Rural Rides Part 14

_Kensington, Sat.u.r.day night, 6 Sept._

Here I close my day, at the end of forty-four miles. In coming up the chalk hill from Westerham, I prepared myself for the red stiff clay-like loam, the big yellow flints and the meadows; and I found them all. I have now gone over this chalk-ridge in the following places: at Coombe in the north-west of Hamps.h.i.+re; I mean the north-west corner, the very extremity of the county. I have gone over it at Ashmansworth, or Highclere, going from Newbury to Andover; at King's Clere, going from Newbury to Winchester; at Ropley, going from Alresford to Selborne; at Dippinghall, going from Crondall to Thursly; at Merrow, going from Chertsey to Chilworth; at Reigate; at Westerham, and then, between these, at G.o.dstone; at Sevenoaks, going from London to Battle; at Hollingbourne, as mentioned above, and at Folkestone. In all these places I have crossed this chalk-ridge. Everywhere, upon the top of it, I have found a flat, and the soil of all these flats I have found to be a red stiff loam mingled up with big yellow flints. A soil difficult to work; but by no means bad, whether for wood, hops, gra.s.s, orchards, or corn. I once before mentioned that I was a.s.sured that the pasture upon these bleak hills was as rich as that which is found in the north of Wilts.h.i.+re, in the neighbourhood of Swindon, where they make some of the best cheese in the kingdom. Upon these hills I have never found the labouring people poor and miserable, as in the rich vales. All is not appropriated where there are coppices and wood, where the cultivation is not so easy and the produce so very large.

After getting up the hill from Westerham, I had a general descent to perform all the way to the Thames. When you get to Beckenham, which is the last parish in Kent, the country begins to a.s.sume a c.o.c.kney-like appearance; all is artificial, and you no longer feel any interest in it. I was anxious to make this journey into Kent, in the midst of harvest, in order that I might _know_ the real state of the crops. The result of my observations and my inquiries, is, that the crop is a _full average_ crop of everything except barley, and that the barley yields a great deal more than an average crop. I thought that the beans were very poor during my ride into Hamps.h.i.+re; but I then saw no real bean countries. I have seen such countries now; and I do not think that the beans present us with a bad crop. As to the quality, it is, in no case (except perhaps the barley), equal to that of last year. We had, last year, an Italian summer. When the wheat, or other grain has to _ripen in wet weather_, it will not be _bright_, as it will when it has to ripen in fair weather. It will have a dingy or clouded appearance; and perhaps the flour may not be quite so good. The wheat, in fact, will not be so heavy. In order to enable others to judge, as well as myself, I took samples from the fields as I went along. I took them very fairly, and as often as I thought that there was any material change in the soil or other circ.u.mstances. During the ride I took sixteen samples. These are now at the Office of the Register, in Fleet-street, where they may be seen by any gentleman who thinks the information likely to be useful to him. The samples are numbered, and there is a reference pointing out the place where each sample was taken. The opinions that I gather amount to this: that there is an average crop of everything, and a little more of barley.

Now then we shall see how all this tallies with the schemes, with the intentions and expectations of our matchless gentlemen at Whitehall.

These wise men have put forth their views in the _Courier_ of the 27th of August, and in words which ought never to be forgotten, and which, at any rate, shall be recorded here.

"GRAIN.--During the present unsettled state of the weather, it is impossible for the best informed persons to antic.i.p.ate upon good grounds what will be the future price of agricultural produce. Should the season even yet prove favourable for the operations of the harvest, there is every probability of the average price of grain continuing at that exact price which will prove most conducive to the interests of the corn growers, and at the same time encouraging to the agriculture of our colonial possessions. We do not speak lightly on this subject, for we are aware that His Majesty's Ministers have been fully alive to the inquiries from all qualified quarters as to the effect likely to be produced on the markets from the addition of the present crops to the stock of wheat already on hand. The result of these inquiries is, that in the highest quarters there exists the full expectation, that towards the month of November, the price of wheat will nearly approach to seventy s.h.i.+llings, a price which, while it affords the extent of remuneration to the British farmer recognized by the corn laws, will at the same time admit of the sale of the Canadian bonded wheat; and the introduction of this foreign corn, grown by British colonists, will contribute to keeping down our markets, and exclude foreign grain from other quarters."

There's nice gentlemen of Whitehall! What pretty gentlemen they are!

"_Envy of surrounding nations_," indeed, to be under command of pretty gentlemen who can make calculations so nice, and put forth predictions so positive upon such a subject! "_Admiration of the world_," indeed, to live under the command of men who can so control seasons and markets; or, at least, who can so dive into the secrets of trade, and find out the contents of the fields, barns, and ricks, as to be able to balance things so nicely as to cause the Canadian corn to find a market, without injuring the sale of that of the British farmer, and without admitting that of the French farmer and the other farmers of the continent! Happy, too happy, rogues that we are, to be under the guidance of such pretty gentlemen, and right just is it that we should be banished for life, if we utter a word _tending_ to bring such pretty gentlemen into contempt.

