Rural Rides Part 32

"That your pet.i.tioners have recently observed that many great sums of the money, part of which we pay, have been voted to be given to persons who render no services to the country; some of which sums we will mention here; that the sum of 94,900_l._ has been voted for disbanded _foreign_ officers, their _widows_ and _children_; that your pet.i.tioners know that ever since the peace this charge has been annually made; that it has been on an average 110,000_l._ a-year, and that, of course, this band of foreigners have actually taken away out of England, since the peace, one million and seven hundred thousand pounds; partly taken from the fruit of our labour; and if our dinners were actually taken from our table and carried over to Hanover, the process could not be to our eyes more visible than it now is; and we are astonished that those who fear that we, who make the land bring forth crops, and who make the clothing and the houses, shall swallow up the rental, appear to think nothing at all of the swallowings of these Hanoverian men, women, and children, who may continue thus to swallow for half a century to come.

"That the advocates of the project for sending us out of our country to the rocks and snows of Nova Scotia, and the swamps and wilds of Canada, have insisted on the necessity of _checking marriages_ amongst us, in order to cause a decrease in our numbers; that, however, while this is insisted on in your honourable House, we perceive a part of our own earnings voted away to encourage marriage amongst those who do not work, and who live at our expense; and that to your pet.i.tioners it does seem most wonderful, that there should be persons to fear that we, the labourers, shall, on account of our numbers, swallow up the rental, while they actually vote away our food and raiment to increase the numbers of those who never have produced, and who never will produce, anything useful to man.

"That your pet.i.tioners know that more than one-half of the whole of their wages is taken from them by the taxes; that these taxes go chiefly into the hands of idlers; that your pet.i.tioners are the bees, and that the tax-receivers are the drones; and they know, further, that while there is a project for sending the bees out of the country, no one proposes to send away the drones; but that your pet.i.tioners hope to see the day when the checking of the increase of the drones, and not of the bees, will be the object of an English Parliament.

"That, in consequence of taxes, your pet.i.tioners pay six-pence for a pot of worse beer than they could make for one penny; that they pay ten s.h.i.+llings for a pair of shoes that they could have for five s.h.i.+llings; that they pay seven-pence for a pound of soap or candles that they could have for three-pence; that they pay seven-pence for a pound of sugar that they could have for three-pence; that they pay six s.h.i.+llings for a pound of tea that they could have for two s.h.i.+llings; that they pay double for their bread and meat of what they would have to pay if there were no idlers to be kept out of the taxes; that, therefore, it is the taxes that make their wages insufficient for their support, and that compel them to apply for aid to the poor-rates; that, knowing these things, they feel indignant at hearing themselves described as _paupers_, while so many thousands of idlers, for whose support they pay taxes, are called _n.o.ble Lords_ and _Ladies_, _honourable Gentlemen_, _Masters_, and _Misses_; that they feel indignant at hearing themselves described as a nuisance to be got rid of, while the idlers who live upon their earnings are upheld, caressed and cherished, as if they were the sole support of the country."

Having repeated to them these pa.s.sages, I proceeded: "My workmen were induced thus to pet.i.tion in consequence of the information which I, their master, had communicated to them; and, Gentlemen, why should not your labourers pet.i.tion in the same strain? Why should you suffer them to remain in a state of ignorance relative to the cause of their misery?

The eye sweeps over in this county more riches in one moment than are contained in the whole county in which I was born, and in which the pet.i.tioners live. Between Holbeach and Boston, even at a public-house, neither bread nor meat was to be found; and while the landlord was telling me that the people were become so poor that the butchers killed no meat in the neighbourhood. I counted more than two thousand fat sheep lying about in the pastures in that richest spot in the whole world.

Starvation in the midst of plenty; the land covered with food, and the working people without victuals: everything taken away by the tax-eaters of various descriptions: and yet you take no measures for redress; and your miserable labourers seem to be doomed to expire with hunger, without an effort to obtain relief. What! cannot you point out to them the real cause of their sufferings; cannot you take a piece of paper and write out a pet.i.tion for them; cannot your labourers pet.i.tion as well as mine; are G.o.d's blessings bestowed on you without any spirit to preserve them; is the fatness of the land, is the earth teeming with food for the body and raiment for the back, to be an apology for the want of that courage for which your fathers were so famous; is the abundance which G.o.d has put into your hands, to be the excuse for your resigning yourselves to starvation? My G.o.d! is there no spirit left in England except in the miserable sand-hills of Surrey?" These words were not uttered without effect I can a.s.sure the reader. The a.s.semblage was of that stamp in which thought goes before expression; but the effect of this example of my men in Surrey will, I am sure, be greater than anything that has been done in the pet.i.tioning way for a long time past.

