Rural Rides Part 31

I will inquire, one of these days, what _right_ Burdett has to live in England more than those whom he proposes to send away.

_Spittal, near Lincoln, 19th April 1830._

Here we are, at the end of a pretty decent trip since we left Boston.

The next place, on our way to Hull, was Horncastle, where I preached politics in the playhouse to a most respectable body of farmers, who had come in the wet to meet me. Mr. John p.e.n.i.ston, who had invited me to stop there, behaved in a very obliging manner, and made all things very pleasant.

The country _from_ Boston continued, as I said before, flat for about half the way to Horncastle, and we then began to see the high land. From Horncastle I set off two hours before the carriage, and going through a very pretty village called Ashby, got to another at the foot of a hill, which, they say, forms part of the _Wolds_; that is, a ridge of hills.

This second village is called Scamblesby. The vale in which it lies is very fine land. A hazel mould, rich and light too. I saw a man here ploughing for barley, after turnips, with _one horse_: the horse did not seem to work hard, and the man was _singing_: I need not say that he was young; and I dare say he had the good sense to keep his legs under another man's table, and to stretch his body on another man's bed.

This is a very fine _corn country_: chalk at bottom: stony near the surface, in some places: here and there a chalk-pit in the hills: the shape of the ground somewhat like that of the broadest valleys in Wilts.h.i.+re; but the fields not without fences as they are there: fields from fifteen to forty acres: the hills not downs, as in Wilts.h.i.+re; but cultivated all over. The houses white and thatched, as they are in all chalk countries. The valley at Scamblesby has a little rivulet running down it, just as in all the chalk countries. The land continues nearly the same to Louth, which lies in a deep dell, with beautiful pastures on the surrounding hills, like those that I once admired at Shaftesbury, in Dorsets.h.i.+re, and like that near St. Austle, in Cornwall, which I described in 1808.

At Louth the wise corporation had _refused_ to let us have the playhouse; but my friends had prepared a very good place; and I had an opportunity of addressing crowded audiences two nights running. At no place have I been better pleased than at Louth. Mr. Paddison, solicitor, a young gentleman whom I had the honour to know slightly before, and to know whom, whether I estimate by character or by talent, would be an honour to any man, was particularly attentive to us. Mr. Naull, ironmonger, who had had the battle to fight for me for twenty years, expressed his exultation at my triumph in a manner that showed that he justly partic.i.p.ated it with me. I breakfasted at Mr. Naull's with a gentleman 88 or 89 years of age, whose joy at shaking me by the hand was excessive. "Ah!" said he, "where are _now_ those savages who, at Hull, threatened to kill me for raising my voice against this system?" This is a very fine town, and has a beautiful church, nearly equal to that at Boston.

We left Louth on the morning of Thursday the 15th, and got to Barton on the Humber by about noon, over a very fine country, large fields, fine pastures, flocks of those great sheep, of from 200 to 1,000 in a flock; and here at Barton, we arrived at the northern point of this n.o.ble county, having never seen one single acre of waste land, and not one acre that would be called bad land, in the south of England. The _Wolds_, or high-lands, lie away to our right, from Horncastle to near Barton; and on the other side of the Wolds lie the _Marshes of Lincolns.h.i.+re_, which extend along the coast from Boston to the mouth of the Humber, on the bank of which we were at Barton, Hull being on the opposite side of the river, which is here about five miles wide, and which we had to cross in a steam-boat.

But let me not forget Great Grimsby, at which we changed horses, and breakfasted, in our way from Louth to Barton. "What the devil!" the reader will say, "should you want to recollect _that_ place for? Why do you want not to forget that sink of corruption? What could you find there to be s.n.a.t.c.hed from everlasting oblivion, except for the purpose of being execrated?" I did, however, find something there worthy of being made known, not only to every man in England but to every man in the world; and not to mention it here would be to be guilty of the greatest injustice.

To my surprise I found a good many people a.s.sembled at the inn-door, evidently expecting my arrival. While breakfast was preparing, I wished to speak to the bookseller of the place, if there were one, and to give him a list of my books and writings, that he might place it in his shop.

When he came, I was surprised to find that he had it already, and that he, occasionally, sold my books. Upon my asking him how he got it, he said that it was brought down from London and given to him by a Mr.

Plaskitt, who, he said, had all my writings, and who, he said, he was sure would be very glad to see me; but that he lived above a mile from the town. A messenger, however, had gone off to carry the news, and Mr.

