FROM THE (LONDON) WEN ACROSS SURREY, ACROSS THE WEST OF SUSSEX, AND INTO THE SOUTH EAST OF HAMPSHIRE.
Reigate (Surrey), Saturday, 26 July, 1823.
Came from the Wen, through Croydon. It rained nearly all the way. The corn is good. A great deal of straw. The barley very fine; but all are backward; and if this weather continue much longer, there must be that "heavenly blight" for which the wise friends of "social order" are so fervently praying. But if the wet now cease, or cease soon, what is to become of the "poor souls of farmers" God only knows! In one article the wishes of our wise Government appear to have been gratified to the utmost; and that, too, without the aid of any express form of prayer. I allude to the hops, of which it is said that there will be, according to all appearance, none at all! Bravo! Courage, my Lord Liverpool! This article, at any rate, will not choak us, will not distress us, will not make us miserable by "over-production!"--The other day a gentleman (and a man of general good sense too) said to me: "What a deal of wet we have: what do you think of the weather now?"--"More rain," said I. "D--n those farmers," said he, "what luck they have! They will be as rich as Jews!"--Incredible as this may seem, it is a fact. But, indeed, there is no folly, if it relate to these matters, which is, now-a-days, incredible. The hop affair is a pretty good illustration of the doctrine of "relief" from "diminished production." Mr. Ricardo may now call upon any of the hop-planters for proof of the correctness of his notions. They are ruined, for the greater part, if their all be embarked in hops. How are they to pay rent? I saw a planter the other day who sold his hops (Kentish) last fall for sixty shillings a hundred. The same hops will now fetch the owner of them eight pounds, or a hundred and sixty shillings.
Thus the Quaker gets rich, and the poor devil of a farmer is squeezed into a gaol. The Quakers carry on the far greater part of this work. They are, as to the products of the earth, what the Jews are as to gold and silver. How they profit, or, rather, the degree in which they profit, at the expense of those who own and those who till the land, may be guessed at if we look at their immense worth, and if we at the same time reflect that they never work. Here is a sect of non-labourers. One would think that their religion bound them under a curse not to work. Some part of the people of all other sects work; sweat at work; do something that is useful to other people; but here is a sect of buyers and sellers. They make nothing; they cause nothing to come; they breed as well as other sects; but they make none of the raiment or houses, and cause none of the food to come. In order to justify some measure for paring the nails of this grasping sect, it is enough to say of them, which we may with perfect truth, that if all the other sects were to act like them, the community must perish. This is quite enough to say of this sect, of the monstrous privileges of whom we shall, I hope, one of these days, see an end. If I had the dealing with them, I would soon teach them to use the spade and the plough, and the musket too when necessary.
The rye along the road side is ripe enough; and some of it is reaped and in shock. At Mearstam there is a field of cabbages, which, I was told, belonged to Colonel Joliffe. They appear to be early Yorks, and look very well. The rows seem to be about eighteen inches apart. There may be from 15,000 to 20,000 plants to the acre; and I dare say that they will weigh three pounds each, or more. I know of no crop of cattle food equal to this. If they be early Yorks, they will be in perfection in October, just when the grass is almost gone. No five acres of common grass land will, during the year, yield cattle food equal, either in quantity or quality, to what one acre of land in early Yorks will produce during three months.
Worth (Sussex), Wednesday, 30 July.
Worth is ten miles from Reigate on the Brighton-road, which goes through Horley. Reigate has the Surrey chalk hills close to it on the North, and sand-hills along on its South, and nearly close to it also. As soon as you are over the sand-hills, you come into a country of deep clay; and this is called the Weald of Surrey. This Weald winds away round, towards the West, into Sussex, and towards the East, into Kent. In this part of Surrey it is about eight miles wide, from North to South, and ends just as you enter the parish of Worth, which is the first parish (in this part) in the county of Sussex. All across the Weald (the strong and stiff clays) the corn looks very well. I found it looking well from the Wen to Reigate, on the villanous spewy soil between the Wen and Croydon; on the chalk from Croydon to near Reigate; on the loam, sand and chalk (for there are all three) in the valley of Reigate; but not quite so well on the sand. On the clay all the corn looks well. The wheat, where it has begun to die, is dying of a good colour, not black, nor in any way that indicates blight. It is, however, all backward. Some few fields of white wheat are changing colour; but for the greater part it is quite green; and though a sudden change of weather might make a great alteration in a short time, it does appear that the harvest must be later than usual. When I say this, however, I by no means wish to be understood as saying that it must be so late as to be injurious to the crop. In 1816, I saw a barley-rick making in November. In 1821, I saw wheat uncut, in Suffolk, in October. If we were now to have good, bright, hot weather, for as long a time as we have had wet, the whole of the corn in these Southern counties would be housed, and great part of it threshed out, by the 10th of September. So that all depends on the weather, which appears to be clearing up in spite of Saint Swithin. This Saint's birth-day is the 15th of July; and it is said that if rain fall on his birth-day it will fall on forty days successively. But I believe that you reckon retrospectively as well as prospectively; and if this be the case, we may, this time, escape the extreme unction; for it began to rain on the 26th of June; so that it rained 19 days before the 15th of July; and as it has rained 16 days since, it has rained, in the whole, 35 days, and, of course, five days more will satisfy this wet soul of a saint. Let him take his five days; and there will be plenty of time for us to have wheat at four shillings a bushel. But if the Saint will give us no credit for the 19 days, and will insist upon his forty daily drenchings after the fifteenth of July; if he will have such a soaking as this at the celebration of the anniversary of his birth, let us hope that he is prepared with a miracle for feeding us, and with a still more potent miracle for keeping the farmers from riding over us, filled, as Lord Liverpool thinks their pockets will be, by the annihilation of their crops!
The upland meadow grass is, a great deal of it, not cut yet along the Weald. So that in these parts there has been not a great deal of hay spoiled. The clover hay was got in very well; and only a small part of the meadow hay has been spoiled in this part of the country. This is not the case, however, in other parts, where the grass was forwarder, and where it was cut before the rain came. Upon the whole, however, much hay does not appear to have been spoiled as yet. The farmers along here, have, most of them, begun to cut to-day. This has been a fine day; and it is clear that they expect it to continue. I saw but two pieces of Swedish turnips between the Wen and Reigate, but one at Reigate, and but one between Reigate and Worth. During a like distance in Norfolk or Suffolk, you would see two or three hundred fields of this sort of root. Those that I do see here look well. The white turnips are just up, or just sown, though there are some which have rough leaves already. This Weald is, indeed, not much of land for turnips; but from what I see here, and from what I know of the weather, I think that the turnips must be generally good. The after-grass is surprisingly fine. The lands which have had hay cut and carried from them are, I think, more beautiful than I ever saw them before. It should, however, always be borne in mind that this beautiful grass is by no means the best. An acre of this grass will not make a quarter part so much butter as an acre of rusty-looking pasture, made rusty by the rays of the sun. Sheep on the commons die of the beautiful grass produced by long-continued rains at this time of the year. Even geese, hardy as they are, die from the same cause. The rain will give quantity; but without sun the quality must be poor at the best. The woods have not shot much this year. The cold winds, the frosts, that we had up to Midsummer, prevented the trees from growing much. They are beginning to shoot now; but the wood must be imperfectly ripened.
I met at Worth a beggar, who told me, in consequence of my asking where he belonged, that he was born in South Carolina. I found, at last, that he was born in the English army, during the American rebel-war; that he became a soldier himself; and that it had been his fate to serve under the Duke of York, in Holland; under General Whitelock, at Buenos Ayres; under Sir John Moore, at Corunna; and under "the Greatest Captain," at Talavera! This poor fellow did not seem to be at all aware that in the last case he partook in a victory! He had never before heard of its being a victory. He, poor fool, thought that it was a defeat. "Why," said he, "we ran away, Sir." Oh, yes! said I, and so you did afterwards, perhaps, in Portugal, when Massena was at your heels; but it is only in certain cases that running away is a mark of being defeated; or, rather, it is only with certain commanders. A matter of much more interest to us, however, is that the wars for "social order," not forgetting Gatton and Old Sarum, have filled the country with beggars, who have been, or who pretend to have been, soldiers and sailors. For want of looking well into this matter, many good and just, and even sensible men are led to give to these army and navy beggars what they refuse to others. But if reason were consulted, she would ask what pretensions these have to a preference? She would see in them men who had become soldiers or sailors because they wished to live without that labour by which other men are content to get their bread. She would ask the soldier beggar whether he did not voluntarily engage to perform services such as were performed at Manchester; and if she pressed him for the motive to this engagement, could he assign any motive other than that of wishing to live without work upon the fruit of the work of other men? And why should reason not be listened to? Why should she not be consulted in every such case? And if she were consulted, which would she tell you was the most worthy of your compassion, the man who, no matter from what cause, is become a beggar after forty years spent in the raising of food and raiment for others as well as for himself; or the man who, no matter again from what cause, is become a beggar after forty years living upon the labour of others, and during the greater part of which time he has been living in a barrack, there kept for purposes explained by Lord Palmerston, and always in readiness to answer those purposes? As to not giving to beggars, I think there is a law against giving! However, give to them people will, as long as they ask. Remove the cause of the beggary, and we shall see no more beggars; but as long as there are boroughmongers there will be beggars enough.
Horsham (Sussex), Thursday, 31 July.
I left Worth this afternoon about 5 o'clock, and am got here to sleep, intending to set off for Petworth in the morning, with a view of crossing the South Downs and then going into Hampshire through Havant, and along at the southern foot of Portsdown Hill, where I shall see the earliest corn in England. From Worth you come to Crawley along some pretty good land; you then turn to the left and go two miles along the road from the Wen to Brighton; then you turn to the right, and go over six of the worst miles in England, which miles terminate but a few hundred yards before you enter Horsham. The first two of these miserable miles go through the estate of Lord Erskine. It was a bare heath, with here and there, in the better parts of it, some scrubby birch. It has been, in part, planted with fir-trees, which are as ugly as the heath was: and, in short, it is a most villanous tract. After quitting it, you enter a forest; but a most miserable one; and this is followed by a large common, now enclosed, cut up, disfigured, spoiled, and the labourers all driven from its skirts. I have seldom travelled over eight miles so well calculated to fill the mind with painful reflections. The ride has, however, this in it: that the ground is pretty much elevated, and enables you to look about you. You see the Surrey hills away to the North; Hindhead and Blackdown to the North West and West; and the South Downs from the West to the East. The sun was shining upon all these, though it was cloudy where I was. The soil is a poor, miserable, clayey-looking sand, with a sort of sandstone underneath. When you get down into this town, you are again in the Weald of Sussex. I believe that Weald meant clay, or low, wet, stiff land. This is a very nice, solid, country town. Very clean, as all the towns in Sussex are. The people very clean. The Sussex women are very nice in their dress and in their houses. The men and boys wear smock-frocks more than they do in some counties. When country people do not they always look dirty and comfortless. This has been a pretty good day; but there was a little rain in the afternoon; so that St. Swithin keeps on as yet, at any rate. The hay has been spoiled here, in cases where it has been cut; but a great deal of it is not yet cut. I speak of the meadows; for the clover-hay was all well got in. The grass, which is not cut, is receiving great injury. It is, in fact, in many cases rotting upon the ground. As to corn, from Crawley to Horsham there is none worth speaking of. What there is is very good, in general, considering the quality of the soil. It is about as backward as at Worth: the barley and oats green, and the wheat beginning to change colour.
Billingshurst (Sussex), Friday Morning, 1 Aug.
This village is 7 miles from Horsham, and I got here to breakfast about seven o'clock. A very pretty village, and a very nice breakfast in a very neat little parlour of a very decent public-house. The landlady sent her son to get me some cream, and he was just such a chap as I was at his age, and dressed just in the same sort of way, his main garment being a blue smock-frock, faded from wear, and mended with pieces of new stuff, and, of course, not faded. The sight of this smock-frock brought to my recollection many things very dear to me. This boy will, I dare say, perform his part at Billingshurst, or at some place not far from it. If accident had not taken me from a similar scene, how many villains and fools, who have been well teazed and tormented, would have slept in peace at night, and have fearlessly swaggered about by day! When I look at this little chap; at his smock-frock, his nailed shoes, and his clean, plain, and coarse shirt, I ask myself, will anything, I wonder, ever send this chap across the ocean to tackle the base, corrupt, perjured Republican Judges of Pennsylvania? Will this little, lively, but, at the same time, simple boy, ever become the terror of villains and hypocrites across the Atlantic? What a chain of strange circumstances there must be to lead this boy to thwart a miscreant tyrant like Mackeen, the Chief Justice and afterwards Governor of Pennsylvania, and to expose the corruptions of the band of rascals, called a "Senate and a House of Representatives," at Harrisburgh, in that state!
I was afraid of rain, and got on as fast as I could: that is to say, as fast as my own diligence could help me on; for, as to my horse, he is to go only so fast. However, I had no rain; and got to Petworth, nine miles further, by about ten o'clock.
Petworth (Sussex), Friday Evening, 1 Aug.
