_Lincoln, 23rd April 1830._
From the inn at Spittal we came to this famous ancient Roman station,
and afterwards grand scene of Saxon and Gothic splendour, on the 21st.
It was the third or fourth day of the _Spring fair_, which is one of the
greatest in the kingdom, and which lasts for a whole week. Horses begin
the fair; then come sheep; and to-day, the horned-cattle. It is supposed
that there were about 50,000 sheep, and I think the whole of the space
in the various roads and streets, covered by the cattle, must have
amounted to ten acres of ground or more. Some say that they were as
numerous as the sheep. The number of horses I did not hear; but they say
that there were 1,500 fewer in number than last year. The sheep sold
5_s._ a head, on an average, lower than last year; and the cattle in the
same proportion. High-priced horses sold well; but the horses which are
called tradesmen's horses were very low. This is the natural march of
the Thing: those who live on the taxes have money to throw away; but
those who _pay_ them are ruined, and have, of course, no money to lay
out on horses.
The country from Spittal to Lincoln continued to be much about the same
as from Barton to Spittal. Large fields, rather light loam at top, stone
under, about half corn-land and the rest grass. Not so many sheep as in
the richer lands, but a great many still. As you get on towards Lincoln,
the ground gradually rises, and you go on the road made by the Romans.
When you come to the city you find the ancient castle and the
magnificent cathedral on the _brow_ of a sort of ridge which ends here;
for you look all of a sudden down into a deep valley, where the greater
part of the remaining city lies. It once had _fifty-two churches_; it
has now only eight, and only about 9,000 inhabitants! The cathedral is,
I believe, the _finest building in the whole world_. All the others that
I have seen (and I have seen all in England except Chester, York,
Carlisle, and Durham) are little things compared with this. To the task
of describing a thousandth-part of its striking beauties I am
inadequate; it surpasses greatly all that I had anticipated; and oh! how
loudly it gives the lie to those brazen Scotch historians who would have
us believe that England was formerly a _poor_ country! The whole revenue
raised from Lincolnshire, even by this present system of taxation, would
not rear such another pile in two hundred years. Some of the city gates
are down; but there is one standing, the arch of which is said to be two
thousand years old; and a most curious thing it is. The sight of the
cathedral fills the mind alternately with wonder, admiration,
melancholy, and rage: wonder at its grandeur and magnificence;
admiration of the zeal and disinterestedness of those who here devoted
to the honour of God those immense means which they might have applied
to their own enjoyments; melancholy at its present neglected state; and
indignation against those who now enjoy the revenues belonging to it,
and who creep about it merely as a pretext for devouring a part of the
fruit of the people's labour. There are no men in England who ought to
wish for _reform_ so anxiously as the working clergy of the church of
England; we are all oppressed; but they are oppressed and insulted more
than any men that ever lived in the world. The clergy in America; I mean
in free America, not in our beggarly colonies, where clerical insolence
and partiality prevail still more than here; I mean in the United
States, where every man gives what he pleases, and no more: the clergy
of the episcopal church are a hundred times better off than the working
clergy are here. They are, also, much more respected, because their
_order_ has not to bear the blame of enormous exactions; which exactions
here are swallowed up by the aristocracy and their dependents; but which
swallowings are imputed to every one bearing the name of parson.
Throughout the whole country I have maintained the necessity and the
justice of resuming the church property; but I have never failed to say
that I know of no more meritorious and ill-used men than the working
clergy of the established church.
