_Sheffield, 31st January 1830._
On the 26th instant I gave my third lecture at Leeds. I should in vain
endeavour to give an adequate description of the pleasure which I felt
at my reception, and at the effect which I produced in that fine and
opulent capital of this great county of York; for the _capital_ it is in
fact, though not in name. On the first evening, the play-house, which is
pretty spacious, was not completely filled in all its parts; but on the
second and the third, it was filled brim full, boxes, pit and gallery;
besides a dozen or two of gentlemen who were accommodated with seats on
the stage. Owing to a cold which I took at Huddersfield, and which I
spoke of before, I was, as the players call it, not in very good
_voice_; but the audience made allowance for that, and very wisely
preferred sense to sound. I never was more delighted than with my
audience at Leeds; and what I set the highest value on, is, that I find
I produced a prodigious effect in that important town.
There had been a meeting at Doncaster, a few days before I went to Leeds
from Ripley, where one of the speakers, a Mr. Becket Denison, had said,
speaking of the taxes, that there must be an application of the _pruning
hook_ or of the _sponge_. This gentleman is a banker, I believe; he is
one of the Beckets connected with the Lowthers; and he is a brother, or
very near relation of that Sir John Becket who is the Judge Advocate
General. So that, at last, others can talk of the pruning hook and the
sponge, as well as I.
From Leeds I proceeded on to this place, not being able to stop at
either Wakefield or Barnsley, except merely to change horses. The people
in those towns were apprised of the time that I should pass through
them; and, at each place, great numbers assembled to see me, to shake me
by the hand, and to request me to stop. I was so hoarse as not to be
able to make the post-boy hear me when I called to him; and, therefore,
it would have been useless to stop; yet I promised to go back if my time
and my voice would allow me. They do not; and I have written to the
gentlemen of those places to inform them, that when I go to Scotland in
the spring, I will not fail to stop in those towns, in order to express
my gratitude to them. All the way along, from Leeds to Sheffield, it is
coal and iron, and iron and coal. It was dark before we reached
Sheffield; so that we saw the iron furnaces in all the horrible
splendour of their everlasting blaze. Nothing can be conceived more
grand or more terrific than the yellow waves of fire that incessantly
issue from the top of these furnaces, some of which are close by the
way-side. Nature has placed the beds of iron and the beds of coal
alongside of each other, and art has taught man to make one to operate
upon the other, as to turn the iron-stone into liquid matter, which is
drained off from the bottom of the furnace, and afterwards moulded into
blocks and bars, and all sorts of things. The combustibles are put into
the top of the furnace, which stands thirty, forty, or fifty feet up in
the air, and the ever blazing mouth of which is kept supplied with coal
and coke and iron stone, from little iron wagons forced up by steam, and
brought down again to be re-filled. It is a surprising thing to behold;
and it is impossible to behold it without being convinced that, whatever
other nations may do with cotton and with wool, they will never equal
England with regard to things made of iron and steel. This Sheffield,
and the land all about it, is one bed of iron and coal. They call it
black Sheffield, and black enough it is; but from this one town and its
environs go nine-tenths of the knives that are used in the whole world;
there being, I understand, no knives made at Birmingham; the manufacture
of which place consists of the larger sort of implements, of locks of
all sorts, and guns and swords, and of all the endless articles of
hardware which go to the furnishing of a house. As to the land, viewed
in the way of agriculture, it really does appear to be very little
worth. I have not seen, except at Harewood and Ripley, a stack of wheat
since I came into Yorkshire; and even there, the whole I saw; and all
that I have seen since I came into Yorkshire; and all that I saw during
a ride of six miles that I took into Derbyshire the day before
yesterday; all put together would not make the one-half of what I have
many times seen in one single rick-yard of the vales of Wiltshire. But
this is all very proper: these coal-diggers, and iron-melters, and
knife-makers, compel us to send the food to them, which, indeed, we do
very cheerfully, in exchange for the produce of their rocks, and the
wondrous works of their hands.
