RURAL RIDE: FROM WINCHESTER TO BURGHCLERE.

Burghclere, Monday Morning, 31st October 1825.

We had, or I had, resolved not to breakfast at Winchester yesterday: and yet we were detained till nearly noon. But at last off we came, fasting. The turnpike-road from Winchester to this place comes through a village called Sutton Scotney, and then through Whitchurch, which lies on the Andover and London road, through Basingstoke. We did not take the cross-turnpike till we came to Whitchurch. We went to King’s Worthy; that is about two miles on the road from Winchester to London; and then, turning short to our left, came up upon the downs to the north of Winchester race-course. Here, looking back at the city and at the fine valley above and below it, and at the many smaller valleys that run down from the high ridges into that great and fertile valley, I could not help admiring the taste of the ancient kings who made this city (which once covered all the hill round about, and which contained 92 churches and chapels) a chief place of their residence. There are not many finer spots in England; and if I were to take in a circle of eight or ten miles of semi-diameter, I should say that I believe there is not one so fine. Here are hill, dell, water, meadows, woods, corn-fields, downs: and all of them very fine and very beautifully disposed. This country does not present to us that sort of beauties which we see about Guildford and Godalming, and round the skirts of Hindhead and Blackdown, where the ground lies in the form that the surface-water in a boiling copper would be in if you could, by word of command, make it be still, the variously-shaped bubbles all sticking up; and really, to look at the face of the earth, who can help imagining that some such process has produced its present form? Leaving this matter to be solved by those who laugh at mysteries, I repeat that the country round Winchester does not present to us beauties of this sort; but of a sort which I like a great deal better. Arthur Young calls the vale between Farnham and Alton the finest ten miles in England. Here is a river with fine meadows on each side of it, and with rising grounds on each outside of the meadows, those grounds having some hop-gardens and some pretty woods. But though I was born in this vale I must confess that the ten miles between Maidstone and Tunbridge (which the Kentish folks call the Garden of Eden) is a great deal finer; for here, with a river three times as big, and a vale three times as broad, there are, on rising grounds six times as broad, not only hop-gardens and beautiful woods, but immense orchards of apples, pears, plums, cherries and filberts, and these, in many cases, with gooseberries and currants and raspberries beneath; and, all taken together, the vale is really worthy of the appellation which it bears. But even this spot, which I believe to be the very finest, as to fertility and diminutive beauty, in this whole world, I, for my part, do not like so well; nay, as a spot to live on, I think nothing at all of it, compared with a country where high downs prevail, with here and there a large wood on the top or the side of a hill, and where you see, in the deep dells, here and there a farm-house, and here and there a village, the buildings sheltered by a group of lofty trees.

This is my taste, and here, in the north of Hampshire, it has its full gratification. I like to look at the winding side of a great down, with two or three numerous flocks of sheep on it, belonging to different farms; and to see, lower down, the folds, in the fields, ready to receive them for the night. We had, when we got upon the downs, after leaving Winchester, this sort of country all the way to Whitchurch. Our point of destination was this village of Burghclere, which lies close under the north side of the lofty hill at Highclere, which is called Beacon Hill, and on the top of which there are still the marks of a Roman encampment. We saw this hill as soon as we got on Winchester Downs; and without any regard to roads, we steered for it, as sailors do for a land-mark. Of these 13 miles (from Winchester to Whitchurch) we rode about eight or nine upon the green-sward, or over fields equally smooth. And here is one great pleasure of living in countries of this sort: no sloughs, no ditches, no nasty dirty lanes, and the hedges, where there are any, are more for boundary marks than for fences. Fine for hunting and coursing: no impediments; no gates to open; nothing to impede the dogs, the horses, or the view. The water is not seen running; but the great bed of chalk holds it, and the sun draws it up for the benefit of the grass and the corn; and, whatever inconvenience is experienced from the necessity of deep wells, and of driving sheep and cattle far to water, is amply made up for by the goodness of the water, and by the complete absence of floods, of drains, of ditches and of water-furrows. As things now are, however, these countries have one great drawback: the poor day-labourers suffer from the want of fuel, and they have nothing but their bare pay. For these reasons they are greatly worse off than those of the woodland countries; and it is really surprising what a difference there is between the faces that you see here and the round, red faces that you see in the wealds and the forests, particularly in Sussex, where the labourers will have a meat-pudding of some sort or other; and where they will have a fire to sit by in the winter.