_Leicester, 26th April 1830._
At the famous ancient city of Lincoln I had crowded audiences,
principally consisting of farmers, on the 21st and 22nd; exceedingly
well-behaved audiences; and great impression produced. One of the
evenings, in pointing out to them the wisdom of explaining to their
labourers the cause of their distress, in order to ward off the effects
of the resentment which the labourers now feel everywhere against the
farmers, I related to them what my labourers at Barn-Elm had been doing
since I left home: and I repeated to them the complaints that my
labourers made, stating to them, from memory, the following parts of
that spirited petition:
"That your petitioners have recently observed that many great sums of
the money, part of which we pay, have been voted to be given to persons
who render no services to the country; some of which sums we will
mention here; that the sum of 94,900_l._ has been voted for disbanded
_foreign_ officers, their _widows_ and _children_; that your petitioners
know that ever since the peace this charge has been annually made; that
it has been on an average 110,000_l._ a-year, and that, of course, this
band of foreigners have actually taken away out of England, since the
peace, one million and seven hundred thousand pounds; partly taken from
the fruit of our labour; and if our dinners were actually taken from our
table and carried over to Hanover, the process could not be to our eyes
more visible than it now is; and we are astonished that those who fear
that we, who make the land bring forth crops, and who make the clothing
and the houses, shall swallow up the rental, appear to think nothing at
all of the swallowings of these Hanoverian men, women, and children, who
may continue thus to swallow for half a century to come.
"That the advocates of the project for sending us out of our country to
the rocks and snows of Nova Scotia, and the swamps and wilds of Canada,
have insisted on the necessity of _checking marriages_ amongst us, in
order to cause a decrease in our numbers; that, however, while this is
insisted on in your honourable House, we perceive a part of our own
earnings voted away to encourage marriage amongst those who do not work,
and who live at our expense; and that to your petitioners it does seem
most wonderful, that there should be persons to fear that we, the
labourers, shall, on account of our numbers, swallow up the rental,
while they actually vote away our food and raiment to increase the
numbers of those who never have produced, and who never will produce,
anything useful to man.
"That your petitioners know that more than one-half of the whole of
their wages is taken from them by the taxes; that these taxes go chiefly
into the hands of idlers; that your petitioners are the bees, and that
the tax-receivers are the drones; and they know, further, that while
there is a project for sending the bees out of the country, no one
proposes to send away the drones; but that your petitioners hope to see
the day when the checking of the increase of the drones, and not of the
bees, will be the object of an English Parliament.
"That, in consequence of taxes, your petitioners pay six-pence for a pot
of worse beer than they could make for one penny; that they pay ten
shillings for a pair of shoes that they could have for five shillings;
that they pay seven-pence for a pound of soap or candles that they could
have for three-pence; that they pay seven-pence for a pound of sugar
that they could have for three-pence; that they pay six shillings for a
pound of tea that they could have for two shillings; that they pay
double for their bread and meat of what they would have to pay if there
were no idlers to be kept out of the taxes; that, therefore, it is the
taxes that make their wages insufficient for their support, and that
compel them to apply for aid to the poor-rates; that, knowing these
things, they feel indignant at hearing themselves described as
_paupers_, while so many thousands of idlers, for whose support they pay
taxes, are called _noble Lords_ and _Ladies_, _honourable Gentlemen_,
_Masters_, and _Misses_; that they feel indignant at hearing themselves
described as a nuisance to be got rid of, while the idlers who live upon
their earnings are upheld, caressed and cherished, as if they were the
sole support of the country."
Having repeated to them these passages, I proceeded: "My workmen were
induced thus to petition in consequence of the information which I,
their master, had communicated to them; and, Gentlemen, why should not
your labourers petition in the same strain? Why should you suffer them
to remain in a state of ignorance relative to the cause of their misery?
The eye sweeps over in this county more riches in one moment than are
contained in the whole county in which I was born, and in which the
petitioners live. Between Holbeach and Boston, even at a public-house,
neither bread nor meat was to be found; and while the landlord was
telling me that the people were become so poor that the butchers killed
no meat in the neighbourhood. I counted more than two thousand fat sheep
lying about in the pastures in that richest spot in the whole world.
Starvation in the midst of plenty; the land covered with food, and the
working people without victuals: everything taken away by the tax-eaters
of various descriptions: and yet you take no measures for redress; and
your miserable labourers seem to be doomed to expire with hunger,
without an effort to obtain relief. What! cannot you point out to them
the real cause of their sufferings; cannot you take a piece of paper and
write out a petition for them; cannot your labourers petition as well as
mine; are God's blessings bestowed on you without any spirit to preserve
them; is the fatness of the land, is the earth teeming with food for the
body and raiment for the back, to be an apology for the want of that
courage for which your fathers were so famous; is the abundance which
God has put into your hands, to be the excuse for your resigning
yourselves to starvation? My God! is there no spirit left in England
except in the miserable sand-hills of Surrey?" These words were not
uttered without effect I can assure the reader. The assemblage was of
that stamp in which thought goes before expression; but the effect of
this example of my men in Surrey will, I am sure, be greater than
anything that has been done in the petitioning way for a long time past.
