Chapter III: Part 3

Got home by the coach. At leaving Whitchurch we soon passed the mill where the Mother-Bank paper is made! Thank God, this mill is likely soon to want employment! Hard by is a pretty park and house, belonging to "_'Squire_" Portal, the _paper-maker_. The country people, who seldom want for sarcastic shrewdness, call it "_Rag Hall_"!--I perceive that they are planting oaks on the "_wastes_," as the _Agriculturasses_ call them, about _Hartley Row_; which is very good; because the herbage, after the first year, is rather increased than diminished by the operation; while, in time, the oaks arrive at a timber state, and add to the beauty and to the _real wealth_ of the country, and to the real and solid wealth of the descendants of the planter, who, in every such case, merits unequivocal praise, because he plants for his children's children.--The planter here is LADY MILDMAY, who is, it seems, Lady of the Manors about here. It is impossible to praise this act of hers too much, especially when one considers her _age_. I beg a thousand pardons! I do not mean to say that her Ladyship is _old_; but she has long had grand-children. If her Ladyship had been a reader of old dread-death and dread-devil Johnson, that teacher of moping and melancholy, she never would have planted an oak tree. If the writings of this time-serving, mean, dastardly old pensioner had got a firm hold of the minds of the people at large, the people would have been bereft of their very souls. These writings, aided by the charm of pompous sound, were fast making their way, till light, reason, and the French revolution came to drive them into oblivion; or, at least, to confine them to the shelves of repentant, married old rakes, and those of old stock-jobbers with young wives standing in need of something to keep down the unruly ebullitions which are apt to take place while the "dearies" are gone hobbling to 'Change.----"After _pleasure_ comes _pain_," says Solomon; and after the sight of Lady Mildmay's truly noble plantations, came that of the clouts of the "gentlemen cadets" of the "_Royal Military College of Sandhurst_!" Here, close by the road side, is the _drying-ground_. Sheets, shirts, and all sorts of things were here spread upon lines, covering, perhaps, an acre of ground! We soon afterwards came to "_York_ Place" on "_Osnaburg_ Hill." And is there never to be an _end_ of these things? Away to the left, we see that immense building, which contains children _breeding up to be military commanders_! Has this plan cost so little as two millions of pounds? I never see this place (and I have seen it forty times during the last twenty years) without asking myself this question: Will this thing be suffered to go on; will this thing, created by money _raised by loan_; will this thing be upheld by means of taxes, _while the interest of the Debt is reduced_, on the ground that the nation is _unable to pay the interest in full_?--Answer that question, Castlereagh, Sidmouth, Brougham, or Scarlett.

KENTISH JOURNAL: FROM KENSINGTON TO DARTFORD, ROCHESTER, CHATHAM, AND FAVERSHAM.

_Tuesday, December 4, 1821, Elverton Farm, near Faversham, Kent._

This is the first time, since I went to France, in 1792, that I have been on this side of _Shooters' Hill_. The land, generally speaking, from Deptford to Dartford is poor, and the surface ugly by nature, to which ugliness there has been made, just before we came to the latter place, a considerable addition by the enclosure of a common, and by the sticking up of some shabby-genteel houses, surrounded with dead fences and things called gardens, in all manner of ridiculous forms, making, all together, the bricks, hurdle-rods and earth say, as plainly as they can speak, "Here dwell _vanity_ and _poverty_." This is a little excrescence that has grown out of the immense sums which have been drawn from other parts of the kingdom to be expended on Barracks, Magazines, Martello-Towers, Catamarans, and all the excuses for lavish expenditure which the war for the Bourbons gave rise to. All things will return; these rubbishy flimsy things, on this common, will first be deserted, then crumble down, then be swept away, and the cattle, sheep, pigs and geese will once more graze upon the common, which will again furnish heath, furze and turf for the labourers on the neighbouring lands.--After you leave Dartford the land becomes excellent. You come to a bottom of chalk, many feet from the surface, and when that is the case the land is sure to be good; no _wet_ at bottom, no deep ditches, no water furrows necessary; sufficiently moist in dry weather, and no water lying about upon it in wet weather for any length of time. The chalk acts as a filtering-stone, not as a sieve, like gravel, and not as a dish, like clay. The chalk acts as the soft stone in Herefordshire does; but it is not so congenial to trees that have tap-roots.--Along through Gravesend towards Rochester the country presents a sort of gardening scene. Rochester (the Bishop of which is, or lately was, _tax Collector for London and Middlesex_) is a small but crowded place, lying on the south bank of the beautiful Medway, with a rising ground on the other side of the city. _Stroud_, which you pass through before you come to the bridge, over which you go to enter Rochester; _Rochester_ itself, and _Chatham_, form, in fact, one main street of about two miles and a half in length.--Here I was got into the scenes of my cap-and-feather days! Here, at between sixteen and seventeen, I enlisted for a soldier. Upon looking up towards the fortifications and the barracks, how many recollections crowded into my mind! The girls in these towns do not seem to be _so pretty_ as they were thirty-eight years ago; or, am I not so quick in discovering beauties as I was then? Have thirty-eight years corrected my taste, or made me a hypercritic in these matters? Is it that I now look at them with the solemnness of a "professional man," and not with the enthusiasm and eagerness of an "amateur?" I leave these questions for philosophers to solve. One thing I will say for the young women of these towns, and that is, that I always found those of them that I had the great happiness to be acquainted with, evince a sincere desire to do their best to smooth the inequalities of life, and to give us, "brave fellows," as often as they could, strong beer, when their churlish masters of fathers or husbands would have drenched us to death with small. This, at the out-set of life, gave me a high opinion of the judgment and justice of the female sex; an opinion which has been confirmed by the observations of my whole life.--This Chatham has had some monstrous _wens_ stuck on to it by the lavish expenditure of the war. These will moulder away. It is curious enough that I should meet with a gentleman in an inn at Chatham to give me a picture of the house-distress in that enormous wen, which, during the war, was stuck on to Portsmouth. Not less than fifty thousand people had been drawn together there! These are now dispersing. The coagulated blood is diluting and flowing back through the veins. Whole streets are deserted, and the eyes of the houses knocked out by the boys that remain. The jackdaws, as much as to say, "Our turn to be inspired and to teach is come," are beginning to take possession of the Methodist chapels. The gentleman told me that he had been down to Portsea to sell half a street of houses, left him by a relation; and that nobody would give him anything for them further than as very cheap fuel and rubbish! Good God! And is this "prosperity?" Is this the "prosperity of the war?" Have I not, for twenty long years, been regretting the existence of these unnatural embossments; these white-swellings, these odious wens, produced by _Corruption_ and engendering crime and misery and slavery? We shall see the whole of these wens abandoned by the inhabitants, and, at last, the cannons on the fortifications may be of some use in battering down the buildings.--But what is to be the fate of the great wen of all? The monster called, by the silly coxcombs of the press, "the metropolis of the empire"? What is to become of that multitude of towns that has been stuck up around it? The village of Kingston was smothered in the town of Portsea; and why? Because taxes, drained from other parts of the kingdom, were brought thither.

