"You permit the Jews openly to preach in their synagogues, and call
Jesus Christ an impostor; and you send women to jail (to be brought
to bed there, too), for declaring their unbelief in
Christianity."--_King of Bohemia's Letter to Canning, published in
the Register, 4th of January, 1823._
_Hargham, 22nd March, 1830._
I set off from London on the 8th of March, got to Bury St. Edmund's that
evening; and, to my great mortification, saw the county-election and the
assizes both going on at Chelmsford, where, of course, a great part of
the people of Essex were met. If I had been aware of that, I should
certainly have stopped at Chelmsford in order to address a few words of
sense to the unfortunate constituents of Mr. Western. At Bury St.
Edmund's I gave a lecture on the ninth and another on the tenth of
March, in the playhouse, to very crowded audiences. I went to Norwich on
the 12th, and gave a lecture there on that evening, and on the evening
of the 13th. The audience here was more numerous than at Bury St.
Edmund's, but not so numerous in proportion to the size of the place;
and, contrary to what has happened in most other places, it consisted
more of town's people than of country people.
During the 14th and 15th, I was at a friend's house at Yelverton, half
way between Norwich and Bungay, which last is in Suffolk, and at which
place I lectured on the 16th to an audience consisting chiefly of
farmers, and was entertained there in a most hospitable and kind manner
at the house of a friend.
The next day, being the 17th, I went to Eye, and there lectured in the
evening in the neat little playhouse of the place, which was crowded in
every part, stage and all. The audience consisted almost entirely of
farmers, who had come in from Diss, from Harleston, and from all the
villages round about, in this fertile and thickly-settled neighbourhood.
I stayed at Eye all the day of the 18th, having appointed to be at
Ipswich on the 19th. Eye is a beautiful little place, though an
exceedingly rotten borough.
All was harmony and good humour: everybody appeared to be of one mind;
and as these friends observed to me, so I thought, that more effect had
been produced by this one lecture in that neighbourhood, than could have
been produced in a whole year, if the Register had been put into the
hands of every one of the hearers during that space of time; for though
I never attempt to put forth that sort of stuff which the "intense"
people on the other side of St. George's Channel call "_eloquence_," I
bring out strings of very interesting facts; I use pretty powerful
arguments; and I hammer them down so closely upon the mind, that they
seldom fail to produce a lasting impression.
On the 19th I proceeded to Ipswich, not imagining it to be the fine,
populous, and beautiful place that I found it to be. On that night, and
on the night of the 20th, I lectured to boxes and pit, crowded
principally with opulent farmers, and to a gallery filled, apparently,
with journeymen tradesmen and their wives. On the Sunday before I came
away, I heard, from all quarters, that my audiences had retired deeply
impressed with the truths which I had endeavoured to inculcate. One
thing, however, occurred towards the close of the lecture of Saturday,
the 20th, that I deem worthy of particular attention. In general it
would be useless for me to attempt to give anything like _a report_ of
these speeches of mine, consisting as they do of words uttered pretty
nearly as fast as I can utter them, during a space of never less than
two, and sometimes of nearly three hours. But there occurred here
something that I must notice. I was speaking of _the degrees_ by which
the established church had been losing its _legal influence_ since the
peace. First, the _Unitarian Bill_, removing the penal act which forbade
an impugning of the doctrine of the Trinity; second, the repeal of the
_Test Act_, which declared, in effect, that the religion of any of the
Dissenters was as good as that of the church of England; third, the
repeal of the penal and excluding laws with regard to the _Catholics_;
and this last act, said I, does in effect declare that the thing called
"the _Reformation_" was _unnecessary_. "No," said one gentleman, in a
very loud voice, and he was followed by four or five more, who said "No,
No." "Then," said I, "we will, if you like, put it _to the vote_.
Understand, gentlemen, that _I do not say_, whatever I may think, that
the Reformation was unnecessary; but I say that _this act amounts to a
declaration_ that it was unnecessary; and, without losing our good
humour, we will, if that gentleman choose, put this question to the
vote." I paused a little while, receiving no answer, and perceiving that
the company were with me, I proceeded with my speech, concluding with
the complete demolishing blow which the church would receive by the bill
for giving civil and political power for training to the bar, and
seating on the bench, for placing in the commons and amongst the peers,
and for placing in the council, along with the King himself, _those who
deny that there ever existed a Redeemer_; who give the name of
_impostor_ to him whom _we worship as God_, and who boast of having
hanged him upon the cross. "Judge you, gentlemen," said I, "of the
figure which England will make, when its laws will seat on the bench,
from which people have been sentenced to suffer most severely for
denying the truth of Christianity; from which bench it has been held
that _Christianity is part and parcel of the law of the land_; judge you
of the figure which England will make amongst Christian nations, when a
Jew, a blasphemer of Christ, a professor of the doctrines of those who
murdered him, shall be sitting upon that bench; and judge, gentlemen,
what we must think of _the clergy_ of this church of ours, _if they
remain silent_ while such a law shall be passed."
We were entertained at Ipswich by a very kind and excellent friend,
whom, as is generally the case, I had never seen or heard of before. The
morning of the day of the last lecture, I walked about five miles, then
went to his house to breakfast, and stayed with him and dined. On the
Sunday morning, before I came away, I walked about six miles, and
repeated the good cheer at breakfast at the same place. Here I heard the
first singing of the birds this year; and I here observed an instance of
that _petticoat government_, which, apparently, pervades the whole of
animated nature. A lark, very near to me in a ploughed field, rose from
the ground, and was saluting the sun with his delightful song. He was
got about as high as the dome of St. Paul's, having me for a motionless
and admiring auditor, when the hen started up from nearly the same spot
whence the cock had risen, flew up and passed close by him. I could not
hear what she said; but supposed that she must have given him a pretty
smart reprimand; for down she came upon the ground, and he, ceasing to
sing, took a twirl in the air, and came down after her. Others have, I
dare say, seen this a thousand times over; but I never observed it
before.
About twelve o'clock, my son and I set off for this place (Hargham),
coming through Needham Market, Stowmarket, Bury St. Edmund's, and
Thetford, at which latter place I intended to have lectured to-day and
to-morrow, where the theatre was to have been the scene, but the mayor
of the town thought it best not to give his permission until the assizes
(which commence to-day the 22nd) should be over, lest the judge should
take offence, seeing that it is the custom, while his Lordship is in the
town, to give up the civil jurisdiction to him. Bless his worship! what
in all the world should he think would take me to Thetford, _except it
being a time for holding the assizes_? At no _other_ time should I have
dreamed of finding an audience in so small a place, and in a country so
thinly inhabited. I was attracted, too, by the desire of meeting some of
my "_learned friends_" from the Wen; for I deal in arguments founded on
the _law of the land_, and on _Acts of Parliament_. The deuce take this
mayor for disappointing me; and, now, I am afraid that I shall not fall
in with this learned body during the whole of my spring tour.
Finding Thetford to be forbidden ground, I came hither to Sir Thomas
Beevor's, where I had left my two daughters, having, since the 12th
inclusive, travelled 120 miles, and delivered six lectures. Those 120
miles have been through a fine _farming country_, and without my seeing,
until I came to Thetford, but one spot of waste or common land, and that
not exceeding, I should think, from fifty to eighty acres. From this
place to Norwich, and through Attleborough and Wymondham, the land is
all good, and the farming excellent. It is pretty nearly the same from
Norwich to Bungay, where we enter Suffolk. Bungay is a large and fine
town, with three churches, lying on the side of some very fine meadows.
Harleston, on the road to Eye, is a very pretty market-town: of Eye, I
have spoken before. From Eye to Ipswich, we pass through a series of
villages, and at Ipswich, to my great surprise, we found a most
beautiful town, with a population of about twelve thousand persons; and
here our profound Prime Minister might have seen most abundant evidence
of prosperity; for the _new houses_ are, indeed, very numerous. But if
our famed and profound Prime Minister, having Mr. Wilmot Horton by the
arm, and standing upon one of the hills that surround this town, and
which, each hill seeming to surpass the other hill in beauty, command a
complete view of every house, or, at least, of the top of every house,
in this opulent town; if he, thus standing, and thus accompanied, were
to hold up his hands, clap them together, and bless God for the proofs
of prosperity contained in the new and red bricks, and were to cast his
eye southward of the town, and see the numerous little vessels upon the
little arm of the sea which comes up from Harwich, and which here finds
its termination; and were, in those vessels, to discover an additional
proof of prosperity; if he were to be thus situated, and to be thus
feeling, would not some doubts be awakened in his mind; if I, standing
behind him, were to whisper in his ear, "Do you not think that the
greater part of these new houses have been created by taxes, which went
to pay the about 20,000 _troops_ that were stationed here for pretty
nearly 20 years during the war, and some of which are stationed here
still? Look at that immense building, my Lord Duke: it is fresh and
_new_ and fine and splendid, and contains indubitable marks of opulence;
but it is a BARRACK; aye, and the money to build that barrack, and to
maintain the 20,000 troops, has assisted to beggar, to dilapidate, to
plunge into ruin and decay, hundreds upon hundreds of villages and
hamlets in Wiltshire, in Dorsetshire, in Somersetshire, and in other
counties who shared not in the ruthless squanderings of the war. But,"
leaning my arm upon the Duke's shoulder, and giving Wilmot a poke in the
poll to make him listen and look, and pointing with my fore-finger to
the twelve large, lofty, and magnificent churches, each of them at least
700 years old, and saying, "Do you think Ipswich was not larger and far
more populous 700 years ago than it is at this hour?" Putting this
question to him, would it not check his exultation, and would it not
make even Wilmot begin to reflect?
Even at this hour, with all the unnatural swellings of the war, there
are not two thousand people, _including the bed-ridden and the babies_,
to each of the magnificent churches. Of adults, there cannot be more
than about 1400 to a church; and there is one of the churches which,
being well filled, as in ancient times, would contain from four to seven
thousand persons, for the nave of it appears to me to be larger than St.
Andrew's Hall at Norwich, which Hall was formerly the church of the
Benedictine Priory. And, perhaps, the great church here might have
belonged to some monastery; for here were three Augustine priories, one
of them founded in the reign of William the Conqueror, another founded
in the reign of Henry the Second, another in the reign of King John,
with an Augustine friary, a Carmelite friary, an hospital founded in the
reign of King John; and here, too, was the college founded by Cardinal
Wolsey, the gateway of which, though built in brick, is still preserved,
being the same sort of architecture as that of Hampton Court, and St.
James's Palace.
There is no doubt but that this was a much greater place than it is now.
It is the great outlet for the immense quantities of corn grown in this
most productive county, and by farmers the most clever that ever lived.
