Rural Rides Part 22

When I got to Devizes on Sat.u.r.day evening, and came to look out of the inn-window into the street, I perceived that I had seen that place before, and always having thought that I should like to _see_ Devizes, of which I had heard so much talk as a famous corn-market, I was very much surprised to find that it was not new to me. Presently a stage-coach came up to the door, with "Bath and London" upon its panels; and then I recollected that I had been at this place on my way to Bristol last year. Devizes is, as nearly as possible, in the centre of the county, and the _ca.n.a.l_ that pa.s.ses close by it is the great channel through which the produce of the country is carried away to be devoured by the idlers, the thieves, and the prost.i.tutes, who are all tax-eaters, in the Wens of Bath and London. Pottern, which I pa.s.sed through in my way from Warminster to Devizes, was once a place much larger than Devizes; and it is now a mere ragged village, with a church large, very ancient, and of most costly structure. The whole of the people here might, as in most other cases, be placed in the _belfry_, or the church-porches.

All the way along the mansion-houses are nearly all gone. There is now and then a great place, belonging to a borough-monger, or some one connected with borough-mongers; but all the _little gentlemen_ are gone; and hence it is that parsons are now made justices of the peace! There are few other persons left who are at all capable of filling the office in a way to suit the system! The monopolizing brewers and rag-rooks are, in some places, the "magistrates;" and thus is the whole thing _changed_, and England is no more what it was. Very near to the sides of my road from Warminster to Devizes there were formerly (within a hundred years) 22 mansion-houses of sufficient note to be marked as such in the county-map then made. There are now only seven of them remaining. There were five parish-churches nearly close to my road; and in one parish out of the five the parsonage-house is, in the parliamentary return, said to be "too small" for the parson to live in, though the church would contain two or three thousand people, and though the living is a Rectory, and a rich one too! Thus has the church-property, or, rather, that public property which is called church property, been dilapidated!

The parsons have swallowed the _t.i.thes_ and the rent of the glebes; and have, successively, suffered the parsonage-houses to fall into decay.

But these parsonage-houses were, indeed, not intended for large families. They were intended for a priest, a main part of whose business it was to distribute the t.i.thes amongst the poor and the strangers! The parson, in this case, at Corsley, says, "too small for an inc.u.mbent with a family." Ah! there is the mischief. It was never intended to give men t.i.thes as a premium for breeding! Malthus does not seem to see any harm in _this_ sort of increase of population. It is the _working_ population, those who raise the food and the clothing, that he and Scarlett want to put a stop to the breeding of!

I saw, on my way through the down-countries, hundreds of acres of ploughed land in _shelves_. What I mean is, the side of a steep hill made into the shape of _a stairs_, only the rising parts more sloping than those of a stairs, and deeper in proportion. The side of the hill, in its original form, was too steep to be ploughed, or, even, to be worked with a spade. The earth, as soon as moved, would have rolled down the hill; and besides, the rains would have soon washed down all the surface earth, and have left nothing for plants of any sort to grow in.

Therefore the sides of hills, where the land was sufficiently good, and where it was wanted for the growing of corn, were thus made into a sort of steps or shelves, and the horizontal parts (representing the parts of the stairs that we put our feet upon) were ploughed and sowed, as they generally are, indeed, to this day. Now no man, not even the hireling Chalmers, will have the impudence to say that these shelves, amounting to thousands and thousands of acres in Wilts.h.i.+re alone, were not made by the hand of man. It would be as impudent to contend that the churches were formed by the flood, as to contend that these shelves were formed by that cause. Yet thus the Scotch scribes must contend; or they must give up all their a.s.sertions about the ancient beggary and want of population in England; for, as in the case of the churches, what were these shelves made _for_? And could they be made at all without a great abundance of hands? These shelves are everywhere to be seen throughout the down-countries of Suss.e.x, Hamps.h.i.+re, Wilts.h.i.+re, Dorsets.h.i.+re, Devons.h.i.+re, and Cornwall; and besides this, large tracts of land, amounting to millions of acres, perhaps, which are now downs, heaths, or woodlands, still, if you examine closely, bear the marks of the plough.

The fact is, I dare say, that the country has never varied much in the gross amount of its population; but formerly the people were pretty evenly spread over the country, instead of being, as the greater part of them now are, collected together in great ma.s.ses, where, for the greater part, the idlers live on the labour of the industrious.

In quitting Devizes yesterday morning I saw, just on the outside of the town, a monstrous building, which I took for _a barrack_; but upon asking what it was, I found it was one of those other marks of the JUBILEE REIGN; namely, _a most magnificent gaol_! It seemed to me sufficient to hold one-half of the able-bodied men in the county! And it would do it too, and do it well! Such a system must come to an end, and the end must be dreadful. As I came on the road, for the first three or four miles, I saw great numbers of labourers either digging potatoes for their Sunday's dinner, or coming home with them, or going out to dig them. The land-owners, or occupiers, let small pieces of land to the labourers, and these they cultivate with the spade for their own use.

They pay in all cases a high rent, and in most cases an enormous one.

