RIDE DOWN THE VALLEY OF THE AVON IN WILTSHIRE.

"Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn; and, The labourer is worthy of his reward."--Deuteronomy, ch. xxv, ver. 4; 1 Cor. ix, 9; 1 Tim. v, 9.

Milton, Monday, 28th August.

I came off this morning on the Marlborough road about two miles, or three, and then turned off, over the downs, in a north-westerly direction, in search of the source of the Avon River, which goes down to Salisbury. I had once been at Netheravon, a village in this valley; but I had often heard this valley described as one of the finest pieces of land in all England; I knew that there were about thirty parish churches, standing in a length of about thirty miles, and in an average width of hardly a mile; and I was resolved to see a little into the reasons that could have induced our fathers to build all these churches, especially if, as the Scotch would have us believe, there were but a mere handful of people in England until of late years.

The first part of my ride this morning was by the side of Sir John Astley's park. This man is one of the members of the county (gallon-loaf Bennet being the other). They say that he is good to the labouring people; and he ought to be good for something, being a member of Parliament of the Lethbridge and Dickenson stamp. However, he has got a thumping estate; though it be borne in mind, the working-people and the fund-holders and the dead-weight have each their separate mortgage upon it; of which this Baronet has, I dare say, too much justice to complain, seeing that the amount of these mortgages was absolutely necessary to carry on Pitt and Perceval and Castlereagh Wars; to support Hanoverian soldiers in England; to fight and beat the Americans on the Serpentine River; to give Wellington a kingly estate; and to defray the expenses of Manchester and other yeomanry cavalry; besides all the various charges of Power-of-Imprisonment Bills and of Six-Acts. These being the cause of the mortgages, the "worthy Baronet" has, I will engage, too much justice to complain of them.

In steering across the down, I came to a large farm, which a shepherd told me was Milton Hill Farm. This was upon the high land, and before I came to the edge of this Valley of Avon, which was my land of promise; or, at least, of great expectation; for I could not imagine that thirty churches had been built for nothing by the side of a brook (for it is no more during the greater part of the way) thirty miles long. The shepherd showed me the way towards Milton; and at the end of about a mile, from the top of a very high part of the down, with a steep slope towards the valley, I first saw this Valley of Avon; and a most beautiful sight it was! Villages, hamlets, large farms, towers, steeples, fields, meadows, orchards, and very fine timber trees, scattered all over the valley. The shape of the thing is this: on each side downs, very lofty and steep in some places, and sloping miles back in other places; but each outside of the valley are downs. From the edge of the downs begin capital arable fields generally of very great dimensions, and, in some places, running a mile or two back into little cross-valleys, formed by hills of downs. After the corn-fields come meadows, on each side, down to the brook or river. The farm-houses, mansions, villages, and hamlets, are generally situated in that part of the arable land which comes nearest the meadows.

Great as my expectations had been, they were more than fulfilled. I delight in this sort of country; and I had frequently seen the vale of the Itchen, that of the Bourn, and also that of the Teste, in Hampshire; I had seen the vales amongst the South Downs; but I never before saw anything to please me like this valley of the Avon. I sat upon my horse, and looked over Milton and Easton and Pewsy for half an hour, though I had not breakfasted. The hill was very steep. A road, going slanting down it, was still so steep, and washed so very deep, by the rains of ages, that I did not attempt to ride down it, and I did not like to lead my horse, the path was so narrow. So seeing a boy with a drove of pigs, going out to the stubbles, I beckoned him to come up to me; and he came and led my horse down for me. Endless is the variety in the shape of the high lands which form this valley. Sometimes the slope is very gentle, and the arable lands go back very far. At others, the downs come out into the valley almost like piers into the sea, being very steep in their sides, as well as their ends towards the valley. They have no slope at their other ends: indeed they have no back ends, but run into the main high land. There is also great variety in the width of the valley; great variety in the width of the meadows; but the land appears all to be of the very best; and it must be so, for the farmers confess it.

It seemed to me, that one way, and that not, perhaps, the least striking, of exposing the folly, the stupidity, the inanity, the presumption, the insufferable emptiness and insolence and barbarity, of those numerous wretches, who have now the audacity to propose to transport the people of England, upon the principle of the monster Malthus, who has furnished the unfeeling oligarchs and their toad-eaters with the pretence, that man has a natural propensity to breed faster than food can be raised for the increase; it seemed to me, that one way of exposing this mixture of madness and of blasphemy was to take a look, now that the harvest is in, at the produce, the mouths, the condition, and the changes that have taken place, in a spot like this, which God has favoured with every good that he has had to bestow upon man.

From the top of the hill I was not a little surprised to see, in every part of the valley that my eye could reach, a due, a large portion of fields of Swedish turnips, all looking extremely well. I had found the turnips, of both sorts, by no means bad, from Salt Hill to Newbury; but from Newbury through Burghclere, Highclere, Uphusband, and Tangley, I had seen but few. At and about Ludgarshall and Everley, I had seen hardly any. But when I came, this morning, to Milton Hill farm, I saw a very large field of what appeared to me to be fine Swedish turnips. In the valley, however, I found them much finer, and the fields were very beautiful objects, forming, as their colour did, so great a contrast with that of the fallows and the stubbles, which latter are, this year, singularly clean and bright.

Having gotten to the bottom of the hill, I proceeded on to the village of Milton. I left Easton away at my right, and I did not go up to Watton Rivers where the river Avon rises, and which lies just close to the South-west corner of Marlborough Forest, and at about 5 or 6 miles from the town of Marlborough. Lower down the river, as I thought, there lived a friend, who was a great farmer, and whom I intended to call on. It being my way, however, always to begin making enquiries soon enough, I asked the pig-driver where this friend lived; and, to my surprise, I found that he lived in the parish of Milton. After riding up to the church, as being the centre of the village, I went on towards the house of my friend, which lay on my road down the valley. I have many, many times witnessed agreeable surprise; but I do not know, that I ever in the whole course of my life, saw people so much surprised and pleased as this farmer and his family were at seeing me. People often tell you, that they are glad to see you; and in general they speak truth. I take pretty good care not to approach any house, with the smallest appearance of a design to eat or drink in it, unless I be quite sure of a cordial reception; but my friend at Fifield (it is in Milton parish) and all his family really seemed to be delighted beyond all expression.