Plaskitt arrived before we had done breakfast, bringing with him a son and a daughter. And from the lips of this gentleman, a man of as kind and benevolent appearance and manners as I ever beheld in my life, I had the following facts; namely, "that one of his sons sailed for New York some years ago; that the s.h.i.+p was cast away on the sh.o.r.es of Long Island; that the captain, crew, and pa.s.sengers all perished; that the wrecked vessel was taken possession of by people on the coast; that his son had a watch in his trunk, or chest, a purse with fourteen s.h.i.+llings in it, and divers articles of wearing apparel; that the Americans, who searched the wreck, _sent all these articles safely to England to him_"; "and," said he, "I keep the purse and the money at home, and _here is the watch in my pocket_"!

It would have been worth the expense of coming from London to Grimsby, if for nothing but to learn this fact, which I record, not only in justice to the free people of America, and particularly in justice to my late neighbours in Long Island, but in justice to the character of mankind. I publish it as something to counterbalance the conduct of the atrocious monsters who plunder the wrecks on the coast of Cornwall, and, as I am told, on the coasts here in the east of the island.

Away go, then, all the accusations upon the character of the Yankees.

People may call them _sharp_, _cunning_, _overreaching_; and when they have exhausted the vocabulary of their abuse, the answer is found in this one fact, stated by Mr. Joshua Plaskitt, of Great Grimsby, in Lincolns.h.i.+re, Old England. The person who sent the things to Mr.

Plaskitt was named Jones. It did not occur to me to ask his christian name, nor to inquire what was the particular place where he lived in Long Island. I request Mr. Plaskitt to contrive to let me know these particulars; as I should like to communicate them to friends that I have on the north side of that island. However, it would excite no surprise there, that one of their countrymen had acted this part; for every man of them, having the same opportunity, would do the same. Their forefathers carried to New England the nature and character of the people of Old England, before national debts, paper-money, septennial bills, standing armies, dead-weights, and jubilees, had beggared and corrupted the people.

At Hull I _lectured_ (I laugh at the word) to about seven hundred persons on the same evening that I arrived from Louth, which was on Thursday the 15th. We had what they call the summer theatre, which was crowded in every part except on the stage; and the next evening the stage was crowded too. The third evening was merely accidental, no previous notice having been given of it. On the Sat.u.r.day I went in the middle of the day to Beverley; saw there the beautiful minster, and some of the fine horses which they show there at this season of the year; dined with about fifty farmers; made a speech to them and about a hundred more, perhaps; and got back to Hull time enough to go to the theatre there.

The country round Hull appears to exceed even that of Lincolns.h.i.+re. The three mornings that I was at Hull I walked out in three different directions, and found the country everywhere fine. To the east lies the Holderness country. I used to wonder that Yorks.h.i.+re, to which I, from some false impression in my youth, had always attached the idea of _sterility_, should send us of the south those beautiful cattle with short horns and straight and deep bodies. You have only to see the country to cease to wonder at this. It lies on the north side of the mouth of the Humber; is as flat and fat as the land between Holbeach and Boston, without, as they tell me, the necessity of such numerous ditches. The appellation "Yorks.h.i.+re _bite_"; the acute sayings ascribed to Yorks.h.i.+remen; and their quick manner, I remember, in the army. When speaking of what country a man was, one used to say, in defence of the party, "York, but honest." Another saying was that it was a bare common that a Yorks.h.i.+reman would go over without taking a bite. Every one knows the story of the gentleman who, upon finding that a boot-cleaner in the south was a Yorks.h.i.+reman, and expressing his surprise that he was not become master of the inn, received for answer, "Ah, sir, but master is York too!" And that of the Yorks.h.i.+re boy who, seeing a gentleman eating some eggs, asked the cook to give him a little _salt_; and upon being asked what he could want with salt, he said, "Perhaps that gentleman may give me an egg presently."

It is surprising what effect sayings like these produce upon the mind.

From one end to the other of the kingdom, Yorks.h.i.+remen are looked upon as being keener than other people; more eager in pursuit of their own interests; more sharp and more selfish. For my part, I was cured with regard to the _people_ long before I saw Yorks.h.i.+re. In the army, where we see men of all counties, I always found Yorks.h.i.+remen distinguished for their frank manners and generous disposition. In the United States, my kind and generous friends of Pennsylvania were the children and descendants of Yorks.h.i.+re parents; and, in truth, I long ago made up my mind that this hardness and sharpness ascribed to Yorks.h.i.+remen arose from the sort of envy excited by that quickness, that activity, that buoyancy of spirits, which bears them up through adverse circ.u.mstances, and their conquent success in all the situations of life. They, like the people of Lancas.h.i.+re, are just the very reverse of being _cunning_ and _selfish_; be they farmers, or be they what they may, you get at the bottom of their hearts in a minute. Everything they think soon gets to the tongue, and out it comes, heads and tails, as fast as they can pour it. Fine materials for Oliver to work on! If he had been sent to the _west_ instead of the north, he would have found people there on whom he would have exercised his powers in vain. You are not to have every valuable quality in the same man and the same people: you are not to have prudent caution united with quickness and volubility.

