RIDE, FROM MALMSBURY, IN WILTSHIRE, THROUGH GLOUCESTERSHIRE, HEREFORDSHIRE, AND WORCESTERSHIRE.
_Stroud (Gloucestershire), Tuesday Forenoon, 12th Sept. 1826._
I set off from Malmsbury this morning at 6 o"clock, in as sweet and bright a morning as ever came out of the heavens, and leaving behind me as pleasant a house and as kind hosts as I ever met with in the whole course of my life, either in England or America; and that is saying a great deal indeed. This circ.u.mstance was the more pleasant, as I had never before either seen or heard of these kind, unaffected, sensible, _sans facons_, and most agreeable friends. From Malmsbury I first came, at the end of five miles, to Tutbury, which is in Gloucestershire, there being here a sort of dell, or ravine, which, in this place, is the boundary line of the two counties, and over which you go on a bridge, one-half of which belongs to each county. And now, before I take my leave of Wiltshire, I must observe that, in the whole course of my life (days of _courtship_ excepted, of course), I never pa.s.sed seventeen pleasanter days than those which I have just spent in Wiltshire. It is, especially in the southern half, just the sort of country that I like; the weather has been pleasant; I have been in good houses and amongst good and beautiful gardens; and in _every_ case I have not only been most kindly entertained, but my entertainers have been of just the stamp that I like.
I saw again this morning large flocks of _goldfinches_ feeding on the thistle-seed on the roadside. The French call this bird by a name derived from the thistle, so notorious has it always been that they live upon this seed. _Thistle_ is, in French, _Chardon_; and the French call this beautiful little bird _Chardonaret_. I never could have supposed that such flocks of these birds would ever be seen in England. But it is a great year for all the feathered race, whether wild or tame: naturally so, indeed; for every one knows that it is the _wet_, and not the _cold_, that is injurious to the breeding of birds of all sorts, whether land-birds or water-birds. They say that there are this year double the usual quant.i.ty of ducks and geese: and, really, they do seem to swarm in the farmyards, wherever I go. It is a great mistake to suppose that ducks and geese _need_ water, except to drink. There is, perhaps, no spot in the world, in proportion to its size and population, where so many of these birds are reared and fatted as in Long Island; and it is not in one case out of ten that they have any ponds to go to, or, that they ever see any water other than water that is drawn up out of a well.
A little way before I got to Tutbury I saw a woman digging some potatoes in a strip of ground, making part of a field, nearly an oblong square, and which field appeared to be laid out in strips. She told me that the field was part of a farm (to the homestead of which she pointed); that it was by the farmer _let out_ in strips to labouring people; that each strip contained a rood (or quarter of a statute acre); that each married labourer rented one strip; and that the annual rent was _a pound_ for the strip. Now the taxes being all paid by the farmer; the fences being kept in repair by him; and, as appeared to me, the land being exceedingly good: all these things considered, the rent does not appear to be too high.--This fashion is certainly a _growing_ one; it is a little step towards a coming back to the ancient small life and lease holds and common-fields! This field of strips was, in fact, a sort of common-field; and the "agriculturists," as the conceited a.s.ses of landlords call themselves at their clubs and meetings, might, and they would if their skulls could admit any thoughts except such as relate to high prices and low wages; they might, and they would, begin to suspect that the "dark age" people were not so very foolish when they had so many common-fields, and when almost every man that had a family had also a bit of land, either large or small. It is a very curious thing that the enclosing of commons, that the shutting out of the labourers _from all share_ in the land; that the prohibiting of them to look at a wild animal, almost at a lark or a frog; it is curious that this hard-hearted system should have gone on, until, at last, it has produced effects so injurious and so dangerous to the grinders themselves that they have, of their own accord, and for their own safety, begun to make a step towards the ancient system, and have, in the manner I have observed, made the labourers sharers in some degree in the uses at any rate of the soil.
The far greater part of these strips of land have potatoes growing in them; but in some cases they have borne wheat, and in others barley, this year; and these have now turnips; very young, most of them, but in some places very fine, and in every instance nicely hoed out. The land that will bear 400 bushels of potatoes to the acre will bear 40 bushels of wheat; and the ten bushels of wheat to the quarter of an acre would be a crop far more valuable than a hundred bushels of potatoes, as I have proved many times in the Register.