When I set out this morning, I intended to go all the way down to the city of Salisbury to-day; but, I soon found, that to refuse to sleep at Fifield would cost me a great deal more trouble than a day was worth. So that I made my mind up to stay in this farm-house, which has one of the nicest gardens, and it contains some of the finest flowers, that I ever saw, and all is disposed with as much good taste as I have ever witnessed. Here I am, then, just going to bed after having spent as pleasant a day as I ever spent in my life. I have heard to-day, that Birkbeck lost his life by attempting to cross a river on horse-back; but if what I have heard besides be true, that life must have been hardly worth preserving; for, they say, that he was reduced to a very deplorable state; and I have heard, from what I deem unquestionable authority, that his two beautiful and accomplished daughters are married to two common labourers, one a Yankee and the other an Irishman, neither of whom has, probably, a second shirt to his back, or a single pair of shoes to put his feet into! These poor girls owe their ruin and misery (if my information be correct), and, at any rate, hundreds besides Birkbeck himself, owe their utter ruin, the most scandalous degradation, together with great bodily suffering, to the vanity, the conceit, the presumption of Birkbeck, who, observe, richly merited all that he suffered, not excepting his death; for, he sinned with his eyes open; he rejected all advice; he persevered after he saw his error; he dragged thousands into ruin along with him; and he most vilely calumniated the man, who, after having most disinterestedly, but in vain, endeavoured to preserve him from ruin, endeavoured to preserve those who were in danger of being deluded by him. When, in 1817, before he set out for America, I was, in Catherine Street, Strand, London, so earnestly pressing him not to go to the back countries, he had one of these daughters with him. After talking to him for some time, and describing the risks and disadvantages of the back countries, I turned towards the daughter and, in a sort of joking way, said: "Miss Birkbeck, take my advice: don't let anybody get you more than twenty miles from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore." Upon which he gave me a most dignified look, and observed: "Miss Birkbeck has a father, Sir, whom she knows it to be her duty to obey." This snap was enough for me. I saw, that this was a man so full of self-conceit, that it was impossible to do anything with him. He seemed to me to be bent upon his own destruction. I thought it my duty to warn others of their danger: some took the warning; others did not; but he and his brother adventurer, Flower, never forgave me, and they resorted to all the means in their power to do me injury. They did me no injury, no thanks to them; and I have seen them most severely, but most justly, punished.

Amesbury, Tuesday, 29th August.

I set off from Fifield this morning, and got here about one o'clock, with my clothes wet. While they are drying, and while a mutton chop is getting ready, I sit down to make some notes of what I have seen since I left Enford ... but, here comes my dinner: and I must put off my notes till I have dined.

Salisbury, Wednesday, 30th August.

My ride yesterday, from Milton to this city of Salisbury, was, without any exception, the most pleasant; it brought before me the greatest number of, to me, interesting objects, and it gave rise to more interesting reflections, than I remember ever to have had brought before my eyes, or into my mind, in any one day of my life; and therefore, this ride was, without any exception, the most pleasant that I ever had in my life, as far as my recollection serves me. I got a little wet in the middle of the day; but I got dry again, and I arrived here in very good time, though I went over the Accursed Hill (Old Sarum), and went across to Laverstoke, before I came to Salisbury.

Let us now, then, look back over this part of Wiltshire, and see whether the inhabitants ought to be "transported" by order of the "Emigration Committee," of which we shall see and say more by-and-by. I have before described this valley generally; let me now speak of it a little more in detail. The farms are all large, and, generally speaking, they were always large, I dare say; because sheep is one of the great things here; and sheep, in a country like this, must be kept in flocks, to be of any profit. The sheep principally manure the land. This is to be done only by folding; and, to fold, you must have a flock. Every farm has its portion of down, arable, and meadow; and, in many places, the latter are watered meadows, which is a great resource where sheep are kept in flocks; because these meadows furnish grass for the suckling ewes, early in the spring; and, indeed, because they have always food in them for sheep and cattle of all sorts. These meadows have had no part of the suffering from the drought, this year. They fed the ewes and lambs in the spring, and they are now yielding a heavy crop of hay; for I saw men mowing in them, in several places, particularly about Netheravon, though it was raining at the time.

The turnips look pretty well all the way down the valley; but, I see very few, except Swedish turnips. The early common turnips very nearly all failed, I believe. But the stubbles are beautifully bright; and the rick-yards tell us that the crops are good, especially of wheat. This is not a country of pease and beans, nor of oats, except for home consumption. The crops are wheat, barley, wool, and lambs, and these latter not to be sold to butchers, but to be sold, at the great fairs, to those who are going to keep them for some time, whether to breed from, or finally to fat for the butcher. It is the pulse and the oats that appear to have failed most this year; and therefore this Valley has not suffered. I do not perceive that they have many potatoes; but what they have of this base root seem to look well enough. It was one of the greatest villains upon earth (Sir Walter Raleigh), who (they say) first brought this root into England. He was hanged at last! What a pity, since he was to be hanged, the hanging did not take place before he became such a mischievous devil as he was in the latter two-thirds of his life!

The stack-yards down this valley are beautiful to behold. They contain from five to fifteen banging wheat-ricks, besides barley-ricks, and hay-ricks, and also besides the contents of the barns, many of which exceed a hundred, some two hundred, and I saw one at Pewsey, and another at Fittleton, each of which exceeded two hundred and fifty feet in length. At a farm, which, in the old maps, is called Chissenbury Priory, I think I counted twenty-seven ricks of one sort and another, and sixteen or eighteen of them wheat-ricks. I could not conveniently get to the yard, without longer delay than I wished to make; but I could not be much out in my counting. A very fine sight this was, and it could not meet the eye without making one look round (and in vain) to see the people who were to eat all this food; and without making one reflect on the horrible, the unnatural, the base and infamous state, in which we must be, when projects are on foot, and are openly avowed, for transporting those who raise this food, because they want to eat enough of it to keep them alive; and when no project is on foot for transporting the idlers who live in luxury upon this same food; when no project is on foot for transporting pensioners, parsons, or dead-weight people!