I am told that wheat is worth six shillings a quarter more, at some
times, at Ipswich than at Norwich, the navigation to London being so
much more speedy and safe. Immense quantities of flour are sent from
this town. The windmills on the hills in the vicinage are so numerous
that I counted, whilst standing in one place, no less than seventeen.
They are all painted or washed white; the sails are black; it was a fine
morning, the wind was brisk, and their twirling altogether added greatly
to the beauty of the scene, which, having the broad and beautiful arm of
the sea on the one hand, and the fields and meadows, studded with
farm-houses, on the other, appeared to me the most beautiful sight of
the kind that I had ever beheld. The town and its churches were down in
the dell before me, and the only object that came to disfigure the scene
was THE BARRACK, and made me utter involuntarily the words of
BLACKSTONE: "The laws of England recognise no distinction between the
citizen and the soldier; they know of no standing soldier: no inland
fortresses; no barracks." "Ah!" said I to myself, but loud enough for
any one to have heard me a hundred yards, "such _were_ the laws of
England when mass was said in those magnificent churches, and such they
continued until a _septennial_ Parliament came and deprived the people
of England of their rights."
I know of no town to be compared with Ipswich, except it be Nottingham;
and there is this difference in the two; that Nottingham stands high,
and, on one side, looks over a very fine country; whereas Ipswich is in
a dell, meadows running up above it, and a beautiful arm of the sea
below it. The town itself is substantially built, well paved, everything
good and solid, and no wretched dwellings to be seen on its outskirts.
From the town itself, you can see nothing; but you can, in no direction,
go from it a quarter of a mile without finding views that a painter
might crave, and then, the country round about it, so well cultivated;
the land in such a beautiful state, the farm-houses all white, and all
so much alike; the barns, and everything about the homesteads so snug:
the stocks of turnips so abundant everywhere; the sheep and cattle in
such fine order; the wheat all drilled; the ploughman so expert; the
furrows, if a quarter of a mile long, as straight as a line, and laid as
truly as if with a level: in short, here is everything to delight the
eye, and to make the people proud of their country; and this is the case
throughout the whole of this county. I have always found Suffolk farmers
great boasters of their superiority over others; and I must say that it
is not without reason.
But, observe, this has been a very _highly-favoured county_: it has had
poured into it millions upon millions of money, drawn from Wiltshire,
and other inland counties. I should suppose that Wiltshire alone has,
within the last forty years, had two or three millions of money drawn
from it, _to be given to Essex and Suffolk_. At one time there were not
less than sixty thousand men kept on foot in these counties. The
increase of London, too, the swellings of the immortal Wen, have
assisted to heap wealth upon these counties; but, in spite of all this,
the distress pervades all ranks and degrees, except those who live on
the taxes. At Eye, butter used to sell for eighteen-pence a pound: it
now sells for nine-pence halfpenny, though the grass has not yet begun
to spring; and eggs were sold at thirty for a shilling. Fine times for
me, whose principal food is eggs, and whose sole drink is milk, but very
bad times for those who sell me the food and the drink.
Coming from Ipswich to Bury St. Edmund's, you pass through
Needham-market and Stowmarket, two very pretty market towns; and, like
all the other towns in Suffolk, free from the drawback of shabby and
beggarly houses on the outskirts. I remarked that I did not see in the
whole county one single instance of paper or rags supplying the place of
glass in any window, and did not see one miserable hovel in which a
labourer resided. The county, however, is _flat_: with the exception of
the environs of Ipswich, there is none of that beautiful variety of hill
and dale, and hanging woods, that you see at every town in Hampshire,
Sussex, and Kent. It is curious, too, that though the people, I mean the
poorer classes of people, are extremely neat in their houses, and though
I found all their gardens dug up and prepared for cropping, you do not
see about their cottages (and it is just the same in Norfolk) that
_ornamental gardening_; the walks, and the flower borders, and the
honey-suckles, and roses, trained over the doors, or over arched sticks,
that you see in Hampshire, Sussex, and Kent, that I have many a time
sitten upon my horse to look at so long and so often, as greatly to
retard me on my journey. Nor is this done for show or ostentation. If
you find a cottage in those counties, by the side of a _by lane_, or in
the midst of a forest, you find just the same care about the garden and
the flowers. In those counties, too, there is great taste with regard
_to trees_ of every description, from the hazel to the oak. In Suffolk
it appears to be just the contrary: here is the great dissight of all
these three eastern counties. Almost every bank of every field is
studded with _pollards_, that is to say, trees that have been
_beheaded_, at from six to twelve feet from the ground, than which
nothing in nature can be more ugly. They send out shoots from the head,
which are lopped off once in ten or a dozen years for fuel, or other
purposes. To add to the deformity, the ivy is suffered to grow on them,
which, at the same time, checks the growth of the shoots. These pollards
become hollow very soon, and, as timber, are fit for nothing but
gate-posts, even before they be hollow. Upon a farm of a hundred acres
these pollards, by root and shade, spoil at least six acres of the
ground, besides being most destructive to the fences. Why not plant six
acres of the ground with timber and underwood? Half an acre a year
would most amply supply the farm with poles and brush, and with
everything wanted in the way of fuel; and why not plant hedges to be
unbroken by these pollards? I have scarcely seen a single farm of a
hundred acres without pollards, sufficient to find the farm-house in
fuel, without any assistance from coals, for several years.
However, the great number of farm-houses in Suffolk, the neatness of
those houses, the moderation in point of extent which you generally see,
and the great store of the food in the turnips, and the admirable
management of the whole, form a pretty good compensation for the want of
beauties. The land is generally as clean as a garden ought to be; and,
though it varies a good deal as to lightness and stiffness, they make it
all bear prodigious quantities of Swedish turnips; and on them pigs,
sheep, and cattle, all equally thrive. I did not observe a single poor
miserable animal in the whole county.
To conclude an account of Suffolk, and not to sing the praises of Bury
St. Edmund's, would offend every creature of Suffolk birth; even at
Ipswich, when I was praising _that place_, the very people of that town
asked me if I did not think Bury St. Edmund's the nicest town in the
world. Meet them wherever you will, they have all the same boast; and
indeed, as a town _in itself_, it is the neatest place that ever was
seen. It is airy, it has several fine open places in it, and it has the
remains of the famous abbey walls and the abbey gate entire; and it is
so clean and so neat that nothing can equal it in that respect. It was a
favourite spot in ancient times; greatly endowed with monasteries and
hospitals. Besides the famous Benedictine Abbey, there were once a
college and a friary; and as to the abbey itself, it was one of the
greatest in the kingdom; and was so ancient as to have been founded only
about forty years after the landing of Saint Austin in Kent. The land
all round about it is good; and the soil is of that nature as not to
produce much dirt at any time of the year; but the country about it is
_flat_, and not of that beautiful variety that we find at Ipswich.
After all, what is the reflection now called for? It is that this fine
county, for which nature has done all that she can do, soil, climate,
sea-ports, people; everything that can be done, and an internal
government, civil and ecclesiastical, the most complete in the world,
wanting nothing but to _be let alone_, to make every soul in it as happy
as people can be upon earth; the peace provided for by the county rates;
property protected by the law of the land; the poor provided for by the
poor-rates; religion provided for by the tithes and the church-rates;
easy and safe conveyance provided for by the highway-rates;
extraordinary danger provided against by the militia-rates; a complete
government in itself; _but having to pay a portion of sixty millions a
year in taxes, over and above all this; and that, too, on account of
wars carried on, not for the defence of England_, not for the upholding
of _English liberty and happiness_, but for the purpose of crushing
liberty and happiness in other countries; and all this because, and only
because, a septennial Parliament has deprived the people of their
rights.
That which we _admire_ most is not always that which would be _our
choice_. One might imagine, that after all that I have said about this
fine county, I should certainly prefer it as a place of residence. I
should not, however: my choice has been always very much divided between
the woods of Sussex and the downs of Wiltshire. I should not like to be
compelled to decide; but if I were compelled, I do believe that I should
fix on some vale in Wiltshire. Water meadows at the bottom, corn-land
going up towards the hills, those hills being _Down land_, and a
farm-house, in a clump of trees, in some little cross vale between the
hills, sheltered on every side but the south. In short, if Mr. Bennet
would give me a farm, the house of which lies on the right-hand side of
the road going from Salisbury to Warminster, in the parish of Norton
Bovant, just before you enter that village; if he would but be so good
as to do that, I would freely give up all the rest of the world to the
possession of whoever may get hold of it. I have hinted this to him once
or twice before, but I am sorry to say that he turns a deaf ear to my
hinting.
_Cambridge, 28th March, 1830._
I went from Hargham to Lynn on Tuesday, the 23rd; but owing to the
disappointment at Thetford, everything was deranged. It was market-day
at Lynn, but no preparations of any sort had been made, and no
notification given. I therefore resolved, after staying at Lynn on
Wednesday, to make a short tour, and to come back to it again. This tour
was to take in _Ely_, Cambridge, St. Ives, Stamford, Peterborough,
Wisbeach, and was to bring me back to Lynn, after a very busy ten days.
I was particularly desirous to have a little political preaching at Ely,
the place where the flogging of the English local militia under a guard
of German bayonets cost me so dear.
I got there about noon on Thursday, the 25th, being market-day; but I
had been apprised even before I left Lynn, that no place had been
provided for my accommodation. A gentleman at Lynn gave me the name of
one at Ely, who, as he thought, would be glad of an opportunity of
pointing out a proper place, and of speaking about it; but just before I
set off from Lynn, I received a notification from this gentleman, that
he could do nothing in the matter. I knew that Ely was a small place,
but I was determined to go and see the spot where the militia-men were
flogged, and also determined to find some opportunity or other of
relating that story as publicly as I could at Ely, and of describing the
_tail_ of the story; of which I will speak presently. Arrived at Ely, I
first walked round the beautiful cathedral, that honour to our Catholic
forefathers, and that standing disgrace to our Protestant selves. It is
impossible to look at that magnificent pile without _feeling_ that we
are a fallen race of men. The cathedral would, leaving out the palace of
the bishop, and the houses of the dean, canons, and prebendaries, weigh
more, if it were put into a scale, than all the houses in the town, and
all the houses for a mile round the neighbourhood if you exclude the
remains of the ancient monasteries. You have only to open your eyes to
be convinced that England must have been a far greater and more wealthy
country in those days than it is in these days. The hundreds of
thousands of loads of stone, of which this cathedral and the monasteries
in the neighbourhood were built, must all have been brought by sea from
distant parts of the kingdom. These foundations were laid more than a
thousand years ago; and yet there are vagabonds who have the impudence
to say that it is the Protestant religion that has made England a great
country.