The dispersion of the wen is the only real difficulty that I see in settling the affairs of the nation and restoring it to a happy state. But dispersed it _must_ be; and if there be half a million, or more, of people to suffer, the consolation is, that the suffering will be divided into half a million of parts. As if the swelling out of London, naturally produced by the Funding System, were not sufficient; as if the evil were not sufficiently great from the inevitable tendency of the system of loans and funds, our pretty gentlemen must resort to positive institutions to augment the population of the Wen. They found that the increase of the Wen produced an increase of thieves and prostitutes, an increase of all sorts of diseases, an increase of miseries of all sorts; they saw that taxes drawn up to one point produced these effects; they must have a "_penitentiary_," for instance, to check the evil, and that they must needs have in the Wen! So that here were a million of pounds, drawn up in taxes, employed not only to keep the thieves and prostitutes still in the _Wen_, but to bring up to the Wen workmen to build the penitentiary, who and whose families, amounting, perhaps, to thousands, make an addition to the cause of that crime and misery, to check which is the object of the Penitentiary! People would follow, they must follow, the million of money. However, this is of a piece with all the rest of their goings on. They and their predecessors, Ministers and _House_, have been collecting together all the materials for a dreadful explosion; and if the explosion be not dreadful, other heads must point out the means of prevention.

_Wednesday, 5 Dec._

The land on quitting Chatham is chalk at bottom; but before you reach Sittingbourne there is a vein of gravel and sand under, but a great depth of loam above. About Sittingbourne the chalk bottom comes again, and continues on to this place, where the land appears to me to be as good as it can possibly be. Mr. WILLIAM WALLER, at whose house I am, has grown, this year, Mangel-Wurzel, the roots of which weigh, I think, on an average, twelve pounds, and in rows, too, at only about thirty inches distant from each other. In short, as far as _soil_ goes, it is impossible to see a finer country than this. You frequently see a field of fifty acres, level as a die, clean as a garden and as rich. Mr. _Birkbeck_ need not have crossed the Atlantic, and Alleghany into the bargain, to look for land _too rich to bear wheat_; for here is a plenty of it. In short, this is a country of hop-gardens, cherry, apple, pear and filbert orchards, and quick-set hedges. But, alas! what, in point of _beauty_, is a country without woods and lofty trees! And here there are very few indeed. I am now sitting in a room, from the window of which I look, _first_, over a large and level field of rich land, in which the drilled wheat is finely come up, and which is surrounded by clipped quickset hedges with a row of apple trees running by the sides of them; _next_, over a long succession of rich meadows, which are here called marshes, the shortest grass upon which will fatten sheep or oxen; _next_, over a little branch of the salt water which runs up to Faversham; _beyond that_, on the Isle of Shepry (or Shepway), which rises a little into a sort of ridge that runs along it; rich fields, pastures and orchards lie all around me; and yet, I declare, that I a million times to one prefer, as a spot to _live on_, the heaths, the miry coppices, the wild woods and the forests of Sussex and Hampshire.