A little while before I came to this farm-yard, I saw, in one piece, about four hundred acres of wheat-stubble, and I saw a sheep-fold, which, I thought, contained an acre of ground, and had in it about four thousand sheep and lambs. The fold was divided into three separate flocks; but the piece of ground was one and the same; and I thought it contained about an acre. At one farm, between Pewsey and Upavon, I counted more than 300 hogs in one stubble. This is certainly the most delightful farming in the world. No ditches, no water-furrows, no drains, hardly any hedges, no dirt and mire, even in the wettest seasons of the year: and though the downs are naked and cold, the valleys are snugness itself. They are, as to the downs, what ah-ahs! are, in parks or lawns. When you are going over the downs, you look over the valleys, as in the case of the ah-ah; and if you be not acquainted with the country, your surprise, when you come to the edge of the hill, is very great. The shelter, in these valleys, and particularly where the downs are steep and lofty on the sides, is very complete. Then, the trees are everywhere lofty. They are generally elms, with some ashes, which delight in the soil that they find here. There are, almost always, two or three large clumps of trees in every parish, and a rookery or two (not rag-rookery) to every parish. By the water's edge there are willows; and to almost every farm there is a fine orchard, the trees being, in general, very fine, and, this year, they are, in general, well loaded with fruit. So that, all taken together, it seems impossible to find a more beautiful and pleasant country than this, or to imagine any life more easy and happy than men might here lead, if they were untormented by an accursed system that takes the food from those that raise it, and gives it to those that do nothing that is useful to man.

Here the farmer has always an abundance of straw. His farm-yard is never without it. Cattle and horses are bedded up to their eyes. The yards are put close under the shelter of a hill, or are protected by lofty and thick-set trees. Every animal seems comfortably situated; and, in the dreariest days of winter, these are, perhaps, the happiest scenes in the world; or, rather, they would be such, if those, whose labour makes it all, trees, corn, sheep and everything, had but their fair share of the produce of that labour. What share they really have of it one cannot exactly say; but, I should suppose, that every labouring man in this valley raises as much food as would suffice for fifty, or a hundred persons, fed like himself!

At a farm at Milton there were, according to my calculation, 600 quarters of wheat and 1200 quarters of barley of the present year's crop. The farm keeps, on an average, 1400 sheep, it breeds and rears an usual proportion of pigs, fats the usual proportion of hogs, and, I suppose, rears and fats the usual proportion of poultry. Upon inquiry, I found that this farm was, in point of produce, about one-fifth of the parish. Therefore, the land of this parish produces annually about 3000 quarters of wheat, 6000 quarters of barley, the wool of 7000 sheep, together with the pigs and poultry. Now, then, leaving green, or moist, vegetables out of the question, as being things that human creatures, and especially labouring human creatures, ought never to use as sustenance, and saying nothing, at present, about milk and butter; leaving these wholly out of the question, let us see how many people the produce of this parish would keep, supposing the people to live all alike, and to have plenty of food and clothing. In order to come at the fact here, let us see what would be the consumption of one family; let it be a family of five persons; a man, wife, and three children, one child big enough to work, one big enough to eat heartily, and one a baby; and this is a pretty fair average of the state of people in the country. Such a family would want 5 lb. of bread a-day; they would want a pound of mutton a-day; they would want two pounds of bacon a-day; they would want, on an average, winter and summer, a gallon and a half of beer a-day; for I mean that they should live without the aid of the Eastern or the Western slave-drivers. If sweets were absolutely necessary for the baby, there would be quite honey enough in the parish. Now, then, to begin with the bread, a pound of good wheat makes a pound of good bread; for, though the offal be taken out, the water is put in; and, indeed, the fact is, that a pound of wheat will make a pound of bread, leaving the offal of the wheat to feed pigs, or other animals, and to produce other human food in this way. The family would, then, use 1825 lb. of wheat in the year, which, at 60 lb. a bushel, would be (leaving out a fraction) 30 bushels, or three quarters and six bushels, for the year.

Next comes the mutton, 365 lb. for the year. Next the bacon, 730 lb. As to the quantity of mutton produced; the sheep are bred here, and not fatted in general; but we may fairly suppose, that each of the sheep kept here, each of the standing-stock, makes first, or last, half a fat sheep; so that a farm that keeps, on an average, 100 sheep, produces annually 50 fat sheep. Suppose the mutton to be 15 lb. a quarter, then the family will want, within a trifle of, seven sheep a year. Of bacon or pork, 36 score will be wanted. Hogs differ so much in their propensity to fat, that it is difficult to calculate about them: but this is a very good rule: when you see a fat hog, and know how many scores he will weigh, set down to his account a sack (half a quarter) of barley for every score of his weight; for, let him have been educated (as the French call it) as he may, this will be about the real cost of him when he is fat. A sack of barley will make a score of bacon, and it will not make more. Therefore, the family would want 18 quarters of barley in the year for bacon.