We left Lincoln on the 23rd about noon, and got to Newark, in Nottinghams.h.i.+re, in the evening, where I gave a lecture at the theatre to about three hundred persons. Newark is a very fine town, and the Castle Inn, where we stopped, extraordinarily good and pleasantly situated. Here I was met by a parcel of the printed pet.i.tions of the labourers at Barn-Elm.

I shall continue to _sow these_, as I proceed on my way. It should have been stated at the head of the printed pet.i.tion that it was presented to the House of Lords by his Grace the Duke of Richmond, and by Mr. Pallmer to the House of Commons.

The country from Lincoln to Newark (sixteen miles) is by no means so fine as that which we have been in for so many weeks. The land is clayey in many parts. A pleasant country; a variety of hill and valley; but not that richness which we had so long had under our eye: fields smaller; fewer sheep, and those not so large, and so manifestly loaded with flesh. The roads always good. Newark is a town very much like Nottingham, having a very fine and s.p.a.cious market-place; the buildings everywhere good; but it is in the villages that you find the depth of misery.

Having appointed positively to be at Leicester in the evening of Sat.u.r.day, the 24th, we could not stop either at Grantham or at Melton Mowbray, not even long enough to view their fine old magnificent churches. In going from Newark to Grantham, we got again into Lincolns.h.i.+re, in which last county Grantham is. From Newark nearly to Melton Mowbray, the country is about the same as between Lincoln and Newark; by no means bad land, but not so rich as that of Lincolns.h.i.+re, in the middle and eastern parts; not approaching to the Holderness country in point of riches; a large part arable land, well tilled; but not such large homesteads, such numerous great stacks of wheat, and such endless flocks of lazy sheep.

Before we got to Melton Mowbray the beautiful pastures of this little verdant county of Leicester began to appear. Meadows and green fields, with here and there a corn field, all of smaller dimensions than those of Lincolns.h.i.+re, but all very beautiful; with gentle hills and woods too; not beautiful woods, like those of Hamps.h.i.+re and of the wilds of Surrey, Suss.e.x and Kent; but very pretty, all the country around being so rich. At Mowbray we began to get amongst the Leicesters.h.i.+re sheep, those fat creatures which we see the butchers' boys battering about so unmercifully in the streets and the outskirts of the Wen. The land is warmer here than in Lincolns.h.i.+re; the gra.s.s more forward, and the wheat, between Mowbray and Leicester, six inches high, and generally looking exceedingly well. In Lincolns.h.i.+re and Nottinghams.h.i.+re I found the wheat in general rather thin, and frequently sickly; nothing like so promising as in Suffolk and Norfolk.

We got to Leicester on the 24th at about half-after five o'clock; and the time appointed for the lecture was six. Leicester is a very fine town; s.p.a.cious streets, fine inns, fine shops, and containing, they say, thirty or forty thousand people. It is well stocked with jails, of which a new one, in addition to the rest, has just been built, covering three acres of ground! And, as if _proud_ of it, the grand portal has little turrets in the castle style, with _embrasures_ in miniature on the caps of the turrets. Nothing speaks the want of reflection in the people so much as the self-gratulation which they appear to feel in these edifices in their several towns. Instead of expressing shame at these indubitable proofs of the horrible increase of misery and of crime, they really boast of these "improvements," as they call them. Our forefathers built abbeys and priories and churches, and they made such use of them that jails were nearly unnecessary. We, their sons, have knocked down the abbeys and priories; suffered half the parsonage-houses and churches to pretty nearly tumble down, and make such uses of the remainder, that jails and tread-mills and dungeons have now become the most striking edifices in every county in the kingdom.

