Part 38

MIN. Does the honourable and learned Gentleman wish to see that "_equitable_ adjustment," which Cobbett has a thousand times declared can never take place without an application, to new purposes, of that great mass of public property, commonly called Church property?

B. (Almost bursting with rage). How _dare_ the honourable gentlemen to suppose me capable of such a thought?

MIN. We suppose nothing. We only ask the question; and we ask it, because to put an end to the small-notes would inevitably produce all these things; and it is impossible to have small-notes to the extent necessary to _keep up prices_, without having, now-and-then, _breaking banks_. Banks cannot break without _producing misery_; you must have the _consequence_ if you will have the _cause_. The honourable and learned Gentleman wants the feast without the reckoning. In short, is the honourable and learned Gentleman for putting an end to "_public credit_"?

B. No, no, no, no!

MIN. Then would it not be better for the honourable and learned Gentleman to _hold his tongue_?

All men of sense and sincerity will at once answer this last question in the affirmative. They will all say that this is not _opposition_ to the Ministers. The Ministers do not _wish_ to see 40,000 families, nor any families at all (who give them _no real annoyance_), reduced to misery; they do not _wish_ to cripple their own tax-payers; very far from it. If they could carry on the debt and dead-weight and place and pension and barrack system, without reducing any _quiet_ people to misery, they would like it exceedingly. But they _do_ wish to carry on that system; and he does not _oppose_ them who does not endeavour to put an end to the system.

This is done by nobody in Parliament; and, therefore, there is, in fact, _no opposition_; and this is felt by the whole nation; and this is the reason why _the people_ now take so little interest in what is said and done in Parliament, compared to that which they formerly took. This is the reason why there is no man, or men, whom the people seem to care at all about. A great portion of the people now clearly understand the nature and effects of the system; they are not now to be deceived by speeches and professions. If Pitt and Fox had _now to start_, there would be no "Pittites" and "Foxites." Those happy days of political humbug are gone for ever. The "gentlemen _opposite_" are opposite only as to mere _local position_. They sit on the opposite side of the House: that's all. In every other respect they are like parson and clerk; or, perhaps, rather more like the rooks and jackdaws: one _caw_ and the other _chatter_; but both have the same object in view: both are in pursuit of the same sort of diet. One set is, to be sure, IN place, and the other OUT; but, though the rooks keep the jackdaws on the inferior branches, these latter would be as clamorous as the rooks themselves against _felling the tree_; and just as clamorous would the "gentlemen opposite" be against any one who should propose to put down the system itself. And yet, unless you do _that_, things must go on in the present way, and _felons_ must be _better fed_ than _honest labourers_; and starvation and thieving and robbing and gaol-building and transporting and hanging and penal laws must go on increasing, as they have gone on from the day of the establishment of the debt to the present hour. Apropos of _penal laws_, Doctor Black (of the Morning Chronicle) is now filling whole columns with very just remarks on the new and terrible law, which makes the taking of an apple _felony_; but he says not a word about the _silence_ of Sir Jammy (the humane _code-softener_) upon this subject! The "_humanity_ and _liberality_" of the Parliament have relieved men addicted to _fraud_ and to _certain other crimes_ from the disgrace of the pillory, and they have, since Castlereagh cut his own throat, relieved _self-slayers_ from the disgrace of the cross-road burial; but the same Parliament, amidst all the workings of this rare humanity and liberality, have made it _felony to take an apple off a tree_, which last year was a trivial trespass, and was formerly no offence at all! However, even this _is necessary_, as long as this bank-note system continue in its present way; and all complaints about severity of laws, levelled at the poor, are useless and foolish; and these complaints are even base in those who do their best to uphold a system which has brought _the honest labourer to be fed worse than the felon_. What, short of such laws, can prevent _starving men_ from coming to take away the dinners of those who have plenty? "_Education_"! Despicable cant and nonsense! What education, what moral precepts, can quiet the gnawings and ragings of hunger?