After steering for some time, we came down to a very fine farmhouse, which we stopped a little to admire; and I asked Richard whether that was not a place to be happy in. The village, which we found to be Stoke-Charity, was about a mile lower down this little vale. Before we got to it, we overtook the owner of the farm, who knew me, though I did not know him; but when I found it was Mr. Hinton Bailey, of whom and whose farm I had heard so much, I was not at all surprised at the fineness of what I had just seen. I told him that the word charity, making, as it did, part of the name of this place, had nearly inspired me with boldness enough to go to the farmhouse, in the ancient style, and ask for something to eat, for that we had not yet breakfasted. He asked us to go back; but at Burghclere we were resolved to dine. After, however, crossing the village, and beginning again to ascend the downs, we came to a labourer’s (once a farmhouse), where I asked the man whether he had any bread and cheese, and was not a little pleased to hear him say “Yes.” Then I asked him to give us a bit, protesting that we had not yet broken our fast. He answered in the affirmative at once, though I did not talk of payment. His wife brought out the cut loaf, and a piece of Wiltshire cheese, and I took them in hand, gave Richard a good hunch, and took another for myself. I verily believe that all the pleasure of eating enjoyed by all the feeders in London in a whole year does not equal that which we enjoyed in gnawing this bread and cheese as we rode over this cold down, whip and bridle-reins in one hand, and the hunch in the other. Richard, who was purse bearer, gave the woman, by my direction, about enough to buy two quartern loaves: for she told me that they had to buy their bread at the mill, not being able to bake themselves for want of fuel; and this, as I said before, is one of the draw-backs in this sort of country. I wish every one of these people had an American fire-place. Here they might, then, even in these bare countries, have comfortable warmth. Rubbish of any sort would, by this means, give them warmth. I am now, at six o’clock in the morning, sitting in a room, where one of these fire-places, with very light turf in it, gives as good and steady a warmth as it is possible to feel, and which room has, too, been cured of smoking by this fire-place.

Before we got this supply of bread and cheese, we, though in ordinary times a couple of singularly jovial companions, and seldom going a hundred yards (except going very fast) without one or the other speaking, began to grow dull, or rather glum. The way seemed long; and, when I had to speak in answer to Richard, the speaking was as brief as might be. Unfortunately, just at this critical period, one of the loops that held the straps of Richard’s little portmanteau broke; and it became necessary (just before we overtook Mr. Bailey) for me to fasten the portmanteau on before me, upon my saddle. This, which was not the work of more than five minutes, would, had I had a breakfast, have been nothing at all, and, indeed, matter of laughter. But now it was something. It was his “fault” for capering and jerking about “so.” I jumped off, saying, “Here! I’ll carry it myself.” And then I began to take off the remaining strap, pulling with great violence and in great haste. Just at this time my eyes met his, in which I saw great surprise; and, feeling the just rebuke, feeling heartily ashamed of myself, I instantly changed my tone and manner, cast the blame upon the saddler, and talked of the effectual means which we would take to prevent the like in future.

Now, if such was the effect produced upon me by the want of food for only two or three hours; me, who had dined well the day before and eaten toast and butter the over-night; if the missing of only one breakfast, and that, too, from my own whim, while I had money in my pocket to get one at any public-house, and while I could get one only for asking for at any farm-house; if the not having breakfasted could, and under such circumstances, make me what you may call “cross” to a child like this, whom I must necessarily love so much, and to whom I never speak but in the very kindest manner; if this mere absence of a breakfast could thus put me out of temper, how great are the allowances that we ought to make for the poor creatures who, in this once happy and now miserable country, are doomed to lead a life of constant labour and of half-starvation. I suppose that, as we rode away from the cottage, we gnawed up, between us, a pound of bread and a quarter of a pound of cheese. Here was about fivepence worth at present prices. Even this, which was only a mere snap, a mere stay-stomach, for us, would, for us two, come to 3_s._ a week all but a penny. How, then, gracious God! is a labouring man, his wife, and, perhaps, four or five small children, to exist upon 8_s._ or 9_s._ a week! Aye, and to find house-rent, clothing, bedding and fuel out of it? Richard and I ate here, at this snap, more, and much more, than the average of labourers, their wives and children, have to eat in a whole day, and that the labourer has to work on too!

When we got here to Burghclere we were again as hungry as hunters. What, then, must be the life of these poor creatures? But is not the state of the country, is not the hellishness of the system, all depicted in this one disgraceful and damning fact, that the magistrates, who settle on what the labouring poor ought to have to live on, ALLOW THEM LESS THAN IS ALLOWED TO FELONS IN THE GAOLS, and allow them nothing for clothing and fuel, and house-rent! And yet, while this is notoriously the case, while the main body of the working class in England are fed and clad and even lodged worse than felons, and are daily becoming even worse and worse off, the King is advised to tell the Parliament, and the world, that we are in a state of unexampled prosperity, and that this prosperity must be permanent, because all the GREAT interests are prospering! THE WORKING PEOPLE ARE NOT, THEN, “A GREAT INTEREST”! THEY WILL BE FOUND TO BE ONE, BY-AND-BY. What is to be the end of this? What can be the end of it, but dreadful convulsion? What other can be produced by a system, which allows the felon better food, better clothing, and better lodging than the honest labourer?

