantity of food annually raised in four or five
adjoining parishes; for, is it not something rather damnable, Jerry, to
talk of _transporting_ Englishmen, on account of the _excess of their
numbers_, when the fact is notorious that their labour produces five or
ten times as much food and raiment as they and their families consume!
However, to drop Jerry, for the present, the baseness, the foul, the
stinking, the carrion baseness, of the fellows that call themselves
"country gentlemen," is, that the wretches, while railing against the
poor and the poor-rates; while affecting to believe that the poor are
wicked and lazy; while complaining that the poor, the working people,
are too numerous, and that the country villages are too populous: the
carrion baseness of these wretches is, that, while they are thus _bold_
with regard to the working and poor people, they never even whisper a
word against pensioners, placemen, soldiers, parsons, fundholders,
tax-gatherers, or tax-eaters! They say not a word against the prolific
dead-weight to whom they give a premium for breeding, while they want to
check the population of labourers! They never say a word about the too
great populousness of the Wen; nor about that of Liverpool, Manchester,
Cheltenham, and the like! Oh! they are the most cowardly, the very
basest, the most scandalously base reptiles that ever were warmed into
life by the rays of the sun!
In taking my leave of this beautiful vale, I have to express my deep
shame, as an Englishman, at beholding the general _extreme poverty_ of
those who cause this vale to produce such quantities of food and
raiment. This is, I verily believe it, the _worst used labouring people
upon the face of the earth_. Dogs and hogs and horses are treated with
more civility; and as to food and lodging, how gladly would the
labourers change with them! This state of things never can continue many
years! _By some means or other_ there must be an end to it; and my firm
belief is, that that end will be dreadful. In the meanwhile I see, and I
see it with pleasure, that the common people know that they are ill
used; and that they cordially, most cordially, hate those who ill-treat
them.
During the day I crossed the river about fifteen or sixteen times, and
in such hot weather it was very pleasant to be so much amongst meadows
and water. I had been at Netheravon about eighteen years ago, where I
had seen a great quantity of hares. It is a place belonging to Mr. Hicks
Beach, or Beech, who was once a member of parliament. I found the place
altered a good deal; out of repair; the gates rather rotten; and (a very
bad sign!) the roof of the dog-kennel falling in! There is a church, at
this village of Netheravon, large enough to hold a thousand or two of
people, and the whole parish contains only 350 souls, men, women and
children. This Netheravon was formerly a great lordship, and in the
parish there were three considerable mansion-houses, besides the one
near the church. These mansions are all down now; and it is curious
enough to see the former _walled gardens_ become _orchards_, together
with other changes, all tending to prove the gradual decay in all except
what appertains merely to _the land_ as a thing of production for the
distant market. But, indeed, the people and the means of enjoyment must
go away. They are _drawn_ away by the taxes and the paper-money. How are
_twenty thousand new houses_ to be, all at once, building in the Wen,
without people and food and raiment going from this valley towards the
Wen? It must be so; and this unnatural, this dilapidating, this ruining
and debasing work must go on, until that which produces it be destroyed.
When I came down to Stratford Dean, I wanted to go across to Laverstoke,
which lay to my left of Salisbury; but just on the side of the road
here, at Stratford Dean, rises the _Accursed Hill_. It is very lofty.
It was originally a hill in an irregular sort of sugar-loaf shape: but
it was so altered by the Romans, or by somebody, that the upper
three-quarter parts of the hill now, when seen from a distance, somewhat
resemble _three cheeses_, laid one upon another; the bottom one a great
deal broader than the next, and the top one like a Stilton cheese, in
proportion to a Gloucester one. I resolved to ride over this Accursed
Hill. As I was going up a field towards it, I met a man going home from
work. I asked how he _got on_. He said, very badly. I asked him what was
the cause of it. He said the _hard times_. "What _times_," said I; "was
there ever a finer summer, a finer harvest, and is there not an _old_
wheat-rick in every farm-yard?" "Ah!" said he, "_they_ make it bad for
poor people, for all that." "_They?_" said I, "who is _they_?" He was
silent. "Oh, no, no! my friend," said I, "it is not _they_; it is that
Accursed Hill that has robbed you of the supper that you ought to find
smoking on the table when you get home." I gave him the price of a pot
of beer, and on I went, leaving the poor dejected assemblage of skin and
bone to wonder at my words.
The hill is very steep, and I dismounted and led my horse up. Being as
near to the top as I could conveniently get, I stood a little while
reflecting, not so much on the changes which that hill had seen, as on
the changes, the terrible changes, which, in all human probability, it
had _yet to see_, and which it would have greatly _helped to produce_.
It was impossible to stand on this accursed spot, without swelling with
indignation against the base and plundering and murderous sons of
corruption. I have often wished, and I, speaking out loud, expressed the
wish now: "May that man perish for ever and ever, who, having the power,
neglects to bring to justice the perjured, the suborning, the insolent
and perfidious miscreants, who openly sell their country's rights and
their own souls."
From the Accursed Hill I went to Laverstoke where "Jemmy Burrough" (as
they call him here), the Judge, lives. I have not heard much about
"Jemmy" since he tried and condemned the two young men who had wounded
the game-keepers of Ashton Smith and Lord Palmerston. His Lordship
(Palmerston) is, I see, making a tolerable figure in the newspapers as a
_share-man_! I got into Salisbury about half-past seven o'clock, less
tired than I recollect ever to have been after so long a ride; for,
including my several crossings of the river and my deviations to look at
churches and farm-yards, and rick-yards, I think I must have ridden
nearly forty miles.
RIDE FROM SALISBURY TO WARMINSTER, FROM WARMINSTER TO FROME, FROM FROME
TO DEVIZES, AND FROM DEVIZES TO HIGHWORTH.
"Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor
of the land to fail: saying, When will the new moon be gone that
we may sell corn? And the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat,
making the Ephah small and the Shekel great, and falsifying the
balances by deceit; that we may buy the poor for silver, and the
needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat?
Shall not the land tremble for this; and every one mourn that
dwelleth therein? I will turn your feasting into mourning, saith
the Lord God, and your songs into lamentations."--Amos, chap.
viii. ver. 4 to 10.
_Heytesbury (Wilts), Thursday, 31st August, 1826._
This place, which is one of the rotten boroughs of Wiltshire, and which
was formerly a considerable town, is now but a very miserable affair.