The practice prevails all the way from Warminster to Devizes, and from Devizes to nearly this place (Highworth). The rent is, in some places, a s.h.i.+lling a rod, which is, mind, 160_s._ or 8_l._ an acre! Still the poor creatures like to have the land: they work in it at their spare hours; and on Sunday mornings early: and the overseers, sharp as they may be, cannot ascertain precisely how much they get out of their plat of ground. But, good G.o.d! what a life to live! What a life to see people live; to see this sight in our own country, and to have the base vanity to _boast_ of that country, and to talk of our "const.i.tution" and our "liberties," and to affect to _pity_ the Spaniards, whose working people live like gentlemen, compared with our miserable creatures. Again I say, give me the Inquisition and well-healed cheeks and ribs, rather than "civil and religious liberty," and skin and bone. But the fact is that, where honest and laborious men can be compelled to starve quietly, whether all at once or by inches, with old wheat ricks, and fat cattle under their eye, it is a mockery to talk of their "liberty," of any sort; for the sum total of their state is this, they have "liberty" to choose between death by starvation (quick or slow) and death by the halter!

Between Warminster and Westbury I saw thirty or more men _digging_ a great field of I dare say twelve acres. I thought, "surely that 'humane,' half-mad fellow, Owen, is not got at work here; that Owen who, the _feelosofers_ tell us, went to the Continent to find out how to prevent the increase of the labourers' children." No: it was not Owen: it was the overseer of the parish, who had set these men to dig up this field previously to its being sown with wheat. In short, it was a digging instead of a ploughing. The men, I found upon inquiry, got 9_d._ a day for their work. Plain digging in the market gardens near London is, I believe, 3_d._ or 4_d._ a rod. If these poor men, who were chiefly weavers or spinners from Westbury, or had come home to their parish from Bradford or Trowbridge; if they digged six rods each in a day, and _fairly_ did it, they must work well. This would be 1-1/2_d._ a rod, or 20_s._ an acre; and that is as cheap as ploughing, and four times as good. But how much better to give the men higher wages, and let them do more work? If married, how are their miserable families to live on 4_s._ 6_d._ a week? And, if single, they must and will have more, either by poaching, or by taking without leave. At any rate, this is better than the _road work_: I mean better for those who pay the rates; for here is something which they get for the money that they give to the poor; whereas, in the case of the road-work, the money given in relief is generally wholly so much lost to the rate-payer. What a curious spectacle this is: the manufactories _throwing the people back again upon the land_! It is not above eighteen months ago that the Scotch FEELOSOFERS, and especially Dr. Black, were calling upon _the farm labourers to become manufacturers_! I remonstrated with the Doctor at the time; but he still insisted that such a transfer of hands was the only remedy for the distress in the farming districts. However (and I thank G.o.d for it), the _feelosofers_ have enough to do at _home_ now; for the poor are crying for food in dear, cleanly, warm, fruitful Scotland herself, in spite of a' the Hamiltons and a' the Wallaces and a' the Maxwells and a' the Hope Johnstones and a' the Dundases and a'

the Edinbro' Reviewers and a' the Broughams and Birckbecks. In spite of all these, the poor of Scotland are now helping themselves, or about to do it, for want of the means of purchasing food.

From Devizes I came to the vile rotten borough of Calne leaving the park and house of Lord Lansdown to my left. This man's name is Petty, and, doubtless, his ancestors "came in with the Conqueror;" for _Petty_ is, unquestionably, a corruption of the French word _Pet.i.t_; and in this case there appears to have been not the least degeneracy; a thing rather rare in these days. There is a man whose name was Grimstone (that is, to a certainty, _Grindstone_), who is now called Lord Verulam, and who, according to his pedigree in the Peerage, is descended from a "standard-bearer of the Conqueror!" Now, the devil a bit is there the word Grindstone, or Grimstone, in the Norman language. Well, let them have all that their French descent can give them, since they will insist upon it, that they are not of this country. So help me G.o.d, I would, if I could, _give them Normandy_ to live in, and, if the people would let them, to possess.

This Petty family began, or, at least, made its first _grand push_, in poor, unfortunate Ireland! The _history_ of that push would amuse the people of Wilts.h.i.+re! Talking of Normans and high-blood, puts me in mind of Beckford and his "Abbey"! The public knows that the _tower_ of this thing fell down some time ago. It was built of Scotch-fir and cased with stone! In it there was a place which the owner had named, "The Gallery of Edward III., the frieze of which (says the account) contains the achievements of seventy-eight Knights of the Garter, from whom the owner is lineally descended"! Was there ever vanity and impudence equal to these! the negro-driver brag of his high blood! I dare say that the old powder-man, Farquhar, had as good pretension; and I really should like to know whether he took out Beckford's name and put in his own, as the lineal descendant of the seventy-eight Knights of the Garter.