Looking, now, back again for a minute to the little village of _Stoke-Charity_, the name of which seems to indicate that its rents formerly belonged wholly to the poor and indigent part of the community: it is near to Winchester, that grand scene of ancient learning, piety, and munificence. Be this as it may, the parish formerly contained ten farms, and it now contains but two, which are owned by Mr. Hinton Bailey and his nephew, and, therefore, which may probably become _one_. There used to be ten well-fed families in this parish at any rate: these, taking five to a family, made fifty well-fed people. And now all are half-starved, except the curate and the two families. The _blame_ is not the land-owner's; it is nobody's; it is due to the infernal _funding_ and _taxing_ system, which _of necessity_ drives property into large masses in order to _save itself_; which crushes little proprietors down into labourers; and which presses them down in that state, there takes their wages from them and makes them _paupers_, their share of food and raiment being taken away to support debt and dead-weight and army and all the rest of the enormous expenses which are required to sustain this intolerable system. Those, therefore, are fools or hypocrites who affect to wish to better the lot of the poor labourers and manufacturers, while they, at the same time, either actively or passively, uphold the system which is the manifest cause of it. Here is a system which, clearly as the nose upon your face, you see taking away the little gentleman's estate, the little farmer's farm, the poor labourer's meat-dinner and Sunday-coat; and while you see this so plainly, you, fool or hypocrite, as you are, cry out for supporting the system that causes it all! Go on, base wretch; but remember that of such a progress dreadful must be the end. The day will come when millions of long-suffering creatures will be in a state that they and you now little dream of. All that we now behold of _combinations_, and the like, are mere _indications_ of what the great body of the suffering people _feel_, and of the thoughts that are passing in their minds. The _coaxing_ work of _schools_ and _tracts_ will only add to what would be quite enough without them. There is not a labourer in the whole country who does not see to the bottom of this _coaxing_ work. They are _not deceived_ in this respect. Hunger has opened their eyes. I'll engage that there is not, even in this obscure village of Stoke-Charity, one single creature, however forlorn, who does not understand all about the _real motives_ of the school and the tract and the Bible affair as well as Butterworth, or Rivington, or as Joshua Watson himself.

Just after we had finished the bread and cheese, we crossed the turnpike road that goes from Basingstoke to Stockbridge; and Mr. Bailey had told us that we were then to bear away to our right, and go to the end of a wood (which we saw one end of), and keep round with that wood, or coppice, as he called it, to our left; but we, seeing Beacon Hill more to the left, and resolving to go, as nearly as possible, in a straight line to it, steered directly over the fields; that is to say, pieces of ground from 30 to 100 acres in each. But a hill which we had to go over had here hidden from our sight a part of this "coppice," which consists, perhaps, of 150 or 200 acres, and which we found sweeping round, in a crescent-like form so far, from towards our left, as to bring our land-mark over the coppice at about the mid-length of the latter. Upon this discovery we slackened sail; for this coppice might be a mile across; and though the bottom was sound enough, being a coverlet of flints upon a bed of chalk, the underwood was too high and too thick for us to face, being, as we were, at so great a distance from the means of obtaining a fresh supply of clothes. Our leather leggings would have stood anything; but our coats were of the common kind; and before we saw the other side of the coppice we should, I dare say, have been as ragged as forest-ponies in the month of March.

In this dilemma I stopped and looked at the coppice. Luckily two boys, who had been cutting sticks (to _sell_, I dare say, at least _I hope so_), made their appearance, at about half a mile off, on the side for the coppice. Richard galloped off to the boys, from whom he found that in one part of the coppice there was a road cut across, the point of entrance into which road they explained to him. This was to us what the discovery of a canal across the isthmus of Darien would be to a ship in the Gulf of Mexico wanting to get into the Pacific without doubling Cape Horne. A beautiful road we found it. I should suppose the best part of a mile long, perfectly straight, the surface sound and smooth, about eight feet wide, the whole length seen at once, and, when you are at one end, the other end seeming to be hardly a yard wide. When we got about half-way, we found a road that crossed this. These roads are, I suppose, cut for the hunters. They are very pretty, at any rate, and we found this one very convenient; for it cut our way short by a full half mile.

From this coppice to Whitchurch is not more than about four miles, and we soon reached it, because here you begin to descend into the _vale_, in which this little town lies, and through which there runs that _stream_ which turns the mill of 'Squire Portal, and which mill makes the Bank of England Note-Paper! Talk of the Thames and the Hudson with their forests of masts; talk of the Nile and the Delaware bearing the food of millions on their bosoms; talk of the Ganges and the Mississippi sending forth over the world their silks and their cottons; talk of the Rio de la Plata and the other rivers, their beds pebbled with silver and gold and diamonds. What, as to their effect on the condition of mankind, as to the virtues, the vices, the enjoyments and the sufferings of men; what are all these rivers put together compared with the _river of Whitchurch_, which a man of threescore may jump across dry-shod, which moistens a quarter of a mile wide of poor, rushy meadow, which washes the skirts of the park and game preserves of that bright patrician who wedded the daughter of Hanson, the attorney and late solicitor to the Stamp-Office, and which is, to look at it, of far less importance than any gutter in the Wen! Yet this river, by merely turning a wheel, which wheel sets some rag-tearers and grinders and washers and re-compressers in motion, has produced a greater effect on the condition of men than has been produced on that condition by all the other rivers, all the seas, all the mines and all the continents in the world. The discovery of America, and the consequent discovery and use of vast quantities of silver and gold, did, indeed, produce great effects on the nations of Europe. They changed the value of money, and caused, as all such changes must, _a transfer of property_, raising up new families and pulling down old ones, a transfer very little favourable either to _morality_, or to real and _substantial liberty_. But this cause worked _slowly_; its consequences came on by slow _degrees_; it made a transfer of property, but it made that transfer in so small a degree, and it left the property quiet in the hands of the new possessor _for so long a time_, that the effect was not violent, and was not, at any rate, such as to uproot possessors by whole districts, as the hurricane uproots the forests.