Just before I got into Tutbury I was met by a good many people, in twos, threes, or fives, some running and some walking fast, one of the first of whom asked me if I had met an "old man" some distance back. I asked what _sort_ of a man: "A _poor_ man." "I don"t recollect, indeed; but what are you all pursuing him for?" "He has been _stealing_." "What has he been stealing?" "Cabbages." "Where?" "Out of Mr. Glover, the hatter"s, garden." "What! do you call that _stealing_; and would you punish a man, a poor man, and, therefore, in all likelihood, a hungry man too, and, moreover an old man; do you set up a hue-and-cry after, and would you punish, such a man for taking a few cabbages, when that Holy Bible, which, I dare say, you profess to believe in, and perhaps a.s.sist to circulate, teaches you that the hungry man may, without committing any offence at all, go into his neighbour"s vineyard and eat his fill of grapes, one bunch of which is worth a sack-full of cabbages?" "Yes; but he is a very bad character." "Why, my friend, very poor and almost starved people are apt to be "bad characters;" but the Bible, in both Testaments, commands us to be merciful to the poor, to feed the hungry, to have compa.s.sion on the aged; and it makes no exception as to the "character" of the parties." Another group or two of the pursuers had come up by this time; and I, bearing in mind the fate of Don Quixote when he interfered in somewhat similar cases, gave my horse the hint, and soon got away; but though doubtless I made no converts, I, upon looking back, perceived that I had slackened the pursuit! The pursuers went more slowly; I could see that they got to talking; it was now the step of deliberation rather than that of decision; and though I did not like to call upon Mr. Glover, I hope he was merciful. It is impossible for me to witness scenes like this; to hear a man called _a thief_ for such a cause; to see him thus eagerly and vindictively pursued for having taken some cabbages in a garden: it is impossible for me to behold such a scene, without calling to mind the practice in the United States of America, where, if a man were even to talk of prosecuting another (especially if that other were poor, or old) for taking from the land, or from the trees, any part of a growing crop, for his own personal and immediate use; if any man were even to talk of prosecuting another for such an act, such talker would be held in universal abhorrence: people would hate him; and, in short, if rich as Ricardo or Baring, he might live by himself; for no man would look upon him as a neighbour.
Tutbury is a very pretty town, and has a beautiful ancient church. The country is high along here for a mile or two towards Avening, which begins a long and deep and narrow valley, that comes all the way down to Stroud. When I got to the end of the high country, and the lower country opened to my view, I was at about three miles from Tutbury, on the road to Avening, leaving the Minching-hampton road to my right. Here I was upon the edge of the high land, looking right down upon the village of Avening, and seeing, just close to it, a large and fine mansion-house, a beautiful park, and, making part of the park, one of the finest, most magnificent woods (of 200 acres, I dare say), lying facing me, going from a valley up a gently-rising hill. While I was sitting on my horse admiring this spot, a man came along with some tools in his hand, as if going somewhere to work as plumber. "Whose beautiful place is that?"
said I. "One "Squire Ricardo, I think they call him, but ..."--You might have "knocked me down with a feather," as the old women say,... "but"
(continued the plumber) "the Old Gentleman"s dead, and" ... "G.o.d ---- the old gentleman and the young gentleman too!" said I; and, giving my horse a blow, instead of a word, on I went down the hill. Before I got to the bottom, my reflections on the present state of the "market" and on the probable results of "watching the turn of it," had made me better humoured; and as one of the first objects that struck my eye in the village was the sign of the CROSS, and of the Red, or b.l.o.o.d.y, Cross too, I asked the landlord some questions, which began a series of joking and bantering that I had with the people, from one end of the village to the other. I set them all a laughing; and, though they could not know my name, they will remember me for a long while.--This estate of Gatcomb belonged, I am told, to a Mr. Shepperd, and to his fathers before him. I asked where this Shepperd was NOW? A tradesman-looking man told me that he did not know where he was; but that he had heard that he was living somewhere near to Bath! Thus they go! Thus they are squeezed out of existence. The little ones are gone; and the big ones have nothing left for it but to resort to the bands of holy matrimony with the turn of the market watchers and their breed. This the big ones are now doing apace; and there is this comfort at any rate; namely, that the connection cannot make them baser than they are, a boroughmonger being, of all G.o.d"s creatures, the very basest.
From Avening I came on through Nailsworth, Woodchester, and Rodborough, to this place. These villages lie on the sides of a narrow and deep valley, with a narrow stream of water running down the middle of it, and this stream turns the wheels of a great many mills and sets of machinery for the making of _woollen-cloth_. The factories begin at Avening, and are scattered all the way down the valley. There are steam-engines as well as water powers. The work and the trade is so flat that in, I should think, much more than a hundred acres of ground which I have seen to-day covered with rails or racks for the drying of cloth, I do not think that I have seen one single acre where the racks had cloth upon them. The workmen do not get half wages; great numbers are thrown on the parish; but overseers and magistrates in this part of England do not presume that they are to leave anybody to starve to death; there is law here; this is in England, and not in "the North," where those who ought to see that the poor do not suffer talk of their dying with hunger as Irish "Squires do; aye, and applaud them for their patient resignation!
The Gloucestershire people have no notion of dying with hunger; and it is with great pleasure that I remark that I have seen no woe-worn creature this day. The sub-soil here is a yellowish ugly stone. The houses are all built with this; and, it being ugly, the stone is made _white_ by a wash of some sort or other. The land on both sides of the valley, and all down the bottom of it, has plenty of trees on it; it is chiefly pasture land, so that the green and the white colours, and the form and great variety of the ground, and the water and altogether make this a very pretty ride. Here are a series of spots, every one of which a lover of landscapes would like to have painted. Even the buildings of the factories are not ugly. The people seem to have been constantly well off. A pig in almost every cottage sty; and that is the infallible mark of a happy people. At present, indeed, this valley suffers; and though cloth will always be wanted, there will yet be much suffering even here, while at Uly and other places they say that the suffering is great indeed.