No rain, until just at sunset, and then very little. I must now look back. From Horsham to within a few miles of Petworth is in the Weald of Sussex; stiff land, small fields, broad hedge-rows, and invariably thickly planted with fine, growing oak trees. The corn here consists chiefly of wheat and oats. There are some bean-fields, and some few fields of peas; but very little barley along here. The corn is very good all along the Weald; backward; the wheat almost green; the oats quite green; but, late as it is, I see no blight; and the farmers tell me that there is no blight. There may be yet, however; and therefore our Government, our "paternal Government," so anxious to prevent "over production," need not despair as yet, at any rate. The beans in the Weald are not very good. They got lousy before the wet came; and it came rather too late to make them recover what they had lost. What peas there are look well. Along here the wheat, in general, may be fit to cut in about 16 days' time; some sooner; but some later, for some is perfectly green. No Swedish turnips all along this country. The white turnips are just up, coming up, or just sown. The farmers are laying out lime upon the wheat fallows, and this is the universal practice of the country. I see very few sheep. There are a good many orchards along in the Weald, and they have some apples this year; but, in general, not many. The apple trees are planted very thickly, and, of course, they are small; but they appear healthy in general; and in some places there is a good deal of fruit, even this year. As you approach Petworth, the ground rises and the soil grows lighter. There is a hill which I came over, about two miles from Petworth, whence I had a clear view of the Surrey chalk-hills, Leithhill, Hindhead, Blackdown, and of the South Downs, towards one part of which I was advancing. The pigs along here are all black, thin-haired, and of precisely the same sort of those that I took from England to Long Island, and with which I pretty well stocked the American states. By-the-by, the trip, which Old Sidmouth and crew gave me to America, was attended with some interesting consequences; amongst which were the introducing of the Sussex pigs into the American farmyards; the introduction of the Swedish turnip into the American fields; the introduction of American apple trees into England; and the introduction of the making, in England, of the straw plat, to supplant the Italian; for, had my son not been in America, this last would not have taken place; and in America he would not have been, had it not been for Old Sidmouth and crew. One thing more, and that is of more importance than all the rest, Peel's Bill arose out of the "puff-out" Registers; these arose out of the trip to Long Island; and out of Peel's Bill has arisen the best bothering that the wigs of the Boroughmongers ever received, which bothering will end in the destruction of the Boroughmongering. It is curious, and very useful, thus to trace events to their causes.
Soon after quitting Billingshurst I crossed the river Arun, which has a canal running alongside of it. At this there are large timber and coal yards, and kilns for lime. This appears to be a grand receiving and distributing place. The river goes down to Arundale, and, together with the valley that it runs through, gives the town its name. This valley, which is very pretty, and which winds about a good deal, is the dale of the Arun: and the town is the town of the Arun-dale. To-day, near a place called Westborough Green, I saw a woman bleaching her home-spun and home-woven linen. I have not seen such a thing before, since I left Long Island. There, and, indeed, all over the American States, North of Maryland, and especially in the New England States, almost the whole of both linen and woollen used in the country, and a large part of that used in towns, is made in the farmhouses. There are thousands and thousands of families who never use either, except of their own making. All but the weaving is done by the family. There is a loom in the house, and the weaver goes from house to house. I once saw about three thousand farmers, or rather country people, at a horse-race in Long Island, and my opinion was, that there were not five hundred who were not dressed in home-spun coats. As to linen, no farmer's family thinks of buying linen. The Lords of the Loom have taken from the land, in England, this part of its due; and hence one cause of the poverty, misery, and pauperism that are becoming so frightful throughout the country. A national debt and all the taxation and gambling belonging to it have a natural tendency to draw wealth into great masses. These masses produce a power of congregating manufactures, and of making the many work at them, for the gain of a few. The taxing Government finds great convenience in these congregations. It can lay its hand easily upon a part of the produce; as ours does with so much effect. But the land suffers greatly from this, and the country must finally feel the fatal effects of it. The country people lose part of their natural employment. The women and children, who ought to provide a great part of the raiment, have nothing to do. The fields must have men and boys; but where there are men and boys there will be women and girls; and as the Lords of the Loom have now a set of real slaves, by the means of whom they take away a great part of the employment of the countrywomen and girls, these must be kept by poor-rates in whatever degree they lose employment through the Lords of the Loom. One would think that nothing can be much plainer than this; and yet you hear the jolterheads congratulating one another upon the increase of Manchester, and such places! My straw affair will certainly restore to the land some of the employment of its women and girls. It will be impossible for any of the "rich ruffians;" any of the horse-power or steam-power or air-power ruffians; any of these greedy, grinding ruffians, to draw together bands of men, women and children, and to make them slaves, in the working of straw. The raw material comes of itself, and the hand, and the hand alone, can convert it to use. I thought well of this before I took one single step in the way of supplanting the Leghorn bonnets. If I had not been certain that no rich ruffian, no white slave holder, could ever arise out of it, assuredly one line upon the subject never would have been written by me. Better a million times that the money should go to Italy; better that it should go to enrich even the rivals and enemies of the country; than that it should enable these hard, these unfeeling men, to draw English people into crowds and make them slaves, and slaves too of the lowest and most degraded cast.
As I was coming into this town I saw a new-fashioned sort of stone-cracking. A man had a sledge-hammer, and was cracking the heads of the big stones that had been laid on the road a good while ago. This is a very good way; but this man told me that he was set at this because the farmers had no employment for many of the men. "Well," said I, "but they pay you to do this!" "Yes," said he. "Well, then," said I, "is it not better for them to pay you for working on their land?" "I can't tell, indeed, Sir, how that is." But only think; here is half the haymaking to do: I saw, while I was talking to this man, fifty people in one hay-field of Lord Egremont, making and carrying hay; and yet, at a season like this, the farmers are so poor as to be unable to pay the labourers to work on the land! From this cause there will certainly be some falling off in production. This will, of course, have a tendency to keep prices from falling so low as they would do if there were no falling off. But can this benefit the farmer and landlord? The poverty of the farmers is seen in their diminished stock. The animals are sold younger than formerly. Last year was a year of great slaughtering. There will be less of everything produced; and the quality of each thing will be worse. It will be a lower and more mean concern altogether. Petworth is a nice market town; but solid and clean. The great abundance of stone in the land hereabouts has caused a corresponding liberality in paving and wall building; so that everything of the building kind has an air of great strength, and produces the agreeable idea of durability. Lord Egremont's house is close to the town, and, with its out-buildings, garden walls, and other erections, is, perhaps, nearly as big as the town; though the town is not a very small one. The Park is very fine, and consists of a parcel of those hills and dells which Nature formed here when she was in one of her most sportive modes. I have never seen the earth flung about in such a wild way as round about Hindhead and Blackdown; and this Park forms a part of this ground. From an elevated part of it, and, indeed, from each of many parts of it, you see all around the country to the distance of many miles. From the South East to the North West, the hills are so lofty and so near, that they cut the view rather short; but for the rest of the circle you can see to a very great distance. It is, upon the whole, a most magnificent seat, and the Jews will not be able to get it from the present owner; though, if he live many years, they will give even him a twist. If I had time, I would make an actual survey of one whole county, and find out how many of the old gentry have lost their estates, and have been supplanted by the Jews, since Pitt began his reign. I am sure I should prove that in number they are one-half extinguished. But it is now that they go. The little ones are, indeed, gone; and the rest will follow in proportion as the present farmers are exhausted. These will keep on giving rents as long as they can beg or borrow the money to pay rents with. But a little more time will so completely exhaust them that they will be unable to pay; and as that takes place, the landlords will lose their estates. Indeed many of them, and even a large portion of them, have, in fact, no estates now. They are called theirs; but the mortgagees and annuitants receive the rents. As the rents fall off, sales must take place, unless in cases of entails; and if this thing go on, we shall see Acts passed to cut off entails, in order that the Jews may be put into full possession. Such, thus far, will be the result of our "glorious victories" over the French! Such will be, in part, the price of the deeds of Pitt, Addington, Perceval, and their successors. For having applauded such deeds; for having boasted of the Wellesleys; for having bragged of battles won by money and by money only, the nation deserves that which it will receive; and as to the landlords, they, above all men living, deserve punishment. They put the power into the hands of Pitt and his crew to torment the people; to keep the people down; to raise soldiers and to build barracks for this purpose. These base landlords laughed when affairs like that of Manchester took place. They laughed at the Blanketteers. They laughed when Canning jested about Ogden's rupture. Let them, therefore, now take the full benefit of the measures of Pitt and his crew. They would fain have us believe that the calamities they endure do not arise from the acts of the Government. What do they arise from, then? The Jacobins did not contract the Debt of 800,000,000l. sterling. The Jacobins did not create a Dead Weight of 150,000,000l. The Jacobins did not cause a pauper-charge of 200,000,000l. by means of "new enclosure bills," "vast improvements," paper-money, potatoes, and other "proofs of prosperity." The Jacobins did not do these things. And will the Government pretend that "Providence" did it? That would be "blasphemy" indeed.----Poh! These things are the price of efforts to crush freedom in France, lest the example of France should produce a reform in England. These things are the price of that undertaking; which, however, has not yet been crowned with success; for the question is not yet decided. They boast of their victory over the French. The Pitt crew boast of their achievements in the war. They boast of the battle of Waterloo. Why! what fools could not get the same, or the like, if they had as much money to get it with? Shooting with a silver gun is a saying amongst game-eaters. That is to say, purchasing the game. A waddling, fat fellow that does not know how to prime and load will, in this way, beat the best shot in the country. And this is the way that our crew "beat" the people of France. They laid out, in the first place, six hundred millions which they borrowed, and for which they mortgaged the revenues of the nation. Then they contracted for a "dead weight" to the amount of one hundred and fifty millions. Then they stripped the labouring classes of the commons, of their kettles, their bedding, their beer-barrels; and, in short, made them all paupers, and thus fixed on the nation a permanent annual charge of about 8 or 9 millions, or a gross debt of 200,000,000l. By these means, by these anticipations, our crew did what they thought would keep down the French nation for ages; and what they were sure would, for the present, enable them to keep up the tithes and other things of the same sort in England. But the crew did not reflect on the consequences of the anticipations! Or, at least, the landlords, who gave the crew their power, did not thus reflect. These consequences are now come, and are coming; and that must be a base man indeed who does not see them with pleasure.
Singleton (Sussex), Saturday, 2 Aug.
Ever since the middle of March I have been trying remedies for the hooping-cough, and have, I believe, tried everything, except riding, wet to the skin, two or three hours amongst the clouds on the South Downs. This remedy is now under trial. As Lord Liverpool said, the other day, of the Irish Tithe Bill, it is "under experiment." I am treating my disorder (with better success, I hope) in somewhat the same way that the pretty fellows at Whitehall treat the disorders of poor Ireland. There is one thing in favour of this remedy of mine, I shall know the effect of it, and that, too, in a short time. It rained a little last night. I got off from Petworth without baiting my horse, thinking that the weather looked suspicious; and that St. Swithin meaned to treat me to a dose. I had no great-coat, nor any means of changing my clothes. The hooping-cough made me anxious; but I had fixed on going along the South Downs from Donnington Hill down to Lavant, and then to go on the flat to the South foot of Portsdown Hill, and to reach Fareham to-night. Two men, whom I met soon after I set off, assured me that it would not rain. I came on to Donnington, which lies at the foot of that part of the South Downs which I had to go up. Before I came to this point, I crossed the Arun and its canal again; and here was another place of deposit for timber, lime, coals, and other things. White, in his history of Selborne, mentions a hill, which is one of the Hindhead group, from which two springs (one on each side of the hill) send water into the two seas: the Atlantic and the German Ocean! This is big talk: but it is a fact. One of the streams becomes the Arun, which falls into the Channel; and the other, after winding along amongst the hills and hillocks between Hindhead and Godalming, goes into the river Wey, which falls into the Thames at Weybridge. The soil upon leaving Petworth, and at Petworth, seems very good; a fine deep loam, a sort of mixture of sand and soft chalk. I then came to a sandy common; a piece of ground that seemed to have no business there; it looked as if it had been tossed from Hindhead or Blackdown. The common, however, during the rage for "improvements," has been enclosed. That impudent fellow, Old Rose, stated the number of Enclosure Bills as an indubitable proof of "national prosperity." There was some rye upon this common, the sight of which would have gladdened the heart of Lord Liverpool. It was, in parts, not more than eight inches high. It was ripe, and, of course, the straw dead; or I should have found out the owner, and have bought it to make bonnets of! I defy the Italians to grow worse rye than this. The reader will recollect that I always said that we could grow as poor corn as any Italians that ever lived. The village of Donton lies at the foot of one of these great chalk ridges which are called the South Downs. The ridge in this place is, I think, about three-fourths of a mile high, by the high road, which is obliged to go twisting about, in order to get to the top of it. The hill sweeps round from about West North West, to East South East; and, of course, it keeps off all the heavy winds, and especially the South West winds, before which, in this part of England (and all the South and Western part of it) even the oak trees seem as if they would gladly flee; for it shaves them up as completely as you see a quickset hedge shaved by hook or shears. Talking of hedges reminds me of having seen a box-hedge, just as I came out of Petworth, more than twelve feet broad, and about fifteen feet high. I dare say it is several centuries old. I think it is about forty yards long. It is a great curiosity.
The apple trees at Donnington show their gratitude to the hill for its shelter; for I have seldom seen apple trees in England so large, so fine, and, in general, so flourishing. I should like to have, or to see, an orchard of American apples under this hill. The hill, you will observe, does not shade the ground at Donnington. It slopes too much for that. But it affords complete shelter from the mischievous winds. It is very pretty to look down upon this little village as you come winding up the hill.
