Part 28

RIDE THROUGH THE NORTH-EAST PART OF SUSSEX, AND ALL ACROSS KENT, FROM THE WEALD OF SUSSEX, TO DOVER.

_Worth (Sussex), Friday, 29 August 1823._

I have so often described the soil and other matters appertaining to the country between the Wen and this place that my readers will rejoice at being spared the repetition here. As to the harvest, however, I find that they were deluged here on Tuesday last, though we got but little, comparatively, at Kensington. Between Mitcham and Sutton they were making wheat-ricks. The corn has not been injured here worth notice. Now and then an ear in the butts _grown_; and grown wheat is a sad thing! You may almost as well be without wheat altogether. However, very little harm has been done here as yet.

At Walton Heath I saw a man who had suffered most terribly from the _game-laws_. He saw me going by, and came out to tell me his story; and a horrible story it is, as the public will find, when it shall come regularly and fully before them. Apropos of game-works: I asked who was _the Judge_ at the Somersetshire Assizes the other day. A correspondent tells me that it was Judge Burrough. I am well aware that, as this correspondent observes, "gamekeepers ought not to be _shot at_." This is not the point. It is not a _gamekeeper_ in the usual sense of that word; it is a man seizing another without a warrant. That is what it is; and this, and Old Ellenborough's Act, are _new things_ in England, and things of which the laws of England, "the birthright of Englishmen," knew nothing. Yet farmer Voke ought not to have shot at the gamekeeper, or seizer, without warrant: he ought not to have shot at him; and he would not had it not been for the law that put him in danger of being transported on the evidence of this man. So that it is clearly the terrible law that, in these cases, produces the violence. Yet, admire with me, reader, the singular turn of the mind of Sir James Mackintosh, whose whole soul appears to have been long bent on the "amelioration of the Penal Code," and who has never said one single word about this new and most terrible part of it! Sir James, after years of incessant toil, has, I believe, succeeded in getting a repeal of the laws for the punishment of "witchcraft," of the very existence of which laws the nation was unacquainted. But the devil a word has he said about the _game-laws_, which put into the gaols a full third part of the prisoners, and to hold which prisoners the gaols have actually been enlarged in all parts of the country! Singular turn of mind! Singular "humanity!" Ah! Sir James knows very well what he is at. He understands the state of his constituents at Knaresborough too well to meddle with game-laws. He has a "friend," I dare say, who knows more about game-laws than he does. However, the poor _witches_ are safe: thank Sir James for that. Mr. Carlile's sister and Mrs. Wright are in gaol, and may be there for life! But the poor witches are safe. No hypocrite: no base pretender to religion; no atrocious, savage, _black_-hearted wretch, who would murder half mankind rather than not live on the labours of others; no monster of this kind can now persecute the poor witches, thanks to Sir James who has obtained security for them in all their rides through the air, and in all their sailings upon the horseponds!

_Tonbridge Wells (Kent), Saturday, 30 August._

I came from Worth about seven this morning, passed through East Grinstead, over Holthigh Common, through Ashurst, and thence to this place. The morning was very fine, and I left them at Worth, making a wheat-rick. There was no show for rain till about one o'clock, as I was approaching Ashurst. The shattering that came at first I thought nothing of; but the clouds soon grew up all round, and the rain set in for the afternoon. The buildings at Ashurst (which is the first parish in Kent on quitting Sussex) are a mill, an alehouse, a church, and about six or seven other houses. I stopped at the alehouse to bait my horse; and, for want of bacon, was compelled to put up with bread and cheese for myself. I waited in vain for the rain to cease or to slacken, and the _want of bacon_ made me fear as to a _bed_. So, about five o'clock, I, without great coat, got upon my horse, and came to this place, just as fast and no faster than if it had been fine weather. A very fine soaking! If the South Downs have left any little remnant of the hooping-cough, _this_ will take it away to be sure. I made not the least haste to get out of the rain, I stopped, here and there, as usual, and asked questions about the corn, the hops, and other things. But the moment I got in I got a good fire, and set about the work of drying in good earnest. It costing me nothing for drink, I can afford to have plenty of fire. I have not been in the house an hour; and all my clothes are now as dry as if they had never been wet. It is not getting wet that hurts you, if you keep moving while you are wet. It is the suffering of yourself to be _inactive_ while the wet clothes are on your back.