As to the beer, 18 gallons to the bushel of malt is very good; but, as we allow of no spirits, no wine, and none of the slave produce, we will suppose that a sixth part of the beer is strong stuff. This would require two bushels of malt to the 18 gallons. The whole would, therefore, take 35 bushels of malt; and a bushel of barley makes a bushel of malt, and, by the increase pays the expense of malting. Here, then, the family would want, for beer, four quarters and three bushels of barley. The annual consumption of the family, in victuals and drink, would then be as follows:

Qrs. Bush. Wheat 3 6 Barley 22 3 ---------- Sheep 7

This being the case, the 3000 quarters of wheat, which the parish annually produces, would suffice for 800 families. The 6000 quarters of barley, would suffice for 207 families. The 3500 fat sheep, being half the number kept, would suffice for 500 families. So that here is, produced in the parish of Milton, bread for 800, mutton for 500, and bacon and beer for 207 families. Besides victuals and drink, there are clothes, fuel, tools, and household goods wanting; but there are milk, butter, eggs, poultry, rabbits, hares, and partridges, which I have not noticed, and these are all eatables, and are all eaten too. And as to clothing, and, indeed, fuel and all other wants beyond eating and drinking, are there not 7000 fleeces of Southdown wool, weighing, all together, 21,000 lb., and capable of being made into 8400 yards of broad cloth, at two pounds and a half of wool to the yard? Setting, therefore, the wool, the milk, butter, eggs, poultry, and game against all the wants beyond the solid food and drink, we see that the parish of Milton, that we have under our eye, would give bread to 800 families, mutton to 580, and bacon and beer to 207. The reason why wheat and mutton are produced in a proportion so much greater than the materials for making bacon and beer, is, that the wheat and the mutton are more loudly demanded from a distance, and are much more cheaply conveyed away in proportion to their value. For instance, the wheat and mutton are wanted in the infernal Wen, and some barley is wanted there in the shape of malt; but hogs are not fatted in the Wen, and a larger proportion of the barley is used where it is grown.

Here is, then, bread for 800 families, mutton for 500, and bacon and beer for 207. Let us take the average of the three, and then we have 502 families, for the keeping of whom, and in this good manner too, the parish of Milton yields a sufficiency. In the wool, the milk, butter, eggs, poultry, and game, we have seen ample, and much more than ample, provision for all wants other than those of mere food and drink. What I have allowed in food and drink is by no means excessive. It is but a pound of bread, and a little more than half-a-pound of meat a day to each person on an average; and the beer is not a drop too much. There are no green and moist vegetables included in my account; but, there would be some, and they would not do any harm; but, no man can say, or, at least, none but a base usurer, who would grind money out of the bones of his own father; no other man can, or will, say, that I have been too liberal to this family; and yet, good God! what extravagance is here, if the labourers of England be now treated justly!

Is there a family, even amongst those who live the hardest, in the Wen, that would not shudder at the thought of living upon what I have allowed to this family? Yet what do labourers' families get, compared to this? The answer to that question ought to make us shudder indeed. The amount of my allowance, compared with the amount of the allowance that labourers now have, is necessary to be stated here, before I proceed further. The wheat 3 qrs. and 6 bushels at present price (56s. the quarter) amounts to 10l. 10s. The barley (for bacon and beer) 22 qrs. 3 bushels, at present price (34s. the quarter), amounts to 37l. 16s. 8d. The seven sheep, at 40s. each, amount to 14l. The total is 62l. 6s. 8d.; and this, observe, for bare victuals and drink; just food and drink enough to keep people in working condition.

What then do the labourers get? To what fare has this wretched and most infamous system brought them! Why such a family as I have described is allowed to have, at the utmost, only about 9s. a week. The parish allowance is only about 7s. 6d. for the five people, including clothing, fuel, bedding and everything! Monstrous state of things! But let us suppose it to be nine shillings. Even that makes only 23l. 8s. a year, for food, drink, clothing, fuel and everything, whereas I allow 62l. 6s. 8d. a year for the bare eating and drinking; and that is little enough. Monstrous, barbarous, horrible as this appears, we do not, however, see it in half its horrors; our indignation and rage against this infernal system is not half roused, till we see the small number of labourers who raise all the food and the drink, and, of course, the mere trifling portion of it that they are suffered to retain for their own use.

The parish of Milton does, as we have seen, produce food, drink, clothing, and all other things, enough for 502 families, or 2510 persons upon my allowance, which is a great deal more than three times the present allowance, because the present allowance includes clothing, fuel, tools, and everything. Now, then, according to the "Population Return," laid before Parliament, this parish contains 500 persons, or, according to my division, one hundred families. So that here are about one hundred families to raise food and drink enough, and to raise wool and other things to pay for all other necessaries, for five hundred and two families! Aye, and five hundred and two families fed and lodged, too, on my liberal scale. Fed and lodged according to the present scale, this one hundred families raise enough to supply more, and many more, than fifteen hundred families; or seven thousand five hundred persons! And yet those who do the work are half starved! In the 100 families there are, we will suppose, 80 able working men, and as many boys, sometimes assisted by the women and stout girls. What a handful of people to raise such a quantity of food! What injustice, what a hellish system it must be, to make those who raise it skin and bone and nakedness, while the food and drink and wool are almost all carried away to be heaped on the fund-holders, pensioners, soldiers, dead-weight, and other swarms of tax-eaters! If such an operation do not need putting an end to, then the devil himself is a saint.

Thus it must be, or much about thus, all the way down this fine and beautiful and interesting valley. There are 29 agricultural parishes, the two last being in town; being Fisherton and Salisbury. Now, according to the "Population Return," the whole of these 29 parishes contain 9,116 persons; or, according to my division, 1,823 families. There is no reason to believe, that the proportion that we have seen in the case of Milton does not hold good all the way through; that is, there is no reason to suppose, that the produce does not exceed the consumption in every other case in the same degree that it does in the case of Milton. And indeed if I were to judge from the number of houses and the number of ricks of corn, I should suppose that the excess was still greater in several of the other parishes. But, supposing it to be no greater; supposing the same proportion to continue all the way from Watton Rivers to Stratford Dean, then here are 9,116 persons raising food and raiment sufficient for 45,580 persons, fed and lodged according to my scale; and sufficient for 136,740 persons, according to the scale on which the unhappy labourers of this fine valley are now fed and lodged!

