Rural Rides

by William Cobbett

Hurstbourn Tarrant, Hants,
Nov. 2. Friday.

This place is commonly called Uphusband, which is, I think, as decent a corruption of names as one would wish to meet with. However, Uphusband the people will have it, and Uphusband it shall be for me. I came from Berghclere this morning, and through the park of Lord Caernarvon, at Highclere. It is a fine season to look at woods. The oaks are still covered, the beeches in their best dress, the elms yet pretty green, and the beautiful ashes only beginning to turn off. This is, according to my fancy, the prettiest park that I have ever seen. A great variety of hill and dell. A good deal of water, and this, in one part, only wants the colours of American trees to make it look like a “creek;” for the water runs along at the foot of a steepish hill, thickly covered with trees, and the branches of the lowermost trees hang down into the water and hide the bank completely. I like this place better than Fonthill, Blenheim, Stowe, or any other gentleman’s grounds that I have seen. The house I did not care about, though it appears to be large enough to hold half a village. The trees are very good, and the woods would be handsomer if the larches and firs were burnt, for which only they are fit. The great beauty of the place is the lofty downs, as steep, in some places, as the roof of a house, which form a sort of boundary, in the form of a part of a crescent, to about a third part of the park, and then slope off and get more distant, for about half another third part. A part of these downs is covered with trees, chiefly beech, the colour of which, at this season, forms a most beautiful contrast with that of the down itself, which is so green and so smooth! From the vale in the park, along which we rode, we looked apparently almost perpendicularly up at the downs, where the trees have extended themselves by seed more in some places than others, and thereby formed numerous salient parts of various forms, and, of course, as many and as variously formed glades. These, which are always so beautiful in forests and parks, are peculiarly beautiful in this lofty situation and with verdure so smooth as that of these chalky downs. Our horses beat up a score or two of hares as we crossed the park; and, though we met with no gothic arches made of Scotch fir, we saw something a great deal better; namely, about forty cows, the most beautiful that I ever saw, as to colour at least. They appear to be of the Galway-breed. They are called, in this country, Lord Caernarvon’s breed. They have no horns, and their colour is a ground of white with black or red spots, these spots being from the size of a plate to that of a crown piece; and some of them have no small spots. These cattle were lying down together in the space of about an acre of ground: they were in excellent condition, and so fine a sight of the kind I never saw. Upon leaving the park, and coming over the hills to this pretty vale of Uphusband, I could not help calculating how long it might be before some Jew would begin to fix his eye upon Highclere, and talk of putting out the present owner, who, though a Whig, is one of the best of that set of politicians, and who acted a manly part in the case of our deeply injured and deeply lamented Queen. Perhaps his Lordship thinks that there is no fear of the Jews as to him. But does he think that his tenants can sell fat hogs at 7s. 6d. a score, and pay him more than a third of the rent that they have paid him while the debt was contracting? I know that such a man does not lose his estate at once; but, without rents, what is the estate? And that the Jews will receive the far greater part of his rents is certain, unless the interest of the Debt be reduced. Lord Caernarvon told a man, in 1820, that he did not like my politics. But what did he mean by my politics? I have no politics but such as he ought to like. I want to do away with that infernal system, which, after having beggared and pauperized the Labouring Classes, has now, according to the Report, made by the Ministers themselves to the House of Commons, plunged the owners of the land themselves into a state of distress, for which those Ministers themselves can hold out no remedy! To be sure, I labour most assiduously to destroy a system of distress and misery; but is that any reason why a Lord should dislike my politics? However, dislike or like them, to them, to those very politics, the Lords themselves must come at last. And that I should exult in this thought, and take little pains to disguise my exultation, can surprise nobody who reflects on what has passed within these last twelve years. If the Landlords be well; if things be going right with them; if they have fair prospects of happy days; then what need they care about me and my politics; but, if they find themselves in “distress,” and do not know how to get out of it; and, if they have been plunged into this distress by those who “dislike my politics;” is there not some reason for men of sense to hesitate a little before they condemn those politics? If no great change be wanted; if things could remain even; then men may, with some show of reason, say that I am disturbing that which ought to be let alone. But if things cannot remain as they are; if there must be a great change; is it not folly, and, indeed, is it not a species of idiotic perverseness, for men to set their faces, without rhyme or reason, against what is said as to this change by me, who have, for nearly twenty years, been warning the country of its danger, and foretelling that which has now come to pass and is coming to pass? However, I make no complaint on this score. People disliking my politics “neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg,” as Jefferson said by the writings of the Atheists. If they be pleased in disliking my politics, I am pleased in liking them; and so we are both enjoying ourselves. If the country wants no assistance from me, I am quite sure that I want none from it.

