=Source.=--William Cobbett's _Rural Rides_, ed. by Mr. Pitt
Cobbett, 1885.
"Leicester, 26th April, 1830.
"At the famous 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 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 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 £94,000 has been voted to
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 the average, £110,000 a
year, and that, of course, this band of foreigners have actually
taken away out of England, since the peace, one million and seven
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 more visible to our eyes 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 your petitioners know that more than one half 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; 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 sixpence 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 sevenpence for a pound of soap or candles
that they could have for threepence; that they pay sevenpence for
a pound of sugar that they could have for threepence; that they
pay six shillings for a pound of tea which 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 eyes sweep over in this country
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 waste
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 sandhills of Surrey?"