Yesterday morning I went into the Cathedral at Salisbury about 7
o'clock. When I got into the nave of the church, and was looking up and
admiring the columns and the roof, I heard a sort of _humming_, in some
place which appeared to be in the transept of the building. I wondered
what it was, and made my way towards the place whence the noise appeared
to issue. As I approached it, the noise seemed to grow louder. At last,
I thought I could distinguish the sounds of the human voice. This
encouraged me to proceed; and, still following the sound, I at last
turned in at a doorway to my left, where I found a priest and his
congregation assembled. It was a parson of some sort, with a white
covering on him, and five women and four men: when I arrived, there were
five couple of us. I joined the congregation, until they came to the
_litany_; and then, being monstrously hungry, I did not think myself
bound to stay any longer. I wonder what the founders would say, if they
could rise from the grave, and see such a congregation as this in this
most magnificent and beautiful cathedral? I wonder what they would say,
if they could know _to what purpose_ the endowments of this Cathedral
are now applied; and above all things, I wonder what they would say, if
they could see the half-starved labourers that now minister to the
luxuries of those who wallow in the wealth of those endowments. There is
one thing, at any rate, that might be abstained from, by those that
revel in the riches of those endowments; namely, to abuse and
blackguard those of our forefathers, from whom the endowments came, and
who erected the edifice, and carried so far towards the skies that
beautiful and matchless spire, of which the present possessors have the
impudence to boast, while they represent as ignorant and benighted
creatures, those who conceived the grand design, and who executed the
scientific and costly work. These fellows, in big white wigs, of the
size of half a bushel, have the audacity, even within the walls of the
Cathedrals themselves, to rail against those who founded them; and
Rennell and Sturges, while they were actually, literally, fattening on
the spoils of the monastery of St. Swithin, at Winchester, were
publishing abusive pamphlets against that Catholic religion which had
given them their very bread. For my part, I could not look up at the
spire and the whole of the church at Salisbury, without _feeling_ that I
lived in degenerate times. Such a thing never could be made _now_. We
_feel_ that as we look at the building. It really does appear that if
our forefathers had not made these buildings, we should have forgotten,
before now, what the Christian religion was!
At Salisbury, or very near to it, four other rivers fall into the
Avon--the Wyly river, the Nadder, the Born, and another little river
that comes from Norrington. These all become one, at last, just below
Salisbury, and then, under the name of the Avon, wind along down and
fall into the sea at Christchurch. In coming from Salisbury, I came up
the road which runs pretty nearly parallel with the river Wyly, which
river rises at Warminster and in the neighbourhood. This river runs down
a valley twenty-two miles long. It is not so pretty as the valley of the
Avon; but it is very fine in its whole length from Salisbury to this
place (Heytesbury). Here are watered meadows nearest to the river on
both sides; then the gardens, the houses, and the corn-fields. After the
corn-fields come the downs; but, generally speaking, the downs are not
so bold here as they are on the sides of the Avon. The downs do not come
out in promontories so often as they do on the sides of the Avon. The
_Ah-ah!_ if I may so express it, is not so deep, and the sides of it not
so steep, as in the case of the Avon; but the villages are as frequent;
there is more than one church in every mile, and there has been a due
proportion of mansion houses demolished and defaced. The farms are very
fine up this vale, and the meadows, particularly at a place called
Stapleford, are singularly fine. They had just been mowed at Stapleford,
and the hay carried off. At Stapleford, there is a little cross valley,
running up between two hills of the down. There is a little run of water
about a yard wide at this time, coming down this little vale across the
road into the river. The little vale runs up three miles. It does not
appear to be half a mile wide; but in those three miles there are four
churches; namely, Stapleford, Uppington, Berwick St. James, and
Winterborne Stoke. The present population of these four villages is 769
souls, men, women, and children, the whole of whom could very
conveniently be seated in the chancel of the church at Stapleford.
Indeed, the church and parish of Uppington seem to have been united with
one of the other parishes, like the parish in Kent which was united with
North Cray, and not a single house of which now remains. What were these
four churches _built for_ within the distance of three miles? There are
three parsonage houses still remaining; but, and it is a very curious
fact, neither of them good enough for the parson to live in! Here are
seven hundred and sixty souls to be taken care of, but there is no
parsonage house for a soul-curer to stay in, or at least that he _will_
stay in; and all the three parsonages are, in the return laid before
Parliament, represented to be no better than miserable labourers'
cottages, though the parish of Winterborne Stoke has a church sufficient
to contain two or three thousand people. The truth is, that the parsons
have been receiving the revenues of the livings, and have been suffering
the parsonage houses to fall into decay. Here were two or three mansion
houses, which are also gone, even from the sides of this little run of
water.
To-day has been exceedingly hot. Hotter, I think, for a short time, than
I ever felt it in England before. In coming through a village called
Wishford, and mounting a little hill, I thought the heat upon my back
was as great as I had ever felt it in my life. There were thunder storms
about, and it had rained at Wishford a little before I came to it.
My next village was one that I had lived in for a short time, when I was
only about ten or eleven years of age. I had been sent down with a horse
from Farnham, and I remember that I went by _Stone-henge_, and rode up
and looked at the stones. From Stone-henge I went to the village of
Steeple Langford, where I remained from the month of June till the fall
of the year. I remembered the beautiful villages up and down this
valley. I also remembered, very well, that the women at Steeple Langford
used to card and spin dyed wool. I was, therefore, somewhat filled with
curiosity to see this Steeple Langford again; and, indeed, it was the
recollection of this village that made me take a ride into Wiltshire
this summer. I have, I dare say, a thousand times talked about this
Steeple Langford and about the beautiful farms and meadows along this
valley. I have talked of these to my children a great many times; and I
formed the design of letting two of them see this valley this year, and
to go through Warminster to Stroud, and so on to Gloucester and
Hereford. But, when I got to Everley, I found that they would never get
along fast enough to get into Herefordshire in time for what they
intended; so that I parted from them in the manner I have before
described. I was resolved, however, to see Steeple Langford myself, and
I was impatient to get to it, hoping to find a public-house, and a
stable to put my horse in, to protect him, for a while, against the
flies, which tormented him to such a degree, that to ride him was work
as hard as threshing. When I got to Steeple Langford, I found no
public-house, and I found it a much more miserable place than I had
remembered it. The _Steeple_, to which it owed its distinctive
appellation, was gone; and the place altogether seemed to me to be very
much altered for the worse. A little further on, however, I came to a
very famous inn, called Deptford Inn, which is in the parish of Wyly. I
stayed at this inn till about four o'clock in the afternoon. I
remembered Wyly very well, and thought it a gay place when I was a boy.