Yesterday morning (Sunday the 25th) I walked out to the village of Knighton, two miles on the Bosworth road, where I breakfasted, and then walked back. This morning I walked out to Hailstone, nearly three miles on the Lutterworth road, and got my breakfast there. You have nothing to do but to walk through these villages, to see the cause of the increase of the jails. Standing on the hill at Knighton, you see the three ancient and lofty and beautiful spires rising up at Leicester; you see the river winding down through a broad bed of the most beautiful meadows that man ever set his eyes on; you see the bright verdure covering all the land, even to the tops of the hills, with here and there a little wood, as if made by G.o.d to give variety to the beauty of the scene, for the river brings the coal in abundance, for fuel, and the earth gives the brick and the tile in abundance. But go down into the villages; invited by the spires, rising up amongst the trees in the dells, at scarcely ever more than a mile or two apart; invited by these spires, go down into these villages, view the large, and once the most beautiful, churches; see the parson's house, large, and in the midst of pleasure-gardens; and then look at the miserable sheds in which the labourers reside! Look at these hovels, made of mud and of straw; bits of gla.s.s, or of old off-cast windows, without frames or hinges, frequently, but merely stuck in the mud wall. Enter them, and look at the bits of chairs or stools; the wretched boards tacked together to serve for a table; the floor of pebble, broken brick, or of the bare ground; look at the thing called a bed; and survey the rags on the backs of the wretched inhabitants; and then wonder, if you can, that the jails and dungeons and tread-mills increase, and that a standing army and barracks are become the favourite establishments of England!

At the village of Hailstone, I got into the purlieu, as they call it in Hamps.h.i.+re, of a person well known in the Wen; namely, the Reverend Beresford, rector of that fat affair, St. Andrew's, Holborn! In walking through the village, and surveying its deplorable dwellings, so much worse than the cow-sheds of the cottagers on the skirts of the forests in Hamps.h.i.+re, my attention was attracted by the surprising contrast between them and the house of their religious teacher. I met a labouring man. Country people _know everything_. If you have ever made a _faux pas_, of any sort of description; if you have anything about you of which you do not want all the world to know, never retire to a village, keep in some great town; but the Wen, for your life, for there the next-door neighbour will not know even your name; and the vicinage will judge of you solely by the quant.i.ty of money that you have to spend.

This labourer seemed not to be in a very great hurry. He was digging in his garden; and I, looking over a low hedge, _pitched him up_ for a gossip, commencing by asking him whether that was the parson's house.

Having answered in the affirmative, and I, having asked the parson's name, he proceeded thus: "His name is Beresford; but though he lives there, he has not this living now, he has got the living of St.

Andrew's, Holborn; and they say it is worth a great many thousands a year. He could not, they say, keep this living and have that too, because they were so far apart. And so this living was given to Mr.

Brown, who is the rector of Hobey, about seven miles off." "Well," said I, "but _how comes Beresford to live here now_, if the living be given to another man?" "Why, Sir," said he, "this Beresford married a daughter of Brown; and so, you know (smiling and looking very archly), Brown comes and takes the payment for the t.i.thes, and pays a curate that lives in that house there in the field; and Beresford lives at that fine house still, just as he used to do." I asked him what the living was worth, and he answered twelve hundred pounds a year. It is a rectory, I find, and of course the parson has great t.i.thes as well as small.

The people of this village know a great deal more about Beresford than the people of St. Andrew's, Holborn, know about him. In short, the country people know all about the whole thing. They will be long before they act; but they will make no noise as a signal for action. They will be moved by nothing but actual want of food. This the Thing seems to be aware of; and hence all the innumerable schemes for keeping them quiet: hence the endless jails and all the terrors of hardened law: hence the schemes for coaxing them, by letting them have bits of land: hence the everlasting bills and discussions of committees about the state of the poor, and the state of the poor-laws: all of which will fail; and at last, unless reduction of taxation speedily take place, the schemers will find what the consequences are of reducing millions to the verge of starvation.

The labourers here, who are in need of parochial relief, are formed into what are called _roundsmen_; that is to say, they are sent round from one farmer to another, each maintaining a certain number for a certain length of time; and thus they go round from one to the other. If the farmers did not pay three s.h.i.+llings in taxes out of every six s.h.i.+llings that they give in the shape of wages, they could afford to give the men four and sixpence in wages, which would be better to the men than the six. But as long as this burden of taxes shall continue, so long the misery will last, and it will go on increasing with accelerated pace.