Ely is what one may call a miserable little town: very prettily
situated, but poor and mean. Everything seems to be on the decline, as,
indeed, is the case everywhere, where the clergy are the masters. They
say that this bishop has an income of L18,000 a year. He and the dean
and chapter are the owners of all the land and tithes, for a great
distance round about, in this beautiful and most productive part of the
country; and yet this famous building, the cathedral, is in a state of
disgraceful irrepair and disfigurement. The great and magnificent
windows to the east have been shortened at the bottom, and the space
plastered up with brick and mortar, in a very slovenly manner, for the
purpose of saving the expense of keeping the glass in repair. Great
numbers of the windows in the upper part of the building have been
partly closed up in the same manner, and others quite closed up. One
door-way, which apparently had stood in need of repair, has been rebuilt
in modern style, because it was cheaper; and the churchyard contained a
flock of sheep acting as vergers for those who live upon the immense
income, not a penny of which ought to be expended upon themselves while
any part of this beautiful building is in a state of irrepair. This
cathedral was erected "to the honour of God and the Holy Church." My
daughters went to the service in the afternoon, in the choir of which
they saw God honoured by the presence of _two old men_, forming the
whole of the congregation. I dare say, that in Catholic times, five
thousand people at a time have been assembled in this church. The
cathedral and town stand upon a little hill, about three miles in
circumference, raised up, as it were, for the purpose, amidst the rich
fen land by which the hill is surrounded, and I dare say that the town
formerly consisted of houses built over a great part of this hill, and
of, probably, from fifty to a hundred thousand people. The people do not
now exceed above four thousand, including the bedridden and the babies.
Having no place provided for lecturing, and knowing no single soul in
the place, I was thrown upon my own resources. The first thing I did was
to walk up through the market, which contained much more than an
audience sufficient for me; but, leaving the market people to carry on
their affairs, I picked up a sort of labouring man, asked him if he
recollected when the local militia-men were flogged under the guard of
the Germans; and, receiving an answer in the affirmative, I asked him to
go and show me the spot, which he did; he showed me a little common
along which the men had been marched, and into a piece of pasture-land,
where he put his foot upon the identical spot where the flogging had
been executed. On that spot, I told him what I had suffered for
expressing my indignation at that flogging. I told him that a large sum
of English money was now every year sent abroad to furnish half pay and
allowances to the officers of those German troops, and to maintain the
widows and children of such of them as were dead; and I added, "You have
to work to help to pay that money; part of the taxes which you pay on
your malt, hops, beer, leather, soap, candles, tobacco, tea, sugar, and
everything else, goes abroad every year to pay these people: it has thus
been going abroad ever since the peace; and it will thus go abroad for
the rest of your life, if this system of managing the nation's affairs
continue;" and I told him that about one million seven hundred thousand
pounds had been sent abroad on this account, _since the peace_.
When I opened, I found that this man was willing to open too; and he
uttered sentiments that would have convinced me, if I had not before
been convinced of the fact, that there are very few, even amongst the
labourers, who do not clearly understand the cause of their ruin. I
discovered that there were two Ely men flogged upon that occasion, and
that one of them was still alive and residing near the town. I sent for
this man, who came to me in the evening when he had done his work, and
who told me that he had lived seven years with the same master when he
was flogged, and was bailiff or head man to his master. He has now a
wife and several children; is a very nice-looking, and appears to be a
hard-working, man, and to bear an excellent character.
But how was I to harangue? For I was determined not to quit Ely without
something of that sort. I told this labouring man who showed me the
flogging spot, my name, which seemed to surprise him very much, for he
had heard of me before. After I had returned to my inn, I walked back
again through the market amongst the farmers; then went to an inn that
looked out upon the market-place, went into an up-stairs room, threw up
the sash, and sat down at the window, and looked out upon the market.
Little groups soon collected to survey me, while I sat in a very
unconcerned attitude. The farmers had dined, or I should have found out
the most numerous assemblage, and have dined with them. The next best
thing was, to go and sit down in the room where they usually dropped in
to drink after dinner; and, as they nearly all smoke, to take a pipe
with them. This, therefore, I did; and, after a time, we began to talk.
The room was too small to contain a twentieth part of the people that
would have come in if they could. It was hot to suffocation; but,
nevertheless, I related to them the account of the flogging, and of my
persecution on that account; and I related to them the account above
stated with regard to the English money now sent to the Germans, at
which they appeared to be utterly astonished. I had not time sufficient
for a lecture, but I explained to them briefly the real cause of the
distress which prevailed; I warned the farmers particularly against the
consequences of hoping that this distress would remove itself. I
portrayed to them the effects of the taxes; and showed them that we owe
this enormous burden to the want of being fairly represented in the
Parliament. Above all things, I did that which I never fail to do,
showed them the absurdity of grumbling at the six millions a year given
in relief to the poor, while they were silent, and seemed to think
nothing of the sixty millions of taxes collected by the Government at
London, and I asked them how any man of property could have the
impudence to call upon the labouring man to serve in the militia, and to
deny that that labouring man had, in case of need, a clear right to a
share of the produce of the land. I explained to them how the poor were
originally relieved; told them that the revenues of the livings, which
had their foundation in _charity_, were divided amongst the poor. The
demands for repair of the churches, and the clergy themselves; I
explained to them how church-rates and poor-rates came to be introduced;
how the burden of maintaining the poor came to be thrown upon the people
at large; how the nation had sunk by degrees ever since the event called
the Reformation; and, pointing towards the cathedral, I said, "Can you
believe, gentlemen, that when that magnificent pile was reared, and when
all the fine monasteries, hospitals, schools, and other resorts of piety
and charity, existed in this town and neighbourhood; can you believe,
that Ely was the miserable little place that it now is; and that that
England which had never heard of the name of _pauper_, contained the
crowds of miserable creatures that it now contains, some starving at
stone-cracking by the way-side, and others drawing loaded wagons on that
way?"
A young man in the room (I having come to a pause) said: "But, Sir, were
there no poor in Catholic times?" "Yes," said I, "to be sure there were.
The Scripture says, that the poor shall never cease out of the land; and
there are five hundred texts of Scripture enjoining on all men to be
good and kind to the poor. It is necessary to the existence of civil
society, that there should be poor. Men have two motives to industry and
care in all the walks of life: one, to acquire wealth; but the other and
stronger, to avoid poverty. If there were no poverty, there would be no
industry, no enterprise. But this poverty is not to be made a punishment
unjustly severe. Idleness, extravagance, are offences against morality;
but they are not offences of that heinous nature to justify the
infliction of starvation by way of punishment. It is, therefore, the
duty of every man that is able; it is particularly the duty of every
government, and it was a duty faithfully executed by the Catholic
Church, to take care that no human being should perish for want in a
land of plenty; and to take care, too, that no one should be deficient
of a sufficiency of food and raiment, not only to sustain life, but also
to sustain health." The young man said: "I thank you, Sir; I am
answered."
I strongly advised the farmers to be well with their work-people; for
that, unless their flocks were as safe in their fields as their bodies
were in their beds, their lives must be lives of misery; that if their
sacks and barns were not places of as safe deposit for their corn as
their drawers were for their money, the life of the farmer was the most
wretched upon earth, in place of being the most pleasant, as it ought to
be.
_Boston, Friday, 9th April, 1830._
Quitting Cambridge and Dr. Chafy and Serjeant Frere, on Monday, the 29th
of March, I arrived at St. Ives, in Huntingdonshire, about one o'clock
in the day. In the evening I harangued to about 200 persons, principally
farmers, in a wheelwright's shop, that being the only _safe_ place in
the town, of sufficient dimensions and sufficiently strong. It was
market-day; and this is a great cattle-market. As I was not to be at
Stamford in Lincolnshire till the 31st, I went from St. Ives to my
friend Mr. Wells's, near Huntingdon, and remained there till the 31st in
the morning, employing the evening of the 30th in going to Chatteris, in
the Isle of Ely, and there addressing a good large company of farmers.
On the 31st, I went to Stamford, and, in the evening, spoke to about 200
farmers and others, in a large room in a very fine and excellent inn,
called Standwell's Hotel, which is, with few exceptions, the nicest inn
that I have ever been in. On the 1st of April, I harangued here again,
and had amongst my auditors some most agreeable, intelligent, and
public-spirited yeomen, from the little county of Rutland, who made,
respecting the _seat in Parliament_, the proposition, the details of the
purport of which I communicated to my readers in the last Register.
On the 2nd of April, I met my audience in the playhouse at Peterborough;
and though it had snowed all day, and was very wet and sloppy, I had a
good large audience; and I did not let this opportunity pass without
telling my hearers of the part that their _good_ neighbour, Lord
Fitzwilliam, had acted with regard to the _French war_, with regard to
_Burke and his pension_; with regard to the _dungeoning law_, which
drove me across the Atlantic in 1817, and with regard to the putting
into the present Parliament, aye, and for that very town, that very
Lawyer Scarlett, whose state prosecutions are now become so famous.
"Never," said I, "did I say that behind a man's back that I would not
say to his face. I wish I had his face before me: but I am here as near
to it as I can get: I am before the face of his friends: here,
therefore, I will say what I think of him." When I had described his
conduct, and given my opinion on it, many applauded, and not one
expressed disapprobation.
On the 3rd, I speechified at Wisbeach, in the playhouse, to about 220
people, I think it was; and that same night, went to sleep at a friend's
(a total stranger to me, however) at St. Edmund's, in the heart of the
Fens. I stayed there on the 4th (Sunday), the morning of which brought a
hard frost: ice an inch thick, and the total destruction of the apricot
blossoms.
After passing Sunday and the greater part of Monday (the 5th) at St.
Edmund's, where my daughters and myself received the greatest kindness
and attention, we went, on Monday afternoon, to Crowland, where we were
most kindly lodged and entertained at the houses of two gentlemen, to
whom also we were personally perfect strangers; and in the evening, I
addressed a very large assemblage of most respectable farmers and
others, in this once famous town. There was another hard frost on the
Monday morning; just, as it were, to _finish_ the apricot bloom.
On the 6th I went to Lynn, and on that evening and on the evening of the
7th, I spoke to about 300 people in the playhouse. And here there was
more _interruption_ than I have ever met with at any other place. This
town, though containing as good and kind friends as I have met with in
any other, and though the people are generally as good, contains also,
apparently, a large proportion of _dead-weight_, the offspring, most
likely, of the _rottenness of the borough_. Two or three, or even _one_
man, may, if not tossed out at once, disturb and interrupt everything in
a case where constant attention to _fact_ and _argument_ is requisite,
to insure utility to the meeting. There were but _three_ here; and
though they were finally silenced, it was not without great loss of
time, great noise and hubbub. Two, I was told, were _dead-weight_ men,
and one a sort of _higgling merchant_.
