Part 2

Fat hogs have lately sold, in this village, at 7_s._ 6_d._ a score (but would hardly bring that now), that is to say, at 4-1/2_d._ a pound. The hog is weighed whole, when killed and dressed. The head and feet are included; but so is the lard. Hogs fatted on peas or barley-meal may be called the very best meat that England contains. At Salisbury (only about 20 miles off) fat hogs sell for 5_s._ to 4_s._ 6_d._ a score. But, then, observe, these are _dairy hogs_, which are not nearly so good in quality as the corn-fed hogs. But I shall probably hear more about these prices as I get further towards the West. Some wheat has been sold at Newbury-market for 6_l._ a load (40 bushels); that is, at 3_s._ a bushel. A considerable part of the crop is wholly unfit for bread flour, and is not equal in value to good barley. In not a few instances the wheat has been carried into the gate, or yard, and thrown down to be made dung of. So that, if we were to take the average, it would not exceed, I am convinced, 5_s._ a bushel in this part of the country; and the average of all England would not, perhaps, exceed 4_s._ or 3_s._ 6_d._ a bushel. However, LORD LIVERPOOL has got a _bad harvest_ at last! That _remedy_ has been applied! Somebody sent me some time ago that stupid newspaper, called the _Morning Herald_, in which its readers were reminded of my "_false prophecies_," I having (as this paper said) foretold that wheat would be at _two shillings a bushel before Christmas_. These gentlemen of the "_respectable_ part of the press" do not mind lying a little upon a pinch. [See Walter's "Times" of Tuesday last, for the following: "_Mr. Cobbett has thrown open the front of his house at Kensington, where he proposes to sell meat at a reduced price_."] What I said was this: that, if the crop were good and the harvest fine, and gold continued to be paid at the Bank, we should see wheat at four, not two, shillings a bushel before Christmas. Now, the crop was, in many parts, very much blighted, and the harvest was very bad indeed; and yet the average of England, including that which is destroyed, or not brought to market at all, will not exceed 4_s._ a bushel. A farmer told me, the other day, that he got _so little_ offered for some of his wheat, that he was resolved not to take any more of it to market; but to give it to hogs. Therefore, in speaking of the price of wheat, you are to take in the unsold as well as the sold; that which fetches nothing as well as that which is sold at high price.--I see, in the Irish papers, which have overtaken me on my way, that the system is working the Agriculturasses in "the sister-kingdom" too! The following paragraph will show that the _remedy_ of a _bad harvest_ has not done our dear sister much good. "A very numerous meeting of the Kildare Farming Society met at Naas on the 24th inst., the Duke of Leinster in the Chair; Robert de la Touche, Esq., M.P., Vice-President. Nothing can more strongly prove the BADNESS OF THE TIMES, and very _unfortunate state of the country_, than the necessity in which the Society finds itself of _discontinuing its premiums, from its present want of funds_. The best members of the farming classes have got so much in arrear in their subscriptions that they have declined to appear or to dine with their neighbours, and general depression damps the spirit of the most industrious and _hitherto prosperous_ cultivators." You are mistaken, Pat; it is not the _times_ any more than it is the _stars_. Bobadil, you know, imputed his beating to the _planets_: "planet-stricken, by the foot of Pharaoh!"--"No, Captain," says Welldon, "indeed it was a _stick_." It is not the _times_, dear Patrick: it is _the government_, who, having first contracted a great debt in depreciated money, are now compelling you to pay the interest at the rate of three for one. Whether this be _right_, or _wrong_, the Agriculturasses best know: it is much more their affair than it is mine; but, be you well assured, that they are only at the beginning of their sorrows. Ah! Patrick, whoever shall live only a few years will see a _grand change_ in your state! Something a _little more rational_ than "Catholic Emancipation" will take place, or I am the most deceived of all mankind. This _Debt_ is your best, and, indeed, your _only friend_. It must, at last, give the THING a _shake_, such as it never had before.--The accounts which my country newspapers give of the failure of farmers are perfectly dismal. In many, many instances they have put an end to their existence, as the poor deluded creatures did who had been ruined by the South Sea Bubble! I cannot help feeling for these people, for whom my birth, education, taste, and habits give me so strong a partiality. Who can help feeling for their wives and children, hurled down headlong from affluence to misery in the space of a few months! Become all of a sudden the mockery of those whom they compelled, perhaps, to cringe before them! If the Labourers exult, one cannot say that it is unnatural. If _Reason_ have her fair sway, I am exempted from all pain upon this occasion. I have done my best to prevent these calamities. Those farmers who have attended to me are safe while the storm rages. My endeavours to stop the evil in time cost me the earnings of twenty long years! I did not sink, no, nor _bend_, beneath the heavy and reiterated blows of the accursed system, which I have dealt back blow for blow; and, blessed be God, I now see it _reel_! It is staggering about like a sheep with water in the head: turning its pate up on one side: seeming to listen, but has no hearing: seeming to look, but has no sight: one day it capers and dances: the next it mopes and seems ready to die.