_Huntley, Between Gloucester and Ross._
From Stroud I came up to Pitchcomb, leaving Painswick on my right. From the lofty hill at Pitchcomb I looked down into that great flat and almost circular vale, of which the city of Gloucester is in the centre.
To the left I saw the Severn, become a sort of arm of the sea; and before me I saw the hills that divide this county from Herefordshire and Worcestershire. The hill is a mile down. When down, you are amongst dairy-farms and orchards all the way to Gloucester, and this year the orchards, particularly those of pears, are greatly productive. I intended to sleep at Gloucester, as I had, when there, already come twenty-five miles, and as the fourteen, which remained for me to go in order to reach Bollitree, in Herefordshire, would make about nine more than either I or my horse had a taste for. But when I came to Gloucester I found that I should run a risk of having no bed if I did not bow very low and pay very high; for what should there be here but one of those scandalous and beastly fruits of the system called a "Music-Meeting!"
Those who founded the Cathedrals never dreamed, I dare say, that they would have been put to such uses as this! They are, upon these occasions, made use of as _Opera-Houses_; and I am told that the money which is collected goes, in some shape or another, to the Clergy of the Church, or their widows, or children, or something. These a.s.semblages of player-folks, half-rogues and half-fools, began with the small paper-money; and with it they will go. They are amongst the profligate pranks which idleness plays when fed by the sweat of a starving people.
From this scene of prost.i.tution and of pocket-picking I moved off with all convenient speed, but not before the ostler made me pay 9_d._ for merely letting my horse _stand_ about ten minutes, and not before he had _begun_ to abuse me for declining, though in a very polite manner, to make him a present in addition to the 9_d._ How he ended I do not know; for I soon set the noise of the shoes of my horse to answer him. I got to this village, about eight miles from Gloucester, by five o"clock: it is now half past seven, and I am going to bed with an intention of getting to Bollitree (six miles only) early enough in the morning to catch my sons in bed if they play the sluggard.
_Bollitree, Wednesday, 13th Sept._
This morning was most beautiful. There has been rain here now, and the gra.s.s begins (but only begins) to grow. When I got within two hundred yards of Mr. Palmer"s I had the happiness to meet my son Richard, who said that he had been up an hour. As I came along I saw one of the prettiest sights in the _flower_ way that I ever saw in my life. It was a little orchard; the gra.s.s in it had just taken a start, and was beautifully fresh; and very thickly growing amongst the gra.s.s was the purple flowered _Colchic.u.m_ in full bloom. They say that the leaves of this plant, which come out in the spring and die away in the summer, are poisonous to cattle if they eat much of them in the spring. The flower, if standing by itself, would be no great beauty; but contrasted thus with the fresh gra.s.s, which was a little shorter than itself, it was very beautiful.
_Bollitree, Sat.u.r.day, 23rd Sept._
Upon my arrival here, which, as the reader has seen, was ten days ago, I had a parcel of _letters_ to open, amongst which were a large lot from Correspondents, who had been good enough to set me right with regard to that conceited and impudent plagiarist, or literary thief, "Sir James Graham, Baronet of Netherby." One correspondent says that I have reversed the rule of the Decalogue by visiting the sins of the son upon the father. Another tells me anecdotes about the "Magnus Apollo." I hereby do the father justice by saying that, from what I have now heard of him, I am induced to believe that he would have been ashamed to commit flagrant acts of plagiarism, which the son has been guilty of.
The whole of this plagiarist"s pamphlet is bad enough. Every part of it is contemptible; but the pa.s.sage in which he says that there was "no man of any authority who did not under-rate the distress that would arise out of Peel"s Bill;" this pa.s.sage merits a broom-stick at the hands of any Englishman that chooses to lay it on, and particularly from me.
As to _crops_ in Herefordshire and Gloucestershire, they have been very bad. Even the wheat here has been only a two-third part crop. The barley and oats really next to nothing. _Fed off_ by cattle and sheep in many places, partly for want of gra.s.s and partly from their worthlessness.
The cattle have been nearly starved in many places; and we hear the same from Worcestershire. In some places one of these beautiful calves (last spring calves) will be given for the wintering of another. Hay at Stroud was six pounds a ton: last year it was 3_l._ a ton: and yet meat and cheese are lower in price than they were last year. Mutton (I mean alive) was last year at this time 7-1/2_d._; it is now 6_d._ There has been in North Wilts and in Gloucestershire half the quant.i.ty of cheese made this year, and yet the price is lower than it was last year. Wool is half the last year"s price. There has, within these three weeks or a month, been a prodigious increase in the quant.i.ty of cattle food; the gra.s.s looks like the gra.s.s late in May; and the late and stubble-turnips (of which immense quant.i.ties have been sown) have grown very much, and promise large crops generally; yet lean sheep have, at the recent fairs, fallen in price; they have been lessening in price, while the facility of keeping them has been augmenting! Aye; but the paper-money has not been augmenting, notwithstanding the Branch-Bank at Gloucester! This bank is quite ready, they say, to take deposits; that is to say, to keep people"s spare money for them; but to lend them none, without such security as would get money, even from the claws of a miser. This trick is, then, what the French call a _coup-manque_; or a missing of the mark. In spite of everything, as to the season, calculated to cause lean sheep to rise in price, they fell, I hear, at Wilton fair (near Salisbury) on the 12th instant, from 2_s._ to 3_s._ a head. And yesterday, 22nd Sept., at Newent fair, there was a fall since the last fair in this neighbourhood. Mr. Palmer sold, at this fair, sheep for 23_s._ a head, rather better than some which he sold at the same fair last year for 34_s._ a head: so that here is a falling off of a third!