I remembered a very beautiful garden belonging to a rich farmer and
miller. I went to see it; but, alas! though the statues in the water and
on the grass-plat were still remaining, everything seemed to be in a
state of perfect carelessness and neglect. The living of this parish of
Wyly was lately owned by Dampier (a brother of the Judge), who lived at,
and I believe had the living of, Meon Stoke in Hampshire. This fellow, I
believe, never saw the parish of Wyly but once, though it must have
yielded him a pretty good fleece. It is a Rectory, and the great tithes
must be worth, I should think, six or seven hundred pounds a year, at
the least.
It is a part of our system to have certain _families_, who have no
particular merit, but who are to be maintained, without why or
wherefore, at the public expense, in some shape, or under some name, or
other, it matters not much what shape or what name. If you look through
the old list of pensioners, sinecurists, parsons, and the like, you will
find the same names everlastingly recurring. They seem to be a sort of
creatures that have an _inheritance in the public carcass_, like the
maggots that some people have in their skins. This family of Dampier
seems to be one of these. What, in God's name, should have made one of
these a Bishop and the other a Judge! I never heard of the smallest
particle of talent that either of them possessed. This Rector of Wyly
was another of them. There was no harm in them that I know of, beyond
that of living upon the public; but where were their merits? They had
none, to distinguish them, and to entitle them to the great sums they
received; and, under any other system than such a system as this, they
would, in all human probability, have been gentlemen's servants or
little shopkeepers. I dare say there is some of the _breed_ left; and,
if there be, I would pledge my existence, that they are, in some shape
or other, feeding upon the public. However, thus it must be, until that
change come which will put an end to men paying _fourpence_ in tax upon
a pot of beer.
This Deptford Inn was a famous place of meeting for the _Yeomanry
Cavalry_, in glorious anti-jacobin times, when wheat was twenty
shillings a bushel, and when a man could be crammed into gaol for years,
for only _looking_ awry. This inn was a glorious place in the days of
Peg Nicholson and her Knights. Strangely altered now. The shape of the
garden shows you what revelry used to be carried on here. Peel's Bill
gave this inn, and all belonging to it, a terrible souse. The unfeeling
brutes, who used to brandish their swords, and swagger about, at the
news of what was called "a victory," have now to lower their scale in
clothing, in drink, in eating, in dress, in horseflesh, and everything
else. They are now a lower sort of men than they were. They look at
their rusty sword and their old dusty helmet and their once gay
regimental jacket. They do not hang these up now in the "parlour" for
everybody to see them: they hang them up in their bedrooms, or in a
cockloft; and when they meet their eye, they look at them as a cow does
at a bastard calf, or as the bridegroom does at a girl that the
overseers are about to compel him to marry. If their children should
happen to see these implements of war twenty or thirty years hence, they
will certainly think that their fathers were the greatest fools that
ever walked the face of the earth; and that will be a most filial and
charitable way of thinking of them; for it is not from ignorance that
they have sinned, but from excessive baseness; and when any of them now
complain of those acts of the Government which strip them, (as the late
Order in Council does), of a fifth part of their property in an hour,
let them recollect their own base and malignant conduct towards those
persecuted reformers, who, if they had not been suppressed by these very
yeomen, would, long ago, have put an end to the cause of that ruin of
which these yeomen now complain. When they complain of their ruin, let
them remember the toasts which they drank in anti-jacobin times; let
them remember their base and insulting exultations on the occasion of
the 16th of August at Manchester; let them remember their cowardly abuse
of men, who were endeavouring to free their country from that horrible
scourge which they themselves now feel.
Just close by this Deptford Inn is the farm-house of the farm where that
Gourlay lived, who has long been making a noise in the Court of
Chancery, and who is now, I believe, confined in some place or other for
having assaulted Mr. Brougham. This fellow, who is confined, the
newspapers tell us, on a charge of being insane, is certainly one of
the most malignant devils that I ever knew anything of in my life. He
went to Canada about the time that I went last to the United States. He
got into a quarrel with the Government there about something, I know not
what. He came to see me, at my house in the neighbourhood of New York,
just before I came home. He told me his Canada story. I showed him all
the kindness in my power, and he went away, knowing that I was just then
coming to England. I had hardly got home, before the Scotch newspapers
contained communications from a person, pretending to derive his
information from Gourlay, relating to what Gourlay had described as
having passed between him and me; and which description was a tissue of
most abominable falsehoods, all having a direct tendency to do injury to
me, who had never, either by word or deed, done anything that could
possibly have a tendency to do injury to this Gourlay. What the vile
Scotch newspapers had begun, the malignant reptile himself continued
after his return to England, and, in an address to Lord Bathurst,
endeavoured to make his court to the Government by the most foul, false
and detestable slanders upon me, from whom, observe, he had never
received any injury, or attempt at injury, in the whole course of his
life; whom he had visited; to whose house he had gone, of his own
accord, and that, too, as he said, out of _respect_ for me; endeavoured,
I say, to make his court to the Government by the most abominable
slanders against me. He is now, even now, putting forth, under the form
of letters to me, a revival of what he pretends was a _conversation_
that passed between us at my house near New York. Even if what he says
were true, none but caitiffs as base as those who conduct the English
newspapers, would give circulation to his letters, containing, as they
must, the substance of a conversation purely private. But I never had
any conversation with him: I never talked to him at all about the things
that he is now bringing forward. I heard the fellow's stories about
Canada: I thought he told me lies; and, besides, I did not care a straw
whether his stories were true or not; I looked upon him as a sort of
gambling adventurer; but I treated him as is the fashion of the country
in which I was, with great civility and hospitality. There are two
fellows of the name of Jacob and Johnson at Winchester, and two fellows
at Salisbury of the name of Brodie and Dowding. These reptiles publish,
each couple of them, a newspaper; and in these newspapers they seem to
take particular delight in calumniating me. The two Winchester fellows
insert the letters of this half crazy, half cunning, Scotchman, Gourlay;
the other fellows insert still viler slanders; and, if I had seen one of
their papers, before I left Salisbury, which I have seen since, I
certainly would have given Mr. Brodie something to make him remember me.