Let it be observed, that this paragraph _must_ have come from Whitehall.

This wretched paper is the demi-official organ of the Government. As to the owners of the paper, Daniel Stewart, that notorious fellow, Street, and the rest of them, not excluding the brother of the great Oracle, which brother bought, the other day, a share of this vehicle of baseness and folly; as to these fellows, they have no control other than what relates to the expenditure and the receipts of the vehicle. They get their news from the offices of the Whitehall people, and their paper is the mouth-piece of those same people. Mark this, I pray you, reader; and let the French people mark it, too, and then take their revenge for the Waterloo insolence. This being the case, then; this paragraph proceeding from the pretty gentlemen, what a light it throws on their expectations, their hopes, and their fears. They see that wheat at seventy s.h.i.+llings a quarter is _necessary_ to them! Ah! pray mark that!

They see that wheat at seventy s.h.i.+llings a quarter is necessary to them; and, therefore, they say that wheat will be at seventy s.h.i.+llings a quarter, the price, as they call it, necessary to remunerate the British farmer. And how do the conjurers at Whitehall know this? Why, they have made full inquiries "in qualified quarters." And the qualified quarters have satisfied the "highest quarters," that, "towards the month of November, the price of wheat will nearly approach to seventy s.h.i.+llings the quarter!" I wonder what the words towards the "end of November," may mean. Devil's in't if middle of September is not "_towards_ November;"

and the wheat, instead of going on towards seventy s.h.i.+llings, is very fast coming down to forty. The beast who wrote this paragraph; the pretty beast; this "envy of surrounding nations" wrote it on the 27th of August, _a soaking wet Sat.u.r.day_! The pretty beast was not aware, that the next day was going to be fine, and that we were to have only the succeeding Tuesday and half the following Sat.u.r.day of wet weather until the whole of the harvest should be in. The pretty beast wrote while the rain was spattering against the window; and he did "not speak lightly,"

but was fully aware that the highest quarters, having made inquiries of the qualified quarters, were sure that wheat would be at seventy s.h.i.+llings during the ensuing year. What will be the price of wheat it is impossible for any one to say. I know a gentleman, who is a very good judge of such matters, who is of opinion that the average price of wheat will be thirty-two s.h.i.+llings a quarter, or lower, before Christmas; this is not quite half what the _highest quarters_ expect, in consequence of the inquiries which they have made of the _qualified quarters_. I do not say, that the average of wheat will come down to thirty-two s.h.i.+llings; but this I know, that at Reading, last Sat.u.r.day, about forty-five s.h.i.+llings was the price; and, I hear, that, in Norfolk, the price is forty-two. The _highest quarters_, and the infamous London press, will, at any rate, be prettily exposed, before Christmas. Old Sir Thomas Lethbridge, too, and Gaffer Gooch, and his base tribe of Pitt.i.tes at Ipswich; c.o.ke and Suffield, and their crew; all these will be prettily laughed at; nor will that "tall soul," Lord Milton, escape being reminded of his profound and patriotic observation relative to "this self-renovating country." No sooner did he see the wheat get up to sixty or seventy s.h.i.+llings than he lost all his alarms; found that all things were right, turned his back on Yorks.h.i.+re Reformers, and went and toiled for Scarlett at Peterborough: and discovered, that there was nothing wrong, at last, and that the "self-renovating country" would triumph over all its difficulties!--So it will, "tall soul;" it will triumph over all its difficulties; it will renovate itself; it will purge itself of rotten boroughs, of vile borough-mongers, their tools and their stopgaps; it will purge itself of all the villanies which now corrode its heart; it will, in short, free itself from those curses, which the expenditure of eight or nine hundred millions of English money took place in order to make perpetual: it will, in short, become free from oppression, as easy and as happy as the gallant and sensible nation on the other side of the Channel. This is the sort of renovation, but not renovation by the means of wheat at seventy s.h.i.+llings a quarter.

