Rural Rides Part 28

We left Weston Grove on Friday morning, and came across to Botley, where we remained during the rest of the day, and until after breakfast yesterday. I had not seen "the Botley Parson" for several years, and I wished to have a look at him now, but could not get a sight of him, though we rode close before his house, at much about his breakfast time, and though we gave him the strongest of invitation that could be expressed by hallooing and by cracking of whips! The fox was too cunning for us, and do all we could, we could not provoke him to put even his nose out of kennel. From Mr. James Warner's at Botley we went to Mr. Hallett's, at Allington, and had the very great pleasure of seeing him in excellent health. We intended to go back to Botley, and then to go to t.i.tchfield, and, in our way to this place, over Portsdown Hill, whence I intended to show George the harbour and the fleet, and (of still more importance) the spot on which we signed the "Hampshire Pet.i.tion," in 1817; that pet.i.tion which foretold that which the "Norfolk Pet.i.tion" confirmed; that pet.i.tion which will be finally acted upon, or.... That pet.i.tion was the very _last thing that I wrote at Botley_. I came to London in November 1816; the Power-of-Imprisonment Bill was pa.s.sed in February, 1817; just before it was pa.s.sed, the Meeting took place on Portsdown Hill; and I, in my way to the hill from London, stopped at Botley and wrote the pet.i.tion. We had one meeting afterwards at Winchester, when I heard parsons swear like troopers, and saw one of them hawk up his spittle, and spit it into Lord Cochrane's poll! Ah! my bucks, we have you _now_! You are got nearly to the end of your tether; and, what is more, _you know it_. Pay off the Debt, parsons! It is useless to swear and spit, and to present addresses applauding Power-of-Imprisonment Bills, unless you can pay off the Debt! Pay off the Debt, parsons! They say you can _lay_ the devil. Lay _this_ devil, then; or, confess that he is too many for you; aye, and for Sturges Bourne, or Bourne Sturges (I forget which), at your backs!

From Arlington, we, fearing that it would rain before we could get round by t.i.tchfield, came across the country over Waltham Chase and Soberton Down. The chase was very green and fine; but the down was the very greenest thing that I have seen in the whole country. It is not a large down; perhaps not more than five or six hundred acres; but the land is good, the chalk is at a foot from the surface, or more; the mould is a hazel mould; and when I was upon the opposite hill, I could, though I knew the spot very well, hardly believe that it was a down. The green was darker than that of any pasture or even any sainfoin or clover that I had seen throughout the whole of my ride; and I should suppose that there could not have been many less than a thousand sheep in the three flocks that were feeding upon the down when I came across it. I do not speak with anything like positiveness as to the measurement of this down; but I do not believe that it exceeds six hundred and fifty acres.

They must have had more rain in this part of the country than in most other parts of it. Indeed, no part of Hampshire seems to have suffered very much from the drought. I found the turnips pretty good, of both sorts, all the way from Andover to Rumsey. Through the New Forest, you may as well expect to find loaves of bread growing in fields as turnips, where there are any fields for them to grow in. From Redbridge to Weston, we had not light enough to see much about us; but when we came down to Botley, we there found the turnips as good as I had ever seen them in my life, as far I could judge from the time I had to look at them. Mr. Warner has as fine turnip fields as I ever saw him have, Swedish turnips and white also; and pretty nearly the same may be said of the whole of that neighbourhood for many miles round.

After quitting Soberton Down, we came up a hill leading to Hambledon, and turned off to our left to bring us down to Mr. Goldsmith's at West End, where we now are, at about a mile from the village of Hambledon. A village it _now_ is; but it was formerly a considerable market-town, and it had three fairs in the year. There is now not even the name of market left, I believe; and the fairs amount to little more than a couple or three gingerbread-stalls, with dolls and whistles for children. If you go through the place, you see that it has been a considerable town. The church tells the same story; it is now a tumble-down rubbishy place; it is partaking in the fate of all those places which were formerly a sort of rendezvous for persons who had things to buy and things to sell.

_Wens_ have devoured market-towns and villages; and _shops_ have devoured _markets and fairs_; and this, too, to the infinite injury of the most numerous cla.s.ses of the people. Shop-keeping, merely as shop-keeping, is injurious to any community. What are the shop and the shop-keeper for? To receive and distribute the produce of the land.

There are other articles, certainly; but the main part is the produce of the land. The shop must be paid for; the shop-keeper must be kept; and the one must be paid for and the other must be kept by the consumer of the produce; or, perhaps, partly by the consumer and partly by the producer.

When fairs were very frequent, shops were not needed. A manufacturer of shoes, of stockings, of hats; of almost any thing that man wants, could manufacture at home in an obscure hamlet, with cheap house-rent, good air, and plenty of room. He need pay no heavy rent for shop; and no disadvantages from confined situation; and, then, by attending three or four or five or six fairs in a year, he sold the work of his hands, unloaded with a heavy expense attending the keeping of a shop. He would get more for ten shillings in a booth at a fair or market, than he would get in a shop for ten or twenty pounds. Of course he could afford to sell the work of his hands for less; and thus a greater portion of their earnings remained with those who raised the food and the clothing from the land. I had an instance of this in what occurred to myself at Weyhill fair. When I was at Salisbury, in September, I wanted to buy a whip. It was a common hunting-whip, with a hook to it to pull open gates with, and I could not get it for less than seven shillings and sixpence.