This fellow, who was a little coal-merchant but a short while ago, is
now, it seems, a paper-money maker, as well as a newspaper maker. Stop,
Master Brodie, till I go to Salisbury again, and see whether I do not
give you a _check_, even such as you did not receive during the late
run! Gourlay, amongst other whims, took it into his head to write
against the poor laws, saying that they were a bad thing. He found,
however, at last, that they were necessary to keep him from starving;
for he came down to Wyly, three or four years ago, and threw himself
upon the parish. The overseers, who recollected what a swaggering blade
it was, when it came here to teach the moon-rakers "hoo to farm, mon,"
did not see the sense of keeping him like a gentleman; so they set him
to crack stones upon the highway; and that set him off again, pretty
quickly. The farm that he rented is a very fine farm, with a fine large
farm-house to it. It is looked upon as one of the best farms in the
country: the present occupier is a farmer born in the neighbourhood; a
man such as ought to occupy it; and Gourlay, who came here with his
Scotch impudence to teach others how to farm, is much about where and
how he ought to be. Jacob and Johnson, of Winchester, know perfectly
well that all the fellow says about me is lies; they know also that
their parson readers know that it is a mass of lies: they further know
that the parsons know that they know that it is a mass of lies; but they
know that their paper will sell the better for that; they know that to
circulate lies about me will get them money, and this is what they do it
for, and such is the character of English newspapers, and of a great
part of the readers of those newspapers. Therefore, when I hear of
people "suffering;" when I hear of people being "ruined;" when I hear of
"unfortunate families;" when I hear a talk of this kind, I stop, before
I either express or feel compassion, to ascertain _who_ and _what_ the
sufferers are; and whether they have or have not participated in, or
approved of, acts like those of Jacob and Johnson and Brodie and
Dowding; for if they have, if they have malignantly calumniated those
who have been labouring to prevent their ruin and misery, then a crushed
ear-wig, or spider, or eft, or toad, is as much entitled to the
compassion of a just and sensible man. Let the reptiles perish: it would
be injustice; it would be to fly in the face of morality and religion to
express sorrow for their ruin. They themselves have felt for no man, and
for the wife and children of no man, if that man's public virtues
thwarted their own selfish views, or even excited their groundless
fears. They have signed addresses, applauding everything tyrannical and
inhuman. They have seemed to glory in the shame of their country, to
rejoice in its degradation, and even to exult in the shedding of
innocent blood, if these things did but tend, as they thought, to give
them permanent security in the enjoyment of their unjust gains. Such has
been their conduct; they are numerous: they are to be found in all parts
of the kingdom: therefore again I say, when I hear of "ruin" or
"misery," I must know what the conduct of the sufferers has been before
I bestow my compassion.
_Warminster (Wilts), Friday, 1st Sept._
I set out from Heytesbury this morning about six o'clock. Last night,
before I went to bed, I found that there were some men and boys in the
house, who had come all the way from Bradford, about twelve miles, in
order to get _nuts_. These people were men and boys that had been
employed in the _cloth factories_ at Bradford and about Bradford. I had
some talk with some of these nutters, and I am quite convinced, not that
the cloth making is at _an end_; but that it _never will be again what
it has been_. Before last Christmas these manufacturers had full work,
at one shilling and threepence a yard at broad-cloth weaving. They have
now a quarter work, at one shilling a yard! One and three-pence a yard
for this weaving has been given at all times within the memory of man!
Nothing can show more clearly than this, and in a stronger light, the
great change which has taken place in the _remuneration of labour_.
There was a turn out last winter, when the price was reduced to a
shilling a yard; but it was put an end to in the usual way; the
constable's staff, the bayonet, the gaol. These poor nutters were
extremely ragged. I saved my supper, and I fasted instead of
breakfasting. That was three shillings, which I had saved, and I added
five to them, with a resolution to save them afterwards, in order to
give these chaps a breakfast for once in their lives. There were eight
of them, six men and two boys; and I gave them two quartern loaves, two
pounds of cheese, and eight pints of strong beer. The fellows were very
thankful, but the conduct of the landlord and landlady pleased me
exceedingly. When I came to pay my bill, they had said nothing about my
bed, which had been a very good one; and, when I asked why they had not
put the bed into the bill, they said they would not charge anything for
the bed since I had been so good to the poor men. Yes, said I, but I
must not throw the expense upon you. I had no supper, and I have had no
breakfast; and, therefore, I am not called upon to pay for them: but _I
have had_ the bed. It ended by my paying for the bed, and coming off,
leaving the nutters at their breakfast, and very much delighted with the
landlord and his wife; and I must here observe that I have pretty
generally found a good deal of compassion for the poor people to
prevail amongst publicans and their wives.
From Heytesbury to Warminster is a part of the country singularly bright
and beautiful. From Salisbury up to very near Heytesbury, you have the
valley, as before described by me. Meadows next the water; then arable
land; then the downs; but when you come to Heytesbury, and indeed a
little before, in looking forward you see the vale stretch out, from
about three miles wide to ten miles wide, from high land to high land.
From a hill before you come down to Heytesbury, you see through this
wide opening into Somersetshire. You see a round hill rising in the
middle of the opening; but all the rest a flat enclosed country, and
apparently full of wood. In looking back down this vale one cannot help
being struck with the innumerable proofs that there are of a decline in
point of population. In the first place, there are twenty-four parishes,
each of which takes a little strip across the valley, and runs up
through the arable land into the down. There are twenty-four parish
churches, and there ought to be as many _parsonage-houses_; but seven of
these, out of the twenty-four, that is to say, nearly one-third of them,
are, in the returns laid before Parliament (and of which returns I shall
speak more particularly by-and-by), stated to be such miserable
dwellings as to be unfit for a parson to reside in. Two of them,
however, are gone. There are no parsonage-houses in those two parishes:
there are the scites; there are the glebes; but the houses have been
suffered to fall down and to be totally carried away. The tithes remain,
indeed, and the parson sacks the amount of them. A journeyman parson
comes and works in three or four churches of a Sunday; but the master
parson is not there. He generally carries away the produce to spend it
in London, at Bath, or somewhere else, to show off his daughters; and
the overseers, that is to say, the farmers, manage the poor in their own
way, instead of having, according to the ancient law, a third-part of
all the tithes to keep them with.
