As we had to come to this place, which is three miles up the river Itchen from Winchester, we crossed the Winchester and Basingstoke road at King’s Worthy. This brought us, before we crossed the river, along through Martyr’s Worthy, so long the seat of the Ogles, and now, as I observed in my last Register, sold to a general or colonel. These Ogles had been deans, I believe; or prebends, or something of that sort: and the one that used to live here had been, and was when he died, an “admiral.” However, this last one, “Sir Charles,” the loyal address mover, is my man for the present. We saw, down by the water-side, opposite to “Sir Charles’s” late family mansion, a beautiful strawberry garden, capable of being watered by a branch of the Itchen which comes close by it, and which is, I suppose, brought there on purpose. Just by, on the greensward, under the shade of very fine trees, is an alcove, wherein to sit to eat the strawberries, coming from the little garden just mentioned, and met by bowls of cream coming from a little milk-house, shaded by another clump a little lower down the stream. What delight! What a terrestrial paradise! “Sir Charles” might be very frequently in this paradise, while that Sidmouth, whose Bill he so applauded, had many men shut up in loathsome dungeons! Ah, well! “Sir Charles,” those very men may, perhaps, at this moment, envy neither you nor Sidmouth; no, nor Sidmouth’s son and heir, even though Clerk of the Pells. At any rate it is not likely that “Sir Charles” will sit again in this paradise contemplating another loyal address, to carry to a county meeting ready engrossed on parchment, to be presented by Fleming and supported by Lockhart and the “Hampshire parsons.”
I think I saw, as I came along, the new owner of the estate. It seems that he bought it “stock and fluke” as the sailors call it; that is to say, that he bought moveables and the whole. He appeared to me to be a keen man. I can’t find out where he comes from, or what he or his father has been. I like to see the revolution going on; but I like to be able to trace the parties a little more closely. “Sir Charles,” the loyal address gentleman, lives in London, I hear. I will, I think, call upon him (if I can find him out) when I get back, and ask how he does now? There is one Hollest, a George Hollest, who figured pretty bigly on that same loyal address day. This man is become quite an inoffensive harmless creature. If we were to have another county meeting, he would not, I think, threaten to put the sash down upon anybody’s head! Oh! Peel, Peel, Peel! Thy Bill, oh, Peel, did sicken them so! Let us, oh, thou offspring of the great Spinning Jenny promoter, who subscribed ten thousand pounds towards the late “glorious” war; who was, after that, made a Baronet, and whose biographers (in the Baronetage) tell the world that he had a “presentiment that he should be the founder of a family.” Oh, thou, thou great Peel, do thou let us have only two more years of thy Bill! Or, oh, great Peel, Minister of the interior, do thou let us have repeal of Corn Bill! Either will do, great Peel. We shall then see such modest ’squires, and parsons looking so queer! However, if thou wilt not listen to us, great Peel, we must, perhaps (and only perhaps), wait a little longer. It is sure to come at last, and to come, too, in the most efficient way.
The water in the Itchen is, they say, famed for its clearness. As I was crossing the river the other day, at Avington, I told Richard to look at it, and I asked him if he did not think it very clear. I now find that this has been remarked by very ancient writers. I see, in a newspaper just received, an account of dreadful fires in New Brunswick. It is curious that in my Register of the 29th October (dated from Chilworth in Surrey) I should have put a question relative to the White-Clover, the Huckleberries, or the Raspberries, which start up after the burning down of woods in America. These fires have been at two places which I saw when there were hardly any people in the whole country; and if there never had been any people there to this day it would have been a good thing for England. Those colonies are a dead expense, without a possibility of their ever being of any use. There are, I see, a church and a barrack destroyed. And why a barrack? What! were there bayonets wanted already to keep the people in order? For as to an enemy, where was he to come from? And if there really be an enemy anywhere there about, would it not be a wise way to leave the worthless country to him, to use it after his own way? I was at that very Fredericton, where they say thirty houses and thirty-nine barns have now been burnt. I can remember when there was no more thought of there ever being a barn there than there is now thought of there being economy in our Government. The English money used to be spent prettily in that country. What do we want with armies and barracks and chaplains in those woods? What does anybody want with them; but we, above all the rest of the world? There is nothing there, no house, no barrack, no wharf, nothing, but what is bought with taxes raised on the half-starving people of England. What do we want with these wildernesses? Ah! but they are wanted by creatures who will not work in England, and whom this fine system of ours sends out into those woods to live in idleness upon the fruit of English labour. The soldier, the commissary, the barrack-master, all the whole tribe, no matter under what name; what keeps them? They are paid “by Government;” and I wish that we constantly bore in mind that the “Government” pays our money. It is, to be sure, sorrowful to hear of such fires and such dreadful effects proceeding from them; but to me it is beyond all measure more sorrowful to see the labourers of England worse fed than the convicts in the gaols; and I know very well that these worthless and jobbing colonies have assisted to bring England into this horrible state. The honest labouring man is allowed (aye, by the magistrates) less food than the felon in the gaol; and the felon is clothed and has fuel; and the labouring man has nothing allowed for these. These worthless colonies, which find places for people that the Thing provides for, have helped to produce this dreadful state in England. Therefore, any assistance the sufferers should never have from me, while I could find an honest and industrious English labourer (unloaded with a family too) fed worse than a felon in the gaols; and this I can find in every part of the country.