I see that there has been a grand humanity-meeting in Norfolk to assure the Parliament that these humanity-people will back it in any measures that it may adopt for freeing the NEGROES. Mr. Buxton figured here, also Lord Suffield, who appear to have been the two principal actors, or showers-off. This same Mr. Buxton opposed the Bill intended to relieve the poor in England by breaking a little into the brewers’ monopoly; and as to Lord Suffield, if he really wish to free slaves, let him go to Wykham in this county, where he will see some drawing, like horses, gravel to repair the roads for the stock-jobbers and dead-weight and the seat-dealers to ride smoothly on. If he go down a little further, he will see CONVICTS at PRECISELY THE SAME WORK, harnessed in JUST THE SAME WAY; but the convicts he will find hale and ruddy-cheeked, in dresses sufficiently warm, and bawling and singing; while he will find the labourers thin, ragged, shivering, dejected mortals, such as never were seen in any other country upon earth. There is not a negro in the West Indies who has not more to eat in a day, than the average of English labourers have to eat in a week, and of better food too. Colonel Wodehouse and a man of the name of Hoseason (whence came he?) who opposed this humanity-scheme talked of the sums necessary to pay the owners of the slaves. They took special care not to tell the humanity-men to look at home for slaves to free. No, no! that would have applied to themselves, as well as to Lord Suffield and humanity Buxton. If it were worth while to reason with these people, one might ask them whether they do not think that another war is likely to relieve them of all these cares, simply by making the colonies transfer their allegiance or assert their independence? But to reason with them is useless. If they can busy themselves with compassion for the negroes, while they uphold the system that makes the labourers of England more wretched, and beyond all measure more wretched, than any negro slaves are, or ever were, or ever can be, they are unworthy of anything but our contempt.

But the “education” canters are the most curious fellows of all. They have seen “education,” as they call it, and crimes, go on increasing together, till the gaols, though six times their former dimensions, will hardly suffice; and yet the canting creatures still cry that crimes arise from want of what they call “education!” They see the felon better fed and better clad than the honest labourer. They see this; and yet they continually cry that the crimes arise from a want of “education!” What can be the cause of this perverseness? It is not perverseness: it is roguery, corruption, and tyranny. The tyrant, the unfeeling tyrant, squeezes the labourers for gain’s sake; and the corrupt politician and literary or tub rogue find an excuse for him by pretending that it is not want of food and clothing, but want of education, that makes the poor, starving wretches thieves and robbers. If the press, if only the press, were to do its duty, or but a tenth part of its duty, this hellish system could not go on. But it favours the system by ascribing the misery to wrong causes. The causes are these: the tax-gatherer presses the landlord; the landlord the farmer; and the farmer the labourer. Here it falls at last; and this class is made so miserable that a felon’s life is better than that of a labourer. Does there want any other cause to produce crimes? But on these causes, so clear to the eye of reason, so plain from experience, the press scarcely ever says a single word; while it keeps bothering our brains about education and morality; and about ignorance and immorality leading to félonies. To be sure immorality leads to félonies. Who does not know that? But who is to expect morality in a half-starved man, who is whipped if he do not work, though he has not, for his whole day’s food, so much as I and my little boy snapped up in six or seven minutes upon Stoke-Charity Down? Aye! but if the press were to ascribe the increase of crimes to the true causes it must go further back. It must go to the cause of the taxes. It must go to the debt, the dead-weight, the thundering standing army, the enormous sinécures, pensions, and grants; and this would suit but a very small part of a press which lives and thrives principally by one or the other of these.

As with the press, so is it with Mr. Brougham and all such politicians. They stop short, or, rather, they begin in the middle. They attempt to prevent the evils of the deadly ivy by cropping off, or, rather, bruising a little, a few of its leaves. They do not assail even its branches, while they appear to look upon the trunk as something too sacred even to be looked at with vulgar eyes. Is not the injury recently done to about forty thousand poor families in and near Plymouth, by the Small-note Bill, a thing that Mr. Brougham ought to think about before he thinks anything more about educating those poor families? Yet will he, when he again meets the Ministers, say a word about this monstrous evil? I am afraid that no Member will say a word about it; but I am rather more than afraid that he will not. And why? Because, if he reproach the Ministers with this crying cruelty, they will ask him first how this is to be prevented without a repeal of the Small-note Bill (by which Peel’s Bill was partly repealed); then they will ask him, how the prices are to be kept up without the small-notes; then they will say, “Does the honourable and learned Gentleman wish to see wheat at four shillings a bushel again?”

B. No (looking at Mr. Western and Daddy Coke), no, no, no! Upon my honour, no!

MIN. Does the honourable and learned Gentleman wish to see Cobbett again at county meetings, and to see petitions again coming from those meetings, calling for a reduction of the interest of the...?

B. No, no, no, upon my soul, no!

MIN. Does the honourable and learned Gentleman wish to see that “equitable adjustment,” which Cobbett has a thousand times declared can never take place without an application, to new purposes, of that great mass of public property, commonly called Church property?

B. (Almost bursting with rage). How dare the honourable gentlemen to suppose me capable of such a thought?

MIN. We suppose nothing. We only ask the question; and we ask it, because to put an end to the small-notes would inevitably produce all these things; and it is impossible to have small-notes to the extent necessary to keep up prices, without having, now-and-then, breaking banks. Banks cannot break without producing misery; you must have the consequence if you will have the cause. The honourable and learned Gentleman wants the feast without the reckoning. In short, is the honourable and learned Gentleman for putting an end to “public credit”?

