Rural Rides Part 21

Shall not the land tremble for this; and every one mourn that dwelleth therein? I will turn your feasting into mourning, saith the Lord G.o.d, and your songs into lamentations."--Amos, chap.

viii. ver. 4 to 10.

_Heytesbury (Wilts), Thursday, 31st August, 1826._

This place, which is one of the rotten boroughs of Wilts.h.i.+re, and which was formerly a considerable town, is now but a very miserable affair.

Yesterday morning I went into the Cathedral at Salisbury about 7 o'clock. When I got into the nave of the church, and was looking up and admiring the columns and the roof, I heard a sort of _humming_, in some place which appeared to be in the transept of the building. I wondered what it was, and made my way towards the place whence the noise appeared to issue. As I approached it, the noise seemed to grow louder. At last, I thought I could distinguish the sounds of the human voice. This encouraged me to proceed; and, still following the sound, I at last turned in at a doorway to my left, where I found a priest and his congregation a.s.sembled. It was a parson of some sort, with a white covering on him, and five women and four men: when I arrived, there were five couple of us. I joined the congregation, until they came to the _litany_; and then, being monstrously hungry, I did not think myself bound to stay any longer. I wonder what the founders would say, if they could rise from the grave, and see such a congregation as this in this most magnificent and beautiful cathedral? I wonder what they would say, if they could know _to what purpose_ the endowments of this Cathedral are now applied; and above all things, I wonder what they would say, if they could see the half-starved labourers that now minister to the luxuries of those who wallow in the wealth of those endowments. There is one thing, at any rate, that might be abstained from, by those that revel in the riches of those endowments; namely, to abuse and blackguard those of our forefathers, from whom the endowments came, and who erected the edifice, and carried so far towards the skies that beautiful and matchless spire, of which the present possessors have the impudence to boast, while they represent as ignorant and benighted creatures, those who conceived the grand design, and who executed the scientific and costly work. These fellows, in big white wigs, of the size of half a bushel, have the audacity, even within the walls of the Cathedrals themselves, to rail against those who founded them; and Rennell and Sturges, while they were actually, literally, fattening on the spoils of the monastery of St. Swithin, at Winchester, were publis.h.i.+ng abusive pamphlets against that Catholic religion which had given them their very bread. For my part, I could not look up at the spire and the whole of the church at Salisbury, without _feeling_ that I lived in degenerate times. Such a thing never could be made _now_. We _feel_ that as we look at the building. It really does appear that if our forefathers had not made these buildings, we should have forgotten, before now, what the Christian religion was!

At Salisbury, or very near to it, four other rivers fall into the Avon--the Wyly river, the Nadder, the Born, and another little river that comes from Norrington. These all become one, at last, just below Salisbury, and then, under the name of the Avon, wind along down and fall into the sea at Christchurch. In coming from Salisbury, I came up the road which runs pretty nearly parallel with the river Wyly, which river rises at Warminster and in the neighbourhood. This river runs down a valley twenty-two miles long. It is not so pretty as the valley of the Avon; but it is very fine in its whole length from Salisbury to this place (Heytesbury). Here are watered meadows nearest to the river on both sides; then the gardens, the houses, and the corn-fields. After the corn-fields come the downs; but, generally speaking, the downs are not so bold here as they are on the sides of the Avon. The downs do not come out in promontories so often as they do on the sides of the Avon. The _Ah-ah!_ if I may so express it, is not so deep, and the sides of it not so steep, as in the case of the Avon; but the villages are as frequent; there is more than one church in every mile, and there has been a due proportion of mansion houses demolished and defaced. The farms are very fine up this vale, and the meadows, particularly at a place called Stapleford, are singularly fine. They had just been mowed at Stapleford, and the hay carried off. At Stapleford, there is a little cross valley, running up between two hills of the down. There is a little run of water about a yard wide at this time, coming down this little vale across the road into the river. The little vale runs up three miles. It does not appear to be half a mile wide; but in those three miles there are four churches; namely, Stapleford, Uppington, Berwick St. James, and Winterborne Stoke. The present population of these four villages is 769 souls, men, women, and children, the whole of whom could very conveniently be seated in the chancel of the church at Stapleford.

Indeed, the church and parish of Uppington seem to have been united with one of the other parishes, like the parish in Kent which was united with North Cray, and not a single house of which now remains. What were these four churches _built for_ within the distance of three miles? There are three parsonage houses still remaining; but, and it is a very curious fact, neither of them good enough for the parson to live in! Here are seven hundred and sixty souls to be taken care of, but there is no parsonage house for a soul-curer to stay in, or at least that he _will_ stay in; and all the three parsonages are, in the return laid before Parliament, represented to be no better than miserable labourers'

cottages, though the parish of Winterborne Stoke has a church sufficient to contain two or three thousand people. The truth is, that the parsons have been receiving the revenues of the livings, and have been suffering the parsonage houses to fall into decay. Here were two or three mansion houses, which are also gone, even from the sides of this little run of water.

To-day has been exceedingly hot. Hotter, I think, for a short time, than I ever felt it in England before. In coming through a village called Wishford, and mounting a little hill, I thought the heat upon my back was as great as I had ever felt it in my life. There were thunder storms about, and it had rained at Wishford a little before I came to it.