Think of the dreadful ruin, then, which must fall upon the renting farmers, whether they rent the land, or rent the money which enables them to call the land their own! The recent Order in Council _has_ ruined many. I was, a few days after that Order reached us, in Wiltshire, in a rick yard, looking at the ricks, amongst which were two of beans. I asked the farmer how much the Order would take out of his pocket; and he said it had already taken out more than a hundred pounds!
This is a pretty state of things for a man to live in! The winds are less uncertain than this calling of a farmer is now become, though it is a calling the affairs of which have always been deemed as little liable to accident as anything human.
The "best public instructor" tells us, that the Ministers are about to give the _Militia-Clothing_ to the poor Manufacturers! Coats, waistcoats, trousers, shoes and stockings! Oh, what a kind as well as wise "envy of surrounding nations" this is! Dear good souls! But what are the _women_ to do? No _smocks_, pretty gentlemen! No royal commission to be appointed to distribute smocks to the suffering "females" of the "_disturbed_ districts!" How fine our "manufacturing population" will look all dressed in _red_! Then indeed will the farming fellows have to repent, that they did not follow the advice of Dr.
Black, and fly to the "_happy_ manufacturing districts," where employment, as the Doctor affirmed, was so abundant and so permanent, and where wages were so high! Out of evil comes good; and this state of things has blown the Scotch _poleeteecal ec.o.o.noomy_ to the devil, at any rate. In spite of all their plausibility and persevering bra.s.s, the Scotch writers are now generally looked upon as so many tricky humbugs.
Mr. Sedgwick"s affair is enough, one would think, to open men"s eyes to the character of this greedy band of _invaders_; for invaders they are, and of the very worst sort: they come only to live on the labour of others; never to work themselves; and, while they do this, they are everlastingly publishing essays, the object of which is, to keep the Irish out of England! Dr. Black has, within these four years, published more than a hundred articles, in which he has represented the invasion of the Irish as being ruinous to England! What monstrous impudence! The Irish come to help do the work; the Scotch to help eat the taxes; or, to tramp "_aboot mon_" with a pack and licence; or, in other words, to cheat upon a small scale, as their superiors do upon a large one. This tricky and greedy set have, however, at last, overreached themselves, after having so long overreached all the rest of mankind that have had the misfortune to come in contact with them. They are now smarting under the scourge, the torments of which they have long made others feel. They have been the princ.i.p.al inventors and executors of all that has been d.a.m.nable to England. They are _now_ bothered; and I thank G.o.d for it. It may, and it must, finally deliver us from their baleful influence.
To return to the kind and pretty gentlemen of Whitehall, and their _Militia-Clothing_: if they refuse to supply the women with smocks, perhaps they would have no objection to hand them over some petticoats; or at any rate, to give their husbands a _musket_ a piece, and a little powder and ball; just to amuse themselves with, instead of the employment of "digging holes one day and filling them up the next," as suggested by "the great statesman, now no more," who was one of that "n.o.ble, honourable, and venerable body" the Privy Council (to which Sturges Bourne belongs), and who cut his own throat at North Cray, in Kent, just about three years after he had brought in the bill, which compelled me to make the Register contain two sheets and a quarter, and to compel printers to give, before they began to print, bail to pay any fines that might be inflicted on them for anything that they might print. Let me see: where was I? Oh! the muskets and powder and ball ought, certainly, to go with the red clothes; but how strange it is, that the _real relief_ never seems to occur, even for one single moment, to the minds of these pretty gentlemen; namely, _taking off the taxes_.
What a thing it is to behold poor people receiving taxes, or alms, to prevent them from starving; and to behold one half, at least, of what they receive, taken from them in taxes! What a sight to behold soldiers, horse and foot, employed to prevent a distressed people from committing acts of violence, when the _cost_ of the horse and foot would, probably, if applied in the way of relief to the sufferers, prevent the existence of the distress! A cavalry horse has, I think, ten pounds of oats a day and twenty pounds of hay. These at present prices, cost 16_s._ a week. Then there is stable room, barracks, straw, saddle and all the trappings. Then there is the wear of the horse. Then the pay of them. So that one single horseman, with his horse, do not cost so little as 36_s._ a week; and that is more than the parish allowance to five labourers" or manufacturers" families, at five to a family; so that one horseman and his horse cost what would feed twenty-five of the distressed creatures. If there be ten thousand of these hors.e.m.e.n, they cost as much as would keep, at the parish rate, two hundred and fifty thousand of the distressed persons. Aye; it is even so, parson Hay, stare at it as long as you like. But, suppose it to be only half as much: then it would maintain a hundred and twenty-five thousand persons.