B. No, no, no, no!

MIN. Then would it not be better for the honourable and learned
Gentleman to hold his tongue?

All men of sense and sincerity will at once answer this last question in the affirmative. They will all say that this is not opposition to the Ministers. The Ministers do not wish to see 40,000 families, nor any families at all (who give them no real annoyance), reduced to misery; they do not wish to cripple their own tax-payers; very far from it. If they could carry on the debt and dead-weight and place and pension and barrack system, without reducing any quiet people to misery, they would like it exceedingly. But they do wish to carry on that system; and he does not oppose them who does not endeavour to put an end to the system.

This is done by nobody in Parliament; and, therefore, there is, in fact, no opposition; and this is felt by the whole nation; and this is the reason why the people now take so little interest in what is said and done in Parliament, compared to that which they formerly took. This is the reason why there is no man, or men, whom the people seem to care at all about. A great portion of the people now clearly understand the nature and effects of the system; they are not now to be deceived by speeches and professions. If Pitt and Fox had now to start, there would be no “Pittites” and “Foxites.” Those happy days of political humbug are gone for ever. The “gentlemen opposite” are opposite only as to mere local position. They sit on the opposite side of the House: that’s all. In every other respect they are like parson and clerk; or, perhaps, rather more like the rooks and jackdaws: one caw and the other chatter; but both have the same object in view: both are in pursuit of the same sort of diet. One set is, to be sure, IN place, and the other OUT; but, though the rooks keep the jackdaws on the inferior branches, these latter would be as clamorous as the rooks themselves against felling the tree; and just as clamorous would the “gentlemen opposite” be against any one who should propose to put down the system itself. And yet, unless you do that, things must go on in the present way, and felons must be better fed than honest labourers; and starvation and thieving and robbing and gaol-building and transporting and hanging and penal laws must go on increasing, as they have gone on from the day of the establishment of the debt to the present hour. Apropos of penal laws, Doctor Black (of the Morning Chronicle) is now filling whole columns with very just remarks on the new and terrible law, which makes the taking of an apple felony; but he says not a word about the silence of Sir Jammy (the humane code-softener) upon this subject! The “humanity and liberality” of the Parliament have relieved men addicted to fraud and to certain other crimes from the disgrace of the pillory, and they have, since Castlereagh cut his own throat, relieved self-slayers from the disgrace of the cross-road burial; but the same Parliament, amidst all the workings of this rare humanity and liberality, have made it felony to take an apple off a tree, which last year was a trivial trespass, and was formerly no offence at all! However, even this is necessary, as long as this bank-note system continue in its present way; and all complaints about severity of laws, levelled at the poor, are useless and foolish; and these complaints are even base in those who do their best to uphold a system which has brought the honest labourer to be fed worse than the felon. What, short of such laws, can prevent starving men from coming to take away the dinners of those who have plenty? “Education”! Despicable cant and nonsense! What education, what moral precepts, can quiet the gnawings and ragings of hunger?

Looking, now, back again for a minute to the little village of Stoke-Charity, the name of which seems to indicate that its rents formerly belonged wholly to the poor and indigent part of the community: it is near to Winchester, that grand scene of ancient learning, piety, and munificence. Be this as it may, the parish formerly contained ten farms, and it now contains but two, which are owned by Mr. Hinton Bailey and his nephew, and, therefore, which may probably become one. There used to be ten well-fed families in this parish at any rate: these, taking five to a family, made fifty well-fed people. And now all are half-starved, except the curate and the two families. The blame is not the land-owner’s; it is nobody’s; it is due to the infernal funding and taxing system, which of necessity drives property into large masses in order to save itself; which crushes little proprietors down into labourers; and which presses them down in that state, there takes their wages from them and makes them paupers, their share of food and raiment being taken away to support debt and dead-weight and army and all the rest of the enormous expenses which are required to sustain this intolerable system. Those, therefore, are fools or hypocrites who affect to wish to better the lot of the poor labourers and manufacturers, while they, at the same time, either actively or passively, uphold the system which is the manifest cause of it. Here is a system which, clearly as the nose upon your face, you see taking away the little gentleman’s estate, the little farmer’s farm, the poor labourer’s meat-dinner and Sunday-coat; and while you see this so plainly, you, fool or hypocrite, as you are, cry out for supporting the system that causes it all! Go on, base wretch; but remember that of such a progress dreadful must be the end. The day will come when millions of long-suffering creatures will be in a state that they and you now little dream of. All that we now behold of combinations, and the like, are mere indications of what the great body of the suffering people feel, and of the thoughts that are passing in their minds. The coaxing work of schools and tracts will only add to what would be quite enough without them. There is not a labourer in the whole country who does not see to the bottom of this coaxing work. They are not deceived in this respect. Hunger has opened their eyes. I’ll engage that there is not, even in this obscure village of Stoke-Charity, one single creature, however forlorn, who does not understand all about the real motives of the school and the tract and the Bible affair as well as Butterworth, or Rivington, or as Joshua Watson himself.