From this hill I ought to have had a most extensive view. I ought to have seen the Isle of Wight and the sea before me; and to have looked back to Chalk Hill at Reigate, at the foot of which I had left some bonnet-grass bleaching. But, alas! Saint Swithin had begun his works for the day before I got to the top of the hill. Soon after the two turnip-hoers had assured me that there would be no rain, I saw, beginning to poke up over the South Downs (then right before me) several parcels of those white, curled clouds that we call Judges' Wigs. And they are just like Judges' wigs. Not the parson-like things which the Judges wear when they have to listen to the dull wrangling and duller jests of the lawyers; but those big wigs which hang down about their shoulders, when they are about to tell you a little of their intentions, and when their very looks say, "Stand clear!" These clouds (if rising from the South West) hold precisely the same language to the great-coatless traveller. Rain is sure to follow them. The sun was shining very beautifully when I first saw these Judges' wigs rising over the hills. At the sight of them he soon began to hide his face! and before I got to the top of the hill of Donton, the white clouds had become black, had spread themselves all around, and a pretty decent and sturdy rain began to fall. I had resolved to come to this place (Singleton) to breakfast. I quitted the turnpike road (from Petworth to Chichester) at a village called Upwaltham, about a mile from Donnington Hill; and came down a lane, which led me first to a village called Eastdean; then to another called Westdean, I suppose; and then to this village of Singleton, and here I am on the turnpike road from Midhurst to Chichester. The lane goes along through some of the finest farms in the world. It is impossible for corn land and for agriculture to be finer than these. In cases like mine, you are pestered to death to find out the way to set out to get from place to place. The people you have to deal with are innkeepers, ostlers, and post-boys; and they think you mad if you express your wish to avoid turnpike roads; and a great deal more than half mad if you talk of going, even from necessity, by any other road. They think you a strange fellow if you will not ride six miles on a turnpike road rather than two on any other road. This plague I experienced on this occasion. I wanted to go from Petworth to Havant. My way was through Singleton and Funtington. I had no business at Chichester, which took me too far to the South; nor at Midhurst, which took me too far to the West. But though I stayed all day (after my arrival) at Petworth, and though I slept there, I could get no directions how to set out to come to Singleton, where I am now. I started, therefore, on the Chichester road, trusting to my enquiries of the country people as I came on. By these means I got hither, down a long valley, on the South Downs, which valley winds and twists about amongst hills, some higher and some lower, forming cross dells, inlets, and ground in such a variety of shapes that it is impossible to describe; and the whole of the ground, hill as well as dell, is fine, most beautiful corn land, or is covered with trees or underwood. As to St. Swithin, I set him at defiance. The road was flinty, and very flinty. I rode a foot pace; and got here wet to the skin. I am very glad I came this road. The corn is all fine; all good; fine crops, and no appearance of blight. The barley extremely fine. The corn not forwarder than in the Weald. No beans here; few oats comparatively; chiefly wheat and barley; but great quantities of Swedish turnips, and those very forward. More Swedish turnips here upon one single farm than upon all the farms that I saw between the Wen and Petworth. These turnips are, in some places, a foot high, and nearly cover the ground. The farmers are, however, plagued by this St. Swithin, who keeps up a continual drip, which prevents the thriving of the turnips and the killing of the weeds. The orchards are good here in general. Fine walnut trees, and an abundant crop of walnuts. This is a series of villages all belonging to the Duke of Richmond, the outskirts of whose park and woods come up to these farming lands, all of which belong to him; and I suppose that every inch of land that I came through this morning belongs either to the Duke of Richmond or to Lord Egremont. No harm in that, mind, if those who till the land have fair play; and I should act unjustly towards these noblemen if I insinuated that the husbandmen have not fair play as far as the landlords are concerned; for everybody speaks well of them. There is, besides, no misery to be seen here. I have seen no wretchedness in Sussex; nothing to be at all compared to that which I have seen in other parts; and as to these villages in the South Downs, they are beautiful to behold. Hume and other historians rail against the feudal-system; and we, "enlightened" and "free" creatures as we are, look back with scorn, or, at least, with surprise and pity, to the "vassalage" of our forefathers. But if the matter were well enquired into, not slurred over, but well and truly examined, we should find that the people of these villages were as free in the days of William Rufus as are the people of the present day; and that vassalage, only under other names, exists now as completely as it existed then. Well; but out of this, if true, arises another question: namely, Whether the millions would derive any benefit from being transferred from these great Lords who possess them by hundreds, to Jews and jobbers who would possess them by half-dozens, or by couples? One thing we may say with a certainty of being right: and that is, that the transfer would be bad for the Lords themselves. There is an appearance of comfort about the dwellings of the labourers all along here that is very pleasant to behold. The gardens are neat, and full of vegetables of the best kinds. I see very few of "Ireland's lazy root;" and never, in this country, will the people be base enough to lie down and expire from starvation under the operation of the extreme unction! Nothing but a potato-eater will ever do that. As I came along between Upwaltham and Eastdean, I called to me a young man, who, along with other turnip-hoers, was sitting under the shelter of a hedge at breakfast. He came running to me with his victuals in his hand; and I was glad to see that his food consisted of a good lump of household bread and not a very small piece of bacon. I did not envy him his appetite, for I had at that moment a very good one of my own; but I wanted to know the distance I had to go before I should get to a good public-house. In parting with him, I said, "You do get some bacon then?" "Oh, yes! Sir," said he, and with an emphasis and a swag of the head which seemed to say, "We must and will have that." I saw, and with great delight, a pig at almost every labourer's house. The houses are good and warm; and the gardens some of the very best that I have seen in England. What a difference, good God! what a difference between this country and the neighbourhood of those corrupt places Great Bedwin and Cricklade. What sort of breakfast would this man have had in a mess of cold potatoes? Could he have worked, and worked in the wet, too, with such food? Monstrous! No society ought to exist where the labourers live in a hog-like sort of way. The Morning Chronicle is everlastingly asserting the mischievous consequences of the want of enlightening these people "i' th a Sooth;" and telling us how well they are off in the North. Now this I know, that in the North the "enlightened" people eat sowens, burgoo, porridge, and potatoes: that is to say, oatmeal and water, or the root of extreme unction. If this be the effect of their light, give me the darkness "o' th a Sooth." This is according to what I have heard. If, when I go to the North, I find the labourers eating more meat than those of the "Sooth," I shall then say that "enlightening" is a very good thing; but give me none of that "light," or of that "grace," which makes a man content with oatmeal and water, or that makes him patiently lie down and die of starvation amidst abundance of food. The Morning Chronicle hears the labourers crying out in Sussex. They are right to cry out in time. When they are actually brought down to the extreme unction it is useless to cry out. And next to the extreme unction is the porridge of the "enlightened" slaves who toil in the factories for the Lords of the Loom. Talk of vassals! Talk of villains! Talk of serfs! Are there any of these, or did feudal times ever see any of them, so debased, so absolutely slaves, as the poor creatures who, in the "enlightened" North, are compelled to work fourteen hours in a day, in a heat of eighty-four degrees; and who are liable to punishment for looking out at a window of the factory!
This is really a soaking day, thus far. I got here at nine o'clock. I stripped off my coat, and put it by the kitchen fire. In a parlour just eight feet square I have another fire, and have dried my shirt on my back. We shall see what this does for a hooping-cough. The clouds fly so low as to be seen passing by the sides of even little hills on these downs. The Devil is said to be busy in a high wind; but he really appears to be busy now in this South West wind. The Quakers will, next market day, at Mark Lane, be as busy as he. They and the Ministers and St. Swithin and Devil all seem to be of a mind.
I must not forget the churches. That of Donnington is very small for a church. It is about twenty feet wide and thirty long. It is, however, sufficient for the population, the amount of which is two hundred and twenty-two, not one half of whom are, of course, ever at church at one time. There is, however, plenty of room for the whole: the "tower" of this church is about double the size of a sentry-box. The parson, whose name is Davidson, did not, when the Return was laid before Parliament, in 1818, reside in the parish. Though the living is a large living, the parsonage house was let to "a lady and her three daughters." What impudence a man must have to put this into a Return! The church at Upwaltham is about such another, and the "tower" still less than that at Donnington. Here the population is seventy-nine. The parish is a rectory, and in the Return before mentioned, the parson (whose name was Tripp) says that the church will hold the population, but that the parsonage house will not hold him! And why? Because it is "a miserable cottage." I looked about for this "miserable cottage," and could not find it. What on impudent fellow this must have been! And, indeed, what a state of impudence have they not now arrived at! Did he, when he was ordained, talk anything about a fine house to live in? Did Jesus Christ and Saint Paul talk about fine houses? Did not this priest most solemnly vow to God, upon the altar, that he would be constant, in season and out of season, in watching over the souls of his flock? However, it is useless to remonstrate with this set of men. Nothing will have any effect upon them. They will keep grasping at the tithes as long as they can reach them. "A miserable cottage!" What impudence! What, Mr. Tripp, is it a fine house that you have been appointed and ordained to live in? Lord Egremont is the patron of Mr. Tripp; and he has a duty to perform too; for the living is not his: he is, in this case, only an hereditary trustee for the public; and he ought to see that this parson resides in the parish, which, according to his own Return, yields him 125l. a-year. Eastdean is a Vicarage, with a population of 353, a church which the parson says will hold 200, and which I say will hold 600 or 700, and a living worth 85l. a-year, in the gift of the Bishop of Chichester.
Westdean is united with Singleton, the living is in the gift of the Church at Chichester and the Duke of Richmond alternately; it is a large living, it has a population of 613, and the two churches, says the parson, will hold 200 people! What careless, or what impudent fellows these must have been. These two churches will hold a thousand people, packed much less close than they are in meeting houses.
At Upwaltham there is a toll gate, and when the woman opened the door of the house to come and let me through, I saw some straw plat lying in a chair. She showed it me; and I found that it was made by her husband, in the evenings, after he came home from work, in order to make him a hat for the harvest. I told her how to get better straw for the purpose; and when I told her that she must cut the grass, or the grain, green, she said, "Aye, I dare say it is so: and I wonder we never thought of that before; for we sometimes make hats out of rushes, cut green, and dried, and the hats are very durable." This woman ought to have my Cottage Economy. She keeps the toll-gate at Upwaltham, which is called Waltham, and which is on the turnpike road from Petworth to Chichester. Now, if any gentleman who lives at Chichester will call upon my Son, at the Office of the Register in Fleet Street, and ask for a copy of Cottage Economy, to be given to this woman, he will receive the copy, and my thanks, if he will have the goodness to give it to her, and to point to her the Essay on Straw Plat.
Fareham (Hants), Saturday, 2 August.
Here I am in spite of St. Swithin!--The truth is, that the Saint is like most other oppressors; rough him! rough him! and he relaxes. After drying myself, and sitting the better part of four hours at Singleton, I started in the rain, boldly setting the Saint at defiance, and expecting to have not one dry thread by the time I got to Havant, which is nine miles from Fareham, and four from Cosham. To my most agreeable surprise, the rain ceased before I got by Selsey, I suppose it is called, where Lord Selsey's house and beautiful and fine estate is. On I went, turning off to the right to go to Funtington and Westbourn, and getting to Havant to bait my horse, about four o'clock.
From Lavant (about two miles back from Funtington) the ground begins to be a sea side flat. The soil is somewhat varied in quality and kind; but with the exception of an enclosed common between Funtington and Westbourn, it is all good soil. The corn of all kinds good and earlier than further back. They have begun cutting peas here, and near Lavant I saw a field of wheat nearly ripe. The Swedish turnips very fine, and still earlier than on the South Downs. Prodigious crops of walnuts; but the apples bad along here. The South West winds have cut them off; and, indeed, how should it be otherwise, if these winds happen to prevail in May, or early in June?
On the new enclosure, near Funtington, the wheat and oats are both nearly ripe.
In a new enclosure, near Westbourn, I saw the only really blighted wheat that I have yet seen this year. "Oh!" exclaimed I, "that my Lord Liverpool, that my much respected stern-path-of-duty-man, could but see that wheat, which God and the seedsman intended to be white; but which the Devil (listening to the prayers of the Quakers) has made black! Oh! could but my Lord see it, lying flat upon the ground, with the May-weed and the Couch-grass pushing up through it, and with a whole flock of rooks pecking away at its ears! Then would my much valued Lord say, indeed, that the 'difficulties' of agriculture are about to receive the 'greatest abatement!'"
But now I come to one of the great objects of my journey: that is to say, to see the state of the corn along at the South foot and on the South side of Portsdown Hill. It is impossible that there can be, anywhere, a better corn country than this. The hill is eight miles long, and about three-fourths of a mile high, beginning at the road that runs along at the foot of the hill. On the hill-side the corn land goes rather better than half way up; and on the sea-side the corn land is about the third (it may be half) a mile wide. Portsdown Hill is very much in the shape of an oblong tin cover to a dish. From Bedhampton, which lies at the Eastern end of the hill, to Fareham, which is at the Western end of it, you have brought under your eye not less than eight square miles of corn fields, with scarcely a hedge or ditch of any consequence, and being, on an average, from twenty to forty acres each in extent. The land is excellent. The situation good for manure. The spot the earliest in the whole kingdom. Here, if the corn were backward, then the harvest must be backward. We were talking at Reigate of the prospect of a backward harvest. I observed that it was a rule that if no wheat were cut under Portsdown Hill on the hill fair-day, 26th July, the harvest must be generally backward. When I made this observation the fair-day was passed; but I determined in my mind to come and see how the matter stood. When, therefore, I got to the village of Bedhampton, I began to look out pretty sharply. I came on to Wimmering, which is just about the mid-way along the foot of the hill, and there I saw, at a good distance from me, five men reaping in a field of wheat of about 40 acres. I found, upon enquiry, that they began this morning, and that the wheat belongs to Mr. Boniface, of Wimmering. Here the first sheaf is cut that is cut in England: that the reader may depend upon. It was never known that the average even of Hampshire was less than ten days behind the average of Portsdown Hill. The corn under the hill is as good as I ever saw it, except in the year 1813. No beans here. No peas. Scarcely any oats. Wheat, barley, and turnips. The Swedish turnips not so good as on the South Downs and near Funtington; but the wheat full as good, rather better; and the barley as good as it is possible to be. In looking at these crops one wonders whence are to come the hands to clear them off.
