Mr. Blount, at whose house (7 miles from Weyhill) I am, went with me to the fair; and we took particular pains to ascertain the prices. We saw, and spoke to, Mr. John Herbert, of Stoke (near Uphusband) who was asking 20s., and who did not expect to get it, for South-down ewes, just such as he sold, last year (at this fair), for 36s. Mr. Jolliff, of Crux-Easton, was asking 16s. for just such ewes as he sold, last year (at this fair) for 32s. Farmer Holdway had sold “for less than half” his last year’s price. A farmer that I did not know, told us, that he had sold to a great sheep-dealer of the name of Smallpiece at the latter’s own price! I asked him what that “own price” was; and he said that he was ashamed to say. The horse-fair appeared to have no business at all going on; for, indeed, how were people to purchase horses, who had got only half-price for their sheep?
The sales of sheep, at this one fair (including Appleshaw), must have amounted, this year, to a hundred and twenty or thirty thousand pounds less than last year! Stick a pin there, master “Prosperity Robinson,” and turn back to it again anon! Then came the horses; not equal in amount to the sheep, but of great amount. Then comes the cheese, a very great article; and it will have a falling off, if you take quantity into view, in a still greater proportion. The hops being a monstrous crop, their price is nothing to judge by. But all is fallen. Even corn, though, in many parts, all but the wheat and rye have totally failed, is, taking a quarter of each of the six sorts (wheat, rye, barley, oats, pease, and beans), 11s. 9d. cheaper, upon the whole; that is to say, 11s. 9d. upon 258s. And, if the “late panic” had not come, it must and it would have been, and according to the small bulk of the crop, it ought to have been, 150s. dearer, instead of 11s. 9d. cheaper. Yet, it is too dear, and far too dear, for the working people to eat! The masses, the assembled masses, must starve, if the price of bread be not reduced; that is to say, in Scotland and Ireland; for, in England, I hope that the people will “demand and insist” (to use the language of the Bill of Rights) on a just and suitable provision, agreeably to the law; and, if they do not get it, I trust that law and justice will, in due course, be done, and strictly done, upon those who refuse to make such provision. Though, in time, the price of corn will come down without any repeal of the Corn Bill; and though it would have come down now, if we had had a good crop, or an average crop; still the Corn Bill ought now to be repealed, because people must not be starved in waiting for the next crop; and the “landowners’ monopoly,” as the son of “John with the bright sword” calls it, ought to be swept away; and the sooner it is done, the better for the country. I know very well that the landowners must lose their estates, if such prices continue, and if the present taxes continue; I know this very well; and, I like it well; for, the landowners may cause the taxes to be taken off if they will. “Ah! wicked dog!” say they, “What, then, you would have us lose the half pay and the pensions and sinecures which our children and other relations, or that we ourselves, are pocketing out of the taxes, which are squeezed, in great part, out of the labourer’s skin and bone!” Yes, upon my word, I would; but if you prefer losing your estates, I have no great objection; for it is hard that, “in a free country,” people should not have their choice of the different roads to the poor-house. Here is the rub: the vote-owners, the seat-owners, the big borough-mongers, have directly and indirectly, so large a share of the loaves and fishes, that the share is, in point of clear income, equal to, and, in some cases, greater than, that from their estates; and, though this is not the case with the small fry of jolterheads, they are so linked in with, and overawed by, the big ones, that they have all the same feeling; and that is, that to cut off half-pay, pensions, sinecures, commissionerships (such as that of Hobhouse’s father), army, and the rest of the “good things,” would be nearly as bad as to take away the estates, which, besides, are, in fact, in many instances, nearly gone (at least from the present holder) already, by the means of mortgage, annuity, rent-charge, settlement, jointure, or something or other. Then there are the parsons, who with their keen noses, have smelled out long enough ago, that, if any serious settlement should take place, they go to a certainty. In short, they know well how the whole nation (the interested excepted) feel towards them. They know well, that were it not for their allies, it would soon be queer times with them.