I could not come through that villanous hole, Calne, without cursing Corruption at every step; and when I was coming by an ill-looking, broken-winded place, called the town-hall, I suppose, I poured out a double dose of execration upon it. "Out of the frying-pan into the fire;" for in about ten miles more I came to another rotten-hole, called Wotton-Ba.s.set! This also is a mean, vile place, though the country all round it is very fine. On this side of Wotton-Ba.s.set I went out of my way to see the church at Great Lyddiard, which in the parliamentary return is called Lyddiard _Tregoose_. In my old map it is called _Tregose_; and to a certainty the word was _Tregrosse_; that is to say, _tres grosse_, or _very big_. Here is a good old mansion-house and large walled-in garden and a park belonging, they told me, to Lord Bolingbroke. I went quite down to the house, close to which stands the large and fine church. It appears _to have been_ a n.o.ble place; the land is some of the finest in the whole country; the trees show that the land is excellent; but all, except the church, is in a state of irrepair and apparent neglect, if not abandonment. The parish is large, the living is a rich one, it is a Rectory; but though the inc.u.mbent has the great and small t.i.thes, he, in his return, tells the Parliament that the parsonage-house is "worn out and incapable of repair!" And observe that Parliament lets him continue to sack the produce of the t.i.thes and the glebe, while they know the parsonage-house to be crumbling-down, and while he has the impudence to tell them that he does not reside in it, though the law says that he shall! And while this is suffered to be, a _poor_ man may be transported for being in pursuit of a hare! What coals, how hot, how red, is this flagitious system preparing for the backs of its supporters!

In coming from Wotton-Ba.s.set to Highworth, I left Swindon a few miles away to my left, and came by the village of Blunsdon. All along here I saw great quant.i.ties of hops in the hedges, and very fine hops, and I saw at a village called Stratton, I think it was, the finest _campanula_ that I ever saw in my life. The main stalk was more than four feet high, and there were four stalks, none of which were less than three feet high. All through the country, poor, as well as rich, are very neat in their gardens, and very careful to raise a great variety of flowers. At Blunsdon I saw a clump, or, rather, a sort of orchard, of as fine walnut-trees as I ever beheld, and loaded with walnuts. Indeed I have seen great crops of walnuts all the way from London. From Blunsdon to this place is but a short distance, and I got here about two or three o'clock. This is a _cheese country_; some corn, but, generally speaking, it is a country of dairies. The sheep here are of the large kind; a sort of Leicester sheep, and the cattle chiefly for milking. The ground is a stiff loam at top, and a yellowish stone under. The houses are almost all built of stone. It is a tolerably rich, but by no means a gay and pretty country. Highworth has a situation corresponding with its name.

On every side you go up-hill to it, and from it you see to a great distance all round and into many counties.

_Highworth, Wednesday, 6th Sept._

The great object of my visit to the Northern border of Wilts.h.i.+re will be mentioned when I get to Malmsbury, whither I intend to go to-morrow, or next day, and thence through Gloucesters.h.i.+re, in my way to Herefords.h.i.+re. But an additional inducement was to have a good long political _gossip_ with some excellent friends, who detest the borough-ruffians as cordially as I do, and who, I hope, wish as anxiously to see their fall effected, and no matter by what means. There was, however, arising incidentally a third object, which, had I known of its existence, would of itself have brought me from the south-west to the north-east corner of this county. One of the parishes adjoining to Highworth is that of Coles.h.i.+ll, which is in Berks.h.i.+re, and which is the property of Lord Radnor, or Lord Folkestone, and is the seat of the latter. I was at Coles.h.i.+ll twenty-two or three years ago, and twice at later periods. In 1824 Lord Folkestone bought some Locust trees of me; and he has several times told me that they were growing very finely; but I did not know that they had been planted at Coles.h.i.+ll; and, indeed, I always thought that they had been planted somewhere in the south of Wilts.h.i.+re. I now found, however, that they were growing at Coles.h.i.+ll, and yesterday I went to see them, and was, for many reasons, more delighted with the sight than with any that I have beheld for a long while. These trees stand in clumps of 200 trees in each, and the trees being four feet apart each way. These clumps make part of a plantation of 30 or forty acres, perhaps 50 acres. The rest of the ground; that is to say, the ground where the clumps of Locusts do not stand, was, at the same time that the Locust clumps were, planted with chestnuts, elms, ashes, oaks, beeches, and other trees. These trees were stouter and taller than the Locust trees were, when the plantation was made. Yet, if you were now to place yourself at a mile's distance from the plantation, you would not think that there was any plantation at all except the clumps. The fact is that the other trees have, as they generally do, made as yet but very little progress; are not, I should think, upon an average, more than 4-1/2 feet, or 5 feet, high; while the clumps of Locusts are from 12 to 20 feet high; and I think that I may safely say that the average height is sixteen feet. They are the most beautiful clumps of trees that I ever saw in my life. They were indeed planted by a clever and most trusty servant, who, to say all that can be said in his praise, is, that he is worthy of such a master as he has.

The trees are, indeed, in good land, and have been taken good care of; but the other trees are in the same land; and, while they have been taken the same care of since they were planted, they had not, I am sure, worse treatment before planting than these Locust trees had. At the time when I sold them to my Lord Folkestone, they were in a field at Worth, near Crawley, in Suss.e.x. The history of their transport is this. A Wilts.h.i.+re wagon came to Worth for the trees on the 14th of March 1824.

