Burghclere,
Sunday, 8th Sept.
It rained steadily this morning, or else, at the end of these six days of hunting for George, and two for me, we should have set off. The rain gives me time to give an account of Mr. Budd’s crop of Tullian Wheat. It was sown in rows and on ridges, with very wide intervals, ploughed all summer. If he reckon that ground only which the wheat grew upon, he had one hundred and thirty bushels to the acre; and even if he reckoned the whole of the ground, he had 28 bushels all but two gallons to the acre! But the best wheat he grew this year was dibbled in between rows of Swedish Turnips, in November, four rows upon a ridge, with an eighteen-inch interval between each two rows, and a five-feet interval between the outside rows on each ridge. It is the white cone that Mr. Budd sows. He had ears with 130 grains in each. This would be the farming for labourers in their little plots. They might grow thirty bushels of wheat to the acre, and have crops of cabbages, in the intervals, at the same time; or, of potatoes, if they liked them better.
Before my arrival here, Mr. Budd had seen my description of the state of the labourers in Wiltshire, and had, in consequence, written to my son James (not knowing where I was) as follows: “In order to see how the labourers are now screwed down, look at the following facts: Arthur Young, in 1771 (55 years ago) allowed for a man, his wife and three children 13s. 1d. a week, according to present money-prices. By the Berkshire Magistrates’ table, made in 1795, the allowance was, for such family, according to the present money-prices, 11s. 4d. Now it is, according to the same standard, 8s. According to your father’s proposal, the sum would be (supposing there to be no malt tax) 18s. a week; and little enough too.” Is not that enough to convince any one of the hellishness of this system? Yet Sir Glory applauds it. Is it not horrible to contemplate millions in this half-starving state; and, is it not the duty of “England’s Glory,” who has said that his estate is “a retaining fee for defending the rights of the people;” is it not his duty to stay in England and endeavour to restore the people, the millions, to what their fathers were, instead of going abroad; selling off his carriage horses, and going abroad, there to spend some part, at least, of the fruits of English labour? I do not say, that he has no right, generally speaking, to go and spend his money abroad; but, I do say, that having got himself elected for such a city as Westminster, he had no right, at a time like this, to be absent from Parliament. However, what cares he? His “retaining fee” indeed! He takes special care to augment that fee; but I challenge all his shoe-lickers, all the base worshippers of twenty thousand acres, to show me one single thing that he has ever done, or, within the last twelve years, attempted to do, for his clients. In short, this is a man that must now be brought to book; he must not be suffered to insult Westminster any longer: he must turn-to or turn out: he is a sore to Westminster; a set-fast on its back; a cholic in its belly; a cramp in its limbs; a gag in its mouth: he is a nuisance, a monstrous nuisance, in Westminster, and he must be abated.
RIDE, FROM BURGHCLERE TO LYNDHURST, IN THE NEW FOREST.
“The Reformers have yet many and powerful foes; we have to contend against a host, such as never existed before in the world. Nine-tenths of the press; all the channels of speedy communication of sentiment; all the pulpits; all the associations of rich people; all the taxing-people; all the military and naval establishments; all the yeomanry cavalry tribes. Your allies are endless in number and mighty in influence. But, we have one ally worth the whole of them put together, namely, the DEBT! This is an ally, whom no honours or rewards can seduce from us. She is a steady, unrelaxing, persevering, incorruptible ally. An ally that is proof against all blandishments, all intrigues, all temptations, and all open attacks. She sets at defiance all ‘military,’ all ‘yeomanry cavalry.’ They may as well fire at a ghost. She cares no more for the sabres of the yeomanry or the Life Guards than Milton’s angels did for the swords of Satan’s myrmidons. This ally cares not a straw about spies and informers. She laughs at the employment of secret-service money. She is always erect, day and night, and is always firmly moving on in our cause, in spite of all the terrors of gaols, dungeons, halters and axes. Therefore, Mr. Jabet, be not so pert. The combat is not so unequal as you seem to imagine; and, confident and insolent as you now are, the day of your humiliation may not be far distant.”—Letter to Mr. Jabet, of Birmingham, Register, v. 31, p. 477. (Nov. 1816.)