We left Lincoln on the 23rd about noon, and got to Newark, in
Nottinghamshire, in the evening, where I gave a lecture at the theatre
to about three hundred persons. Newark is a very fine town, and the
Castle Inn, where we stopped, extraordinarily good and pleasantly
situated. Here I was met by a parcel of the printed petitions of the
labourers at Barn-Elm.
I shall continue to _sow these_, as I proceed on my way. It should have
been stated at the head of the printed petition that it was presented to
the House of Lords by his Grace the Duke of Richmond, and by Mr. Pallmer
to the House of Commons.
The country from Lincoln to Newark (sixteen miles) is by no means so
fine as that which we have been in for so many weeks. The land is clayey
in many parts. A pleasant country; a variety of hill and valley; but not
that richness which we had so long had under our eye: fields smaller;
fewer sheep, and those not so large, and so manifestly loaded with
flesh. The roads always good. Newark is a town very much like
Nottingham, having a very fine and spacious market-place; the buildings
everywhere good; but it is in the villages that you find the depth of
misery.
Having appointed positively to be at Leicester in the evening of
Saturday, the 24th, we could not stop either at Grantham or at Melton
Mowbray, not even long enough to view their fine old magnificent
churches. In going from Newark to Grantham, we got again into
Lincolnshire, in which last county Grantham is. From Newark nearly to
Melton Mowbray, the country is about the same as between Lincoln and
Newark; by no means bad land, but not so rich as that of Lincolnshire,
in the middle and eastern parts; not approaching to the Holderness
country in point of riches; a large part arable land, well tilled; but
not such large homesteads, such numerous great stacks of wheat, and such
endless flocks of lazy sheep.
Before we got to Melton Mowbray the beautiful pastures of this little
verdant county of Leicester began to appear. Meadows and green fields,
with here and there a corn field, all of smaller dimensions than those
of Lincolnshire, but all very beautiful; with gentle hills and woods
too; not beautiful woods, like those of Hampshire and of the wilds of
Surrey, Sussex and Kent; but very pretty, all the country around being
so rich. At Mowbray we began to get amongst the Leicestershire sheep,
those fat creatures which we see the butchers' boys battering about so
unmercifully in the streets and the outskirts of the Wen. The land is
warmer here than in Lincolnshire; the grass more forward, and the wheat,
between Mowbray and Leicester, six inches high, and generally looking
exceedingly well. In Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire I found the wheat
in general rather thin, and frequently sickly; nothing like so promising
as in Suffolk and Norfolk.
We got to Leicester on the 24th at about half-after five o'clock; and
the time appointed for the lecture was six. Leicester is a very fine
town; spacious streets, fine inns, fine shops, and containing, they say,
thirty or forty thousand people. It is well stocked with jails, of which
a new one, in addition to the rest, has just been built, covering three
acres of ground! And, as if _proud_ of it, the grand portal has little
turrets in the castle style, with _embrasures_ in miniature on the caps
of the turrets. Nothing speaks the want of reflection in the people so
much as the self-gratulation which they appear to feel in these edifices
in their several towns. Instead of expressing shame at these indubitable
proofs of the horrible increase of misery and of crime, they really
boast of these "improvements," as they call them. Our forefathers built
abbeys and priories and churches, and they made such use of them that
jails were nearly unnecessary. We, their sons, have knocked down the
abbeys and priories; suffered half the parsonage-houses and churches to
pretty nearly tumble down, and make such uses of the remainder, that
jails and tread-mills and dungeons have now become the most striking
edifices in every county in the kingdom.