A very pleasant ride to-day; and the pleasanter for my having set the wet Saint at defiance. It is about thirty miles from Petworth to Fareham; and I got in in very good time. I have now come, if I include my boltings, for the purpose of looking at farms and woods, a round hundred miles from the Wen to this town of Fareham; and in the whole of the hundred miles I have not seen one single wheat-rick, though I have come through as fine corn countries as any in England, and by the homesteads of the richest of farmers. Not one single wheat-rick have I seen, and not one rick of any sort of corn. I never saw nor heard of the like of this before; and if I had not witnessed the fact with my own eyes I could not have believed it. There are some farmers who have corn in their barns, perhaps; but when there is no rick left, there is very little corn in the hands of farmers. Yet the markets, St. Swithin notwithstanding, do not rise. This harvest must be three weeks later than usual, and the last harvest was three weeks earlier than usual. The last crop was begun upon at once, on account of the badness of the wheat of the year before. So that the last crop will have had to give food for thirteen months and a half. And yet the markets do not rise! And yet there are men, farmers, mad enough to think that they have "got past the bad place," and that things will come about, and are coming about! And Lethbridge, of the Collective, withdraws his motion because he has got what he wanted: namely, a return of good and "remunerating prices!" The Morning Chronicle of this day, which has met me at this place, has the following paragraph. "The weather is much improved, though it does not yet assume the character of being fine. At the Corn Exchange since Monday the arrivals consist of 7,130 quarters of wheat, 450 quarters of barley, 8,300 quarters of oats, and 9,200 sacks of flour. The demand for wheat is next to Zero, and for oats it is extremely dull. To effect sales, prices are not much attended to, for the demand cannot be increased at the present currency. The farmers should pay attention to oats, for the foreign new, under the King's lock, will be brought into consumption, unless a decline takes place immediately, and a weight will thereby be thrown over the markets, which under existing circumstances will be extremely detrimental to the agricultural interests. Its distress however does not deserve much sympathy, for as soon as there was a prospect of the payment of rents, the cause of the people was abandoned by the Representatives of Agriculture in the Collected Wisdom, and Mr. Brougham's most excellent measure for increasing the consumption of Malt was neglected. Where there is no sympathy, none can be expected, and the land proprietors need not in future depend on the assistance of the mercantile and manufacturing interests, should their own distress again require a united effort to remedy the general grievances." As to the mercantile and manufacturing people, what is the land to expect from them? But I agree with the Chronicle that the landlords deserve ruin. They abandoned the public cause the moment they thought that they saw a prospect of getting rents. That prospect will soon disappear, unless they pray hard to St. Swithin to insist upon forty days wet after his birth-day. I do not see what the farmers can do about the price of oats. They have no power to do anything, unless they come with their cavalry horses and storm the "King's lock." In short, it is all confusion in men's minds as well as in their pockets. There must be something completely out of joint when the Government are afraid of the effects of a good crop. I intend to set off to-morrow for Botley, and go thence to Easton; and then to Alton and Crondall and Farnham, to see how the hops are there. By the time that I get back to the Wen I shall know nearly the real state of the case as to crops; and that, at this time, is a great matter.
THROUGH THE SOUTH-EAST OF HAMPSHIRE, BACK THROUGH THE SOUTH-WEST OF SURREY, ALONG THE WEALD OF SURREY, AND THEN OVER THE SURREY HILLS DOWN TO THE WEN.
Batley (Hampshire), 5th August, 1823.
I got to Fareham on Saturday night, after having got a soaking on the South Downs on the morning of that day. On the Sunday morning, intending to go and spend the day at Titchfield (about three miles and a half from Fareham), and perceiving, upon looking out of the window, about 5 o'clock in the morning, that it was likely to rain, I got up, struck a bustle, got up the ostler, set off and got to my destined point before 7 o'clock in the morning. And here I experienced the benefits of early rising; for I had scarcely got well and safely under cover, when St. Swithin began to pour down again, and he continued to pour during the whole of the day. From Fareham to Titchfield village a large part of the ground is a common enclosed some years ago. It is therefore amongst the worst of the land in the country. Yet I did not see a bad field of corn along here, and the Swedish turnips were, I think, full as fine as any that I saw upon the South Downs. But it is to be observed that this land is in the hands of dead-weight people, and is conveniently situated for the receiving of manure from Portsmouth. Before I got to my friend's house, I passed by a farm where I expected to find a wheat-rick standing. I did not, however; and this is the strongest possible proof that the stock of corn is gone out of the hands of the farmers. I set out from Titchfield at 7 o'clock in the evening, and had seven miles to go to reach Botley. It rained, but I got myself well furnished forth as a defence against the rain. I had not gone two hundred yards before the rain ceased; so that I was singularly fortunate as to rain this day; and I had now to congratulate myself on the success of the remedy for the hooping-cough which I used the day before on the South Downs; for really, though I had a spell or two of coughing on Saturday morning when I set out from Petworth, I have not had, up to this hour, any spell at all since I got wet upon the South Downs. I got to Botley about nine o'clock, having stopped two or three times to look about me as I went along; for I had, in the first place, to ride, for about three miles of my road, upon a turnpike road of which I was the projector, and, indeed, the maker. In the next place I had to ride, for something better than half a mile of my way, along between fields and coppices that were mine until they came into the hands of the mortgagee, and by the side of cottages of my own building. The only matter of much interest with me was the state of the inhabitants of those cottages. I stopped at two or three places, and made some little enquiries; I rode up to two or three houses in the village of Botley, which I had to pass through, and just before it was dark I got to a farmhouse close by the church, and what was more, not a great many yards from the dwelling of that delectable creature, the Botley parson, whom, however, I have not seen during my stay at this place.
Botley lies in a valley, the soil of which is a deep and stiff clay. Oak trees grow well; and this year the wheat grows well, as it does upon all the clays that I have seen. I have never seen the wheat better in general, in this part of the country, than it is now. I have, I think, seen it heavier; but never clearer from blight. It is backward compared to the wheat in many other parts; some of it is quite green; but none of it has any appearance of blight. This is not much of a barley country. The oats are good. The beans that I have seen, very indifferent.
The best news that I have learnt here is, that the Botley parson is become quite a gentle creature, compared to what he used to be. The people in the village have told me some most ridiculous stories about his having been hoaxed in London! It seems that somebody danced him up from Botley to London, by telling him that a legacy had been left him, or some such story. Up went the parson on horseback, being in too great a hurry to run the risk of coach. The hoaxers, it appears, got him to some hotel, and there set upon him a whole tribe of applicants, wet-nurses, dry-nurses, lawyers with deeds of conveyance for borrowed money, curates in want of churches, coffin-makers, travelling companions, ladies' maids, dealers in Yorkshire hams, Newcastle coals, and dealers in dried night-soil at Islington. In short, if I am rightly informed, they kept the parson in town for several days, bothered him three parts out of his senses, compelled him to escape, as it were, from a fire; and then, when he got home, he found the village posted all over with handbills giving an account of his adventure, under the pretence of offering 500l. reward for a discovery of the hoaxers! The good of it was the parson ascribed his disgrace to me, and they say that he perseveres to this hour in accusing me of it. Upon my word, I had nothing to do with the matter, and this affair only shows that I am not the only friend that the parson has in the world. Though this may have had a tendency to produce in the parson that amelioration of deportment which is said to become him so well, there is something else that has taken place, which has, in all probability, had a more powerful influence in this way; namely, a great reduction in the value of the parson's living, which was at one time little short of five hundred pounds a year, and which, I believe, is now not the half of that sum! This, to be sure, is not only a natural but a necessary consequence of the change in the value of money. The parsons are neither more nor less than another sort of landlords. They must fall, of course, in their demands, or their demands will not be paid. They may take in kind, but that will answer them no purpose at all. They will be less people than they have been, and will continue to grow less and less, until the day when the whole of the tithes and other Church property, as it is called, shall be applied to public purposes.
Easton (Hampshire), Wednesday Evening, 6th August.
This village of Easton lies at a few miles towards the north-east from Winchester. It is distant from Botley, by the way which I came, about fifteen or sixteen miles. I came through Durley, where I went to the house of farmer Mears. I was very much pleased with what I saw at Durley, which is about two miles from Botley, and is certainly one of the most obscure villages in this whole kingdom. Mrs. Mears, the farmer's wife, had made, of the crested dog's tail grass, a bonnet which she wears herself. I there saw girls platting the straw. They had made plat of several degrees of fineness; and they sell it to some person or persons at Fareham, who, I suppose, makes it into bonnets. Mrs. Mears, who is a very intelligent and clever woman, has two girls at work, each of whom earns per week as much (within a shilling) as her father, who is a labouring man, earns per week. The father has at this time only 7s. per week. These two girls (and not very stout girls) earn six shillings a week each: thus the income of this family is, from seven shillings a week, raised to nineteen shillings a week. I shall suppose that this may in some measure be owing to the generosity of ladies in the neighbourhood, and to their desire to promote this domestic manufacture; but if I suppose that these girls receive double compared to what they will receive for the same quantity of labour when the manufacture becomes more general, is it not a great thing to make the income of the family nineteen shillings a week instead of seven? Very little, indeed, could these poor things have done in the field during the last forty days. And, besides, how clean; how healthful; how everything that one could wish is this sort of employment! The farmer, who is also a very intelligent person, told me that he should endeavour to introduce the manufacture as a thing to assist the obtaining of employment, in order to lessen the amount of the poor-rates. I think it very likely that this will be done in the parish of Durley. A most important matter it is, to put paupers in the way of ceasing to be paupers. I could not help admiring the zeal as well as the intelligence of the farmer's wife, who expressed her readiness to teach the girls and women of the parish, in order to enable them to assist themselves. I shall hear, in all probability, of their proceedings at Durley, and if I do, I shall make a point of communicating to the Public an account of those interesting proceedings. From the very first, from the first moment of my thinking about this straw affair, I regarded it as likely to assist in bettering the lot of the labouring people. If it has not this effect, I value it not. It is not worth the attention of any of us; but I am satisfied that this is the way in which it will work. I have the pleasure to know that there is one labouring family, at any rate, who are living well through my means. It is I, who, without knowing them, without ever having seen them, without even now knowing their names, have given the means of good living to a family who were before half-starved. This is indisputably my work; and when I reflect that there must necessarily be, now, some hundreds of families, and shortly, many thousands of families, in England, who are and will be, through my means, living well instead of being half-starved, I cannot but feel myself consoled; I cannot but feel that I have some compensation for the sentence passed upon me by Ellenborough, Grose, Le Blanc, and Bailey; and I verily believe, that in the case of this one single family in the parish of Durley I have done more good than Bailey ever did in the whole course of his life, notwithstanding his pious Commentary on the Book of Common Prayer. I will allow nothing to be good, with regard to the labouring classes, unless it make an addition to their victuals, drink, or clothing. As to their minds, that is much too sublime matter for me to think about. I know that they are in rags, and that they have not a belly-full; and I know that the way to make them good, to make them honest, to make them dutiful, to make them kind to one another, is to enable them to live well; and I also know that none of these things will ever be accomplished by Methodist sermons, and by those stupid, at once stupid and malignant things, and roguish things, called Religious Tracts.
It seems that this farmer at Durley has always read the Register, since the first appearance of little Two-penny Trash. Had it not been for this reading, Mrs. Mears would not have thought about the grass; and had she not thought about the grass, none of the benefits above mentioned would have arisen to her neighbours. The difference between this affair and the spinning-jenny affairs is this: that the spinning-jenny affairs fill the pockets of "rich ruffians," such as those who would have murdered me at Coventry; and that this straw affair makes an addition to the food and raiment of the labouring classes, and gives not a penny to be pocketed by the rich ruffians.
From Durley I came on in company with farmer Mears through Upham. This Upham is the place where Young, who wrote that bombastical stuff, called "Night Thoughts," was once the parson, and where, I believe, he was born. Away to the right of Upham lies the little town of Bishop's Waltham, whither I wished to go very much, but it was too late in the day. From Upham we came on upon the high land, called Black Down. This has nothing to do with that Black-down Hill, spoken of in my last ride. We are here getting up upon the chalk hills, which stretch away towards Winchester. The soil here is a poor blackish stuff, with little white stones in it, upon a bed of chalk. It was a down not many years ago. The madness and greediness of the days of paper-money led to the breaking of it up. The corn upon it is miserable; but as good as can be expected upon such land.
At the end of this tract we come to a spot called Whiteflood, and here we cross the old turnpike road which leads from Winchester to Gosport through Bishop's Waltham. Whiteflood is at the foot of the first of a series of hills over which you come to get to the top of that lofty ridge called Morning Hill. The farmer came to the top of the first hill along with me; and he was just about to turn back, when I, looking away to the left, down a valley which stretched across the other side of the down, observed a rather singular appearance, and said to the farmer, "What is that coming up that valley? is it smoke, or is it a cloud?" The day had been very fine hitherto; the sun was shining very bright where we were. The farmer answered, "Oh, it's smoke; it comes from Ouselberry, which is down in that bottom behind those trees." So saying, we bid each other good day; he went back, and I went on. Before I had got a hundred and fifty yards from him, the cloud which he had taken for the Ouselberry smoke came upon the hill and wet me to the skin. He was not far from the house at Whiteflood; but I am sure that he could not entirely escape it. It is curious to observe how the clouds sail about in the hilly countries, and particularly, I think, amongst the chalk-hills. I have never observed the like amongst the sand-hills, or amongst rocks.