Hurstbourn Tarrant
(commonly called Uphusband),
Wednesday, 11th October, 1826.
When quarters are good, you are apt to lurk in them; but, really it was so wet, that we could not get away from Burghclere till Monday evening. Being here, there were many reasons for our going to the great fair at Weyhill, which began yesterday, and, indeed, the day before, at Appleshaw. These two days are allotted for the selling of sheep only, though the horse-fair begins on the 10th. To Appleshaw they bring nothing but those fine curled-horned and long-tailed ewes, which bring the house-lambs and the early Easter-lambs; and these, which, to my taste, are the finest and most beautiful animals of the sheep kind, come exclusively out of Dorsetshire and out of the part of Somersetshire bordering on that county.
To Weyhill, which is a village of half a dozen houses on a down, just above Appleshaw, they bring from the down-farms in Wiltshire and Hampshire, where they are bred, the Southdown sheep; ewes to go away into the pasture and turnip countries to have lambs, wethers to be fatted and killed, and lambs (nine months old) to be kept to be sheep. At both fairs there is supposed to be about two hundred thousand sheep. It was of some consequence to ascertain how the price of these had been affected by “late panic,” which ended the “respite” of 1822; or by the “plethora of money” as loan-man Baring called it. I can assure this political Doctor, that there was no such “plethora” at Weyhill, yesterday, where, while I viewed the long faces of the farmers, while I saw consciousness of ruin painted on their countenances, I could not help saying to myself, “the loan-mongers think they are cunning; but, by ——, they will never escape the ultimate consequences of this horrible ruin!” The prices, take them on a fair average, were, at both fairs, just about one-half what they were last year. So that my friend Mr. Thwaites of the Herald, who had a lying Irish reporter at Preston, was rather hasty, about three months ago, when he told his well-informed readers, that, “those politicians were deceived, who had supposed that prices of farm produce would fall in consequence of ‘late panic’ and the subsequent measures”! There were Dorsetshire ewes that sold last year, for 50s. a head. We could hear of none this year that exceeded 25s. And only think of 25s. for one of these fine, large ewes, nearly fit to kill, and having two lambs in her, ready to be brought forth in, on an average, six weeks’ time! The average is three lambs to two of these ewes. In 1812 these ewes were from 55s. to 72s. each, at this same Appleshaw fair; and in that year I bought South-down ewes at 45s. each, just such as were, yesterday, sold for 18s. Yet the sheep and grass and all things are the same in real value. What a false, what a deceptious, what an infamous thing, this paper-money system is!
However, it is a pleasure, it is real, it is great delight, it is boundless joy to me, to contemplate this infernal system in its hour of wreck: swag here: crack there: scroop this way: souse that way: and such a rattling and such a squalling: and the parsons and their wives looking so frightened, beginning, apparently, to think that the day of judgment is at hand! I wonder what master parson of Sharncut, whose church can contain eight persons, and master parson of Draycot Foliot, who is, for want of a church, inducted under a tent, or temporary booth; I wonder what they think of South-down lambs (9 months old) selling for 6 or 7 shillings each! I wonder what the Barings and the Ricardos think of it. I wonder what those master parsons think of it, who are half-pay naval, or military officers, as well as master parsons of the church made by law. I wonder what the Gaffer Gooches, with their parsonships and military offices, think of it. I wonder what Daddy Coke and Suffield think of it; and when, I wonder, do they mean to get into their holes and barns again to cry aloud against the “roguery of reducing the interest of the Debt”; when, I wonder, do these manly, these modest, these fair, these candid, these open, and, above all things, these sensible, fellows intend to assemble again, and to call all “the House of Quidenham” and the “House of Kilmainham,” or Kinsaleham, or whatever it is (for I really have forgotten); to call, I say, all these about them, in the holes and the barns, and then and there again make a formal and solemn protest against Cobbett and against his roguish proposition for reducing the interest of the Debt! Now, I have these fellows on the hip; and brave sport will I have with them before I have done.