The wagon had been stopped on the way by the snow; and though the snow was gone off before the trees were put upon the wagon, it was very cold, and there were sharp frosts and harsh winds. I had the trees taken up, and tied up in hundreds by withes, like so many f.a.gots. They were then put in and upon the wagon, we doing our best to keep the roots inwards in the loading, so as to prevent them from being exposed but as little as possible to the wind, sun, and frost. We put some fern on the top, and, where we could, on the sides; and we tied on the load with ropes, just as we should have done with a load of f.a.gots. In this way they were several days upon the road; and I do not know how long it was before they got safe into the ground again. All this shows how hardy these trees are, and it ought to admonish gentlemen to make pretty strict enquiries, when they have gardeners, or bailiffs, or stewards, under whose hands Locust trees die, or do not thrive.

N.B. Dry as the late summer was, I never had my Locust trees so fine as they are this year. I have some, they write me, five feet high, from seed sown just before I went to Preston the first time, that is to say, on the 13th of May. I shall advertise my trees in the next Register. I never had them so fine, though the great drought has made the number comparatively small. Lord Folkestone bought of me 13,600 trees. They are at this moment worth the money they cost him, and, in addition the cost of planting, and in addition to that, they are worth the fee simple of the ground (very good ground) on which they stand; and this I am able to demonstrate to any man in his senses. What a difference in the value of Wilts.h.i.+re if all its Elms were Locusts! As fuel, a foot of Locust-wood is worth four or five of any English wood. It will burn better green than almost any other wood will dry. If men want woods, beautiful woods, and _in a hurry_, let them go and see the clumps at Coles.h.i.+ll. Think of a wood 16 feet high, and I may say 20 feet high, in twenty-nine months from the day of planting; and the plants, on an average, not more than two feet high when planted! Think of that: and any one may see it at Coles.h.i.+ll. See what efforts gentlemen make _to get a wood_! How they look at the poor slow-growing things for years; when they might, if they would, have it at once: really almost at a wish; and, with due attention, in almost any soil; and the most valuable of woods into the bargain. Mr. Palmer, the bailiff, showed me, near the house at Coles.h.i.+ll, a Locust tree, which was planted about 35 years ago, or perhaps 40. He had measured it before. It is eight foot and an inch round at a foot from the ground. It goes off afterwards into two princ.i.p.al limbs; which two soon become six limbs, and each of these limbs is three feet round. So that here are six everlasting gate-posts to begin with. This tree is worth 20 pounds at the least farthing.

I saw also at Coles.h.i.+ll the most complete farmyard that I ever saw, and that I believe there is in all England, many and complete as English farmyards are. This was the contrivance of Mr. Palmer, Lord Folkestone's bailiff and steward. The master gives all the credit of plantation and farm to the servant; but the servant ascribes a good deal of it to the master. Between them, at any rate, here are some most admirable objects in rural affairs. And here, too, there is no misery amongst those who do the work; those without whom there could have been no Locust-plantations and no farmyard. Here all are comfortable; gaunt hunger here stares no man in the face. That same disposition which sent Lord Folkestone to visit John Knight in the dungeons at Reading keeps pinching hunger away from Coles.h.i.+ll. It is a very pretty spot all taken together. It is chiefly grazing land; and though the making of cheese and bacon is, I dare say, the most profitable part of the farming here, Lord Folkestone fats oxen, and has a stall for it, which ought to be shown to foreigners, instead of the spinning jennies. A fat ox is a finer thing than a cheese, however good. There is a dairy here too, and beautifully kept. When this stall is full of oxen, and they all fat, how it would make a French farmer stare! It would make even a Yankee think that "Old England" was a respectable "mother" after all. If I had to show this village off to a Yankee, I would blindfold him all the way to, and after I got him out of, the village, lest he should see the scare-crows of paupers on the road.

For a week or ten days before I came to Highworth I had, owing to the uncertainty as to where I should be, had no newspapers sent me from London; so that, really, I began to feel that I was in the "dark ages."

Arrived here, however, the _light_ came bursting in upon me, flash after flash, from the Wen, from Dublin, and from Modern Athens. I had, too, for several days, had n.o.body to enjoy the light with. I had no sharers in the "_anteelactual_" treat, and this sort of enjoyment, unlike that of some other sorts, is augmented by being divided. Oh! how happy we were, and how proud we were, to find (from the "instructor") that we had a king, that we were the subjects of a sovereign, who had graciously sent twenty-five pounds to Sir Richard Birnie's poor-box, there to swell the amount of the munificence of fined delinquents! Aye, and this, too, while (as the "instructor" told us) this same sovereign had just bestowed, unasked for (oh! the dear good man!), an annuity of 500_l._ a year on Mrs. Fox, who, observe, and whose daughters, had already a banging pension, paid out of the taxes, raised in part, and in the greatest part, upon a people who are half-starved and half-naked. And our admiration at the poor-box affair was not at all lessened by the reflection that more money than sufficient to pay all the poor-rates of Wilts.h.i.+re and Berks.h.i.+re will, this very year, have been expended on new palaces, on pullings down and alterations of palaces before existing, and on ornaments and decorations in and about Hyde Park, where a bridge is building, which, I am told, must cost a hundred thousand pounds, though all the water that has to pa.s.s under it would go through a sugar-hogshead; and does, a little while before it comes to this bridge, go through an arch which I believe to be smaller than a sugar-hogshead!

besides, there was a bridge here before, and a very good one too.