Yesterday morning (Sunday the 25th) I walked out to the village of
Knighton, two miles on the Bosworth road, where I breakfasted, and then
walked back. This morning I walked out to Hailstone, nearly three miles
on the Lutterworth road, and got my breakfast there. You have nothing to
do but to walk through these villages, to see the cause of the increase
of the jails. Standing on the hill at Knighton, you see the three
ancient and lofty and beautiful spires rising up at Leicester; you see
the river winding down through a broad bed of the most beautiful meadows
that man ever set his eyes on; you see the bright verdure covering all
the land, even to the tops of the hills, with here and there a little
wood, as if made by God to give variety to the beauty of the scene, for
the river brings the coal in abundance, for fuel, and the earth gives
the brick and the tile in abundance. But go down into the villages;
invited by the spires, rising up amongst the trees in the dells, at
scarcely ever more than a mile or two apart; invited by these spires, go
down into these villages, view the large, and once the most beautiful,
churches; see the parson's house, large, and in the midst of
pleasure-gardens; and then look at the miserable sheds in which the
labourers reside! Look at these hovels, made of mud and of straw; bits
of glass, or of old off-cast windows, without frames or hinges,
frequently, but merely stuck in the mud wall. Enter them, and look at
the bits of chairs or stools; the wretched boards tacked together to
serve for a table; the floor of pebble, broken brick, or of the bare
ground; look at the thing called a bed; and survey the rags on the backs
of the wretched inhabitants; and then wonder, if you can, that the jails
and dungeons and tread-mills increase, and that a standing army and
barracks are become the favourite establishments of England!
At the village of Hailstone, I got into the purlieu, as they call it in
Hampshire, of a person well known in the Wen; namely, the Reverend
Beresford, rector of that fat affair, St. Andrew's, Holborn! In walking
through the village, and surveying its deplorable dwellings, so much
worse than the cow-sheds of the cottagers on the skirts of the forests
in Hampshire, my attention was attracted by the surprising contrast
between them and the house of their religious teacher. I met a labouring
man. Country people _know everything_. If you have ever made a _faux
pas_, of any sort of description; if you have anything about you of
which you do not want all the world to know, never retire to a village,
keep in some great town; but the Wen, for your life, for there the
next-door neighbour will not know even your name; and the vicinage will
judge of you solely by the quantity of money that you have to spend.
This labourer seemed not to be in a very great hurry. He was digging in
his garden; and I, looking over a low hedge, _pitched him up_ for a
gossip, commencing by asking him whether that was the parson's house.
Having answered in the affirmative, and I, having asked the parson's
name, he proceeded thus: "His name is Beresford; but though he lives
there, he has not this living now, he has got the living of St.
Andrew's, Holborn; and they say it is worth a great many thousands a
year. He could not, they say, keep this living and have that too,
because they were so far apart. And so this living was given to Mr.
Brown, who is the rector of Hobey, about seven miles off." "Well," said
I, "but _how comes Beresford to live here now_, if the living be given
to another man?" "Why, Sir," said he, "this Beresford married a daughter
of Brown; and so, you know (smiling and looking very archly), Brown
comes and takes the payment for the tithes, and pays a curate that lives
in that house there in the field; and Beresford lives at that fine house
still, just as he used to do." I asked him what the living was worth,
and he answered twelve hundred pounds a year. It is a rectory, I find,
and of course the parson has great tithes as well as small.
The people of this village know a great deal more about Beresford than
the people of St. Andrew's, Holborn, know about him. In short, the
country people know all about the whole thing. They will be long before
they act; but they will make no noise as a signal for action. They will
be moved by nothing but actual want of food. This the Thing seems to be
aware of; and hence all the innumerable schemes for keeping them quiet:
hence the endless jails and all the terrors of hardened law: hence the
schemes for coaxing them, by letting them have bits of land: hence the
everlasting bills and discussions of committees about the state of the
poor, and the state of the poor-laws: all of which will fail; and at
last, unless reduction of taxation speedily take place, the schemers
will find what the consequences are of reducing millions to the verge of
starvation.
The labourers here, who are in need of parochial relief, are formed into
what are called _roundsmen_; that is to say, they are sent round from
one farmer to another, each maintaining a certain number for a certain
length of time; and thus they go round from one to the other. If the
farmers did not pay three shillings in taxes out of every six shillings
that they give in the shape of wages, they could afford to give the men
four and sixpence in wages, which would be better to the men than the
six. But as long as this burden of taxes shall continue, so long the
misery will last, and it will go on increasing with accelerated pace.