From Whiteflood you come over a series of hills, part of which form a rabbit-warren called Longwood warren, on the borders of which is the house and estate of Lord Northesk. These hills are amongst the most barren of the downs of England; yet a part of them was broken up during the rage for improvements; during the rage for what empty men think was an augmenting of the capital of the country. On about twenty acres of this land, sown with wheat, I should not suppose that there would be twice twenty bushels of grain! A man must be mad, or nearly mad, to sow wheat upon such a spot. However, a large part of what was enclosed has been thrown out again already, and the rest will be thrown out in a very few years. The down itself was poor; what, then, must it be as corn-land! Think of the destruction which has here taken place. The herbage was not good, but it was something; it was something for every year, and without trouble. Instead of grass it will now, for twenty years to come, bear nothing but that species of weeds which is hardy enough to grow where the grass will not grow. And this was "augmenting the capital of the nation." These new enclosure-bills were boasted of by George Rose and by Pitt as proofs of national prosperity! When men in power are ignorant to this extent, who is to expect anything but consequences such as we now behold.
From the top of this high land called Morning Hill, and the real name of which is Magdalen Hill, from a chapel which once stood there dedicated to Mary Magdalen; from the top of this land you have a view of a circle which is upon an average about seventy miles in diameter; and I believe in no one place so little as fifty miles in diameter. You see the Isle of Wight in one direction, and in the opposite direction you see the high lands in Berkshire. It is not a pleasant view, however. The fertile spots are all too far from you. Descending from this hill, you cross the turnpike-road (about two miles from Winchester), leading from Winchester to London through Alresford and Farnham. As soon as you cross the road, you enter the estate of the descendant of Rollo, Duke of Buckingham, which estate is in the parish of Avington. In this place the Duke has a farm, not very good land. It is in his own hands. The corn is indifferent, except the barley, which is everywhere good. You come a full mile from the roadside down through this farm, to the Duke's mansion-house at Avington, and to the little village of that name, both of them beautifully situated, amidst fine and lofty trees, fine meadows, and streams of clear water. On this farm of the Duke I saw (in a little close by the farmhouse) several hens in coops with broods of pheasants instead of chickens. It seems that a gamekeeper lives in the farmhouse, and I dare say the Duke thinks much more of the pheasants than of the corn. To be very solicitous to preserve what has been raised with so much care and at so much expense is by no means unnatural; but, then, there is a measure to be observed here; and that measure was certainly outstretched in the case of Mr. Deller. I here saw, at this gamekeeping farmhouse, what I had not seen since my departure from the Wen; namely, a wheat-rick! Hard, indeed, would it have been if a Plantagenet, turned farmer, had not a wheat-rick in his hands. This rick contains, I should think, what they call in Hampshire ten loads of wheat, that is to say, fifty quarters, or four hundred bushels. And this is the only rick, not only of wheat, but of any corn whatever, that I have seen since I left London. The turnips upon this farm are by no means good; but I was in some measure compensated for the bad turnips by the sight of the Duke's turnip-hoers, about a dozen females, amongst whom there were several very pretty girls, and they were as merry as larks. There had been a shower that had brought them into a sort of huddle on the road side. When I came up to them, they all fixed their eyes upon me, and, upon my smiling, they bursted out into laughter. I observed to them that the Duke of Buckingham was a very happy man to have such turnip-hoers, and really they seemed happier and better off than any work-people that I saw in the fields all the way from London to this spot. It is curious enough, but I have always observed that the women along this part of the country are usually tall. These girls were all tall, straight, fair, round-faced, excellent complexion, and uncommonly gay. They were well dressed too, and I observed the same of all the men that I saw down at Avington. This could not be the case if the Duke were a cruel or hard master; and this is an act of justice due from me to the descendant of Rollo. It is in the house of Mr. Deller that I make these notes, but as it is injustice that we dislike, I must do Rollo justice; and I must again say that the good looks and happy faces of his turnip-hoers spoke much more in his praise than could have been spoken by fifty lawyers, like that Storks who was employed, the other day, to plead against the Editor of the Bucks Chronicle, for publishing an account of the selling-up of farmer Smith, of Ashendon, in that county. I came through the Duke's Park to come to Easton, which is the next village below Avington. A very pretty park. The house is quite in the bottom; it can be seen in no direction from a distance greater than that of four or five hundred yards. The river Itchen, which rises near Alresford, which runs down through Winchester to Southampton, goes down the middle of this valley, and waters all its immense quantity of meadows. The Duke's house stands not far from the river itself. A stream of water is brought from the river to feed a pond before the house. There are several avenues of trees which are very beautiful, and some of which give complete shelter to the kitchen garden, which has, besides, extraordinarily high walls. Never was a greater contrast than that presented by this place and the place of Lord Egremont. The latter is all loftiness. Everything is high about it; it has extensive views in all directions. It sees and can be seen by all the country around. If I had the ousting of one of these noblemen, I certainly, however, would oust the Duke, who, I dare say, will by no means be desirous of seeing arise the occasion of putting the sincerity of the compliment to the test. The village of Easton is, like that of Avington, close by the waterside. The meadows are the attraction; and, indeed, it is the meadows that have caused the villages to exist.
Selborne (Hants), Thursday, 7th August, Noon.
I took leave of Mr. Deller this morning, about 7 o'clock. Came back through Avington Park, through the village of Avington, and, crossing the Itchen river, came over to the village of Itchen Abas. Abas means below. It is a French word that came over with Duke Rollo's progenitors. There needs no better proof of the high descent of the Duke, and of the antiquity of his family. This is that Itchen Abas where that famous Parson-Justice, the Reverend Robert Wright, lives, who refused to hear Mr. Deller's complaint against the Duke's servant at his own house, and who afterwards, along with Mr. Poulter, bound Mr. Deller over to the Quarter Sessions for the alleged assault. I have great pleasure in informing the public that Mr. Deller has not had to bear the expenses in this case himself; but that they have been borne by his neighbours, very much to the credit of those neighbours. I hear of an affair between the Duke of Buckingham and a Mr. Bird, who resides in this neighbourhood. If I had had time I should have gone to see Mr. Bird, of whose treatment I have heard a great deal, and an account of which treatment ought to be brought before the public. It is very natural for the Duke of Buckingham to wish to preserve that game which he calls his hobby-horse; it is very natural for him to delight in his hobby; but hobbies, my Lord Duke, ought to be gentle, inoffensive, perfectly harmless little creatures. They ought not to be suffered to kick and fling about them: they ought not to be rough-shod, and, above all things, they ought not to be great things like those which are ridden by the Life-guards: and, like them, be suffered to dance, and caper, and trample poor devils of farmers under foot. Have your hobbies, my Lords of the Soil, but let them be gentle; in short, let them be hobbies in character with the commons and forests, and not the high-fed hobbies from the barracks at Knightsbridge, such as put poor Mr. Sheriff Waithman's life in jeopardy. That the game should be preserved, every one that knows anything of the country will allow; but every man of any sense must see that it cannot be preserved by sheer force. It must be rather through love than through fear; rather through good-will than through ill-will. If the thing be properly managed, there will be plenty of game without any severity towards any good man. Mr. Deller's case was so plain: it was so monstrous to think that a man was to be punished for being on his own ground in pursuit of wild animals that he himself had raised: this was so monstrous, that it was only necessary to name it to excite the indignation of the country. And Mr. Deller has, by his spirit and perseverance, by the coolness and the good sense which he has shown throughout the whole of this proceeding, merited the commendation of every man who is not in his heart an oppressor. It occurs to me to ask here, who it is that finally pays for those "counsels' opinions" which Poulter and Wright said they took in the case of Mr. Deller; because, if these counsels' opinions are paid for by the county, and if a Justice of the Peace can take as many counsels' opinions as he chooses, I should like to know what fellow, who chooses to put on a bobtail wig and call himself a lawyer, may not have a good living given to him by any crony Justice at the expense of the county. This never can be legal. It never can be binding on the county to pay for these counsels' opinions. However, leaving this to be enquired into another time, we have here, in Mr. Deller's case, an instance of the worth of counsels' opinions. Mr. Deller went to the two Justices, showed them the Register with the Act of Parliament in it, called upon them to act agreeably to that Act of Parliament; but they chose to take counsels' opinion first. The two "counsel," the two "lawyers," the two "learned friends," told them that they were right in rejecting the application of Mr. Deller and in binding him over for the assault; and, after all, this Grand Jury threw out the Bill, and in that throwing out showed that they thought the counsels' opinions not worth a straw.
Being upon the subject of matter connected with the conduct of these Parson-Justices, I will here mention what is now going on in Hampshire respecting the accounts of the Treasurer of the County. At the last Quarter Sessions, or at a Meeting of the Magistrates previous to the opening of the Sessions, there was a discussion relative to this matter. The substance of which appears to have been this; that the Treasurer, Mr. George Hollis, whose accounts had been audited, approved of, and passed every year by the Magistrates, is in arrear to the county to the amount of about four thousand pounds. Sir Thomas Baring appears to have been the great stickler against Mr. Hollis, who was but feebly defended by his friends. The Treasurer of a county is compelled to find securities. These securities have become exempted, in consequence of the annual passing of the accounts by the Magistrates! Nothing can be more just than this exemption. I am security, suppose, for a Treasurer. The Magistrates do not pass his accounts on account of a deficiency. I make good the deficiency. But the Magistrates are not to go on year after year passing his accounts, and then, at the end of several years, come and call upon me to make good the deficiencies. Thus say the securities of Mr. Hollis. The Magistrates, in fact, are to blame. One of the Magistrates, a Reverend Mr. Orde, said that the Magistrates were more to blame than the Treasurer; and really I think so too; for, though Mr. Hollis has been a tool for many many years, of Old George Rose and the rest of that crew, it seems impossible to believe that he could have intended anything dishonest, seeing that the detection arose out of an account published by himself in the newspaper, which account he need not have published until three months later than the time when he did publish it. This is, as he himself states, the best possible proof that he was unconscious of any error or any deficiency. The fact appears to be this; that Mr. Hollis, who has for many years been Under Sheriff as well as Treasurer of the County, who holds several other offices, and who has, besides, had large pecuniary transactions with his bankers, has for years had his accounts so blended that he has not known how this money belonging to the county stood. His own statement shows that it was all a mass of confusion. The errors, he says, have arisen entirely from the negligence of his clerks, and from causes which produced a confusion in his accounts. This is the fact; but he has been in good fat offices too long not to have made a great many persons think that his offices would be better in their hands; and they appear resolved to oust him. I, for my part, am glad of it; for I remember his coming up to me in the Grand Jury Chamber, just after the people at St. Stephen's had passed Power-of-Imprisonment Bill in 1817; I remember his coming up to me as the Under Sheriff of Willis, the man that we now call Flemming, who has begun to build a house at North Stoneham; I remember his coming up to me, and with all the base sauciness of a thorough-paced Pittite, telling me to disperse or he would take me into custody! I remember this of Mr. Hollis, and I am therefore glad that calamity has befallen him; but I must say that after reading his own account of the matter; after reading the debate of the Magistrates; and after hearing the observations and opinions of well-informed and impartial persons in Hampshire who dislike Mr. Hollis as much as I do; I must say that I think him perfectly clear of all intention to commit anything like fraud, or to make anything worthy of the name of false account; and I am convinced that this affair, which will now prove extremely calamitous to him, might have been laughed at by him at the time when wheat was fifteen shillings a bushel. This change in the affairs of the Government; this penury now experienced by the Pittites at Whitehall, reaches, in its influence, to every part of the country. The Barings are now the great men in Hampshire. They were not such in the days of George Rose while George was able to make the people believe that it was necessary to give their money freely to preserve the "blessed comforts of religion." George Rose would have thrown his shield over Mr. Hollis; his broad and brazen shield. In Hampshire the Bishop, too, is changed. The present is doubtless as pious as the last, every bit; and has the same Bishop-like views; but it is not the same family; it is not the Garniers and Poulters and Norths and De Grays and Haygarths; it is not precisely the same set who have the power in their hands. Things, therefore, take another turn. The Pittite jolter-heads are all broken-backed; and the Barings come forward with their well-known weight of metal. It was exceedingly unfortunate for Mr. Hollis that Sir Thomas Baring happened to be against him. However, the thing will do good altogether. The county is placed in a pretty situation: its Treasurer has had his accounts regularly passed by the Magistrates; and these Magistrates come at last and discover that they have for a long time been passing accounts that they ought not to pass. These Magistrates have exempted the securities of Mr. Hollis, but not a word do they say about making good the deficiencies. What redress, then, have the people of the county? They have no redress, unless they can obtain it by petitioning the Parliament; and if they do not petition, if they do not state their case, and that boldly too, they deserve everything that can befall them from similar causes. I am astonished at the boldness of the Magistrates. I am astonished that they should think of calling Mr. Hollis to account without being prepared for rendering an account of their own conduct. However, we shall see what they will do in the end. And when we have seen that, we shall see whether the county will rest quietly under the loss which it is likely to sustain.