However, to get rid of all dispute, and to state one staring and undeniable fact, let me first observe, that it is notorious, that the poor-rates are looked upon as enormous; that they are deemed an insupportable burden; that Scarlett and Nolan have a.s.serted, that they threaten to swallow up the land; that it is equally notorious that a large part of the poor-rates ought to be called _wages_; all this is undeniable, and now comes the d.a.m.ning fact; namely, that the whole amount of these poor-rates falls far short of the cost of the standing army in time of peace! So that, take away this army, which is to keep the distressed people from committing acts of violence, and you have, at once, ample means of removing all the distress and all the danger of acts of violence! _When_ will this be done? Do not say, "_Never_,"
reader: if you do, you are not only a slave, but you ought to be one.
I cannot dismiss this _militia-clothing_ affair, without remarking, that I do not agree with those who _blame_ the Ministers for having let in the foreign corn _out of fear_. Why not do it from that motive? "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." And what is meaned by "fear of the Lord," but the fear of doing wrong, or of persevering in doing wrong? And whence is this fear to arise? From thinking of the _consequences_, to be sure: and, therefore if the Ministers did let in the foreign corn for fear of popular commotion, they acted rightly, and their motive was as good and reasonable as the act was wise and just. It would have been lucky for them if the same sort of motive had prevailed, when the Corn Bill was pa.s.sed; but that _game-c.o.c.k_ statesman, who at last, sent a spur into his own throat, was then in high feather, and he, while soldiers were drawn up round the Honourable, Honourable, Honourable House, said, that he did not for his part, care much about the Bill; but, since the mob had clamoured against _it_, he was resolved to support it! Alas! that such a _c.o.c.k_ statesman should have come to such an end! All the towns and cities in England pet.i.tioned against that odious Bill. Their pet.i.tions were rejected, and that rejection is _amongst_ the causes of the present embarra.s.sments. Therefore I am not for blaming the Ministers for acting from _fear_. They did the same in the case of the poor Queen. Fear taught them wisely, then, also. What!
would you never have people act from _fear_? What but fear of the law restrains many men from committing crimes? What but fear of exposure prevents thousands upon thousands of offences, moral as well as legal?
Nonsense about "acting from fear." I always hear with great suspicion your eulogists of "_vigorous_" government; I do not like your vigorous governments; your game-c.o.c.k governments. We saw enough of these, and _felt_ enough of them too, under Pitt, Dundas, Perceval, Gibbs, Ellenborough, Sidmouth and Castlereagh. I prefer governments like those of Edward I. of England and St. Louis of France; _c.o.c.ks_ as towards their enemies and rivals, and _chickens_ as towards their own people: precisely the reverse of our modern "country gentlemen," as they call themselves; very lions as towards their poor, robbed, famishing labourers, but more than lambs as towards tax-eaters, and especially as towards the fierce and whiskered _dead-weight_, in the presence of any of whom they dare not say that their souls are their own. This base race of men, called "country gentlemen" must be speedily changed by almost a miracle; or they, big as well as little, must be swept away; and if it should be desirable for posterity to have a just idea of them, let posterity take this one fact; that the t.i.thes are now, in part, received by men, who are Rectors and Vicars, and who, at the same time receive half-pay as naval or military officers; and that not one English "country gentleman" has had the courage even to complain of this, though many gallant half-pay officers have been dismissed and beggared, upon the ground, that the half-pay is not a reward for past services, but a retaining fee for future services; so that, put the two together, they amount to this; that the half-pay is given to church parsons, that they may be, when war comes, ready to serve as officers in the army or navy!
Let the world match that if it can! And yet there are scoundrels to say, that we do not want a _radical reform_! Why there must be such a reform, in order to prevent us from becoming a ma.s.s of wretches too corrupt and profligate and base even to carry on the common transactions of life.