This was more than I had made up my mind to give, and I went on with my switch. When we got to Weyhill fair, George had made shift to lose his whip some time before, and I had made him go without one by way of punishment. But now, having come to the fair, and seeing plenty of whips, I bought him one, just such a one as had been offered me at Salisbury for seven and sixpence, for four and sixpence; and, seeing the man with his whips afterwards, I thought I would have one myself; and he let me have it for three shillings. So that, here were two whips, precisely of the same kind and quality as the whip at Salisbury, bought for the money which the man at Salisbury asked me for one whip. And yet, far be it from me to accuse the man at Salisbury of an attempt at extortion: he had an expensive shop, and a family in a town to support, while my Weyhill fellow had been making his whips in some house in the country, which he rented, probably for five or six pounds a year, with a good garden to it. Does not every one see, in a minute, how this exchanging of fairs and markets for shops creates _idlers and traffickers_; creates those locusts, called middle-men, who create nothing, who add to the value of nothing, who improve nothing, but who live in idleness, and who live well, too, out of the labour of the producer and the consumer. The fair and the market, those wise inst.i.tutions of our forefathers, and with regard to the management of which they were so scrupulously careful; the fair and the market bring the producer and the consumer in contact with each other. Whatever is gained is, at any rate, gained by one or the other of these. The fair and the market bring them together, and enable them to act for their mutual interest and convenience. The shop and the trafficker keeps them apart; the shop hides from both producer and consumer the real state of matters. The fair and the market lay everything open: going to either, you see the state of things at once; and the transactions are fair and just, not disfigured, too, by falsehood, and by those attempts at deception which disgrace traffickings in general.

Very wise, too, and very just, were the laws against _forestalling_ and _regrating_. They were laws to prevent the producer and the consumer from being cheated by the trafficker. There are whole bodies of men; indeed, a very large part of the community, who live in idleness in this country, in consequence of the whole current of the laws now running in favour of the trafficking monopoly. It has been a great object with all wise governments, in all ages, from the days of Moses to the present day, to confine trafficking, mere trafficking, to as few hands as possible. It seems to be the main object of this government to give all possible encouragement to traffickers of every description, and to make them swarm like the lice of Egypt. There is that numerous sect, the Quakers. This sect arose in England: they were engendered by the Jewish system of usury. Till _excises_ and _loanmongering_ began, these vermin were never heard of in England. They seem to have been hatched by that fraudulent system, as maggots are bred by putrid meat, or as the flounders come in the livers of rotten sheep. The base vermin do not pretend to work: all they talk about is dealing; and the government, in place of making laws that would put them in the stocks, or cause them to be whipped at the cart's tail, really seem anxious to encourage them and to increase their numbers; nay, it is not long since Mr. Brougham had the effrontery to move for leave to bring in a bill to make men liable to be hanged upon the bare word of these vagabonds. This is, with me, something never to be forgotten. But everything tends the same way: all the regulations, all the laws that have been adopted of late years, have a tendency to give encouragement to the trickster and the trafficker, and to take from the labouring cla.s.ses all the honour and a great part of the food that fairly belonged to them.

In coming along yesterday, from Waltham Chase to Soberton Down, we pa.s.sed by a big white house upon a hill that was, when I lived at Botley, occupied by one Goodlad, who was a c.o.c.k justice of the peace, and who had been a chap of some sort or other, in _India_. There was a man of the name of Singleton, who lived in Waltham Chase, and who was deemed to be a great poacher. This man, having been forcibly ousted by the order of this Goodlad and some others from an encroachment that he had made in the forest, threatened revenge. Soon after this, a horse (I forget to whom it belonged) was stabbed or shot in the night-time in a field. Singleton was taken up, tried at Winchester, convicted and _transported_. I cannot relate exactly what took place. I remember that there were some curious circ.u.mstances attending the conviction of this man. The people in that neighbourhood were deeply impressed with these circ.u.mstances. Singleton was transported; but Goodlad and his wife were both dead and buried, in less, I believe, than three months after the departure of poor Singleton. I do not know that any injustice really was done; but I do know that a great impression was produced, and a very sorrowful impression, too, on the minds of the people in that neighbourhood.

I cannot quit Waltham Chase without observing, that I heard, last year, that a Bill was about to be pet.i.tioned for, to enclose that Chase! Never was so monstrous a proposition in this world. The Bishop of Winchester is Lord of the Manor over this Chase. If the Chase be enclosed, the timber must be cut down, young and old; and here are a couple of hundred acres of land, worth ten thousand acres of land in the New Forest. This is as fine timber land as any in the wealds of Surrey, Suss.e.x or Kent.