I must now go back to Itchen Abas, where, in the farm-yard of a farmer, Courtenay, I saw another wheat-rick. From Itchen Abas I came up the valley to Itchen Stoke. Soon after that I crossed the Itchen river, came out into the Alresford turnpike road, and came on towards Alresford, having the valley now upon my left. If the hay be down all the way to Southampton in the same manner that it is along here, there are thousands of acres of hay rotting on the sides of this Itchen river. Most of the meadows are watered artificially. The crops of grass are heavy, and they appear to have been cut precisely in the right time to be spoiled. Coming on towards Alresford, I saw a gentleman (about a quarter of a mile beyond Alresford) coming out of his gate with his hat off, looking towards the south-west, as if to see what sort of weather it was likely to be. This was no other than Mr. Rolleston or Rawlinson, who, it appears, has a box and some land here. This gentleman was, when I lived in Hampshire, one of those worthy men, who, in the several counties of England, executed "without any sort of remuneration" such a large portion of that justice which is the envy of surrounding nations and admiration of the world. We are often told, especially in Parliament, of the disinterestedness of these persons; of their worthiness, their piety, their loyalty, their excellent qualities of all sorts, but particularly of their disinterestedness, in taking upon them the office of Justice of the Peace; spending so much time, taking so much trouble, and all for nothing at all, but for the pure love of their King and country. And the worst of it is, that our Ministers impose upon this disinterestedness and generosity; and, as in the case of Mr. Rawlinson, at the end of, perhaps, a dozen years of services voluntarily rendered to "King and country," they force him, sorely against his will, no doubt, to become a Police Magistrate in London! To be sure there are five or six hundred pounds a-year of public money attached to this; but what are these paltry pounds to a "country gentleman," who so disinterestedly rendered us services for so many years? Hampshire is fertile in persons of this disinterested stamp. There is a 'Squire Greme, who lives across the country, not many miles from the spot where I saw "Mr. Justice" Rawlinson. This 'Squire also has served the country for nothing during a great many years; and of late years, the 'Squire Junior, eager, apparently to emulate his sire, has become a distributor of stamps for this famous county of Hants! What sons 'Squire Rawlinson may have is more than I know at present, though I will endeavour to know it, and to find out whether they also be serving us. A great deal has been said about the debt of gratitude due from the people to the Justices of the Peace. An account, containing the names and places of abode of the Justices, and of the public money, or titles, received by them and by their relations; such an account would be a very useful thing. We should then know the real amount of this debt of gratitude. We shall see such an account by-and-by; and we should have seen it long ago if there had been, in a certain place, only one single man disposed to do his duty.
I came through Alresford about eight o'clock, having loitered a good deal in coming up the valley. After quitting Alresford you come (on the road towards Alton) to the village of Bishop's Sutton; and then to a place called Ropley Dean, where there is a house or two. Just before you come to Ropley Dean, you see the beginning of the Valley of Itchen. The Itchen river falls into the salt water at Southampton. It rises, or rather has its first rise, just by the road side at Ropley Dean, which is at the foot of that very high land which lies between Alresford and Alton. All along by the Itchen river, up to its very source, there are meadows; and this vale of meadows, which is about twenty-five miles in length, and is in some places a mile wide, is, at the point of which I am now speaking, only about twice as wide as my horse is long! This vale of Itchen is worthy of particular attention. There are few spots in England more fertile or more pleasant; and none, I believe, more healthy. Following the bed of the river, or, rather, the middle of the vale, it is about five-and-twenty miles in length, from Ropley Dean to the village of South Stoneham, which is just above Southampton. The average width of the meadows is, I should think, a hundred rods at the least; and if I am right in this conjecture, the vale contains about five thousand acres of meadows, large part of which is regularly watered. The sides of the vale are, until you come down to within about six or eight miles of Southampton, hills or rising grounds of chalk, covered more or less thickly with loam. Where the hills rise up very steeply from the valley the fertility of the corn-lands is not so great; but for a considerable part of the way the corn-lands are excellent, and the farmhouses, to which those lands belong, are, for the far greater part, under covert of the hills on the edge of the valley. Soon after the rising of the stream, it forms itself into some capital ponds at Alresford. These, doubtless, were augmented by art, in order to supply Winchester with fish. The fertility of this vale, and of the surrounding country, is best proved by the fact that, besides the town of Alresford and that of Southampton, there are seventeen villages, each having its parish church, upon its borders. When we consider these things we are not surprised that a spot situated about half way down this vale should have been chosen for the building of a city, or that that city should have been for a great number of years a place of residence for the Kings of England.
Winchester, which is at present a mere nothing to what it once was, stands across the vale at a place where the vale is made very narrow by the jutting forward of two immense hills. From the point where the river passes through the city, you go, whether eastward or westward, a full mile up a very steep hill all the way. The city is, of course, in one of the deepest holes that can be imagined. It never could have been thought of as a place to be defended since the discovery of gunpowder; and, indeed, one would think that very considerable annoyance might be given to the inhabitants even by the flinging of the flint-stones from the hills down into the city.
At Ropley Dean, before I mounted the hill to come on towards Rotherham Park, I baited my horse. Here the ground is precisely like that at Ashmansworth on the borders of Berkshire, which, indeed, I could see from the ground of which I am now speaking. In coming up the hill, I had the house and farm of Mr. Duthy to my right. Seeing some very fine Swedish turnips, I naturally expected that they belonged to this gentleman, who is Secretary to the Agricultural Society of Hampshire; but I found that they belonged to a farmer Mayhew. The soil is, along upon this high land, a deep loam, bordering on a clay, red in colour, and pretty full of large, rough, yellow-looking stones, very much like some of the land in Huntingdonshire; but here is a bed of chalk under this. Everything is backward here. The wheat is perfectly green in most places; but it is everywhere pretty good. I have observed, all the way along, that the wheat is good upon the stiff, strong land. It is so here; but it is very backward. The greater part of it is full three weeks behind the wheat under Portsdown Hill. But few farmhouses come within my sight along here; but in one of them there was a wheat-rick, which is the third I have seen since I quitted the Wen. In descending from this high ground, in order to reach the village of East Tisted, which lies on the turnpike road from the Wen to Gosport through Alton, I had to cross Rotherham Park. On the right of the park, on a bank of land facing the north-east, I saw a very pretty farmhouse, having everything in excellent order, with fine corn-fields about it, and with a wheat-rick standing in the yard. This farm, as I afterwards found, belongs to the owner of Rotherham Park, who is also the owner of East Tisted, who has recently built a new house in the park, who has quite metamorphosed the village of Tisted within these eight years, who has, indeed, really and truly improved the whole country just round about here, whose name is Scot, well known as a brickmaker at North End, Fulham, and who has, in Hampshire, supplanted a Norman of the name of Powlet. The process by which this transfer has taken place is visible enough, to all eyes but the eyes of the jolterheads. Had there been no Debt created to crush liberty in France and to keep down reformers in England, Mr. Scot would not have had bricks to burn to build houses for the Jews and jobbers and other eaters of taxes; and the Norman Powlet would not have had to pay in taxes, through his own hands and those of his tenants and labourers, the amount of the estate at Tisted, first to be given to the Jews, jobbers, and tax-eaters, and then by them to be given to "'Squire Scot" for his bricks. However, it is not 'Squire Scot who has assisted to pass laws to make people pay double toll on a Sunday. 'Squire Scot had nothing to do with passing the New Game-laws and Old Ellenborough's Act; 'Squire Scot never invented the New Trespass law, in virtue of which John Cockbain of Whitehaven in the county of Cumberland was, by two clergymen and three other magistrates of that county, sentenced to pay one half-penny for damages and seven shillings costs, for going upon a field, the property of William, Earl of Lonsdale. In the passing of this Act, which was one of the first passed in the present reign, 'Squire Scot, the brickmaker, had nothing to do. Go on, good 'Squire, thrust out some more of the Normans: with the fruits of the augmentations which you make to the Wen, go, and take from them their mansions, parks, and villages!
At Tisted I crossed the turnpike road before mentioned, and entered a lane which, at the end of about four miles, brought me to this village of Selborne. My readers will recollect that I mentioned this Selborne when I was giving an account of Hawkley Hanger, last fall. I was desirous of seeing this village, about which I have read in the book of Mr. White, and which a reader has been so good as to send me. From Tisted I came generally up hill till I got within half a mile of this village, when, all of a sudden, I came to the edge of a hill, looked down over all the larger vale of which the little vale of this village makes a part. Here Hindhead and Black-down Hill came full in my view. When I was crossing the forest in Sussex, going from Worth to Horsham, these two great hills lay to my west and north-west. To-day I am got just on the opposite side of them, and see them, of course, towards the east and the south-east, while Leith Hill lies away towards the north-east. This hill, from which you descend down into Selborne, is very lofty; but, indeed, we are here amongst some of the highest hills in the island, and amongst the sources of rivers. The hill over which I have come this morning sends the Itchen river forth from one side of it, and the river Wey, which rises near Alton, from the opposite side of it. Hindhead which lies before me, sends, as I observed upon a former occasion, the Arun forth towards the south and a stream forth towards the north, which meets the river Wey, somewhere above Godalming. I am told that the springs of these two streams rise in the Hill of Hindhead, or, rather, on one side of the hill, at not many yards from each other. The village of Selborne is precisely what it is described by Mr. White. A straggling irregular street, bearing all the marks of great antiquity, and showing, from its lanes and its vicinage generally, that it was once a very considerable place. I went to look at the spot where Mr. White supposes the convent formerly stood. It is very beautiful. Nothing can surpass in beauty these dells and hillocks and hangers, which last are so steep that it is impossible to ascend them, except by means of a serpentine path. I found here deep hollow ways, with beds and sides of solid white stone; but not quite so white and so solid, I think, as the stone which I found in the roads at Hawkley. The churchyard of Selborne is most beautifully situated. The land is good, all about it. The trees are luxuriant and prone to be lofty and large. I measured the yew-tree in the churchyard, and found the trunk to be, according to my measurement, twenty-three feet, eight inches, in circumference. The trunk is very short, as is generally the case with yew-trees; but the head spreads to a very great extent, and the whole tree, though probably several centuries old, appears to be in perfect health. Here are several hop-plantations in and about this village; but for this once the prayers of the over-production men will be granted, and the devil of any hops there will be. The bines are scarcely got up the poles; the bines and the leaves are black, nearly, as soot; full as black as a sooty bag or dingy coal-sack, and covered with lice. It is a pity that these hop-planters could not have a parcel of Spaniards and Portuguese to louse their hops for them. Pretty devils to have liberty, when a favourite recreation of the Donna is to crack the lice in the head of the Don! I really shrug up my shoulders thinking of the beasts. Very different from such is my landlady here at Selborne, who, while I am writing my notes, is getting me a rasher of bacon, and has already covered the table with a nice clean cloth. I have never seen such quantities of grapes upon any vines as I see upon the vines in this village, badly pruned as all the vines have been. To be sure, this is a year for grapes, such, I believe, as has been seldom known in England, and the cause is the perfect ripening of the wood by the last beautiful summer. I am afraid, however, that the grapes come in vain; for this summer has been so cold, and is now so wet, that we can hardly expect grapes which are not under glass to ripen. As I was coming into this village, I observed to a farmer who was standing at his gateway, that people ought to be happy here, for that God had done everything for them. His answer was, that he did not believe there was a more unhappy place in England: for that there were always quarrels of some sort or other going on. This made me call to mind the King's proclamation, relative to a reward for discovering the person who had recently shot at the parson of this village. This parson's name is Cobbold, and it really appears that there was a shot fired through his window. He has had law-suits with the people; and I imagine that it was these to which the farmer alluded. The hops are of considerable importance to the village, and their failure must necessarily be attended with consequences very inconvenient to the whole of a population so small as this. Upon inquiry, I find that the hops are equally bad at Alton, Froyle, Crondall, and even at Farnham. I saw them bad in Sussex; I hear that they are bad in Kent; so that hop-planters, at any rate, will be, for once, free from the dreadful evils of abundance. A correspondent asks me what is meant by the statements which he sees in the Register, relative to the hop-duty? He sees it, he says, continually falling in amount; and he wonders what this means. The thing has not, indeed, been properly explained. It is a gamble; and it is hardly right for me to state, in a publication like the Register, anything relative to a gamble. However, the case is this: a taxing system is necessarily a system of gambling; a system of betting; stock-jobbing is no more than a system of betting, and the wretched dogs that carry on the traffic are little more, except that they are more criminal, than the waiters at an E O Table, or the markers at billiards. The hop duty is so much per pound. The duty was imposed at two separate times. One part of it, therefore, is called the Old Duty, and the other part the New Duty. The old duty was a penny to the pound of hops. The amount of this duty, which can always be ascertained at the Treasury as soon as the hopping season is over, is the surest possible guide in ascertaining the total amount of the growth of hops for the year. If, for instance, the duty were to amount to no more than eight shillings and fourpence, you would be certain that only a hundred pounds of hops had been grown during the year. Hence a system of gambling precisely like the gambling in the funds. I bet you that the duty will not exceed so much. The duty has sometimes exceeded two hundred thousand pounds. This year it is supposed that it will not exceed twenty, thirty, or forty thousand. The gambling fellows are betting all this time; and it is, in fact, an account of the betting which is inserted in the Register.
This vile paper-money and funding-system; this system of Dutch descent, begotten by Bishop Burnet, and born in hell; this system has turned everything into a gamble. There are hundreds of men who live by being the agents to carry on gambling. They reside here in the Wen; many of the gamblers live in the country; they write up to their gambling agent, whom they call their stockbroker; he gambles according to their order; and they receive the profit or stand to the loss. Is it possible to conceive a viler calling than that of an agent for the carrying on of gambling? And yet the vagabonds call themselves gentlemen; or, at least, look upon themselves as the superiors of those who sweep the kennels. In like manner is the hop-gamble carried on. The gambling agents in the Wen make the bets for the gamblers in the country; and, perhaps, millions are betted during the year, upon the amount of a duty, which, at the most, scarcely exceeds a quarter of a million. In such a state of things how are you to expect young men to enter on a course of patient industry? How are you to expect that they will seek to acquire fortune and fame by study or by application of any kind?