On the 8th I went to Holbeach, in this noble county of Lincoln; and,
gracious God! what a _contrast_ with the scene at Lynn! I knew not a
soul in the place. Mr. Fields, a bookseller and printer, had invited me
by letter, and had, in the nicest and most unostentatious manner, made
all the preparations. Holbeach lies in the midst of some of the richest
land in the world; a small market-town, but a parish more than twenty
miles across, larger, I believe, than the county of Rutland, produced an
audience (in a very nice room, with seats prepared) of 178, apparently
all wealthy farmers, and men in that rank of life; and an audience so
_deeply_ attentive to the dry matters on which I had to address it, I
have very seldom met with. I was delighted with Holbeach; a neat little
town; a most beautiful church with a spire, like that of "the man of
Ross, pointing to the skies;" gardens very pretty; fruit-trees in
abundance, with blossom-buds ready to burst; and land, dark in colour,
and as fine in substance as flour, as fine as if sifted through one of
the sieves with which we get the dust out of the clover seed; and when
cut deep down into with a spade, precisely, as to substance, like a
piece of hard butter; yet nowhere is the _distress_ greater than here. I
walked on from Holbeach, six miles, towards Boston; and seeing the
fatness of the land, and the fine grass and the never-ending sheep lying
about like _fat hogs_, stretched in the sun, and seeing the abject state
of the labouring people, I could not help exclaiming, "God has given us
the best country in the world; our brave and wise and virtuous fathers,
who built all these magnificent churches, gave us the best government in
the world, and we, their cowardly and foolish and profligate sons, have
made this once-paradise what we now behold!"
I arrived at Boston (where I am now writing) to-day, (Friday, 9th April)
about ten o'clock. I must arrive at Louth before I can say _precisely_
what my future route will be. There is an immense fair at Lincoln next
week; and a friend has been _here_ to point out the proper days to be
there; as, however, this Register will not come from the press until
after I shall have had an opportunity of writing something at Louth,
time enough to be inserted in it. I will here go back, and speak of the
country that I have travelled over, since I left Cambridge on the 29th
of March.
From Cambridge to St. Ives the land is generally in open, unfenced
fields, and some common fields; generally stiff land, and some of it not
very good, and wheat, in many places, looking rather thin. From St. Ives
to Chatteris (which last is in the Isle of Ely), the land is better,
particularly as you approach the latter place. From Chatteris I came
back to Huntingdon and once more saw its beautiful meadows, of which I
spoke when I went thither in 1823. From Huntingdon, through Stilton, to
Stamford (the two last in Lincolnshire), is a country of rich arable
land and grass fields, and of beautiful meadows. The enclosures are very
large, the soil red, with a whitish stone below; very much like the soil
at and near Ross in Herefordshire, and like that near Coventry and
Warwick. Here, as all over this country, everlasting fine sheep. The
houses all along here are built of the stone of the country: you seldom
see brick. The churches are large, lofty, and fine, and give proof that
the country was formerly much more populous than it is now, and that the
people had a vast deal more of wealth in their hands and at their own
disposal. There are three beautiful churches at Stamford, not less, I
dare say, than three [_quaere_] hundred years old; but two of them (I did
not go to the other) are as perfect as when just finished, except as to
the _images_, most of which have been destroyed by the ungrateful
Protestant barbarians, of different sorts, but some of which (_out of
the reach_ of their ruthless hands) are still in the niches.
From Stamford to Peterborough is a country of the same description, with
the additional beauty of _woods_ here and there, and with meadows just
like those at Huntingdon, and not surpassed by those on the Severn near
Worcester, nor by those on the Avon at Tewkesbury. The cathedral at
Peterborough is exquisitely beautiful, and I have great pleasure in
saying, that, contrary to the _more magnificent_ pile at Ely, it is kept
in good order; the Bishop (Herbert Marsh) residing a good deal on the
spot; and though he _did_ write a pamphlet to justify and urge on the
war, the ruinous war, and though he _did_ get a _pension_ for it, he is,
they told me, very good to the poor people. My daughters had a great
desire to see, and I had a great desire they should see, the
burial-place of that ill-used, that savagely-treated, woman, and that
honour to woman-kind, Catherine, queen of the ferocious tyrant, Henry
the Eighth. To the infamy of that ruffian, and the shame of after ages,
there is no _monument_ to record her virtues and her sufferings; and the
remains of this daughter of the wise Ferdinand and of the generous
Isabella, who sold her jewels to enable Columbus to discover the new
world, lie under the floor of the cathedral, commemorated by a short
inscription on a plate of brass. All men, Protestants or not
Protestants, feel as I feel upon this subject; search the _hearts_ of
the bishop and of his dean and chapter, and these feelings are there;
but to do _justice_ to the memory of this illustrious victim of tyranny,
would be to cast a reflection on that event to which they owe their rich
possessions, and, at the same time, to suggest ideas not very favourable
to the descendants of those who divided amongst them the plunder of the
people arising out of that event, and which descendants are their
patrons, and give them what they possess. From this cause, and no other,
it is, that the memory of the virtuous Catherine is unblazoned, while
that of the tyrannical, the cruel, and the immoral Elizabeth, is
recorded with all possible veneration, and all possible varnishing-over
of her disgusting amours and endless crimes.
They relate at Peterborough, that the same sexton who buried Queen
Catherine, also buried here Mary, Queen of Scots. The remains of the
latter, of very questionable virtue, or, rather, of unquestionable vice,
were removed to Westminster Abbey by her son, James the First; but those
of the virtuous Queen were suffered to remain unhonoured! Good God! what
injustice, what a want of principle, what hostility to all virtuous
feeling, has not been the fruit of this Protestant Reformation; what
plunder, what disgrace to England, what shame, what misery, has that
event not produced! There is nothing that I address to my hearers with
more visible effect than a statement of _the manner in which the
poor-rates and the church-rates came_. This, of course, includes an
account of _how the poor were relieved in Catholic times_. To the far
greater part of people this is information _wholly new_; they are
_deeply interested_ in it; and the impression is very great. Always
before we part, Tom Cranmer's church receives a considerable blow.
There is in the cathedral a very ancient monument, made to commemorate,
they say, the murder of the abbot and his monks by the Danes. Its date
is the year 870. Almost all the cathedrals, were, it appears, originally
churches of monasteries. That of Winchester and several others,
certainly were. There has lately died, in the garden of the bishop's
palace, a tortoise that had been _there_ more, they say, than two
hundred years; a fact very likely to be known; because, at the end of
thirty or forty, people would begin to talk about it as something
remarkable; and thus the record would be handed down from father to son.
From Peterborough to Wisbeach, the road, for the most part, lies through
the _Fens_, and here we passed through the village of Thorney, where
there was a famous abbey, which, together with its valuable domain, was
given by the savage tyrant, Henry VIII., to John Lord Russell (made a
lord by that tyrant), the founder of the family of that name. This man
got also the abbey and estate at Woburn; the priory and its estate at
Tavistock; and in the next reign he got Covent Garden and other parts
adjoining; together with other things, all then _public property_. A
history, a _true history_ of this family (which I hope I shall find time
to write) would be a most valuable thing. It would be a nice little
specimen of the way in which these families became possessed of a great
part of their estates. It would show how the poor-rates and the
church-rates came. It would set the whole nation _right_ at once. Some
years ago I had a set of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ (Scotch), which
contained an account of every other _great family_ in the kingdom; but I
could find in it no account of _this_ family, either under the word
Russell or the word Bedford. I got into a passion with the book, because
it contained no account of the mode of raising the birch-tree; and it
was sold to _a son_ (as I was told) of Mr. Alderman Heygate; and if that
gentleman look into the book, he will find what I say to be true; but if
I should be in error about this, perhaps he will have the goodness to
let me know it. I shall be obliged to any one to point me out any
printed account of this family; and particularly to tell me where I can
get an old folio, containing (amongst other things) Bulstrode's argument
and narrative in justification of the sentence and execution of Lord
William Russell, in the reign of Charles the Second. It is impossible to
look at the now-miserable village of Thorney, and to think of its
once-splendid abbey; it is impossible to look at the _twenty thousand
acres_ of land around, covered with fat sheep, or bearing six quarters
of wheat or ten of oats to the acre, without any manure; it is
impossible to think of these without feeling a desire that the whole
nation should know all about the _surprising merits_ of the possessors.
Wisbeach, lying farther up the arm of the sea than Lynn, is, like the
latter, a little town of commerce, chiefly engaged in exporting to the
south, _the corn_ that grows in this productive country. It is a good
solid town, though not handsome, and has a large market, particularly
for corn.
To Crowland, I went, as before stated, from Wisbeach, staying two nights
at St. Edmund's. Here I was in the heart of the Fens. The whole country
as _level_ as the table on which I am now writing. The horizon like the
sea in a dead calm: you see the morning sun come up, just as at sea; and
see it go down over the rim, in just the same way as at sea in a calm.
The land covered with beautiful grass, with sheep lying about upon it,
as fat as hogs stretched out sleeping in a stye. The kind and polite
friends, with whom we were lodged, had a very neat garden, and fine
young orchard. Everything grows well here: earth without a stone so big
as a pin's head; grass as thick as it can grow on the ground; immense
bowling-greens separated by ditches; and not the sign of dock or thistle
or other weed to be seen. What a contrast between these and the
heath-covered sand-hills of Surrey, amongst which I was born! Yet the
labourers, who spuddle about the ground in the little _dips_ between
those sand-hills, are better off than those that exist in this fat of
the land. _Here_ the grasping system takes _all_ away, because it has
the means of coming at the value of all: _there_, the poor man enjoys
_something_, because he is thought too poor to have anything: he is
there allowed to have what is deemed _worth nothing_; but here, where
every inch is valuable, not one inch is he permitted to enjoy.
At Crowland also (still in the Fens) was a great and rich _abbey_, a
good part of the magnificent ruins of the church of which are still
standing, one corner or part of it being used as the _parish church_, by
the worms, which have crept out of the dead bodies of those who lived in
the days of the founders;
"And wond'ring man could want the larger pile,
Exult, and claim the corner with a smile."
They tell you, that all the country at and near Crowland was a mere
swamp, a mere bog, _bearing nothing_, bearing nothing worth naming,
until the _modern drainings_ took place! The thing called the
"Reformation," has lied common sense out of men's minds. So _likely_ a
thing to choose a barren swamp whereon, or wherein, to make the site of
an abbey, and of a benedictine abbey too! It has been always observed,
that the monks took care to choose for their places of abode, pleasant
spots, surrounded by productive land. The likeliest thing in the world
for these monks to choose a swamp for their dwelling-place, surrounded
by land that produced nothing good! The thing gives the lie to itself:
and it is impossible to reject the belief, that these Fens were as
productive of corn and meat a thousand years ago, and more so, than they
are at this hour. There is a curious triangular bridge here, on one part
of which stands the statue of one of the ancient kings. It is all of
great age; and everything shows that Crowland was a place of importance
in the earliest times.