Here, then, is the rub. Here are the reasons why the taxes are not taken off! Some of these jolterheaded beasts were ready to cry, and I know one that did actually cry to a farmer (his tenant) in 1822. The tenant told him, that “Mr. Cobbett had been right about this matter.” “What!” exclaimed he, “I hope you do not read Cobbett! He will ruin you, and he would ruin us all. He would introduce anarchy, confusion, and destruction of property!” Oh, no, Jolterhead! There is no destruction of property. Matter, the philosophers say, is indestructible. But, it is all easily transferable, as is well-known to the base Jolterheads and the blaspheming Jews. The former of these will, however, soon have the faint sweat upon them again. Their tenants will be ruined first: and, here what a foul robbery these landowners have committed, or at least, enjoyed and pocketed the gain of! They have given their silent assent to the one-pound note abolition Bill. They knew well that this must reduce the price of farm produce one-half, or thereabouts; and yet, they were prepared to take and to insist on, and they do take and insist on, as high rents as if that Bill had never been passed! What dreadful ruin will ensue! How many, many farmers’ families are now just preparing the way for their entrance into the poor-house! How many; certainly many a score farmers did I see at Weyhill, yesterday, who came there as it were to know their fate; and who are gone home thoroughly convinced, that they shall, as farmers, never see Weyhill fair again!
When such a man, his mind impressed with such conviction, returns home and there beholds a family of children, half bred up, and in the notion that they were not to be mere working people, what must be his feelings? Why, if he have been a bawler against Jacobins and Radicals; if he have approved of the Power-of-Imprisonment Bill and of Six-Acts; aye, if he did not rejoice at Castlereagh’s cutting his own throat; if he have been a cruel screwer down of the labourers, reducing them to skeletons; if he have been an officious detecter of what are called “poachers,” and have assisted in, or approved of, the hard punishments, inflicted on them; then, in either of these cases, I say, that his feelings, though they put the suicidal knife into his own hand, are short of what he deserves! I say this, and this I repeat with all the seriousness and solemnity with which a man can make a declaration; for, had it not been for these base and selfish and unfeeling wretches, the deeds of 1817 and 1819 and 1820 would never have been attempted. These hard and dastardly dogs, armed up to the teeth, were always ready to come forth to destroy, not only to revile, to decry, to belie, to calumniate in all sorts of ways, but, if necessary, absolutely to cut the throats of, those who had no object, and who could have no object, other than that of preventing a continuance in that course of measures, which have finally produced the ruin, and threaten to produce the absolute destruction, of these base, selfish, hard and dastardly dogs themselves. Pity them! Let them go for pity to those whom they have applauded and abetted.
The farmers, I mean the renters, will not now, as they did in 1819, stand a good long emptying out. They had, in 1822, lost nearly all. The present stock of the farms is not, in one half of the cases, the property of the farmer. It is borrowed stock; and the sweeping out will be very rapid. The notion that the Ministers will “do something” is clung on to by all those who are deeply in debt, and all who have leases, or other engagements for time. These believe (because they anxiously wish) that the paper-money, by means of some sort or other, will be put out again; while the Ministers believe (because they anxiously wish) that the thing can go on, that they can continue to pay the interest of the debt, and meet all the rest of their spendings, without one-pound notes and without bank-restriction. Both parties will be deceived, and in the midst of the strife, that the dissipation of the delusion will infallibly lead to, the whole Thing is very likely to go to pieces; and that, too, mind, tumbling into the hands and placed at the mercy, of a people, the millions of whom have been fed upon less, to four persons, than what goes down the throat of one single common soldier! Please to mind that, Messieurs the admirers of select vestries! You have not done it, Messieurs Sturges Bourne and the Hampshire Parsons! You thought you had! You meaned well; but it was a coup-manqué, a missing of the mark, and that, too, as is frequently the case, by over-shooting it. The attempt will, however, produce its just consequences in the end; and those consequences will be of vast importance.
From Weyhill I was shown, yesterday, the wood, in which took place the battle, in which was concerned poor Turner, one of the young men, who was hanged at Winchester, in the year 1822. There was another young man, named Smith, who was, on account of another game-battle, hanged on the same gallows! And this for the preservation of the game, you will observe! This for the preservation of the sports of that aristocracy for whose sake, and solely for whose sake, “Sir James Graham, of Netherby, descendant of the Earls of Monteith and of the seventh Earl of Galloway, K.T.” (being sure not to omit the K.T.); this hanging of us is for the preservation of the sports of that aristocracy, for the sake of whom this Graham, this barefaced plagiarist, this bungling and yet impudent pamphleteer, would sacrifice, would reduce to beggary, according to his pamphlet, three hundred thousand families (making, doubtless, two millions of persons), in the middle rank of life! It is for the preservation, for upholding what he insolently calls the “dignity” of this sporting aristocracy, that he proposes to rob all mortgagees, all who have claims upon land! The feudal lords in France had, as Mr. Young tells us, a right, when they came in, fatigued, from hunting or shooting, to cause the belly of one of their vassals to be ripped up, in order for the lord to soak his feet in the bowels! Sir James Graham of the bright sword does not propose to carry us back so far as this; he is willing to stop at taking away the money and the victuals of a very large part of the community; and, monstrous as it may seem, I will venture to say, that there are scores of the Lord-Charles tribe who think him moderate to a fault!