The march of circ.u.mstances is precisely what it was in France, just previous to the French revolution. If the aristocracy were wise, they would put a stop to that march. The middle cla.s.s are fast sinking down to the state of the lower cla.s.s. _A community of feeling_ between these cla.s.ses, and that feeling an angry one, is what the aristocracy has to dread. As far as the higher clergy are concerned, this community of feeling is already complete. A short time will extend the feeling to every other branch; and then, the hideous consequences make their appearance. Reform; a radical reform of the Parliament; this reform _in time_; this reform, which would reconcile the middle cla.s.s to the aristocracy, and give renovation to that which has now become a ma.s.s of decay and disgust; this reform, given with a good grace, and not taken by force, is the only refuge for the aristocracy of this kingdom. Just as it was in France. All the tricks of financiers have been tried in vain; and by-and-by some trick more pompous and foolish than the rest; Sir Henry Parnell's trick, perhaps, or something equally foolish, would blow the whole concern into the air.

_Worcester, 18th May, 1830._

In tracing myself from Leicester to this place, I begin at Lutterworth, in Leicesters.h.i.+re, one of the prettiest country towns that I ever saw; that is to say, prettiest _situated_. At this place they have, in the church (they say), the identical _pulpit_ from which Wickliffe preached!

This was not his birth-place; but he was, it seems, priest of this parish.

I set off from Lutterworth early on the 29th of April, stopped to breakfast at Birmingham, got to Wolverhampton by two o'clock (a distance altogether of about 50 miles), and lectured at six in the evening. I repeated, or rather continued, the lecturing, on the 30th, and on the 3rd of May. On the 6th of May went to Dudley, and lectured there: on the 10th of May, at Birmingham; on the 12th and 13th, at Shrewsbury; and on the 14th, came here.

Thus have I come through countries of corn and meat and iron and coal; and from the banks of the Humber to those of the Severn, I find all the people, who do not share in the taxes, in a state of distress, greater or less, _Mortgagers_ all frightened out of their-wits; _fathers_ trembling for the fate of their children; and _working people_ in the most miserable state, and, as they ought to be, in the _worst of temper_. These will, I am afraid, be the _state-doctors_ at last! The farmers are cowed down: the poorer they get, the more cowardly they are.

Every one of them sees the cause of his suffering, and sees general ruin at hand; but every one hopes that by some trick, some act of meanness, some contrivance, _he shall escape_. So that there is no hope of any change for the better but from the _working people_. The farmers will sink to a very low state; and thus the Thing (barring _accidents_) may go on, until neither farmer nor tradesman will see a joint of meat on his table once in a quarter of a year. It appears likely to be precisely as it was in France: it is now just what France was at the close of the reign of Louis XV. It has been the fas.h.i.+on to ascribe the _French Revolution_ to the writings of Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and others.

These writings had _nothing at all_ to do with the matter: no, _nothing at all_. The _Revolution_ was produced by _taxes_, which at last became unbearable; by debts of the State; but, in fact, by the despair of the people, produced by the weight of the taxes.

It is curious to observe how ready the supporters of tyranny and taxation are to ascribe rebellions and revolutions to disaffected leaders; and particularly to writers; and, as these supporters of tyranny and taxation have had the press at their command; have had generally the absolute command of it, they have caused this belief to go down from generation to generation. It will not do for them to ascribe revolutions and rebellions to the true cause; because then the rebellions and revolutions would be justified; and it is their object to cause them to be condemned. Infinite delusion has prevailed in this country, in consequence of the efforts of which I am now speaking.

Voltaire was just as much a cause of the French Revolution as I have been the cause of imposing these sixty millions of taxes. The French Revolution was produced by the grindings of taxation; and this I will take an opportunity very soon of proving, to the conviction of every man in the kingdom who chooses to read.

In the iron country, of which Wolverhampton seems to be a sort of central point, and where thousands, and perhaps two or three hundred thousand people, are a.s.sembled together, the _truck_ or _tommy_ system generally prevails; and this is a very remarkable feature in the state of this country. I have made inquiries with regard to the origin, or etymology, of this word _tommy_, and could find no one to furnish me with the information. It is certainly, like so many other good things, to be ascribed to _the army_; for, when I was a recruit at Chatham barracks, in the year 1783, we had brown bread served out to us twice in the week. And, for what reason G.o.d knows, we used to call it _tommy_.

And the sergeants, when they called us out to get our bread, used to tell us to come and get our _tommy_. Even the officers used to call it tommy. Any one that could get white bread, called it bread; but the brown stuff that we got in lieu of part of our pay was called _tommy_; and so we used to call it when we got abroad. When the soldiers came to have bread served out to them in the several towns in England, the name of "tommy" went down by tradition; and, doubtless, it was taken up and adapted to the truck system in Staffords.h.i.+re and elsewhere.