There are two enclosures of about 40 acres each, perhaps, that were simply surrounded by a bank being thrown up about twenty years ago, only twenty years ago, and on the poorest part of the Chase, too; and these are now as beautiful plantations of young oak trees as man ever set his eyes on; many of them as big or bigger round than my thigh! Therefore, besides the sweeping away of two or three hundred cottages; besides plunging into ruin and misery all these numerous families, here is one of the finest pieces of timber land in the whole kingdom, going to be cut up into miserable clay fields, for no earthly purpose but that of gratifying the stupid greediness of those who think that they must gain, if they add to the breadth of their private fields. But if a thing like this be permitted, we must be prettily furnished with Commissioners of woods and forests! I do not believe that they will sit in Parliament and see a Bill like this pa.s.sed and hold their tongues; but if they were to do it, there is no measure of reproach which they would not merit. Let them go and look at the two plantations of oaks, of which I have just spoken; and then let them give their consent to such a Bill if they can.

_Thursley, Monday Evening, 23rd October._

When I left Weston, my intention was, to go from Hambledon to Up Park, thence to Arundel, thence, to Brighton, thence to East-bourne, thence to Wittersham in Kent, and then by Cranbrook, Tunbridge, G.o.dstone and Reigate to London; but when I got to Botley, and particularly when I got to Hambledon, I found my horse's back so much hurt by the saddle, that I was afraid to take so long a stretch, and therefore resolved to come away straight to this place, to go hence to Reigate, and so to London.

Our way, therefore, this morning, was over Butser-hill to Petersfield, in the first place; then to Lyphook and then to this place, in all about twenty-four miles. Butser-hill belongs to the back chain of the South Downs; and, indeed, it terminates that chain to the westward. It is the highest hill in the whole country. Some think that Hindhead, which is the famous sand-hill over which the Portsmouth road goes at sixteen miles to the north of this great chalk-hill; some think that Hindhead is the highest hill of the two. Be this as it may, Butser-hill, which is the right-hand hill of the two between which you go at three miles from Petersfield going towards Portsmouth; this Butser-hill, is, I say, quite high enough; and was more than high enough for us, for it took us up amongst clouds that wet us very nearly to the skin. In going from Mr.

Goldsmith's to the hill, it is all up hill for five miles. Now and then a little stoop; not much; but regularly, with these little exceptions, up hill for these five miles. The hill appears, at a distance, to be a sharp ridge on its top. It is, however, not so. It is, in some parts, half a mile wide or more. The road lies right along the middle of it from west to east, and, just when you are at the highest part of the hill, it is very narrow from north to south; not more, I think, than about a hundred or a hundred and thirty yards.

This is as interesting a spot, I think, as the foot of man ever was placed upon. Here are two valleys, one to your right and the other to your left, very little less than half a mile down to the bottom of them, and much steeper than a tiled roof of a house. These valleys may be, where they join the hill, three or four hundred yards broad. They get wider as they get farther from the hill. Of a clear day you see all the north of Hampshire; nay, the whole county, together with a great part of Surrey and of Suss.e.x. You see the whole of the South Downs to the eastward as far as your eye can carry you; and, lastly, you see over Portsdown Hill, which lies before you to the south; and there are spread open to your view the isle of Portsea, Porchester, Wimmering, Fareham, Gosport, Portsmouth, the harbour, Spithead, the Isle of Wight and the ocean.

But something still more interesting occurred to me here in the year 1808, when I was coming on horseback over the same hill from Botley to London. It was a very beautiful day and in summer. Before I got upon the hill (on which I had never been before), a shepherd told me to keep on in the road in which I was, till I came to the London turnpike road.

When I got to within a quarter of a mile of this particular point of the hill, I saw, at this point, what I thought was a cloud of dust; and, speaking to my servant about it, I found that he thought so too; but this cloud of dust disappeared all at once. Soon after, there appeared to arise another cloud of dust at the same place, and then that disappeared, and the spot was clear again. As we were trotting along, a pretty smart pace, we soon came to this narrow place, having one valley to our right and the other valley to our left, and, there, to my great astonishment, I saw the clouds come one after another, each appearing to be about as big as two or three acres of land, skimming along in the valley on the north side, a great deal below the tops of the hills; and successively, as they arrived at our end of the valley, rising up, crossing the narrow pa.s.s, and then descending down into the other valley and going off to the south; so that we who sate there upon our horses, were alternately in clouds and in sunshine. It is an universal rule, that if there be a fog in the morning, and that fog go from the valleys to the tops of the hills, there will be rain that day; and if it disappear by sinking in the valley, there will be no rain that day. The truth is, that fogs are clouds, and clouds are fogs. They are more or less full of water; but they are all water; sometimes a sort of steam, and sometimes water that falls in drops. Yesterday morning the fogs had ascended to the tops of the hills; and it was raining on all the hills round about us before it began to rain in the valleys. We, as I observed before, got pretty nearly wet to the skin upon the top of Butser-hill; but we had the pluck to come on and let the clothes dry upon our backs.