_Ryall, near Upton on Severn (Worcestershire), Monday, 25th Sept._
I set off from Mr. Palmer"s yesterday, after breakfast, having his son (about 13 years old) as my travelling companion. We came across the country, a distance of about 22 miles, and, having crossed the Severn at Upton, arrived here, at Mr. John Price"s, about two o"clock. On our road we pa.s.sed by the estate and park of _another Ricardo_! This is Osmond; the other is David. This one has ousted two families of Normans, the Honeywood Yateses, and the Scudamores. They suppose him to have ten thousand pounds a year in rent here! Famous "watching the turn of the market"! The Barings are at work down in this country too. They are everywhere, indeed, depositing their eggs about, like cunning old guinea-hens, in sly places, besides the great, open showy nests that they have. The "instructor" tells us, that the Ricardos have received sixty-four thousand pounds Commission, on the "Greek Loans," or, rather, "Loans to the Greeks." Oh, brave Greeks, to have such patriots to aid you with their financial skill; such patriots as Mr. Galloway to make engines of war for you, while his son is making them for the Turks; and such patriots as Burdett and Hobhouse to talk of your political relations! Happy Greeks! Happy Mexicans, too, it seems; for the "best instructor" tells us, that the Barings, whose progenitors came from Dutchland about the same time as, and perhaps in company with, the Ricardos; happy Mexicans too; for, the "instructor" as good as swears, that the Barings will see that the dividends on your loans are paid in future! Now, therefore, the riches, the loads, the shiploads of silver and gold are now to pour in upon us! Never was there a nation so foolish as this! But, and this ought to be well understood, it is not _mere_ foolishness; not mere harmless folly; it is foolishness, the offspring of _greediness_ and of a _gambling_, which is little short of a _roguish_ disposition; and this disposition prevails to an enormous extent in the country, as I am told, more than in the monstrous Wen itself. Most delightfully, however, have the greedy, mercenary, selfish, unfeeling wretches, been bit by the _loans_ and _shares_! The King of Spain gave the wretches a sharp bite, for which I always most cordially thank his Majesty. I dare say, that his sponging off of the roguish Bonds has reduced to beggary, or caused to cut their throats, many thousands of the greedy, fund-loving, stock-jobbing devils, who, if they regard it likely to raise their "securities" one per cent., would applaud the murder of half the human race. These vermin all, without a single exception, approved of, and rejoiced at, Sidmouth"s _Power-of-Imprisonment Bill_, and they applauded his _Letter of Thanks to the Manchester Yeomanry Cavalry_. No matter what it is that puts an end to a system which engenders and breeds up vermin like these.
Mr. Hanford, of this county, and Mr. Canning of Gloucestershire, having dined at Mr. Price"s yesterday, I went, to-day, with Mr. Price to see Mr. Hanford at his house and estate at Bredon Hill, which is, I believe, one of the highest in England. The ridge, or, rather, the edge of it, divides, in this part, Worcestershire from Gloucestershire. At the very highest part of it there are the remains of an encampment, or rather, I should think, citadel. In many instances, in Wiltshire, these marks of fortifications are called castles still; and, doubtless, there were once castles on these spots. From Bredon Hill you see into nine or ten counties; and those curious bubblings-up, the Malvern Hills, are right before you, and only at about ten miles" distance, in a straight line.
As this hill looks over the counties of Worcester, Gloucester, Hereford and part of Warwick and the rich part of Stafford; and, as it looks over the vales of Esham, Worcester, and Gloucester, having the Avon and the Severn, winding down them, you certainly see from this Bredon Hill one of the very richest spots of England, and I am fully convinced, a richer spot than is to be seen in any other country in the world; I mean _Scotland excepted_, of course, for fear Sawney should cut my throat, or, which is much the same thing squeeze me by the hand, from which last I pray thee to deliver me, O Lord!
The Avon (this is the _third_ Avon that I have crossed in this Ride) falls into the Severn just below Tewkesbury, through which town we went in our way to Mr. Hanford"s. These rivers, particularly the Severn, go through, and sometimes overflow, the finest meadows of which it is possible to form an idea. Some of them contain more than a hundred acres each; and the number of cattle and sheep, feeding in them, is prodigious. Nine-tenths of the land, in these extensive vales, appears to me to be pasture, and it is pasture of the richest kind. The sheep are chiefly of the Leicester breed, and the cattle of the Hereford, white face and dark red body, certainly the finest and most beautiful of all horn-cattle. The gra.s.s, after the fine rains that we have had, is in its finest possible dress; but, here, as in the parts of Gloucestershire and Herefordshire that I have seen, there are no turnips, except those which have been recently sown; and, though amidst all these thousands upon thousands of acres of the finest meadows and gra.s.s land in the world, hay is, I hear, seven pounds a ton at Worcester. However, unless we should have very early and even hard frosts, the gra.s.s will be so abundant, that the cattle and sheep will do better than people are apt to think. But, be this as it may, this summer has taught us, that our climate is the _best for produce_, after all; and that we cannot have Italian sun and English meat and cheese. We complain of the _drip_; but it is the drip that makes the beef and the mutton.
Mr. Hanford"s house is on the side of Bredon Hill; about a third part up it, and is a very delightful place. The house is of ancient date, and it appears to have been always inhabited by and the property of Roman Catholics; for there is, in one corner of the very top of the building, up in the very roof of it, a Catholic chapel, as ancient as the roof itself. It is about twenty-five feet long and ten wide. It has arch-work, to imitate the roof of a church. At the back of the altar there is a little room, which you enter through a door going out of the chapel; and, adjoining this little room, there is a closet, in which is a trapdoor made to let the priests down into one of those hiding places, which were contrived for the purpose of evading the grasp of those greedy Scotch minions, to whom that pious and tolerant Protestant, James I., delivered over those English gentlemen, who remained faithful to the religion of their fathers, and, to set his country free from which greedy and cruel grasp, that honest Englishman, Guy Fawkes, wished, as he bravely told the King and his Scotch council, "_to blow the Scotch beggars back to their mountains again_." Even this King has, in his works (for James was an author), had the justice to call him "the English Scaevola"; and we Englishmen, fools set on by knaves, have the folly, or the baseness, to burn him in effigy on the 5th November, the anniversary of his intended exploit! In the hall of this house there is the portrait of Sir Thomas Winter, who was one of the accomplices of Fawkes, and who was killed in the fight with the sheriff and his party.