_Thursday, 6 Dec._

"Agricultural distress" is the great topic of general conversation. The _Webb Hallites_ seem to prevail here. The fact is, farmers in general read nothing but the newspapers; these, in the Wen, are under the control of the Corruption of one or the other of the factions; and in the country, nine times out of ten, under the control of the parsons and landlords, who are the magistrates, as they are pompously called, that is to say, Justices of the Peace. From such vehicles what are farmers to learn? They are, in general, thoughtful and sensible men; but their natural good sense is perverted by these publications, had it not been for which we never should have seen "_a sudden transition from war to peace_" lasting seven years, and more _sudden_ in its destructive effects at last than at first. _Sir Edward Knatchbull_ and _Mr. Honeywood_ are the members of the "Collective Wisdom" for this county. The former was, till of late, a _Tax-Collector_. I hear that he is a great advocate for _corn-bills_! I suppose he does not wish to let people who have _leases_ see the bottom of the evil. He may get his rents for this year; but it will be his last year, if the interest of the Debt be not very greatly reduced. Some people here think that corn is _smuggled in_ even now! Perhaps it is, _upon the whole_, best that the delusion should continue for a year longer; as that would tend to make the destruction of the system more sure, or, at least, make the cure more radical.

_Friday, 7 Dec._

I went through _Faversham_. A very pretty little town, and just ten minutes' walk from the market-place up to the Dover turnpike-road. Here are the _powder-affairs_ that Mr. HUME so well exposed. An immensity of buildings and expensive things. Why are not these premises let or sold? However, this will never be done until there be a _reformed Parliament_. Pretty little VAN, that beauty of all beauties; that orator of all orators; that saint of all saints; that financier of all financiers, said that if Mr. HUME were to pare down the expenses of government to _his_ wish, there would be others "the Hunts, Cobbetts, and Carliles, who would still want the expense to be less." I do not know _how low_ Mr. Hume would wish to go; but for myself I say that if I ever have the power to do it, I will reduce the expenditure, and that in quick time too, down to what it was in the reign of Queen Anne; that is to say, to less than is now paid to tax-gatherers for their labour in collecting the taxes; and, monstrous as VAN may think the idea, I do not regard it as impossible that I may have such power; which I would certainly not employ to do an act of _injustice_ to any human being, and would, at the same time, maintain the throne in more real splendour than that in which it is now maintained. But I would have nothing to do with any VANS, except as door-keepers or porters.

_Saturday, 8 Dec._

Came home very much pleased with my visit to Mr. WALKER, in whose house I saw no drinking of wine, spirits, or even beer; where all, even to the little children, were up by candle-light in the morning, and where the most perfect sobriety was accompanied by constant cheerfulness. _Kent_ is in a deplorable way. The farmers are skilful and intelligent, generally speaking. But there is infinite _corruption_ in Kent, owing partly to the swarms of West Indians, Nabobs, Commissioners, and others of nearly the same description, that have selected it for the place of their residence; but owing still more to the immense sums of public money that have, during the last thirty years, been expended in it. And when one thinks of these, the conduct of the people of Dover, Canterbury, and other places, in the case of the ever-lamented Queen, does them everlasting honour. The _fruit_ in Kent is more _select_ than in Herefordshire, where it is raised for _cyder_, while, in Kent, it is raised for sale in its fruit state, a great deal being sent to the _Wen_, and a great deal sent to the North of England and to Scotland. The orchards are beautiful indeed. Kept in the neatest order, and, indeed, all belonging to them excels anything of the kind to be seen in Normandy; and as to apples, I never saw any so good in France as those of Kent. This county, so blessed by Providence, has been cursed by the System in a peculiar degree. It has been the _receiver_ of immense sums, raised on the other counties. This has puffed its _rents_ to an unnatural height; and now that the drain of other counties is stopped, it feels like a pampered pony turned out in winter to live upon a common. It is in an extremely "unsatisfactory state," and has certainly a greater mass of suffering to endure than any other part of the kingdom, the _Wens_ only excepted. Sir EDWARD KNATCHBULL, who is a child of the System, does appear to see no more of the cause of these sufferings than if he were a baby. How should he? Not very bright by nature; never listening but to one side of the question; being a man who wants high rents to be paid him; not gifted with much light, and that little having to strive against prejudice, false shame, and self interest, what wonder is there that he should not see things in their true light?

NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK JOURNAL.