I must here relate something that appears very interesting to me, and something, which, though it must have been seen by every man that has lived in the country, or, at least, in any hilly country, has never been particularly mentioned by anybody as far as I can recollect. We frequently talk of clouds coming from _dews_; and we actually see the heavy fogs become clouds. We see them go up to the tops of hills, and, taking a swim round, actually come and drop down upon us and wet us through. But I am now going to speak of clouds coming out of the sides of hills in exactly the same manner that you see smoke come out of a tobacco pipe, and rising up, with a wider and wider head, like the smoke from a tobacco-pipe, go to the top of the hill or over the hill, or very much above it, and then come over the valleys in rain. At about a mile's distance from Mr. Palmer's house at Bollitree, in Herefordshire, there is a large, long beautiful wood, covering the side of a lofty hill, winding round in the form of a crescent, the bend of the crescent being towards Mr. Palmer's house. It was here that I first observed this mode of forming clouds. The first time I noticed it, I pointed it out to Mr.

Palmer. We stood and observed cloud after cloud come out from different parts of the side of the hill, and tower up and go over the hill out of sight. He told me that that was a certain sign that it would rain that day, for that these clouds would come back again, and would fall in rain. It rained sure enough; and I found that the country people, all round about, had this mode of the forming of the clouds as a sign of rain. The hill is called Penyard, and this forming of the clouds they call Old Penyard's _smoking his pipe_; and it is a rule that it is sure to rain during the day if Old Penyard smokes his pipe in the morning.

These appearances take place, especially in warm and sultry weather. It was very warm yesterday morning: it had thundered violently the evening before: we felt it hot even while the rain fell upon us at Butser-hill.

Petersfield lies in a pretty broad and very beautiful valley. On three sides of it are very lofty hills, partly downs and partly covered with trees: and, as we proceeded on our way from the bottom of Butser-hill to Petersfield, we saw thousands upon thousands of clouds, continually coming puffing out from different parts of these hills and towering up to the top of them. I stopped George several times to make him look at them; to see them come puffing out of the chalk downs as well as out of the woodland hills; and bade him remember to tell his father of it when he should get home, to convince him that the hills of Hampshire could smoke their pipes as well as those of Herefordshire. This is a really curious matter. I have never read, in any book, anything to lead me to suppose that the observation has ever found its way into print before.

Sometimes you will see only one or two clouds during a whole morning, come out of the side of a hill; but we saw thousands upon thousands, bursting out, one after another, in all parts of these immense hills.

The first time that I have leisure, when I am in the high countries again, I will have a conversation with some old shepherd about this matter; if he cannot enlighten me upon the subject, I am sure that no philosopher can.

We came through Petersfield without stopping, and baited our horses at Lyphook, where we stayed about half an hour. In coming from Lyphook to this place, we overtook a man who asked for relief. He told me he was a weaver, and, as his accent was northern, I was about to give him the balance that I had in hand arising from our savings in the fasting way, amounting to about three shillings and sixpence; but, unfortunately for him, I asked him what place he had lived at as a weaver; and he told me that he was a Spitalfields weaver. I instantly put on my glove and returned my purse into my pocket, saying, go, then, to Sidmouth and Peel and the rest of them "and get relief; for I have this minute, while I was stopping at Lyphook, read in the _Evening Mail_ newspaper, an address to the King from the Spitalfields' weavers, for which address they ought to suffer death from starvation. In that address those base wretches tell the King, that they were loyal men: that they detested the designing men who were guilty of seditious practices in 1817; they, in short, express their approbation of the Power-of-imprisonment Bill, of all the deeds committed against the Reformers in 1817 and 1819; they, by fair inference, express their approbation of the thanks given to the Manchester Yeomanry. You are one of them; my name is William Cobbett, and I would sooner relieve a dog than relieve you." Just as I was closing my harangue, we overtook a country-man and woman that were going the same way. The weaver attempted explanations. He said that they only said it in order to get relief; but that they did not mean it in their hearts. "Oh, base dogs!" said I: "it is precisely by such men that ruin is brought upon nations; it is precisely by such baseness and insincerity, such scandalous cowardice, that ruin has been brought upon them. I had two or three shillings to give you; I had them in my hand: I have put them back into my purse: I trust I shall find somebody more worthy of them: rather than give them to you, I would fling them into that sand-pit and bury them for ever."

How curiously things happen! It was by mere accident that I took up a newspaper to read: it was merely because I was compelled to stay a quarter of an hour in the room without doing anything, and above all things it was miraculous that I should take up the _Evening Mail_, into which, I believe, I never before looked, in my whole life. I saw the royal arms at the top of the paper; took it for the _Old Times_, and, in a sort of lounging mood, said to George, "Give me hold of that paper, and let us see what that foolish devil Anna Brodie says." Seeing the words "_Spitalfields_," I read on till I got to the base and scoundrelly part of the address. I then turned over, and looked at the t.i.tle of the paper and the date of it, resolving, in my mind, to have satisfaction, of some sort or other, upon these base vagabonds. Little did I think that an opportunity would so soon occur of showing my resentment against them, and that, too, in so striking, so appropriate, and so efficient a manner. I dare say, that it was some tax-eating scoundrel who drew up this address (which I will insert in the Register, as soon as I can find it); but that is nothing to me and my fellow sufferers of 1817 and 1819.