The falling down and the beggary of these parsonage-houses prove beyond
all question the decayed state of the population. And, indeed, the
mansion-houses are gone, except in a very few instances. There are but
five left, that I could perceive, all the way from Salisbury to
Warminster, though the country is the most pleasant that can be
imagined. Here is water, here are meadows; plenty of fresh-water fish;
hares and partridges in abundance, and it is next to impossible to
destroy them. Here are shooting, coursing, hunting; hills of every
height, size, and form; valleys, the same; lofty trees and rookeries in
every mile; roads always solid and good; always pleasant for exercise;
and the air must be of the best in the world. Yet it is manifest that
four-fifths of the mansions have been swept away. There is a
parliamentary return, to prove that nearly a third of the parsonage
houses have become beggarly holes or have disappeared. I have now been
in nearly threescore villages, and in twenty or thirty or forty hamlets
of Wiltshire; and I do not know that I have been in one, however small,
in which I did not see a house or two, and sometimes more, either
tumbled down, or beginning to tumble down. It is impossible for the eyes
of man to be fixed on a finer country than that between the village of
Codford and the town of Warminster; and it is not very easy for the eyes
of man to discover labouring people more miserable. There are two
villages, one called Norton Bovant, and the other Bishopstrow, which I
think form, together, one of the prettiest spots that my eyes ever
beheld. The former village belongs to Bennet, the member for the county,
who has a mansion there, in which two of his sisters live, I am told.
There is a farm at Bishopstrow, standing at the back of the arable land,
up in a vale, formed by two very lofty hills, upon each of which there
was formerly a Roman Camp, in consideration of which farm, if the owner
would give it to me, I would almost consent to let Ottiwell Wood remain
quiet in his seat, and suffer the pretty gentlemen of Whitehall to go on
without note or comment till they had fairly blowed up their concern.
The farm-yard is surrounded by lofty and beautiful trees. In the
rick-yard I counted twenty-two ricks of one sort and another. The hills
shelter the house and the yard and the trees, most completely, from
every wind but the south. The arable land goes down before the house,
and spreads along the edge of the down, going, with a gentle slope, down
to the meadows. So that, going along the turnpike road, which runs
between the lower fields of the arable land, you see the large and
beautiful flocks of sheep upon the sides of the down, while the
horn-cattle are up to their eyes in grass in the meadows. Just when I
was coming along here, the sun was about half an hour high; it shined
through the trees most brilliantly; and, to crown the whole, I met, just
as I was entering the village, a very pretty girl, who was apparently
going a gleaning in the fields. I asked her the name of the place, and
when she told me it was Bishopstrow, she pointed to the situation of the
church, which, she said, was on the other side of the river. She really
put me in mind of the pretty girls at Preston who spat upon the
"individual" of the Derby family, and I made her a bow accordingly.
The whole of the population of the twenty-four parishes down this vale,
amounts to only 11,195 souls, according to the Official return to
Parliament; and, mind, I include the parish of Fisherton Anger (a suburb
of the city of Salisbury), which contains 893 of the number. I include
the town of Heytesbury, with its 1,023 souls; and I further include this
very good and large market town of Warminster, with its population of
5,000! So that I leave, in the other twenty-one parishes, only 4,170
souls, men, women, and children! That is to say, a hundred and
ninety-eight souls to each parish; or, reckoning five to a family,
thirty-nine families to each parish. Above one half of the population
never could be expected to be in the church at one time; so that here
are one-and-twenty churches built for the purpose of holding two
thousand and eighty people! There are several of these churches, any one
of which would conveniently contain the whole of these people, the two
thousand and eighty! The church of Bishopstrow would contain the whole
of the two thousand and eighty very well indeed; and it is curious
enough to observe that the churches of Fisherton Anger, Heytesbury, and
Warminster, though quite sufficient to contain the people that go to
church, are none of them nearly so big as several of the village
churches. All these churches are built long and long before the reign of
Richard the Second; that is to say, they were founded long before that
time, and if the first churches were gone, these others were built in
their stead. There is hardly one of them that is not as old as the reign
of Richard the Second; and yet that impudent Scotchman, George Chalmers,
would make us believe that, in the reign of Richard the Second, the
population of the country was hardly anything at all! He has the
impudence, or the gross ignorance, to state the population of England
and Wales at _two millions_, which, as I have shown in the last Number
of the Protestant Reformation, would allow only twelve able men to every
parish church throughout the kingdom. What, I ask, for about the
thousandth time I ask it; what were these twenty churches built for?
Some of them stand within a quarter of a mile of each other. They are
pretty nearly as close to each other as the churches in London and
Westminster are.
What a monstrous thing, to suppose that they were built without there
being people to go to them; and built, too, without money and without
hands! The whole of the population in these twenty-one parishes could
stand, and without much crowding too, in the bottoms of the towers of
the several churches. Nay, in three or four of the parishes, the whole
of the people could stand in the church porches. Then the _church-yards_
show you how numerous the population must have been. You see, in some
cases, only here and there the mark of a grave, where the church-yard
contains from half an acre to an acre of land, and sometimes more. In
short, everything shows that here was once a great and opulent
population; that there was an abundance to eat, to wear, and to spare;
that all the land that is now under cultivation, and a great deal that
is not now under cultivation, was under cultivation in former times. The
Scotch beggars would make us believe that _we_ sprang from beggars. The
impudent scribes would make us believe that England was formerly nothing
at all till they came to enlighten it and fatten upon it. Let the
beggars answer me this question; let the impudent, the brazen scribes,
that impose upon the credulous and cowed-down English; let them tell me
_why_ these twenty-one churches were built; what they were built FOR;
why the large churches of the two Codfords were stuck up within a few
hundred yards of each other, if the whole of the population could then,
as it can now, be crammed into the chancel of either of the two
churches? Let them answer me this question, or shut up their mouths upon
this subject, on which they have told so many lies.
As to the produce of this valley, it must be at least ten times as great
as its consumption, even if we include the three towns that belong to
it. I am sure I saw produce enough in five or six of the farm-yards, or
rick-yards, to feed the whole of the population of the twenty-one
parishes. But the infernal system causes it all to be carried away. Not
a bit of good beef, or mutton, or veal, and scarcely a bit of bacon is
left for those who raise all this food and wool. The labourers here
_look_ as if they were half-starved. They answer extremely well to the
picture that Fortescue gave of the French in his day.