Nov. 3. Saturday.

Fat hogs have lately sold, in this village, at 7s. 6d. a score (but would hardly bring that now), that is to say, at 4½d. a pound. The hog is weighed whole, when killed and dressed. The head and feet are included; but so is the lard. Hogs fatted on peas or barley-meal may be called the very best meat that England contains. At Salisbury (only about 20 miles off) fat hogs sell for 5s. to 4s. 6d. a score. But, then, observe, these are dairy hogs, which are not nearly so good in quality as the corn-fed hogs. But I shall probably hear more about these prices as I get further towards the West. Some wheat has been sold at Newbury-market for 6l. a load (40 bushels); that is, at 3s. a bushel. A considerable part of the crop is wholly unfit for bread flour, and is not equal in value to good barley. In not a few instances the wheat has been carried into the gate, or yard, and thrown down to be made dung of. So that, if we were to take the average, it would not exceed, I am convinced, 5s. a bushel in this part of the country; and the average of all England would not, perhaps, exceed 4s. or 3s. 6d. a bushel. However, Lord Liverpool has got a bad harvest at last! That remedy has been applied! Somebody sent me some time ago that stupid newspaper, called the Morning Herald, in which its readers were reminded of my “false prophecies,” I having (as this paper said) foretold that wheat would be at two shillings a bushel before Christmas. These gentlemen of the “respectable part of the press” do not mind lying a little upon a pinch. [See Walter’s “Times” of Tuesday last, for the following: “Mr. Cobbett has thrown open the front of his house at Kensington, where he proposes to sell meat at a reduced price.”] What I said was this: that, if the crop were good and the harvest fine, and gold continued to be paid at the Bank, we should see wheat at four, not two, shillings a bushel before Christmas. Now, the crop was, in many parts, very much blighted, and the harvest was very bad indeed; and yet the average of England, including that which is destroyed, or not brought to market at all, will not exceed 4s. a bushel. A farmer told me, the other day, that he got so little offered for some of his wheat, that he was resolved not to take any more of it to market; but to give it to hogs. Therefore, in speaking of the price of wheat, you are to take in the unsold as well as the sold; that which fetches nothing as well as that which is sold at high price.—I see, in the Irish papers, which have overtaken me on my way, that the system is working the Agriculturasses in “the sister-kingdom” too! The following paragraph will show that the remedy of a bad harvest has not done our dear sister much good. “A very numerous meeting of the Kildare Farming Society met at Naas on the 24th inst., the Duke of Leinster in the Chair; Robert de la Touche, Esq., M.P., Vice-President. Nothing can more strongly prove the BADNESS OF THE TIMES, and very unfortunate state of the country, than the necessity in which the Society finds itself of discontinuing its premiums, from its present want of funds. The best members of the farming classes have got so much in arrear in their subscriptions that they have declined to appear or to dine with their neighbours, and general depression damps the spirit of the most industrious and hitherto prosperous cultivators.” You are mistaken, Pat; it is not the times any more than it is the stars. Bobadil, you know, imputed his beating to the planets: “planet-stricken, by the foot of Pharaoh!”—“No, Captain,” says Welldon, “indeed it was a stick.” It is not the times, dear Patrick: it is the government, who, having first contracted a great debt in depreciated money, are now compelling you to pay the interest at the rate of three for one. Whether this be right, or wrong, the Agriculturasses best know: it is much more their affair than it is mine; but, be you well assured, that they are only at the beginning of their sorrows. Ah! Patrick, whoever shall live only a few years will see a grand change in your state! Something a little more rational than “Catholic Emancipation” will take place, or I am the most deceived of all mankind. This Debt is your best, and, indeed, your only friend. It must, at last, give the THING a shake, such as it never had before.—The accounts which my country newspapers give of the failure of farmers are perfectly dismal. In many, many instances they have put an end to their existence, as the poor deluded creatures did who had been ruined by the South Sea Bubble! I cannot help feeling for these people, for whom my birth, education, taste, and habits give me so strong a partiality. Who can help feeling for their wives and children, hurled down headlong from affluence to misery in the space of a few months! Become all of a sudden the mockery of those whom they compelled, perhaps, to cringe before them! If the Labourers exult, one cannot say that it is unnatural. If Reason have her fair sway, I am exempted from all pain upon this occasion. I have done my best to prevent these calamities. Those farmers who have attended to me are safe while the storm rages. My endeavours to stop the evil in time cost me the earnings of twenty long years! I did not sink, no, nor bend, beneath the heavy and reiterated blows of the accursed system, which I have dealt back blow for blow; and, blessed be God, I now see it reel! It is staggering about like a sheep with water in the head: turning its pate up on one side: seeming to listen, but has no hearing: seeming to look, but has no sight: one day it capers and dances: the next it mopes and seems ready to die.

