A Morning's Walk from London to Kew

by Sir R. Phillips

Yet does reason afford no alternative? Is benevolence forced to prefer barren heaths from which cottagers may derive scanty meals, merely because those who have the power fail to reconcile the rights ©f others who want, with the benefit of the whole community? Is our wisdom confined in so narrow a circle? Has nature provided abundance, and do we create insuperable bars to its enjoyment? Is such the line of demarcation between the selfish ordinances of man, and the wise dispensations of Providence?

Let me recommend our legislators for once to put their greedy, covetous, and inordinate Selves out of consideration. The poor may not be qualified to plead their rights, except by acts of rioting; but let them find clamorous advocates in the consciences of some of their law-makers. In spite, then, of the fees of parliament, I exhort the Legislature to pass a GENERAL ENCLOSURE BILL, not such a one, however, as would be recommended by the illustrious Board of Agriculture, but founded on such principles as might appropriately confer on it the title of A BILL FOR THE EXTINCTION OF WANT!

In discussing and enacting its provisions, let it be borne in mind, that the surface of the earth, like the atmosphere in which we breathe, and the light in which we see, is the natural and common patrimony of man. Let it be considered, that by nature we are tillers of the soil, and that all the artifices of society, and the employments of towns, are good and desirable in the degree only in which they promote the comforts of the country. Let it be felt, that the 10,000 destitute families in this county of Surrey, and the half million in England and Wales, are so, merely because servitude or manufactures have failed to sustain them; and that they require, in consequence, the free use of the means presented by nature for their subsistence. In fine, let it be considered, that the unappropriated wastes are a national stock, fortunately in reserve as a provision for the increasing numbers of destitute; and that no more is required of the law than to arrange and economize the distribution, consistently with the wants of some, and the rights of all.

I indulged myself in a pleasing reverie on this subject, while I rambled from the spot where it originated towards an adjacent house, in which died the late Mr. Pitt, a man who had the opportunity of executing that which I have the power only to speculate upon, and who, though resident in this tract, was blind to its capabilities. Ah! thought I, perhaps in a less selfish age, this very heath, and all the adjoining heaths, waste tracts, and commons, from Bushy to Wimbledon, and from Barnes to Kingston, may be covered with cottages, each surrounded by its two or three acres of productive garden, orchard, and paddock! The healthful and happy inhabitants, emerged from the workhouses, the gaols, the cellars, the stews, the St. Giles’s, the loathsome courts, alleys, and lanes of the metropolis, would have reason to return thanksgivings to the wise Legislature, who had thus restored them to the condition of men, and enabled them to exhibit the moral effects of the change. Such, in the opinion of the writer, would be a radical cure for several of the complicated and deep-rooted diseases which now afflict British society; at least, it is a remedy without cost or sacrifice; and, as such, an homage due from affluence and power to indigence and misfortune. Such a plan would draw from the over-peopled towns, that destitute portion of the population, whose means of living have been reduced or superseded by shoals of adventurers from the country. It would render workhouses useless, except for the vicious or incorrigibly idle; would diminish the poor-rates, and deprive the inmates of gaols of the powerful excuse afforded to crime by the hopeless and galling condition of poverty.

The house in which that darling of Fame, the late Mr. Pitt, lived a few years, and terminated his career, is a modest and irregularly-built mansion, surrounded by a few acres of pleasure-ground, and situated about a quarter of a mile from the paling of Richmond Park. My curiosity led me to visit the chamber in which this minister died, to indulge in the vivid associations produced by the contemplation of remarkable localities. I seated myself in a chair near the spot where stood the couch on which he took his eternal slumber. I fancied, at the instant, that I still saw the severe visage and gaunt figure of the minister standing between the Treasury-bench and the table of the House of Commons, turning around to his admiring partisans, and filling the ear of his auditory with the deep full tones of a voice that bespoke a colossal stature. Certain phrases which he used to parrot still vibrated on my brain: “Bonaparte, the child and champion of Jacobinism,”—“the preservation of social order in Europe,”—“the destruction of whatever is dear to our feelings as Englishmen,”—“the security of our religion, liberties, and property,”—“indemnity for the past and security for the future,” with which he used to bewilder or terrify the plain country gentlemen, or the youths from Eton, Oxford, or Cambridge, who constitute a majority of that House. His success in exciting the passions of such senators in favour of discord and war, his lavish expenditure of the public money in corrupting others, and his insincerity in whatever he professed for the public benefit, rendered him through life the subject of my aversion: but, in this chamber, reduced to the level of ordinary men, and sinking under the common infirmities of humanity, his person, character, and premature decease became objects of interesting sympathy. Perhaps he did what he thought best; or, rather, committed the least possible evil amidst the contrariety of interests and passions in which he and all public men are placed. This, however, is but a poor apology for one who lent his powerful talents to wage wars that involved the happiness of millions, who became a willing firebrand among nations, and who, as a tool or a principal, was foremost in every work of contemporary mischief. The love of office, and a passion for public speaking, were, doubtless, the predominant feelings of his soul. To gratify the former, he became the instrument of others, and thence the sophistry of his eloquence and the insincerity of his character; while, in the proud display of his acknowledged powers as an orator, he was stimulated not less by vanity, than by the virtuous rivalry of Fox. As a financier, he played the part of a nobleman who, having estates, worth 20,000l. per annum, mortgages them to enable him to spend 100,000l. and then plumes himself on his power, with the same freeholds, to make a greater figure than his predecessors. But, except for the lesson which he afforded to nations never to trust their fortunes in the hands of inexperienced statesmen, why do I gravely discuss the measures and errors of one who did not live long enough to prove his genuine character? No precocity of talents, no mechanical splendour of eloquence, can stand in the place of judgment founded on Experience. At forty-six, Pitt would have begun, like all other men of the same age, to correct the errors of his past life; but, being then cut off—HIS STORY IS INCOMPLETE! He had within him the elements of a great man, yet they were called into action before their powers were adjusted and matured; and the world suffered by experiments made in teaching himself, instead of profiting by the union of his experience with his intellectual energies. He was an actor on the stage, while he ought to have been in the closet studying his part; his errors, therefore, merit pity, and those alone are to be blamed for them who made a dishonest use of his precocious powers.