The country that I have come over to-day is a very pretty one. The soil is a pale yellow loam, looking like brick earth, but rather sandy; but the bottom is a softish stone. Now-and-then, where you go through hollow ways (as at East Grinstead) the sides are solid rock. And, indeed, the rocks sometimes (on the sides of hills) show themselves above ground, and, mixed amongst the woods, make very interesting objects. On the road from the Wen to Brighton, through Godstone and over Turner's Hill, and which road I crossed this morning in coming from Worth to East Grinstead; on that road, which goes through Lindfield, and which is by far the pleasantest coach-road from the Wen to Brighton; on the side of this road, on which coaches now go from the Wen to Brighton, there is a long chain of rocks, or, rather, rocky hills, with trees growing amongst the rocks, or apparently out of them, as they do in the woods near Ross in Herefordshire, and as they do in the Blue Mountains in America, where you can see no earth at all; where all seems rock, and yet where the trees grow most beautifully. At the place of which I am now speaking, that is to say, by the side of this pleasant road to Brighton, and between Turner's Hill and Lindfield, there is a rock, which they call "_Big-upon-Little_;" that is to say, a rock upon another, having nothing else to rest upon, and the top one being longer and wider than the top of the one it lies on. This big rock is no trifling concern, being as big, perhaps, as a not very small house. How, then, _came_ this big upon little? What lifted up the big? It balances itself naturally enough; but what tossed it up? I do not like to _pay_ a parson for teaching me, while I have "_God's own word_" to teach me; but, if any parson will tell me _how_ big _came_ upon little, I do not know that I shall grudge him a trifle. And if he cannot tell me this: if he say, All that we have to do is to _admire_ and _adore_; then I tell him that I can admire and adore without his _aid_, and that I will keep my money in my pocket.

To return to the soil of this country, it is such a loam as I have described with this stone beneath; sometimes the top soil is lighter and sometimes heavier; sometimes the stone is harder and sometimes softer; but this is the general character of it all the way from Worth to Tonbridge Wells. This land is what may be called the _middle kind_. The wheat crop about 20 to 24 bushels to an acre, on an average of years. The grass fields not bad, and all the fields will grow grass; I mean make upland meadows. The woods good, though not of the finest. The land seems to be about thus divided: 3-tenths _woods_, 2-tenths _grass_, a tenth of a tenth _hops_, and the rest _corn-land_. These make very pretty surface, especially as it is a rarity to see a _pollard tree_, and as nobody is so beastly as to _trim trees up_ like the elms near the Wen. The country has no _flat_ spot in it; yet the hills are not high. My road was a gentle rise or a gentle descent all the way. Continual new views strike the eye; but there is little variety in them: all is pretty, but nothing strikingly beautiful. The labouring people look pretty well. They have pigs. They invariably do best in the _woodland_ and _forest_ and _wild_ countries. Where the mighty grasper has _all under his eye_, they can get but little. These are cross-roads, mere parish roads; but they are very good. While I was at the alehouse at Ashurst, I heard some labouring men talking about the roads; and they having observed that the parish roads had become so wonderfully better within the last seven or eight years, I put in my word, and said: "It is odd enough, too, that the parish roads should become _better and better_ as the farmers become _poorer and poorer_!" They looked at one another, and put on a sort of _expecting_ look; for my observation seemed to _ask for information_. At last one of them said, "Why, it is because the farmers _have not the money to employ men_, and so they are put on the roads." "Yes," said I, "but they must pay them there." They said no more, and only _looked hard at one another_. They had, probably, never thought about this before. They seemed puzzled by it, and well they might, for it has bothered the wigs of boroughmongers, parsons and lawyers, and will bother them yet. Yes, this country now contains a body of occupiers of the land, who suffer the land to go to decay for want of means to pay a sufficiency of labourers; and, at the same time, are compelled to pay those labourers for doing that which is of no use to the occupiers! There, Collective Wisdom! Go: brag of that! Call that "the envy of surrounding nations and the admiration of the world."