There is also the portrait of his lady, who must have spent half her life-time in the working of some very curious sacerdotal vestments, which are preserved here with great care, and are as fresh and as beautiful as they were the day they were finished.
A parson said to me, once, by letter: "Your religion, Mr. Cobbett, seems to me to be altogether _political_." "Very much so, indeed," answered I, "and well it may, since I have been furnished with a creed which makes part of an Act of Parliament." And, the fact is, I am no Doctor of Divinity, and like a religion, any religion, that tends to make men innocent and benevolent and happy, by taking the best possible means of furnishing them with plenty to eat and drink and wear. I am a Protestant of the Church of England, and, as such, blush to see, that more than half the parsonage-houses are wholly gone, or are become mere hovels.
What I have written on the "Protestant Reformation," has proceeded entirely from a sense of justice towards our calumniated Catholic forefathers, to whom we owe all those of our inst.i.tutions that are worthy of our admiration and grat.i.tude. I have not written as a Catholic, but as an Englishman; yet a sincere Catholic must feel some little grat.i.tude towards me; and, if there was an ungrateful reptile in the neighbourhood of Preston, to give, as a toast, "Success to Stanley and Wood," the conduct of those Catholics that I have seen here has, as far as I am concerned, amply compensated for his baseness.
This neighbourhood has witnessed some pretty thumping transfers from the Normans. Holland, one of Baring"s partners, or clerks, has recently bought an estate of Lord Somers, called Dumbleton, for, it is said, about eighty thousand pounds. Another estate of the same Lord, called Strensham, has been bought by a Brummigeham Banker of the name of Taylor, for, it is said, seventy thousand pounds. "Eastnor Castle," just over the Malvern Hills, is still building, and Lord Eastnor lives at that pretty little warm and snug place, the priory of Reigate, in Surrey, and close by the not less snug little borough of the same name.
MEMORANDUM. When we were pet.i.tioning _for reform_, in 1817, my Lord Somers wrote and published a pamphlet, under his own name, condemning our conduct and our principles, and insisting that we, if let alone, should produce "_a revolution_, and _endanger all property_!" The Barings are adding field to field and tract to tract in Herefordshire; and, as to the Ricardos, they seem to be animated with the same laudable spirit. This Osmond Ricardo has a park at one of his estates, called Broomsborough, and that park has a new porter"s lodge, upon which there is a span new cross as large as life! Aye, big enough and long enough to crucify a man upon! I had never seen such an one before; and I know not what sort of thought it was that seized me at the moment; but, though my horse is but a clumsy goer, I verily believe I got away from it at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour. My companion, who is always upon the look-out for cross-ditches, or pieces of timber, on the road-side, to fill up the time of which my jog-trot gives him so wearisome a surplus, seemed delighted at this my new pace; and, I dare say he has wondered ever since what should have given me wings just for that once and that once only.
_Worcester, Tuesday, 26th Sept._
Mr. Price rode with us to this city, which is one of the cleanest, neatest, and handsomest towns I ever saw: indeed, I do not recollect to have seen any one equal to it. The _cathedral_ is, indeed, a poor thing, compared with any of the others, except that of Hereford; and I have seen them all but those of Carlisle, Durham, York, Lincoln, Chester, and Peterborough; but the _town_ is, I think, the very best I ever saw; and which is, indeed, the greatest of all recommendations, the _people_ are, upon the whole, the most suitably dressed and most decent looking people. The town is precisely in character with the beautiful and rich country, in the midst of which it lies. Everything you see gives you the idea of real, solid wealth; aye! and thus it was, too, before, long before, Pitt, and even long before "good Queen Bess" and her military law and her Protestant racks, were ever heard or dreamed of.
At Worcester, as everywhere else, I find a group of cordial and sensible friends, at the house of one of whom, Mr. George Brooke, I have just spent a most pleasant evening, in company with several gentlemen, whom he had had the goodness to invite to meet me. I here learned a fact, which I must put upon record before it escape my memory. Some few years ago (about seven, perhaps), at the public sale by auction of the goods of a then recently deceased Attorney of the name of Hyde, in this city, there were, amongst the goods to be sold, the portraits of _Pitt_, _Burdett_, and _Paine_, all framed and glazed. Pitt, with hard driving and very lofty praises, fetched fifteen shillings; Burdett fetched twenty-seven shillings. Paine was, in great haste, knocked down at five pounds; and my informant was convinced, that the lucky purchaser might have had fifteen pounds for it. I hear Colonel Davies spoken of here with great approbation: he will soon have an opportunity of showing us whether he deserve it.
The hop-picking and bagging is over here. The crop, as in the other hop-countries, has been very great, and the quality as good as ever was known. The average price appears to be about 75_s._ the hundred weight.