Talk of "liberty," indeed; "civil and religious liberty": the
Inquisition, with a belly full, is far preferable to a state of things
like this. For my own part, I really am ashamed to ride a fat horse, to
have a full belly, and to have a clean shirt upon my back, while I look
at these wretched countrymen of mine; while I actually see them reeling
with weakness; when I see their poor faces present me nothing but skin
and bone, while they are toiling to get the wheat and the meat ready to
be carried away to be devoured by the tax-eaters. I am ashamed to look
at these poor souls, and to reflect that they are my countrymen; and
particularly to reflect that we are descended from those amongst whom
"beef, pork, mutton, and veal, were the food of the poorer sort of
people." What! and is the "Emigration Committee" sitting, to invent the
means of getting rid of some part of the thirty-nine families that are
employed in raising the immense quantities of food in each of these
twenty-one parishes? Are there _schemers_ to go before this conjuration
Committee; Wiltshire _schemers_, to tell the Committee how they can get
rid of a part of these one hundred and ninety-eight persons to every
parish? Are there schemers of this sort of work still, while no man, no
man at all, not a single man, says a word about getting rid of the
dead-weight, or the supernumerary parsons, both of whom have actually a
premium given them for breeding, and are filling the country with
idlers? We are reversing the maxim of the Scripture: our laws almost
say, that those that work shall not eat, and that those who do not work
shall have the food. I repeat, that the baseness of the English
land-owners surpasses that of any other men that ever lived in the
world. The cowards know well that the labourers that give value to their
land are skin and bone. They are not such brutes as not to know that
this starvation is produced by taxation. They know well, how unjust it
is to treat their labourers in this way. They know well that there goes
down the common foot soldier's single throat more food than is allowed
by them to a labourer, his wife, and three children. They know well that
the present standing army in time of peace consumes more food and
raiment than a million of the labourers consume; aye, than two millions
of them consume; if you include the women and the children; they well
know these things; they know that their poor labourers are taxed to keep
this army in fatness and in splendour. They know that the dead-weight,
which, in the opinion of most men of sense, ought not to receive a
single farthing of the public money, swallow more of good food than a
third or a fourth part of the real labourers of England swallow. They
know that a million and a half of pounds sterling was taken out of the
taxes, partly raised upon the labourers, to enable the poor Clergy of
the Church of England to marry and to breed. They know that a regulation
has been recently adopted, by which an old dead-weight man is enabled to
sell his dead-weight to a young man; and that thus this burden would, if
the system were to be continued, be rendered perpetual. They know that a
good slice of the dead-weight money goes _to Hanover_; and that even
these Hanoverians can sell their dead-weight claim upon us. The "country
gentlemen" fellows know all this: they know that the poor labourers,
including all the poor manufacturers, pay one-half of their wages in
taxes to support all these things; and yet not a word about these things
is ever said, or even hinted, by these mean, these cruel, these
cowardly, these carrion, these dastardly reptiles. Sir James Graham, of
Netherby, who, I understand, is a young fellow instead of an old one,
may invoke our pity upon these "ancient families," but he will invoke in
vain. It was their duty to stand forward and prevent
Power-of-Imprisonment Bills, Six Acts, Ellenborough's Act, Poaching
Transportation Act, New Trespass Act, Sunday Tolls, and the hundreds of
other things that could be named. On the contrary, _they were the cause
of them all_. They were the cause of all the taxes, and all the debts;
and now let them take the consequences!
_Saturday, September 2nd._
After I got to Warminster yesterday, it began to rain, which stopped me
in my way to Frome in Somersetshire, which lies about seven or eight
miles from this place; but, as I meant to be quite in the northern part
of the county by to-morrow noon, or there-abouts, I took a post-chaise
in the afternoon of yesterday and went to Frome, where I saw, upon my
entrance into the town, between two and three hundred weavers, men and
boys, cracking stones, moving earth, and doing other sorts of work,
towards making a fine road into the town. I drove into the town, and
through the principal streets, and then I put my chaise up a little at
one of the inns.
This appears to be a sort of little Manchester. A very small Manchester,
indeed; for it does not contain above ten or twelve thousand people, but
it has all the _flash_ of a Manchester, and the innkeepers and their
people look and behave like the Manchester fellows. I was, I must
confess, glad to find proofs of the irretrievable decay of the place. I
remembered how ready the bluff manufacturers had been to _call in the
troops_ of various descriptions. "Let them," said I to myself, "call the
troops in now, to make their trade revive. Let them now resort to their
friends of the yeomanry and of the army; let them now threaten their
poor workmen with the gaol, when they dare to ask for the means of
preventing starvation in their families. Let them, who have, in fact,
lived and thriven by the sword, now call upon the parson-magistrate to
bring out the soldiers to compel me, for instance, to give thirty
shillings a yard for the superfine black broad cloth (made at Frome),
which Mr. Roe, at Kensington, offered me at seven shillings and sixpence
a yard just before I left home! Yes, these men have ground down into
powder those who were earning them their fortunes: let the grinders
themselves now be ground, and, according to the usual wise and just
course of Providence, let them be crushed by the system which they have
delighted in, because it made others crouch beneath them." Their poor
work-people cannot be worse off than they long have been. The parish
pay, which they now get upon the roads, is 2_s._ 6_d._ a week for a man,
2_s._ for his wife, 1_s._ 3_d._ for each child under eight years of age,
3_d._ a week, in addition, to each child above eight, who can go to
work: and, if the children above eight years old, whether girls or boys,
do not go to work upon the road, they have _nothing_! Thus, a family of
five people have just as much, and eight pence over, as goes down the
throat of one single foot soldier; but, observe, the standing soldier;
that "truly English institution" has clothing, fuel, candle, soap, and
house-rent, over and above what is allowed to this miserable family! And
yet the base reptiles, who are called "country gentlemen," and whom Sir
James Graham calls upon us to commit all sorts of acts of injustice in
order to _preserve_, never utter a whisper about the expenses of keeping
the soldiers, while they are everlastingly railing against the working
people, of every description, and representing them, and them only, as
the cause of the loss of their estates!
These poor creatures at Frome have pawned all their things, or nearly
all. All their best clothes, their blankets and sheets; their looms; any
little piece of furniture that they had, and that was good for anything.