This is a great _nut_ year. I saw them hanging very thick on the way-side during a great part of this day's ride; and they put me in mind of the old saying, "That a great _nut_ year is a great year for that class whom the lawyers, in their Latin phrase, call the 'sons and daughters of nobody.'" I once asked a farmer, who had often been overseer of the poor, whether he really thought that there was any ground for this old saying, or whether he thought it was mere banter? He said that he was sure that there were good grounds for it; and he even cited instances in proof, and mentioned one particular year, when there were four times as many of this class as ever had been born in a year in the parish before; an effect which he ascribed solely to the crop of nuts of the year before. Now, if this be the case, ought not Parson Malthus, Lawyer Scarlett, and the rest of that tribe, to turn their attention to the nut-trees? The _Vice Society_, too, with that holy man Wilberforce at its head, ought to look out sharp after these mischievous nut-trees. A law to cause them all to be grubbed up, and thrown into the fire, would, certainly, be far less unreasonable than many things which we have seen and heard of.

The corn, from Worth to this place, is pretty good. The farmers say it is a small crop; other people, and especially the labourers, say that it is a good crop. I think it is not large and not small; about an average crop; perhaps rather less, for the land is rather light, and this is not a year for light lands. But there is no blight, no mildew, in spite of all the prayers of the "loyal." The wheat about a third cut, and none carried. No other corn begun upon. Hops very bad till I came within a few miles of this place, when I saw some which I should suppose would bear about six hundredweight to the acre. The orchards no great things along here. Some apples here and there; but small and stunted. I do not know that I have seen to-day any one _tree_ well loaded with fine apples.

_Tenterden (Kent), Sunday, 31 August._

Here I am after a most delightful ride of twenty-four miles, through Frant, Lamberhurst, Goudhurst, Milkhouse Street, Benenden, and Rolvenden. By making a great stir in rousing waiters and "boots" and maids, and by leaving behind me the name of "a d--d noisy, troublesome fellow," I got clear of "_the Wells_," and out of the contagion of its Wen-engendered inhabitants, time enough to meet the first rays of the sun, on the hill that you come up in order to get to Frant, which is a most beautiful little village at about two miles from "_the Wells_." Here the land belongs, I suppose, to Lord Abergavenny, who has a mansion and park here. A very pretty place, and kept, seemingly, in very nice order. I saw here what I never saw before: the bloom of the _common heath_ we wholly overlook; but it is a very pretty thing; and here, when the plantations were made, and as they grew up, heath was _left to grow_ on the sides of the roads in the plantations. The heath is not so much of a dwarf as we suppose. This is four feet high; and, being in full bloom, it makes the prettiest border that can be imagined. This place of Lord Abergavenny is, altogether, a very pretty place; and, so far from grudging him the possession of it, I should feel pleasure at seeing it in his possession, and should pray God to preserve it to him, and from the unholy and ruthless touch of the Jews and jobbers; but I cannot forget this Lord's _sinecure_! I cannot forget that he has, for doing nothing, received of the public money more than sufficient to buy such an estate as this. I cannot forget that this estate may, perhaps, have actually been bought with that money. Not being able to forget this, and with my mind filled with reflections of this sort, I got up to the church at Frant, and just by I saw a _School-house_ with this motto on it: "_Train up a child as he should walk_," &c. That is to say, try to breed up the Boys and Girls of this village in such a way that they may never know anything about Lord Abergavenny's sinecure; or, knowing about it, that they may think it _right_ that he should roll in wealth coming to him in such a way. The projectors deceive nobody but themselves! They are working for the destruction of their own system. In looking back over "_the Wells_" I cannot but admire the operation of the gambling system. This little _toad-stool_ is a thing created entirely by the gamble; and the means have, hitherto, come out of the wages of labour. These means are _now_ coming out of the farmer's capital and out of the landlord's estate; the labourers are stripped; they can give no more: the saddle is now fixing itself upon the right back.