Now will Jerry Curteis, who complains so bitterly about the poor-rates, and who talks of the poor working people as if their poverty were the worst of crimes; will Jerry say anything about this bridge, or about the enormous expenses at Hyde Park Corner and in St. James's Park? Jerry knows, or he ought to know, that this bridge alone will cost more money than half the poor-rates of the county of Suss.e.x. Jerry knows, or he ought to know, that this bridge must be paid for out of the taxes. He must know, or else he must be what I dare not suppose him, that it is the taxes that make the paupers; and yet I am afraid that Jerry will not open his lips on the subject of this bridge. What they are going at at Hyde Park Corner n.o.body that I talk with seems to know. The "great Captain of the age," as that nasty palaverer, Brougham, called him, lives close to this spot, where also the "English ladies'" naked Achilles stands, having on the base of it the word WELLINGTON in great staring letters, while all the other letters are very, very small; so that base tax-eaters and fund-gamblers from the country, when they go to crouch before this image, think it is the image of the Great Captain himself! The reader will recollect that after the battle of Waterloo, when we beat Napoleon with nearly a million of foreign bayonets in our pay, pay that came out of that _borrowed money_, for which we have _now_ to wince and howl; the reader will recollect that at that "glorious"

time, when the insolent wretches of tax-eaters were ready to trample us under foot; that, at that time, when the Yankees were defeated on the Serpentine River, and before they had thrashed Blue and Buff so unmercifully on the ocean and on the lakes; that, at that time, when the creatures called "English ladies" were flocking from all parts of the country to present rings, to "Old Blucher"; that, at that time of exultation with the corrupt, and of mourning with the virtuous, the Collective, in the hey-day, in the delirium, of its joy, resolved to expend three millions of money on triumphal arches, or columns, or monuments of some sort or other, to commemorate the glories of the war!

Soon after this, however, low prices came, and they drove triumphal arches out of the heads of the Ministers, until "prosperity, unparalleled prosperity" came! This set them to work upon palaces and streets; and I am told that the triumphal-arch project is now going on at Hyde Park Corner! Good G.o.d! If this should be true, how apt will everything be! Just about the time that the arch, or arches, will be completed; just about the time that the scaffolding will be knocked away, down will come the whole of the horrid borough-mongering system, for the upholding of which the vile tax-eating crew called for the war!

All these palaces and other expensive projects were hatched two years ago; they were hatched in the days of "prosperity," the plans and contracts were made, I dare say, two or three years ago! However, they will be completed much about in the nick of time! They will help to exhibit the system in its true light.

The "best possible public instructor" tells us that Canning is going to Paris. For what, I wonder? His brother, Huskisson, was there last year; and he did nothing. It is supposed that the "revered and ruptured Ogden"

orator is going to try the force of his oratory in order to induce France and her allies to let Portugal alone. He would do better to arm some s.h.i.+ps of war! Oh! no: never will that be done again; or, at least, there never will again be war for three months as long as this borough and paper system shall last! This system has run itself out. It has lasted a good while, and has done tremendous mischief to the people of England; but it is over; it is done for; it will live for a while, but it will go about drooping its wings and half shutting its eyes, like a c.o.c.k that has got the pip; it will never crow again; and for that I most humbly and fervently thank G.o.d! It has crowed over us long enough: it has pecked us and spurred us and slapped us about quite long enough. The nasty, insolent creatures that it has sheltered under its wings have triumphed long enough: they are now going to the workhouse; and thither let them go.

I _know_ nothing of the politics of the Bourbons; but though I can easily conceive that they would not like to see an end of the paper system and a consequent Reform in England; though I can see very good reasons for believing this, I do not believe that Canning will induce them to sacrifice their own obvious and immediate interests for the sake of preserving our funding system. He will not get them out of Cadiz, and he will not induce them to desist from interfering in the affairs of Portugal, if they find it their interest to interfere. They know that we _cannot go to war_. They know this as well as we do; and every sane person in England seems to know it well. No war for us _without Reform_!

We are come to this at last. No war with _this Debt_; and this Debt defies every power but that of _Reform_. Foreign nations were, as to our real state, a good deal enlightened by "late panic." They had hardly any notion of our state before that. That opened their eyes, and led them to conclusions that they never before dreamed of. It made them see that that which they had always taken for a mountain of solid gold was only a great heap of rubbishy, rotten paper! And they now, of course, estimate us accordingly. But it signifies not what _they_ think, or what _they_ do; unless they will subscribe and pay off this _Debt_ for the people at Whitehall. The foreign governments (not excepting the American) all hate the English Reformers; those of Europe, because our example would be so dangerous to despots; and that of America, because we should not suffer it to build fleets and to add to its territories at pleasure. So that we have not only our own borough-mongers and tax-eaters against us; but also all foreign governments. Not a straw, however, do we care for them all, so long as we have for us the ever-living, ever-watchful, ever-efficient, and all-subduing _Debt_! Let our foes subscribe, I say, and pay off that _Debt_; for until they do that we snap our fingers at them.