Looking back over the road that I have come to-day, and perceiving the direction of the road going from this village in another direction, I perceive that this is a very direct road from Winchester to Farnham. The road, too, appears to have been, from ancient times, sufficiently wide; and when the Bishop of Winchester selected this beautiful spot whereon to erect a monastery, I dare say the roads along here were some of the best in the country.
Thursley (Surrey), Thursday, 7th August.
I got a boy at Selborne to show me along the lanes out into Woolmer forest on my way to Headley. The lanes were very deep; the wet malme just about the colour of rye-meal mixed up with water, and just about as clammy, came in many places very nearly up to my horse's belly. There was this comfort, however, that I was sure that there was a bottom, which is by no means the case when you are among clays or quick-sands. After going through these lanes, and along between some fir-plantations, I came out upon Woolmer Forest, and, to my great satisfaction, soon found myself on the side of those identical plantations which have been made under the orders of the smooth Mr. Huskisson, and which I noticed last year in my ride from Hambledon to this place. These plantations are of fir, or, at least, I could see nothing else, and they never can be of any more use to the nation than the sprigs of heath which cover the rest of the forest. Is there nobody to inquire what becomes of the income of the Crown lands? No, and there never will be, until the whole system be changed. I have seldom ridden on pleasanter ground than that which I found between Woolmer Forest and this beautiful village of Thursley. The day has been fine, too; notwithstanding I saw the Judges' terrific wigs as I came up upon the turnpike road from the village of Itchen. I had but one little scud during the day: just enough for St. Swithin to swear by; but when I was upon the hills I saw some showers going about the country. From Selborne, I had first to come to Headley, about five miles. I came to the identical public-house where I took my blind guide last year, who took me such a dance to the southward, and led me up to the top of Hindhead at last. I had no business there. My route was through a sort of hamlet called Churt, which lies along on the side and towards the foot of the north of Hindhead, on which side, also, lies the village of Thursley. A line is hardly more straight than is the road from Headley to Thursley; and a prettier ride I never had in the course of my life. It was not the less interesting from the circumstance of its giving me all the way a full view of Crooksbury Hill, the grand scene of my exploits when I was a taker of the nests of crows and magpies.
At Churt I had, upon my left, three hills out upon the common, called the Devil's Jumps. The Unitarians will not believe in the Trinity, because they cannot account for it. Will they come here to Churt, go and look at these "Devil's Jumps," and account to me for the placing of these three hills, in the shape of three rather squat sugar-loaves, along in a line upon this heath, or the placing of a rock-stone upon the top of one of them as big as a church tower? For my part, I cannot account for this placing of these hills. That they should have been formed by mere chance is hardly to be believed. How could waters rolling about have formed such hills? How could such hills have bubbled up from beneath? But, in short, it is all wonderful alike: the stripes of loam running down through the chalk-hills; the circular parcels of loam in the midst of chalk-hills; the lines of flint running parallel with each other horizontally along the chalk-hills; the flints placed in circles as true as a hair in the chalk-hills; the layers of stone at the bottom of hills of loam; the chalk first soft, then some miles further on, becoming chalk-stone; then, after another distance, becoming burr-stone, as they call it; and at last becoming hard, white stone, fit for any buildings; the sand-stone at Hindhead becoming harder and harder till it becomes very nearly iron in Herefordshire, and quite iron in Wales; but, indeed, they once dug iron out of this very Hindhead. The clouds, coming and settling upon the hills, sinking down and creeping along, at last coming out again in springs, and those becoming rivers. Why, it is all equally wonderful, and as to not believing in this or that, because the thing cannot be proved by logical deduction, why is any man to believe in the existence of a God any more than he is to believe in the doctrine of the Trinity? For my part, I think the "Devil's jumps," as the people here call them, full as wonderful and no more wonderful than hundreds and hundreds of other wonderful things. It is a strange taste which our ancestors had, to ascribe no inconsiderable part of these wonders of nature to the Devil. Not far from the Devil's jumps is that singular place which resembles a sugar-loaf inverted, hollowed out, and an outside rim only left. This is called the "Devil's Punch Bowl;" and it is very well known in Wiltshire, that the forming, or, perhaps, it is the breaking up, of Stonehenge is ascribed to the Devil, and that the mark of one of his feet is now said to be seen in one of the stones.
I got to Thursley about sunset, and without experiencing any inconvenience from the wet. I have mentioned the state of the corn as far as Selborne. On this side of that village I find it much forwarder than I found it between Selborne and Ropley Dean. I am here got into some of the very best barley-land in the kingdom; a fine, buttery, stoneless loam, upon a bottom of sand or sand-stone. Finer barley and turnip-land it is impossible to see. All the corn is good here. The wheat not a heavy crop; but not a light one; and the barley all the way along from Headley to this place as fine, if not finer, than I ever saw it in my life. Indeed I have not seen a bad field of barley since I left the Wen. The corn is not so forward here as under Portsdown Hill; but some farmers intend to begin reaping wheat in a few days. It is monstrous to suppose that the price of corn will not come down. It must come down, good weather or bad weather. If the weather be bad, it will be so much the worse for the farmer, as well as for the nation at large, and can be of no benefit to any human being but the Quakers, who must now be pretty busy, measuring the crops all over the kingdom. It will be recollected that in the Report of the Agricultural Committee of 1821, it appeared, from the evidence of one Hodgson, a partner of Cropper, Benson, and Co. Quakers, of Liverpool, that these Quakers sent a set of corn-gaugers into the several counties, just before every harvest; that these fellows stopped here and there, went into the fields, measured off square yards of wheat, clipped off the ears, and carried them off. These they afterwards packed up and sent off to Cropper and Co. at Liverpool. When the whole of the packets were got together, they were rubbed out, measured, weighed, and an estimate made of the amount of the coming crop. This, according to the confession of Hodgson himself, enabled these Quakers to speculate in corn, with the greater chance of gain. This has been done by these men for many years. Their disregard of worldly things; their desire to lay up treasures in heaven; their implicit yielding to the Spirit; these have induced them to send their corn-gaugers over the country regularly year after year; and I will engage that they are at it at this moment. The farmers will bear in mind that the New Trespass-law, though clearly not intended for any such purpose, enables them to go and seize by the throat any of these gaugers that they may catch in their fields. They could not do this formerly; to cut off standing corn was merely a trespass, for which satisfaction was to be attained by action at law. But now you can seize the caitiff who is come as a spy amongst your corn. Before, he could be off and leave you to find out his name as you could; but now you can lay hold of him, as Mr. Deller did of the Duke's man, and bring him before a Magistrate at once. I do hope that the farmers will look sharp out for these fellows, who are neither more nor less than so many spies. They hold a great deal of corn; they want blight, mildew, rain, hurricanes; but happy I am to see that they will get no blight, at any rate. The grain is formed; everywhere everybody tells me that there is no blight in any sort of corn, except in the beans.
I have not gone through much of a bean country. The beans that I have seen are some of them pretty good, more of them but middling, and still more of them very indifferent.
I am very happy to hear that that beautiful little bird, the American partridge, has been introduced with success to this neighbourhood, by Mr. Leech at Lea. I am told that they have been heard whistling this summer; that they have been frequently seen, and that there is no doubt that they have broods of young ones. I tried several times to import some of these birds; but I always lost them, by some means or other, before the time arrived for turning them out. They are a beautiful little partridge, and extremely interesting in all their manner. Some persons call them quail. If any one will take a quail and compare it with one of these birds, he will see that they cannot be of the same sort. In my "Year's Residence in America," I have, I think, clearly proved that these birds are partridges, and not quails. In the United States, north of New Jersey, they are called quail: south and south-west of New Jersey they are called partridges. They have been called quail solely on account of their size; for they have none of the manners of quail belonging to them. Quails assemble in flocks like larks, starlings, or rooks. Partridges keep in distinct coveys; that is to say, the brood lives distinct from all other broods until the ensuing spring, when it forms itself into pairs and separates. Nothing can be a distinction more clear than this. Our own partridges stick to the same spot from the time that they are hatched to the time that they pair off, and these American partridges do the same. Quails, like larks, get together in flocks at the approach of winter, and move about according to the season, to a greater or less distance from the place where they were bred. These, therefore, which have been brought to Thursley, are partridges; and if they be suffered to live quietly for a season or two, they will stock the whole of that part of the country, where the delightful intermixture of corn-fields, coppices, heaths, furze-fields, ponds, and rivulets is singularly favourable to their increase.
The turnips cannot fail to be good in such a season and in such land; yet the farmers are most dreadfully tormented with the weeds, and with the superabundant turnips. Here, my Lord Liverpool, is over production indeed! They have sown their fields broad-cast; they have no means of destroying the weeds by the plough; they have no intervals to bury them in; and they hoe, or scratch, as Mr. Tull calls it; and then comes St. Swithin and sets the weeds and the hoed-up turnips again. Then there is another hoeing or scratching; and then comes St. Swithin again: so that there is hoe, hoe, muddle, muddle, and such a fretting and stewing; such a looking up to Hindhead to see when it is going to be fine; when, if that beautiful field of twenty acres, which I have now before my eyes, and wherein I see half a dozen men hoeing and poking and muddling, looking up to see how long it is before they must take to their heels to get under the trees to obtain shelter from the coming shower; when, I say, if that beautiful field had been sowed upon ridges at four feet apart, according to the plan in my Year's Residence, not a weed would have been to be seen in the field, the turnip-plants would have been three times the size that they now are, the expense would have not been a fourth part of that which has already taken place, and all the muddling and poking about of weeds, and all the fretting and all the stewing would have been spared; and as to the amount of the crop, I am now looking at the best land in England for Swedish turnips, and I have no scruple to assert that if it had been sown after my manner, it would have had a crop double the weight of that which it now will have. I think I know of a field of turnips, sown much later than the field now before me, and sown in rows at nearly four feet apart, which have a crop double the weight of that which will be produced in yon beautiful field.
Reigate (Surrey), Friday, 8th August.
At the end of a long, twisting-about ride, but a most delightful ride, I got to this place about nine o'clock in the evening. From Thursley I came to Brook, and there crossed the turnpike-road from London to Chichester through Godalming and Midhurst. Thence I came on, turning upon the left upon the sand-hills of Hambledon (in Surrey, mind). On one of these hills is one of those precious jobs, called "Semaphores." For what reason this pretty name is given to a sort of Telegraph house, stuck up at public expense upon a high hill; for what reason this outlandish name is given to the thing, I must leave the reader to guess; but as to the thing itself; I know that it means this: a pretence for giving a good sum of the public money away every year to some one that the Borough-system has condemned this labouring and toiling nation to provide for. The Dead Weight of nearly about six millions sterling a year; that is to say, this curse entailed upon the country on account of the late wars against the liberties of the French people, this Dead Weight is, however, falling, in part, at least, upon the landed jolterheads who were so eager to create it, and who thought that no part of it would fall upon themselves. Theirs has been a grand mistake. They saw the war carried on without any loss or any cost to themselves. By the means of paper-money and loans, the labouring classes were made to pay the whole of the expenses of the war. When the war was over, the jolterheads thought they would get gold back again to make all secure; and some of them really said, I am told, that it was high time to put an end to the gains of the paper-money people. The jolterheads quite overlooked the circumstance that, in returning to gold, they doubled and trebled what they had to pay on account of the debt, and that, at last, they were bringing the burden upon themselves. Grand, also, was the mistake of the jolterheads when they approved of the squanderings upon the Dead Weight. They thought that the labouring classes were going to pay the whole of the expenses of the Knights of Waterloo, and of the other heroes of the war. The jolterheads thought that they should have none of this to pay. Some of them had relations belonging to the Dead Weight, and all of them were willing to make the labouring classes toil like asses for the support of those who had what was called "fought and bled" for Gatton and Old Sarum. The jolterheads have now found, however, that a pretty good share of the expense is to fall upon themselves. Their mortagees are letting them know that Semaphores and such pretty things cost something, and that it is unreasonable for a loyal country gentleman, a friend of "social order" and of the "blessed comforts of religion" to expect to have Semaphores and to keep his estate too.
This Dead Weight is, unquestionably, a thing, such as the world never saw before. Here are not only a tribe of pensioned naval and military officers, commissaries, quartermasters, pursers, and God knows what besides; not only these, but their wives and children are to be pensioned, after the death of the heroes themselves. Nor does it signify, it seems, whether the hero were married before he became part of the Dead Weight or since. Upon the death of the man, the pension is to begin with the wife, and a pension for each child; so that, if there be a large family of children, the family, in many cases, actually gains by the death of the father! Was such a thing as this ever before heard of in the world? Any man that is going to die has nothing to do but to marry a girl to give her a pension for life to be paid out of the sweat of the people; and it was distinctly stated, during the Session of Parliament before the last, that the widows and children of insane officers were to have the same treatment as the rest! Here is the envy of surrounding nations and the admiration of the world! In addition, then, to twenty thousand parsons, more than twenty thousand stock-brokers and stock-jobbers perhaps; forty or fifty thousand tax-gatherers; thousands upon thousands of military and naval officers in full pay; in addition to all these, here are the thousands upon thousands of pairs of this Dead Weight, all busily engaged in breeding gentlemen and ladies; and all while Malthus is wanting to put a check upon the breeding of the labouring classes; all receiving a premium for breeding! Where is Malthus? Where is this check-population parson? Where are his friends, the Edinburgh Reviewers? Faith, I believe they have given him up. They begin to be ashamed of giving countenance to a man who wants to check the breeding of those who labour, while he says not a word about those two hundred thousand breeding pairs, whose offspring are necessarily to be maintained at the public charge. Well may these fatteners upon the labour of others rail against the Radicals! Let them once take the fan to their hand, and they will, I warrant it, thoroughly purge the floor. However, it is a consolation to know, that the jolterheads who have been the promoters of the measures that have led to these heavy charges; it is a consolation to know that the jolterheads have now to bear part of the charges, and that they cannot any longer make them fall exclusively upon the shoulders of the labouring classes. The disgust that one feels at seeing the whiskers, and hearing the copper heels rattle, is in some measure compensated for by the reflection, that the expense of them is now beginning to fall upon the malignant and tyrannical jolterheads who are the principal cause of their being created.