Renovation it will have: it will rouse and will shake from itself curses like the pension which is paid to Burke's executors. This is the sort of renovation, "tall soul;" and not wheat at 70_s._ a quarter, while it is at twenty-five s.h.i.+llings a quarter in France. Pray observe, reader, how the "tall soul" _catched_ at the rise in the price of wheat: how he _snapped_ at it: how quickly he ceased his attacks upon the Whitehall people and upon the System. He thought he had been deceived: he thought that things were coming about again; and so he drew in his horns, and began to talk about the self-renovating country. This was the tone of them _all_. This was the tone of all the borough-mongers; all the friends of the System; all those, who, like Lethbridge, had begun to be staggered. They had deviated, for a moment, into our path! but they popped back again the moment they saw the price of wheat rise! All the enemies of Reform, all the calumniators of Reformers, all the friends of the System, most anxiously desired a rise in the price of wheat. Mark the curious fact, that all the vile press of London; the whole of that infamous press; that newspapers, magazines, reviews: the whole of the base thing; and a baser surely this world never saw; that the whole of this base thing rejoiced, exulted, crowed over me, and told an impudent lie, in order to have the crowing; crowed, for what? _Because wheat and bread were become dear!_ A newspaper hatched under a corrupt Priest, a profligate Priest, and recently espoused to the h.e.l.l of Pall Mall; even this vile thing crowed because wheat and bread had become dear! Now, it is notorious, that, heretofore, every periodical publication in this kingdom was in the constant habit of lamenting, when bread became dear, and of rejoicing, when it became cheap. This is notorious. Nay, it is equally notorious, that this infamous press was everlastingly a.s.sailing bakers, and millers, and butchers, for not selling bread, flour, and meat cheaper than they were selling them. In how many hundreds of instances has this infamous press caused attacks to be made by the mob upon tradesmen of this description! All these things are notorious.

Moreover, notorious it is that, long previous to every harvest, this infamous, this execrable, this beastly press, was engaged in stunning the public with accounts of the _great crop_ which was just coming forward! There was always, with this press, a prodigiously large crop.

This was invariably the case. It was never known to be the contrary.

Now these things are perfectly well known to every man in England. How comes it, then, reader, that the profligate, the trading, the lying, the infamous press of London, has now totally changed its tone and bias. The base thing never now tells us that there is a great crop or even a good crop. It never now wants cheap bread and cheap wheat and cheap meat. It never now finds fault of bakers and butchers. It now always endeavours to make it appear that corn is dearer than it is. The base _Morning Herald_, about three weeks ago, not only suppressed the fact of the fall of wheat, but a.s.serted that there had been a rise in the price. Now _why is all this_? That is a great question, reader. That is a very interesting question. Why has this infamous press, which always pursues that which it thinks its own interest; why has it taken this strange turn? This is the reason: stupid as the base thing is, it has arrived at a conviction, that if the price of the produce of the land cannot be kept up to something approaching ten s.h.i.+llings a bushel for good wheat, the h.e.l.lish system of funding must be blown up. The infamous press has arrived at a conviction, that that cheating, that fraudulent system by which this press lives, must be destroyed unless the price of corn can be kept up. The infamous traders of the press are perfectly well satisfied, that the interest of the Debt must be reduced, unless wheat can be kept up to nearly ten s.h.i.+llings a bushel. Stupid as they are, and stupid as the fellows down at Westminster are, they know very well, that the whole system, stock-jobbers, Jews, cant and all, go to the devil at once, as soon as a deduction is made from the interest of the Debt.

Knowing this, they want wheat to sell high; because it has, at last, been hammered into their skulls, that the interest cannot be paid in full, if wheat sells low. Delightful is the dilemma in which they are.

Dear bread does not suit their manufactories, and cheap bread does not suit their Debt. "_Envy of surrounding nations_," how hard it is that Providence will not enable your farmers to sell dear and the consumers to buy cheap! These are the things that you want. Admiration of the world you are; but have these things you will not. There may be those, indeed, who question whether you yourself know what you want; but, at any rate, if you want these things, you will not have them.

Before I conclude, let me ask the reader to take a look at the _singularity_ of the tone and tricks of this Six-Acts Government. Is it not a novelty in the world to see a Government, and in ordinary seasons, too, having its whole soul absorbed in considerations relating to the price of corn? There are our neighbours, the French, who have got a Government engaged in taking military possession of a great neighbouring kingdom to free which from these very French, we have recently expended a _hundred and fifty millions of money_. Our neighbours have got a Government that is thus engaged, and we have got a Government that employs itself in making incessant "inquiries in all the qualified quarters" relative to the price of wheat! Curious employment for a Government! Singular occupation for the Ministers of the Great George!

They seem to think nothing of Spain, with its eleven millions of people, being in fact added to France. Wholly insensible do they appear to concerns of this sort, while they sit thinking, day and night, upon the price of the bushel of wheat!

However, they are not, after all, such fools as they appear to be.

Despicable, indeed, must be that nation, whose safety or whose happiness does, in any degree, depend on so fluctuating a thing as the price of corn. This is a matter that we must take as it comes. The seasons will be what they will be; and all the calculations of statesmen must be made wholly independent of the changes and chances of seasons. This has always been the case, to be sure. What nation could ever carry on its affairs, if it had to take into consideration the price of corn?