Now, there is nothing wrong, nothing _essentially_ wrong, in this system of barter. Barter is in practice in some of the happiest communities in the world. In the new settled parts of the United States of America, to which money has scarcely found its way, to which articles of wearing apparel are brought from a great distance, where the great and almost sole occupations are, the rearing of food, the building of houses, and the making of clothes, barter is the rule and money payment the exception. And this is attended with no injury and with very little inconvenience. The bargains are made, and the accounts kept _in money_; but the payments are made in produce or in goods, the price of these being previously settled on. The store-keeper (which we call shop-keeper) receives the produce in exchange for his goods, and exchanges that produce for more goods; and thus the concerns of the community go on, every one living in abundance, and the sound of misery never heard.

But when this tommy system; this system of barter; when this makes its appearance where money has for ages been the medium of exchange, and of payments for labour; when this system makes its appearance in such a state of society, there is something wrong; things are out of joint; and it becomes us to inquire into the real cause of its being resorted to; and it does not become us to join in an outcry against the employers who resort to it, until we be perfectly satisfied that those employers are guilty of oppression.

The manner of carrying on the tommy system is this: suppose there to be a master who employs a hundred men. That hundred men, let us suppose, to earn a pound a week each. This is not the case in the iron-works; but no matter, we can ill.u.s.trate our meaning by one sum as well as by another.

These men lay out weekly the whole of the hundred pounds in victuals, drink, clothing, bedding, fuel, and house-rent. Now, the master finding the profits of his trade fall off very much, and being at the same time in want of money to pay the hundred pounds weekly, and perceiving that these hundred pounds are carried away at once, and given to shopkeepers of various descriptions; to butchers, bakers, drapers, hatters, shoemakers, and the rest; and knowing that, on an average, these shopkeepers must all have a profit of thirty _per cent._, or more, he determines to _keep this thirty per cent. to himself_; and this is thirty pounds a week gained as a shop-keeper, which amounts to 1,560_l._ a year. He, therefore, sets up a tommy shop: a long place containing every commodity that the workman can want, liquor and house-room excepted. Here the workman takes out his pound's worth; and his house-rent he pays in truck, if he do not rent of his master; and if he will have liquor, beer, or gin, or anything else, he must get it by trucking with the goods that he has got at the tommy shop.

Now, there is nothing essentially unjust in this. There is a little inconvenience as far as the house-rent goes; but not much. The tommy is easily turned into money; and if the single saving man does experience some trouble in the sale of his goods, that is compensated for in the more important case of the married man, whose wife and children generally experience the benefit of this payment in kind. It is, to be sure, a sorrowful reflection, that such a check upon the drinking propensities of the fathers should be necessary; but _the necessity exists_; and, however sorrowful the fact, the fact, I am a.s.sured, is, that thousands upon thousands of mothers have to bless this system, though it arises from a loss of trade and the poverty of the masters.

I have often had to observe on the cruel effects of the suppression of markets and fairs, and on the consequent power of extortion possessed by the country shop-keepers. And what a thing it is to reflect on, that these shopkeepers have the whole of the labouring men of England constantly in their debt; have on an average a mortgage on their wages to the amount of five or six weeks, and make them pay any price that they choose to extort. So that, in fact, there is a tommy system in every village, the difference being, that the shop-keeper is the tommy man instead of the farmer.

The only question is in this case of the manufacturing tommy work, whether the master charges a higher price than the shop-keepers would charge; and, while I have not heard that the masters do this, I think it improbable that they should. They must desire to avoid the charge of such extortion; and they have little temptation to it; because they buy at best hand and in large quant.i.ties; because they are sure of their customers, and know to a certainty the quant.i.ty that they want; and because the distribution of the goods is a matter of such perfect regularity, and attended with so little expense, compared with the expenses of the shopkeeper. Any farmer who has a parcel of married men working for him, might supply them with meat for four-pence the pound, when the butcher must charge them seven-pence, or lose by his trade; and to me, it has always appeared astonis.h.i.+ng, that farmers (where they happen to have the power completely in their hands) do not compel their married labourers to have a sufficiency of bread and meat for their wives and children. What would be more easy than to reckon what would be necessary for house-rent, fuel, and clothing; to pay that in money once a month, or something of that sort, and to pay the rest in meat, flour, and malt? I may never occupy a farm again; but if I were to do it, to any extent, the East and West Indies, nor big brewer, nor distiller, should ever have one farthing out of the produce of my farm, except he got it through the throats of those who made the wearing apparel. If I had a village at my command, not a tea-kettle should sing in that village: there should be no extortioner under the name of country shop-keeper, and no straight-backed, bloated fellow, with red eyes, unshaven face, and slip-shod till noon, called a publican, and generally worthy of the name of _sinner_. Well-covered backs and well-lined bellies would be my delight; and as to talking about controlling and compelling, what a controlling and compelling are there now! It is everlasting control and compulsion. My bargain should be so much in money, and so much in bread, meat, and malt.