But though, as to the character of the _people_, I, having known so many hundreds of Yorks.h.i.+remen, was perfectly enlightened, and had quite got the better of all prejudices many years ago, I still, in spite of the matchless horses and matchless cattle, had a general impression that Yorks.h.i.+re was a _sterile_ county, compared with the counties in the south and the west; and this notion was confirmed in some measure by my seeing the moory and rocky parts in the West Riding last winter. It was necessary for me to come and see the country on the banks of the Humber.

I have seen the vale of Honiton, in Devons.h.i.+re, that of Taunton and of Glas...o...b..ry, in Somersets.h.i.+re: I have seen the vales of Gloucester and Worcester, and the banks of the Severn and the Avon: I have seen the vale of Berks.h.i.+re, that of Aylesbury, in Buckinghams.h.i.+re: I have seen the beautiful vales of Wilts.h.i.+re; and the banks of the Medway, from Tunbridge to Maidstone, called the Garden of Eden: I was born at one end of Arthur Young's "finest ten miles in England:" I have ridden my horse across the Thames at its two sources; and I have been along every inch of its banks, from its sources, to Gravesend, whence I have sailed out of it into the channel; and having seen and had ability to judge of the goodness of the land in all these places, I declare that I have never seen any to be compared with the land on the banks of the Humber, from the Holderness country included, and with the exception of the land from Wisbeach to Holbeach, and Holbeach to Boston. Really, the single parish of Holbeach, or a patch of the same size in the Holderness country, seems to be equal in value to the whole of the county of Surrey, if we leave out the little plot of hop-garden at Farnham.

Nor is the town of Hull itself to be overlooked. It is a little city of London: streets, shops, everything like it; clean as the best parts of London, and the people as bustling and attentive. The town of Hull is _surrounded_ with commodious docks for s.h.i.+pping. These docks are separated, in three or four places, by draw-bridges; so that, as you walk round the town, you walk by the side of the docks and the s.h.i.+ps.

The town on the outside of the docks is pretty considerable, and the walks from it into the country beautiful. I went about a good deal, and I nowhere saw marks of beggary or filth, even in the outskirts: none of those nasty, shabby, thief-looking sheds that you see in the approaches to London: none of those off-scourings of pernicious and insolent luxury. I hate commercial towns in general: there is generally something so loathsome in the look, and so stern and unfeeling in the manners of seafaring people, that I have always, from my very youth, disliked sea-ports; but really the sight of this nice town, the manners of its people, the civil, and kind and cordial reception that I met with, and the clean streets, and especially the pretty gardens in every direction, as you walk into the country, has made Hull, though a sea-port, a place that I shall always look back to with delight.

Beverley, which was formerly a very considerable city, with three or four gates, one of which is yet standing, had a great college, built in the year 700 by the Archbishop of York. It had three famous hospitals and two friaries. There is one church, a very fine one, and the minster still left; of which a bookseller in the town was so good as to give me copper-plate representations. It is still a very pretty town; the market large; the land all round the country good; and it is particularly famous for horses; those for speed being shown off here on the market-days at this time of the year. The farmers and gentlemen a.s.semble in a very wide street, on the outside of the western gate of the town; and at a certain time of the day the grooms come from their different stables to show off their beautiful horses; blood horses, coach horses, hunters, and cart horses; sometimes, they tell me, forty or fifty in number. The day that I was there (being late in the season) there were only seven or eight, or ten at the most. When I was asked at the inn to go and see "_the horses_," I had no curiosity, thinking it was such a parcel of horses as we see at a market in the south; but I found it a sight worth going to see; for besides the beauty of the horses, there were the adroitness, the agility, and the boldness of the grooms, each running alongside of his horse, with the latter trotting at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour, and then swinging him round, and showing him off to the best advantage. In short, I was exceedingly gratified by the trip to Beverley: the day was fair and mild; we went by one road and came back by another, and I have very seldom pa.s.sed a pleasanter day in my life.