Mothers have been compelled to pawn all the tolerably good clothes that
their children had. In case of a man having two or three shirts, he is
left with only one, and sometimes without any shirt; and, though this is
a sort of manufacture that cannot very well come to a complete end,
still it has received a blow from which it cannot possibly recover. The
population of this Frome has been augmented to the degree of one-third
within the last six or seven years. There are here all the usual signs
of accommodation bills and all false paper stuff, called money: new
houses, in abundance, half finished; new gingerbread "places of
worship," as they are called; great swaggering inns; parcels of
swaggering fellows going about, with vulgarity imprinted upon their
countenances, but with good clothes upon their backs.
I found the working people at Frome very intelligent; very well informed
as to the cause of their misery; not at all humbugged by the canters,
whether about religion or loyalty. When I got to the inn, I sent my
post-chaise boy back to the road, to tell one or two of the weavers to
come to me at the inn. The landlord did not at first like to let such
ragged fellows upstairs. I insisted, however, upon their coming up, and
I had a long talk with them. They were very intelligent men; had much
clearer views of what is likely to happen than the pretty gentlemen of
Whitehall seem to have; and, it is curious enough, that they, these
common weavers, should tell me, that they thought that the trade never
would come back again to what it was before; or, rather, to what it has
been for some years past. This is the impression everywhere; that the
_puffing is over_; that we must come back again to something like
reality. The first factories that I met with were at a village called
Upton Lovell, just before I came to Heytesbury. There they were a-doing
not more than a quarter work. There is only one factory, I believe, here
at Warminster, and that has been suspended, during the harvest, at any
rate. At Frome they are all upon about a quarter work. It is the same at
Bradford and Trowbridge; and, as curious a thing as ever was heard of
in the world is, that here are, through all these towns, and throughout
this country, weavers from the North, singing about the towns ballads of
Distress! They had been doing it at Salisbury, just before I was there.
The landlord at Heytesbury told me that people that could afford it
generally gave them something; and I was told that they did the same at
Salisbury. The landlord at Heytesbury told me, that every one of them
had a _license to beg_, given them, he said, "by the Government." I
suppose it was some _pass_ from a Magistrate; though I know of no law
that allows of such passes; and a pretty thing it would be, to grant
such licenses, or such passes, when the law so positively commands, that
the poor of every parish shall be maintained in and by every such
parish.
However, all law of this sort, all salutary and humane law, really seems
to be drawing towards an end in this now miserable country, where the
thousands are caused to wallow in luxury, to be surfeited with food and
drink, while the millions are continually on the point of famishing. In
order to form an idea of the degradation of the people of this country,
and of the abandonment of every English principle, what need we of more
than this one disgraceful and truly horrible fact, namely, that _the
common soldiers, of the standing army in time of peace, subscribe, in
order to furnish the meanest of diet to keep from starving the
industrious people who are taxed to the amount of one-half of their
wages, and out of which taxes the very pay of these soldiers comes_! Is
not this one fact; this disgraceful, this damning fact; is not this
enough to convince us, that _there must be a change_; that there must be
a complete and radical change; or, that England must become a country of
the basest slavery that ever disgraced the earth?
_Devizes, (Wilts), Sunday Morning, 3rd Sept._
I left Warminster yesterday at about one o'clock. It is contrary to my
practice to set out at all, unless I can do it early in the morning; but
at Warminster I was at the South-West corner of this county, and I had
made a sort of promise to be to-day at Highworth, which is at the
North-East corner, and which parish, indeed, joins up to Berkshire. The
distance, including my little intended deviations, was more than fifty
miles; and, not liking to attempt it in one day, I set off in the middle
of the day, and got here in the evening, just before a pretty heavy rain
came on.
Before I speak of my ride from Warminster to this place, I must once
more observe, that Warminster is a very nice town; everything belonging
to it is _solid_ and _good_. There are no villanous gingerbread houses
running up, and no nasty, shabby-genteel people; no women trapesing
about with showy gowns and dirty necks; no jew-looking fellows with
dandy coats, dirty shirts, and half-heels to their shoes. A really nice
and good town. It is a great corn-market: one of the greatest in this
part of England; and here things are still conducted in the good, old,
honest fashion. The corn is brought and pitched in the market before it
is sold; and, when sold, it is paid for on the nail; and all is over,
and the farmers and millers gone home by day-light. Almost everywhere
else the corn is sold by sample; it is sold by juggling in a corner; the
parties meet and drink first; it is night work; there is no fair and
open market; the mass of the people do not know what the prices are; and
all this favours that _monopoly_ which makes the corn change hands many
times, perhaps, before it reaches the mouth, leaving a profit in each
pair of hands, and which monopoly is, for the greater part, carried on
by the villanous tribe of _Quakers_, _none of whom ever work_, and all
of whom prey upon the rest of the community, as those infernal devils,
the wasps, prey upon the bees. Talking of the Devil, puts one in mind of
his imps; and talking of _Quakers_, puts one in mind of Jemmy Cropper of
Liverpool. I should like to know precisely (I know pretty nearly) what
effect "late panic" has had, and is having, on Jemmy! Perhaps the reader
will recollect, that Jemmy told the public, through the columns of base
Bott Smith, that "Cobbett's prophecies were falsified as soon as
spawned." Jemmy, canting Jemmy, has now had time to ruminate on that!
But does the reader remember James's project for "making Ireland as
happy as England"? It was simply by introducing cotton-factories,
steam-engines, and power-looms! That was all; and there was Jemmy in
Ireland, speech-making before such Lords and such Bishops and such
'Squires as God never suffered to exist in the world before: there was
Jemmy, showing, proving, demonstrating, that to make the Irish
cotton-workers would infallibly make them _happy_! If it had been now,
instead of being two years ago, he might have produced the reports of
the starvation-committees of Manchester to confirm his opinions. One
would think, that this instance of the folly and impudence of this
canting son of the monopolizing sect, would cure this public of its
proneness to listen to cant; but nothing will cure it; the very
existence of this sect, none of whom ever work, and the whole of whom
live like fighting-cocks upon the labour of the rest of the community;
the very _existence_ of such a sect shows, that the nation is, almost in
its nature, _a dupe_. There has been a great deal of railing against
the King of Spain; not to becall the King of Spain is looked upon as a
proof of want of "liberality," and what must it be, then, to _applaud_
any of the acts of the King of Spain! This I am about to do, however,
think Dr. Black of it what he may.