Nevertheless, such is the situation of _our Government_, that its very existence, in its present way, depends upon the price of corn. The pretty fellows at Whitehall, if you may say to them: Well, but look at Spain; look at the enormous strides of the French; think of the consequences in case of another war; look, too, at the growing marine of America. See, Mr. Jenkinson, see, Mr. Canning, see, Mr. Huskisson, see, Mr. Peel, and all ye tribe of Grenvilles, see, what tremendous dangers are gathering together about us! "_Us!_" Aye, about _you_; but pray think what tremendous dangers wheat at four s.h.i.+llings a bushel will bring about _us_! This is the git. Here lies the whole of it. We laugh at a Government employing itself in making calculations about the price of corn, and in employing its press to put forth market puffs. We laugh at these things; but we should not laugh, if we considered, that it is on the price of wheat that the duration of the power and the profits of these men depends. They know what they want; and they wish to believe themselves, and to make others believe, that they shall have it. I have observed before, but it is necessary to observe again, that all those who are for the System, let them be Opposition or not Opposition, feel as Whitehall feels about the price of corn. I have given an instance, in the "tall soul;" but it is the same with the whole of them, with the whole of those who do not wish to see this infernal System changed. I was informed, and I believe it to be true, that the Marquis of Lansdowne said, last April, when the great rise took place in the price of corn, that he had always thought that the cash-measures had but little effect on prices; but that he was now satisfied that those measures had no effect at all on prices! Now, what is our situation; what is the situation of this country, if we must have the present Ministry, or a Ministry of which the Marquis of Lansdowne is to be a Member, if the Marquis of Lansdowne did utter these words? And again, I say, that I verily believe he did utter them.

Ours is a Government that now seems to depend very much upon the _weather_. The old type of a s.h.i.+p at sea will not do now, ours is a weather Government; and to know the state of it, we must have recourse to those gla.s.ses that the Jews carry about. Weather depends upon the winds, in a great measure; and I have no scruple to say, that the situation of those two Right Honourable youths, that are now gone to the Lakes in the north; that their situation, next winter, will be rendered very irksome, not to say perilous, by the present easterly wind, if it should continue about fifteen days longer. Pitt, when he had just made a monstrous issue of paper, and had, thereby, actually put the match which blowed up the old She Devil in 1797--Pitt, at that time, congratulated the nation, that the wisdom of Parliament had established a solid system of finance. Anything but solid it a.s.suredly was; but his system of finance was as worthy of being called solid, as that system of Government which now manifestly depends upon the weather and the winds.

Since my return home (it is now Thursday, 11th September), I have received letters from the east, from the north, and from the west. All tell me that the harvest is very far advanced, and that the crops are free from blight. These letters are not particular as to the weight of the crop; except that they all say that the barley is excellent. The wind is now coming from the east. There is every appearance of the fine weather continuing. Before Christmas, we shall have the wheat down to what will be a fair average price in future. I always said that the late rise was a mere puff. It was, in part, a scarcity rise. The wheat of 1821 was grown and bad. That of 1822 had to be begun upon in July. The crop has had to last thirteen months and a half. The present crop will have to last only eleven months, or less. The crop of barley, last year, was so very bad; so very small; and the crop of the year before so very bad in quality that wheat was malted, last year, in great quant.i.ties, instead of barley. This year, the crop of barley is prodigious. All these things considered wheat, if the cash-measures had had no effect, must have been a hundred and forty s.h.i.+llings a quarter, and barley eighty. Yet the first never got to seventy, and the latter never got to forty! And yet there was a man who calls himself a statesman to say that that mere puff of a rise satisfied him that the cash-measures had never had any effect! Ah! they are all _afraid_ to believe in the effect of those cash-measures: they tremble like children at the sight of the rod, when you hold up before them the effect of those cash-measures. Their only hope, is, that I am wrong in my opinions upon that subject; because, if I am right, their System is condemned to speedy destruction!