Just after we had finished the bread and cheese, we crossed the turnpike road that goes from Basingstoke to Stockbridge; and Mr. Bailey had told us that we were then to bear away to our right, and go to the end of a wood (which we saw one end of), and keep round with that wood, or coppice, as he called it, to our left; but we, seeing Beacon Hill more to the left, and resolving to go, as nearly as possible, in a straight line to it, steered directly over the fields; that is to say, pieces of ground from 30 to 100 acres in each. But a hill which we had to go over had here hidden from our sight a part of this “coppice,” which consists, perhaps, of 150 or 200 acres, and which we found sweeping round, in a crescent-like form so far, from towards our left, as to bring our land-mark over the coppice at about the mid-length of the latter. Upon this discovery we slackened sail; for this coppice might be a mile across; and though the bottom was sound enough, being a coverlet of flints upon a bed of chalk, the underwood was too high and too thick for us to face, being, as we were, at so great a distance from the means of obtaining a fresh supply of clothes. Our leather leggings would have stood anything; but our coats were of the common kind; and before we saw the other side of the coppice we should, I dare say, have been as ragged as forest-ponies in the month of March.

In this dilemma I stopped and looked at the coppice. Luckily two boys, who had been cutting sticks (to sell, I dare say, at least I hope so), made their appearance, at about half a mile off, on the side for the coppice. Richard galloped off to the boys, from whom he found that in one part of the coppice there was a road cut across, the point of entrance into which road they explained to him. This was to us what the discovery of a canal across the isthmus of Darien would be to a ship in the Gulf of Mexico wanting to get into the Pacific without doubling Cape Horne. A beautiful road we found it. I should suppose the best part of a mile long, perfectly straight, the surface sound and smooth, about eight feet wide, the whole length seen at once, and, when you are at one end, the other end seeming to be hardly a yard wide. When we got about half-way, we found a road that crossed this. These roads are, I suppose, cut for the hunters. They are very pretty, at any rate, and we found this one very convenient; for it cut our way short by a full half mile.

From this coppice to Whitchurch is not more than about four miles, and we soon reached it, because here you begin to descend into the vale, in which this little town lies, and through which there runs that stream which turns the mill of ’Squire Portal, and which mill makes the Bank of England Note-Paper! Talk of the Thames and the Hudson with their forests of masts; talk of the Nile and the Delaware bearing the food of millions on their bosoms; talk of the Ganges and the Mississippi sending forth over the world their silks and their cottons; talk of the Rio de la Plata and the other rivers, their beds pebbled with silver and gold and diamonds. What, as to their effect on the condition of mankind, as to the virtues, the vices, the enjoyments and the sufferings of men; what are all these rivers put together compared with the river of Whitchurch, which a man of threescore may jump across dry-shod, which moistens a quarter of a mile wide of poor, rushy meadow, which washes the skirts of the park and game preserves of that bright patrician who wedded the daughter of Hanson, the attorney and late solicitor to the Stamp-Office, and which is, to look at it, of far less importance than any gutter in the Wen! Yet this river, by merely turning a wheel, which wheel sets some rag-tearers and grinders and washers and re-compressers in motion, has produced a greater effect on the condition of men than has been produced on that condition by all the other rivers, all the seas, all the mines and all the continents in the world. The discovery of America, and the consequent discovery and use of vast quantities of silver and gold, did, indeed, produce great effects on the nations of Europe. They changed the value of money, and caused, as all such changes must, a transfer of property, raising up new families and pulling down old ones, a transfer very little favourable either to morality, or to real and substantial liberty. But this cause worked slowly; its consequences came on by slow degrees; it made a transfer of property, but it made that transfer in so small a degree, and it left the property quiet in the hands of the new possessor for so long a time, that the effect was not violent, and was not, at any rate, such as to uproot possessors by whole districts, as the hurricane uproots the forests.