My next village was one that I had lived in for a short time, when I was only about ten or eleven years of age. I had been sent down with a horse from Farnham, and I remember that I went by _Stone-henge_, and rode up and looked at the stones. From Stone-henge I went to the village of Steeple Langford, where I remained from the month of June till the fall of the year. I remembered the beautiful villages up and down this valley. I also remembered, very well, that the women at Steeple Langford used to card and spin dyed wool. I was, therefore, somewhat filled with curiosity to see this Steeple Langford again; and, indeed, it was the recollection of this village that made me take a ride into Wilts.h.i.+re this summer. I have, I dare say, a thousand times talked about this Steeple Langford and about the beautiful farms and meadows along this valley. I have talked of these to my children a great many times; and I formed the design of letting two of them see this valley this year, and to go through Warminster to Stroud, and so on to Gloucester and Hereford. But, when I got to Everley, I found that they would never get along fast enough to get into Herefords.h.i.+re in time for what they intended; so that I parted from them in the manner I have before described. I was resolved, however, to see Steeple Langford myself, and I was impatient to get to it, hoping to find a public-house, and a stable to put my horse in, to protect him, for a while, against the flies, which tormented him to such a degree, that to ride him was work as hard as thres.h.i.+ng. When I got to Steeple Langford, I found no public-house, and I found it a much more miserable place than I had remembered it. The _Steeple_, to which it owed its distinctive appellation, was gone; and the place altogether seemed to me to be very much altered for the worse. A little further on, however, I came to a very famous inn, called Deptford Inn, which is in the parish of Wyly. I stayed at this inn till about four o'clock in the afternoon. I remembered Wyly very well, and thought it a gay place when I was a boy.

I remembered a very beautiful garden belonging to a rich farmer and miller. I went to see it; but, alas! though the statues in the water and on the gra.s.s-plat were still remaining, everything seemed to be in a state of perfect carelessness and neglect. The living of this parish of Wyly was lately owned by Dampier (a brother of the Judge), who lived at, and I believe had the living of, Meon Stoke in Hamps.h.i.+re. This fellow, I believe, never saw the parish of Wyly but once, though it must have yielded him a pretty good fleece. It is a Rectory, and the great t.i.thes must be worth, I should think, six or seven hundred pounds a year, at the least.

It is a part of our system to have certain _families_, who have no particular merit, but who are to be maintained, without why or wherefore, at the public expense, in some shape, or under some name, or other, it matters not much what shape or what name. If you look through the old list of pensioners, sinecurists, parsons, and the like, you will find the same names everlastingly recurring. They seem to be a sort of creatures that have an _inheritance in the public carca.s.s_, like the maggots that some people have in their skins. This family of Dampier seems to be one of these. What, in G.o.d's name, should have made one of these a Bishop and the other a Judge! I never heard of the smallest particle of talent that either of them possessed. This Rector of Wyly was another of them. There was no harm in them that I know of, beyond that of living upon the public; but where were their merits? They had none, to distinguish them, and to ent.i.tle them to the great sums they received; and, under any other system than such a system as this, they would, in all human probability, have been gentlemen's servants or little shopkeepers. I dare say there is some of the _breed_ left; and, if there be, I would pledge my existence, that they are, in some shape or other, feeding upon the public. However, thus it must be, until that change come which will put an end to men paying _fourpence_ in tax upon a pot of beer.

This Deptford Inn was a famous place of meeting for the _Yeomanry Cavalry_, in glorious anti-jacobin times, when wheat was twenty s.h.i.+llings a bushel, and when a man could be crammed into gaol for years, for only _looking_ awry. This inn was a glorious place in the days of Peg Nicholson and her Knights. Strangely altered now. The shape of the garden shows you what revelry used to be carried on here. Peel's Bill gave this inn, and all belonging to it, a terrible souse. The unfeeling brutes, who used to brandish their swords, and swagger about, at the news of what was called "a victory," have now to lower their scale in clothing, in drink, in eating, in dress, in horseflesh, and everything else. They are now a lower sort of men than they were. They look at their rusty sword and their old dusty helmet and their once gay regimental jacket. They do not hang these up now in the "parlour" for everybody to see them: they hang them up in their bedrooms, or in a c.o.c.kloft; and when they meet their eye, they look at them as a cow does at a b.a.s.t.a.r.d calf, or as the bridegroom does at a girl that the overseers are about to compel him to marry. If their children should happen to see these implements of war twenty or thirty years hence, they will certainly think that their fathers were the greatest fools that ever walked the face of the earth; and that will be a most filial and charitable way of thinking of them; for it is not from ignorance that they have sinned, but from excessive baseness; and when any of them now complain of those acts of the Government which strip them, (as the late Order in Council does), of a fifth part of their property in an hour, let them recollect their own base and malignant conduct towards those persecuted reformers, who, if they had not been suppressed by these very yeomen, would, long ago, have put an end to the cause of that ruin of which these yeomen now complain. When they complain of their ruin, let them remember the toasts which they drank in anti-jacobin times; let them remember their base and insulting exultations on the occasion of the 16th of August at Manchester; let them remember their cowardly abuse of men, who were endeavouring to free their country from that horrible scourge which they themselves now feel.