But, to return to the above-mentioned hanging at Winchester (a thing never to be forgotten by me), James Turner, aged 28 years, was accused of assisting to kill Robert Baker, gamekeeper to Thomas Asheton Smith, Esq., in the parish of South Tidworth; and Charles Smith, aged 27 years, was accused of shooting at (not killing) Robert Snellgrove, assistant gamekeeper to Lord Palmerston (Secretary at War), at Broadlands, in the parish of Romsey. Poor Charles Smith had better have been hunting after shares than after hares! Mines, however deep, he would have found less perilous than the pleasure grounds of Lord Palmerston! I deem this hanging at Winchester worthy of general attention, and particularly at this time, when the aristocracy near Andover, and one, at least, of the members for that town, of whom this very Thomas Asheton Smith was, until lately, one, was, if the report in the Morning Chronicle (copied into the Register of the 7th instant) be correct, endeavouring, at the late Meeting at Andover, to persuade people, that they (these aristocrats) wished to keep up the price of corn for the sake of the labourers, whom Sir John Pollen (Thomas Asheton Smith’s son’s present colleague as member for Andover) called “poor devils,” and who, he said, had “hardly a rag to cover them!” Oh! wished to keep up the price of corn for the good of the “poor devils of labourers who have hardly a rag to cover them!” Amiable feeling, tender-hearted souls! Cared not a straw about rents! Did not; oh no! did not care even about the farmers! It was only for the sake of the poor, naked devils of labourers, that the colleague of young Thomas Asheton Smith cared; it was only for those who were in the same rank of life as James Turner and Charles Smith were, that these kind Andover aristocrats cared! This was the only reason in the world for their wanting corn to sell at a high price? We often say, “that beats everything;” but really, I think, that these professions of the Andover aristocrats do “beat everything.” Ah! but, Sir John Pollen, these professions come too late in the day: the people are no longer to be deceived by such stupid attempts at disguising hypocrisy. However, the attempt shall do this: it shall make me repeat here that which I published on the Winchester hanging, in the Register of the 6th of April, 1822. It made part of a “Letter to Landlords.” Many boys have, since this article was published, grown up to the age of thought. Let them now read it; and I hope, that they will remember it well.
I, last fall, addressed ten letters to you on the subject of the Agricultural Report. My object was to convince you, that you would be ruined; and, when I think of your general conduct towards the rest of the nation, and especially towards the labourers, I must say that I have great pleasure in seeing that my opinions are in a fair way of being verified to the full extent. I dislike the Jews; but the Jews are not so inimical to the industrious classes of the country as you are. We should do a great deal better with the ’Squires from ’Change Alley, who, at any rate, have nothing of the ferocious and bloody in their characters. Engrafted upon your native want of feeling is the sort of military spirit of command that you have acquired during the late war. You appeared, at the close of that war, to think that you had made a conquest of the rest of the nation for ever; and, if it had not been for the burdens which the war left behind it, there would have been no such thing as air, in England, for any one but a slave to breathe. The Bey of Tunis never talked to his subjects in language more insolent than you talked to the people of England. The DEBT, the blessed Debt, stood our friend, made you soften your tone, and will finally place you where you ought to be placed.
This is the last Letter that I shall ever take the trouble to address to you. In a short time, you will become much too insignificant to merit any particular notice; but just in the way of farewell, and that there may be something on record to show what care has been taken of the partridges, pheasants, and hares, while the estates themselves have been suffered to slide away, I have resolved to address this one more Letter to you, which resolution has been occasioned by the recent putting to death, at Winchester, of two men denominated Poachers. This is a thing, which, whatever you may think of it, has not been passed over, and is not to be passed over, without full notice and ample record. The account of the matter, as it appeared in the public prints, was very short; but the fact is such as never ought to be forgotten. And, while you are complaining of your “distress,” I will endeavour to lay before the public that which will show, that the law has not been unmindful of even your sports. The time is approaching, when the people will have an opportunity of exercising their judgment as to what are called “Game-Laws;” when they will look back a little at what has been done for the sake of insuring sport to landlords. In short, landlords as well as labourers will pass under review. But, I must proceed to my subject, reserving reflections for a subsequent part of my letter.