This infamous libel upon us is published under the name of the Spitalfields weavers; and, if I am asked what the poor creatures were to do, being without bread as they were, I answer by asking whether they could find no knives to cut their throats with; seeing that they ought to have cut their throats ten thousand times over, if they could have done it, rather than sanction the publication of so infamous a paper as this.

It is not thus that the weavers in the north have acted. Some scoundrel wanted to inveigle them into an applauding of the Ministers; but they, though nothing so infamous as this address was proposed to them, rejected the proposition, though they were ten times more in want than the weavers of Spitalfields have ever been. They were only called upon to applaud the Ministers for the recent Orders in Council; but they justly said that the Ministers had a great deal more to do, before they would merit their applause. What would these brave and sensible men have said to a tax-eating scoundrel, who should have called upon them to present an address to the King, and in that address to applaud the terrible deeds committed against the people in 1817 and 1819! I have great happiness in reflecting that this baseness of the Spitalfields weavers will not bring them one single mouthful of bread. This will be their lot; this will be the fruit of their baseness: and the nation, the working cla.s.ses of the nation, will learn, from this, that the way to get redress of their grievances, the way to get food and raiment in exchange for their labour, the way to ensure good treatment from the Government, is not to crawl to that Government, to lick its hands, and seem to deem it an honour to be its slaves.

Before we got to Thursley, I saw three poor fellows getting in turf for their winter fuel, and I gave them a shilling apiece. To a boy at the bottom of Hindhead, I gave the other sixpence, towards buying him a pair of gloves; and thus I disposed of the money which was, at one time, actually out of my purse, and going into the hand of the loyal Spitalfields weaver.

We got to this place (Mr. Knowles's of Thursley) about 5 o'clock in the evening, very much delighted with our ride.

_Kensington, Thursday, 26th Oct._

We left Mr. Knowles's on Thursday morning, came through G.o.dalming, stopped at Mr. Rowland's at Chilworth, and then came on through Dorking to Colley Farm, near Reigate, where we slept. I have so often described the country from Hindhead to the foot of Reigate Hill, and from the top of Reigate Hill to the Thames, that I shall not attempt to do it again here. When we got to the river Wey, we crossed it from G.o.dalming Pismarsh to come up to Chilworth. I desired George to look round the country, and asked him if he did not think it was very pretty. I put the same question to him when we got into the beautiful neighbourhood of Dorking, and when we got to Reigate, and especially when we got to the tip-top of Reigate Hill, from which there is one of the finest views in the whole world; but ever after our quitting Mr. Knowles's, George insisted that that was the prettiest country that we had seen in the course of our whole ride, and that he liked Mr. Knowles's place better than any other place that he had seen. I reminded him of Weston Grove; and I reminded him of the beautiful ponds and gra.s.s and plantations at Mr. Leach's; but he still persisted in his judgment in favour of Mr.

Knowles's place, in which decision, however, the greyhounds and the beagles had manifestly a great deal to do.

From Thursley to Reigate inclusive, on the chalk-side as well as on the sand-side, the crops of turnips, of both kinds, were pretty nearly as good as I ever saw them in my life. On a farm of Mr. Drummond's at Aldbury, rented by a farmer Peto, I saw a piece of cabbages, of the large kind, which will produce, I should think, not much short of five and twenty tons to the acre; and here I must mention (I do not know _why_ I must, by the bye) an instance of my own skill in measuring land by the eye. The cabbages stand upon half a field and on the part of it furthest from the road where we were. We took the liberty to open the gate and ride into the field, in order to get closer to the cabbages to look at them. I intended to notice this piece of cabbages, and I asked George how much ground he thought there was in the piece. He said, _two acres_: and asked me how much I thought. I said that there were _above four acres_, and that I should not wonder if there were _four acres and a half_. Thus divided in judgment, we turned away from the cabbages to go out of the field at another gate, which pointed towards our road.

Near this gate we found a man turning a heap of manure. This man, as it happened, had hoed the cabbages by the acre, or had had a hand in it. We asked him how much ground there was in that piece of cabbages, and he told us, _four acres and a half_! I suppose it will not be difficult to convince the reader that George looked upon me as a sort of conjuror. At Mr. Pym's, at Colley farm, we found one of the very finest pieces of mangel wurzel that I had ever seen in my life. We calculated that there would be little short of _forty tons to the acre_; and there being three acres to the piece, Mr. Pym calculates that this mangel wurzel, the produce of these three acres of land, will carry his ten or twelve milch-cows nearly, if not wholly, through the winter. There did not appear to be a spurious plant, and there was not one plant that had gone to seed, in the whole piece. I have never seen a more beautiful ma.s.s of vegetation, and I had the satisfaction to learn, after having admired the crop, that the seed came from my own shop, and that it had been saved by myself.