The trade of Sheffield has fallen off less in proportion than that of
the other manufacturing districts. North America, and particularly the
United States, where the people have so much victuals to cut, form a
great branch of the custom of this town. If the people of Sheffield
could only receive a tenth part of what their knives sell for by retail
in America, Sheffield might pave its streets with silver. A _gross_ of
knives and forks is sold to the Americans for less than three knives and
forks can be bought at retail in a country store in America. No fear of
rivalship in this trade. The Americans may lay on their tariff, and
double it, and triple it; but as long as they continue to _cut_ their
victuals, from Sheffield they must have the things to cut it with.
The ragged hills all round about this town are bespangled with groups of
houses inhabited by the working cutlers. They have not suffered like the
working weavers; for, to make knives, there must be the hand of man.
Therefore, machinery cannot come to destroy the wages of the labourer.
The home demand has been very much diminished; but still the depression
has here not been what it has been, and what it is, where the machinery
can be brought into play. We are here just upon the borders of
Derbyshire, a nook of which runs up and separates Yorkshire from
Nottinghamshire. I went to a village, the day before yesterday, called
_Mosborough_, the whole of the people of which are employed in the
making of _sickles_ and _scythes_; and where, as I was told, they are
very well off even in these times. A prodigious quantity of these things
go to the United States of America. In short, there are about twelve
millions of people there continually consuming these things; and the
hardware merchants here have their agents and their stores in the great
towns of America, which country, as far as relates to this branch of
business, is still a part of old England.
Upon my arriving here on Wednesday night, the 27th instant, I by no
means intended to lecture until I should be a little recovered from my
cold; but, to my great mortification, I found that the lecture had been
advertised, and that great numbers of persons had actually assembled. To
send them out again, and give back the money, was a thing not to be
attempted. I, therefore, went to the Music Hall, the place which had
been taken for the purpose, gave them a specimen of the state of my
voice, asked them whether I should proceed, and they, answering in the
affirmative, on I went. I then rested until yesterday, and shall
conclude my labours here to-morrow, and then proceed to "_fair
Nottingham_," as we used to sing when I was a boy, in celebrating the
glorious exploits of "Robin Hood and Little John." By the by, as we went
from Huddersfield to Dewsbury, we passed by a hill which is celebrated
as being the burial-place of the famed Robin Hood, of whom the people in
this country talk to this day.
At Nottingham, they have advertised for my lecturing at the play-house,
for the 3rd, 4th, and 5th of February, and for a public breakfast to be
given to me on the first of those days, I having declined a dinner
agreeably to my original notification, and my friends insisting upon
something or other in that sort of way. It is very curious that I have
always had a very great desire to see Nottingham. This desire certainly
originated in the great interest that I used to take, and that all
country boys took, in the history of Robin Hood, in the record of whose
achievements, which were so well calculated to excite admiration in the
country boys, this Nottingham, with the word "_fair_" always before it,
was so often mentioned. The word _fair_, as used by our forefathers,
meant fine; for we frequently read in old descriptions of parts of the
country of such a district or such a parish, containing a _fair_
mansion, and the like; so that this town appears to have been celebrated
as a very fine place, even in ancient times; but within the last thirty
years, Nottingham has stood high in my estimation, from the conduct of
its people; from their public spirit; from their excellent sense as to
public matters; from the noble struggle which they have made from the
beginning of the French war to the present hour: if only forty towns in
England equal in size to Nottingham had followed its bright example,
there would have been no French war against liberty; the Debt would have
been now nearly paid off, and we should have known nothing of those
manifold miseries which now afflict, and those greater miseries which
now menace, the country. The French would not have been in Cadiz; the
Russians would not have been at Constantinople; the Americans would not
have been in the Floridas; we should not have had to dread the combined
fleets of America, France, and Russia; and, which is the worst of all,
we should not have seen the jails four times as big as they were; and
should not have seen Englishmen reduced to such a state of misery as for
the honest labouring man to be fed worse than the felons in the jails.