The reader (if he do not belong to a hop-country) should be told, that hop-planters, and even all their neighbours, are, as hop-ward, _mad_, though the most sane and reasonable people as to all other matters. They are ten times more jealous upon this score than men ever are of their wives; aye, and than they are of their mistresses, which is going a great deal farther. I, who am a _Farnham_ man, was well aware of this foible; and therefore, when a gentleman told me, that he would not brew with Farnham hops, if he could have them as a gift, I took special care not to ask him how it came to pa.s.s, that the Farnham hops always sold at about double the price of the Worcester; but, if he had said the same thing to any other Farnham man that I ever saw, I should have preferred being absent from the spot: the hops are bitter, but nothing is their bitterness compared to the language that my townsman would have put forth.
This city, or this neighbourhood, at least, being the birth-place of what I have called, the "Little-Shilling project," and Messrs. Atwood and Spooner being the originators of the project, and the project having been adopted by Mr. Western, and having been by him now again recently urged upon the Ministers, in a Letter to Lord Liverpool, and it being possible that some worthy persons may be misled, and even ruined, by the confident a.s.sertions and the pertinacity of the projectors; this being the case, and I having half an hour to spare, will here endeavour to show, in as few words as I can, that this project, if put into execution, would produce injustice the most crying that the world ever heard of, and would, in the present state of things, infallibly lead to a violent revolution. The project is to "lower the standard," as they call it; that is to say, to make a _sovereign pa.s.s for more than 20s._ In what _degree_ they would reduce the standard they do not say; but a vile pamphlet writer, whose name is Crutwell, and who is a beneficed parson, and who has most foully abused me, because I laugh at the project, says that he would reduce it one half; that is to say, that he would make a sovereign pa.s.s for two pounds. Well, then, let us, for plainness" sake, suppose that the present sovereign is, all at once, to pa.s.s for two pounds. What will the consequences be? Why, here is a parson, who receives his t.i.thes in kind and whose t.i.thes are, we will suppose, a thousand bushels of wheat in a year, on an average; and he owes a thousand pounds to somebody. He will pay his debt with 500 sovereigns, and he will still receive his thousand bushels of wheat a year! I let a farm for 100_l._ a year, by the year; and I have a mortgage of 2000_l._ upon it, the interest just taking away the rent.
Pa.s.s the project, and then I, of course, raise my rent to 200_l._ a year, and I still pay the mortgagee 100_l._ a year! What can be plainer than this? But, the Banker"s is the fine case. I deposit with a banker a thousand whole sovereigns to-day. Pa.s.s the project to-morrow, and the banker pays me my deposit with a thousand half sovereigns! If, indeed, you could double the quant.i.ty of corn and meat and all goods by the same Act of Parliament, then, all would be right; but that quant.i.ty will remain what it was before you pa.s.sed the project; and, of course, the money being doubled in nominal amount, the price of the goods would be doubled. There needs not another word upon the subject; and whatever may be the national inference respecting the intellects of Messrs. Atwood and Spooner, I must say, that I do most sincerely believe, that there is not one of my readers, who will not feel astonishment, that any men, having the reputation of men of sound mind, should not clearly see, that such a project must almost instantly produce a revolution of the most dreadful character.
_Stanford Park, Wednesday, 27th Sept. (Morning)._
In a letter which I received from Sir Thomas Winnington (one of the Members for this county), last year, he was good enough to request that I would call upon him, if I ever came into Worcestershire, which I told him I would do; and accordingly here we are in his house, situated, certainly, in one of the finest spots in all England. We left Worcester yesterday about ten o"clock, crossed the Severn, which runs close by the town, and came on to this place, which lies in a north-western direction from Worcester, at 14 miles distance from that city, and at about six from the borders of Shropshire. About four miles back we pa.s.sed by the park and through the estate of Lord Foley, to whom is due the praise of being a most indefatigable and successful _planter of trees_. He seems to have taken uncommon pains in the execution of this work; and he has the merit of disinterestedness, the trees being chiefly oaks, which he is _sure_ he can never see grow to timber. We crossed the Teme River just before we got here. Sir Thomas was out shooting; but he soon came home, and gave us a very polite reception. I had time, yesterday, to see the place, to look at trees, and the like, and I wished to get away early this morning; but, being prevailed on to stay to breakfast, here I am, at six o"clock in the morning, in one of the best and best-stocked private libraries that I ever saw; and, what is more, the owner, from what pa.s.sed yesterday, when he brought me hither, convinced me that he was acquainted with the _insides_ of the books. I asked, and shall ask, no questions about who got these books together; but the collection is such as, I am sure, I never saw before in a private house.
The house and stables and courts are such as they ought to be for the great estate that surrounds them; and the park is everything that is beautiful. On one side of the house, looking over a fine piece of water, you see a distant valley, opening between lofty hills: on another side the ground descends a little at first, then goes gently rising for a while, and then rapidly, to the distance of a mile perhaps, where it is crowned with trees in irregular patches, or groups, single and most magnificent trees being scattered all over the whole of the park; on another side, there rise up beautiful little hills, some in the form of barrows on the downs, only forty or a hundred times as large, one or two with no trees on them, and others topped with trees; but, on one of these little hills, and some yards higher than the lofty trees which are on this little hill, you see rising up the tower of the parish church, which hill is, I think, taken all together, amongst the most delightful objects that I ever beheld.