Talking of the shop, I came to it in a very few hours after looking at this mangel wurzel; and I soon found that it was high time for me to get home again; for here had been pretty devils' works going on. Here I found the "Greek cause," and all its appendages, figuring away in grand style. But I must make this matter of separate observation.

I have put an end to my Ride of August, September, and October, 1826, during which I have travelled five hundred and sixty-eight miles, and have slept in thirty different beds, having written three monthly pamphlets, called the "Poor Man's Friend," and have also written (including the present one) eleven Registers. I have been in three cities, in about twenty market towns, in perhaps five hundred villages; and I have seen the people nowhere so well off as in the neighbourhood of Weston Grove, and nowhere so badly off as in the dominions of the Select Vestry of Hurstbourn Tarrant, commonly called Uphusband. During the whole of this ride, I have very rarely been a-bed after day-light; I have drunk neither wine nor spirits. I have eaten no vegetables, and only a very moderate quant.i.ty of meat; and, it may be useful to my readers to know, that the riding of twenty miles was not so fatiguing to me at the end of my tour as the riding of ten miles was at the beginning of it. Some ill-natured fools will call this "_egotism_." Why is it egotism? Getting upon a good strong horse, and riding about the country has no merit in it; there is no conjuration in it; it requires neither talents nor virtues of any sort; but _health_ is a very valuable thing; and when a man has had the experience which I have had in this instance, it is his duty to state to the world and to his own countrymen and neighbours in particular, the happy effects of early rising, sobriety, abstinence and a resolution to be active. It is his duty to do this: and it becomes imperatively his duty, when he has seen, in the course of his life, so many men; so many men of excellent hearts and of good talents, rendered prematurely old, cut off ten or twenty years before their time, by a want of that early rising, sobriety, abstinence and activity from which he himself has derived so much benefit and such inexpressible pleasure. During this ride I have been several times wet to the skin. At some times of my life, after having indulged for a long while in codling myself up in the house, these soakings would have frightened me half out of my senses; but I care very little about them: I avoid getting wet if I can; but it is very seldom that rain, come when it would, has prevented me from performing the day's journey that I had laid out beforehand. And this is a very good rule: to stick to your intention whether it be attended with inconveniences or not; to look upon yourself as _bound_ to do it. In the whole of this ride, I have met with no one untoward circ.u.mstance, properly so called, except the wounding of the back of my horse, which grieved me much more on his account than on my own. I have a friend, who, when he is disappointed in accomplishing anything that he has laid out, says that he has been _beaten_, which is a very good expression for the thing. I was beaten in my intention to go through Suss.e.x and Kent; but I will retrieve the affair in a very few months' time, or, perhaps, few weeks. The COLLECTIVE will be here now in a few days; and as soon as I have got the Preston Pet.i.tion fairly before them, and find (as I dare say I shall) that the pet.i.tion will not be _tried_ until February, I shall take my horse and set off again to that very spot, in the London turnpike-road, at the foot of Butser-hill, whence I turned off to go to Petersfield, instead of turning the other way to go to Up Park: I shall take my horse and go to this spot, and, with a resolution not to be beaten next time, go along through the whole length of Suss.e.x, and sweep round through Kent and Surrey till I come to Reigate again, and then home to Kensington; for I do not like to be beaten by horse's sore back, or by anything else; and, besides that, there are several things in Suss.e.x and Kent that I want to see and give an account of. For the present, however, farewell to the country, and now for the Wen and its villanous corruptions.

RURAL RIDE: TO TRING, IN HERTFORDSHIRE.

_Barn-Elm Farm, 23rd Sept. 1829._

As if to prove the truth of all that has been said in _The Woodlands_ about the impolicy of cheap planting, as it is called, Mr. Elliman has planted another and larger field with a mixture of ash, locusts, and larches; not upon _trenched_ ground, but upon ground moved with the plough. The larches made great haste to _depart this life_, bequeathing to Mr. Elliman a very salutary lesson. The ash appeared to be alive, and that is all: the locusts, though they had to share in all the disadvantages of their neighbours, appeared, it seems, to be doing pretty well, and had made decent shoots, when a neighbour's sheep invaded the plantation, and, being fond of the locust leaves and shoots, as all cattle are, reduced them to mere stumps, as it were to put them upon a level with the ash. In _The Woodlands_, I have strongly pressed the necessity of effectual fences; without these, you plant and sow in vain: you plant and sow the plants and seeds of disappointment and mortification; and the earth, being always grateful, is sure to reward you with a plentiful crop. One half acre of Mr. Elliman's plantation of locusts before-mentioned, time will tell him, is worth more than the whole of the six or seven acres of this _cheaply_ planted field.