_Bergh-Apton, near Norwich, Monday, 10 Dec. 1821._

From the _Wen_ to Norwich, from which I am now distant seven miles, there is nothing in Essex, Suffolk, or this county, that can be called a _hill_. Essex, when you get beyond the immediate influence of the gorgings and disgorgings of the Wen; that is to say, beyond the demand for crude vegetables and repayment in manure, is by no means a fertile county. There appears generally to be a bottom of _clay_; not _soft chalk_, which they persist in calling clay in Norfolk. I wish I had one of these Norfolk men in a coppice in Hampshire or Sussex, and I would show him what _clay_ is. Clay is what pots and pans and jugs and tiles are made of; and not soft, whitish stuff that crumbles to pieces in the sun, instead of baking as hard as a stone, and which, in dry weather, is to be broken to pieces by nothing short of a sledge-hammer. The narrow ridges on which the wheat is sown; the water furrows; the water standing in the dips of the pastures; the rusty iron-like colour of the water coming out of some of the banks; the deep ditches; the rusty look of the pastures--all show, that here is a bottom of clay. Yet there is gravel too; for the oaks do not grow well. It was not till I got nearly to SUDBURY that I saw much change for the better. Here the bottom of chalk, the soft dirty-looking chalk that the Norfolk people call clay, begins to be the bottom, and this, with very little exception (as far as I have been) is the bottom of all the lands of these two fine counties of Suffolk and Norfolk.--SUDBURY has some fine meadows near it on the sides of the river Stour. The land all along to Bury Saint Edmund's is very fine; but no trees worth looking at. _Bury_, formerly the seat of an Abbot, the last of whom was, I think, hanged, or somehow put to death, by that matchless tyrant, Henry VIII., is a very pretty place; extremely clean and neat; no ragged or dirty people to be seen, and women (_young_ ones I mean) very pretty and very neatly dressed.--On this side of Bury, a considerable distance lower, I saw a field of _Rape_, transplanted very thick, for, I suppose, sheep feed in the spring. The farming all along to Norwich is very good. The land clean, and everything done in a masterly manner.

_Tuesday, 11 Dec._

Mr. SAMUEL CLARKE, my host, has about 30 acres of _Swedes_ in rows. Some at 4 feet distances, some at 30 inches; and about 4 acres of the 4-feet Swedes were transplanted. I have seen thousands of acres of Swedes in these counties, and here are the largest crops that I have seen. The widest rows are decidedly the largest crops here; and, the _transplanted_, though under disadvantageous circumstances, amongst the best of the best. The wide rows amount to at least 20 tons to the acre, exclusive of the greens taken off two months ago, which weighed 5 tons to the acre. Then, there is the inter tillage, so beneficial to the land, and the small quantity of manure required in the broad rows, compared to what is required when the seed is drilled or sown upon the level. Mr. NICHOLLS, a neighbour of Mr. CLARKE, has a part of a field transplanted on _seven turn ridges_, put in when in the other part of the field, drilled, the plants were a fortnight old. He has a much larger crop in the transplanted than in the drilled part. But, if it had been a _fly-year_, he might have had _none_ in the drilled part, while, in all probability, the crop in the transplanted part would have been better than it now is, seeing that a _wet_ summer, though favourable to the hitting of the Swedes, is by no means favourable to their attaining a great size of bulb. This is the case this year with all turnips. A great deal of leaf and neck, but not bulbs in proportion. The advantages of transplanting are, _first_, you make sure of a crop in spite of fly; and, _second_, you have six weeks or two months longer to prepare your ground. And the advantages of wide rows are, _first_, that you want only about half the quantity of manure; and, _second_, that you _plough_ the ground two or three times during the summer.

_Grove, near Holt, Thursday, 13th Dec._

Came to the Grove (Mr. Withers's), near Holt, along with Mr. Clarke. Through _Norwich_ to _Aylsham_ and then to _Holt_. On our road we passed the house of the late _Lord Suffield_, who married Castlereagh's wife's sister, who is a daughter of the late Earl of Buckinghamshire, who had for so many years that thumping sinecure of eleven thousand a year in Ireland, and who was the son of a man that, under the name of Mr. Hobart, cut such a figure in supporting Lord North and afterwards Pitt, and was made a peer under the auspices of the latter of these two heaven-born Ministers. This house, which is a very ancient one, was, they say, the birth-place of Ann de Boleyne, the mother of Queen Elizabeth. Not much matter; for she married the king while his real wife was alive. I could have excused her, if there had been no marrying in the case; but hypocrisy, always bad, becomes detestable when it resorts to religious ceremony as its mask. She, no more than Cranmer, seems, to her last moments, to have remembered her sins against her lawful queen. Fox's "_Book of Martyrs_," that ought to be called "the _Book of Liars_," says that Cranmer, the recanter and re-recanter, held out his offending hand in the flames, and cried out "that hand, that hand!" If he had cried out _Catherine! Catherine!_ I should have thought better of him; but it is clear that the whole story is a lie, invented by the protestants, and particularly by the sectarians, to white-wash the character of this perfidious hypocrite and double apostate, who, if bigotry had something to do in bringing him to the stake, certainly deserved his fate, if any offences committed by man can deserve so horrible a punishment.--The present LORD SUFFIELD is that Mr. EDWARD HARBORD, whose father-in-law left him 500_l._ to buy a seat in Parliament, and who refused to carry an address to the late beloved and lamented Queen, because Major Cartwright and myself were chosen to accompany him! Never mind, my Lord; you will grow less fastidious! They say, however, that he is really good to his tenants, and has told them, that he will take anything that they can give. There is some sense in this! He is a great Bible Man; and it is strange that he cannot see, that things are out of order, when _his_ interference in this way can be at all _necessary_, while there is a Church that receives a tenth part of the produce of the earth.--There are some oak woods here, but very poor. Not like those, not near like the worst of those, in Hampshire and Herefordshire. All this eastern coast seems very unpropitious to trees of all sorts.--We passed through the estate of a Mr. Marsin, whose house is near the road, a very poor spot, and the first really poor ground I have seen in Norfolk. A nasty spewy black gravel on the top of a sour clay. It is worse than the heaths between Godalming and Liphook; for, while it is too poor to grow anything but heath, it is too cold to give you the chirping of the grasshopper in summer. However, Mr. Marsin has been too wise to enclose this wretched land, which is just like that which Lord Caernarvon has enclosed in the parishes of Highclere, and Burghclere, and which, for tillage, really is not worth a single farthing an acre.--Holt is a little, old-fashioned, substantially-built market-town. The land just about it, or, at least, towards the east, is poor, and has been lately enclosed.