The march of circumstances is precisely what it was in France, just
previous to the French revolution. If the aristocracy were wise, they
would put a stop to that march. The middle class are fast sinking down
to the state of the lower class. _A community of feeling_ between these
classes, and that feeling an angry one, is what the aristocracy has to
dread. As far as the higher clergy are concerned, this community of
feeling is already complete. A short time will extend the feeling to
every other branch; and then, the hideous consequences make their
appearance. Reform; a radical reform of the Parliament; this reform _in
time_; this reform, which would reconcile the middle class to the
aristocracy, and give renovation to that which has now become a mass of
decay and disgust; this reform, given with a good grace, and not taken
by force, is the only refuge for the aristocracy of this kingdom. Just
as it was in France. All the tricks of financiers have been tried in
vain; and by-and-by some trick more pompous and foolish than the rest;
Sir Henry Parnell's trick, perhaps, or something equally foolish, would
blow the whole concern into the air.
_Worcester, 18th May, 1830._
In tracing myself from Leicester to this place, I begin at Lutterworth,
in Leicestershire, one of the prettiest country towns that I ever saw;
that is to say, prettiest _situated_. At this place they have, in the
church (they say), the identical _pulpit_ from which Wickliffe preached!
This was not his birth-place; but he was, it seems, priest of this
parish.
I set off from Lutterworth early on the 29th of April, stopped to
breakfast at Birmingham, got to Wolverhampton by two o'clock (a distance
altogether of about 50 miles), and lectured at six in the evening. I
repeated, or rather continued, the lecturing, on the 30th, and on the
3rd of May. On the 6th of May went to Dudley, and lectured there: on the
10th of May, at Birmingham; on the 12th and 13th, at Shrewsbury; and on
the 14th, came here.
Thus have I come through countries of corn and meat and iron and coal;
and from the banks of the Humber to those of the Severn, I find all the
people, who do not share in the taxes, in a state of distress, greater
or less, _Mortgagers_ all frightened out of their-wits; _fathers_
trembling for the fate of their children; and _working people_ in the
most miserable state, and, as they ought to be, in the _worst of
temper_. These will, I am afraid, be the _state-doctors_ at last! The
farmers are cowed down: the poorer they get, the more cowardly they are.
Every one of them sees the cause of his suffering, and sees general ruin
at hand; but every one hopes that by some trick, some act of meanness,
some contrivance, _he shall escape_. So that there is no hope of any
change for the better but from the _working people_. The farmers will
sink to a very low state; and thus the Thing (barring _accidents_) may
go on, until neither farmer nor tradesman will see a joint of meat on
his table once in a quarter of a year. It appears likely to be precisely
as it was in France: it is now just what France was at the close of the
reign of Louis XV. It has been the fashion to ascribe the _French
Revolution_ to the writings of Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and others.
These writings had _nothing at all_ to do with the matter: no, _nothing
at all_. The _Revolution_ was produced by _taxes_, which at last became
unbearable; by debts of the State; but, in fact, by the despair of the
people, produced by the weight of the taxes.
It is curious to observe how ready the supporters of tyranny and
taxation are to ascribe rebellions and revolutions to disaffected
leaders; and particularly to writers; and, as these supporters of
tyranny and taxation have had the press at their command; have had
generally the absolute command of it, they have caused this belief to go
down from generation to generation. It will not do for them to ascribe
revolutions and rebellions to the true cause; because then the
rebellions and revolutions would be justified; and it is their object to
cause them to be condemned. Infinite delusion has prevailed in this
country, in consequence of the efforts of which I am now speaking.
Voltaire was just as much a cause of the French Revolution as I have
been the cause of imposing these sixty millions of taxes. The French
Revolution was produced by the grindings of taxation; and this I will
take an opportunity very soon of proving, to the conviction of every man
in the kingdom who chooses to read.