And what is the bargain, I want to know, _with yearly servants_? Why, so much in money and the rest in bread, meat, beer, lodging and fuel. And does any one affect to say that this is wrong? Does any one say that it is wrong to exercise control and compulsion over these servants; such control and compulsion is not only the master's right, but they are included in his bounden _duties_. It is his duty to make them rise early, keep good hours, be industrious, and careful, be cleanly in their persons and habits, be civil in their language. These are amongst the uses of the means which G.o.d has put into his hands; and are these means to be neglected towards married servants any more than towards single ones?

Even in the well-cultivated and thickly-settled parts of the United States of America, it is the general custom, and a very good custom it is, to pay the wages of labour _partly in money and partly in kind_; and this practice is extended to carpenters, bricklayers, and other workmen about buildings, and even to tailors, shoemakers, and weavers, who go (a most excellent custom) to farm-houses to work. The bargain is, so much money _and found_; that is to say, found in food and drink, and sometimes in lodging. The money then used to be, for a common labourer, in Long Island, at common work (not haying or harvesting), three York s.h.i.+llings a day, and found; that is to say, three times seven-pence halfpenny of our money; and three times seven-pence halfpenny a day, which is eleven s.h.i.+llings and three-pence a week, and found. This was the wages of the commonest labourer at the commonest work. And the wages of a good labourer now, in Worcesters.h.i.+re, _is eight s.h.i.+llings a week, and not found_. Accordingly, they are miserably poor and degraded.

Therefore, there is in this mode of payment nothing _essentially_ degrading; but the tommy system of Staffords.h.i.+re, and elsewhere, though not unjust in itself, indirectly inflicts great injustice on the whole race of shop-keepers, who are necessary for the distribution of commodities in great towns, and whose property is taken away from them by this species of monopoly, which the employers of great numbers of men have been compelled to adopt for their own safety. It is not the fault of the masters, who can have no pleasure in making profit in this way: it is the fault of the taxes, which, by lowering the price of their goods, have compelled them to resort to this means of diminis.h.i.+ng their expenses, or to quit their business altogether, which a great part of them cannot do without being left without a penny; and if a law could be pa.s.sed and enforced (which it cannot) to put an end to the tommy system, the consequence would be, that instead of a fourth part of the furnaces being let out of blast in this neighbourhood, one-half would be let out of blast, and additional thousands of poor creatures would be left solely dependent on parochial relief.

A view of the situation of things at Shrewsbury, will lead us in a minute to the real cause of the tommy system. Shrewsbury is one of the most interesting spots that man ever beheld. It is the capital of the county of Salop, and Salop appears to have been the original name of the town itself. It is curiously enclosed by the river Severn, which is here large and fine, and which, in the form of a _horse-shoe_, completely surrounds it, leaving, of the whole of the two miles round, only one little place whereon to pa.s.s in and out on land. There are two bridges, one on the east, and the other on the west; the former called the English, and the other, the Welsh bridge. The environs of this town, especially on the Welsh side, are the most beautiful that can be conceived. The town lies in the midst of a fine agricultural country, of which it is the great and almost only mart. Hither come the farmers to sell their produce, and hence they take, in exchange, their groceries, their clothing, and all the materials for their implements and the domestic conveniences. It was fair-day when I arrived at Shrewsbury.

Everything was on the decline. Cheese, which four years ago sold at sixty s.h.i.+llings the six-score pounds, would not bring forty. I took particular pains to ascertain the fact with regard to the cheese, which is a great article here. I was a.s.sured that shop-keepers in general did not now sell half the quant.i.ty of goods in a month that they did in that s.p.a.ce of time four or five years ago. The _ironmongers_ were not selling a fourth-part of what they used to sell five years ago.