Just close by this Deptford Inn is the farm-house of the farm where that Gourlay lived, who has long been making a noise in the Court of Chancery, and who is now, I believe, confined in some place or other for having a.s.saulted Mr. Brougham. This fellow, who is confined, the newspapers tell us, on a charge of being insane, is certainly one of the most malignant devils that I ever knew anything of in my life. He went to Canada about the time that I went last to the United States. He got into a quarrel with the Government there about something, I know not what. He came to see me, at my house in the neighbourhood of New York, just before I came home. He told me his Canada story. I showed him all the kindness in my power, and he went away, knowing that I was just then coming to England. I had hardly got home, before the Scotch newspapers contained communications from a person, pretending to derive his information from Gourlay, relating to what Gourlay had described as having pa.s.sed between him and me; and which description was a tissue of most abominable falsehoods, all having a direct tendency to do injury to me, who had never, either by word or deed, done anything that could possibly have a tendency to do injury to this Gourlay. What the vile Scotch newspapers had begun, the malignant reptile himself continued after his return to England, and, in an address to Lord Bathurst, endeavoured to make his court to the Government by the most foul, false and detestable slanders upon me, from whom, observe, he had never received any injury, or attempt at injury, in the whole course of his life; whom he had visited; to whose house he had gone, of his own accord, and that, too, as he said, out of _respect_ for me; endeavoured, I say, to make his court to the Government by the most abominable slanders against me. He is now, even now, putting forth, under the form of letters to me, a revival of what he pretends was a _conversation_ that pa.s.sed between us at my house near New York. Even if what he says were true, none but caitiffs as base as those who conduct the English newspapers, would give circulation to his letters, containing, as they must, the substance of a conversation purely private. But I never had any conversation with him: I never talked to him at all about the things that he is now bringing forward. I heard the fellow's stories about Canada: I thought he told me lies; and, besides, I did not care a straw whether his stories were true or not; I looked upon him as a sort of gambling adventurer; but I treated him as is the fas.h.i.+on of the country in which I was, with great civility and hospitality. There are two fellows of the name of Jacob and Johnson at Winchester, and two fellows at Salisbury of the name of Brodie and Dowding. These reptiles publish, each couple of them, a newspaper; and in these newspapers they seem to take particular delight in calumniating me. The two Winchester fellows insert the letters of this half crazy, half cunning, Scotchman, Gourlay; the other fellows insert still viler slanders; and, if I had seen one of their papers, before I left Salisbury, which I have seen since, I certainly would have given Mr. Brodie something to make him remember me.

This fellow, who was a little coal-merchant but a short while ago, is now, it seems, a paper-money maker, as well as a newspaper maker. Stop, Master Brodie, till I go to Salisbury again, and see whether I do not give you a _check_, even such as you did not receive during the late run! Gourlay, amongst other whims, took it into his head to write against the poor laws, saying that they were a bad thing. He found, however, at last, that they were necessary to keep him from starving; for he came down to Wyly, three or four years ago, and threw himself upon the parish. The overseers, who recollected what a swaggering blade it was, when it came here to teach the moon-rakers "hoo to farm, mon,"

did not see the sense of keeping him like a gentleman; so they set him to crack stones upon the highway; and that set him off again, pretty quickly. The farm that he rented is a very fine farm, with a fine large farm-house to it. It is looked upon as one of the best farms in the country: the present occupier is a farmer born in the neighbourhood; a man such as ought to occupy it; and Gourlay, who came here with his Scotch impudence to teach others how to farm, is much about where and how he ought to be. Jacob and Johnson, of Winchester, know perfectly well that all the fellow says about me is lies; they know also that their parson readers know that it is a ma.s.s of lies: they further know that the parsons know that they know that it is a ma.s.s of lies; but they know that their paper will sell the better for that; they know that to circulate lies about me will get them money, and this is what they do it for, and such is the character of English newspapers, and of a great part of the readers of those newspapers. Therefore, when I hear of people "suffering;" when I hear of people being "ruined;" when I hear of "unfortunate families;" when I hear a talk of this kind, I stop, before I either express or feel compa.s.sion, to ascertain _who_ and _what_ the sufferers are; and whether they have or have not partic.i.p.ated in, or approved of, acts like those of Jacob and Johnson and Brodie and Dowding; for if they have, if they have malignantly calumniated those who have been labouring to prevent their ruin and misery, then a crushed ear-wig, or spider, or eft, or toad, is as much ent.i.tled to the compa.s.sion of a just and sensible man. Let the reptiles perish: it would be injustice; it would be to fly in the face of morality and religion to express sorrow for their ruin. They themselves have felt for no man, and for the wife and children of no man, if that man's public virtues thwarted their own selfish views, or even excited their groundless fears. They have signed addresses, applauding everything tyrannical and inhuman. They have seemed to glory in the shame of their country, to rejoice in its degradation, and even to exult in the shedding of innocent blood, if these things did but tend, as they thought, to give them permanent security in the enjoyment of their unjust gains. Such has been their conduct; they are numerous: they are to be found in all parts of the kingdom: therefore again I say, when I hear of "ruin" or "misery," I must know what the conduct of the sufferers has been before I bestow my compa.s.sion.

_Warminster (Wilts), Friday, 1st Sept._

I set out from Heytesbury this morning about six o'clock. Last night, before I went to bed, I found that there were some men and boys in the house, who had come all the way from Bradford, about twelve miles, in order to get _nuts_. These people were men and boys that had been employed in the _cloth factories_ at Bradford and about Bradford. I had some talk with some of these nutters, and I am quite convinced, not that the cloth making is at _an end_; but that it _never will be again what it has been_. Before last Christmas these manufacturers had full work, at one s.h.i.+lling and threepence a yard at broad-cloth weaving. They have now a quarter work, at one s.h.i.+lling a yard! One and three-pence a yard for this weaving has been given at all times within the memory of man!

Nothing can show more clearly than this, and in a stronger light, the great change which has taken place in the _remuneration of labour_.