Not so the product of the little sedgy rivulet of Whitchurch! It has, in the short space of a hundred and thirty-one years, and, indeed, in the space of the last _forty_, caused greater changes as to property than had been caused by all other things put together in the long course of seven centuries, though during that course there had been a sweeping, confiscating Protestant reformation. Let us look back to the place where I started on this present rural ride. Poor old Baron Maseres, succeeded at Reigate by little Parson Fellowes, and at Betchworth (three miles on my road) by Kendrick, is no bad instance to begin with; for the Baron was nobly descended, though from French ancestors. At Albury, fifteen miles on my road, Mr. Drummond (a banker) is in the seat of one of the Howards, and close by he has bought the estate, just pulled down the house, and blotted out the memory of the Godschalls. At Chilworth, two miles further down the same vale, and close under St. Martha's Hill, Mr. Tinkler, a powder-maker (succeeding Hill, another powder-maker, who had been a breeches-maker at Hounslow), has got the old mansion and the estate of the old Duchess of Marlborough, who frequently resided in what was then a large quadrangular mansion, but the remains of which now serve as out farm-buildings and a farmhouse, which I found inhabited by a poor labourer and his family, the farm being in the hands of the powder-maker, who does not find the once noble seat good enough for him. Coming on to Waverley Abbey, there is Mr. Thompson, a merchant, succeeding the Orby Hunters and Sir Robert Rich. Close adjoining, Mr. Laing, a West India dealer of some sort, has stepped into the place of the lineal descendants of Sir William Temple. At Farnham the park and palace remain in the hands of a Bishop of Winchester, as they have done for about eight hundred years: but why is this? Because they are public property; because they cannot, without express laws, be transferred. Therefore the product of the rivulet of Whitchurch has had no effect upon the ownership of these, which are still in the hands of a Bishop of Winchester; not of a William of Wykham, to be sure; but still, in those of a bishop, at any rate. Coming on to old Alresford (twenty miles from Farnham) Sheriff, the son of a Sheriff, who was a Commissary in the American war, has succeeded the Gages. Two miles further on, at Abbotston (down on the side of the Itchen) Alexander Baring has succeeded the heirs and successors of the Duke of Bolton, the remains of whose noble mansion I once saw here. Not above a mile higher up, the same Baring has, at the Grange, with its noble mansion, park and estate, succeeded the heirs of Lord Northington; and at only about two miles further, Sir Thomas Baring, at Stratton Park, has succeeded the Russells in the ownership of the estates of Stratton and Micheldover, which were once the property of Alfred the Great! Stepping back, and following my road, down by the side of the meadows of the beautiful river Itchen, and coming to Easton, I look across to Martyr's Worthy, and there see (as I observed before) the Ogles succeeded by a general or a colonel somebody; but who, or whence, I cannot learn.

This is all in less than four score miles, from Reigate even to this place, where I now am. Oh! mighty rivulet of Whitchurch! All our properties, all our laws, all our manners, all our minds, you have changed! This, which I have noticed, has all taken place within forty, and most of it within _ten_ years. The _small gentry_, to about the _third_ rank upwards (considering there to be five ranks from the smallest gentry up to the greatest nobility), are _all gone_, nearly to a man, and the small farmers along with them. The Barings alone have, I should think, swallowed up thirty or forty of these small gentry without perceiving it. They, indeed, swallow up the biggest race of all; but innumerable small fry slip down unperceived, like caplins down the throats of the sharks, while these latter _feel_ only the codfish. It frequently happens, too, that a big gentleman or nobleman, whose estate has been big enough to resist for a long while, and who has swilled up many caplin-gentry, goes down the throat of the loan-dealer with all the caplins in his belly.