And yet there is an "Emigration Committee" sitting to devise the means of getting rid, not of the idlers, not of the pensioners, not of the dead-weight, not of the parsons, (to "relieve" whom we have seen the poor labourers taxed to the tune of a million and a half of money) not of the soldiers; but to devise means of getting rid of these working people, who are grudged even the miserable morsel that they get! There is in the men calling themselves "English country gentlemen" something superlatively base. They are, I sincerely believe, the most cruel, the most unfeeling, the most brutally insolent: but I know, I can prove, I can safely take my oath, that they are the most base of all the creatures that God ever suffered to disgrace the human shape. The base wretches know well, that the taxes amount to more than sixty millions a year, and that the poor-rates amount to about seven millions; yet, while the cowardly reptiles never utter a word against the taxes, they are incessantly railing against the poor-rates, though it is, (and they know it) the taxes that make the paupers. The base wretches know well, that the sum of money given, even to the fellows that gather the taxes, is greater in amount than the poor-rates; the base wretches know well, that the money, given to the dead-weight (who ought not to have a single farthing), amounts to more than the poor receive out of the rates; the base wretches know well, that the common foot-soldier now receives more pay per week (7s. 7d.) exclusive of clothing, firing, candle, and lodging; the base wretches know, that the common foot-soldier receives more to go down his own single throat, than the overseers and magistrates allow to a working man, his wife and three children; the base wretches know all this well; and yet their railings are confined to the poor and the poor-rates; and it is expected that they will, next session, urge the Parliament to pass a law to enable overseers and vestries and magistrates to transport paupers beyond the seas! They are base enough for this, or for any thing; but the whole system will go to the devil long before they will get such an act passed; long before they will see perfected this consummation of their infamous tyranny.

It is manifest enough, that the population of this valley was, at one time, many times over what it is now; for, in the first place, what were the twenty-nine churches built for? The population of the 29 parishes is now but little more than one-half of that of the single parish of Kensington; and there are several of the churches bigger than the church at Kensington. What, then, should all these churches have been built for? And besides, where did the hands come from? And where did the money come from? These twenty-nine churches would now not only hold all the inhabitants, men, women, and children, but all the household goods, and tools, and implements, of the whole of them, farmers and all, if you leave out the wagons and carts. In three instances, Fifield, Milston, and Roach-Fen, the church-porches will hold all the inhabitants, even down to the bed-ridden and the babies. What then? will any man believe that these churches were built for such little knots of people? We are told about the great superstition of our fathers, and of their readiness to gratify the priests by building altars and other religious edifices. But we must think those priests to have been most devout creatures indeed, if we believe that they chose to have the money laid out in useless churches, rather than have it put into their own pockets! At any rate, we all know that Protestant Priests have no whims of this sort; and that they never lay out upon churches any money that they can, by any means, get hold of.

But, suppose that we were to believe that the Priests had, in old times, this unaccountable taste; and suppose we were to believe that a knot of people, who might be crammed into a church-porch, were seized, and very frequently too, with the desire of having a big church to go to; we must, after all this, believe that this knot of people were more than giants, or that they had surprising riches, else we cannot believe that they had the means of gratifying the strange wishes of their Priests and their own not less strange piety and devotion. Even if we could believe that they thought that they were paving their way to heaven, by building churches which were a hundred times too large for the population, still we cannot believe, that the building could have been effected without bodily force; and, where was this force to come from, if the people were not more numerous than they now are? What, again, I ask, were these twenty-nine churches stuck up, not a mile from each other; what were twenty-nine churches made for, if the population had been no greater than it is now?

But, in fact, you plainly see all the traces of a great ancient population. The churches are almost all large, and built in the best manner. Many of them are very fine edifices; very costly in the building; and, in the cases where the body of the church has been altered in the repairing of it, so as to make it smaller, the tower, which everywhere defies the hostility of time, shows you what the church must formerly have been. This is the case in several instances; and there are two or three of these villages which must formerly have been market-towns, and particularly Pewsy and Upavon. There are now no less than nine of the parishes out of the twenty-nine, that have either no parsonage-houses, or have such as are in such a state that a Parson will not, or cannot, live in them. Three of them are without any parsonage-houses at all, and the rest are become poor, mean, falling-down places. This latter is the case at Upavon, which was formerly a very considerable place. Nothing can more clearly show, than this, that all, as far as buildings and population are concerned, has been long upon the decline and decay. Dilapidation after dilapidation have, at last, almost effaced even the parsonage-houses, and that too in defiance of the law, ecclesiastical as well as civil. The land remains; and the crops and the sheep come as abundantly as ever; but they are now sent almost wholly away, instead of remaining, as formerly, to be, in great part, consumed in these twenty-nine parishes.

The stars, in my map, mark the spots where manor-houses, or gentlemen's mansions, formerly stood, and stood, too, only about sixty years ago. Every parish had its manor house in the first place; and then there were, down this Valley, twenty-one others; so that, in this distance of about thirty miles, there stood fifty mansion houses. Where are they now? I believe there are but eight that are at all worthy of the name of mansion houses; and even these are but poorly kept up, and, except in two or three instances, are of no benefit to the labouring people; they employ but few persons; and, in short, do not half supply the place of any eight of the old mansions. All these mansions, all these parsonages, aye, and their goods and furniture, together with the clocks, the brass kettles, the brewing-vessels, the good bedding and good clothes and good furniture, and the stock in pigs, or in money, of the inferior classes, in this series of once populous and gay villages and hamlets; all these have been by the accursed system of taxing and funding and paper-money, by the well-known exactions of the state, and by the not less real, though less generally understood, extortions of the monopolies arising out of paper-money; all these have been, by these accursed means, conveyed away, out of this Valley, to the haunts of the tax-eaters and the monopolizers. There are many of the mansion houses, the ruins of which you yet behold. At Milton there are two mansion houses, the walls and the roofs of which yet remain, but which are falling gradually to pieces, and the garden walls are crumbling down. At Enford, Bennet, the Member for the county, had a large mansion house, the stables of which are yet standing. In several places, I saw, still remaining, indubitable traces of an ancient manor house, namely a dove-cote or pigeon-house. The poor pigeons have kept possession of their heritage, from generation to generation, and so have the rooks, in their several rookeries, while the paper-system has swept away, or rather swallowed-up, the owners of the dove-cotes and of the lofty trees, about forty families of which owners have been ousted in this one Valley, and have become dead-weight creatures, tax-gatherers, barrack-fellows, thief-takers, or, perhaps, paupers or thieves.