There was a turn out last winter, when the price was reduced to a s.h.i.+lling a yard; but it was put an end to in the usual way; the constable's staff, the bayonet, the gaol. These poor nutters were extremely ragged. I saved my supper, and I fasted instead of breakfasting. That was three s.h.i.+llings, which I had saved, and I added five to them, with a resolution to save them afterwards, in order to give these chaps a breakfast for once in their lives. There were eight of them, six men and two boys; and I gave them two quartern loaves, two pounds of cheese, and eight pints of strong beer. The fellows were very thankful, but the conduct of the landlord and landlady pleased me exceedingly. When I came to pay my bill, they had said nothing about my bed, which had been a very good one; and, when I asked why they had not put the bed into the bill, they said they would not charge anything for the bed since I had been so good to the poor men. Yes, said I, but I must not throw the expense upon you. I had no supper, and I have had no breakfast; and, therefore, I am not called upon to pay for them: but _I have had_ the bed. It ended by my paying for the bed, and coming off, leaving the nutters at their breakfast, and very much delighted with the landlord and his wife; and I must here observe that I have pretty generally found a good deal of compa.s.sion for the poor people to prevail amongst publicans and their wives.

From Heytesbury to Warminster is a part of the country singularly bright and beautiful. From Salisbury up to very near Heytesbury, you have the valley, as before described by me. Meadows next the water; then arable land; then the downs; but when you come to Heytesbury, and indeed a little before, in looking forward you see the vale stretch out, from about three miles wide to ten miles wide, from high land to high land.

From a hill before you come down to Heytesbury, you see through this wide opening into Somersets.h.i.+re. You see a round hill rising in the middle of the opening; but all the rest a flat enclosed country, and apparently full of wood. In looking back down this vale one cannot help being struck with the innumerable proofs that there are of a decline in point of population. In the first place, there are twenty-four parishes, each of which takes a little strip across the valley, and runs up through the arable land into the down. There are twenty-four parish churches, and there ought to be as many _parsonage-houses_; but seven of these, out of the twenty-four, that is to say, nearly one-third of them, are, in the returns laid before Parliament (and of which returns I shall speak more particularly by-and-by), stated to be such miserable dwellings as to be unfit for a parson to reside in. Two of them, however, are gone. There are no parsonage-houses in those two parishes: there are the scites; there are the glebes; but the houses have been suffered to fall down and to be totally carried away. The t.i.thes remain, indeed, and the parson sacks the amount of them. A journeyman parson comes and works in three or four churches of a Sunday; but the master parson is not there. He generally carries away the produce to spend it in London, at Bath, or somewhere else, to show off his daughters; and the overseers, that is to say, the farmers, manage the poor in their own way, instead of having, according to the ancient law, a third-part of all the t.i.thes to keep them with.

The falling down and the beggary of these parsonage-houses prove beyond all question the decayed state of the population. And, indeed, the mansion-houses are gone, except in a very few instances. There are but five left, that I could perceive, all the way from Salisbury to Warminster, though the country is the most pleasant that can be imagined. Here is water, here are meadows; plenty of fresh-water fish; hares and partridges in abundance, and it is next to impossible to destroy them. Here are shooting, coursing, hunting; hills of every height, size, and form; valleys, the same; lofty trees and rookeries in every mile; roads always solid and good; always pleasant for exercise; and the air must be of the best in the world. Yet it is manifest that four-fifths of the mansions have been swept away. There is a parliamentary return, to prove that nearly a third of the parsonage houses have become beggarly holes or have disappeared. I have now been in nearly threescore villages, and in twenty or thirty or forty hamlets of Wilts.h.i.+re; and I do not know that I have been in one, however small, in which I did not see a house or two, and sometimes more, either tumbled down, or beginning to tumble down. It is impossible for the eyes of man to be fixed on a finer country than that between the village of Codford and the town of Warminster; and it is not very easy for the eyes of man to discover labouring people more miserable. There are two villages, one called Norton Bovant, and the other Bishopstrow, which I think form, together, one of the prettiest spots that my eyes ever beheld. The former village belongs to Bennet, the member for the county, who has a mansion there, in which two of his sisters live, I am told.

There is a farm at Bishopstrow, standing at the back of the arable land, up in a vale, formed by two very lofty hills, upon each of which there was formerly a Roman Camp, in consideration of which farm, if the owner would give it to me, I would almost consent to let Ottiwell Wood remain quiet in his seat, and suffer the pretty gentlemen of Whitehall to go on without note or comment till they had fairly blowed up their concern.

The farm-yard is surrounded by lofty and beautiful trees. In the rick-yard I counted twenty-two ricks of one sort and another. The hills shelter the house and the yard and the trees, most completely, from every wind but the south. The arable land goes down before the house, and spreads along the edge of the down, going, with a gentle slope, down to the meadows. So that, going along the turnpike road, which runs between the lower fields of the arable land, you see the large and beautiful flocks of sheep upon the sides of the down, while the horn-cattle are up to their eyes in gra.s.s in the meadows. Just when I was coming along here, the sun was about half an hour high; it s.h.i.+ned through the trees most brilliantly; and, to crown the whole, I met, just as I was entering the village, a very pretty girl, who was apparently going a gleaning in the fields. I asked her the name of the place, and when she told me it was Bishopstrow, she pointed to the situation of the church, which, she said, was on the other side of the river. She really put me in mind of the pretty girls at Preston who spat upon the "individual" of the Derby family, and I made her a bow accordingly.