Nov. 4. Sunday.

This, to my fancy, is a very nice country. It is continual hill and dell. Now and then a chain of hills higher than the rest, and these are downs, or woods. To stand upon any of the hills and look around you, you almost think you see the ups and downs of sea in a heavy swell (as the sailors call it) after what they call a gale of wind. The undulations are endless, and the great variety in the height, breadth, length, and form of the little hills, has a very delightful effect.—The soil, which, to look on it, appears to be more than half flint stones, is very good in quality, and, in general, better on the tops of the lesser hills than in the valleys. It has great tenacity; does not wash away like sand, or light loam. It is a stiff, tenacious loam, mixed with flint stones. Bears Saint-foin well, and all sorts of grass, which make the fields on the hills as green as meadows, even at this season; and the grass does not burn up in summer.—In a country so full of hills one would expect endless runs of water and springs. There are none: absolutely none. No water-furrow is ever made in the land. No ditches round the fields. And, even in the deep valleys, such as that in which this village is situated, though it winds round for ten or fifteen miles, there is no run of water even now. There is the bed of a brook, which will run before spring, and it continues running with more or less water for about half the year, though, some years, it never runs at all. It rained all Friday night; pretty nearly all day yesterday; and to-day the ground is as dry as a bone, except just along the street of the village, which has been kept in a sort of stabble by the flocks of sheep passing along to and from Appleshaw fair. In the deep and long and narrow valleys, such as this, there are meadows with very fine herbage and very productive. The grass very fine and excellent in its quality. It is very curious that the soil is much shallower in the vales than on the hills. In the vales it is a sort of hazle-mould on a bed of something approaching to gravel; but on the hills it is stiff loam, with apparently half flints, on a bed of something like clay first (reddish, not yellow), and then comes the chalk, which they often take up by digging a sort of wells; and then they spread it on the surface, as they do the clay in some countries, where they sometimes fetch it many miles and at an immense expense. It was very common, near Botley, to chalk land at an expense of sixteen pounds an acre.——The land here is excellent in quality generally, unless you get upon the highest chains of hills. They have frequently 40 bushels of wheat to the acre. Their barley is very fine; and their Saint-foin abundant. The turnips are, in general, very good at this time; and the land appears as capable of carrying fine crops of them as any land that I have seen. A fine country for sheep: always dry: they never injure the land when feeding off turnips in wet weather; and they can lie down on the dry; for the ground is, in fact, never wet except while the rain is actually falling. Sometimes, in spring-thaws and thunder-showers, the rain runs down the hills in torrents; but is gone directly. The flocks of sheep, some in fold and some at large, feeding on the sides of the hills, give great additional beauty to the scenery.—The woods, which consist chiefly of oak thinly intermixed with ash, and well set with underwood of ash and hazle, but mostly the latter, are very beautiful. They sometimes stretch along the top and sides of hills for miles together; and as their edges, or outsides, joining the fields and the downs, go winding and twisting about, and as the fields and downs are naked of trees, the sight altogether is very pretty.—The trees in the deep and long valleys, especially the Elm and the Ash, are very fine and very lofty; and from distance to distance, the Rooks have made them their habitation. This sort of country, which, in irregular shape, is of great extent, has many and great advantages. Dry under foot. Good roads, winter as well as summer, and little, very little, expense. Saint-foin flourishes. Fences cost little. Wood, hurdles, and hedging-stuff cheap. No shade in wet harvests. The water in the wells excellent. Good sporting country, except for coursing, and too many flints for that.—What becomes of all the water? There is a spring in one of the cross valleys that runs into this, having a basin about thirty feet over, and about eight feet deep, which, they say, sends up water once in about 30 or 40 years; and boils up so as to make a large current of water.—Not far from Uphusband the Wansdike (I think it is called) crosses the country. Sir Richard Colt Hoare has written a great deal about this ancient boundary, which is, indeed, something very curious. In the ploughed fields the traces of it are quite gone; but they remain in the woods as well as on the downs.

Nov. 5. Monday.