I found, very much to my surprise, that at Hull I was very nearly as far north as at Leeds, and, at Beverley, a little farther north. Of all things in the world, I wanted to speak to Mr. Foster of the _Leeds Patriot_; but was not aware of the relative situation till it was too late to write to him. Boats go up the Humber and the Ouse to within a few miles of Leeds. The Holderness country is that piece of land which lies between Hull and the sea: it appears to be a perfect flat; and is said to be, and I dare say is, one of the very finest spots in the whole kingdom. I had a very kind invitation to go into it; but I could not stay longer on that side of the Humber without neglecting some duty or other. In quitting Hull, I left behind me but one thing, the sight of which had not pleased me; namely, a fine gilded equestrian statue of the Dutch "_Deliverer_," who gave to England the national debt, that fruitful mother of mischief and misery. Until this statue be replaced by that of Andrew Marvell, that real honour of this town, England will never be what it ought to be.

We came back to Barton by the steam-boat on Sunday in the afternoon of the 18th, and in the evening reached this place, which is an inn, with three or four houses near it, at the distance of ten miles from Lincoln, to which we are going on Wednesday, the 21st. Between this place and Barton we pa.s.sed through a delightfully pretty town called Brigg. The land in this, which is called the high part of Lincolns.h.i.+re, has generally stone, a solid bed of stone of great depth, at different distances from the surface. In some parts this stone is of a yellowish colour, and in the form of very thick slate; and in these parts the soil is not so good; but, generally speaking, the land is excellent; easily tilled; no surface water; the fields very large; not many trees; but what there are, particularly the ash, very fine, and of free growth; and innumerable flocks of those big, long-woolled sheep, from one hundred to a thousand in a flock, each having from eight to ten pounds of wool upon its body. One of the finest sights in the world is one of these thirty or forty-acre fields, with four or five or six hundred ewes, each with her one or two lambs skipping about upon gra.s.s, the most beautiful that can be conceived, and on lands as level as a bowling-green. I do not recollect having seen a mole-hill or an ant-hill since I came into the country; and not one acre of waste land, though I have gone the whole length of the country one way, and am now got nearly half way back another way.

Having seen this country, and having had a glimpse at the Holderness country, which lies on the banks of the sea, and to the east and north-east of Hull, can I cease to wonder that those devils, the Danes, found their way hither so often. There were the fat sheep then, just as there are now, depend upon it; and these numbers of n.o.ble churches, and these magnificent minsters, were reared because the wealth of the country remained _in the country_, and was not carried away to the south, to keep swarms of devouring tax-eaters, to cram the maws of wasteful idlers, and to be transferred to the grasp of luxurious and blaspheming Jews.

You always perceive that the churches are large and fine and lofty, in proportion to the richness of the soil and the extent of the parish. In many places where there are _now_ but a very few houses, and those comparatively miserable, there are churches that look like cathedrals.

It is quite curious to observe the difference in the style of the churches of Suffolk and Norfolk, and those of Lincolns.h.i.+re, and of the other bank of the Humber. In the former two counties the churches are good, large, and with a good, plain, and pretty lofty tower. And in a few instances, particularly at Ipswich and Long Melford, you find magnificence in these buildings; but in Lincolns.h.i.+re the magnificence of the churches is surprising. These churches are the indubitable proof of great and solid wealth, and formerly of great population. From everything that I have heard, the _Netherlands_ is a country very much resembling Lincolns.h.i.+re; and they say that the church at Antwerp is like that at Boston; but my opinion is, that Lincolns.h.i.+re alone contains more of these fine buildings than the whole of the continent of Europe.

Still, however, there is the almost total want of the _singing birds_.

There had been a shower a little while before we arrived at this place; it was about six o'clock in the evening; and there is a thick wood, together with the orchards and gardens, very near to the inn. We heard a little twittering from one thrush; but at that very moment, if we had been as near to just such a wood in Surrey, or Hamps.h.i.+re, or Suss.e.x, or Kent, we should have heard ten thousand birds singing altogether; and the thrushes continuing their song till twenty minutes after sunset.

When I was at Ipswich, the gardens and plantations round that beautiful town began in the morning to ring with the voices of the different birds. The nightingale is, I believe, _never heard_ anywhere on the eastern side of Lincolns.h.i.+re; though it is sometimes heard in the same lat.i.tude in the dells of Yorks.h.i.+re. How ridiculous it is to suppose that these frail birds, with their slender wings and proportionately heavy bodies, _cross the sea_, and come back again! I have not yet heard more than half a dozen skylarks; and I have, only last year, heard ten at a time make the air ring over one of my fields at Barn-Elm. This is a great drawback from the pleasure of viewing this fine country.