_Friday, 14th Dec._

Went to see the estate of Mr. Hardy at Leveringsett, a hamlet about two miles from Holt. This is the first time that I have seen a _valley_ in this part of England. From Holt you look, to the distance of seven or eight miles, over a very fine valley, leaving a great deal of inferior hill and dell within its boundaries. At the bottom of this general valley, Mr. Hardy has a very beautiful estate of about four hundred acres. His house is at one end of it near the high road, where he has a malt-house and a brewery, the neat and ingenious manner of managing which I would detail if my total unacquaintance with machinery did not disqualify me for the task. His estate forms a valley of itself, somewhat longer than broad. The tops, and the sides of the tops of the hills round it, and also several little hillocks in the valley itself, are judiciously planted with trees of various sorts, leaving good wide roads, so that it is easy to ride round them in a carriage. The fields, the fences, the yards and stacks, the buildings, the cattle, all showed the greatest judgment and industry. There was really nothing that the most critical observer could say was _out of order_. However, the forest trees do not grow well here. The oaks are mere scrubs, as they are about Brentwood in Essex, and in some parts of Cornwall; and, for some unaccountable reason, people seldom plant the _ash_, which no wind will _shave_, as it does the oak.

_Saturday, 15 Dec._

Spent the evening amongst the Farmers, at their Market Room at Holt; and very much pleased at them I was. We talked over the _cause of the low prices_, and I, as I have done everywhere, endeavoured to convince them, that prices must fall a great deal lower yet; and that no man, who wishes not to be ruined, ought to keep or take a farm, unless on a calculation of best wheat at 4_s._ a bushel and a best Southdown ewe at 15_s._ or even 12_s._ They heard me patiently, and, I believe, were well convinced of the truth of what I said. I told them of the correctness of the predictions of their great countryman, Mr. PAINE, and observed, how much better it would have been, to take his advice, than to burn him in effigy. I endeavoured (but in such a case all human powers must fail!) to describe to them the sort and size of the talents of the Stern-path-of-duty man, of the great hole-digger, of the jester, of the Oxford scholar, of the loan-jobber (who had just made an enormous grasp), of the Oracle, and so on. Here, as everywhere else, I hear every creature speak loudly in praise of _Mr. Coke_. It is well known to my readers, that I think nothing of him as a _public_ man; that I think even his good qualities an injury to his country, because they serve the knaves whom he is duped by to dupe the people more effectually; but, it would be base in me not to say, that I hear, from men of all parties, and sensible men too, expressions made use of towards him that affectionate children use towards the best of parents. I have not met with a single exception.

_Bergh Apton, Sunday, 16 Dec._

Came from Holt through Saxthorpe and Cawston. At the former village were on one end of a decent white house, these words, "_Queen Caroline; for her Britons mourn_," and a crown over all in black. I need not have looked to see: I might have been sure that the owner of the house was a _shoe-maker_, a trade which numbers more men of sense and of public spirit than any other in the kingdom.--At Cawston we stopped at a public house, the keeper of which had taken and read the Register for years. I shall not attempt to describe the pleasure I felt at the hearty welcome given us by Mr. Pern and his wife and by a young miller of the village, who, having learnt at Holt that we were to return that way, had come to meet us, the house being on the side of the great road, from which the village is at some distance. This is the birth-place of the famous _Botley Parson_, all the history of whom we now learned, and, if we could have gone to the village, they were prepared to _ring the bells_, and show us the old woman who nursed the _Botley Parson_! These Norfolk _baws_ never do things by halves. We came away, very much pleased with our reception at Cawston, and with a promise, on my part, that, if I visited the county again, I would write a Register there; a promise which I shall certainly keep.