_Highworth, Friday, 8th Sept._

"The best public instructor" of yesterday (arrived to-day) informs us that "A number of official gentlemen connected with finance have waited upon Lord Liverpool"! Connected with finance! And "a number" of them too! Bless their numerous and united noddles! Good G.o.d! what a state of things it is altogether! There never was the like of it seen in this world before. Certainly never; and the end must be what the far greater part of the people antic.i.p.ate. It was this very Lord Liverpool that ascribed the _sufferings_ of the country to a _surplus of food_; and that, too, at the very time when he was advising the King to put forth a begging proclamation to raise money to prevent, or, rather, put a stop to, starvation in Ireland; and when, at the same time, public money was granted for the causing of English people to emigrate to Africa! Ah!

Good G.o.d! who is to record or recount the endless blessings of a Jubilee-Government! The "instructor" gives us a sad account of the state of the working cla.s.ses in Scotland. I am not glad that these poor people suffer: I am very sorry for it; and if I could relieve them out of my own means, without doing good to and removing danger from the insolent borough-mongers and tax-eaters of Scotland, I would share my last s.h.i.+lling with the poor fellows. But I must be glad that something has happened to silence the impudent Scotch quacks, who have been, for six years past, crying up the doctrine of Malthus, and railing against the English poor-laws. Let us now see what _they_ will do with their poor.

Let us see whether they will have the impudence to call upon _us_ to maintain their poor! Well, amidst all this suffering, there is one good thing; the Scotch political economy is blown to the devil, and the Edinburgh Review and Adam Smith along with it.

_Malmsbury (Wilts), Monday, 11th Sept._

I was detained at Highworth partly by the rain and partly by company that I liked very much. I left it at six o'clock yesterday morning, and got to this town about three or four o'clock in the afternoon, after a ride, including my deviations, of 34 miles; and as pleasant a ride as man ever had. I got to a farmhouse in the neighbourhood of Cricklade, to breakfast, at which house I was very near to the source of the river Isis, which is, they say, the first branch of the Thames. They call it the "Old Thames," and I rode through it here, it not being above four or five yards wide, and not deeper than the knees of my horse.

The land here and all round Cricklade is very fine. Here are some of the very finest pastures in all England, and some of the finest dairies of cows, from 40 to 60 in a dairy, grazing in them. Was not this _always_ so? Was it created by the union with Scotland; or was it begotten by Pitt and his crew? Aye, it was always so; and there were formerly two churches here, where there is now only one, and five, six, or ten times as many people. I saw in one single farmyard here more food than enough for four times the inhabitants of the parish; and this yard did not contain a tenth, perhaps, of the produce of the parish; but while the poor creatures that raise the wheat and the barley and cheese and the mutton and the beef are living upon potatoes, an accursed _Ca.n.a.l_ comes kindly through the parish to convey away the wheat and all the good food to the tax-eaters and their attendants in the Wen! What, then, is this "an improvement?" is a nation _richer_ for the carrying away of the food from those who raise it, and giving it to bayonet men and others, who are a.s.sembled in great ma.s.ses? I could broom-stick the fellow who would look me in the face and call this "an improvement." What! was it not better for the consumers of the food to live near to the places where it was grown? We have very nearly come to the system of Hindostan, where the farmer is allowed by the _Aumil_, or tax-contractor, only so much of the produce of his farm to eat in the year! The thing is not done in so undisguised a manner here: here are a.s.sessor, collector, exciseman, supervisor, informer, constable, justice, sheriff, jailor, judge, jury, jack-ketch, barrack-man. Here is a great deal of ceremony about it; all is done according to law; it is the _free-est_ country in the world: but somehow or other the produce is, at last, _carried away_; and it is eaten, for the main part, by those who do not work.

I observed some pages back that when I got to Malmsbury I should have to explain my main object in coming to the North of Wilts.h.i.+re. In the year 1818 the Parliament, by _an Act_, ordered the bishops to cause the beneficed clergy to give in an account of their livings, which account was to contain the following particulars relating to each parish:

1. Whether a Rectory, Vicarage, or what.

2. In what rural Deanery.

3. Population.

4. Number of Churches and Chapels.

5. _Number of persons they_ (the churches and chapels) _can contain_.

In looking into this account as it was finally made up and printed by the parliamentary officers, I saw that it was impossible for it to be true. I have always a.s.serted, and, indeed, I have clearly proved, that one of the two last population returns is false, barefacedly false; and I was sure that the account of which I am now speaking was equally false. The falsehood consisted, I saw princ.i.p.ally, in the account of the capacity of the church to contain people; that is, under the head No. 5, as above stated. I saw that in almost every instance this account must of necessity be false, though coming from under the pen of a beneficed clergyman. I saw that there was a constant desire to make it appear that the church was now become too small! And thus to help along the opinion of a great recent increase of population, an opinion so sedulously inculcated by all the tax-eaters of every sort, and by the most brutal and best public instructor. In some cases the falsehood of this account was impudent almost beyond conception; and yet it required going to the spot to get unquestionable proof of the falsehood. In many of the parishes, in hundreds of them, the population is next to nothing, far fewer persons than the church porch would contain. Even in these cases the parsons have seldom said that the church would contain more than the population! In such cases they have generally said that the church can contain "the population!" So it can; but it can contain ten times the number! And thus it was that, in words of truth, a lie in meaning was told to the Parliament, and not one word of notice was ever taken of it.