It is time for me now, withdrawing myself from these objects visible to the eye, to speak of the state of _the people_, and of the manner in which their affairs are affected by the workings of the system. With regard to the labourers, they are, everywhere, miserable. The wages for those who are employed on the land are, through all the counties that I have come, twelve s.h.i.+llings a week for married men, and less for single ones; but a large part of them are not even at this season employed on the land. The farmers, for want of means of profitable employment, suffer the men to fall upon the parish; and they are employed in digging and breaking stone for the roads; so that the roads are nice and smooth for the sheep and cattle to walk on in their way to the all-devouring jaws of the Jews and other tax-eaters in London and its vicinity. None of the best meat, except by mere accident, is consumed here. To-day (the 20th of April) we have seen hundreds upon hundreds of sheep, as fat as hogs, go by this inn door, their toes, like those of the foot-marks at the entrance of the lion's den, all pointing towards the Wen; and the landlord gave us for dinner a little skinny, hard leg of old ewe mutton!

Where the man got it I cannot imagine. Thus it is: every good thing is literally driven or carried away out of the country. In walking out yesterday, I saw three poor fellows digging stone for the roads, who told me that they never had anything but bread to eat, and water to wash it down. One of them was a widower with three children; and his pay was eighteen-pence a-day; that is to say, about three pounds of bread a day each, for six days in the week; nothing for Sunday, and nothing for lodging, was.h.i.+ng, clothing, candle-light, or fuel! Just such was the state of things in France at the eve of the revolution! Precisely such; and precisely the same were the _causes_. Whether the effect will be the same I do not take upon myself positively to determine. Just on the other side of the hedge, while I was talking to these men, I saw about two hundred fat sheep in a rich pasture. I did not tell them what I might have told them; but I explained to them why the farmers were unable to give them a sufficiency of wages. They listened with great attention; and said that they did believe that the farmers were in great distress themselves.

With regard to the farmers, it is said here that the far greater part, if sold up, would be found to be insolvent. The tradesmen in country towns are, and must be, in but little better state. They all tell you they do not sell half so many goods as they used to sell; and, of course, the manufacturers must suffer in the like degree. There is a diminution and deterioration, every one says, in the stocks upon the farms. _Sheep-was.h.i.+ng_ is a sort of business in this country; and I heard at Boston that the sheep-washers say that there is a gradual falling off in point of the numbers of sheep washed.

The farmers are all gradually sinking in point of property. The very rich ones do not feel that ruin is absolutely approaching; but they are all alarmed; and as to the poorer ones, they are fast falling into the rank of paupers. When I was at Ely a gentleman who appeared to be a great farmer told me, in presence of fifty farmers at the White Hart inn, that he had seen that morning _three men_ cracking stones on the road as paupers of the parish of Wilbarton; and that all these men had been _overseers of the poor of that same parish within the last seven years_. Wheat keeps up in price to about an average of seven s.h.i.+llings a bushel; which is owing to our two successive bad harvests; but fat beef and pork are at a very low price, and mutton not much better. The beef was selling at Lynn for five s.h.i.+llings the stone of fourteen pounds, and the pork at four and sixpence. The wool (one of the great articles of produce in these countries) selling for less than half of its former price.

And here let me stop to observe that I was well informed before I left London that merchants were exporting our long wool to France, where it paid _thirty per cent. duty_. Well, say the landowners, but we have to thank Huskisson for this at any rate; and that is true enough; for the law was most rigid against the export of wool; but what will the _manufacturers_ say? Thus the collective goes on, smas.h.i.+ng one cla.s.s and then another; and, resolved to adhere to the taxes, it knocks away, one after another, the props of the system itself. By every measure that it adopts for the sake of obtaining security, or of affording relief to the people, it does some act of crying injustice. To save itself from the natural effects of its own measures, it knocked down the country bankers, in direct violation of the law in 1822. It is now about to lay its heavy hand on the big brewers and the publicans, in order to pacify the call for a reduction of taxes, and with the hope of preventing such reduction in reality. It is making a trifling attempt to save the West Indians from total ruin, and the West India colonies from revolt; but by that same attempt it reflects injury on the British distillers, and on the growers of barley. Thus it cannot do justice without doing injustice; it cannot do good without doing evil; and thus it must continue to do, until it take off, in reality, more than one half of the taxes.