_Great Yarmouth, Friday (morning), 21st Dec._

The day before yesterday I set out for Bergh Apton with Mr. CLARKE, to come hither by the way of _Beccles_ in Suffolk. We stopped at Mr. Charles Clarke's at Beccles, where we saw some good and sensible men, who see clearly into all the parts of the works of the "Thunderers," and whose anticipations, as to the "general working of events," are such as they ought to be. They gave us a humorous account of the "rabble" having recently crowned a Jackass, and of a struggle between them and the "Yeomanry Cavaltry." This _was_ a place of most ardent and blazing _loyalty_, as the pretenders to it call it; but, it seems it now blazes less furiously; it is milder, more measured in its effusions; and, with the help of low prices, will become bearable in time. This Beccles is a very pretty place, has watered meadows near it, and is situated amidst fine lands. What a _system_ it must be to make people wretched in a country like this! Could he be _heaven-born_ that invented such a system? GAFFER GOOCH'S father, a very old man, lives not far from here. We had a good deal of fun about the Gaffer, who will certainly never lose the name, unless he should be made a Lord.--We slept at the house of a friend of Mr. Clarke on our way, and got to this very fine town of Great Yarmouth yesterday about noon. A party of friends met us and conducted us about the town, which is a very beautiful one indeed. What I liked best, however, was the hearty welcome that I met with, because it showed, that the reign of calumny and delusion was passed. A company of gentlemen gave me a dinner in the evening, and, in all my life I never saw a set of men more worthy of my respect and gratitude. Sensible, modest, understanding the whole of our case, and clearly foreseeing what is about to happen. One gentleman proposed, that, as it would be impossible for all to go to London, there should be a _Provincial Feast of the Gridiron_, a plan, which, I hope, will be adopted--I leave Great Yarmouth with sentiments of the sincerest regard for all those whom I there saw and conversed with, and with my best wishes for the happiness of all its inhabitants; nay, even the _parsons_ not excepted; for, if they did not come to welcome me, they collected in a group to _see_ me, and that was one step towards doing justice to him whom their order have so much, so foully, and, if they knew their own interest, so foolishly slandered.

_Bergh Apton, 22nd Dec. (night)._

After returning from Yarmouth yesterday, went to dine at Stoke-Holy-Cross, about six miles off; got home at mid-night, and came to Norwich this morning, this being market-day, and also the day fixed on for a Radical Reform Dinner at the Swan Inn, to which I was invited. Norwich is a very fine city, and the Castle, which stands in the middle of it, on a hill, is truly majestic. The meat and poultry and vegetable market is beautiful. It is kept in a large open square in the middle, or nearly so, of the City. The ground is a pretty sharp slope, so that you see all at once. It resembles one of the French markets, only _there_ the vendors are all standing and gabbling like parrots, and the meat is lean and bloody and nasty, and the people snuffy and grimy in hands and face, the contrary, precisely the contrary of all which is the case in this beautiful market at Norwich, where the women have a sort of uniform brown great coats, with white aprons and _bibs_ (I think they call them) going from the apron up to the bosom. They equal in neatness (for nothing can surpass) the market women in Philadelphia.--The cattle-market is held on the hill by the castle, and many _fairs_ are smaller in bulk of stock. The corn-market is held in a very magnificent place, called Saint Andrew's Hall, which will contain two or three thousand persons. They tell me, that this used to be a most delightful scene; a most joyous one; and, I think, it was this scene that Mr. CURWEN described in such glowing colours when he was talking of the Norfolk farmers, each worth so many thousands of pounds. Bear me witness, reader, that _I never was dazzled_ by such sights; that the false glare never put my eyes out; and that, even then, twelve years ago, I warned Mr. CURWEN of the _result_! Bear witness to this, my Disciples, and justify the doctrines of him for whose sakes you have endured persecution. How different would Mr. CURWEN find the scene _now_! What took place at the dinner has been already recorded in the Register; and I have only to add with regard to it, that my reception at Norfolk was such, that I have only to regret the total want of power to make those hearty Norfolk and Norwich friends any suitable return, whether by act or word.

_Kensington, Monday, 24 Dec._

Went from Bergh Apton to Norwich in the morning, and from Norwich to London during the day, carrying with me great admiration of and respect for this county of _excellent farmers_, and hearty, open and spirited men. The Norfolk people are quick and smart in their motions and in their speaking. Very neat and _trim_ in all their farming concerns, and very skilful. Their land is good, their roads are level, and the bottom of their soil is dry, to be sure; and these are great advantages; but they are diligent, and make the most of everything. Their management of all sorts of stock is most judicious; they are careful about manure; their teams move quickly; and, in short, it is a county of most excellent cultivators.--The churches in Norfolk are generally large and the towers lofty. They have all been well built at first. Many of them are of the Saxon architecture. They are, almost all (I do not remember an exception), placed on the _highest_ spots to be found near where they stand; and, it is curious enough, that the contrary practice should have prevailed in _hilly_ countries, where they are generally found in valleys and in low, sheltered dells, even in those valleys! These churches prove that the people of Norfolk and Suffolk were always a superior people in point of wealth, while the size of them proves that the country parts were, at one time, a great deal more populous than they now are. The great drawbacks on the beauty of these counties are, their flatness and their want of fine woods; but, to those who can dispense with these, Norfolk, under a wise and just government, can have nothing to ask more than Providence and the industry of man have given.

LANDLORD DISTRESS MEETINGS.

For, in fact, it is not the _farmer_, but the _Landlord_ and _Parson_, who wants relief from the "_Collective_." The tenant's remedy is, quitting his farm or bringing down his rent to what he can afford to give, wheat being 3 or 4 shillings a bushel. This is his remedy. What should _he_ want high prices for? They can do _him_ no good; and this I proved to the farmers last year. The fact is, the Landlords and Parsons are urging the farmers on to get _something done_ to give them high rents and high tithes.