Besides the 25,000 trees which Mr. Elliman had from me, he had some (and a part of them fine plants) which he himself had raised from seed, in the manner described in _The Woodlands_ under the head "Locust." This seed he bought from me; and, as I shall sell but a very few more locust plants, I recommend gentlemen to sow the seed for themselves, according to the directions given in _The Woodlands_, in paragraphs 383 to 386 inclusive. In that part of _The Woodlands_ will be found the most minute directions for the sowing of this seed, and particularly in the preparing of it for sowing; for, unless the proper precautions are taken here, one seed out of one hundred will not come up; and, with the proper precautions, one seed in one hundred will not fail to come up. I beg the reader, who intends to sow locusts, to read with great care the latter part of paragraph 368 of _The Woodlands_.

At this town of Tring, which is a very pretty and respectable place, I saw what reminded me of another of my endeavours to introduce useful things into this country. At the door of a shop I saw a large _case_, with the lid taken off, containing _bundles of straw for platting_. It was straw of spring wheat, tied up in small bundles, with the ear on; just such as I myself have grown in England many times, and bleached for platting, according to the instructions so elaborately given in the last edition of my _Cottage Economy_; and which instructions I was enabled to give from the information collected by my son in America. I asked the shopkeeper where he got this straw: he said, that it came from Tuscany; and that it was manufactured there at Tring, and other places, for, as I understood, some single individual master-manufacturer. I told the shopkeeper, that I wondered that they should send to Tuscany for the straw, seeing that it might be grown, harvested, and equally well bleached at Tring; that it was now, at this time, grown, bleached, and manufactured into bonnets in Kent; and I showed to several persons at Tring a bonnet, made in Kent, from the straw of wheat grown in Kent, and presented by that most public-spirited and excellent man, Mr. John Wood, of Wettersham, who died, to the great sorrow of the whole country round about him, three or four years ago. He had taken infinite pains with this matter, had brought a young woman from Suffolk at his own expense, to teach the children at Wettersham the whole of this manufacture from beginning to end; and, before he died, he saw as handsome bonnets made as ever came from Tuscany. At Benenden, the parish in which Mr. Hodges resides, there is now a manufactory of the same sort, begun, in the first place, under the benevolent auspices of that gentleman's daughters, who began by teaching a poor fellow who had been a cripple from his infancy, who was living with a poor widowed mother, and who is now the master of a school of this description, in the beautiful villages of Benenden and Rolvenden, in Kent. My wife, wishing to have her bonnet cleaned some time ago, applied to a person who performs such work, at Brighton, and got into a conversation with her about the _English Leghorn_ bonnets. The woman told her that they looked very well at first, but that they would not retain their colour, and added, "They will not clean, ma'am, like this bonnet that you have." She was left with a request to clean that; and the result being the same as with all Leghorn bonnets, she was surprised upon being told that that was an "English Leghorn." In short, there is no difference at all in the two; and if these people at Tring choose to grow the straw instead of importing it from Leghorn; and if they choose to make plat, and to make bonnets just as beautiful and as lasting as those which come from Leghorn, they have nothing to do but to read my Cottage Economy, paragraph 224 to paragraph 234, inclusive, where they will find, as plain as words can make it, the whole ma.s.s of directions for taking the seed of the wheat, and converting the produce into bonnets. There they will find directions, first, as to the sort of wheat; second, as to the proper land for growing the wheat; third, season for sowing; fourth, quant.i.ty of seed to the acre, and manner of sowing; fifth, season for cutting the wheat; sixth, manner of cutting it; seventh, manner of bleaching; eighth, manner of housing the straw; ninth, platting; tenth, manner of knitting; eleventh, manner of pressing.

I request my correspondents to inform me, if any one can, where I can get some spring wheat. The botanical name of it is, _Tritic.u.m aestivum_.

It is sown in the spring, at the same time that barley is; these Latin words mean _summer wheat_. It is a small-grained, bearded wheat. I know, from experience, that the little brown-grained winter wheat is just as good for the purpose: but that must be sown earlier; and there is danger of its being thinned on the ground, by worms and other enemies. I should like to sow some this next spring, in order to convince the people of Tring, and other places, that they need not go to Tuscany for the straw.

Of "_Cobbett's Corn_" there is no considerable piece in the neighbourhood of Tring; but I saw some plants, even upon the high hill where the locusts are growing, and which is very backward land, which appeared to be about as forward as my own is at this time. If Mr.

Elliman were to have a patch of good corn by the side of his locust trees, and a piece of spring wheat by the side of the corn, people might then go and see specimens of the three great undertakings, or rather, great additions to the wealth of the nation, introduced under the name of _Cobbett_.

I am the more desirous of introducing this manufacture at Tring on account of the very marked civility which I met with at that place. A very excellent friend of mine, who is professionally connected with that town, was, some time ago, apprised of my intention of going thither to see Mr. Elliman's plantation. He had mentioned this intention to some gentlemen of that town and neighbourhood; and I, to my great surprise, found that a _dinner had been organized_, to which I was to be invited.