Senator Snip congratulated, some years ago, that preciously honourable "Collective Wisdom" of which he is a most worthy Member; Snip congratulated it on the success of the late war in creating capital! Snip is, you must know, a great feelosofer, and a not less great feenanceer. Snip cited, as a proof of the great and glorious effects of paper-money, the new and fine houses in London, the new streets and squares, the new roads, new canals and bridges. Snip was not, I dare say, aware that this same paper-money had destroyed forty mansion houses in this Vale of Avon, and had taken away all the goods, all the substance, of the little gentry and of the labouring class. Snip was not, I dare say, aware that this same paper-money had, in this one Vale of only thirty miles long, dilapidated, and, in some cases, wholly demolished, nine out of twenty-nine even of the parsonage houses. I told Snip at the time (1821), that paper-money could create no valuable thing. I begged Snip to bear this in mind. I besought all my readers, and particularly Mr. Mathias Atwood (one of the members for Lowther-town), not to believe that paper-money ever did, or ever could, create anything of any value. I besought him to look well into the matter, and assured him that he would find that though paper-money could create nothing of value, it was able to transfer everything of value; able to strip a little gentry; able to dilapidate even parsonage houses; able to rob gentlemen of their estates, and labourers of their Sunday-coats and their barrels of beer; able to snatch the dinner from the board of the reaper or the mower, and to convey it to the barrack-table of the Hessian or Hanoverian grenadier; able to take away the wool, that ought to give warmth to the bodies of those who rear the sheep, and put it on the backs of those who carry arms to keep the poor, half-famished shepherds in order!

I have never been able clearly to comprehend what the beastly Scotch feelosofers mean by their "national wealth;" but, as far as I can understand them, this is their meaning: that national wealth means that which is left of the products of the country over and above what is consumed, or used, by those whose labour causes the products to be. This being the notion, it follows, of course, that the fewer poor devils you can screw the products out of, the richer the nation is.

This is, too, the notion of Burdett as expressed in his silly and most nasty, musty aristocratic speech of last session. What, then, is to be done with this over-produce? Who is to have it? Is it to go to pensioners, placemen, tax-gatherers, dead-weight people, soldiers, gendarmerie, police-people, and, in short, to whole millions who do no work at all? Is this a cause of "national wealth"? Is a nation made rich by taking the food and clothing from those who create them, and giving them to those who do nothing of any use? Aye, but this over-produce may be given to manufacturers, and to those who supply the food-raisers with what they want besides food. Oh! but this is merely an exchange of one valuable thing for another valuable thing; it is an exchange of labour in Wiltshire for labour in Lancashire; and, upon the whole, here is no over-production. If the produce be exported, it is the same thing: it is an exchange of one sort of labour for another. But our course is, that there is not an exchange; that those who labour, no matter in what way, have a large part of the fruit of their labour taken away, and receive nothing in exchange. If the over-produce of this Valley of Avon were given, by the farmers, to the weavers in Lancashire, to the iron and steel chaps of Warwickshire, and to other makers or sellers of useful things, there would come an abundance of all these useful things into this valley from Lancashire and other parts: but if, as is the case, the over-produce goes to the fund-holders, the dead-weight, the soldiers, the lord and lady and master and miss pensioners and sinecure people; if the over-produce go to them, as a very great part of it does, nothing, not even the parings of one's nails, can come back to the valley in exchange. And, can this operation, then, add to the "national wealth"? It adds to the "wealth" of those who carry on the affairs of state; it fills their pockets, those of their relatives and dependents; it fattens all tax-eaters; but it can give no wealth to the "nation," which means the whole of the people. National Wealth means the Commonwealth or Commonweal; and these mean, the general good, or happiness, of the people, and the safety and honour of the state; and these are not to be secured by robbing those who labour, in order to support a large part of the community in idleness. Devizes is the market-town to which the corn goes from the greater part of this Valley. If, when a wagon-load of wheat goes off in the morning, the wagon came back at night loaded with cloth, salt, or something or other, equal in value to the wheat, except what might be necessary to leave with the shopkeeper as his profit; then, indeed, the people might see the wagon go off without tears in their eyes. But now they see it go to carry away, and to bring next to nothing in return.

What a twist a head must have before it can come to the conclusion that the nation gains in wealth by the government being able to cause the work to be done by those who have hardly any share in the fruit of the labour! What a twist such a head must have! The Scotch feelosofers, who seem all to have been, by nature, formed for negro-drivers, have an insuperable objection to all those establishments and customs which occasion holidays. They call them a great hindrance, a great bar to industry, a great drawback from "national wealth." I wish each of these unfeeling fellows had a spade put into his hand for ten days, only ten days, and that he were compelled to dig only just as much as one of the common labourers at Fulham. The metaphysical gentlemen would, I believe, soon discover the use of holidays! But why should men, why should any men, work hard? Why, I ask, should they work incessantly, if working part of the days of the week be sufficient? Why should the people at Milton, for instance, work incessantly, when they now raise food and clothing and fuel and every necessary to maintain well five times their number? Why should they not have some holidays? And, pray, say, thou conceited Scotch feelosofer, how the "national wealth" can be increased by making these people work incessantly, that they may raise food and clothing, to go to feed and clothe people who do not work at all?

The state of this Valley seems to illustrate the infamous and really diabolical assertion of Malthus, which is, that the human kind have a natural tendency to increase beyond the means of sustenance for them. Hence, all the schemes of this and the other Scotch writers for what they call checking population. Now, look at this Valley of Avon. Here the people raise nearly twenty times as much food and clothing as they consume. They raise five times as much, even according to my scale of living. They have been doing this for many, many years. They have been doing it for several generations. Where, then, is their natural tendency to increase beyond the means of sustenance for them? Beyond, indeed, the means of that sustenance which a system like this will leave them. Say that, Sawneys, and I agree with you. Far beyond the means that the taxing and monopolizing system will leave in their hands: that is very true; for it leaves them nothing but the scale of the poor-book; they must cease to breed at all, or they must exceed this mark; but the earth, give them their fair share of its products, will always give sustenance in sufficiency to those who apply to it by skilful and diligent labour.