Not so the product of the little sedgy rivulet of Whitchurch! It has, in the short space of a hundred and thirty-one years, and, indeed, in the space of the last forty, caused greater changes as to property than had been caused by all other things put together in the long course of seven centuries, though during that course there had been a sweeping, confiscating Protestant reformation. Let us look back to the place where I started on this present rural ride. Poor old Baron Maseres, succeeded at Reigate by little Parson Fellowes, and at Betchworth (three miles on my road) by Kendrick, is no bad instance to begin with; for the Baron was nobly descended, though from French ancestors. At Albury, fifteen miles on my road, Mr. Drummond (a banker) is in the seat of one of the Howards, and close by he has bought the estate, just pulled down the house, and blotted out the memory of the Godschalls. At Chilworth, two miles further down the same vale, and close under St. Martha’s Hill, Mr. Tinkler, a powder-maker (succeeding Hill, another powder-maker, who had been a breeches-maker at Hounslow), has got the old mansion and the estate of the old Duchess of Marlborough, who frequently resided in what was then a large quadrangular mansion, but the remains of which now serve as out farm-buildings and a farmhouse, which I found inhabited by a poor labourer and his family, the farm being in the hands of the powder-maker, who does not find the once noble seat good enough for him. Coming on to Waverley Abbey, there is Mr. Thompson, a merchant, succeeding the Orby Hunters and Sir Robert Rich. Close adjoining, Mr. Laing, a West India dealer of some sort, has stepped into the place of the lineal descendants of Sir William Temple. At Farnham the park and palace remain in the hands of a Bishop of Winchester, as they have done for about eight hundred years: but why is this? Because they are public property; because they cannot, without express laws, be transferred. Therefore the product of the rivulet of Whitchurch has had no effect upon the ownership of these, which are still in the hands of a Bishop of Winchester; not of a William of Wykham, to be sure; but still, in those of a bishop, at any rate. Coming on to old Alresford (twenty miles from Farnham) Sheriff, the son of a Sheriff, who was a Commissary in the American war, has succeeded the Gages. Two miles further on, at Abbotston (down on the side of the Itchen) Alexander Baring has succeeded the heirs and successors of the Duke of Bolton, the remains of whose noble mansion I once saw here. Not above a mile higher up, the same Baring has, at the Grange, with its noble mansion, park and estate, succeeded the heirs of Lord Northington; and at only about two miles further, Sir Thomas Baring, at Stratton Park, has succeeded the Russells in the ownership of the estates of Stratton and Micheldover, which were once the property of Alfred the Great! Stepping back, and following my road, down by the side of the meadows of the beautiful river Itchen, and coming to Easton, I look across to Martyr’s Worthy, and there see (as I observed before) the Ogles succeeded by a general or a colonel somebody; but who, or whence, I cannot learn.

This is all in less than four score miles, from Reigate even to this place, where I now am. Oh! mighty rivulet of Whitchurch! All our properties, all our laws, all our manners, all our minds, you have changed! This, which I have noticed, has all taken place within forty, and most of it within ten years. The small gentry, to about the third rank upwards (considering there to be five ranks from the smallest gentry up to the greatest nobility), are all gone, nearly to a man, and the small farmers along with them. The Barings alone have, I should think, swallowed up thirty or forty of these small gentry without perceiving it. They, indeed, swallow up the biggest race of all; but innumerable small fry slip down unperceived, like caplins down the throats of the sharks, while these latter feel only the codfish. It frequently happens, too, that a big gentleman or nobleman, whose estate has been big enough to resist for a long while, and who has swilled up many caplin-gentry, goes down the throat of the loan-dealer with all the caplins in his belly.

Thus the Whitchurch rivulet goes on, shifting property from hand to hand. The big, in order to save themselves from being “swallowed up quick” (as we used to be taught to say in our Church Prayers against Buonaparte), make use of their voices to get, through place, pension, or sinecure, something back from the taxers. Others of them fall in love with the daughters and widows of paper-money people, big brewers, and the like; and sometimes their daughters fall in love with the paper-money people’s sons, or the fathers of those sons; and, whether they be Jews, or not, seems to be little matter with this all-subduing passion of love. But the small gentry have no resource. While war lasted, “glorious war,” there was a resource; but now, alas! not only is there no war, but there is no hope of war; and not a few of them will actually come to the parish-book. There is no place for them in the army, church, navy, customs, excise, pension-list, or anywhere else. All these are now wanted by “their betters.” A stock-jobber’s family will not look at such penniless things. So that while they have been the active, the zealous, the efficient instruments, in compelling the working classes to submit to half-starvation, they have at any rate been brought to the most abject ruin themselves; for which I most heartily thank God. The “harvest of war” is never to return without a total blowing up of the paper-system. Spain must belong to France, St. Domingo must pay her tribute. America must be paid for slaves taken away in war, she must have Florida, she must go on openly and avowedly making a navy for the purpose of humbling us; and all this, and ten times more, if France and America should choose; and yet we can have no war as long as the paper-system last; and, if that cease, then what is to come!

Burghclere, Sunday Morning, 6th November.

It has been fine all the week until to-day, when we intended to set off for Hurstbourn-Tarrant, vulgarly called Uphusband, but the rain seems as if it would stop us. From Whitchurch to within two miles of this place it is the same sort of country as between Winchester and Whitchurch. High, chalk bottom, open downs or large fields, with here and there a farmhouse in a dell sheltered by lofty trees, which, to my taste, is the most pleasant situation in the world.

This has been, with Richard, one whole week of hare-hunting, and with me, three days and a half. The weather has been amongst the finest that I ever saw, and Lord Caernarvon’s preserves fill the country with hares, while these hares invite us to ride about and to see his park and estate, at this fine season of the year, in every direction. We are now on the north side of that Beacon Hill for which we steered last Sunday. This makes part of a chain of lofty chalk-hills and downs, which divides all the lower part of Hampshire from Berkshire, though the ancient ruler, owner, of the former took a little strip all along on the flat, on this side of the chain, in order, I suppose, to make the ownership of the hills themselves the more clear of all dispute; just as the owner of a field-hedge and bank owns also the ditch on his neighbour’s side. From these hills you look, at one view, over the whole of Berkshire, into Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, and you can see the Isle of Wight and the sea. On this north side the chalk soon ceases, and the sand and clay begin, and the oak-woods cover a great part of the surface. Amongst these is the farmhouse in which we are, and from the warmth and good fare of which we do not mean to stir until we can do it without the chance of a wet skin.