From Crowland to Lynn, through Thorney and Wisbeach, is all Fens, well
besprinkled, formerly, with monasteries of various descriptions, and
still well set with magnificent churches. From Lynn to Holbeach you get
out of the real Fens, and into the land that I attempted to describe,
when, a few pages back, I was speaking of Holbeach. I say attempted; for
I defy tongue or pen to make the description adequate to the matter: to
know what the thing is, you must _see_ it. The same land continues all
the way on to Boston: endless grass and endless fat sheep; not a stone,
not a weed.
_Boston, Sunday, 11th April, 1830._
Last night, I made a speech at the playhouse to an audience, whose
appearance was sufficient to fill me with pride. I had given notice that
I should perform _on Friday_, overlooking the circumstance that it was
Good Friday. In apologising for this inadvertence, I took occasion to
observe, that even if I had persevered, the clergy of the church could
have nothing to object, seeing that they were now silent while a bill
was passing in Parliament to put _Jews_ on a level with _Christians_; to
enable Jews, the blasphemers of the Redeemer, to sit on the bench, to
sit in both Houses of Parliament, to sit in council with the King, and
to be kings of England, if entitled to the Crown, which, by possibility,
they might become, if this bill were to pass; that to this bill _the
clergy had offered no opposition_; and that, therefore, how could they
hold sacred the anniversary appointed to commemorate the crucifixion of
Christ by the hands of the blaspheming and bloody Jews? That, at any
rate, if this bill passed; if those who called Jesus Christ an
_impostor_ were thus declared to be _as good_ as those who adored him,
there was not, I hoped, a man in the kingdom who would pretend, that it
would be just to compel the people to pay tithes, and fees, and
offerings, to men for _teaching Christianity_. This was a _clincher_;
and as such it was received.
This morning I went out at six, looked at the town, walked three miles
on the road to Spilsby, and back to breakfast at nine. Boston (_bos_ is
Latin for _ox_) though not above a fourth or fifth part of the size of
its _daughter_ in New England, which got its name, I dare say, from some
persecuted native of this place, who had quitted England and all her
wealth and all her glories, to preserve that _freedom_, which was still
more dear to him; though not a town like New Boston, and though little
to what it formerly was, when agricultural produce was the great staple
of the kingdom and the great subject of foreign exchange, is,
nevertheless, a very fine town; good houses, good shops, pretty gardens
about it, a fine open place, nearly equal to that of Nottingham, in the
middle of it a river and a canal passing through it, each crossed by a
handsome and substantial bridge, a fine market for sheep, cattle, and
pigs, and another for meat, butter, and fish; and being, like Lynn, a
great place for the export of corn and flour, and having many fine
mills, it is altogether a town of very considerable importance; and,
which is not to be overlooked, inhabited by people none of whom appear
to be in misery.
The great pride and glory of the Bostonians, is _their church_, which
is, I think, 400 feet long, 90 feet wide, and has a tower (or steeple,
as they call it) 300 feet high, which is both a land-mark and a
sea-mark. To describe the richness, the magnificence, the symmetry, the
exquisite beauty of this pile, is wholly out of my power. It is
impossible to look at it without feeling, first, admiration and
reverence and gratitude to the memory of our fathers who reared it; and
next, indignation at those who affect to believe, and contempt for those
who do believe, that, when this pile was reared, the age was _dark_, the
people rude and ignorant, and the country _destitute of wealth_ and
_thinly peopled_. Look at this church, then; look at the heaps of white
rubbish that the parsons have lately stuck up under the "_New-church
Act_," and which, after having been built with money forced from the
nation by odious taxes, they have stuffed full of _locked-up pens_,
called _pews_, which they let for money, as cattle- and sheep- and
pig-pens are let at fairs and markets; nay, after having looked at this
work of the "_dark_ ages," look at that great, heavy, ugly, unmeaning
mass of stone called St. PAUL'S, which an American friend of mine, who
came to London from Falmouth and had seen the cathedrals at Exeter and
Salisbury, swore to me, that when he first saw it, he was at a loss to
guess whether it were a _court-house_ or a _jail_; after looking at
Boston Church, go and look at that great, gloomy lump, created by a
Protestant Parliament, and by taxes wrung by force from the whole
nation; and then say which is the age really meriting the epithet
_dark_.
St. Botolph, to whom this church is dedicated, while he (if saints see
and hear what is passing on earth) must lament that the piety-inspiring
mass has been, in this noble edifice, supplanted by the monotonous
hummings of an oaken hutch, has not the mortification to see his church
treated in a manner as if the new possessors sighed for the hour of its
destruction. It is taken great care of; and though it has cruelly
suffered from _Protestant repairs_; though the images are gone and the
stained glass; and though the glazing is now in squares instead of
lozenges; though the nave is stuffed with _pens_ called pews; and
though other changes have taken place detracting from the beauty of the
edifice, great care is taken of it as it now is, and the inside is not
disfigured and disgraced by a _gallery_, that great and characteristic
mark of Protestant taste, which, as nearly as may be, makes a church
like a playhouse. Saint Botolph (on the supposition before mentioned)
has the satisfaction to see, that the base of his celebrated church is
surrounded by an iron fence, to keep from it all offensive and corroding
matter, which is so disgusting to the sight round the magnificent piles
at Norwich, Ely and other places; that the churchyard, and all
appertaining to it, are kept in the neatest and most respectable state;
that no money has been spared for these purposes; that here the eye
tells the heart, that gratitude towards the fathers of the Bostonians is
not extinguished in the breasts of their sons; and this the Saint will
know that he owes to the circumstances, that the parish is a poor
vicarage, and that the care of his church is in the hands of _the
industrious people_, and not in those of a fat and luxurious dean and
chapter, wallowing in wealth derived from the people's labour.
_Horncastle, 12th April._
A fine, soft, showery morning saw us out of Boston, carrying with us the
most pleasing reflections as to our reception and treatment there by
numerous persons, none of whom we had ever seen before. The face of the
country, for about half the way, the soil, the grass, the endless sheep,
the thickly-scattered and magnificent churches, continue as on the other
side of Boston; but, after that, we got out of the low and level land.
At Sibsey, a pretty village five miles from Boston, we saw, for the
first time since we left Peterborough, land rising above the level of
the horizon; and, not having seen such a thing for so long, it had
struck my daughters, who overtook me on the road (I having walked on
from Boston), that the sight had an effect like that produced by the
first _sight of land_ after a voyage across the Atlantic.
We now soon got into a country of hedges and dry land and gravel and
clay and stones; the land not bad, however; pretty much like that of
Sussex, lying between the forest part and the South Downs. A good
proportion of woodland also; and just before we got to Horncastle, we
passed the park of that Mr. Dymock who is called "the Champion of
England," and to whom, it is said hereabouts, that we pay out of the
taxes eight thousand pounds a year! This never can be, to be sure; but
if we pay him only a hundred a year, I will lay down my _glove_ against
that of the "Champion," that we do not pay him even _that_ for five
years longer.
It is curious, that the moment you get out of the _rich land_, the
churches become _smaller_, _mean_, and with scarcely anything in the way
of _tower_ or _steeple_. This town is seated in the middle of a large
valley, not, however, remarkable for anything of peculiar value or
beauty; a purely agricultural town; well built, and not mean in any part
of it. It is a great rendezvous for horses and cattle, and
sheep-dealers, and for those who sell these; and accordingly, it suffers
severely from the loss of the small paper-money.
_Horncastle, 13th April, Morning._
I made a speech last evening to from 130 to 150, almost all farmers, and
most men of apparent wealth to a certain extent. I have seldom been
better pleased with my audience. It is not the clapping and huzzaing
that I value so much as the _silent attention_, the _earnest look_ at me
from _all eyes_ at once, and then when the point is concluded, the _look
and nod at each other_, as if the parties were saying, "_Think of
that!_" And of these I had a great deal at Horncastle. They say that
there are _a hundred parish churches within six miles of this town_. I
dare say that there was one farmer from almost every one of those
parishes. This is sowing the seeds of truth in a very sure manner: it is
not scattering broadcast; it is really _drilling the country_.
There is one deficiency, and that, with me, a great one, throughout this
country of corn and grass and oxen and sheep, that I have come over
during the last three weeks; namely, the want of _singing birds_. We are
now just in that season when they sing most. Here, in all this country,
I have seen and heard only about four sky-larks, and not one other
singing bird of any description, and, of the small birds that do not
sing, I have seen only one _yellow-hammer_, and it was perched on the
rail of a pound between Boston and Sibsey. Oh! the thousands of linnets
all singing together on one tree, in the sand-hills of Surrey! Oh! the
carolling in the coppices and the dingles of Hampshire and Sussex and
Kent! At this moment (5 o'clock in the morning) the groves at Barn Elm
are echoing with the warblings of thousands upon thousands of birds. The
_thrush_ begins a little before it is light; next the _black-bird_; next
the _larks_ begin to rise; all the rest begin the moment the sun gives
the signal; and, from the hedges, the bushes, from the middle and the
topmost twigs of the trees, comes the singing of endless variety; from
the long dead grass comes the sound of the sweet and soft voice of the
_white-throat_ or _nettle-tom_, while the loud and merry song of the
_lark_ (the songster himself out of sight) seems to descend from the
skies. MILTON, in his description of paradise, has not omitted the "song
of earliest birds." However, everything taken together, here, in
Lincolnshire, are more good things than man could have had the
conscience to _ask_ of God.
And now, if I had time and room to describe the state of _men's affairs_
in the country through which I have passed, I should show that the
people at Westminster would have known, how to turn paradise itself into
hell. I must, however, defer this until my next, when I shall have been
at Hull and Lincoln, and have had a view of the whole of this rich and
fine country. In the meanwhile, however, I cannot help congratulating
that _sensible_ fellow, Wilmot Horton, and his co-operator, Burdett,
that Emigration is going on at a swimming rate. Thousands are going, and
that, too, _without mortgaging the poor-rates_. But, _sensible_ fellows!
it is not the _aged_, the _halt_, the _ailing_; it is not the _paupers_
that are going; but men with from 200_l._ to 2,000_l._ in their pocket!
This very year, from two to five millions of pounds sterling will
actually be carried _from England_ to the United States. The Scotch, who
have money to pay their passages, go to New York; those who have none
get carried to Canada, that they may thence get into the United States.