In the iron country, of which Wolverhampton seems to be a sort of
central point, and where thousands, and perhaps two or three hundred
thousand people, are assembled together, the _truck_ or _tommy_ system
generally prevails; and this is a very remarkable feature in the state
of this country. I have made inquiries with regard to the origin, or
etymology, of this word _tommy_, and could find no one to furnish me
with the information. It is certainly, like so many other good things,
to be ascribed to _the army_; for, when I was a recruit at Chatham
barracks, in the year 1783, we had brown bread served out to us twice in
the week. And, for what reason God knows, we used to call it _tommy_.
And the sergeants, when they called us out to get our bread, used to
tell us to come and get our _tommy_. Even the officers used to call it
tommy. Any one that could get white bread, called it bread; but the
brown stuff that we got in lieu of part of our pay was called _tommy_;
and so we used to call it when we got abroad. When the soldiers came to
have bread served out to them in the several towns in England, the name
of "tommy" went down by tradition; and, doubtless, it was taken up and
adapted to the truck system in Staffordshire and elsewhere.
Now, there is nothing wrong, nothing _essentially_ wrong, in this system
of barter. Barter is in practice in some of the happiest communities in
the world. In the new settled parts of the United States of America, to
which money has scarcely found its way, to which articles of wearing
apparel are brought from a great distance, where the great and almost
sole occupations are, the rearing of food, the building of houses, and
the making of clothes, barter is the rule and money payment the
exception. And this is attended with no injury and with very little
inconvenience. The bargains are made, and the accounts kept _in money_;
but the payments are made in produce or in goods, the price of these
being previously settled on. The store-keeper (which we call
shop-keeper) receives the produce in exchange for his goods, and
exchanges that produce for more goods; and thus the concerns of the
community go on, every one living in abundance, and the sound of misery
never heard.
But when this tommy system; this system of barter; when this makes its
appearance where money has for ages been the medium of exchange, and of
payments for labour; when this system makes its appearance in such a
state of society, there is something wrong; things are out of joint; and
it becomes us to inquire into the real cause of its being resorted to;
and it does not become us to join in an outcry against the employers who
resort to it, until we be perfectly satisfied that those employers are
guilty of oppression.
The manner of carrying on the tommy system is this: suppose there to be
a master who employs a hundred men. That hundred men, let us suppose, to
earn a pound a week each. This is not the case in the iron-works; but no
matter, we can illustrate our meaning by one sum as well as by another.
These men lay out weekly the whole of the hundred pounds in victuals,
drink, clothing, bedding, fuel, and house-rent. Now, the master finding
the profits of his trade fall off very much, and being at the same time
in want of money to pay the hundred pounds weekly, and perceiving that
these hundred pounds are carried away at once, and given to shopkeepers
of various descriptions; to butchers, bakers, drapers, hatters,
shoemakers, and the rest; and knowing that, on an average, these
shopkeepers must all have a profit of thirty _per cent._, or more, he
determines to _keep this thirty per cent. to himself_; and this is
thirty pounds a week gained as a shop-keeper, which amounts to 1,560_l._
a year. He, therefore, sets up a tommy shop: a long place containing
every commodity that the workman can want, liquor and house-room
excepted. Here the workman takes out his pound's worth; and his
house-rent he pays in truck, if he do not rent of his master; and if he
will have liquor, beer, or gin, or anything else, he must get it by
trucking with the goods that he has got at the tommy shop.
Now, there is nothing essentially unjust in this. There is a little
inconvenience as far as the house-rent goes; but not much. The tommy is
easily turned into money; and if the single saving man does experience
some trouble in the sale of his goods, that is compensated for in the
more important case of the married man, whose wife and children
generally experience the benefit of this payment in kind. It is, to be
sure, a sorrowful reflection, that such a check upon the drinking
propensities of the fathers should be necessary; but _the necessity
exists_; and, however sorrowful the fact, the fact, I am assured, is,
that thousands upon thousands of mothers have to bless this system,
though it arises from a loss of trade and the poverty of the masters.
I have often had to observe on the cruel effects of the suppression of
markets and fairs, and on the consequent power of extortion possessed by
the country shop-keepers. And what a thing it is to reflect on, that
these shopkeepers have the whole of the labouring men of England
constantly in their debt; have on an average a mortgage on their wages
to the amount of five or six weeks, and make them pay any price that
they choose to extort. So that, in fact, there is a tommy system in
every village, the difference being, that the shop-keeper is the tommy
man instead of the farmer.