This rain has given me time to look at the newspapers of about a week old. Oh, oh! The Cotton Lords are tearing! Thank God for that! The Lords of the Anvil are snapping! Thank God for that too! They have kept poor souls, then, in a heat of 84 degrees to little purpose after all. The “great interests” mentioned in the King’s Speech do not, then, all continue to flourish! The “prosperity” was not, then, “permanent,” though the King was advised to assert so positively that it was! “Anglo-Mexican and Pasco-Peruvian” fall in price, and the Chronicle assures me that “the respectable owners of the Mexican Mining shares mean to take measures to protect their property.” Indeed! Like protecting the Spanish Bonds, I suppose? Will the Chronicle be so good as to tell us the names of these “respectable persons”? Doctor Black must know their names; or else he could not know them to be respectable. If the parties be those that I have heard, these mining works may possibly operate with them as an emetic, and make them throw up a part at least of what they have taken down.

There has, I see, at New York, been that confusion which I, four months ago, said would and must take place; that breaking of merchants and all the ruin which, in such a case, spreads itself about, ruining families and producing fraud and despair. Here will be, between the two countries, an interchange of cause and effect, proceeding from the dealings in cotton, until, first and last, two or three hundred thousands of persons have, at one spell of paper-money work, been made to drink deep of misery. I pity none but the poor English creatures, who are compelled to work on the wool of this accursed weed, which has done so much mischief to England. The slaves who cultivate and gather the cotton are well fed. They do not suffer. The sufferers are these who spin it and weave it and colour it, and the wretched beings who cover with it those bodies which, as in the time of old Fortescue, ought to be “clothed throughout in good woollens.”

One newspaper says that Mr. Huskisson is gone to Paris, and thinks it likely that he will endeavour to “inculcate in the mind of the Bourbons wise principles of free trade!” What the devil next! Persuade them, I suppose, that it is for their good that English goods should be admitted into France and into St. Domingo with little or no duty? Persuade them to make a treaty of commerce with him; and, in short, persuade them to make France help to pay the interest of our debt and dead-weight, lest our system of paper should go to pieces, and lest that should be followed by a radical reform, which reform would be injurious to “the monarchical principle!” This newspaper politician does, however, think that the Bourbons will be “too dull” to comprehend these “enlightened and liberal” notions; and I think so too. I think the Bourbons, or, rather, those who will speak for them, will say: “No thank you. You contracted your debt without our participation; you made your dead-weight for your own purposes; the seizure of our museums and the loss of our frontier towns followed your victory of Waterloo, though we were ‘your Allies’ at the time; you made us pay an enormous Tribute after that battle, and kept possession of part of France till we had paid it; you wished, the other day, to keep us out of Spain, and you, Mr. Huskisson, in a speech at Liverpool, called our deliverance of the King of Spain an unjust and unprincipled act of aggression, while Mr. Canning prayed to God that we might not succeed. No thank you, Mr. Huskisson, no. No coaxing, Sir: we saw, then, too clearly the advantage we derived from your having a debt and a dead weight to wish to assist in relieving you from either. ’Monarchical principle’ here, or ‘monarchical principle’ there, we know that your mill-stone debt is our best security. We like to have your wishes, your prayers, and your abuse against us, rather than your subsidies and your fleets: and so farewell, Mr. Huskisson: if you like, the English may drink French wine; but whether they do or not, the French shall not wear your rotten cottons. And as a last word, how did you maintain the ‘monarchical principle,’ the ‘paternal principle,’ or as Castlereagh called it, the ‘social system,’ when you called that an unjust and unprincipled aggression which put an end to the bargain by which the convents and other church-property of Spain were to be transferred to the Jews and Jobbers of London? Bon jour, Monsieur Huskisson, ci-devant membre et orateur du club de quatre vingt neuf!”

If they do not actually say this to him, this is what they will think; and that is, as to the effect, precisely the same thing. It is childishness to suppose that any nation will act from a desire of serving all other nations, or any one other nation, as well as itself. It will make, unless compelled, no compact by which it does not think itself a gainer; and amongst its gains it must, and always does, reckon the injury to its rivals. It is a stupid idea that all nations are to gain by anything. Whatever is the gain of one must, in some way or other, be a loss to another. So that this new project of “free trade” and “mutual gain” is as pure a humbug as that which the newspapers carried on during the “glorious days” of loans, when they told us, at every loan, that the bargain was “equally advantageous to the contractors and to the public!” The fact is, the “free trade” project is clearly the effect of a consciousness of our weakness. As long as we felt strong, we felt bold, we had no thought of conciliating the world; we upheld a system of exclusion, which long experience proved to be founded in sound policy. But we now find that our debts and our loads of various sorts cripple us. We feel our incapacity for the carrying of trade sword in hand: and so we have given up all our old maxims, and are endeavouring to persuade the world that we are anxious to enjoy no advantages that are not enjoyed also by our neighbours. Alas! the world sees very clearly the cause of all this; and the world laughs at us for our imaginary cunning. My old doggrel, that used to make me and my friends laugh in Long Island, is precisely pat to this case.