I will inquire, one of these days, what _right_ Burdett has to live in
England more than those whom he proposes to send away.
_Spittal, near Lincoln, 19th April 1830._
Here we are, at the end of a pretty decent trip since we left Boston.
The next place, on our way to Hull, was Horncastle, where I preached
politics in the playhouse to a most respectable body of farmers, who had
come in the wet to meet me. Mr. John Peniston, who had invited me to
stop there, behaved in a very obliging manner, and made all things very
pleasant.
The country _from_ Boston continued, as I said before, flat for about
half the way to Horncastle, and we then began to see the high land. From
Horncastle I set off two hours before the carriage, and going through a
very pretty village called Ashby, got to another at the foot of a hill,
which, they say, forms part of the _Wolds_; that is, a ridge of hills.
This second village is called Scamblesby. The vale in which it lies is
very fine land. A hazel mould, rich and light too. I saw a man here
ploughing for barley, after turnips, with _one horse_: the horse did not
seem to work hard, and the man was _singing_: I need not say that he was
young; and I dare say he had the good sense to keep his legs under
another man's table, and to stretch his body on another man's bed.
This is a very fine _corn country_: chalk at bottom: stony near the
surface, in some places: here and there a chalk-pit in the hills: the
shape of the ground somewhat like that of the broadest valleys in
Wiltshire; but the fields not without fences as they are there: fields
from fifteen to forty acres: the hills not downs, as in Wiltshire; but
cultivated all over. The houses white and thatched, as they are in all
chalk countries. The valley at Scamblesby has a little rivulet running
down it, just as in all the chalk countries. The land continues nearly
the same to Louth, which lies in a deep dell, with beautiful pastures on
the surrounding hills, like those that I once admired at Shaftesbury, in
Dorsetshire, and like that near St. Austle, in Cornwall, which I
described in 1808.
At Louth the wise corporation had _refused_ to let us have the
playhouse; but my friends had prepared a very good place; and I had an
opportunity of addressing crowded audiences two nights running. At no
place have I been better pleased than at Louth. Mr. Paddison, solicitor,
a young gentleman whom I had the honour to know slightly before, and to
know whom, whether I estimate by character or by talent, would be an
honour to any man, was particularly attentive to us. Mr. Naull,
ironmonger, who had had the battle to fight for me for twenty years,
expressed his exultation at my triumph in a manner that showed that he
justly participated it with me. I breakfasted at Mr. Naull's with a
gentleman 88 or 89 years of age, whose joy at shaking me by the hand was
excessive. "Ah!" said he, "where are _now_ those savages who, at Hull,
threatened to kill me for raising my voice against this system?" This is
a very fine town, and has a beautiful church, nearly equal to that at
Boston.
We left Louth on the morning of Thursday the 15th, and got to Barton on
the Humber by about noon, over a very fine country, large fields, fine
pastures, flocks of those great sheep, of from 200 to 1,000 in a flock;
and here at Barton, we arrived at the northern point of this noble
county, having never seen one single acre of waste land, and not one
acre that would be called bad land, in the south of England. The
_Wolds_, or high-lands, lie away to our right, from Horncastle to near
Barton; and on the other side of the Wolds lie the _Marshes of
Lincolnshire_, which extend along the coast from Boston to the mouth of
the Humber, on the bank of which we were at Barton, Hull being on the
opposite side of the river, which is here about five miles wide, and
which we had to cross in a steam-boat.
But let me not forget Great Grimsby, at which we changed horses, and
breakfasted, in our way from Louth to Barton. "What the devil!" the
reader will say, "should you want to recollect _that_ place for? Why do
you want not to forget that sink of corruption? What could you find
there to be snatched from everlasting oblivion, except for the purpose
of being execrated?" I did, however, find something there worthy of
being made known, not only to every man in England but to every man in
the world; and not to mention it here would be to be guilty of the
greatest injustice.
To my surprise I found a good many people assembled at the inn-door,
evidently expecting my arrival. While breakfast was preparing, I wished
to speak to the bookseller of the place, if there were one, and to give
him a list of my books and writings, that he might place it in his shop.
When he came, I was surprised to find that he had it already, and that
he, occasionally, sold my books. Upon my asking him how he got it, he
said that it was brought down from London and given to him by a Mr.
Plaskitt, who, he said, had all my writings, and who, he said, he was
sure would be very glad to see me; but that he lived above a mile from
the town. A messenger, however, had gone off to carry the news, and Mr.
Plaskitt arrived before we had done breakfast, bringing with him a son
and a daughter. And from the lips of this gentleman, a man of as kind
and benevolent appearance and manners as I ever beheld in my life, I had
the following facts; namely, "that one of his sons sailed for New York
some years ago; that the ship was cast away on the shores of Long
Island; that the captain, crew, and passengers all perished; that the
wrecked vessel was taken possession of by people on the coast; that his
son had a watch in his trunk, or chest, a purse with fourteen shillings
in it, and divers articles of wearing apparel; that the Americans, who
searched the wreck, _sent all these articles safely to England to him_";
"and," said he, "I keep the purse and the money at home, and _here is
the watch in my pocket_"!
It would have been worth the expense of coming from London to Grimsby,
if for nothing but to learn this fact, which I record, not only in
justice to the free people of America, and particularly in justice to my
late neighbours in Long Island, but in justice to the character of
mankind. I publish it as something to counterbalance the conduct of the
atrocious monsters who plunder the wrecks on the coast of Cornwall, and,
as I am told, on the coasts here in the east of the island.
Away go, then, all the accusations upon the character of the Yankees.
People may call them _sharp_, _cunning_, _overreaching_; and when they
have exhausted the vocabulary of their abuse, the answer is found in
this one fact, stated by Mr. Joshua Plaskitt, of Great Grimsby, in
Lincolnshire, Old England. The person who sent the things to Mr.
Plaskitt was named Jones. It did not occur to me to ask his christian
name, nor to inquire what was the particular place where he lived in
Long Island. I request Mr. Plaskitt to contrive to let me know these
particulars; as I should like to communicate them to friends that I have
on the north side of that island. However, it would excite no surprise
there, that one of their countrymen had acted this part; for every man
of them, having the same opportunity, would do the same. Their
forefathers carried to New England the nature and character of the
people of Old England, before national debts, paper-money, septennial
bills, standing armies, dead-weights, and jubilees, had beggared and
corrupted the people.
At Hull I _lectured_ (I laugh at the word) to about seven hundred
persons on the same evening that I arrived from Louth, which was on
Thursday the 15th. We had what they call the summer theatre, which was
crowded in every part except on the stage; and the next evening the
stage was crowded too. The third evening was merely accidental, no
previous notice having been given of it. On the Saturday I went in the
middle of the day to Beverley; saw there the beautiful minster, and some
of the fine horses which they show there at this season of the year;
dined with about fifty farmers; made a speech to them and about a
hundred more, perhaps; and got back to Hull time enough to go to the
theatre there.
The country round Hull appears to exceed even that of Lincolnshire. The
three mornings that I was at Hull I walked out in three different
directions, and found the country everywhere fine. To the east lies the
Holderness country. I used to wonder that Yorkshire, to which I, from
some false impression in my youth, had always attached the idea of
_sterility_, should send us of the south those beautiful cattle with
short horns and straight and deep bodies. You have only to see the
country to cease to wonder at this. It lies on the north side of the
mouth of the Humber; is as flat and fat as the land between Holbeach and
Boston, without, as they tell me, the necessity of such numerous
ditches. The appellation "Yorkshire _bite_"; the acute sayings ascribed
to Yorkshiremen; and their quick manner, I remember, in the army. When
speaking of what country a man was, one used to say, in defence of the
party, "York, but honest." Another saying was that it was a bare common
that a Yorkshireman would go over without taking a bite. Every one knows
the story of the gentleman who, upon finding that a boot-cleaner in the
south was a Yorkshireman, and expressing his surprise that he was not
become master of the inn, received for answer, "Ah, sir, but master is
York too!" And that of the Yorkshire boy who, seeing a gentleman eating
some eggs, asked the cook to give him a little _salt_; and upon being
asked what he could want with salt, he said, "Perhaps that gentleman may
give me an egg presently."
It is surprising what effect sayings like these produce upon the mind.
From one end to the other of the kingdom, Yorkshiremen are looked upon
as being keener than other people; more eager in pursuit of their own
interests; more sharp and more selfish. For my part, I was cured with
regard to the _people_ long before I saw Yorkshire. In the army, where
we see men of all counties, I always found Yorkshiremen distinguished
for their frank manners and generous disposition. In the United States,
my kind and generous friends of Pennsylvania were the children and
descendants of Yorkshire parents; and, in truth, I long ago made up my
mind that this hardness and sharpness ascribed to Yorkshiremen arose
from the sort of envy excited by that quickness, that activity, that
buoyancy of spirits, which bears them up through adverse circumstances,
and their conquent success in all the situations of life. They, like the
people of Lancashire, are just the very reverse of being _cunning_ and
_selfish_; be they farmers, or be they what they may, you get at the
bottom of their hearts in a minute. Everything they think soon gets to
the tongue, and out it comes, heads and tails, as fast as they can pour
it. Fine materials for Oliver to work on! If he had been sent to the
_west_ instead of the north, he would have found people there on whom he
would have exercised his powers in vain. You are not to have every
valuable quality in the same man and the same people: you are not to
have prudent caution united with quickness and volubility.
But though, as to the character of the _people_, I, having known so many
hundreds of Yorkshiremen, was perfectly enlightened, and had quite got
the better of all prejudices many years ago, I still, in spite of the
matchless horses and matchless cattle, had a general impression that
Yorkshire was a _sterile_ county, compared with the counties in the
south and the west; and this notion was confirmed in some measure by my
seeing the moory and rocky parts in the West Riding last winter. It was
necessary for me to come and see the country on the banks of the Humber.
I have seen the vale of Honiton, in Devonshire, that of Taunton and of
Glastonbury, in Somersetshire: I have seen the vales of Gloucester and
Worcester, and the banks of the Severn and the Avon: I have seen the
vale of Berkshire, that of Aylesbury, in Buckinghamshire: I have seen
the beautiful vales of Wiltshire; and the banks of the Medway, from
Tunbridge to Maidstone, called the Garden of Eden: I was born at one end
of Arthur Young's "finest ten miles in England:" I have ridden my horse
across the Thames at its two sources; and I have been along every inch
of its banks, from its sources, to Gravesend, whence I have sailed out
of it into the channel; and having seen and had ability to judge of the
goodness of the land in all these places, I declare that I have never
seen any to be compared with the land on the banks of the Humber, from
the Holderness country included, and with the exception of the land from
Wisbeach to Holbeach, and Holbeach to Boston. Really, the single parish
of Holbeach, or a patch of the same size in the Holderness country,
seems to be equal in value to the whole of the county of Surrey, if we
leave out the little plot of hop-garden at Farnham.