I never like to disappoint anybody; and, therefore, to this dinner I went. The company consisted of about forty-five gentlemen of the town and neighbourhood; and, certainly, though I have been at dinners in several parts of England, I never found, even in Suss.e.x, where I have frequently been so delighted, a more sensible, hearty, entertaining, and hospitable company than this. From me, something in the way of speech was expected, as a matter of course; and though I was, from a cold, so hoa.r.s.e as not to be capable of making myself heard in a large place, I was so pleased with the company, and with my reception, that, first and last, I dare say I addressed the company for an hour and a half. We dined at two, and separated at nine; and, as I declared at parting, for many, many years, I had not spent a happier day. There was present the editor, or some other gentleman, from the newspaper called _The Bucks Gazette and General Advertiser_, who has published in his paper the following account of what pa.s.sed at the dinner. As far as the report goes, it is substantially correct; and, though this gentleman went away at a very early hour, that which he has given of my speech (which he has given very judiciously) contains matter which can hardly fail to be useful to great numbers of his readers.

MR. COBBETT AT TRING.

"Mr. Elliman, a draper at Tring, has lately formed a considerable plantation of the locust tree, which Mr. Cobbett claims the merit of having introduced into this country. The number he has planted is about 30,000, on five acres and a half of very indifferent land, and they have thrived so uncommonly well, that not more than 500 of the whole number have failed. The success of the plantation being made known to Mr.

Cobbett, induced him to pay a visit to Tring to inspect it, and during his sojourn it was determined upon by his friends to give him a dinner at the Rose and Crown Inn. Thursday was fixed for the purpose; when about forty persons, agriculturists and tradesmen of Tring and the neighbouring towns, a.s.sembled, and sat down to a dinner served up in very excellent style, by Mr. Northwood, the landlord: Mr. Faithful, solicitor, of Tring, is the chair.

"The usual routine toasts having been given,

"The Chairman said he was sure the company would drink the toast with which he should conclude what he was about to say, with every mark of respect. In addressing the company, he rose under feelings of no ordinary kind, for he was about to give the health of a gentleman who had the talent of communicating to his writings an energy and perspicuity which he had never met with elsewhere; who conveyed knowledge in a way so clear, that all who read could understand. He (the Chairman) had read the Political Register, from the first of them to the last, with pleasure and benefit to himself, and he would defy any man to put his finger upon a single line which was not in direct support of a kingly government. He advocated the rights of the people, but he always expressed himself favourable to our ancient form of government; he certainly had strongly, but not too strongly, attacked the corruption of the government; but had never attacked its form or its just powers. As a public writer, he considered him the most impartial that he knew. He well recollected--he knew not if Mr. Cobbett himself recollected it--a remarkable pa.s.sage in his writings: he was speaking of the pleasure of pa.s.sing from censure to praise, and thus expressed himself. 'It is turning from the frowns of a surly winter, to welcome a smiling spring come dancing over the daisied lawn, crowned with garlands, and surrounded with melody.' Nature had been bountiful to him; it had blessed him with a const.i.tution capable of enduring the greatest fatigues; and a mind of superior order. Brilliancy, it was said, was a mere meteor; it was so: it was the solidity and depth of understanding such as he possessed, that were really valuable. He had visited this place in consequence of a gentleman having been wise and bold enough to listen to his advice, and to plant a large number of locust trees; and he trusted he would enjoy prosperity and happiness, in duration equal to that of the never-decaying wood of those trees. He concluded by giving Mr. Cobbett's health."

"Mr. Cobbett returned thanks for the manner in which his health had been drunk, and was certain that the trees which had been the occasion of their meeting would be a benefit to the children of the planter. Though it might appear like presumption to suppose that those who were a.s.sembled that day came solely in compliment to him, yet it would be affectation not to believe that it was expected he should say something on the subject of politics. Every one who heard him was convinced that there was something wrong, and that a change of some sort must take place, or ruin to the country would ensue. Though there was a diversity of opinions as to the cause of the distress, and as to the means by which a change might be effected, and though some were not so deeply affected by it as others, all now felt that a change must take place before long, whether they were manufacturers, brewers, butchers, bakers, or of any other description of persons, they had all arrived at the conviction that there must be a change. It would be presumptuous to suppose that many of those a.s.sembled did not understand the cause of the present distress, yet there were many who did not; and those gentlemen who did, he begged to have the goodness to excuse him if he repeated what they already knew. Politics was a science which they ought not to have the trouble of studying; they had sufficient to do in their respective avocations, without troubling themselves with such matters.

For what were the ministers, and a whole tribe of persons under them, paid large sums of money from the country but for the purpose of governing its political affairs. Their fitness for their stations was another thing. He had been told that Mr. Huskisson was so ignorant of the cause of the distress, that he had openly said, he should be glad if any practical man would tell him what it all meant. If any man present were to profess his ignorance of the cause of the distress it would be no disgrace to him; he might be a very good butcher, a very good farmer, or a very good baker: he might well understand the business by which he gained his living; and if any one should say to him, because he did not understand politics, 'You are a very stupid fellow!' he might fairly reply, 'What is that to you?' But it was another thing to those who were so well paid to manage the affairs of the country to plead ignorance of the cause of the prevailing distress.