When his maw was stuffed with paper,
How JOHN BULL did prance and caper!
How he foam’d and how he roar’d:
How his neighbours all he gored!
How he scrap’d the ground and hurl’d
Dirt and filth on all the world!
But JOHN BULL of paper empty,
Though in midst of peace and plenty,
Is modest grown as worn-out sinner,
As Scottish laird that wants a dinner;
As WILBERFORCE, become content
A rotten burgh to represent;
As BLUE and BUFF, when, after hunting
On Yankee coasts their “bits of bunting,”
Came softly back across the seas,
And silent were as mice in cheese.

Yes, the whole world, and particularly the French and the Yankees, see very clearly the course of this fit of modesty and of liberality into which we have so recently fallen. They know well that a war would play the very devil with our national faith. They know, in short, that no Ministers in their senses will think of supporting the paper-system through another war. They know well that no Ministers that now exist, or are likely to exist, will venture to endanger the paper-system; and therefore they know that (for England) they may now do just what they please. When the French were about to invade Spain, Mr. Canning said that his last despatch on the subject was to be understood as a protest on the part of England against permanent occupation of any part of Spain by France. There the French are, however; and at the end of two years and a half he says that he knows nothing about any intention that they have to quit Spain, or any part of it.

Why, Saint Domingo was independent. We had traded with it as an independent state. Is it not clear that if we had said the word (and had been known to be able to arm), France would not have attempted to treat that fine and rich country as a colony? Mark how wise this measure of France! How just, too; to obtain by means of a tribute from the St. Domingoians compensation for the loyalists of that country! Was this done with regard to the loyalists of America in the reign of the good jubilee George III.? Oh, no! Those loyalists had to be paid, and many of them have even yet, at the end of more than half a century, to be paid out of taxes raised on us, for the losses occasioned by their disinterested loyalty! This was a masterstroke on the part of France; she gets about seven millions sterling in the way of tribute; she makes that rich island yield to her great commercial advantages; and she, at the same time, paves the way for effecting one of two objects; namely, getting the island back again, or throwing our islands into confusion whenever it shall be her interest to do it.

This might have been prevented by a word from us if we had been ready for war. But we are grown modest; we are grown liberal; we do not want to engross that which fairly belongs to our neighbours! We have undergone a change somewhat like that which marriage produces on a blustering fellow who while single can but just clear his teeth. This change is quite surprising, and especially by the time that the second child comes the man is loaded; he looks like a loaded man; his voice becomes so soft and gentle compared to what it used to be. Just such are the effects of our load: but the worst of it is our neighbours are not thus loaded. However, far be it from me to regret this, or any part of it. The load is the people’s best friend. If that could, without reform: if that could be shaken off, leaving the seat-men and the parsons in their present state, I would not live in England another day! And I say this with as much seriousness as if I were upon my death-bed.

The wise men of the newspapers are for a repeal of the Corn Laws. With all my heart. I will join anybody in a petition for their repeal. But this will not be done. We shall stop short of this extent of “liberality,” let what may be the consequence to the manufacturers. The Cotton Lords must all go, to the last man, rather than a repeal, these laws will take place: and of this the newspaper wise men may be assured. The farmers can but just rub along now, with all their high prices and low wages. What would be their state, and that of their landlords, if the wheat were to come down again to 4, 5, or even 6 shillings a bushels? Universal agricultural bankruptcy would be the almost instant consequence. Many of them are now deep in debt from the effects of 1820, 1821, and 1822. One more year like 1822 would have broken the whole mass up, and left the lands to be cultivated, under the overseers, for the benefit of the paupers. Society would have been nearly dissolved, and the state of nature would have returned. The Small-Note Bill, co-operating with the Corn Laws, have given a respite, and nothing more. This Bill must remain efficient, paper-money must cover the country, and the corn-laws must remain in force; or an “equitable adjustment” must take place; or, to a state of nature this country must return. What, then, as I want a repeal of the corn-laws, and also want to get rid of the paper-money, I must want to see this return to a state of nature? By no means. I want the “equitable adjustment,” and I am quite sure that no adjustment can be equitable which does not apply every penny’s worth of public property to the payment of the fund-holders and dead-weight and the like. Clearly just and reasonable as this is, however, the very mention of it makes the FIRE-SHOVELS, and some others, half mad. It makes them storm and rant and swear like Bedlamites. But it is curious to hear them talk of the impracticability of it; when they all know that, by only two or three Acts of Parliament, Henry VIII. did ten times as much as it would now, I hope, be necessary to do. If the duty were imposed on me, no statesman, legislator or lawyer, but a simple citizen, I think I could, in less than twenty-four hours, draw up an Act that would give satisfaction to, I will not say every man, but to, at least, ninety-nine out of every hundred; an Act that would put all affairs of money and of religion to rights at once; but that would, I must confess, soon take from us that amiable modesty, of which I have spoken above, and which is so conspicuously shown in our works of free trade and liberality.

The weather is clearing up; our horses are saddled, and we are off.