_Nov. 4. Sunday._

This, to my fancy, is a very nice country. It is continual hill and dell. Now and then a _chain_ of hills higher than the rest, and these are downs, or woods. To stand upon any of the hills and look around you, you almost think you see the ups and downs of sea in a _heavy swell_ (as the sailors call it) after what they call a gale of wind. The undulations are endless, and the great variety in the height, breadth, length, and form of the little hills, has a very delightful effect.--The soil, which, to look _on_ it, appears to be more than half flint stones, is very good in quality, and, in general, better on the tops of the lesser hills than in the valleys. It has great tenacity; does not _wash away_ like sand, or light loam. It is a stiff, tenacious loam, mixed with flint stones. Bears Saint-foin well, and all sorts of grass, which make the fields on the hills as green as meadows, even at this season; and the grass does not burn up in summer.--In a country so full of hills one would expect endless runs of water and springs. There are none: absolutely none. No water-furrow is ever made in the land. No ditches round the fields. And, even in the _deep valleys_, such as that in which this village is situated, though it winds round for ten or fifteen miles, there is no run of water even now. There is the _bed_ of a brook, which will run before spring, and it continues running with more or less water for about half the year, though, some years, it never runs at all. It rained all Friday night; pretty nearly all day yesterday; and to-day the ground is as dry as a bone, except just along the street of the village, which has been kept in a sort of stabble by the flocks of sheep passing along to and from Appleshaw fair. In the deep and long and narrow valleys, such as this, there are meadows with very fine herbage and very productive. The grass very fine and excellent in its quality. It is very curious that the soil is much _shallower_ in the vales than on the hills. In the vales it is a sort of hazle-mould on a bed of something approaching to gravel; but on the hills it is stiff loam, with apparently half flints, on a bed of something like clay first (reddish, not yellow), and then comes the chalk, which they often take up by digging a sort of wells; and then they spread it on the surface, as they do the clay in some countries, where they sometimes fetch it many miles and at an immense expense. It was very common, near Botley, to chalk land at an expense of sixteen pounds an acre.----The land here is excellent in quality generally, unless you get upon the highest chains of hills. They have frequently 40 bushels of wheat to the acre. Their barley is very fine; and their Saint-foin abundant. The turnips are, in general, very good at this time; and the land appears as capable of carrying fine crops of them as any land that I have seen. A fine country for sheep: always dry: they never injure the land when feeding off turnips in wet weather; and they can lie down on the dry; for the ground is, in fact, never wet except while the rain is actually falling. Sometimes, in spring-thaws and thunder-showers, the rain runs down the hills in torrents; but is gone directly. The flocks of sheep, some in fold and some at large, feeding on the sides of the hills, give great additional beauty to the scenery.--The woods, which consist chiefly of oak thinly intermixed with ash, and well set with underwood of ash and hazle, but mostly the latter, are very beautiful. They sometimes stretch along the top and sides of hills for miles together; and as their edges, or outsides, joining the fields and the downs, go winding and twisting about, and as the fields and downs are naked of trees, the sight altogether is very pretty.--The trees in the deep and long valleys, especially the Elm and the Ash, are very fine and very lofty; and from distance to distance, the Rooks have made them their habitation. This sort of country, which, in irregular shape, is of great extent, has many and great advantages. Dry under foot. Good roads, winter as well as summer, and little, very little, expense. Saint-foin flourishes. Fences cost little. Wood, hurdles, and hedging-stuff cheap. No shade in wet harvests. The water in the wells excellent. Good sporting country, except for coursing, and too many flints for that.--What becomes of all the _water_? There is a spring in one of the cross valleys that runs into this, having a basin about thirty feet over, and about eight feet deep, which, they say, sends up water once in about 30 or 40 years; and boils up so as to make a large current of water.--Not far from UPHUSBAND the _Wansdike_ (I think it is called) crosses the country. SIR RICHARD COLT HOARE has written a great deal about this ancient boundary, which is, indeed, something very curious. In the ploughed fields the traces of it are quite gone; but they remain in the _woods_ as well as on the downs.