The whole of the population of the twenty-four parishes down this vale, amounts to only 11,195 souls, according to the Official return to Parliament; and, mind, I include the parish of Fisherton Anger (a suburb of the city of Salisbury), which contains 893 of the number. I include the town of Heytesbury, with its 1,023 souls; and I further include this very good and large market town of Warminster, with its population of 5,000! So that I leave, in the other twenty-one parishes, only 4,170 souls, men, women, and children! That is to say, a hundred and ninety-eight souls to each parish; or, reckoning five to a family, thirty-nine families to each parish. Above one half of the population never could be expected to be in the church at one time; so that here are one-and-twenty churches built for the purpose of holding two thousand and eighty people! There are several of these churches, any one of which would conveniently contain the whole of these people, the two thousand and eighty! The church of Bishopstrow would contain the whole of the two thousand and eighty very well indeed; and it is curious enough to observe that the churches of Fisherton Anger, Heytesbury, and Warminster, though quite sufficient to contain the people that go to church, are none of them nearly so big as several of the village churches. All these churches are built long and long before the reign of Richard the Second; that is to say, they were founded long before that time, and if the first churches were gone, these others were built in their stead. There is hardly one of them that is not as old as the reign of Richard the Second; and yet that impudent Scotchman, George Chalmers, would make us believe that, in the reign of Richard the Second, the population of the country was hardly anything at all! He has the impudence, or the gross ignorance, to state the population of England and Wales at _two millions_, which, as I have shown in the last Number of the Protestant Reformation, would allow only twelve able men to every parish church throughout the kingdom. What, I ask, for about the thousandth time I ask it; what were these twenty churches built for?

Some of them stand within a quarter of a mile of each other. They are pretty nearly as close to each other as the churches in London and Westminster are.

What a monstrous thing, to suppose that they were built without there being people to go to them; and built, too, without money and without hands! The whole of the population in these twenty-one parishes could stand, and without much crowding too, in the bottoms of the towers of the several churches. Nay, in three or four of the parishes, the whole of the people could stand in the church porches. Then the _church-yards_ show you how numerous the population must have been. You see, in some cases, only here and there the mark of a grave, where the church-yard contains from half an acre to an acre of land, and sometimes more. In short, everything shows that here was once a great and opulent population; that there was an abundance to eat, to wear, and to spare; that all the land that is now under cultivation, and a great deal that is not now under cultivation, was under cultivation in former times. The Scotch beggars would make us believe that _we_ sprang from beggars. The impudent scribes would make us believe that England was formerly nothing at all till they came to enlighten it and fatten upon it. Let the beggars answer me this question; let the impudent, the brazen scribes, that impose upon the credulous and cowed-down English; let them tell me _why_ these twenty-one churches were built; what they were built FOR; why the large churches of the two Codfords were stuck up within a few hundred yards of each other, if the whole of the population could then, as it can now, be crammed into the chancel of either of the two churches? Let them answer me this question, or shut up their mouths upon this subject, on which they have told so many lies.

As to the produce of this valley, it must be at least ten times as great as its consumption, even if we include the three towns that belong to it. I am sure I saw produce enough in five or six of the farm-yards, or rick-yards, to feed the whole of the population of the twenty-one parishes. But the infernal system causes it all to be carried away. Not a bit of good beef, or mutton, or veal, and scarcely a bit of bacon is left for those who raise all this food and wool. The labourers here _look_ as if they were half-starved. They answer extremely well to the picture that Fortescue gave of the French in his day.

Talk of "liberty," indeed; "civil and religious liberty": the Inquisition, with a belly full, is far preferable to a state of things like this. For my own part, I really am ashamed to ride a fat horse, to have a full belly, and to have a clean s.h.i.+rt upon my back, while I look at these wretched countrymen of mine; while I actually see them reeling with weakness; when I see their poor faces present me nothing but skin and bone, while they are toiling to get the wheat and the meat ready to be carried away to be devoured by the tax-eaters. I am ashamed to look at these poor souls, and to reflect that they are my countrymen; and particularly to reflect that we are descended from those amongst whom "beef, pork, mutton, and veal, were the food of the poorer sort of people." What! and is the "Emigration Committee" sitting, to invent the means of getting rid of some part of the thirty-nine families that are employed in raising the immense quant.i.ties of food in each of these twenty-one parishes? Are there _schemers_ to go before this conjuration Committee; Wilts.h.i.+re _schemers_, to tell the Committee how they can get rid of a part of these one hundred and ninety-eight persons to every parish? Are there schemers of this sort of work still, while no man, no man at all, not a single man, says a word about getting rid of the dead-weight, or the supernumerary parsons, both of whom have actually a premium given them for breeding, and are filling the country with idlers? We are reversing the maxim of the Scripture: our laws almost say, that those that work shall not eat, and that those who do not work shall have the food. I repeat, that the baseness of the English land-owners surpa.s.ses that of any other men that ever lived in the world. The cowards know well that the labourers that give value to their land are skin and bone. They are not such brutes as not to know that this starvation is produced by taxation. They know well, how unjust it is to treat their labourers in this way. They know well that there goes down the common foot soldier's single throat more food than is allowed by them to a labourer, his wife, and three children. They know well that the present standing army in time of peace consumes more food and raiment than a million of the labourers consume; aye, than two millions of them consume; if you include the women and the children; they well know these things; they know that their poor labourers are taxed to keep this army in fatness and in splendour. They know that the dead-weight, which, in the opinion of most men of sense, ought not to receive a single farthing of the public money, swallow more of good food than a third or a fourth part of the real labourers of England swallow. They know that a million and a half of pounds sterling was taken out of the taxes, partly raised upon the labourers, to enable the poor Clergy of the Church of England to marry and to breed. They know that a regulation has been recently adopted, by which an old dead-weight man is enabled to sell his dead-weight to a young man; and that thus this burden would, if the system were to be continued, be rendered perpetual. They know that a good slice of the dead-weight money goes _to Hanover_; and that even these Hanoverians can sell their dead-weight claim upon us. The "country gentlemen" fellows know all this: they know that the poor labourers, including all the poor manufacturers, pay one-half of their wages in taxes to support all these things; and yet not a word about these things is ever said, or even hinted, by these mean, these cruel, these cowardly, these carrion, these dastardly reptiles. Sir James Graham, of Netherby, who, I understand, is a young fellow instead of an old one, may invoke our pity upon these "ancient families," but he will invoke in vain. It was their duty to stand forward and prevent Power-of-Imprisonment Bills, Six Acts, Ellenborough's Act, Poaching Transportation Act, New Trespa.s.s Act, Sunday Tolls, and the hundreds of other things that could be named. On the contrary, _they were the cause of them all_. They were the cause of all the taxes, and all the debts; and now let them take the consequences!