Nor is the town of Hull itself to be overlooked. It is a little city of
London: streets, shops, everything like it; clean as the best parts of
London, and the people as bustling and attentive. The town of Hull is
_surrounded_ with commodious docks for shipping. These docks are
separated, in three or four places, by draw-bridges; so that, as you
walk round the town, you walk by the side of the docks and the ships.
The town on the outside of the docks is pretty considerable, and the
walks from it into the country beautiful. I went about a good deal, and
I nowhere saw marks of beggary or filth, even in the outskirts: none of
those nasty, shabby, thief-looking sheds that you see in the approaches
to London: none of those off-scourings of pernicious and insolent
luxury. I hate commercial towns in general: there is generally something
so loathsome in the look, and so stern and unfeeling in the manners of
seafaring people, that I have always, from my very youth, disliked
sea-ports; but really the sight of this nice town, the manners of its
people, the civil, and kind and cordial reception that I met with, and
the clean streets, and especially the pretty gardens in every direction,
as you walk into the country, has made Hull, though a sea-port, a place
that I shall always look back to with delight.
Beverley, which was formerly a very considerable city, with three or
four gates, one of which is yet standing, had a great college, built in
the year 700 by the Archbishop of York. It had three famous hospitals
and two friaries. There is one church, a very fine one, and the minster
still left; of which a bookseller in the town was so good as to give me
copper-plate representations. It is still a very pretty town; the market
large; the land all round the country good; and it is particularly
famous for horses; those for speed being shown off here on the
market-days at this time of the year. The farmers and gentlemen assemble
in a very wide street, on the outside of the western gate of the town;
and at a certain time of the day the grooms come from their different
stables to show off their beautiful horses; blood horses, coach horses,
hunters, and cart horses; sometimes, they tell me, forty or fifty in
number. The day that I was there (being late in the season) there were
only seven or eight, or ten at the most. When I was asked at the inn to
go and see "_the horses_," I had no curiosity, thinking it was such a
parcel of horses as we see at a market in the south; but I found it a
sight worth going to see; for besides the beauty of the horses, there
were the adroitness, the agility, and the boldness of the grooms, each
running alongside of his horse, with the latter trotting at the rate of
ten or twelve miles an hour, and then swinging him round, and showing
him off to the best advantage. In short, I was exceedingly gratified by
the trip to Beverley: the day was fair and mild; we went by one road and
came back by another, and I have very seldom passed a pleasanter day in
my life.
I found, very much to my surprise, that at Hull I was very nearly as far
north as at Leeds, and, at Beverley, a little farther north. Of all
things in the world, I wanted to speak to Mr. Foster of the _Leeds
Patriot_; but was not aware of the relative situation till it was too
late to write to him. Boats go up the Humber and the Ouse to within a
few miles of Leeds. The Holderness country is that piece of land which
lies between Hull and the sea: it appears to be a perfect flat; and is
said to be, and I dare say is, one of the very finest spots in the whole
kingdom. I had a very kind invitation to go into it; but I could not
stay longer on that side of the Humber without neglecting some duty or
other. In quitting Hull, I left behind me but one thing, the sight of
which had not pleased me; namely, a fine gilded equestrian statue of the
Dutch "_Deliverer_," who gave to England the national debt, that
fruitful mother of mischief and misery. Until this statue be replaced by
that of Andrew Marvell, that real honour of this town, England will
never be what it ought to be.
We came back to Barton by the steam-boat on Sunday in the afternoon of
the 18th, and in the evening reached this place, which is an inn, with
three or four houses near it, at the distance of ten miles from Lincoln,
to which we are going on Wednesday, the 21st. Between this place and
Barton we passed through a delightfully pretty town called Brigg. The
land in this, which is called the high part of Lincolnshire, has
generally stone, a solid bed of stone of great depth, at different
distances from the surface. In some parts this stone is of a yellowish
colour, and in the form of very thick slate; and in these parts the soil
is not so good; but, generally speaking, the land is excellent; easily
tilled; no surface water; the fields very large; not many trees; but
what there are, particularly the ash, very fine, and of free growth;
and innumerable flocks of those big, long-woolled sheep, from one
hundred to a thousand in a flock, each having from eight to ten pounds
of wool upon its body. One of the finest sights in the world is one of
these thirty or forty-acre fields, with four or five or six hundred
ewes, each with her one or two lambs skipping about upon grass, the most
beautiful that can be conceived, and on lands as level as a
bowling-green. I do not recollect having seen a mole-hill or an ant-hill
since I came into the country; and not one acre of waste land, though I
have gone the whole length of the country one way, and am now got nearly
half way back another way.
Having seen this country, and having had a glimpse at the Holderness
country, which lies on the banks of the sea, and to the east and
north-east of Hull, can I cease to wonder that those devils, the Danes,
found their way hither so often. There were the fat sheep then, just as
there are now, depend upon it; and these numbers of noble churches, and
these magnificent minsters, were reared because the wealth of the
country remained _in the country_, and was not carried away to the
south, to keep swarms of devouring tax-eaters, to cram the maws of
wasteful idlers, and to be transferred to the grasp of luxurious and
blaspheming Jews.
You always perceive that the churches are large and fine and lofty, in
proportion to the richness of the soil and the extent of the parish. In
many places where there are _now_ but a very few houses, and those
comparatively miserable, there are churches that look like cathedrals.
It is quite curious to observe the difference in the style of the
churches of Suffolk and Norfolk, and those of Lincolnshire, and of the
other bank of the Humber. In the former two counties the churches are
good, large, and with a good, plain, and pretty lofty tower. And in a
few instances, particularly at Ipswich and Long Melford, you find
magnificence in these buildings; but in Lincolnshire the magnificence of
the churches is surprising. These churches are the indubitable proof of
great and solid wealth, and formerly of great population. From
everything that I have heard, the _Netherlands_ is a country very much
resembling Lincolnshire; and they say that the church at Antwerp is like
that at Boston; but my opinion is, that Lincolnshire alone contains more
of these fine buildings than the whole of the continent of Europe.
Still, however, there is the almost total want of the _singing birds_.
There had been a shower a little while before we arrived at this place;
it was about six o'clock in the evening; and there is a thick wood,
together with the orchards and gardens, very near to the inn. We heard a
little twittering from one thrush; but at that very moment, if we had
been as near to just such a wood in Surrey, or Hampshire, or Sussex, or
Kent, we should have heard ten thousand birds singing altogether; and
the thrushes continuing their song till twenty minutes after sunset.
When I was at Ipswich, the gardens and plantations round that beautiful
town began in the morning to ring with the voices of the different
birds. The nightingale is, I believe, _never heard_ anywhere on the
eastern side of Lincolnshire; though it is sometimes heard in the same
latitude in the dells of Yorkshire. How ridiculous it is to suppose that
these frail birds, with their slender wings and proportionately heavy
bodies, _cross the sea_, and come back again! I have not yet heard more
than half a dozen skylarks; and I have, only last year, heard ten at a
time make the air ring over one of my fields at Barn-Elm. This is a
great drawback from the pleasure of viewing this fine country.
It is time for me now, withdrawing myself from these objects visible to
the eye, to speak of the state of _the people_, and of the manner in
which their affairs are affected by the workings of the system. With
regard to the labourers, they are, everywhere, miserable. The wages for
those who are employed on the land are, through all the counties that I
have come, twelve shillings a week for married men, and less for single
ones; but a large part of them are not even at this season employed on
the land. The farmers, for want of means of profitable employment,
suffer the men to fall upon the parish; and they are employed in digging
and breaking stone for the roads; so that the roads are nice and smooth
for the sheep and cattle to walk on in their way to the all-devouring
jaws of the Jews and other tax-eaters in London and its vicinity. None
of the best meat, except by mere accident, is consumed here. To-day (the
20th of April) we have seen hundreds upon hundreds of sheep, as fat as
hogs, go by this inn door, their toes, like those of the foot-marks at
the entrance of the lion's den, all pointing towards the Wen; and the
landlord gave us for dinner a little skinny, hard leg of old ewe mutton!
Where the man got it I cannot imagine. Thus it is: every good thing is
literally driven or carried away out of the country. In walking out
yesterday, I saw three poor fellows digging stone for the roads, who
told me that they never had anything but bread to eat, and water to wash
it down. One of them was a widower with three children; and his pay was
eighteen-pence a-day; that is to say, about three pounds of bread a day
each, for six days in the week; nothing for Sunday, and nothing for
lodging, washing, clothing, candle-light, or fuel! Just such was the
state of things in France at the eve of the revolution! Precisely such;
and precisely the same were the _causes_. Whether the effect will be
the same I do not take upon myself positively to determine. Just on the
other side of the hedge, while I was talking to these men, I saw about
two hundred fat sheep in a rich pasture. I did not tell them what I
might have told them; but I explained to them why the farmers were
unable to give them a sufficiency of wages. They listened with great
attention; and said that they did believe that the farmers were in great
distress themselves.
With regard to the farmers, it is said here that the far greater part,
if sold up, would be found to be insolvent. The tradesmen in country
towns are, and must be, in but little better state. They all tell you
they do not sell half so many goods as they used to sell; and, of
course, the manufacturers must suffer in the like degree. There is a
diminution and deterioration, every one says, in the stocks upon the
farms. _Sheep-washing_ is a sort of business in this country; and I
heard at Boston that the sheep-washers say that there is a gradual
falling off in point of the numbers of sheep washed.
The farmers are all gradually sinking in point of property. The very
rich ones do not feel that ruin is absolutely approaching; but they are
all alarmed; and as to the poorer ones, they are fast falling into the
rank of paupers. When I was at Ely a gentleman who appeared to be a
great farmer told me, in presence of fifty farmers at the White Hart
inn, that he had seen that morning _three men_ cracking stones on the
road as paupers of the parish of Wilbarton; and that all these men had
been _overseers of the poor of that same parish within the last seven
years_. Wheat keeps up in price to about an average of seven shillings a
bushel; which is owing to our two successive bad harvests; but fat beef
and pork are at a very low price, and mutton not much better. The beef
was selling at Lynn for five shillings the stone of fourteen pounds, and
the pork at four and sixpence. The wool (one of the great articles of
produce in these countries) selling for less than half of its former
price.