At _Hertford_ there has been a meeting at which _some_ sense was discovered, at any rate. The parties talked about the _fund-holder_, the _Debt_, the _taxes_, and so on, and seemed to be in a very warm temper. Pray, keep yourselves _cool_, gentlemen; for you have a great deal to endure yet. I deeply regret that I have not room to insert the resolutions of this meeting.

There is to be a meeting at _Battle_ (East Sussex) on the 3rd instant, at which _I mean to be_. I want to _see_ my friends on the _South Downs_. To see how they _look_ now.

[At a public dinner given to Mr. Cobbett at Norwich, on the market-day above mentioned, the company drank the toast of _Mr. Cobbett and his "Trash,"_ the name "two-penny trash," having being at one time applied by Lord Castlereagh to the _Register_. In acknowledging this toast Mr. Cobbett addressed the company in a speech, of which the following is a passage:]

"My thanks to you for having drunk my health, are great and sincere; but much greater pleasure do I feel at the approbation bestowed on that _Trash_, which has, for so many years been a mark for the finger of scorn to be pointed at by ignorant selfishness and arrogant and insolent power. To enumerate, barely to name, all, or a hundredth part of, the endeavours that have been made to stifle this _Trash_ would require a much longer space of time than that which we have now before us. But, gentlemen, those endeavours must have _cost money_; money must have been expended in the circulation of Anti-Cobbett, and the endless bale of papers and pamphlets put forth to check the progress of the _Trash_: and, when we take into view the immense sums expended in keeping down the spirit excited by the _Trash_, who of us is to tell, whether these endeavours, taken altogether, may not have added _many millions_ to that debt, of which (without any hint at a _concomitant measure_) some men have now the audacity, the unprincipled, the profligate assurance to talk of reducing the interest. The Trash, Gentlemen, is now triumphant; its triumph we are now met to celebrate; proofs of its triumph I myself witnessed not many hours ago, in that scene where the best possible evidence was to be found. In walking through St. Andrew's Hall, my mind was not so much engaged on the grandeur of the place, or on the gratifying reception I met with; those hearty shakes by the hand which I so much like, those smiles of approbation, which not to see with pride would argue an insensibility to honest fame: even these, I do sincerely assure you, engaged my mind much less than the melancholy reflection, that, of the two thousand or fifteen hundred farmers then in my view, there were probably _three-fourths_ who came to the Hall with aching hearts, and who would leave it in a state of mental agony. What a thing to contemplate, Gentlemen! What a scene is here! A set of men, occupiers of the land; producers of all that we eat, drink, wear, and of all that forms the buildings that shelter us; a set of men industrious and careful by habit; cool, thoughtful, and sensible from the instructions of nature; a set of men provident above all others, and engaged in pursuits in their nature stable as the very earth they till: to see a set of men like this plunged into anxiety, embarrassment, jeopardy, not to be described; and when the particular individuals before me were famed for their superior skill in this great and solid pursuit, and were blessed with soil and other circumstances to make them prosperous and happy: to behold this sight would have been more than sufficient to sink my heart within me, had I not been upheld by the reflection, that I had done all in my power to prevent these calamities, and that I still had in reserve that which, with the assistance of the sufferers themselves, would restore them and the nation to happiness."

SUSSEX JOURNAL: TO BATTLE, THROUGH BROMLEY, SEVEN-OAKS, AND TUNBRIDGE.