One of the great signs of the poverty of people in the middle rank of life is the falling off of the audiences at the playhouses. There is a playhouse in almost every country town, where the players used to act occasionally; and in large towns almost always. In some places they have of late abandoned acting altogether. In others they have acted, very frequently, to not more than _ten or twelve persons_. At Norwich the playhouse had been shut up for a long time. I heard of one manager who has become a porter to a warehouse, and his company dispersed. In most places the insides of the buildings seem to be tumbling to pieces; and the curtains and scenes that they let down seem to be abandoned to the damp and the cobwebs. _My_ appearance on the boards seemed to give new life to the drama. I was, until the birth of my third son, a constant haunter of the playhouse, in which I took great delight; but when _he_ came into the world I said, "Now, Nancy, it is time for us to leave off going to the play." It is really melancholy to look at things now, and to think of things then. I feel great sorrow on account of these poor players; for, though they are made the tools of the Government and the corporations and the parsons, it is not their fault, and they have uniformly, whenever I have come in contact with them, been very civil to me. I am not sorry that they are left out of the list of vagrants in the new Act; but in this case, as in so many others, the men have to be grateful to the _women_; for who believes that this merciful omission would have taken place, if so many of the peers had not contracted matrimonial alliances with players; if so many playeresses had not become peeresses. We may thank G.o.d for disposing the hearts of our law-makers to be guilty of the same sins and foibles as ourselves; for when a lord had been sentenced to the pillory, the use of that ancient mode of punis.h.i.+ng offences was abolished: when a lord (CASTLEREAGH), who was also a minister of state, had cut his own throat, the degrading punishment of burial in cross-roads was abolished; and now, when so many peers and great men have taken to wife play-actresses, which the law termed _vagrants_, that term, as applied to the children of Melpomene and Thalia, is abolished! Laud we the G.o.ds that our rulers cannot after all divest themselves of flesh and blood! For the Lord have mercy upon us if their great souls were once to soar above that tenement!

Lord Stanhope cautioned his brother peers a little while ago against the angry feeling which was _rising up in the poor against the rich_. His Lords.h.i.+p is a wise and humane man, and this is evident from all his conduct. Nor is this angry feeling confined to the counties in the south, where the rage of the people, from the very nature of the local circ.u.mstances, is more formidable; woods and coppices and dingles and bye-lanes and sticks and stones ever at hand, being resources unknown in counties like this. When I was at St. Ives, in Huntingdons.h.i.+re, an open country, I sat with the farmers, and smoked a pipe by way of preparation for evening service, which I performed on a carpenter's bench in a wheelwright's shop; my friends, the players, never having gained any regular settlement in that grand mart for four-legged fat meat, coming from the Fens, and bound to the Wen. While we were sitting, a hand-bill was handed round the table, advertising _farming stock_ for sale; and amongst the implements of husbandry "an _excellent fire-engine, several steel traps, and spring guns_"! And that is the life, is it, of an _English farmer_? I walked on about six miles of the road from Holbeach to Boston. I have before observed upon the inexhaustible riches of this land. At the end of about five miles and three quarters I came to a public-house, and thought I would get some breakfast; but the poor woman, with a tribe of children about her, had not a morsel of either meat or bread! At a house called an inn, a little further on, the landlord had no meat except a little bit of chine of bacon; and though there were a good many houses near the spot, the landlord told me that the people were become so poor that the butchers had left off killing meat in the neighbourhood. Just the state of things that existed in France on the eve of the Revolution. On that very spot I looked round me, and counted more than two thousand fat sheep in the pastures! How long; how long, good G.o.d! is this state of things to last? How long will these people starve in the midst of plenty? How long will fire-engines, steel traps, and spring guns be, in such a state of things, a protection to property? When I was at Beverley a gentleman told me, it was Mr.

Dawson of that place, that some time before a farmer had been sold up by his landlord; and that, in a few weeks afterwards, the farmhouse was on fire, and that when the servants of the landlord arrived to put it out they found the handle of the pump taken away, and that the homestead was totally destroyed. This was told me in the presence of several gentlemen, who all spoke of it as a fact of perfect notoriety.