_Sat.u.r.day, September 2nd._

After I got to Warminster yesterday, it began to rain, which stopped me in my way to Frome in Somersets.h.i.+re, which lies about seven or eight miles from this place; but, as I meant to be quite in the northern part of the county by to-morrow noon, or there-abouts, I took a post-chaise in the afternoon of yesterday and went to Frome, where I saw, upon my entrance into the town, between two and three hundred weavers, men and boys, cracking stones, moving earth, and doing other sorts of work, towards making a fine road into the town. I drove into the town, and through the princ.i.p.al streets, and then I put my chaise up a little at one of the inns.

This appears to be a sort of little Manchester. A very small Manchester, indeed; for it does not contain above ten or twelve thousand people, but it has all the _flash_ of a Manchester, and the innkeepers and their people look and behave like the Manchester fellows. I was, I must confess, glad to find proofs of the irretrievable decay of the place. I remembered how ready the bluff manufacturers had been to _call in the troops_ of various descriptions. "Let them," said I to myself, "call the troops in now, to make their trade revive. Let them now resort to their friends of the yeomanry and of the army; let them now threaten their poor workmen with the gaol, when they dare to ask for the means of preventing starvation in their families. Let them, who have, in fact, lived and thriven by the sword, now call upon the parson-magistrate to bring out the soldiers to compel me, for instance, to give thirty s.h.i.+llings a yard for the superfine black broad cloth (made at Frome), which Mr. Roe, at Kensington, offered me at seven s.h.i.+llings and sixpence a yard just before I left home! Yes, these men have ground down into powder those who were earning them their fortunes: let the grinders themselves now be ground, and, according to the usual wise and just course of Providence, let them be crushed by the system which they have delighted in, because it made others crouch beneath them." Their poor work-people cannot be worse off than they long have been. The parish pay, which they now get upon the roads, is 2_s._ 6_d._ a week for a man, 2_s._ for his wife, 1_s._ 3_d._ for each child under eight years of age, 3_d._ a week, in addition, to each child above eight, who can go to work: and, if the children above eight years old, whether girls or boys, do not go to work upon the road, they have _nothing_! Thus, a family of five people have just as much, and eight pence over, as goes down the throat of one single foot soldier; but, observe, the standing soldier; that "truly English inst.i.tution" has clothing, fuel, candle, soap, and house-rent, over and above what is allowed to this miserable family! And yet the base reptiles, who are called "country gentlemen," and whom Sir James Graham calls upon us to commit all sorts of acts of injustice in order to _preserve_, never utter a whisper about the expenses of keeping the soldiers, while they are everlastingly railing against the working people, of every description, and representing them, and them only, as the cause of the loss of their estates!

These poor creatures at Frome have p.a.w.ned all their things, or nearly all. All their best clothes, their blankets and sheets; their looms; any little piece of furniture that they had, and that was good for anything.

Mothers have been compelled to p.a.w.n all the tolerably good clothes that their children had. In case of a man having two or three s.h.i.+rts, he is left with only one, and sometimes without any s.h.i.+rt; and, though this is a sort of manufacture that cannot very well come to a complete end, still it has received a blow from which it cannot possibly recover. The population of this Frome has been augmented to the degree of one-third within the last six or seven years. There are here all the usual signs of accommodation bills and all false paper stuff, called money: new houses, in abundance, half finished; new gingerbread "places of wors.h.i.+p," as they are called; great swaggering inns; parcels of swaggering fellows going about, with vulgarity imprinted upon their countenances, but with good clothes upon their backs.

I found the working people at Frome very intelligent; very well informed as to the cause of their misery; not at all humbugged by the canters, whether about religion or loyalty. When I got to the inn, I sent my post-chaise boy back to the road, to tell one or two of the weavers to come to me at the inn. The landlord did not at first like to let such ragged fellows upstairs. I insisted, however, upon their coming up, and I had a long talk with them. They were very intelligent men; had much clearer views of what is likely to happen than the pretty gentlemen of Whitehall seem to have; and, it is curious enough, that they, these common weavers, should tell me, that they thought that the trade never would come back again to what it was before; or, rather, to what it has been for some years past. This is the impression everywhere; that the _puffing is over_; that we must come back again to something like reality. The first factories that I met with were at a village called Upton Lovell, just before I came to Heytesbury. There they were a-doing not more than a quarter work. There is only one factory, I believe, here at Warminster, and that has been suspended, during the harvest, at any rate. At Frome they are all upon about a quarter work. It is the same at Bradford and Trowbridge; and, as curious a thing as ever was heard of in the world is, that here are, through all these towns, and throughout this country, weavers from the North, singing about the towns ballads of Distress! They had been doing it at Salisbury, just before I was there.