The only question is in this case of the manufacturing tommy work,
whether the master charges a higher price than the shop-keepers would
charge; and, while I have not heard that the masters do this, I think it
improbable that they should. They must desire to avoid the charge of
such extortion; and they have little temptation to it; because they buy
at best hand and in large quantities; because they are sure of their
customers, and know to a certainty the quantity that they want; and
because the distribution of the goods is a matter of such perfect
regularity, and attended with so little expense, compared with the
expenses of the shopkeeper. Any farmer who has a parcel of married men
working for him, might supply them with meat for four-pence the pound,
when the butcher must charge them seven-pence, or lose by his trade; and
to me, it has always appeared astonishing, that farmers (where they
happen to have the power completely in their hands) do not compel their
married labourers to have a sufficiency of bread and meat for their
wives and children. What would be more easy than to reckon what would be
necessary for house-rent, fuel, and clothing; to pay that in money once
a month, or something of that sort, and to pay the rest in meat, flour,
and malt? I may never occupy a farm again; but if I were to do it, to
any extent, the East and West Indies, nor big brewer, nor distiller,
should ever have one farthing out of the produce of my farm, except he
got it through the throats of those who made the wearing apparel. If I
had a village at my command, not a tea-kettle should sing in that
village: there should be no extortioner under the name of country
shop-keeper, and no straight-backed, bloated fellow, with red eyes,
unshaven face, and slip-shod till noon, called a publican, and generally
worthy of the name of _sinner_. Well-covered backs and well-lined
bellies would be my delight; and as to talking about controlling and
compelling, what a controlling and compelling are there now! It is
everlasting control and compulsion. My bargain should be so much in
money, and so much in bread, meat, and malt.
And what is the bargain, I want to know, _with yearly servants_? Why, so
much in money and the rest in bread, meat, beer, lodging and fuel. And
does any one affect to say that this is wrong? Does any one say that it
is wrong to exercise control and compulsion over these servants; such
control and compulsion is not only the master's right, but they are
included in his bounden _duties_. It is his duty to make them rise
early, keep good hours, be industrious, and careful, be cleanly in their
persons and habits, be civil in their language. These are amongst the
uses of the means which God has put into his hands; and are these means
to be neglected towards married servants any more than towards single
ones?
Even in the well-cultivated and thickly-settled parts of the United
States of America, it is the general custom, and a very good custom it
is, to pay the wages of labour _partly in money and partly in kind_; and
this practice is extended to carpenters, bricklayers, and other workmen
about buildings, and even to tailors, shoemakers, and weavers, who go (a
most excellent custom) to farm-houses to work. The bargain is, so much
money _and found_; that is to say, found in food and drink, and
sometimes in lodging. The money then used to be, for a common labourer,
in Long Island, at common work (not haying or harvesting), three York
shillings a day, and found; that is to say, three times seven-pence
halfpenny of our money; and three times seven-pence halfpenny a day,
which is eleven shillings and three-pence a week, and found. This was
the wages of the commonest labourer at the commonest work. And the wages
of a good labourer now, in Worcestershire, _is eight shillings a week,
and not found_. Accordingly, they are miserably poor and degraded.
Therefore, there is in this mode of payment nothing _essentially_
degrading; but the tommy system of Staffordshire, and elsewhere, though
not unjust in itself, indirectly inflicts great injustice on the whole
race of shop-keepers, who are necessary for the distribution of
commodities in great towns, and whose property is taken away from them
by this species of monopoly, which the employers of great numbers of men
have been compelled to adopt for their own safety. It is not the fault
of the masters, who can have no pleasure in making profit in this way:
it is the fault of the taxes, which, by lowering the price of their
goods, have compelled them to resort to this means of diminishing their
expenses, or to quit their business altogether, which a great part of
them cannot do without being left without a penny; and if a law could be
passed and enforced (which it cannot) to put an end to the tommy system,
the consequence would be, that instead of a fourth part of the furnaces
being let out of blast in this neighbourhood, one-half would be let out
of blast, and additional thousands of poor creatures would be left
solely dependent on parochial relief.