Bidding the Semaphore good-bye, I came along by the church at Hambledon, and then crossed a little common and the turnpike-road from London to Chichester through Godalming and Petworth; not Midhurst, as before. The turnpike-road here is one of the best that I ever saw. It is like the road upon Horley Common, near Worth, and like that between Godstone and East Grinstead; and the cause of this is, that it is made of precisely the same sort of stone, which, they tell me, is brought, in some cases, even from Blackdown Hill, which cannot be less, I should think, than twelve miles distant. This stone is brought, in great lumps, and then cracked into little pieces. The next village I came to after Hambledon was Hascomb, famous for its beech, insomuch that it is called Hascomb Beech.
There are two lofty hills here, between which you go out of the sandy country down into the Weald. Here are hills of all heights and forms. Whether they came in consequence of a boiling of the earth, I know not; but, in form, they very much resemble the bubbles upon the top of the water of a pot which is violently boiling. The soil is a beautiful loam upon a bed of sand. Springs start here and there at the feet of the hills; and little rivulets pour away in all directions. The roads are difficult merely on account of their extreme unevenness; the bottom is everywhere sound, and everything that meets the eye is beautiful; trees, coppices, corn-fields, meadows; and then the distant views in every direction. From one spot I saw this morning Hindhead, Blackdown Hill, Lord Egremont's house and park at Petworth, Donnington Hill, over which I went to go on the South Downs, the South Downs near Lewes; the forest at Worth, Turner's Hill, and then all the way round into Kent and back to the Surrey Hills at Godstone. From Hascomb I began to descend into the low country. I had Leith Hill before me; but my plan was, not to go over it or any part of it, but to go along below it in the real Weald of Surrey. A little way back from Hascomb, I had seen a field of carrots; and now I was descending into a country where, strictly speaking, only three things will grow well,--grass, wheat, and oak trees. At Goose Green I crossed a turnpike-road leading from Guildford to Horsham and Arundel. I next came, after crossing a canal, to a common called Smithwood Common. Leith Hill was full in front of me, but I turned away to the right, and went through the lanes to come to Ewhurst, leaving Crawley to my right. Before I got to Ewhurst, I crossed another turnpike-road, leading from Guildford to Horsham, and going on to Worthing or some of those towns.
At Ewhurst, which is a very pretty village, and the Church of which is most delightfully situated, I treated my horse to some oats, and myself to a rasher of bacon. I had now to come, according to my project, round among the lanes at about a couple of miles distance from the foot of Leith Hill, in order to get first to Ockley, then to Holmwood, and then to Reigate. From Ewhurst the first three miles was the deepest clay that I ever saw, to the best of my recollection. I was warned of the difficulty of getting along; but I was not to be frightened at the sound of clay. Wagons, too, had been dragged along the lanes by some means or another; and where a wagon-horse could go, my horse could go. It took me, however, a good hour and a half to get along these three miles. Now, mind, this is the real weald, where the clay is bottomless; where there is no stone of any sort underneath, as at Worth and all along from Crawley to Billingshurst through Horsham. This clayey land is fed with water soaking from the sand-hills; and in this particular place from the immense hill of Leith. All along here the oak-woods are beautiful. I saw scores of acres by the road-side, where the young oaks stood as regularly as if they had been planted. The orchards are not bad along here, and, perhaps, they are a good deal indebted to the shelter they receive. The wheat very good, all through the weald, but backward.
At Ockley I passed the house of a Mr. Steer, who has a great quantity of hay-land, which is very pretty. Here I came along the turnpike-road that leads from Dorking to Horsham. When I got within about two or three miles of Dorking, I turned off to the right, came across the Holmwood into the lanes leading down to Gadbrook Common, which has of late years been enclosed. It is all clay here; but in the whole of my ride I have not seen much finer fields of wheat than I saw here. Out of these lanes I turned up to "Betchworth" (I believe it is), and from Betchworth came along a chalk-hill to my left and the sand-hills to my right, till I got to this place.
Wen, Sunday, 10th August.
I stayed at Reigate yesterday, and came to the Wen to-day, every step of the way in a rain; as good a soaking as any devotee of St. Swithin ever underwent for his sake. I promised that I would give an account of the effect which the soaking on the South Downs, on Saturday the 2nd instant, had upon the hooping-cough. I do not recommend the remedy to others; but this I will say, that I had a spell of the hooping-cough, the day before I got that soaking, and that I have not had a single spell since; though I have slept in several different beds, and got a second soaking in going from Botley to Easton. The truth is, I believe, that rain upon the South Downs, or at any place near the sea, is by no means the same thing with rain in the interior. No man ever catches cold from getting wet with sea-water; and, indeed, I have never known an instance of a man catching cold at sea. The air upon the South Downs is saltish, I dare say; and the clouds may bring something a little partaking of the nature of sea-water.
At Thursley I left the turnip-hoers poking and pulling and muddling about the weeds, and wholly incapable, after all, of putting the turnips in anything like the state in which they ought to be. The weeds that had been hoed up twice were growing again, and it was the same with the turnips that had been hoed up. In leaving Reigate this morning, it was with great pleasure that I saw a field of Swedish turnips, drilled upon ridges at about four feet distance, the whole field as clean as the cleanest of garden ground. The turnips standing at equal distances in the row, and having the appearance of being, in every respect, in a prosperous state. I should not be afraid to bet that these turnips, thus standing in rows at nearly four feet distance, will be a crop twice as large as any in the parish of Thursley, though there is, I imagine, some of the finest turnip-land in the kingdom. It seems strange that men are not to be convinced of the advantage of the row-culture for turnips. They will insist upon believing that there is some ground lost. They will also insist upon believing that the row-culture is the most expensive. How can there be ground lost if the crop be larger? And as to the expense, take one year with another, the broad-cast method must be twice as expensive as the other. Wet as it has been to-day, I took time to look well about me as I came along. The wheat, even in this ragamuffin part of the country, is good, with the exception of one piece, which lies on your left hand as you come down from Banstead Down. It is very good at Banstead itself, though that is a country sufficiently poor. Just on the other side of Sutton there is a little good land, and in a place or two I thought I saw the wheat a little blighted. A labouring man told me that it was where the heaps of dung had been laid. The barley here is most beautiful, as, indeed, it is all over the country.
Between Sutton and the Wen there is, in fact, little besides houses, gardens, grass plats and other matters to accommodate the Jews and jobbers, and the mistresses and bastards that are put out a-keeping. But, in a dell, which the turnpike-road crosses about a mile on this side of Sutton, there are two fields of as stiff land, I think, as I ever saw in my life. In summer time this land bakes so hard that they cannot plough it unless it be wet. When you have ploughed it, and the sun comes again, it bakes again. One of these fields had been thus ploughed and cross-ploughed in the month of June, and I saw the ground when it was lying in lumps of the size of portmanteaus, and not very small ones either. It would have been impossible to reduce this ground to small particles, except by the means of sledge hammers. The two fields, to which I alluded just now, are alongside of this ploughed field, and they are now in wheat. The heavy rain of to-day, aided by the south-west wind, made the wheat bend pretty nearly to lying down; but you shall rarely see two finer fields of wheat. It is red wheat; a coarsish kind, and the straw stout and strong; but the ears are long, broad and full; and I did not perceive anything approaching towards a speck in the straw. Such land as this, such very stiff land, seldom carries a very large crop; but I should think that these fields would exceed four quarters to an acre; and the wheat is by no means so backward as it is in some places. There is no corn, that I recollect, from the spot just spoken of, to almost the street of Kensington. I came up by Earl's Court, where there is, amongst the market gardens, a field of wheat. One would suppose that this must be the finest wheat in the world. By no means. It rained hard, to be sure, and I had not much time for being particular in my survey; but this field appears to me to have some blight in it; and as to crop, whether of corn or of straw, it is nothing to compare to the general run of the wheat in the wealds of Sussex or of Surrey; what, then, is it, if compared with the wheat on the South Downs, under Portsdown Hill, on the sea-flats at Havant and at Tichfield, and along on the banks of the Itchen!
Thus I have concluded this "rural ride," from the Wen and back again to the Wen, being, taking in all the turnings and windings, as near as can be, two hundred miles in length. My objects were to ascertain the state of the crops, both of hops and of corn. The hop-affair is soon settled, for there will be no hops. As to the corn, my remark is this: that on all the clays, on all the stiff lands upon the chalk; on all the rich lands, indeed, but more especially on all the stiff lands, the wheat is as good as I recollect ever to have seen it, and has as much straw. On all the light lands and poor lands the wheat is thin, and, though not short, by no means good. The oats are pretty good almost everywhere; and I have not seen a bad field of barley during the whole of my ride; though there is no species of soil in England, except that of the fens, over which I have not passed. The state of the farmers is much worse than it was last year, notwithstanding the ridiculous falsehoods of the London newspapers, and the more ridiculous delusion of the jolterheads. In numerous instances the farmers, who continue in their farms, have ceased to farm for themselves, and merely hold the land for the landlords. The delusion caused by the rise of the price of corn has pretty nearly vanished already; and if St. Swithin would but get out of the way with his drippings for about a month, this delusion would disappear, never to return. In the meanwhile, however, the London newspapers are doing what they can to keep up the delusion; and in a paper called Bell's Weekly Messenger, edited, I am told, by a place-hunting lawyer; in that stupid paper of this day I find the following passage:--"So late as January last, the average price of wheat was 39s. per quarter, and on the 29th ult. it was above 62s. As it has been rising ever since, it may now be quoted as little under 65s. So that in this article alone there is a rise of more than thirty-five per cent. Under these circumstances, it is not likely that we shall hear anything of agricultural distress. A writer of considerable talents, but no prophet, had frightened the kingdom by a confident prediction that wheat, after the 1st of May, would sink to 4s. per bushel, and that under the effects of Mr. Peel's Bill, and the payments in cash by the Bank of England, it would never again exceed that price! Nay, so assured was Mr. Cobbett of the mathematical certainty of his deductions on the subject, that he did not hesitate to make use of the following language: 'And farther, if what I say do not come to pass, I will give any one leave to broil me on a gridiron, and for that purpose I will get one of the best gridirons I can possibly get made, and it shall be hung out as near to my premises as possible, in the Strand, so that it shall be seen by everybody as they pass along.' The 1st of May has now passed, Mr. Peel's Bill has not been repealed, and the Bank of England has paid its notes in cash, and yet wheat has risen nearly 40 per cent."
Here is a tissue of falsehoods! But only think of a country being "frightened" by the prospect of a low price of provisions! When such an idea can possibly find its way even into the shallow brain of a cracked-skull lawyer; when such an idea can possibly be put into print at any rate, there must be something totally wrong in the state of the country. Here is this lawyer telling his readers that I had frightened the kingdom by saying that wheat would be sold at four shillings a bushel. Again I say that there must be something wrong, something greatly out of place, some great disease at work in the community, or such an idea as this could never have found its way into print. Into the head of a cracked-skull lawyer it might, perhaps, have entered at any time; but for it to find its way into print there must be something in the state of society wholly out of joint. As to the rest of this article, it is a tissue of downright lies. The writer says that the price of wheat is sixty-five shillings a quarter. The fact is that, on the second instant, the price was fifty-nine shillings and seven-pence: and it is now about two shillings less than that. Then again, this writer must know that I never said that wheat would not rise above four shillings a bushel; but that, on the contrary, I always expressly said that the price would be affected by the seasons, and that I thought that the price would vibrate between three shillings a bushel and seven shillings a bushel. Then again, Peel's Bill has, in part, been repealed; if it had not, there could have been no small note in circulation at this day. So that this lawyer is "All Lie." In obedience to the wishes of a lady, I have been reading about the plans of Mr. Owen; and though I do not as yet see my way clear as to how we can arrange matters with regard to the young girls and the young fellows, I am quite clear that his institution would be most excellent for the disposal of the lawyers. One of his squares would be at a great distance from all other habitations; in the midst of Lord Erskine's estate for instance, mentioned by me in a former ride; and nothing could be so fitting, his Lordship long having been called the father of the Bar; in the midst of this estate, with no town or village within miles of them, we might have one of Mr. Owen's squares, and set the bob-tailed brotherhood most effectually at work. Pray can any one pretend to say that a spade or shovel would not become the hands of this blunder-headed editor of Bell's Messenger better than a pen? However, these miserable falsehoods can cause the delusion to exist but for a very short space of time.
The quantity of the harvest will be great. If the quality be bad, owing to wet weather, the price will be still lower than it would have been in case of dry weather. The price, therefore, must come down; and if the newspapers were conducted by men who had any sense of honour or shame, those men must be covered with confusion.