Petersfield, Friday Evening,
11th November.
We lost another day at Easton; the whole of yesterday, it having rained the whole day; so that we could not have come an inch but in the wet. We started, therefore, this morning, coming through the Duke of Buckingham’s Park, at Avington, which is close by Easton, and on the same side of the Itchen. This is a very beautiful place. The house is close down at the edge of the meadow land; there is a lawn before it, and a pond, supplied by the Itchen, at the end of the lawn, and bounded by the park on the other side. The high road, through the park, goes very near to this water; and we saw thousands of wild-ducks in the pond, or sitting round on the green edges of it, while, on one side of the pond, the hares and pheasants were moving about upon a gravel walk on the side of a very fine plantation. We looked down upon all this from a rising ground, and the water, like a looking-glass, showed us the trees, and even the animals. This is certainly one of the very prettiest spots in the world. The wild water-fowl seem to take particular delight in this place. There are a great many at Lord Caernarvon’s; but there the water is much larger, and the ground and wood about it comparatively rude and coarse. Here, at Avington, everything is in such beautiful order; the lawn before the house is of the finest green, and most neatly kept; and the edge of the pond (which is of several acres) is as smooth as if it formed part of a bowling-green. To see so many wild-fowl in a situation where everything is in the parterre-order has a most pleasant effect on the mind; and Richard and I, like Pope’s cock in the farmyard, could not help thanking the Duke and Duchess for having generously made such ample provision for our pleasure, and that, too, merely to please us as we were passing along. Now this is the advantage of going about on horseback. On foot the fatigue is too great, and you go too slowly. In any sort of carriage you cannot get into the real country places. To travel in stage coaches is to be hurried along by force, in a box, with an air-hole in it, and constantly exposed to broken limbs, the danger being much greater than that of ship-board, and the noise much more disagreeable, while the company is frequently not a great deal more to one’s liking.
From this beautiful spot we had to mount gradually the downs to the southward; but it is impossible to quit the vale of the Itchen without one more look back at it. To form a just estimate of its real value, and that of the lands near it, it is only necessary to know that from its source at Bishop’s Sutton this river has, on its two banks, in the distance of nine miles (before it reaches Winchester) thirteen parish churches. There must have been some people to erect these churches. It is not true, then, that Pitt and George III. created the English nation, notwithstanding all that the Scotch feelosofers are ready to swear about the matter. In short, there can be no doubt in the mind of any rational man that in the time of the Plantagenets England was, out of all comparison, more populous than it is now.
When we began to get up towards the downs, we, to our great surprise, saw them covered with Snow. “Sad times coming on for poor Sir Glory,” said I to Richard. “Why?” said Dick. It was too cold to talk much; and, besides, a great sluggishness in his horse made us both rather serious. The horse had been too hard ridden at Burghclere, and had got cold. This made us change our route again, and instead of going over the downs towards Hambledon, in our way to see the park and the innumerable hares and pheasants of Sir Harry Featherstone, we pulled away more to the left, to go through Bramdean, and so on to Petersfield, contracting greatly our intended circuit. And, besides, I had never seen Bramdean, the spot on which, it is said, Alfred fought his last great and glorious battle with the Danes. A fine country for a battle, sure enough! We stopped at the village to bait our horses; and while we were in the public-house an Exciseman came and rummaged it all over, taking an account of the various sorts of liquor in it, having the air of a complete master of the premises, while a very pretty and modest girl waited on him to produce the divers bottles, jars, and kegs. I wonder whether Alfred had a thought of anything like this when he was clearing England from her oppressors?