Little Langford, or Landford, for instance, between Salisbury and Warminster, is returned as having a population under twenty, and a church that "can contain the population." This church, which I went and looked at, can contain, very conveniently, two hundred people! But there was one instance in which the parson had been singularly impudent; for he had stated the population at eight persons, and had stated that the church could contain eight persons! This was the account of the parish of Sharncut, in this county of Wilts. It lies on the very northermost edge of the county, and its boundary, on one side, divides Wilts.h.i.+re from Gloucesters.h.i.+re. To this Sharncut, therefore, I was resolved to go, and to try the fact with my own eyes. When, therefore, I got through Cricklade, I was compelled to quit the Malmsbury road and go away to my right. I had to go through a village called Ashton Keines, with which place I was very much stricken. It is now a straggling village; but to a certainty it has been a large market town. There is a market-cross still standing in an open place in it; and there are such numerous lanes, crossing each other, and cutting the land up into such little bits, that it must, at one time, have been a large town. It is a very curious place, and I should have stopped in it for some time, but I was now within a few miles of the famous Sharncut, the church of which, according to the parson's account, _could_ contain eight persons!

At the end of about three miles more of road, rather difficult to find, but very pleasant, I got to Sharncut, which I found to consist of a church, two farmhouses, and a parsonage-house, one part of the buildings of which had become a labourer's house. The church has no tower, but a sort of crowning-piece (very ancient) on the transept. The church is sixty feet long, and, on an average, twenty-eight feet wide; so that the area of it contains one thousand six hundred and eighty square feet; or, one hundred and eighty-six square yards! I found in the church eleven pews that would contain, that were made to contain, eighty-two people; and these do not occupy a third part of the area of the church; and thus more than two hundred persons at the least might be accommodated with perfect convenience in this church, which the parson says "_can_ contain _eight_"! Nay, the church porch, on its two benches, would hold twenty people, taking little and big promiscuously. I have been thus particular in this instance, because I would leave no doubt as to the barefacedness of the lie. A strict inquiry would show that the far greater part of the account is a most impudent lie, or, rather, string of lies. For as to the subterfuge that this account was true, because the church "_can_ contain _eight_," it is an addition to the crime of lying. What the Parliament meant was, what "is the greatest number of persons that the church can contain at wors.h.i.+p;" and therefore to put the figure of 8 against the church of Sharncut was to tell the Parliament a wilful lie.

This parish is a rectory; it has great and small t.i.thes; it has a glebe, and a good solid house, though the parson says it is unfit for him to live in! In short, he is not here; a curate that serves, perhaps, three or four other churches, comes here at five o'clock in the afternoon.

The _motive_ for making out the returns in this way is clear enough. The parsons see that they are getting what they get in a declining and a mouldering country. The size of the church tells them, everything tells them, that the country is a mean and miserable thing, compared with what it was in former times. They feel the facts; but they wish to disguise them, because they know that they have been one great cause of the country being in its present impoverished and dilapidated state.

They know that the people look at them with an accusing eye: and they wish to put as fair a face as they can upon the state of things. If you talk to them, they will never acknowledge that there is any misery in the country; because they well know how large a share they have had in the cause of it. They were always haughty and insolent; but the anti-jacobin times made them ten thousand times more so than ever. The cry of Atheism, as of the French, gave these fellows of ours a fine time of it: they became identified with loyalty, and what was more, with property; and at one time, to say, or hint, a word against a parson, do what he would, was to be an enemy of G.o.d and of all property! Those were the glorious times for them. They urged on the war: they were the loudest of all the trumpeters. They saw their t.i.thes in danger. If they did not get the Bourbons restored, there was no chance of re-establis.h.i.+ng t.i.thes in France; and then the example might be fatal.

But they forgot that, to restore the Bourbons, a debt must be contracted; and that, when the nation could not pay the interest of that debt, it would, as it now does, begin to look hard at the t.i.thes! In short, they over-reached themselves; and those of them who have common sense now see it: each hopes that the thing will last out his time; but they have, unless they be half-idiots, a constant dread upon their minds: this makes them a great deal less brazen than they used to be; and I dare say that, if the parliamentary return had to be made out again, the parson of Sharncut would not state that the church "_can_ contain _eight persons_."

From Sharncut I came through a very long and straggling village, called Somerford, another called Ocksey, and another called Crudwell. Between Somerford and Ocksey I saw, on the side of the road, more _goldfinches_ than I had ever seen together; I think fifty times as many as I had ever seen at one time in my life. The favourite food of the goldfinch is the seed of the _thistle_. This seed is just now dead ripe. The thistles are all cut and carried away from the fields by the harvest; but they grow alongside the roads; and, in this place, in great quant.i.ties. So that the goldfinches were got here in flocks, and as they continued to fly along before me for nearly half a mile, and still sticking to the road and the banks, I do believe I had, at last, a flock of ten thousand flying before me. _Birds_ of every kind, including partridges and pheasants and all sorts of poultry, are most abundant this year. The fine, long summer has been singularly favourable to them; and you see the effect of it in the great broods of chickens and ducks and geese and turkeys in and about every farm-yard.