Another respect in which our situation so exactly resembles that of France on the eve of the Revolution is the _fleeing from the country_ in every direction. When I was in Norfolk there were four hundred persons, generally young men, labourers, carpenters, wheelwrights, millwrights, smiths, and bricklayers; most of them with some money, and some farmers and others with good round sums. These people were going to Quebec in timber-s.h.i.+ps, and from Quebec by land into the United States. They had been told that they would not be suffered to land in the United States from on board of s.h.i.+p. The roguish villains had deceived them: but no matter; they will get into the United States; and going through Canada will do them good, for it will teach them to detest everything belonging to it. From Boston, two great barge loads had just gone off by ca.n.a.l to Liverpool, most of them farmers; all carrying some money, and some as much as two thousand pounds each. From the North and West Riding of Yorks.h.i.+re numerous wagons have gone carrying people to the ca.n.a.ls leading to Liverpool; and a gentleman, whom I saw at Peterboro', told me that he saw some of them; and that the men all appeared to be respectable farmers. At Hull the scene would delight the eyes of the wise Burdett; for here the emigration is going on in the "Old Roman Plan." Ten large s.h.i.+ps have gone this spring, laden with these fugitives from the fangs of taxation; some bound direct to the ports of the United States; others, like those at Yarmouth, for Quebec. Those that have most money go direct to the United States. The single men, who are taken for a mere trifle in the Canada s.h.i.+ps, go that way, have nothing but their carca.s.ses to carry over the rocks and swamps, and through the myriads of place-men and pensioners in that miserable region; there are about fifteen more s.h.i.+ps going from this one port this spring. The s.h.i.+ps are fitted up with berths as transports for the carrying of troops. I went on board one morning, and saw the people putting their things on board and stowing them away. Seeing a nice young woman, with a little baby in her arms, I told her that she was going to a country where she would be sure that her children would never want victuals; where she might make her own malt, soap, and candles without being half put to death for it, and where the blaspheming Jews would not have a mortgage on the life's labour of her children.

There is at Hull one farmer going who is seventy years of age; but who takes out five sons and fifteen hundred pounds! Brave and sensible old man! and good and affectionate father! He is performing a truly parental and sacred duty; and he will die with the blessing of his sons on his head for having rescued them from this scene of slavery, misery, cruelty, and crime. Come, then, Wilmot Horton, with your sensible a.s.sociates, Burdett and Poulett Thomson; come into Lincolns.h.i.+re, Norfolk, and Yorks.h.i.+re; come and bring Parson Malthus along with you; regale your sight with this delightful "stream of emigration"; congratulate the "greatest captain of the age," and your brethren of the Collective: congratulate the "n.o.blest a.s.sembly of free men," on these the happy effects of their measures. Oh! no, Wilmot! Oh! no, generous and sensible Burdett, it is not the aged, the infirm, the halt, the blind, and the idiots that go: it is the youth, the strength, the wealth, and the spirit, that will no longer brook hunger and thirst in order that the maws of tax-eaters and Jews may be crammed. You want the Irish to go, and so they will _at our expense_, and all the bad of them, to be kept at our expense on the rocks and swamps of Nova Scotia and Canada. You have no money to send them away with: the tax-eaters want it all; and thanks to the "improvements of the age," the steam-boats will continue to bring them in shoals in pursuit of the orts of the food that their task-masters have taken away from them.

After evening lecture at Horncastle a very decent farmer came to me and asked me about America, telling me that he was resolved to go, for that if he stayed much longer he should not have a s.h.i.+lling to go with. I promised to send him a letter from Louth to a friend at New York, who might be useful to him there and give him good advice. I forgot it at Louth; but I will do it before I go to bed. From the Thames, and from the several ports down the Channel, about two thousand have gone this spring. All the flower of the labourers of the east of Suss.e.x and west of Kent will be culled out and sent off in a short time. From Glasgow the sensible Scotch are pouring out amain. Those that are poor and cannot pay their pa.s.sages, or can rake together only a trifle, are going to a rascally heap of sand and rock and swamp, called Prince Edward's Island, in the horrible Gulf of St. Lawrence; but when the American vessels come over with Indian corn and flour and pork and beef and poultry and eggs and b.u.t.ter and cabbages and green pease and asparagus for the soldier-officers and other tax-eaters, that we support upon that lump of worthlessness; for the lump itself bears nothing but potatoes; when these vessels come, which they are continually doing, winter and summer; towards the fall, with apples and pears and melons and cuc.u.mbers; and, in short, everlastingly coming and taking away the amount of taxes raised in England; when these vessels return, the sensible Scotch will go back in them for a dollar a head, till at last not a man of them will be left but the bed-ridden. Those villanous colonies are held for no earthly purpose but that of furnis.h.i.+ng a pretence of giving money to the relations and dependents of the aristocracy; and they are the nicest channels in the world through which to send English taxes to enrich and strengthen the United States.

Withdraw the English taxes, and, except in a small part in Canada, the whole of those horrible regions would be left to the bears and the savages in the course of a year.