_Nov. 5. Monday._

A _white frost_ this morning. The hills round about beautiful at sun-rise, the rooks making that noise which they always make in winter mornings. The Starlings are come in large flocks; and, which is deemed a sign of a hard winter, the Fieldfares are come at an early season. The haws are very abundant; which, they say, is another sign of a hard winter. The wheat is high enough here, in some fields, "to hide a hare," which is, indeed, not saying much for it, as a hare knows how to hide herself upon the bare ground. But it is, in some fields, four inches high, and is green and gay, the colour being finer than that of any grass.--The fuel here is wood. Little coal is brought from Andover. A load of fagots does not cost above 10_s._ So that, in this respect, the labourers are pretty well off. The wages here and in Berkshire, about 8_s._ a week; but the farmers talk of lowering them.--The poor-rates heavy, and heavy they must be, till taxes and rents come down greatly.--Saturday, and to-day Appleshaw sheep-fair. The sheep, which had taken a rise at Weyhill fair, have fallen again even below the Norfolk and Sussex mark. Some Southdown Lambs were sold at Appleshaw so low as 8_s._ and some even lower. Some Dorsetshire Ewes brought no more than a pound; and, perhaps, the average did not exceed 28_s._ I have seen a farmer here who can get (or could a few days ago) 28_s._ round for a lot of fat Southdown Wethers, which cost him just that money, when they were lambs, _two years ago_! It is impossible that they can have cost him less than 24_s._ each during the two years, having to be fed on turnips or hay in winter, and to be fatted on good grass. Here (upon one hundred sheep) is a loss of 120_l._ and 14_l._ in addition at five per cent. interest on the sum expended in the purchase; even suppose not a sheep has been lost by death or otherwise.--I mentioned before, I believe, that fat hogs are sold at Salisbury at from 5_s._ to 4_s._ 6_d._ the _score_ pounds, dead weight.--Cheese has come down in the same proportion. A correspondent informs me that one hundred and fifty Welsh Sheep were, on the 18th of October, offered for 4_s._ 6_d_, a head, and that they went away unsold! The skin was worth a shilling of the money! The following I take from the _Tyne Mercury_ of the 30th of October. "Last week, at Northawton fair, Mr. Thomas Cooper, of Bow, purchased three milch cows and forty sheep, for 18_l._ 16_s._ 6_d._!" The skins, four years ago, would have sold for more than the money. The _Hampshire Journal_ says that, on 1 November (Thursday) at Newbury Market, wheat sold from 88_s._ to 24_s._ the Quarter. This would make an average of 56_s._ But very little indeed was sold at 88_s._, only the prime of the old wheat. The best of the new for about 48_s._, and then, if we take into view the great proportion that cannot go to market at all, we shall not find the average, even in this rather dear part of England, to exceed 32_s._, or 4_s._ a bushel. And if we take all England through, it does not come up to that, nor anything like it. A farmer very sensibly observed to me yesterday that "if we had had such a crop and such a harvest a few years ago, good wheat would have been 50_l._ a load;" that is to say, 25_s._ a bushel! Nothing can be truer than this. And nothing can be clearer than that the present race of farmers, generally speaking, must be swept away by bankruptcy, if they do not, in time, make their bow, and retire. There are two descriptions of farmers, very distinct as to the effects which this change must naturally have on them. The word _farmer_ comes from the French, _fermier_, and signifies _renter_. Those only who rent, therefore, are, properly speaking, _farmers_. Those who till their own land are _yeomen_; and when I was a boy it was the common practice to call the former _farmers_ and the latter _yeoman-farmers_. These yeomen have, for the greater part, been swallowed up by the paper-system which has drawn such masses of money together. They have, by degrees, been _bought out_. Still there are some few left; and these, if not in debt, will stand their ground. But all the present race of mere renters must give way, in one manner or another. They must break, or drop their style greatly; even in the latter case, their rent must, very shortly, be diminished more than two-thirds. Then comes the _Landlord's turn_; and the sooner the better.--In the _Maidstone Gazette_ I find the following: "Prime beef was sold in Salisbury market, on Tuesday last, at 4_d._ per lb., and good joints of mutton at 3-1/2_d._; butter 11_d._ and 12_d._ per lb.--In the West of Cornwall, during the summer, pork has often been sold at 2-1/2_d._ per lb."--This is very true; and what can be better? How can Peel's Bill work in a more delightful manner? What nice "_general working of events_!" The country rag-merchants have now very little to do. They have _no discounts_. What they have out they _owe_: it is so much _debt_: and, of course, they become poorer and poorer, because they must, like a mortgager, have more and more to pay as prices fall. This is very good; for it will make them disgorge a part, at least, of what they have swallowed, during the years of high prices and depreciation. They are worked in this sort of way: the Tax-Collectors, the Excise-fellows, for instance, hold their sittings every six weeks, in certain towns about the country. They will receive the country rags, if the rag man can find, and will give, security for the due payment of his rags, when they arrive in London. For want of such security, or of some formality of the kind, there was a great bustle in a town in this county not many days ago. The Excise-fellow demanded sovereigns, or Bank of England notes. Precisely how the matter was finally settled I know not; but the reader will see that the Exciseman was only taking a proper precaution; for if the rags were not paid in London, the loss was his.