The churches of the last-mentioned villages are all large, particularly the latter, which is capable of containing very conveniently 3 or 4,000 people. It is a very large church; it has a triple roof, and is nearly 100 feet long; and master parson says, in his return, that it "_can_ contain _two hundred_ people"! At Ocksey the people were in church as I came by. I heard the singers singing; and, as the church-yard was close by the road-side, I got off my horse and went in, giving my horse to a boy to hold. The fellow says that his church "_can_ contain _two hundred_ people." I counted pews for about 450; the singing gallery would hold 40 or 50; two-thirds of the area of the church have no pews in them. On benches these two-thirds would hold 2,000 persons, taking one with another! But this is nothing rare; the same sort of statement has been made, the same kind of falsehoods, relative to the whole of the parishes throughout the country, with here and there an exception.

Everywhere you see the indubitable marks of _decay_ in mansions, in parsonage-houses and in people. Nothing can so strongly depict the great decay of the villages as the state of the parsonage-houses, which are so many parcels of public property, and to prevent the dilapidation of which there are laws so strict. Since I left Devizes, I have pa.s.sed close by, or very near to, thirty-two parish churches; and in fifteen out of these thirty-two parishes the parsonage-houses are stated, in the parliamentary return, either as being unfit for a parson to live in, or, as being wholly tumbled down and gone! What, then, are there Scotch vagabonds; are there Chalmerses and Colquhounds, to swear, "mon," that Pitt and Jubilee George _begat_ all us Englishmen; and that there were only a few stragglers of us in the world before! And that our dark and ignorant fathers, who built Winchester and Salisbury Cathedrals, had neither hands nor money!

When I got in here yesterday, I went at first to an inn; but I very soon changed my quarters for the house of a friend, who and whose family, though I had never seen them before, and had never heard of them until I was at Highworth, gave me a hearty reception, and precisely in _the style_ that I like. This town, though it has nothing particularly engaging in itself, stands upon one of the prettiest spots that can be imagined. Besides the river Avon, which I went down in the south-east part of the country, here is another river Avon, which runs down to Bath, and two branches, or sources, of which meet here. There is a pretty ridge of ground, the base of which is a mile, or a mile and a half wide. On each side of this ridge a branch of the river runs down through a flat of very fine meadows. The town and the beautiful remains of the famous old Abbey stand on the rounded spot which terminates this ridge; and just below, nearly close to the town, the two branches of the river meet; and then they begin to be called _the Avon_. The land round about is excellent, and of a great variety of forms. The trees are lofty and fine: so that what with the water, the meadows, the fine cattle and sheep, and, as I hear, the absence of _hard_-pinching poverty, this is a very pleasant place. There remains more of the Abbey than, I believe, of any of our monastic buildings, except that of Westminster, and those that have become Cathedrals. The church-service is performed in the part of the Abbey that is left standing. The parish church has fallen down and is gone; but the tower remains, which is made use of for the bells; but the Abbey is used as the church, though the church-tower is at a considerable distance from it. It was once a most magnificent building; and there is now a _door-way_, which is the most beautiful thing I ever saw, and which was nevertheless built in Saxon times, in "the _dark_ ages," and was built by men who were not begotten by Pitt nor by Jubilee-George.--What _fools_, as well as ungrateful creatures, we have been and are! There is a broken arch, standing off from the sound part of the building, at which one cannot look up without feeling shame at the thought of ever having abused the men who made it. No one need _tell_ any man of sense; he _feels_ our inferiority to our fathers upon merely beholding the remains of their efforts to ornament their country and elevate the minds of the people. We talk of our skill and learning, indeed! How do we know how skilful, how learned _they_ were? If in all that they have left us we see that they surpa.s.sed us, why are we to conclude that they did not surpa.s.s us in all other things worthy of admiration?

This famous Abbey was founded, in about the year 600, by Maidulf, a Scotch Monk, who upon the suppression of a Nunnery here at that time selected the spot for this great establishment. For the great magnificence, however, to which it was soon after brought it was indebted to Aldhelm, a Monk educated within its first walls by the founder himself; and to St. Aldhelm, who by his great virtues became very famous, the Church was dedicated in the time of King Edgar. This Monastery continued flouris.h.i.+ng during those _dark_ ages, until it was sacked by the great enlightener, at which time it was found to be endowed to the amount of 16,077_l._ 11_s._ 8_d._ of the money of the present day! Amongst other, many other, great men produced by this Abbey of Malmsbury was that famous scholar and historian, William de Malmsbury.

There is a _market-cross_ in this town, the sight of which is worth a journey of hundreds of miles. Time, with his scythe, and "enlightened Protestant piety," with its pick-axes and crow-bars; these united have done much to efface the beauties of this monument of ancient skill and taste and proof of ancient wealth; but in spite of all their destructive efforts, this Cross still remains a most beautiful thing, though possibly, and even probably, nearly, or quite, a thousand years old.

There is a _market-cross_ lately erected at Devizes, and intended to imitate the ancient ones. Compare that with this, and then you have pretty fairly a view of the difference between us and our forefathers of the "dark ages."

To-morrow I start for Bollitree, near Ross, Herefords.h.i.+re, my road being across the county, and through the city of Gloucester.