The dilapidation of parsonage-houses and the depopulation of villages appears not to have been so great just round about Worcester, as in some other parts; but they have made great progress even here. No man appears to fat an ox, or hardly a sheep, except with a view of sending it to London, or to some other infernal resort of monopolizers and tax-eaters. Here, as in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire and Herefordshire, you find plenty of large churches without scarcely any people. I dare say, that, even in this county, more than one half of the parishes have either no parsonage-houses at all; or, have not one that a parson thinks fit for him to live in; and, I venture to assert, that one or the other of these is the case in four parishes out of every five in Herefordshire! Is not this a monstrous shame? Is this “a church”? Is this “law”? The parsons get the tithes and the rent of the glebe-lands, and the parsonage-houses are left to tumble down, and nettles and brambles to hide the spot where they stood. But, the fact is, the Jew-system has swept all the little gentry, the small farmers, and the domestic manufacturers away. The land is now used to raise food and drink for the monopolizers and the tax-eaters and their purveyors and lackeys and harlots; and they get together in Wens.
Of all the mean, all the cowardly reptiles, that ever crawled on the face of the earth, the English land-owners are the most mean and the most cowardly: for, while they support the churches in their several parishes, while they see the population drawn away from their parishes to the Wens, while they are taxed to keep the people in the Wens, and while they see their own Parsons pocket the tithes and the glebe-rents, and suffer the parsonage-houses to fall down; while they see all this, they, without uttering a word in the way of complaint, suffer themselves and their neighbours to be taxed, to build new churches for the monopolizers and tax-eaters in those Wens! Never was there in this world a set of reptiles so base as this. Stupid as many of them are, they must clearly see the flagrant injustice of making the depopulated parishes pay for the aggrandizement of those who have caused the depopulation, aye, actually pay taxes to add to the Wens, and, of course, to cause a further depopulation of the taxed villages; stupid beasts as many of them are, they must see the flagrant injustice of this, and mean and cowardly as many of them are, some of them would remonstrate against it; but, alas! the far greater part of them are, themselves, getting, or expecting, loaves and fishes, either in their own persons, or in those of their family. They smouch, or want to smouch, some of the taxes; and, therefore, they must not complain. And thus the thing goes on. These landowners see, too, the churches falling down and the parsonage-houses either tumbled down or dilapidated. But, then, mind, they have, amongst them, the giving away of the benefices! Of course, all they want is the income, and, the less the parsonage-house costs, the larger the spending income. But, in the meanwhile, here is a destruction of public property; and also, from a diversion of the income of the livings, a great injury, great injustice, to the middle and the working classes.
Is this, then, is this “church” a thing to remain untouched? Shall the widow and the orphan, whose money has been borrowed by the land-owners (including the Parsons) to purchase “victories” with; shall they be stripped of their interest, of their very bread, and shall the Parsons, who have let half the parsonage-houses fall down or become unfit to live in, still keep all the tithes and the glebe-lands and the immense landed estates, called Church Lands? Oh, no! Sir James Graham “of Netherby,” though you are a descendant of the Earls of Monteith, of John of the bright sword, and of the Seventh Earl of Galloway, K.T. (taking care, for God’s sake, not to omit the K.T.); though you may be the Magnus Apollo; and, in short, be you what you may, you shall never execute your project of sponging the fund-holders and of leaving Messieurs the Parsons untouched! In many parishes, where the livings are good too, there is neither parsonage-house nor church! This is the case at Draycot Foliot, in Wiltshire. The living is a Rectory; the Parson has, of course, both great and small tithes; these tithes and the glebe-land are worth, I am told, more than three hundred pounds a year; and yet there is neither church nor parsonage-house; both have been suffered to fall down and disappear; and, when a new Parson comes to take possession of the living, there is, I am told, a temporary tent, or booth, erected, upon the spot where the church ought to be, for the performance of the ceremony of induction! What, then!—Ought not this church to be repealed? An Act of Parliament made this church; an Act of Parliament can unmake it; and is there any but a monster who would suffer this Parson to retain this income, while that of the widow and the orphan was taken away? Oh, no? Sir James Graham of Netherby, who, with the gridiron before you, say, that there was “no man, of any authority, who foresaw the effects of Peel’s Bill;” oh, no! thou stupid, thou empty-headed, thou insolent aristocratic pamphleteer, the widow and the orphan shall not be robbed of their bread, while this Parson of Draycot Foliot keeps the income of his living!