I thus conclude, for the present, my remarks relative to the harvest and the price of corn. It is the great subject of the day; and the comfort is, that we are now speedily to see whether I be right or whether the Marquis of Lansdowne be right. As to the infamous London press, the moment the wheat comes down to forty s.h.i.+llings; that is to say, an average Government return of forty s.h.i.+llings, I will spend ten pounds in placarding this infamous press, after the manner in which we used to placard the base and detestable enemies of the QUEEN. This infamous press has been what is vulgarly called "running its rigs," for several months past. The _Quakers_ have been urging it on, under-handed. They have, I understand, been bribing it pretty deeply, in order to calumniate me, and to favour their own monopoly, but, thank G.o.d, the cunning knaves have outwitted themselves. They won't play at cards; but they will play at _Stocks_; they will play at Lottery Tickets, and they will play at Mark-lane. They have played a silly game, this time. Saint Swithin, that good old Roman Catholic Saint, seemed to have set a trap for them: he went on, wet, wet, wet, even until the harvest began. Then, after two or three days' suns.h.i.+ne, shocking wet again. The ground soaking, the wheat growing, and the "_Friends_;" the gentle Friends, seeking the Spirit, were as busy amongst the sacks at Mark-lane as the devil in a high wind. In short they bought away, with all the gain of G.o.dliness, _and a little more_, before their eyes. All of a sudden, Saint Swithin took away his clouds; out came the sun; the wind got round to the east; just sun enough and just wind enough; and as the wheat ricks everywhere rose up, the long jaws of the Quakers dropped down; and their faces of slate became of a darker hue. That sect will certainly be punished, this year; and, let us hope, that such a change will take place in their concerns as will compel a part of them to labour, at any rate; for, at present, their sect is a perfect monster in society; a whole sect, not one man of whom earns his living by the sweat of his brow. A sect a great deal worse than the Jews; for some of them do work. However, G.o.d send us the easterly wind, for another fortnight, and we shall certainly see some of this sect at work.

RURAL RIDE: FROM KENSINGTON, ACROSS SURREY, AND ALONG THAT COUNTY.

_Reigate, Wednesday Evening, 19th October, 1825._

Having some business at Hartswood, near Reigate, I intended to come off this morning on horseback, along with my son Richard, but it rained so furiously the last night, that we gave up the horse project for to-day, being, by appointment, to be at Reigate by ten o'clock to-day: so that we came off this morning at five o'clock, in a post-chaise, intending to return home and take our horses. Finding, however, that we cannot quit this place till Friday, we have now sent for our horses, though the weather is dreadfully wet. But we are under a farmhouse roof, and the wind may whistle and the rain fall as much as they like.

_Reigate, Thursday Evening, 20th October._

Having done my business at Hartswood to-day about eleven o'clock, I went to a sale at a farm, which the farmer is quitting. Here I had a view of what has long been going on all over the country. The farm, which belongs to _Christ's Hospital_, has been held by a man of the name of Charington, in whose family the lease has been, I hear, a great number of years. The house is hidden by trees. It stands in the Weald of Surrey, close by the _River Mole_, which is here a mere rivulet, though just below this house the rivulet supplies the very prettiest flour-mill I ever saw in my life.

Everything about this farmhouse was formerly the scene of _plain manners_ and _plentiful living_. Oak clothes-chests, oak bedsteads, oak chests of drawers, and oak tables to eat on, long, strong, and well supplied with joint stools. Some of the things were many hundreds of years old. But all appeared to be in a state of decay and nearly of _disuse_. There appeared to have been hardly any _family_ in that house, where formerly there were, in all probability, from ten to fifteen men, boys, and maids: and, which was the worst of all, there was a _parlour_.

Aye, and a _carpet_ and _bell-pull_ too! One end of the front of this once plain and substantial house had been moulded into a "_parlour_;"

and there was the mahogany table, and the fine chairs, and the fine gla.s.s, and all as bare-faced upstart as any stock-jobber in the kingdom can boast of. And there were the decanters, the gla.s.ses, the "dinner-set" of crockery-ware, and all just in the true stock-jobber style. And I dare say it has been _'Squire_ Charington and the _Miss_ Charington's; and not plain Master Charington, and his son Hodge, and his daughter Betty Charington, all of whom this accursed system has, in all likelihood, trans.m.u.ted into a species of mock gentlefolks, while it has ground the labourers down into real slaves. Why do not farmers now _feed_ and _lodge_ their work-people, as they did formerly? Because they cannot keep them _upon so little_ as they give them in wages. This is the real cause of the change. There needs no more to prove that the lot of the working cla.s.ses has become worse than it formerly was. This fact alone is quite sufficient to settle this point. All the world knows, that a number of people, boarded in the same house, and at the same table, can, with as good food, be boarded much cheaper than those persons divided into twos, threes, or fours, can be boarded. This is a well-known truth: therefore, if the farmer now shuts his pantry against his labourers, and pays them wholly in money, is it not clear, that he does it because he thereby gives them a living _cheaper_ to him; that is to say, a _worse_ living than formerly? Mind, he has _a house_ for them; a kitchen for them to sit in, bed rooms for them to sleep in, tables, and stools, and benches, of everlasting duration. All these he has: all these _cost him nothing_; and yet so much does he gain by pinching them in wages, that he lets all these things remain as of no use, rather than feed labourers in the house. Judge, then, of the _change_ that has taken place in the condition of these labourers! And be astonished, if you can, at the _pauperism_ and the _crimes_ that now disgrace this once happy and moral England.