A white frost this morning. The hills round about beautiful at sun-rise, the rooks making that noise which they always make in winter mornings. The Starlings are come in large flocks; and, which is deemed a sign of a hard winter, the Fieldfares are come at an early season. The haws are very abundant; which, they say, is another sign of a hard winter. The wheat is high enough here, in some fields, “to hide a hare,” which is, indeed, not saying much for it, as a hare knows how to hide herself upon the bare ground. But it is, in some fields, four inches high, and is green and gay, the colour being finer than that of any grass.—The fuel here is wood. Little coal is brought from Andover. A load of fagots does not cost above 10s. So that, in this respect, the labourers are pretty well off. The wages here and in Berkshire, about 8s. a week; but the farmers talk of lowering them.—The poor-rates heavy, and heavy they must be, till taxes and rents come down greatly.—Saturday, and to-day Appleshaw sheep-fair. The sheep, which had taken a rise at Weyhill fair, have fallen again even below the Norfolk and Sussex mark. Some Southdown Lambs were sold at Appleshaw so low as 8s. and some even lower. Some Dorsetshire Ewes brought no more than a pound; and, perhaps, the average did not exceed 28s. I have seen a farmer here who can get (or could a few days ago) 28s. round for a lot of fat Southdown Wethers, which cost him just that money, when they were lambs, two years ago! It is impossible that they can have cost him less than 24s. each during the two years, having to be fed on turnips or hay in winter, and to be fatted on good grass. Here (upon one hundred sheep) is a loss of 120l. and 14l. in addition at five per cent. interest on the sum expended in the purchase; even suppose not a sheep has been lost by death or otherwise.—I mentioned before, I believe, that fat hogs are sold at Salisbury at from 5s. to 4s. 6d. the score pounds, dead weight.—Cheese has come down in the same proportion. A correspondent informs me that one hundred and fifty Welsh Sheep were, on the 18th of October, offered for 4s. 6d, a head, and that they went away unsold! The skin was worth a shilling of the money! The following I take from the Tyne Mercury of the 30th of October. “Last week, at Northawton fair, Mr. Thomas Cooper, of Bow, purchased three milch cows and forty sheep, for 18l. 16s. 6d.!” The skins, four years ago, would have sold for more than the money. The Hampshire Journal says that, on 1 November (Thursday) at Newbury Market, wheat sold from 88s. to 24s. the Quarter. This would make an average of 56s. But very little indeed was sold at 88s., only the prime of the old wheat. The best of the new for about 48s., and then, if we take into view the great proportion that cannot go to market at all, we shall not find the average, even in this rather dear part of England, to exceed 32s., or 4s. a bushel. And if we take all England through, it does not come up to that, nor anything like it. A farmer very sensibly observed to me yesterday that “if we had had such a crop and such a harvest a few years ago, good wheat would have been 50l. a load;” that is to say, 25s. a bushel! Nothing can be truer than this. And nothing can be clearer than that the present race of farmers, generally speaking, must be swept away by bankruptcy, if they do not, in time, make their bow, and retire. There are two descriptions of farmers, very distinct as to the effects which this change must naturally have on them. The word farmer comes from the French, fermier, and signifies renter. Those only who rent, therefore, are, properly speaking, farmers. Those who till their own land are yeomen; and when I was a boy it was the common practice to call the former farmers and the latter yeoman-farmers. These yeomen have, for the greater part, been swallowed up by the paper-system which has drawn such masses of money together. They have, by degrees, been bought out. Still there are some few left; and these, if not in debt, will stand their ground. But all the present race of mere renters must give way, in one manner or another. They must break, or drop their style greatly; even in the latter case, their rent must, very shortly, be diminished more than two-thirds. Then comes the Landlord’s turn; and the sooner the better.—In the Maidstone Gazette I find the following: “Prime beef was sold in Salisbury market, on Tuesday last, at 4d. per lb., and good joints of mutton at 3½d.; butter 11d. and 12d. per lb.—In the West of Cornwall, during the summer, pork has often been sold at 2½d. per lb.”—This is very true; and what can be better? How can Peel’s Bill work in a more delightful manner? What nice “general working of events!” The country rag-merchants have now very little to do. They have no discounts. What they have out they owe: it is so much debt: and, of course, they become poorer and poorer, because they must, like a mortgager, have more and more to pay as prices fall. This is very good; for it will make them disgorge a part, at least, of what they have swallowed, during the years of high prices and depreciation. They are worked in this sort of way: the Tax-Collectors, the Excise-fellows, for instance, hold their sittings every six weeks, in certain towns about the country. They will receive the country rags, if the rag man can find, and will give, security for the due payment of his rags, when they arrive in London. For want of such security, or of some formality of the kind, there was a great bustle in a town in this county not many days ago. The Excise-fellow demanded sovereigns, or Bank of England notes. Precisely how the matter was finally settled I know not; but the reader will see that the Exciseman was only taking a proper precaution; for if the rags were not paid in London, the loss was his.

Marlborough,
Tuesday noon, Nov. 6.