On my return from Worcester to this place, yesterday, I noticed, at a village called Severn Stoke, a very curiously-constructed grape house; that is to say a hot-house for the raising of grapes. Upon inquiry, I found, that it belonged to a Parson of the name of St. John, whose parsonage house is very near to it, and who, being sure of having the benefice when the then Rector should die, bought a piece of land, and erected his grapery on it, just facing, and only about 50 yards from, the windows, out of which the old parson had to look until the day of his death, with a view, doubtless, of piously furnishing his aged brother with a memento mori (remember death), quite as significant as a death’s head and cross-bones, and yet done in a manner expressive of that fellow-feeling, that delicacy, that abstinence from self-gratification, which are well known to be characteristics almost peculiar to “the cloth”! To those, if there be such, who may be disposed to suspect that the grapery arose, upon the spot where it stands, merely from the desire to have the vines in bearing state, against the time that the old parson should die, or, as I heard the Botley Parson once call it, “kick the bucket;” to such persons I would just put this one question; did they ever either from Scripture or tradition, learn that any of the Apostles or their disciples, erected graperies from motives such as this? They may, indeed, say, that they never heard of the Apostles erecting any graperies at all, much less of their having erected them from such a motive. Nor, to say the truth, did I ever hear of any such erections on the part of those Apostles and those whom they commissioned to preach the word of God; and, Sir William Scott (now a lord of some sort) never convinced me, by his parson-praising speech of 1802, that to give the church-clergy a due degree of influence over the minds of the people, to make the people revere them, it was necessary that the parsons and their wives should shine at balls and in pump-rooms. On the contrary, these and the like have taken away almost the whole of their spiritual influence. They never had much; but, lately, and especially since 1793, they have had hardly any at all; and, wherever I go, I find them much better known as Justices of the Peace than as Clergymen. What they would come to, if this system could go on for only a few years longer, I know not: but go on, as it is now going, it cannot much longer; there must be a settlement of some sort: and that settlement never can leave that mass, that immense mass, of public property, called “church property,” to be used as it now is.
I have seen, in this country, and in Herefordshire, several pieces of Mangel Wurzel; and, I hear, that it has nowhere failed, as the turnips have. Even the Lucerne has, in some places, failed to a certain extent; but Mr. Walter Palmer, at Pencoyd, in Herefordshire, has cut a piece of Lucerne four times this last summer, and, when I saw it, on the 17th Sept. (12 days ago), it was got a foot high towards another cut. But, with one exception (too trifling to mention), Mr. Walter Palmer’s Lucerne is on the Tullian plan; that is, it is in rows at four feet distance from each other; so that you plough between as often as you please, and thus, together with a little hand weeding between the plants, keep the ground, at all times, clear of weeds and grass. Mr. Palmer says, that his acre (he has no more) has kept two horses all the summer; and he seems to complain, that it has done no more. Indeed! A stout horse will eat much more than a fatting ox. This grass will fat any ox, or sheep; and would not Mr. Palmer like to have ten acres of land that would fat a score of oxen? They would do this, if they were managed well. But is it nothing to keep a team of four horses, for five months in the year, on the produce of two acres of land? If a man say that, he must, of course, be eagerly looking forward to another world; for nothing will satisfy him in this. A good crop of early cabbages may be had between the rows of Lucerne.
Cabbages have, generally, wholly failed. Those that I see are almost all too backward to make much of heads; though it is surprising how fast they will grow and come to perfection as soon as there is twelve hours of night. I am here, however, speaking of the large sorts of cabbage; for the smaller sorts will loave in summer. Mr. Walter Palmer has now a piece of these, of which I think there are from 17 to 20 tons to the acre; and this, too, observe, after a season which, on the same farm, has not suffered a turnip of any sort to come. If he had had 20 acres of these, he might have almost laughed at the failure of his turnips, and at the short crop of hay. And this is a crop of which a man may always be sure, if he take proper pains. These cabbages (Early Yorks or some such sort) should, if you want them in June or July, be sown early in the previous August. If you want them in winter, sown in April, and treated as pointed out in my Cottage Economy. These small sorts stand the winter better than the large; they are more nutritious; and they occupy the ground little more than half the time. Dwarf Savoys are the finest and richest and most nutritious of cabbages. Sown early in April, and planted out early in July, they will, at 18 inches apart each way, yield a crop of 30 to 40 tons by Christmas. But all this supposes land very good, or, very well manured, and plants of a good sort, and well raised and planted, and the ground well tilled after planting; and a crop of 30 tons is worth all these and all the care and all the pains that a man can possibly take.
I am here amongst the finest of cattle, and the finest sheep of the Leicester kind, that I ever saw. My host, Mr. Price, is famed as a breeder of cattle and sheep. The cattle are of the Hereford kind, and the sheep surpassing any animals of the kind that I ever saw. The animals seem to be made for the soil, and the soil for them.
In taking leave of this county, I repeat, with great satisfaction, what I before said about the apparent comparatively happy state of the labouring people; and I have been very much pleased with the tone and manner in which they are spoken to and spoken of by their superiors. I hear of no hard treatment of them here, such as I have but too often heard of in some counties, and too often witnessed in others; and I quit Worcestershire, and particularly the house in which I am, with all those feelings which are naturally produced by the kindest of receptions from frank and sensible people.
Fairford (Gloucestershire),
Saturday Morning, 30th Sept.
Though we came about 45 miles yesterday, we are up by day-light, and just about to set off to sleep at Hayden, near Swindon, in Wiltshire.