In the first place, the mass of the people of Spain are better off,
better fed, better clothed, than the people of any other country in
Europe, and much better than the people of England are. That is one
thing; and that is almost enough of itself. In the next place, the King
of Spain has refused to mortgage the land and labour of his people for
the benefit of an infamous set of Jews and Jobbers. Next, the King of
Spain has most essentially thwarted the Six-Acts people, the Manchester
16th of August, the Parson Hay, the Sidmouth's Circular, the Dungeoning,
the Ogden's rupture people; he has thwarted, and most cuttingly annoyed,
these people, who are also the poacher-transporting people, and the new
trespass law, and the apple-felony and the horse-police (or gendarmerie)
and the Sunday-toll people: the King of Spain has thwarted all these,
and he has materially assisted in blowing up the brutal big fellows of
Manchester; and therefore I applaud the King of Spain.
I do not much like weasels; but I hate rats; and therefore I say success
to the weasels. But there is one act of the King of Spain which is
worthy of the imitation of every King, aye, and of every republic too;
his edict for taxing traffickers, which edict was published about eight
months ago. It imposes a pretty heavy annual tax on every one who is a
_mere buyer and seller_, and who neither produces nor consumes, nor
makes, nor changes the state of, the article, or articles, that he buys
and sells. Those who bring things into the kingdom are deemed producers,
and those who send things out of the kingdom are deemed changers of the
state of things. These two classes embrace all _legitimate merchants_.
Thus, then, the farmer, who produces corn and meat and wool and wood, is
not taxed; nor is the coach-master who buys the corn to give to his
horses, nor the miller who buys it to change the state of it, nor the
baker who buys the flour to change its state; nor is the manufacturer
who buys the wool to change its state; and so on: but the Jew or Quaker,
the _mere dealer_, who buys the corn of the producer to sell it to the
miller, and to deduct _a profit_, which must, at last, fall upon the
consumer; this Jew, or Quaker, or self-styled Christian, who acts the
part of Jew or Quaker, is taxed by the King of Spain; and for this I
applaud the King of Spain.
If we had a law like this, the pestiferous sect of non-labouring, sleek
and fat hypocrites could not exist in England. But ours is, altogether,
_a system of monopolies_, created by taxation and paper-money, from
which monopolies are inseparable. It is notorious that the brewer's
monopoly is the master even of the Government; it is well known to all
who examine and reflect that a very large part of our bread comes to our
mouths loaded with the profit of nine or ten, or more, different
dealers; and I shall, as soon as I have leisure, prove as clearly as
anything ever was proved, that the people pay two millions of pounds a
year in consequence of the Monopoly in tea! that is to say, they pay two
millions a year more than they would pay were it not for the monopoly;
and, mind, I do not mean the monopoly of the East India Company, but the
monopoly of the Quaker and other Tea Dealers, who buy the tea of that
Company! The people of this country are eaten up by monopolies. These
compel those who labour to maintain those who do not labour; and hence
the success of the crafty crew of Quakers, the very _existence_ of which
sect is a disgrace to the country.
Besides the corn market at Warminster, I was delighted, and greatly
surprised, to see the _meat_. Not only the very finest veal and lamb
that I had ever seen in my life, but so exceedingly beautiful that I
could hardly believe my eyes. I am a great connoisseur in joints of
meat; a great judge, if five-and-thirty years of experience can give
sound judgment. I verily believe that I have bought and have roasted
more whole sirloins of beef than any man in England; I know all about
the matter; a very great visitor of Newgate market; in short, though a
little eater, I am a very great provider. It is a fancy, I like the
subject, and therefore I understand it; and with all this knowledge of
the matter, I say I never saw veal and lamb half so fine as what I saw
at Warminster. The town is famed for fine meat; and I knew it, and,
therefore, I went out in the morning to look at the meat. It was, too,
2_d._ a pound cheaper than I left it at Kensington.
My road from Warminster to Devizes lay through Westbury, a nasty odious
rotten-borough, a really rotten place. It has cloth factories in it, and
they seem to be ready to tumble down as well as many of the houses.
God's curse seems to be upon most of these rotten-boroughs. After coming
through this miserable hole, I came along, on the north side of the
famous hill, called Bratton Castle, so renowned in the annals of the
Romans and of Alfred the Great. Westbury is a place of great ancient
grandeur; and it is easy to perceive that it was once ten or twenty
times its present size. My road was now the line of separation between
what they call South Wilts and North Wilts, the former consisting of
high and broad downs and narrow valleys with meadows and rivers running
down them; the latter consisting of a rather flat, enclosed country:
the former having a chalk bottom; the latter a bottom of marl, clay, or
flat stone: the former a country for lean sheep and corn; and the latter
a country for cattle, fat sheep, cheese, and bacon: the former by far,
to my taste, the most beautiful; and I am by no means sure that it is
not, all things considered, the most rich. All my way along, till I came
very near to Devizes, I had the steep and naked downs up to my right,
and the flat and enclosed country to my left.
Very near to Bratton Castle (which is only a hill with deep ditches on
it) is the village of Eddington, so famed for the battle fought here by
Alfred and the Danes. The church in this village would contain several
thousands of persons; and the village is reduced to a few straggling
houses. The land here is very good; better than almost any I ever saw;
as black, and, apparently, as rich, as the land in the market-gardens at
Fulham. The turnips are very good all along here for several miles; but
this is, indeed, singularly fine and rich land. The orchards very fine;
finely sheltered, and the crops of apples and pears and walnuts very
abundant. Walnuts _ripe now_, a month earlier than usual. After
Eddington I came to a hamlet called Earl's Stoke, the houses of which
stand at a few yards from each other on the two sides of the road; every
house is white; and the front of every one is covered with some sort or
other of clematis, or with rose-trees, or jasmines. It was easy to guess
that the whole belonged to one owner; and that owner I found to be a Mr.
Watson Taylor, whose very pretty seat is close by the hamlet, and in
whose park-pond I saw what I never saw before; namely, some _black
swans_. They are not nearly so large as the white, nor are they so
stately in their movements. They are a meaner bird.
_Highworth (Wilts), Monday, 4th Sept._
I got here yesterday, after a ride, including my deviations, of about
thirty-four miles, and that, too, _without breaking my fast_. Before I
got into the rotten-borough of Calne, I had two _tributes_ to pay to the
Aristocracy; namely, two _Sunday tolls_; and I was resolved that the
country in which these tolls were extorted should have not a farthing of
my money that I could by any means keep from it. Therefore I fasted
until I got into the free-quarters in which I now am. I would have made
my horse fast too, if I could have done it without the risk of making
him unable to carry me.