The land produces, on an average, what it always produced; but there is a new distribution of the produce. This 'Squire Charington's father used, I dare say, to sit at the head of the oak-table along with his men, say grace to them, and cut up the meat and the pudding. He might take a cup of _strong beer_ to himself, when they had none; but that was pretty nearly all the difference in their manner of living. So that _all_ lived well. But the _'Squire_ had many _wine-decanters_ and _wine-gla.s.ses_ and "a _dinner set_" and a "_breakfast set_," and "_desert knives_:" and these evidently imply carryings on and a consumption that must of necessity have greatly robbed the long oak table if it had remained fully tenanted. That long table could not share in the work of the decanters and the dinner set. Therefore, it became almost untenanted; the labourers retreated to hovels, called cottages; and, instead of board and lodging, they got money; so little of it as to enable the employer to drink wine; but, then, that he might not reduce them to _quite starvation_, they were enabled to come to him, in the _king's name_, and demand food _as paupers_. And, now, mind, that which a man receives in the _king's name_, he knows well he has _by force_; and it is not in nature that he should _thank_ anybody for it, and least of all the party _from whom it is forced_. Then, if this sort of force be insufficient to obtain him enough to eat and to keep him warm, is it surprising, if he think it no great offence against G.o.d (who created no man to starve) to use another sort of FORCE more within his own control?

Is it, in short, surprising, if he resort to _theft_ and _robbery_?

This is not only the _natural_ progress, but it _has been_ the progress in England. The blame is not justly imputed to 'Squire Charington and his like: the blame belongs to the infernal stock-jobbing system. There was no reason to expect, that farmers would not endeavour to keep pace, in point of show and luxury, with fund-holders, and with all the tribes that _war_ and _taxes_ created. Farmers were not the authors of the mischief; and _now_ they are compelled to shut the labourers out of their houses, and to pinch them in their wages in order to be able to pay their own taxes; and, besides this, the manners and the principles of the working cla.s.s are so changed, that a sort of self-preservation bids the farmer (especially in some counties) to keep them from beneath his roof.

I could not quit this farmhouse without reflecting on the thousands of scores of bacon and thousands of bushels of bread that had been eaten from the long oak-table which, I said to myself, is now perhaps, going at last, to the bottom of a bridge that some stock-jobber will stick up over an artificial river in his c.o.c.kney garden. "_By ---- it shan't_,"

said I, almost in a real pa.s.sion: and so I requested a friend to buy it for me; and if he do so, I will take it to Kensington, or to Fleet-street, and keep it for the good it has done in the world.

When the old farmhouses are down (and down they must come in time) what a miserable thing the country will be! Those that are now erected are mere painted sh.e.l.ls, with a Mistress within, who is stuck up in a place she calls a _parlour_, with, if she have children, the "young ladies and gentlemen" about her: some showy chairs and a sofa (a _sofa_ by all means): half a dozen prints in gilt frames hanging up: some swinging book-shelves with novels and tracts upon them: a dinner brought in by a girl that is perhaps better "educated" than she: two or three nick-nacks to eat instead of a piece of bacon and a pudding: the house too neat for a dirty-shoed carter to be allowed to come into; and everything proclaiming to every sensible beholder, that there is here a constant anxiety to make a _show_ not warranted by the reality. The children (which is the worst part of it) are all too clever to _work_: they are all to be _gentlefolks_. Go to plough! Good G.o.d! What, "young gentlemen"

go to plough! They become _clerks_, or some skimmy-dish thing or other.

They flee from the dirty _work_ as cunning horses do from the bridle.

What misery is all this! What a ma.s.s of materials for producing that general and _dreadful convulsion_ that must, first or last, come and blow this funding and jobbing and enslaving and starving system to atoms!

I was going, to-day, by the side of a plat of ground, where there was a very fine flock of _turkeys_. I stopped to admire them, and observed to the owner how fine they were, when he answered, "We owe them entirely _to you_, Sir, for we never raised one till we read your _Cottage Economy_." I then told him, that we had, this year, raised two broods at Kensington, one black and one white, one of nine and one of eight; but, that, about three weeks back, they appeared to become dull and pale about the head; and, that, therefore, I sent them to a farmhouse, where they recovered instantly, and the broods being such a contrast to each other in point of colour, they were now, when prowling over a gra.s.s field amongst the most agreeable sights that I had ever seen. I intended of course, to let them get their full growth at Kensington, where they were in a gra.s.s plat about fifteen yards square, and where I thought that the feeding of them, in great abundance, with lettuces and other greens from the garden, together with grain, would carry them on to perfection. But I found that I was wrong; and that, though you may raise them to a certain size, in a small place and with such management, they then, if so much confined, begin to be sickly. Several of mine began actually to droop: and, the very day they were sent into the country, they became as gay as ever, and, in three days, all the colour about their heads came back to them.