A little to our right, as we came along, we left the village of Kingston, where ’Squire Græme once lived, as was before related. Here, too, lived a ’Squire Ridge, a famous fox-hunter, at a great mansion, now used as a farmhouse; and it is curious enough that this ’Squire’s son-in-law, one Gunner, an attorney at Bishop’s Waltham, is steward to the man who now owns the estate.
Before we got to Petersfield we called at an old friend’s and got some bread and cheese and small beer, which we preferred to strong. In approaching Petersfield we began to descend from the high chalk-country, which (with the exception of the valleys of the Itchen and the Teste) had lasted us from Uphusband (almost the north-west point of the county) to this place, which is not far from the south-east point of it. Here we quit flint and chalk and downs, and take to sand, clay, hedges, and coppices; and here, on the verge of Hampshire, we begin again to see those endless little bubble-formed hills that we before saw round the foot of Hindhead. We have got in in very good time, and got, at the Dolphin, good stabling for our horses. The waiters and people at inns look so hard at us to see us so liberal as to horse-feed, fire, candle, beds, and room, while we are so very very sparing in the article of drink! They seem to pity our taste. I hear people complain of the “exorbitant charges” at inns; but my wonder always is how the people can live with charging so little. Except in one single instance, I have uniformly, since I have been from home, thought the charges too low for people to live by.
This long evening has given me time to look at the Star newspaper of last night; and I see that, with all possible desire to disguise the fact, there is a great “panic” brewing. It is impossible that this thing can go on, in its present way, for any length of time. The talk about “speculations”; that is to say, adventurous dealings, or, rather, commercial gamblings; the talk about these having been the cause of the breakings and the other symptoms of approaching convulsion is the most miserable nonsense that ever was conceived in the heads of idiots. These are effect; not cause. The cause is the Small-note Bill, that last brilliant effort of the joint mind of Van and Castlereagh. That Bill was, as I always called it, a respite; and it was, and could be, nothing more. It could only put off the evil hour; it could not prevent the final arrival of that hour. To have proceeded with Peel’s Bill was, indeed, to produce total convulsion. The land must have been surrendered to the overseers for the use of the poor. That is to say, without an “Equitable Adjustment.” But that adjustment as prayed for by Kent, Norfolk, Hereford, and Surrey, might have taken place; it ought to have taken place: and it must, at last, take place, or, convulsion must come. As to the nature of this “adjustment,” is it not most distinctly described in the Norfolk Petition? Is not that memorable petition now in the Journals of the House of Commons? What more is wanted than to act on the prayer of that very petition? Had I to draw up a petition again, I would not change a single word of that. It pleased Mr. Brougham’s “best public instructor” to abuse that petition, and it pleased Daddy Coke and the Hickory Quaker, Gurney, and the wise barn-orator, to calumniate its author. They succeeded; but their success was but shame to them; and that author is yet destined to triumph over them. I have seen no London paper for ten days until to-day; and I should not have seen this if the waiter had not forced it upon me. I know very nearly what will happen by next May, or thereabouts; and as to the manner in which things will work in the meanwhile, it is of far less consequence to the nation than it is what sort of weather I shall have to ride in to-morrow. One thing, however, I wish to observe, and that is, that, if any attempt be made to repeal the Corn-Bill, the main body of the farmers will be crushed into total ruin. I come into contact with few who are not gentlemen or very substantial farmers; but I know the state of the whole; and I know that, even with present prices, and with honest labourers fed worse than felons, it is rub-and-go with nineteen-twentieths of the farmers; and of this fact I beseech the ministers to be well aware. And with this fact staring them in the face! with that other horrid fact, that, by the regulations of the magistrates (who cannot avoid it, mind,), the honest labourer is fed worse than the convicted felon; with the breakings of merchants, so ruinous to confiding foreigners, so disgraceful to the name of England; with the thousands of industrious and care-taking creatures reduced to beggary by bank-paper; with panic upon panic, plunging thousands upon thousands into despair: with all this notorious as the Sun at noon-day, will they again advise their Royal Master to tell the Parliament and the world that this country is “in a state of unequalled prosperity,” and that this prosperity “must be permanent, because all the great interests are flourishing?” Let them! That will not alter the result. I had been, for several weeks, saying that the seeming prosperity was fallacious; that the cause of it must lead to ultimate and shocking ruin; that it could not last, because it arose from causes so manifestly fictitious; that, in short, it was the fair-looking, but poisonous, fruit of a miserable expedient. I had been saying this for several weeks, when, out came the King’s Speech and gave me and my doctrines the lie direct as to every point. Well: now, then, we shall soon see.