This emigration is a famous blow given to the borough-mongers. The way to New York is now as well known and as easy, and as little expensive as from old York to London. First, the Suss.e.x parishes sent their paupers; they invited over others that were not paupers; they invited over people of some property; then persons of greater property; now substantial farmers are going; men of considerable fortune will follow. It is the letters written across the Atlantic that do the business. Men of fortune will soon discover that to secure to their families their fortunes, and to take these out of the grasp of the inexorable tax-gatherer, they must get away. Every one that goes will take twenty after him; and thus it will go on. There can be no interruption but _war_; and war the Thing dares not have. As to France or the Netherlands, or any part of that h.e.l.l called Germany, Englishmen can never settle there. The United States form another England without its unbearable taxes, its insolent game-laws, its intolerable dead-weight, and its tread-mills.

EASTERN TOUR ENDED, MIDLAND TOUR BEGUN.

_Lincoln, 23rd April 1830._

From the inn at Spittal we came to this famous ancient Roman station, and afterwards grand scene of Saxon and Gothic splendour, on the 21st.

It was the third or fourth day of the _Spring fair_, which is one of the greatest in the kingdom, and which lasts for a whole week. Horses begin the fair; then come sheep; and to-day, the horned-cattle. It is supposed that there were about 50,000 sheep, and I think the whole of the s.p.a.ce in the various roads and streets, covered by the cattle, must have amounted to ten acres of ground or more. Some say that they were as numerous as the sheep. The number of horses I did not hear; but they say that there were 1,500 fewer in number than last year. The sheep sold 5_s._ a head, on an average, lower than last year; and the cattle in the same proportion. High-priced horses sold well; but the horses which are called tradesmen's horses were very low. This is the natural march of the Thing: those who live on the taxes have money to throw away; but those who _pay_ them are ruined, and have, of course, no money to lay out on horses.

The country from Spittal to Lincoln continued to be much about the same as from Barton to Spittal. Large fields, rather light loam at top, stone under, about half corn-land and the rest gra.s.s. Not so many sheep as in the richer lands, but a great many still. As you get on towards Lincoln, the ground gradually rises, and you go on the road made by the Romans.

When you come to the city you find the ancient castle and the magnificent cathedral on the _brow_ of a sort of ridge which ends here; for you look all of a sudden down into a deep valley, where the greater part of the remaining city lies. It once had _fifty-two churches_; it has now only eight, and only about 9,000 inhabitants! The cathedral is, I believe, the _finest building in the whole world_. All the others that I have seen (and I have seen all in England except Chester, York, Carlisle, and Durham) are little things compared with this. To the task of describing a thousandth-part of its striking beauties I am inadequate; it surpa.s.ses greatly all that I had antic.i.p.ated; and oh! how loudly it gives the lie to those brazen Scotch historians who would have us believe that England was formerly a _poor_ country! The whole revenue raised from Lincolns.h.i.+re, even by this present system of taxation, would not rear such another pile in two hundred years. Some of the city gates are down; but there is one standing, the arch of which is said to be two thousand years old; and a most curious thing it is. The sight of the cathedral fills the mind alternately with wonder, admiration, melancholy, and rage: wonder at its grandeur and magnificence; admiration of the zeal and disinterestedness of those who here devoted to the honour of G.o.d those immense means which they might have applied to their own enjoyments; melancholy at its present neglected state; and indignation against those who now enjoy the revenues belonging to it, and who creep about it merely as a pretext for devouring a part of the fruit of the people's labour. There are no men in England who ought to wish for _reform_ so anxiously as the working clergy of the church of England; we are all oppressed; but they are oppressed and insulted more than any men that ever lived in the world. The clergy in America; I mean in free America, not in our beggarly colonies, where clerical insolence and partiality prevail still more than here; I mean in the United States, where every man gives what he pleases, and no more: the clergy of the episcopal church are a hundred times better off than the working clergy are here. They are, also, much more respected, because their _order_ has not to bear the blame of enormous exactions; which exactions here are swallowed up by the aristocracy and their dependents; but which swallowings are imputed to every one bearing the name of parson.

Throughout the whole country I have maintained the necessity and the justice of resuming the church property; but I have never failed to say that I know of no more meritorious and ill-used men than the working clergy of the established church.

_Leicester, 26th April 1830._

At the famous ancient city of Lincoln I had crowded audiences, princ.i.p.ally consisting of farmers, on the 21st and 22nd; exceedingly well-behaved audiences; and great impression produced. One of the evenings, in pointing out to them the wisdom of explaining to their labourers the cause of their distress, in order to ward off the effects of the resentment which the labourers now feel everywhere against the farmers, I related to them what my labourers at Barn-Elm had been doing since I left home: and I repeated to them the complaints that my labourers made, stating to them, from memory, the following parts of that spirited pet.i.tion: