Rural Rides Part 34

Almost the whole of the country hereabouts is owned by that curious thing called the _Dean and Chapter_ of Durham. Almost the whole of South s.h.i.+elds is theirs, granted upon leases with fines at stated periods.

This Dean and Chapter are the _lords of the Lords_. Londonderry, with all his huffing and strutting, is but a tenant of the Dean and Chapter of Durham, who souse him so often with their _fines_ that it is said that he has had to pay them more than a hundred thousand pounds within the last ten or twelve years. What will Londonderry bet that, he is not the _tenant of the public_ before this day five years? There would be no difficulty in these cases, but on the contrary a very great convenience; because all these tenants of the Dean and Chapter might then purchase out-and-out, and make that property freehold, which they now hold by a tenure so uncertain and so capricious.

_Alnwick, 7th Oct., 1832._

From Sunderland I came, early in the morning of the 5th of October, once more (and I hope not for the last time) to Newcastle, there to lecture on the paper-money, which I did, in the evening. But before I proceed further, I must record something that I heard at Sunderland respecting that babbling fellow Trevor! My readers will recollect the part which this fellow acted with regard to the "liberal Whig prosecution;" they will recollect that it was he who first mentioned the thing in the House of Commons, and suggested to the wise Ministers the propriety of prosecuting me; that Lord Althorp and Denman _hummed_ and _ha'd_ about it; that the latter had _not read it_, and that the former would offer no opinion upon it; that Trevor came on again, encouraged by the works of the curate of Crowhurst, and by the b.l.o.o.d.y old _Times_, whose former editor and now printer is actually a candidate for Berks.h.i.+re, supported by that unprincipled political prattler, Jephthah Marsh, whom I will call to an account as soon as I get back to the South. My readers will further recollect that the b.l.o.o.d.y old _Times_ then put forth another doc.u.ment as a confession of Goodman, made to Burrell, Tredcroft, and Scawen Blunt, while the culprit was in Horsham jail with a halter actually about his neck. My readers know the _result_ of this affair; but they have yet to learn some circ.u.mstances belonging to its progress, which circ.u.mstances are not to be stated here. They recollect, however, that from the very first I treated this TREVOR with the utmost disdain; and that at the head of the articles which I wrote about him I put these words, "TREVOR AND POTATOES;" meaning that he hated me because I was resolved, fire or fire not, that working men should not live upon potatoes in my country. Now, mark; now, chopsticks of the South, mark the sagacity, the justice, the prompt.i.tude, and the excellent taste of these lads of the North! At the last general election, which took place after the "liberal Whig prosecution" had been begun, Trevor was a candidate for the city of Durham, which is about fourteen miles from this busy town of Sunderland. The freemen of Durham are the voters in that city, and some of these freemen reside at Sunderland. Therefore this fellow (I wish to G.o.d you could _see_ him!) went to Sunderland to canva.s.s these freemen residing there; and they pelted him out of the town; and (oh appropriate missiles!) pelted him out with the "accursed root," hallooing and shouting after him--"_Trevor and potatoes!_" Ah!

stupid c.o.xcomb! little did he imagine, when he was playing his game with Althorp and Denman, what would be the ultimate effect of that game!

From Newcastle to Morpeth (the country is what I before described it to be). From Morpeth to this place (Alnwick), the country, generally speaking, is very poor as to land, scarcely any trees at all; the farms enormously extensive; only two churches, I think, in the whole of the twenty miles; scarcely anything worthy the name of a tree, and not one single dwelling having the appearance of a labourer's house. Here appears neither hedging nor ditching; no such thing as a sheep-fold or a hurdle to be seen; the cattle and sheep very few in number; the farm servants living in the farm-houses, and very few of them; the thras.h.i.+ng done by machinery and horses; a country without people. This is a pretty country to take a minister from to govern the South of England! A pretty country to take a Lord Chancellor from to prattle about _Poor Laws_ and about _surplus population_! My Lord Grey has, in fact, spent his life here, and Brougham has spent his life in the Inns of Court, or in the botheration of speculative books. How should either of them know anything about the eastern, southern, or western counties? I wish I had my dignitary Dr. Black here; I would soon make him see that he has all these number of years been talking about the bull's horns instead of his tail and his b.u.t.tocks. Besides the indescribable pleasure of having seen Newcastle, the s.h.i.+eldses, Sunderland, Durham, and Hexham, I have now discovered the true ground of all the errors of the Scotch _feelosofers_ with regard to population, and with regard to poor-laws. The two countries are as different as any two things of the same nature can possibly be; that which applies to the one does not at all apply to the other. The agricultural counties are covered all over with parish churches, and with people thinly distributed here and there.

Only look at the two counties of Dorset and Durham. Dorset contains 1,005 square miles; Durham contains 1,061 square miles. Dorset has 271 _parishes_; Durham has 75 parishes. The population of Dorset is scattered over the whole of the county, there being no town of any magnitude in it. The population of Durham, though larger than that of Dorset, is almost all gathered together at the mouths of the Tyne, the Wear, and the Tees. Northumberland has 1,871 square miles; and Suffolk has 1,512 square miles. Northumberland has _eighty-eight parishes_; and Suffolk has _five hundred and ten parishes_. So that here is a county one third part smaller than that of Northumberland with six times as many villages in it! What comparison is there to be made between states of society so essentially different? What rule is there, with regard to population and poor-laws, which can apply to both cases? And how is my Lord Howick, born and bred up in Northumberland, to know how to judge of a population suitable to Suffolk? Suffolk is a county teeming with production, as well as with people; and how brutal must that man be who would attempt to reduce the agricultural population of Suffolk to that of the number of Northumberland! The population of Northumberland, larger than Suffolk as it is, does not equal it in total population by nearly one-third, notwithstanding that one half of its whole population have got together on the banks of the Tyne. And are we to get rid of our people in the South, and supply the places of them by horses and machines? Why not have the people in the fertile counties of the South, where their very existence causes their food and their raiment to come?

Blind and thoughtless must that man be who imagines that all but _farms_ in the South are unproductive. I much question whether, taking a strip three miles each way from the road, coming from Newcastle to Alnwick, an equal quant.i.ty of what is called _waste ground_, together with the cottages that skirt it, do not exceed such strip of ground in point of produce. Yes, the cows, pigs, geese, poultry, gardens, bees and fuel that arise from those _wastes_, far exceed, even in the capacity of sustaining people, similar breadths of ground, distributed into these large farms in the poorer parts of Northumberland. I have seen not less than ten thousand geese in one tract of common, in about six miles, going from Chobham towards Farnham in Surrey. I believe these geese alone, raised entirely by care and by the common, to be worth more than the clear profit that can be drawn from any similar breadth of land between Morpeth and Alnwick. What folly is it to talk, then, of applying to the counties of the South, principles and rules applicable to a country like this!

To-morrow morning I start for "Modern Athens"! My readers will, I dare say, perceive how much my "_antalluct_" has been improved since I crossed the Tyne. What it will get to when I shall have crossed the Tweed, G.o.d only knows. I wish very much that I could stop a day at Berwick, in order to find some _feelosofer_ to ascertain, by some chemical process, the exact degree of the improvement of the "_antalluct_." I am afraid, however, that I shall not be able to manage this; for I must get along; beginning to feel devilishly home-sick since I have left Newcastle.

They tell me that Lord Howick, who is just married by-the-by, made a speech here the other day, during which he said, "that the Reform was only the means to an end; and that the end was cheap government." Good!

stand to that, my Lord, and, as you are now married, pray let the country fellows and girls marry too: let us have _cheap government_, and I warrant you that there will be room for us all, and plenty for us to eat and drink. It is the drones, and not the bees, that are too numerous; it is the vermin who live upon the taxes, and not those who work to raise them, that we want to get rid of. We are keeping fifty thousand tax-eaters to breed gentlemen and ladies for the industrious and laborious to keep. These are the opinions which I promulgate; and whatever your flatterers may say to the contrary, and whatever _feelosofical_ stuff Brougham and his rabble of writers may put forth, these opinions of mine will finally prevail. I repeat my anxious wish (I would call it a _hope_ if I could) that your father's resolution may be equal to his sense, and that he will do that which is demanded by the right which the people have to insist upon measures necessary to restore the greatness and happiness of the country; and, if he show a disposition to do this, I should deem myself the most criminal of all mankind, if I were to make use of any influence that I possess to render his undertaking more difficult than it naturally must be; but, if he show not that disposition, it will be my bounden duty to endeavour to drive him from the possession of power; for, be the consequences to individuals what they may, the greatness, the freedom, and the happiness of England must be restored.

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