Thus the Whitchurch rivulet goes on, shifting property from hand to hand. The big, in order to save themselves from being "_swallowed up quick_" (as we used to be taught to say in our Church Prayers against Buonaparte), make use of their _voices_ to get, through place, pension, or sinecure, something back from the taxers. Others of them _fall in love_ with the _daughters_ and _widows_ of paper-money people, big brewers, and the like; and sometimes their daughters _fall in love_ with the paper-money people's sons, or the fathers of those sons; and, whether they be _Jews_, or not, seems to be little matter with this all-subduing passion of love. But the _small gentry_ have no resource. While _war_ lasted, "_glorious_ war," there was a resource; but _now_, alas! not only is there no war, but there is _no hope of war_; and not a few of them will actually come to the _parish-book_. There is no place for them in the army, church, navy, customs, excise, pension-list, or anywhere else. All these are now wanted by "their _betters_." A stock-jobber's family will not look at such penniless things. So that while they have been the active, the zealous, the efficient instruments, in compelling the working classes to submit to half-starvation, they have at any rate been brought to the most abject ruin themselves; for which I most heartily thank God. The "harvest of war" is never to return without a total blowing up of the paper-system. Spain must belong to France, St. Domingo must pay her tribute. America must be paid for slaves taken away in war, she must have Florida, she must go on openly and avowedly making a navy for the purpose of humbling us; and all this, and ten times more, if France and America should choose; and yet we can have _no war_ as long as the paper-system last; and, if _that cease_, then _what is to come_!

_Burghclere, Sunday Morning, 6th November._

It has been fine all the week until to-day, when we intended to set off for Hurstbourn-Tarrant, vulgarly called Uphusband, but the rain seems as if it would stop us. From Whitchurch to within two miles of this place it is the same sort of country as between Winchester and Whitchurch. High, chalk bottom, open downs or large fields, with here and there a farmhouse in a dell sheltered by lofty trees, which, to my taste, is the most pleasant situation in the world.

This has been, with Richard, one whole week of hare-hunting, and with me, three days and a half. The weather has been amongst the finest that I ever saw, and Lord Caernarvon's preserves fill the country with hares, while these hares invite us to ride about and to see his park and estate, at this fine season of the year, in every direction. We are now on the north side of that Beacon Hill for which we steered last Sunday. This makes part of a chain of lofty chalk-hills and downs, which divides all the lower part of Hampshire from Berkshire, though the ancient ruler, owner, of the former took a little strip all along on the flat, on this side of the chain, in order, I suppose, to make the ownership of the hills themselves the more clear of all dispute; just as the owner of a field-hedge and bank owns also the ditch on his neighbour's side. From these hills you look, at one view, over the whole of Berkshire, into Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, and you can see the Isle of Wight and the sea. On this north side the chalk soon ceases, and the sand and clay begin, and the oak-woods cover a great part of the surface. Amongst these is the farmhouse in which we are, and from the warmth and good fare of which we do not mean to stir until we can do it without the chance of a wet skin.

This rain has given me time to look at the newspapers of about a week old. Oh, oh! The Cotton Lords are tearing! Thank God for that! The Lords of the Anvil are snapping! Thank God for that too! They have kept poor souls, then, in a heat of 84 degrees to little purpose after all. The "great interests" mentioned in the King's Speech do not, _then_, all continue to flourish! The "prosperity" was not, then, "permanent," though the King was advised to assert so positively that it was! "Anglo-Mexican and Pasco-Peruvian" fall in price, and the Chronicle assures me that "the respectable owners of the Mexican Mining shares mean to take measures to protect their _property_." Indeed! Like _protecting_ the Spanish Bonds, I suppose? Will the Chronicle be so good as to tell us the names of these "_respectable_ persons"? Doctor Black must know their names; or else he could not know them to be _respectable_. If the parties be those that I have heard, these mining works may possibly operate with them as an emetic, and make them throw up a part at least of what they have taken down.

There has, I see, at New York, been that confusion which I, four months ago, said would and must take place; that breaking of merchants and all the ruin which, in such a case, spreads itself about, ruining families and producing fraud and despair. Here will be, between the two countries, an interchange of cause and effect, proceeding from the dealings in _cotton_, until, first and last, two or three hundred thousands of persons have, at one spell of paper-money work, been made to drink deep of misery. I pity none but the poor English creatures, who are compelled to work on the wool of this accursed weed, which has done so much mischief to England. The slaves who cultivate and gather the cotton are well fed. They do not suffer. The sufferers are these who spin it and weave it and colour it, and the wretched beings who cover with it those bodies which, as in the time of old Fortescue, ought to be "clothed throughout in good woollens."