I learnt in the immediate vicinity, that he was much respected, and was a kind master to his domestics. A person, who a little before his death was in this room, told that it was heated to a very high and oppressive temperature; and that the deep voice of the dying minister, as he asked his valet a question, startled this visitor, who had been unused to it. He died calmly, and apparently under none of those political perturbations which, at the period, were mistakenly ascribed to his last moments. The Bishop of Lincoln, who acted the part of his friend and confessor, published an interesting account of his decease, the accuracy of which has never been questioned.

It being my intention, on leaving this spot, to descend the hill to Barnes-Elms, and to proceed by that once classical resort through Barnes and Mortlake to Kew, I left Mr. Pitt’s house on the right, and crossed the common to the retired village of Roehampton.

Opposite to me were the boundaries of Richmond Park; and, little more than half a mile from the house of Pitt, in one of the most picturesque situations of that beautiful demesne, stands the elegant mansion which was presented, it is said, to the then favourite minister, Mr. Addington. Thus it appears, that two succeeding ministers of England, in an age reputed enlightened, lived in a district possessing the described capabilities for removing the canker-worm of poverty, yet neither of them displayed sufficient energy or wisdom to apply the remedy to the disease. I am not, however, arrogant enough to adduce my plans as tests of the patriotism of statesmen; but I venture to appeal from the judgment of this age to that of the next, whether any minister could deserve the reputation of sagacity, who, in an over-peopled country, in which large portions of the inhabitants of the towns were destitute of subsistence, lived themselves in the midst of waste tracts capable of feeding the whole, and yet took no measures nor made a single effort to apply the waste to their wants. If the same facts were related of a ruler in any foreign country, or in any remote age, what would be the inference of a modern English reader in regard to his genuine benevolence, wisdom, or patriotism?

I am desirous of advancing no opinions which can be questioned, yet I cannot refrain from mentioning, in connexion with this wooded horizon, my surprise that peculiar species of trees have not yet found a line of distinction between inhabited and civilized, and uninhabited and barbarous countries. Does not the principle which converts a heath into pasturage and corn-fields, or a collection of furze-bushes or brambles into a fruit-garden, demand that all unproductive trees should give way as fast as possible, in a civilized country, to other trees which afford food to the inhabitants? Are there not desolate countries enough in which to grow trees for the mere purposes of timber? Are there not soils and situations even in England, where none but timber-trees can grow? And is not the timber of many fruit-trees as useful as the timber of many of the lumber-trees which now encumber our soil? It is true, that, when wood constituted the fuel of the country, the growth of lumber-tree was essential to the comforts of the inhabitants; but that is no longer our condition. I conceive, therefore, that a wise and provident government, which, above all other considerations, should endeavour to feed the people at the least cost and labour, ought to allow no lumber-trees to encumber the soil until fruit-trees were planted sufficient to supply the inhabitants with as much fruit as their wants or luxuries might require. The primary object of all public economy should be to saturate, a civilized country with food. Why should not pear and walnut-trees supply the place of oaks, elms, and ash; the apple, plum, cherry, damson, and mulberry, that of the birch, yew, and all pollards? It would be difficult, I conceive, to adduce a reason to the contrary; and none which could weigh against the incalculable advantages of an abundant supply of wholesome provisions in this cheap form. Nor does my plan terminate with the ornaments of forests, parks, and hedge-rows; but I ask, why many hedges themselves might not, in like manner, consist of gooseberry and currant trees in their most luxuriant varieties, intermingled with raspberries, nuts, filberts, bullaces, &c.? Not to give this useful and productive face to a country, appears to me to be shutting our eyes to the light; to prefer the useless to the useful; to be so inconsistent as to expect plenty where we take no means to create it; or, in other words; to sow tares and desire to gather wheat, or expect grapes where we have planted only thorns. Let us, even in this point, condescend to borrow a lesson from an illustrious, though oft despised, neighbour, who, it appears by the evidence of all travellers, has taken care that the roads and hedges of France should be covered with productive fruit trees. If such also were the condition of Britain, how insignificant would become the anxious questions about a Corn Bill, or the price of any single article of food. We should then partake of the ample stores provided, and perhaps contemplated, by our forefathers, when they rendered indigenous the fruit-trees of warmer climates; and, feeling less solicitude in regard to the gross wants of animal subsistence, we should be enabled to employ our faculties more generally in improving our moral and social condition. We should thus extend the principle, and reduce the general purpose of all productive cultivation to an analogous economy, enjoying the fullest triumph which our climate would admit, of the fortunate combinations of human art over the inaptitude and primitive barbarity of nature.

The sequestered village of Roehampton consists of about thirty or forty small houses, in contact; and of a dozen monastic mansions, inhabited by noblemen and well-accredited traders. Each of the latter being surrounded by twenty or thirty acres of garden and pleasure-grounds, and bounded by high brick walls, which in every direction line the roads, Roehampton presents to a stranger a most cheerless aspect. As the plantations are old, the full-grown oaks, elms, and chesnuts, within the walls, add to the gloom, and call to mind those ages of mental paralysis when Druids and Monks gave effect to their impostures by similar arrangements.