Now, it is impossible to believe that a somewhat similar falling off in the sale of iron must not have taken place all over the kingdom; and need we then wonder that the iron in Staffords.h.i.+re has fallen, within these five years, from thirteen pounds to five pounds a ton, or perhaps a great deal more; and need we wonder that the _iron-masters_, who have the same rent and taxes to pay that they had to pay before, have resorted to the tommy system, in order to a.s.sist in saving themselves from ruin! Here is the real cause of the tommy system; and if Mr.

Littleton really wishes to put an end to it, let him prevail upon the Parliament to take off taxes to the amount of forty millions a year.

Another article had experienced a still greater falling off at Shrewsbury; I mean the article of corn-sacks, of which there has been a falling off of _five-sixths_. The sacks are made by weavers in the North; and need we wonder, then, at the low wages of those industrious people, whom I used to see weaving sacks in the miserable cellars at Preston!

Here is the true cause of the tommy system, and of all the other evils which disturb and afflict the country. It is a great country; an immense ma.s.s of industry and resources of all sorts, _breaking up_; a prodigious ma.s.s of enterprise and capital diminis.h.i.+ng and dispersing. The enormous taxes co-operating with the Corn-bill, which those taxes have engendered, are driving skill and wealth out of the country in all directions; are causing iron-masters to make France, and particularly Belgium, blaze with furnaces, in the lieu of those which have been extinguished here; and that have established furnaces and cotton-mills in abundance. These same taxes and this same Corn-bill are sending the long wool from Lincolns.h.i.+re to France, there to be made into those blankets which, for ages, were to be obtained nowhere but in England.

This is the true state of the country, and here are the true causes of that state; and all that the corrupt writers and speakers say about over-population and poor-laws, and about all the rest of their shuffling excuses, is a heap of nonsense and of lies.

I cannot quit Shrewsbury without expressing the great satisfaction that I derived from my visit to that place. It is the only town into which I have gone, in all England, without knowing, beforehand, something of some person in it. I could find out no person that took the Register; and could discover but one person who took the _Advice to Young Men_.

The number of my auditors was expected to be so small, that I doubled the price of admission, in order to pay the expense of the room. To my great surprise, I had a room full of gentlemen, at the request of some of whom I repeated the dose the next night; and if my audience were as well pleased with me as I was with them, their pleasure must have been great indeed. I saw not one single person in the place that I had ever seen before; yet I never had more cordial shakes by the hand; in proportion to their numbers, not more at Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Halifax, Leeds, or Nottingham, or even Hull. I was particularly pleased with the conduct of the _young_ gentlemen at Shrewsbury, and especially when I asked them, whether they were prepared to act upon the insolent doctrine of Huskisson, and quietly submit to this state of things "_during the present generation_"?

TOUR IN THE WEST.

_3rd July, 1830._

Just as I was closing my third Lecture (on Sat.u.r.day night), at Bristol, to a numerous and most respectable audience, the news of the above event [the death of George IV.] arrived. I had advertised, and made all the preparations, for lecturing at Bath on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday; but, under the circ.u.mstances, I thought it would not be proper to proceed thither, for that purpose, until after the burial of the King.

When that has taken place, I shall, as soon as may be, return to Bath, taking Hertfords.h.i.+re and Buckinghams.h.i.+re in my way; from Bath, through Somerset, Devon, and into Cornwall; and back through Dorset, South Wilts, Hants, Suss.e.x, Kent, and then go into Ess.e.x, and, last of all, into my native county of Surrey. I shall then have seen all England with my own eyes, except Rutland, Westmoreland, Durham, c.u.mberland, and Northumberland; and these, if I have life and health till next spring, I shall see, in my way to Scotland. But never shall I see another place to interest me, and so pleasing to me, as Bristol and its environs, taking the whole together. A good and solid and wealthy city: a people of plain and good manners; private virtue and public spirit united; no empty noise, no insolence, no flattery; men very much like the Yorkers and Lancastrians. And as to the seat of the city and its environs, it surpa.s.ses all that I ever saw. A great commercial city in the midst of corn-fields, meadows and woods, and the s.h.i.+ps coming into the centre of it, miles from anything like sea, up a narrow river, and pa.s.sing between two clefts of a rock probably a hundred feet high; so that from the top of these clefts, you _look down_ upon the main-top gallant masts of lofty s.h.i.+ps that are gliding along!