The villages down this Valley of Avon, and, indeed, it was the same in almost every part of this county, and in the North and West of Hampshire also, used to have great employment for the women and children in the carding and spinning of wool for the making of broad-cloth. This was a very general employment for the women and girls; but it is now wholly gone; and this has made a vast change in the condition of the people, and in the state of property and of manners and of morals. In 1816, I wrote and published a Letter to the Luddites, the object of which was to combat their hostility to the use of machinery. The arguments I there made use of were general. I took the matter in the abstract. The principles were all correct enough; but their application cannot be universal; and we have a case here before us, at this moment, which, in my opinion, shows that the mechanic inventions, pushed to the extent that they have been, have been productive of great calamity to this country, and that they will be productive of still greater calamity; unless, indeed, it be their brilliant destiny to be the immediate cause of putting an end to the present system.

The greater part of manufactures consists of clothing and bedding. Now, if by using a machine, we can get our coat with less labour than we got it before, the machine is a desirable thing. But, then, mind, we must have the machine at home, and we ourselves must have the profit of it; for, if the machine be elsewhere; if it be worked by other hands; if other persons have the profit of it; and if, in consequence of the existence of the machine, we have hands at home, who have nothing to do, and whom we must keep, then the machine is an injury to us, however advantageous it may be to those who use it, and whatever traffic it may occasion with foreign States.

Such is the case with regard to this cloth-making. The machines are at Upton-Level, Warminster, Bradford, Westbury, and Trowbridge, and here are some of the hands in the Valley of Avon. This Valley raises food and clothing; but, in order to raise them, it must have labourers. These are absolutely necessary; for without them this rich and beautiful Valley becomes worth nothing except to wild animals and their pursuers. The labourers are men and boys. Women and girls occasionally; but the men and the boys are as necessary as the light of day, or as the air and the water. Now, if beastly Malthus, or any of his nasty disciples, can discover a mode of having men and boys without having women and girls, then, certainly, the machine must be a good thing; but if this Valley must absolutely have the women and the girls, then the machine, by leaving them with nothing to do, is a mischievous thing; and a producer of most dreadful misery. What, with regard to the poor, is the great complaint now? Why, that the single man does not receive the same, or anything like the same, wages as the married man. Aye, it is the wife and girls that are the burden; and to be sure a burden they must be, under a system of taxation like the present, and with no work to do. Therefore, whatever may be saved in labour by the machine is no benefit, but an injury to the mass of the people. For, in fact, all that the women and children earned was so much clear addition to what the family earns now. The greatest part of the clothing in the United States of America is made by the farm women and girls. They do almost the whole of it; and all that they do is done at home. To be sure, they might buy cheap; but they must buy for less than nothing, if it would not answer their purpose to make the things.

The survey of this Valley is, I think, the finest answer in the world to the "Emigration Committee" fellows, and to Jerry Curteis (one of the Members for Sussex), who has been giving "evidence" before it. I shall find out, when I can get to see the report, what this "Emigration Committee" would be after. I remember that, last winter, a young woman complained to one of the Police Justices that the Overseers of some parish were going to transport her orphan brother to Canada, because he became chargeable to their parish! I remember, also, that the Justice said, that the intention of the Overseers was "premature," for that "the Bill had not yet passed"! This was rather an ugly story; and I do think that we shall find that there have been, and are, some pretty propositions before this "Committee." We shall see all about the matter, however, by-and-by; and, when we get the transporting project fairly before us, shall we not then loudly proclaim "the envy of surrounding nations and admiration of the world"!

But, what ignorance, impudence, and insolence must those base wretches have, who propose to transport the labouring people, as being too numerous, while the produce, which is obtained by their labour, is more than sufficient for three, four, or five, or even ten times their numbers! Jerry Curteis, who has, it seems, been a famous witness on this occasion, says that the poor-rates, in many cases, amount to as much as the rent. Well: and what then, Jerry? The rent may be high enough too, and the farmer may afford to pay them both; for a very large part of what you call poor-rates ought to be called wages. But, at any rate, what has all this to do with the necessity of emigration? To make out such necessity, you must make out that you have more mouths than the produce of the parish will feed. Do then, Jerry, tell us, another time, a little about the quantity of food annually raised in four or five adjoining parishes; for, is it not something rather damnable, Jerry, to talk of transporting Englishmen, on account of the excess of their numbers, when the fact is notorious that their labour produces five or ten times as much food and raiment as they and their families consume!

However, to drop Jerry, for the present, the baseness, the foul, the stinking, the carrion baseness, of the fellows that call themselves "country gentlemen," is, that the wretches, while railing against the poor and the poor-rates; while affecting to believe that the poor are wicked and lazy; while complaining that the poor, the working people, are too numerous, and that the country villages are too populous: the carrion baseness of these wretches is, that, while they are thus bold with regard to the working and poor people, they never even whisper a word against pensioners, placemen, soldiers, parsons, fundholders, tax-gatherers, or tax-eaters! They say not a word against the prolific dead-weight to whom they give a premium for breeding, while they want to check the population of labourers! They never say a word about the too great populousness of the Wen; nor about that of Liverpool, Manchester, Cheltenham, and the like! Oh! they are the most cowardly, the very basest, the most scandalously base reptiles that ever were warmed into life by the rays of the sun!

In taking my leave of this beautiful vale, I have to express my deep shame, as an Englishman, at beholding the general extreme poverty of those who cause this vale to produce such quantities of food and raiment. This is, I verily believe it, the worst used labouring people upon the face of the earth. Dogs and hogs and horses are treated with more civility; and as to food and lodging, how gladly would the labourers change with them! This state of things never can continue many years! By some means or other there must be an end to it; and my firm belief is, that that end will be dreadful. In the meanwhile I see, and I see it with pleasure, that the common people know that they are ill used; and that they cordially, most cordially, hate those who ill-treat them.

