This one Act, I mean this Banishment Act, would be enough, with posterity, to characterize this House. When they read (and can believe what they read) that it actually passed a law to banish for life any one who should write, print, or publish anything having a tendency to bring it into contempt; when posterity shall read this, and believe it, they will want nothing more to enable them to say what sort of an assembly it was! It was delightful, too, that they should pass this law just after they had passed Peel’s Bill! Oh, God! thou art just! As to reform, it must come. Let what else will happen, it must come. Whether before, or after, all the estates be transferred, I cannot say. But, this I know very well; that the later it come, the deeper will it go.
I shall, of course, go on remarking, as occasion offers, upon what is done by and said in this present House; but I know that it can do nothing efficient for the relief of the country. I have seen some men of late, who seem to think, that even a reform, enacted, or begun, by this House, would be an evil; and that it would be better to let the whole thing go on, and produce its natural consequence. I am not of this opinion: I am for a reform as soon as possible, even though it be not, at first, precisely what I could wish; because, if the debt blow up before the reform take place, confusion and uproar there must be; and I do not want to see confusion and uproar. I am for a reform of some sort, and soon; but, when I say of some sort, I do not mean of Lord John Russell’s sort; I do not mean a reform in the Lopez way. In short, what I want is, to see the men changed. I want to see other men in the House; and as to who those other men should be, I really should not be very nice. I have seen the Tierneys, the Bankeses, the Wilberforces, the Michael Angelo Taylors, the Lambs, the Lowthers, the Davis Giddies, the Sir John Sebrights, the Sir Francis Burdetts, the Hobhouses, old or young, Whitbreads the same, the Lord Johns and the Lord Williams and the Lord Henries and the Lord Charleses, and, in short, all the whole family; I have seen them all there, all the same faces and names, all my life time; I see that neither adjournment nor prorogation nor dissolution makes any change in the men; and, caprice let it be if you like, I want to see a change in the men. These have done enough in all conscience; or, at least, they have done enough to satisfy me. I want to see some fresh faces, and to hear a change of some sort or other in the sounds. A “hear, hear,” coming everlastingly from the same mouths, is what I, for my part, am tired of.
I am aware that this is not what the “great reformers” in the House mean. They mean, on the contrary, no such thing as a change of men. They mean that Lopez should sit there for ever; or, at least, till succeeded by a legitimate heir. I believe that Sir Francis Burdett, for instance, has not the smallest idea of an Act of Parliament ever being made without his assistance, if he chooses to assist, which is not very frequently the case. I believe that he looks upon a seat in the House as being his property; and that the other seat is, and ought to be, held as a sort of leasehold or copyhold under him. My idea of reform, therefore; my change of faces and of names and of sounds will appear quite horrible to him. However, I think the nation begins to be very much of my way of thinking; and this I am very sure of, that we shall never see that change in the management of affairs, which we most of us want to see, unless there be a pretty complete change of men.
Some people will blame me for speaking out so broadly upon this subject. But I think it the best way to disguise nothing; to do what is right; to be sincere; and to let come what will.
Godalming, November 26 to 28.
I came here to meet my son, who was to return to London when we had done our business.—The turnips are pretty good all over the country, except upon the very thin soils on the chalk. At Thursley they are very good, and so they are upon all these nice light and good lands round about Godalming.
This is a very pretty country. You see few prettier spots than this. The chain of little hills that run along to the South and South-East of Godalming, and the soil, which is a good loam upon a sand-stone bottom, run down on the South side, into what is called the Weald. This Weald is a bed of clay, in which nothing grows well but oak trees. It is first the Weald of Surrey and then the Weald of Sussex. It runs along on the South of Dorking, Reigate, Bletchingley, Godstone, and then winds away down into Kent. In no part of it, as far as I have observed, do the oaks grow finer than between the sand-hill on the South of Godstone and a place called Fellbridge, where the county of Surrey terminates on the road to East Grinstead.
At Godalming we heard some account of a lawsuit between Mr. Holme Sumner and his tenant, Mr. Nash; but the particulars I must reserve till I have them in black and white.
In all parts of the country, I hear of landlords that begin to squeak, which is a certain proof that they begin to feel the bottom of their tenants’ pockets. No man can pay rent; I mean any rent at all, except out of capital; or, except under some peculiar circumstances, such as having a farm near a spot where the fundholders are building houses. When I was in Hampshire, I heard of terrible breakings up in the Isle of Wight. They say, that the general rout is very near at hand there. I heard of one farmer, who held a farm at seven hundred pounds a-year, who paid his rent annually, and punctually, who had, of course, seven hundred pounds to pay to his landlord last Michaelmas; but who, before Michaelmas came, thrashed out and sold (the harvest being so early) the whole of his corn; sold off his stock, bit by bit; got the very goods out of his house, leaving only a bed and some trifling things; sailed with a fair wind over to France with his family; put his mother-in-law into the house to keep possession of the house and farm, and to prevent the landlord from entering upon the land for a year or better, unless he would pay to the mother-in-law a certain sum of money! Doubtless the landlord had already sucked away about three or four times seven hundred pounds from this farmer. He would not be able to enter upon his farm without a process that would cost him some money, and without the farm being pretty well stocked with thistles and docks, and perhaps laid half to common. Farmers on the coast opposite France are not so firmly bounden as those in the interior. Some hundreds of these will have carried their allegiance, their capital (what they have left), and their skill, to go and grease the fat sow, our old friends the Bourbons. I hear of a sharp, greedy, hungry shark of a landlord, who says that “some law must be passed;” that “Parliament must do something to prevent this!” There is a pretty fool for you! There is a great jackass (I beg the real jackass’s pardon), to imagine that the people at Westminster can do anything to prevent the French from suffering people to come with their money to settle in France! This fool does not know, perhaps, that there are Members of Parliament that live in France more than they do in England. I have heard of one, who not only lives there, but carries on vineyards there, and is never absent from them, except when he comes over “to attend to his duties in Parliament.” He perhaps sells his wine at the same time, and that being genuine, doubtless brings him a good price; so that the occupations harmonize together very well. The Isle of Wight must be rather peculiarly distressed; for it was the scene of monstrous expenditure. When the pure Whigs were in power, in 1806, it was proved to them and to the Parliament, that in several instances, a barn in the Isle of Wight was rented by the “envy of surrounding nations” for more money than the rest of the whole farm! These barns were wanted as barracks; and, indeed, such things were carried on in that Island as never could have been carried on under anything that was not absolutely “the admiration of the world.” These sweet pickings, caused, doubtless, a great rise in the rent of the farms; so that, in this Island, there is not only the depression of price, and a greater depression than anywhere else, but also the loss of the pickings, and these together leave the tenants but this simple choice; beggary or flight; and as most of them have had a pretty deal of capital, and will be likely to have some left as yet, they will, as they perceive the danger, naturally flee for succour to the Bourbons. This is, indeed, something new in the History of English Agriculture; and were not Mr. Canning so positive to the contrary, one would almost imagine that the thing which has produced it does not work so very well. However, that gentleman seems resolved to prevent us, by his King of Bohemia and his two Red Lions, from having any change in this thing; and therefore the landlords, in the Isle of Wight, as well as elsewhere, must make the best of the matter.
November 29.