In quitting Frant I descended into a country more woody than that behind me. I asked a man whose fine woods those were that I pointed to, and I fairly gave _a start_ when he said the Marquis Camden's. Milton talks of the _Leviathan_ in a way to make one draw in one's shoulders with fear; and I appeal to any one, who has been at sea when a whale has come near the ship, whether he has not, at the first sight of the monster, made a sort of involuntary movement, as if to _get out of the way_. Such was the movement that I now made. However, soon coming to myself, on I walked my horse by the side of my pedestrian informant. It is Bayham Abbey that this great and awful sinecure placeman owns in this part of the county. Another great estate he owns near Sevenoaks. But here alone he spreads his length and breadth over more, they say, than ten or twelve thousand acres of land, great part of which consists of oak-woods. But, indeed, what estates might he not purchase? Not much less than thirty years he held a place, a sinecure place, that yielded him about thirty thousand pounds a-year! At any rate, he, according to Parliamentary accounts, has received, of public money, little short of a million of guineas. These, at 30 guineas an acre, would buy thirty thousand acres of land. And what did he have all this money _for_? Answer me that question, Wilberforce, you who called him a "bright star," when he gave up _a part_ of his enormous sinecure. He gave up all but the _trifling_ sum of nearly three thousand pounds a-year! What a bright star! And _when_ did he give it up? When the _Radical_ had made the country ring with it. When his name was, by their means, getting into every mouth in the kingdom; when every Radical speech and petition contained the name of Camden. Then it was, and not till then, that this "bright star" let fall part of its "brilliancy." So that Wilberforce ought to have thanked the _Radicals_, and not Camden. When he let go his grasp, he talked of the merits of his father. His father was a lawyer, who was exceedingly well paid for what he did without a million of money being given to his son. But there is something rather out of common-place to be observed about this father. This father was the contemporary of Yorke, who became Lord Hardwicke. Pratt and Yorke, and the merit of Pratt was that he was constantly opposed to the principles of Yorke. Yorke was called a _Tory_ and Pratt a _Whig_; but the devil of it was, both got to be Lords; and, in one shape or another, the families of both have, from that day to this, been receiving great parcels of the public money! Beautiful system! The Tories were for _rewarding Yorke_; the Whigs were for _rewarding Pratt_. The Ministers (all in good time!) humoured both parties; and the stupid people, divided into _tools of two factions_, actually applauded, now one part of them, and now the other part of them, the squandering away of their substance. They were like the man and his wife in the fable, who, to spite one another, gave away to the cunning mumper the whole of their dinner bit by bit. _This species_ of folly is over at any rate. The people are no longer fools enough to be _partisans_. They make no distinctions. The nonsense about "court party" and "country party" is at an end. Who thinks anything more of the name of _Erskine_ than of that of _Scott_? As the people told the two factions at Maidstone when they, with Camden at their head, met to congratulate the Regent on the marriage of his daughter, "they are all tarred with the same brush;" and tarred with the same brush they must be, until there be a real reform of the Parliament. However, the people are no longer deceived. They are not duped. They _know_ that the thing is that which it is. The people of the present day would laugh at disputes (carried on with so much gravity!) about the _principles_ of Pratt and the _principles_ of Yorke. "You are all tarred with the same brush," said the sensible people of Maidstone; and, in those words, they expressed the opinion of the whole country, borough-mongers and tax-eaters excepted.

The country from Frant to Lamberhurst is very woody. I should think five-tenths woods and three grass. The corn, what there is of it, is about the same as farther back. I saw a hop-garden just before I got to Lamberhurst, which will have about two or three hundredweight to the acre. This Lamberhurst is a very pretty place. It lies in a valley with beautiful hills round it. The pastures about here are very fine; and the roads are as smooth and as handsome as those in Windsor Park.

From the last-mentioned place I had three miles to come to Goudhurst, the tower of the church of which is pretty lofty of itself, and the church stands upon the very summit of one of the steepest and highest hills in this part of the country. The church-yard has a view of about twenty-five miles in diameter; and the whole is over a very fine country, though the character of the country differs little from that which I have before described.

Before I got to Goudhurst, I passed by the side of a village called Horsenden, and saw some very large hop-grounds away to my right. I should suppose there were fifty acres; and they appeared to me to look pretty well. I found that they belonged to a Mr. Springate, and people say that it will grow half as many hops as he grew last year, while people in general will not grow a tenth part so many. This hop growing and dealing have always been a _gamble_; and this puts me in mind of the horrible treatment which Mr. Waddington received on account of what was called his _forestalling_ in hops! It is useless to talk: as long as that gentleman remains uncompensated for his sufferings there can be no hope of better days. Ellenborough was his counsel; he afterwards became Judge; but nothing was ever done to undo what Kenyon had done. However, Mr. Waddington will, I trust, yet live to obtain justice. He has, in the meanwhile, given the thing now-and-then a blow; and he has the satisfaction to see it reel about like a drunken man.