This town of Reigate had, in former times, a Priory, which had considerable estates in the neighbourhood; and this is brought to my recollection by a circ.u.mstance which has recently taken place in this very town. We all know how long it has been the fas.h.i.+on for us to take it for _granted_, that the monasteries were _bad things_; but, of late, I have made some hundreds of thousands of very good Protestants begin to suspect, that monasteries were better than _poor-rates_, and that monks and nuns, who _fed the poor_, were better than sinecure and pension men and women, who _feed upon the poor_. But, how came the monasteries! How came this that was at Reigate, for instance? Why, it was, if I recollect correctly, _founded by a Surrey gentleman_, who gave this spot and other estates to it, and who, as was usual, provided that ma.s.ses were to be said in it for his soul and those of others, and that it should, as usual, give aid to the poor and needy.

Now, upon the face of the transaction, what _harm_ could this do the community? On the contrary, it must, one would think, do it _good_; for here was this estate given to a set of landlords who never could quit the spot; who could have no families; who could save no money; who could hold no private property; who could make no will; who must spend all their income at Reigate and near it; who as was the custom, fed the poor, administered to the sick, and taught some, at least, of the people, _gratis_. This, upon the face of the thing, seems to be a very good way of disposing of a rich man's estate.

"Aye, but," it is said, "he left his estate away from his relations."

That is not _sure_, by any means. The contrary is fairly to be presumed.

Doubtless, it was the custom for Catholic Priests, before they took their leave of a dying rich man, to advise him to think of the _Church and the Poor_; that is to say to exhort him to bequeath something to them; and this has been made a monstrous charge against that Church. It is surprising how blind men are, when they have a mind to be blind; what despicable dolts they are, when they desire to be cheated. We, of the Church of England, must have a special deal of good sense and of modesty, to be sure, to rail against the Catholic Church on this account, when our Common Prayer Book, copied from an Act of Parliament, _commands our Parsons to do just the same thing_!

Ah! say the Dissenters, and particularly the Unitarians; that queer sect, who will have all the wisdom in the world to themselves; who will believe and won't believe; who will be Christians and who won't have a _Christ_; who will laugh at you, if you believe in the Trinity, and who would (if they could) boil you in oil if you do not believe in the Resurrection: "Oh!" say the Dissenters, "we know very well, that your _Church Parsons_ are commanded to get, if they can, dying people to give their money and estates to the Church and _the poor_, as they call the concern, though the _poor_, we believe, come in for very little which is got in this way. But what is _your Church_? We are the real Christians; and we, upon our souls, never play such tricks; never, no never, terrify old women out of their stockings full of guineas." "And, as to us," say the Unitarians, "we, the most _liberal_ creatures upon earth; we, whose virtue is indignant at the tricks by which the Monks and Nuns got legacies from dying people to the injury of heirs and other relations; we, who are the really enlightened, the truly consistent, the benevolent, the disinterested, the exclusive patentees of the _salt of the earth_, which is sold only at, or by express permission from our old and original warehouse and manufactory, Ess.e.x-street, in the Strand, first street on the left, going from Temple Bar towards Charing Cross; we defy you to show that Unitarian Parsons...."

Stop your protestations and hear my Reigate anecdote, which, as I said above, brought the recollection of the Old Priory into my head. The readers of the Register heard me, several times, some years ago, mention Mr. Baron Maseres, who was, for a great many years, what they call Cursitor Baron of the Exchequer. He lived partly in London and partly at Reigate, for more, I believe, than half a century; and he died, about two years ago, or less, leaving, I am told, _more than a quarter of a million of money_. The Baron came to see me, in Pall Mall, in 1800. He always came frequently to see me, wherever I was in London; not by any means omitting to _come to see me in Newgate_, where I was imprisoned for two years, with a thousand pounds fine and seven years heavy bail, for having expressed my indignation at the flogging of Englishmen, in the heart of England, under a guard of German bayonets; and to Newgate he always came in _his wig and gown_, in order, as he said, to show his abhorrence of the sentence. I several times pa.s.sed a week, or more, with the Baron at his house, at Reigate, and might have pa.s.sed many more, if my time and taste would have permitted me to accept of his invitations.