During the day I crossed the river about fifteen or sixteen times, and in such hot weather it was very pleasant to be so much amongst meadows and water. I had been at Netheravon about eighteen years ago, where I had seen a great quantity of hares. It is a place belonging to Mr. Hicks Beach, or Beech, who was once a member of parliament. I found the place altered a good deal; out of repair; the gates rather rotten; and (a very bad sign!) the roof of the dog-kennel falling in! There is a church, at this village of Netheravon, large enough to hold a thousand or two of people, and the whole parish contains only 350 souls, men, women and children. This Netheravon was formerly a great lordship, and in the parish there were three considerable mansion-houses, besides the one near the church. These mansions are all down now; and it is curious enough to see the former walled gardens become orchards, together with other changes, all tending to prove the gradual decay in all except what appertains merely to the land as a thing of production for the distant market. But, indeed, the people and the means of enjoyment must go away. They are drawn away by the taxes and the paper-money. How are twenty thousand new houses to be, all at once, building in the Wen, without people and food and raiment going from this valley towards the Wen? It must be so; and this unnatural, this dilapidating, this ruining and debasing work must go on, until that which produces it be destroyed.

When I came down to Stratford Dean, I wanted to go across to Laverstoke, which lay to my left of Salisbury; but just on the side of the road here, at Stratford Dean, rises the Accursed Hill. It is very lofty. It was originally a hill in an irregular sort of sugar-loaf shape: but it was so altered by the Romans, or by somebody, that the upper three-quarter parts of the hill now, when seen from a distance, somewhat resemble three cheeses, laid one upon another; the bottom one a great deal broader than the next, and the top one like a Stilton cheese, in proportion to a Gloucester one. I resolved to ride over this Accursed Hill. As I was going up a field towards it, I met a man going home from work. I asked how he got on. He said, very badly. I asked him what was the cause of it. He said the hard times. "What times," said I; "was there ever a finer summer, a finer harvest, and is there not an old wheat-rick in every farm-yard?" "Ah!" said he, "they make it bad for poor people, for all that." "They?" said I, "who is they?" He was silent. "Oh, no, no! my friend," said I, "it is not they; it is that Accursed Hill that has robbed you of the supper that you ought to find smoking on the table when you get home." I gave him the price of a pot of beer, and on I went, leaving the poor dejected assemblage of skin and bone to wonder at my words.

The hill is very steep, and I dismounted and led my horse up. Being as near to the top as I could conveniently get, I stood a little while reflecting, not so much on the changes which that hill had seen, as on the changes, the terrible changes, which, in all human probability, it had yet to see, and which it would have greatly helped to produce. It was impossible to stand on this accursed spot, without swelling with indignation against the base and plundering and murderous sons of corruption. I have often wished, and I, speaking out loud, expressed the wish now: "May that man perish for ever and ever, who, having the power, neglects to bring to justice the perjured, the suborning, the insolent and perfidious miscreants, who openly sell their country's rights and their own souls."

From the Accursed Hill I went to Laverstoke where "Jemmy Burrough" (as they call him here), the Judge, lives. I have not heard much about "Jemmy" since he tried and condemned the two young men who had wounded the game-keepers of Ashton Smith and Lord Palmerston. His Lordship (Palmerston) is, I see, making a tolerable figure in the newspapers as a share-man! I got into Salisbury about half-past seven o'clock, less tired than I recollect ever to have been after so long a ride; for, including my several crossings of the river and my deviations to look at churches and farm-yards, and rick-yards, I think I must have ridden nearly forty miles.


RIDE FROM SALISBURY TO WARMINSTER, FROM WARMINSTER TO FROME, FROM FROME TO DEVIZES, AND FROM DEVIZES TO HIGHWORTH.

"Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail: saying, When will the new moon be gone that we may sell corn? And the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the Ephah small and the Shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit; that we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat? Shall not the land tremble for this; and every one mourn that dwelleth therein? I will turn your feasting into mourning, saith the Lord God, 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 Wiltshire, 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 assembled. 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 publishing 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 Wiltshire 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 Herefordshire 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 threshing. 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 grass-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 Hampshire. 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 tithes 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 carcass, like the maggots that some people have in their skins. This family of Dampier seems to be one of these. What, in God'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 entitle 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 shillings 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 cockloft; and when they meet their eye, they look at them as a cow does at a bastard 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 assaulted 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 passed 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 passed 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 fashion 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 mass of lies: they further know that the parsons know that they know that it is a mass 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 compassion, to ascertain who and what the sufferers are; and whether they have or have not participated 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 entitled to the compassion 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 compassion.

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 shilling and threepence a yard at broad-cloth weaving. They have now a quarter work, at one shilling 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 shilling 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 shillings, 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 compassion 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 Somersetshire. 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 tithes 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 tithes 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 Wiltshire; 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 grass in the meadows. Just when I was coming along here, the sun was about half an hour high; it shined 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 shirt 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 quantities of food in each of these twenty-one parishes? Are there schemers to go before this conjuration Committee; Wiltshire 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 surpasses 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 Trespass 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!

Saturday, September 2nd.

After I got to Warminster yesterday, it began to rain, which stopped me in my way to Frome in Somersetshire, 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 principal 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 shillings a yard for the superfine black broad cloth (made at Frome), which Mr. Roe, at Kensington, offered me at seven shillings 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 2s. 6d. a week for a man, 2s. for his wife, 1s. 3d. for each child under eight years of age, 3d. 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 institution" 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 pawned 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 pawn all the tolerably good clothes that their children had. In case of a man having two or three shirts, he is left with only one, and sometimes without any shirt; 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 worship," 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 pass from a Magistrate; though I know of no law that allows of such passes; and a pretty thing it would be, to grant such licenses, or such passes, 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 famishing. 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 damning 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 Berkshire. 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 shirts, 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 fashion. 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 mass 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 spawned." 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 God 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 proneness 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-cocks 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 mass 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 trespass 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 assisted 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 classes 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, 2d. 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. God'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.