And here let me stop to observe that I was well informed before I left
London that merchants were exporting our long wool to France, where it
paid _thirty per cent. duty_. Well, say the landowners, but we have to
thank Huskisson for this at any rate; and that is true enough; for the
law was most rigid against the export of wool; but what will the
_manufacturers_ say? Thus the collective goes on, smashing one class and
then another; and, resolved to adhere to the taxes, it knocks away, one
after another, the props of the system itself. By every measure that it
adopts for the sake of obtaining security, or of affording relief to the
people, it does some act of crying injustice. To save itself from the
natural effects of its own measures, it knocked down the country
bankers, in direct violation of the law in 1822. It is now about to lay
its heavy hand on the big brewers and the publicans, in order to pacify
the call for a reduction of taxes, and with the hope of preventing such
reduction in reality. It is making a trifling attempt to save the West
Indians from total ruin, and the West India colonies from revolt; but by
that same attempt it reflects injury on the British distillers, and on
the growers of barley. Thus it cannot do justice without doing
injustice; it cannot do good without doing evil; and thus it must
continue to do, until it take off, in reality, more than one half of the
taxes.
One of the great signs of the poverty of people in the middle rank of
life is the falling off of the audiences at the playhouses. There is a
playhouse in almost every country town, where the players used to act
occasionally; and in large towns almost always. In some places they have
of late abandoned acting altogether. In others they have acted, very
frequently, to not more than _ten or twelve persons_. At Norwich the
playhouse had been shut up for a long time. I heard of one manager who
has become a porter to a warehouse, and his company dispersed. In most
places the insides of the buildings seem to be tumbling to pieces; and
the curtains and scenes that they let down seem to be abandoned to the
damp and the cobwebs. _My_ appearance on the boards seemed to give new
life to the drama. I was, until the birth of my third son, a constant
haunter of the playhouse, in which I took great delight; but when _he_
came into the world I said, "Now, Nancy, it is time for us to leave off
going to the play." It is really melancholy to look at things now, and
to think of things then. I feel great sorrow on account of these poor
players; for, though they are made the tools of the Government and the
corporations and the parsons, it is not their fault, and they have
uniformly, whenever I have come in contact with them, been very civil to
me. I am not sorry that they are left out of the list of vagrants in the
new Act; but in this case, as in so many others, the men have to be
grateful to the _women_; for who believes that this merciful omission
would have taken place, if so many of the peers had not contracted
matrimonial alliances with players; if so many playeresses had not
become peeresses. We may thank God for disposing the hearts of our
law-makers to be guilty of the same sins and foibles as ourselves; for
when a lord had been sentenced to the pillory, the use of that ancient
mode of punishing offences was abolished: when a lord (CASTLEREAGH), who
was also a minister of state, had cut his own throat, the degrading
punishment of burial in cross-roads was abolished; and now, when so many
peers and great men have taken to wife play-actresses, which the law
termed _vagrants_, that term, as applied to the children of Melpomene
and Thalia, is abolished! Laud we the Gods that our rulers cannot after
all divest themselves of flesh and blood! For the Lord have mercy upon
us if their great souls were once to soar above that tenement!
Lord Stanhope cautioned his brother peers a little while ago against the
angry feeling which was _rising up in the poor against the rich_. His
Lordship is a wise and humane man, and this is evident from all his
conduct. Nor is this angry feeling confined to the counties in the
south, where the rage of the people, from the very nature of the local
circumstances, is more formidable; woods and coppices and dingles and
bye-lanes and sticks and stones ever at hand, being resources unknown in
counties like this. When I was at St. Ives, in Huntingdonshire, an open
country, I sat with the farmers, and smoked a pipe by way of preparation
for evening service, which I performed on a carpenter's bench in a
wheelwright's shop; my friends, the players, never having gained any
regular settlement in that grand mart for four-legged fat meat, coming
from the Fens, and bound to the Wen. While we were sitting, a hand-bill
was handed round the table, advertising _farming stock_ for sale; and
amongst the implements of husbandry "an _excellent fire-engine, several
steel traps, and spring guns_"! And that is the life, is it, of an
_English farmer_? I walked on about six miles of the road from Holbeach
to Boston. I have before observed upon the inexhaustible riches of this
land. At the end of about five miles and three quarters I came to a
public-house, and thought I would get some breakfast; but the poor
woman, with a tribe of children about her, had not a morsel of either
meat or bread! At a house called an inn, a little further on, the
landlord had no meat except a little bit of chine of bacon; and though
there were a good many houses near the spot, the landlord told me that
the people were become so poor that the butchers had left off killing
meat in the neighbourhood. Just the state of things that existed in
France on the eve of the Revolution. On that very spot I looked round
me, and counted more than two thousand fat sheep in the pastures! How
long; how long, good God! is this state of things to last? How long will
these people starve in the midst of plenty? How long will fire-engines,
steel traps, and spring guns be, in such a state of things, a protection
to property? When I was at Beverley a gentleman told me, it was Mr.
Dawson of that place, that some time before a farmer had been sold up by
his landlord; and that, in a few weeks afterwards, the farmhouse was on
fire, and that when the servants of the landlord arrived to put it out
they found the handle of the pump taken away, and that the homestead
was totally destroyed. This was told me in the presence of several
gentlemen, who all spoke of it as a fact of perfect notoriety.
Another respect in which our situation so exactly resembles that of
France on the eve of the Revolution is the _fleeing from the country_ in
every direction. When I was in Norfolk there were four hundred persons,
generally young men, labourers, carpenters, wheelwrights, millwrights,
smiths, and bricklayers; most of them with some money, and some farmers
and others with good round sums. These people were going to Quebec in
timber-ships, and from Quebec by land into the United States. They had
been told that they would not be suffered to land in the United States
from on board of ship. The roguish villains had deceived them: but no
matter; they will get into the United States; and going through Canada
will do them good, for it will teach them to detest everything belonging
to it. From Boston, two great barge loads had just gone off by canal to
Liverpool, most of them farmers; all carrying some money, and some as
much as two thousand pounds each. From the North and West Riding of
Yorkshire numerous wagons have gone carrying people to the canals
leading to Liverpool; and a gentleman, whom I saw at Peterboro', told me
that he saw some of them; and that the men all appeared to be
respectable farmers. At Hull the scene would delight the eyes of the
wise Burdett; for here the emigration is going on in the "Old Roman
Plan." Ten large ships have gone this spring, laden with these fugitives
from the fangs of taxation; some bound direct to the ports of the United
States; others, like those at Yarmouth, for Quebec. Those that have most
money go direct to the United States. The single men, who are taken for
a mere trifle in the Canada ships, go that way, have nothing but their
carcasses to carry over the rocks and swamps, and through the myriads of
place-men and pensioners in that miserable region; there are about
fifteen more ships going from this one port this spring. The ships are
fitted up with berths as transports for the carrying of troops. I went
on board one morning, and saw the people putting their things on board
and stowing them away. Seeing a nice young woman, with a little baby in
her arms, I told her that she was going to a country where she would be
sure that her children would never want victuals; where she might make
her own malt, soap, and candles without being half put to death for it,
and where the blaspheming Jews would not have a mortgage on the life's
labour of her children.
There is at Hull one farmer going who is seventy years of age; but who
takes out five sons and fifteen hundred pounds! Brave and sensible old
man! and good and affectionate father! He is performing a truly
parental and sacred duty; and he will die with the blessing of his sons
on his head for having rescued them from this scene of slavery, misery,
cruelty, and crime. Come, then, Wilmot Horton, with your sensible
associates, Burdett and Poulett Thomson; come into Lincolnshire,
Norfolk, and Yorkshire; come and bring Parson Malthus along with you;
regale your sight with this delightful "stream of emigration";
congratulate the "greatest captain of the age," and your brethren of the
Collective: congratulate the "noblest assembly of free men," on these
the happy effects of their measures. Oh! no, Wilmot! Oh! no, generous
and sensible Burdett, it is not the aged, the infirm, the halt, the
blind, and the idiots that go: it is the youth, the strength, the
wealth, and the spirit, that will no longer brook hunger and thirst in
order that the maws of tax-eaters and Jews may be crammed. You want the
Irish to go, and so they will _at our expense_, and all the bad of them,
to be kept at our expense on the rocks and swamps of Nova Scotia and
Canada. You have no money to send them away with: the tax-eaters want it
all; and thanks to the "improvements of the age," the steam-boats will
continue to bring them in shoals in pursuit of the orts of the food that
their task-masters have taken away from them.
After evening lecture at Horncastle a very decent farmer came to me and
asked me about America, telling me that he was resolved to go, for that
if he stayed much longer he should not have a shilling to go with. I
promised to send him a letter from Louth to a friend at New York, who
might be useful to him there and give him good advice. I forgot it at
Louth; but I will do it before I go to bed. From the Thames, and from
the several ports down the Channel, about two thousand have gone this
spring. All the flower of the labourers of the east of Sussex and west
of Kent will be culled out and sent off in a short time. From Glasgow
the sensible Scotch are pouring out amain. Those that are poor and
cannot pay their passages, or can rake together only a trifle, are going
to a rascally heap of sand and rock and swamp, called Prince Edward's
Island, in the horrible Gulf of St. Lawrence; but when the American
vessels come over with Indian corn and flour and pork and beef and
poultry and eggs and butter and cabbages and green pease and asparagus
for the soldier-officers and other tax-eaters, that we support upon that
lump of worthlessness; for the lump itself bears nothing but potatoes;
when these vessels come, which they are continually doing, winter and
summer; towards the fall, with apples and pears and melons and
cucumbers; and, in short, everlastingly coming and taking away the
amount of taxes raised in England; when these vessels return, the
sensible Scotch will go back in them for a dollar a head, till at last
not a man of them will be left but the bed-ridden. Those villanous
colonies are held for no earthly purpose but that of furnishing a
pretence of giving money to the relations and dependents of the
aristocracy; and they are the nicest channels in the world through which
to send English taxes to enrich and strengthen the United States.
Withdraw the English taxes, and, except in a small part in Canada, the
whole of those horrible regions would be left to the bears and the
savages in the course of a year.
This emigration is a famous blow given to the borough-mongers. The way
to New York is now as well known and as easy, and as little expensive as
from old York to London. First, the Sussex parishes sent their paupers;
they invited over others that were not paupers; they invited over people
of some property; then persons of greater property; now substantial
farmers are going; men of considerable fortune will follow. It is the
letters written across the Atlantic that do the business. Men of fortune
will soon discover that to secure to their families their fortunes, and
to take these out of the grasp of the inexorable tax-gatherer, they must
get away. Every one that goes will take twenty after him; and thus it
will go on. There can be no interruption but _war_; and war the Thing
dares not have. As to France or the Netherlands, or any part of that
hell called Germany, Englishmen can never settle there. The United
States form another England without its unbearable taxes, its insolent
game-laws, its intolerable dead-weight, and its tread-mills.