Rural Rides

by William Cobbett

These poor creatures at Frome have pawned all their things, or nearly all. All their best clothes, their blankets and sheets; their looms; any little piece of furniture that they had, and that was good for anything. Mothers have been compelled to pawn all the tolerably good clothes that their children had. In case of a man having two or three shirts, he is left with only one, and sometimes without any shirt; and, though this is a sort of manufacture that cannot very well come to a complete end, still it has received a blow from which it cannot possibly recover. The population of this Frome has been augmented to the degree of one-third within the last six or seven years. There are here all the usual signs of accommodation bills and all false paper stuff, called money: new houses, in abundance, half finished; new gingerbread “places of worship,” as they are called; great swaggering inns; parcels of swaggering fellows going about, with vulgarity imprinted upon their countenances, but with good clothes upon their backs.

I found the working people at Frome very intelligent; very well informed as to the cause of their misery; not at all humbugged by the canters, whether about religion or loyalty. When I got to the inn, I sent my post-chaise boy back to the road, to tell one or two of the weavers to come to me at the inn. The landlord did not at first like to let such ragged fellows upstairs. I insisted, however, upon their coming up, and I had a long talk with them. They were very intelligent men; had much clearer views of what is likely to happen than the pretty gentlemen of Whitehall seem to have; and, it is curious enough, that they, these common weavers, should tell me, that they thought that the trade never would come back again to what it was before; or, rather, to what it has been for some years past. This is the impression everywhere; that the puffing is over; that we must come back again to something like reality. The first factories that I met with were at a village called Upton Lovell, just before I came to Heytesbury. There they were a-doing not more than a quarter work. There is only one factory, I believe, here at Warminster, and that has been suspended, during the harvest, at any rate. At Frome they are all upon about a quarter work. It is the same at Bradford and Trowbridge; and, as curious a thing as ever was heard of in the world is, that here are, through all these towns, and throughout this country, weavers from the North, singing about the towns ballads of Distress! They had been doing it at Salisbury, just before I was there. The landlord at Heytesbury told me that people that could afford it generally gave them something; and I was told that they did the same at Salisbury. The landlord at Heytesbury told me, that every one of them had a license to beg, given them, he said, “by the Government.” I suppose it was some pass from a Magistrate; though I know of no law that allows of such passes; and a pretty thing it would be, to grant such licenses, or such passes, when the law so positively commands, that the poor of every parish shall be maintained in and by every such parish.

However, all law of this sort, all salutary and humane law, really seems to be drawing towards an end in this now miserable country, where the thousands are caused to wallow in luxury, to be surfeited with food and drink, while the millions are continually on the point of famishing. In order to form an idea of the degradation of the people of this country, and of the abandonment of every English principle, what need we of more than this one disgraceful and truly horrible fact, namely, that the common soldiers, of the standing army in time of peace, subscribe, in order to furnish the meanest of diet to keep from starving the industrious people who are taxed to the amount of one-half of their wages, and out of which taxes the very pay of these soldiers comes! Is not this one fact; this disgraceful, this damning fact; is not this enough to convince us, that there must be a change; that there must be a complete and radical change; or, that England must become a country of the basest slavery that ever disgraced the earth?

Devizes, (Wilts),
Sunday Morning, 3rd Sept.

I left Warminster yesterday at about one o’clock. It is contrary to my practice to set out at all, unless I can do it early in the morning; but at Warminster I was at the South-West corner of this county, and I had made a sort of promise to be to-day at Highworth, which is at the North-East corner, and which parish, indeed, joins up to Berkshire. The distance, including my little intended deviations, was more than fifty miles; and, not liking to attempt it in one day, I set off in the middle of the day, and got here in the evening, just before a pretty heavy rain came on.