Therefore, I knew the Baron well. He was a most conscientious man; he was when I first knew him, still a very clever man; he retained all his faculties to a very great age; in 1815, I think it was, I got a letter from him, written in a firm hand, correctly as to grammar, and ably as to matter, and he must then have been little short of ninety. He never was a bright man; but had always been a very sensible, just and humane man, and a man too who always cared a great deal for the public good; and he was the only man that I ever heard of, who refused to have his salary augmented, when an augmentation was offered, and when all other such salaries were augmented. I had heard of this: I asked him about it when I saw him again; and he said: "There was no _work_ to be added, and I saw no justice in adding to the salary. It must," added he, "be _paid by somebody_, and the more I take, the less that somebody must have."

He did not save money for money's sake. He saved it because his habits would not let him spend it. He kept a house in Rathbone Place, chambers in the Temple, and his very pretty place at Reigate. He was by no means stingy, but his scale and habits were cheap. Then, consider, too, a bachelor of nearly a hundred years old. His father left him a fortune, his brother (who also died a very old bachelor), left him another; and the money lay in the funds, and it went on doubling itself over and over again, till it became that immense ma.s.s which we have seen above, and which, when the Baron was making his will, he had neither Catholic priest nor Protestant parson to exhort him to leave to the church and the poor, instead of his relations; though, as we shall presently see, he had somebody else to whom to leave his great heap of money.

The Baron was a most implacable enemy of the Catholics, as Catholics.

There was rather a peculiar reason for this, his grand-father having been a _French Hugonot_ and having fled with his children to England, at the time of the revocation of the Edict of Nantz. The Baron was a very humane man; his humanity made him a.s.sist to support the French emigrant priests; but, at the same time, he caused Sir Richard Musgrave's book against the Irish Catholics to be published at his own expense. He and I never agreed upon this subject; and this subject was, with him, a _vital_ one. He had no asperity in his nature; he was naturally all gentleness and benevolence; and, therefore, he never _resented_ what I said to him on this subject (and which n.o.body else ever, I believe, ventured to say to him): but he did not like it; and he liked it less because I certainly beat him in the argument. However, this was long before he visited me in Newgate: and it never produced (though the dispute was frequently revived) any difference in his conduct towards me, which was uniformly friendly to the last time I saw him before his memory was gone.

There was great excuse for the Baron. From his very birth he had been taught to hate and abhor the Catholic religion. He had been told, that his father and mother had been driven out of France by the Catholics: and there was _that mother_ dinning this in his ears, and all manner of horrible stories along with it, during all the tender years of his life.

In short, the prejudice made part of his very frame. In the year 1803, in August, I think it was, I had gone down to his house on a Friday, and was there on a Sunday. After dinner he and I and his brother walked to the Priory, as is still called the mansion house, in the dell at Reigate, which is now occupied by Lord Eastnor, and in which a Mr.

Birket, I think, then lived. After coming away from the Priory, the Baron (whose native place was Betchworth, about two or three miles from Reigate) who knew the history of every house and every thing else in this part of the country, began to tell me why the place was called _the Priory_. From this he came to the _superst.i.tion_ and _dark ignorance_ that induced people to found monasteries; and he dwelt particularly on the _injustice to heirs and relations_; and he went on, in the usual Protestant strain, and with all the bitterness of which he was capable, against those _crafty priests_, who thus _plundered families_ by means of the influence which they had over people in their dotage, or who were naturally weak-minded.

Alas! poor Baron! he does not seem to have at all foreseen what was to become of his own money! What would he have said to me, if I had answered his observations by predicting, that _he_ would give his great ma.s.s of money to a little parson for that parson's own private use; leave only a mere pittance to his own relations; leave the little parson his house in which we were then sitting (along with all his other real property); that the little parson would come into the house and take possession; and that his own relations (two nieces) would walk out! Yet, all this has actually taken place, and that, too, after the poor old Baron's four score years of jokes about the tricks of _Popish_ priests, practised, in the _dark ages_, upon the _ignorant_ and _superst.i.tious_ people of Reigate.

When I first knew the Baron he was a staunch _Church of England man_. He went to church every Sunday once, at least. He used to take me to Reigate church; and I observed, that he was very well versed in his prayer book. But a decisive proof of his zeal as a Church of England man is, that he settled an annual sum on the inc.u.mbent of Reigate, in order to induce him to preach, or pray (I forget which), in the church, twice on a Sunday, instead of once; and, in case this additional preaching, or praying, were not performed in Reigate church, the annuity was to go (and sometimes it does now go) to the poor of an adjoining parish, and not to those of Reigate, lest I suppose, the parson, the overseers, and other rate-payers, might happen to think that the Baron's annuity would be better laid out in food for the bodies than for the souls of the poor; or, in other words, lest the money should be taken annually and added to the poor-rates to ease the purses of the farmers.