The landlord at Heytesbury told me that people that could afford it generally gave them something; and I was told that they did the same at Salisbury. The landlord at Heytesbury told me, that every one of them had a _license to beg_, given them, he said, "by the Government." I suppose it was some _pa.s.s_ from a Magistrate; though I know of no law that allows of such pa.s.ses; and a pretty thing it would be, to grant such licenses, or such pa.s.ses, when the law so positively commands, that the poor of every parish shall be maintained in and by every such parish.

However, all law of this sort, all salutary and humane law, really seems to be drawing towards an end in this now miserable country, where the thousands are caused to wallow in luxury, to be surfeited with food and drink, while the millions are continually on the point of famis.h.i.+ng. In order to form an idea of the degradation of the people of this country, and of the abandonment of every English principle, what need we of more than this one disgraceful and truly horrible fact, namely, that _the common soldiers, of the standing army in time of peace, subscribe, in order to furnish the meanest of diet to keep from starving the industrious people who are taxed to the amount of one-half of their wages, and out of which taxes the very pay of these soldiers comes_! Is not this one fact; this disgraceful, this d.a.m.ning fact; is not this enough to convince us, that _there must be a change_; that there must be a complete and radical change; or, that England must become a country of the basest slavery that ever disgraced the earth?

_Devizes, (Wilts), Sunday Morning, 3rd Sept._

I left Warminster yesterday at about one o'clock. It is contrary to my practice to set out at all, unless I can do it early in the morning; but at Warminster I was at the South-West corner of this county, and I had made a sort of promise to be to-day at Highworth, which is at the North-East corner, and which parish, indeed, joins up to Berks.h.i.+re. The distance, including my little intended deviations, was more than fifty miles; and, not liking to attempt it in one day, I set off in the middle of the day, and got here in the evening, just before a pretty heavy rain came on.

Before I speak of my ride from Warminster to this place, I must once more observe, that Warminster is a very nice town; everything belonging to it is _solid_ and _good_. There are no villanous gingerbread houses running up, and no nasty, shabby-genteel people; no women trapesing about with showy gowns and dirty necks; no jew-looking fellows with dandy coats, dirty s.h.i.+rts, and half-heels to their shoes. A really nice and good town. It is a great corn-market: one of the greatest in this part of England; and here things are still conducted in the good, old, honest fas.h.i.+on. The corn is brought and pitched in the market before it is sold; and, when sold, it is paid for on the nail; and all is over, and the farmers and millers gone home by day-light. Almost everywhere else the corn is sold by sample; it is sold by juggling in a corner; the parties meet and drink first; it is night work; there is no fair and open market; the ma.s.s of the people do not know what the prices are; and all this favours that _monopoly_ which makes the corn change hands many times, perhaps, before it reaches the mouth, leaving a profit in each pair of hands, and which monopoly is, for the greater part, carried on by the villanous tribe of _Quakers_, _none of whom ever work_, and all of whom prey upon the rest of the community, as those infernal devils, the wasps, prey upon the bees. Talking of the Devil, puts one in mind of his imps; and talking of _Quakers_, puts one in mind of Jemmy Cropper of Liverpool. I should like to know precisely (I know pretty nearly) what effect "late panic" has had, and is having, on Jemmy! Perhaps the reader will recollect, that Jemmy told the public, through the columns of base Bott Smith, that "Cobbett's prophecies were falsified as soon as sp.a.w.ned." Jemmy, canting Jemmy, has now had time to ruminate on that!

But does the reader remember James's project for "making Ireland as happy as England"? It was simply by introducing cotton-factories, steam-engines, and power-looms! That was all; and there was Jemmy in Ireland, speech-making before such Lords and such Bishops and such 'Squires as G.o.d never suffered to exist in the world before: there was Jemmy, showing, proving, demonstrating, that to make the Irish cotton-workers would infallibly make them _happy_! If it had been now, instead of being two years ago, he might have produced the reports of the starvation-committees of Manchester to confirm his opinions. One would think, that this instance of the folly and impudence of this canting son of the monopolizing sect, would cure this public of its p.r.o.neness to listen to cant; but nothing will cure it; the very existence of this sect, none of whom ever work, and the whole of whom live like fighting-c.o.c.ks upon the labour of the rest of the community; the very _existence_ of such a sect shows, that the nation is, almost in its nature, _a dupe_. There has been a great deal of railing against the King of Spain; not to becall the King of Spain is looked upon as a proof of want of "liberality," and what must it be, then, to _applaud_ any of the acts of the King of Spain! This I am about to do, however, think Dr. Black of it what he may.

In the first place, the ma.s.s of the people of Spain are better off, better fed, better clothed, than the people of any other country in Europe, and much better than the people of England are. That is one thing; and that is almost enough of itself. In the next place, the King of Spain has refused to mortgage the land and labour of his people for the benefit of an infamous set of Jews and Jobbers. Next, the King of Spain has most essentially thwarted the Six-Acts people, the Manchester 16th of August, the Parson Hay, the Sidmouth's Circular, the Dungeoning, the Ogden's rupture people; he has thwarted, and most cuttingly annoyed, these people, who are also the poacher-transporting people, and the new trespa.s.s law, and the apple-felony and the horse-police (or gendarmerie) and the Sunday-toll people: the King of Spain has thwarted all these, and he has materially a.s.sisted in blowing up the brutal big fellows of Manchester; and therefore I applaud the King of Spain.