_Marlborough, Tuesday noon, Nov. 6._

I left Uphusband this morning at 9, and came across to this place (20 miles) in a post-chaise. Came up the valley of Uphusband, which ends at about 6 miles from the village, and puts one out upon the Wiltshire Downs, which stretch away towards the West and South-west, towards Devizes and towards Salisbury. After about half a mile of down we came down into a level country; the flints cease, and the chalk comes nearer the top of the ground. The labourers along here seem very poor indeed. Farmhouses with twenty ricks round each, besides those standing in the fields; pieces of wheat 50, 60, or 100 acres in a piece; but a group of women labourers, who were attending the measurers to measure their reaping work, presented such an assemblage of rags as I never before saw even amongst the hoppers at Farnham, many of whom are common beggars. I never before saw _country_ people, and reapers too, observe, so miserable in appearance as these. There were some very pretty girls, but ragged as colts and as pale as ashes. The day was cold too, and frost hardly off the ground; and their blue arms and lips would have made any heart ache but that of a seat-seller or a loan-jobber. A little after passing by these poor things, whom I left, cursing, as I went, those who had brought them to this state, I came to a group of shabby houses upon a hill. While the boy was watering his horses, I asked the ostler the _name_ of the place; and, as the old women say, "you might have knocked me down with a feather," when he said, "_Great Bedwin_." The whole of the houses are not intrinsically worth a thousand pounds. There stood a thing out in the middle of the place, about 25 feet long and 15 wide, being a room stuck up on unhewed stone pillars about 10 feet high. It was the Town Hall, where the ceremony of choosing the _two Members_ is performed. "This place sends Members to Parliament, don't it?" said I to the ostler. "Yes, Sir." "Who are Members _now_?" "I _don't know_, indeed, Sir."--I have not read the _Henriade_ of Voltaire for these 30 years; but in ruminating upon the ostler's answer, and in thinking how the world, yes, _the whole world_, has been deceived as to this matter, two lines of that poem came across my memory:

Representans du peuple, les Grands et le Roi: Spectacle magnifique! Source sacree des lois![1]

The Frenchman, for want of understanding the THING as well as I do, left the eulogium incomplete. I therefore here add four lines, which I request those who publish future editions of the Henriade to insert in continuation of the above eulogium of Voltaire.

Representans du peuple, que celui-ci ignore, Sont fait a miracle pour garder son Or! Peuple trop heureux, que le bonheur inonde! L'envie de vos voisins, admire du monde![2]

The first line was suggested by the ostler; the last by the words which we so very often hear from the bar, the bench, the _seats_, the pulpit, and the throne. Doubtless my poetry is not equal to that of Voltaire; but my rhyme is as good as his, and my _reason_ is a great deal better.--In quitting this villanous place we see the extensive and uncommonly ugly park and domain of LORD AYLESBURY, who seems to have tacked park on to park, like so many outworks of a fortified city. I suppose here are 50 or 100 farms of former days swallowed up. They have been bought, I dare say, from time to time; and it would be a labour very well worthy of reward by the public, to trace to its source the money by which these immense domains, in different parts of the country, have been formed!--MARLBOROUGH, which is an ill-looking place enough, is succeeded, on my road to SWINDON, by an extensive and very beautiful down about 4 miles over. Here nature has flung the earth about in a great variety of shapes. The fine short smooth grass has about 9 inches of mould under it, and then comes the chalk. The water that runs down the narrow side-hill valleys is caught, in different parts of the down, in basins made on purpose, and lined with clay apparently. This is for watering the sheep in summer; sure sign of a really dry soil; and yet the grass never _parches_ upon these downs. The chalk holds the moisture, and the grass is fed by the dews in hot and dry weather.--At the end of this down the high-country ends. The hill is high and steep, and from it you look immediately down into a level farming country; a little further on into the dairy-country, whence the North-Wilts cheese comes; and, beyond that, into the vale of Berkshire, and even to Oxford, which lies away to the North-east from this hill.--The land continues good, flat and rather wet to Swindon, which is a plain country town, built of the stone which is found at about 6 feet under ground about here.--I come on now towards Cirencester, thro' the dairy county of North Wilts.

_Cirencester, Wednesday (Noon), 7 Nov._