A view of the situation of things at Shrewsbury, will lead us in a
minute to the real cause of the tommy system. Shrewsbury is one of the
most interesting spots that man ever beheld. It is the capital of the
county of Salop, and Salop appears to have been the original name of the
town itself. It is curiously enclosed by the river Severn, which is here
large and fine, and which, in the form of a _horse-shoe_, completely
surrounds it, leaving, of the whole of the two miles round, only one
little place whereon to pass in and out on land. There are two bridges,
one on the east, and the other on the west; the former called the
English, and the other, the Welsh bridge. The environs of this town,
especially on the Welsh side, are the most beautiful that can be
conceived. The town lies in the midst of a fine agricultural country, of
which it is the great and almost only mart. Hither come the farmers to
sell their produce, and hence they take, in exchange, their groceries,
their clothing, and all the materials for their implements and the
domestic conveniences. It was fair-day when I arrived at Shrewsbury.
Everything was on the decline. Cheese, which four years ago sold at
sixty shillings the six-score pounds, would not bring forty. I took
particular pains to ascertain the fact with regard to the cheese, which
is a great article here. I was assured that shop-keepers in general did
not now sell half the quantity of goods in a month that they did in that
space of time four or five years ago. The _ironmongers_ were not selling
a fourth-part of what they used to sell five years ago.
Now, it is impossible to believe that a somewhat similar falling off in
the sale of iron must not have taken place all over the kingdom; and
need we then wonder that the iron in Staffordshire has fallen, within
these five years, from thirteen pounds to five pounds a ton, or perhaps
a great deal more; and need we wonder that the _iron-masters_, who have
the same rent and taxes to pay that they had to pay before, have
resorted to the tommy system, in order to assist in saving themselves
from ruin! Here is the real cause of the tommy system; and if Mr.
Littleton really wishes to put an end to it, let him prevail upon the
Parliament to take off taxes to the amount of forty millions a year.
Another article had experienced a still greater falling off at
Shrewsbury; I mean the article of corn-sacks, of which there has been a
falling off of _five-sixths_. The sacks are made by weavers in the
North; and need we wonder, then, at the low wages of those industrious
people, whom I used to see weaving sacks in the miserable cellars at
Preston!
Here is the true cause of the tommy system, and of all the other evils
which disturb and afflict the country. It is a great country; an immense
mass of industry and resources of all sorts, _breaking up_; a prodigious
mass of enterprise and capital diminishing and dispersing. The enormous
taxes co-operating with the Corn-bill, which those taxes have
engendered, are driving skill and wealth out of the country in all
directions; are causing iron-masters to make France, and particularly
Belgium, blaze with furnaces, in the lieu of those which have been
extinguished here; and that have established furnaces and cotton-mills
in abundance. These same taxes and this same Corn-bill are sending the
long wool from Lincolnshire to France, there to be made into those
blankets which, for ages, were to be obtained nowhere but in England.
This is the true state of the country, and here are the true causes of
that state; and all that the corrupt writers and speakers say about
over-population and poor-laws, and about all the rest of their shuffling
excuses, is a heap of nonsense and of lies.
I cannot quit Shrewsbury without expressing the great satisfaction that
I derived from my visit to that place. It is the only town into which I
have gone, in all England, without knowing, beforehand, something of
some person in it. I could find out no person that took the Register;
and could discover but one person who took the _Advice to Young Men_.
The number of my auditors was expected to be so small, that I doubled
the price of admission, in order to pay the expense of the room. To my
great surprise, I had a room full of gentlemen, at the request of some
of whom I repeated the dose the next night; and if my audience were as
well pleased with me as I was with them, their pleasure must have been
great indeed. I saw not one single person in the place that I had ever
seen before; yet I never had more cordial shakes by the hand; in
proportion to their numbers, not more at Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale,
Halifax, Leeds, or Nottingham, or even Hull. I was particularly pleased
with the conduct of the _young_ gentlemen at Shrewsbury, and especially
when I asked them, whether they were prepared to act upon the insolent
doctrine of Huskisson, and quietly submit to this state of things
"_during the present generation_"?