Before I speak of my ride from Warminster to this place, I must once more observe, that Warminster is a very nice town; everything belonging to it is solid and good. There are no villanous gingerbread houses running up, and no nasty, shabby-genteel people; no women trapesing about with showy gowns and dirty necks; no jew-looking fellows with dandy coats, dirty shirts, and half-heels to their shoes. A really nice and good town. It is a great corn-market: one of the greatest in this part of England; and here things are still conducted in the good, old, honest fashion. The corn is brought and pitched in the market before it is sold; and, when sold, it is paid for on the nail; and all is over, and the farmers and millers gone home by day-light. Almost everywhere else the corn is sold by sample; it is sold by juggling in a corner; the parties meet and drink first; it is night work; there is no fair and open market; the mass of the people do not know what the prices are; and all this favours that monopoly which makes the corn change hands many times, perhaps, before it reaches the mouth, leaving a profit in each pair of hands, and which monopoly is, for the greater part, carried on by the villanous tribe of Quakers, none of whom ever work, and all of whom prey upon the rest of the community, as those infernal devils, the wasps, prey upon the bees. Talking of the Devil, puts one in mind of his imps; and talking of Quakers, puts one in mind of Jemmy Cropper of Liverpool. I should like to know precisely (I know pretty nearly) what effect “late panic” has had, and is having, on Jemmy! Perhaps the reader will recollect, that Jemmy told the public, through the columns of base Bott Smith, that “Cobbett’s prophecies were falsified as soon as spawned.” Jemmy, canting Jemmy, has now had time to ruminate on that! But does the reader remember James’s project for “making Ireland as happy as England”? It was simply by introducing cotton-factories, steam-engines, and power-looms! That was all; and there was Jemmy in Ireland, speech-making before such Lords and such Bishops and such ’Squires as God never suffered to exist in the world before: there was Jemmy, showing, proving, demonstrating, that to make the Irish cotton-workers would infallibly make them happy! If it had been now, instead of being two years ago, he might have produced the reports of the starvation-committees of Manchester to confirm his opinions. One would think, that this instance of the folly and impudence of this canting son of the monopolizing sect, would cure this public of its proneness to listen to cant; but nothing will cure it; the very existence of this sect, none of whom ever work, and the whole of whom live like fighting-cocks upon the labour of the rest of the community; the very existence of such a sect shows, that the nation is, almost in its nature, a dupe. There has been a great deal of railing against the King of Spain; not to becall the King of Spain is looked upon as a proof of want of “liberality,” and what must it be, then, to applaud any of the acts of the King of Spain! This I am about to do, however, think Dr. Black of it what he may.

In the first place, the mass of the people of Spain are better off, better fed, better clothed, than the people of any other country in Europe, and much better than the people of England are. That is one thing; and that is almost enough of itself. In the next place, the King of Spain has refused to mortgage the land and labour of his people for the benefit of an infamous set of Jews and Jobbers. Next, the King of Spain has most essentially thwarted the Six-Acts people, the Manchester 16th of August, the Parson Hay, the Sidmouth’s Circular, the Dungeoning, the Ogden’s rupture people; he has thwarted, and most cuttingly annoyed, these people, who are also the poacher-transporting people, and the new trespass law, and the apple-felony and the horse-police (or gendarmerie) and the Sunday-toll people: the King of Spain has thwarted all these, and he has materially assisted in blowing up the brutal big fellows of Manchester; and therefore I applaud the King of Spain.

I do not much like weasels; but I hate rats; and therefore I say success to the weasels. But there is one act of the King of Spain which is worthy of the imitation of every King, aye, and of every republic too; his edict for taxing traffickers, which edict was published about eight months ago. It imposes a pretty heavy annual tax on every one who is a mere buyer and seller, and who neither produces nor consumes, nor makes, nor changes the state of, the article, or articles, that he buys and sells. Those who bring things into the kingdom are deemed producers, and those who send things out of the kingdom are deemed changers of the state of things. These two classes embrace all legitimate merchants. Thus, then, the farmer, who produces corn and meat and wool and wood, is not taxed; nor is the coach-master who buys the corn to give to his horses, nor the miller who buys it to change the state of it, nor the baker who buys the flour to change its state; nor is the manufacturer who buys the wool to change its state; and so on: but the Jew or Quaker, the mere dealer, who buys the corn of the producer to sell it to the miller, and to deduct a profit, which must, at last, fall upon the consumer; this Jew, or Quaker, or self-styled Christian, who acts the part of Jew or Quaker, is taxed by the King of Spain; and for this I applaud the King of Spain.

If we had a law like this, the pestiferous sect of non-labouring, sleek and fat hypocrites could not exist in England. But ours is, altogether, a system of monopolies, created by taxation and paper-money, from which monopolies are inseparable. It is notorious that the brewer’s monopoly is the master even of the Government; it is well known to all who examine and reflect that a very large part of our bread comes to our mouths loaded with the profit of nine or ten, or more, different dealers; and I shall, as soon as I have leisure, prove as clearly as anything ever was proved, that the people pay two millions of pounds a year in consequence of the Monopoly in tea! that is to say, they pay two millions a year more than they would pay were it not for the monopoly; and, mind, I do not mean the monopoly of the East India Company, but the monopoly of the Quaker and other Tea Dealers, who buy the tea of that Company! The people of this country are eaten up by monopolies. These compel those who labour to maintain those who do not labour; and hence the success of the crafty crew of Quakers, the very existence of which sect is a disgrace to the country.

Besides the corn market at Warminster, I was delighted, and greatly surprised, to see the meat. Not only the very finest veal and lamb that I had ever seen in my life, but so exceedingly beautiful that I could hardly believe my eyes. I am a great connoisseur in joints of meat; a great judge, if five-and-thirty years of experience can give sound judgment. I verily believe that I have bought and have roasted more whole sirloins of beef than any man in England; I know all about the matter; a very great visitor of Newgate market; in short, though a little eater, I am a very great provider. It is a fancy, I like the subject, and therefore I understand it; and with all this knowledge of the matter, I say I never saw veal and lamb half so fine as what I saw at Warminster. The town is famed for fine meat; and I knew it, and, therefore, I went out in the morning to look at the meat. It was, too, 2d. a pound cheaper than I left it at Kensington.