I do not much like weasels; but I hate rats; and therefore I say success to the weasels. But there is one act of the King of Spain which is worthy of the imitation of every King, aye, and of every republic too; his edict for taxing traffickers, which edict was published about eight months ago. It imposes a pretty heavy annual tax on every one who is a _mere buyer and seller_, and who neither produces nor consumes, nor makes, nor changes the state of, the article, or articles, that he buys and sells. Those who bring things into the kingdom are deemed producers, and those who send things out of the kingdom are deemed changers of the state of things. These two cla.s.ses embrace all _legitimate merchants_.

Thus, then, the farmer, who produces corn and meat and wool and wood, is not taxed; nor is the coach-master who buys the corn to give to his horses, nor the miller who buys it to change the state of it, nor the baker who buys the flour to change its state; nor is the manufacturer who buys the wool to change its state; and so on: but the Jew or Quaker, the _mere dealer_, who buys the corn of the producer to sell it to the miller, and to deduct _a profit_, which must, at last, fall upon the consumer; this Jew, or Quaker, or self-styled Christian, who acts the part of Jew or Quaker, is taxed by the King of Spain; and for this I applaud the King of Spain.

If we had a law like this, the pestiferous sect of non-labouring, sleek and fat hypocrites could not exist in England. But ours is, altogether, _a system of monopolies_, created by taxation and paper-money, from which monopolies are inseparable. It is notorious that the brewer's monopoly is the master even of the Government; it is well known to all who examine and reflect that a very large part of our bread comes to our mouths loaded with the profit of nine or ten, or more, different dealers; and I shall, as soon as I have leisure, prove as clearly as anything ever was proved, that the people pay two millions of pounds a year in consequence of the Monopoly in tea! that is to say, they pay two millions a year more than they would pay were it not for the monopoly; and, mind, I do not mean the monopoly of the East India Company, but the monopoly of the Quaker and other Tea Dealers, who buy the tea of that Company! The people of this country are eaten up by monopolies. These compel those who labour to maintain those who do not labour; and hence the success of the crafty crew of Quakers, the very _existence_ of which sect is a disgrace to the country.

Besides the corn market at Warminster, I was delighted, and greatly surprised, to see the _meat_. Not only the very finest veal and lamb that I had ever seen in my life, but so exceedingly beautiful that I could hardly believe my eyes. I am a great connoisseur in joints of meat; a great judge, if five-and-thirty years of experience can give sound judgment. I verily believe that I have bought and have roasted more whole sirloins of beef than any man in England; I know all about the matter; a very great visitor of Newgate market; in short, though a little eater, I am a very great provider. It is a fancy, I like the subject, and therefore I understand it; and with all this knowledge of the matter, I say I never saw veal and lamb half so fine as what I saw at Warminster. The town is famed for fine meat; and I knew it, and, therefore, I went out in the morning to look at the meat. It was, too, 2_d._ a pound cheaper than I left it at Kensington.

My road from Warminster to Devizes lay through Westbury, a nasty odious rotten-borough, a really rotten place. It has cloth factories in it, and they seem to be ready to tumble down as well as many of the houses.

G.o.d's curse seems to be upon most of these rotten-boroughs. After coming through this miserable hole, I came along, on the north side of the famous hill, called Bratton Castle, so renowned in the annals of the Romans and of Alfred the Great. Westbury is a place of great ancient grandeur; and it is easy to perceive that it was once ten or twenty times its present size. My road was now the line of separation between what they call South Wilts and North Wilts, the former consisting of high and broad downs and narrow valleys with meadows and rivers running down them; the latter consisting of a rather flat, enclosed country: the former having a chalk bottom; the latter a bottom of marl, clay, or flat stone: the former a country for lean sheep and corn; and the latter a country for cattle, fat sheep, cheese, and bacon: the former by far, to my taste, the most beautiful; and I am by no means sure that it is not, all things considered, the most rich. All my way along, till I came very near to Devizes, I had the steep and naked downs up to my right, and the flat and enclosed country to my left.

Very near to Bratton Castle (which is only a hill with deep ditches on it) is the village of Eddington, so famed for the battle fought here by Alfred and the Danes. The church in this village would contain several thousands of persons; and the village is reduced to a few straggling houses. The land here is very good; better than almost any I ever saw; as black, and, apparently, as rich, as the land in the market-gardens at Fulham. The turnips are very good all along here for several miles; but this is, indeed, singularly fine and rich land. The orchards very fine; finely sheltered, and the crops of apples and pears and walnuts very abundant. Walnuts _ripe now_, a month earlier than usual. After Eddington I came to a hamlet called Earl's Stoke, the houses of which stand at a few yards from each other on the two sides of the road; every house is white; and the front of every one is covered with some sort or other of clematis, or with rose-trees, or jasmines. It was easy to guess that the whole belonged to one owner; and that owner I found to be a Mr.

Watson Taylor, whose very pretty seat is close by the hamlet, and in whose park-pond I saw what I never saw before; namely, some _black swans_. They are not nearly so large as the white, nor are they so stately in their movements. They are a meaner bird.

_Highworth (Wilts), Monday, 4th Sept._

I got here yesterday, after a ride, including my deviations, of about thirty-four miles, and that, too, _without breaking my fast_. Before I got into the rotten-borough of Calne, I had two _tributes_ to pay to the Aristocracy; namely, two _Sunday tolls_; and I was resolved that the country in which these tolls were extorted should have not a farthing of my money that I could by any means keep from it. Therefore I fasted until I got into the free-quarters in which I now am. I would have made my horse fast too, if I could have done it without the risk of making him unable to carry me.

RIDE FROM HIGHWORTH TO CRICKLADE AND THENCE TO MALMSBURY.

_Highworth (Wilts), Monday, 4th Sept. 1826._