_Battle, Wednesday, 2 Jan. 1822._

Came here to-day from Kensington, in order to see what goes on at the Meeting to be held here to-morrow, of the "Gentry, Clergy, Freeholders, and Occupiers of Land in the Rape of Hastings, to take into consideration the distressed state of the Agricultural interest." I shall, of course, give an account of this meeting after it has taken place.--You come through part of _Kent_ to get to _Battle_ from the Great _Wen_ on the Surrey side of the Thames. The first town is Bromley, the next Seven-Oaks, the next Tunbridge, and between Tunbridge and this place you cross the boundaries of the two counties.--From the Surrey Wen to Bromley the land is generally a deep loam on a gravel, and you see few trees except elm. A very ugly country. On quitting Bromley the land gets poorer; clay at bottom; the wheat sown on five, or seven, turn lands; the furrows shining with wet; rushes on the wastes on the sides of the road. Here there is a common, part of which has been enclosed and thrown out again, or, rather, the fences carried away.--There is a frost this morning, some ice, and the women look rosy-cheeked.--There is a very great variety of soil along this road; bottom of yellow clay; then of sand; then of sand-stone; then of solider stone; then (for about five miles) of chalk; then of red clay; then chalk again; here (before you come to Seven-Oaks) is a most beautiful and rich valley, extending from east to west, with rich corn-fields and fine trees; then comes sand-stone again; and the hop-gardens near Seven-Oaks, which is a pretty little town with beautiful environs, part of which consists of the park of _Knowle_, the seat of the Duchess of Dorset. It is a very fine place. And there is another park, on the other side of the town. So that this is a delightful place, and the land appears to be very good. The gardens and houses all look neat and nice. On quitting Seven-Oaks you come to a bottom of gravel for a short distance, and to a clay for many miles. When I say that I saw teams _carting_ gravel from this spot to a distance of nearly _ten miles_ along the road, the reader will be at no loss to know what sort of bottom the land has all along here. The bottom then becomes sand-stone again. This vein of land runs all along through the county of Sussex, and the clay runs into Hampshire, across the forests of Bere and Waltham, then across the parishes of Ouslebury, Stoke, and passing between the sand hills of Southampton and chalk hills of Winchester, goes westward till stopped by the chalky downs between Romsey and Salisbury.--Tunbridge is a small but very nice town, and has some fine meadows and a navigable river.--The rest of the way to Battle presents, alternately, clay and sand-stone. Of course the coppices and oak woods are very frequent. There is now and then a hop-garden spot, and now and then an orchard of apples or cherries; but these are poor indeed compared with what you see about Canterbury and Maidstone. The agricultural state of the country or, rather, the quality of the land, from Bromley to Battle, may be judged of from the fact, that I did not see, as I came along, more than thirty acres of Swedes during the fifty-six miles! In Norfolk I should, in the same distance, have seen five hundred acres! However, man was not the maker of the land; and, as to human happiness, I am of opinion, that as much, and even more, falls to the lot of the leather-legged chaps that live in and rove about amongst those clays and woods as to the more regularly disciplined labourers of the rich and prime parts of England. As "God has made the back to the burthen," so the clay and coppice people make the dress to the stubs and bushes. Under the sole of the shoe is _iron_; from the sole six inches upwards is a high-low; then comes a leather bam to the knee; then comes a pair of leather breeches; then comes a stout doublet; over this comes a smock-frock; and the wearer sets brush and stubs and thorns and mire at defiance. I have always observed, that woodland and forest labourers are best off in the main. The coppices give them pleasant and profitable work in winter. If they have not so great a corn-harvest, they have a three weeks' harvest in April or May; that is to say, in the season of barking, which in Hampshire is called _stripping_, and in Sussex _flaying_, which employs women and children as well as men. And then in the great article of _fuel_! They _buy_ none. It is miserable work, where this is to be bought, and where, as at Salisbury, the poor take by turns the making of fires at their houses to boil four or five tea-kettles. What a winter-life must those lead, whose turn it is not to make the fire! At Launceston in Cornwall a man, a tradesman too, told me, that the people in general could not afford to have fire in ordinary, and that he himself paid 3_d._ for boiling a leg of mutton at another man's fire! The leather-legged-race know none of these miseries, at any rate. They literally get their fuel "by _hook_ or by _crook_," whence, doubtless, comes that old and very expressive saying, which is applied to those cases where people _will have a thing_ by one means or another.

_Battle, Thursday (night), 3 Jan. 1822._

To-day there has been a _Meeting_ here of the landlords and farmers in this part of Sussex, which is called the _Rape of Hastings_. The object was to agree on a petition to Parliament praying for _relief_! Good God! Where is this to _end_? We now see the effects of those _rags_ which I have been railing against for the last twenty years. Here were collected together not less than 300 persons, principally landlords and farmers, brought from their homes by their distresses and by their alarms for the future! Never were such things heard in any country before; and, it is useless to hope, for terrific must be the consequences, if an effectual remedy be not speedily applied. The town, which is small, was in a great bustle before noon; and the Meeting (in a large room in the principal inn) took place about one o'clock. Lord Ashburnham was called to the chair, and there were present Mr. Curteis, one of the county members, Mr. Fuller, who formerly used to cut _such a figure_ in the House of Commons, Mr. Lambe, and many other gentlemen of landed property within the Rape, or district, for which the Meeting was held. Mr. Curteis, after Lord Ashburnham had opened the business, addressed the Meeting.

Mr. Fuller then tendered some Resolutions, describing the fallen state of the landed interest, and proposing to pray, _generally_, for relief. Mr. Britton complained, that it was not proposed to pray for some _specific measure_, and insisted, that the cause of the evil was the rise in the value of money without a corresponding reduction in the taxes.--A Committee was appointed to draw up a petition, which was next produced. It merely described the distress, and prayed generally for relief. Mr. Holloway proposed an addition, containing an imputation of the distress to restricted currency and unabated taxation, and praying for a reduction of taxes. A discussion now arose upon two points: first, whether the addition were admissible at all! and, second, whether Mr. Holloway was qualified to offer it to the Meeting. Both the points having been, at last, decided in the affirmative, the addition, or amendment, was put, and _lost_; and then the original petition was adopted.

After the business of the day was ended, there was a dinner in the inn, in the same room where the Meeting had been held. I was at this dinner; and Mr. Britton having proposed my health, and Mr. Curteis, who was in the Chair, having given it, I thought it would have looked like mock-modesty, which is, in fact, only another term for hypocrisy, to refrain from expressing my opinions upon a point or two connected with the business of the day. I shall now insert a substantially correct sketch of what the company was indulgent enough to hear from me at the dinner; which I take from the report contained in the _Morning Chronicle_ of Saturday last. The report in the Chronicle has all the _pith_ of what I advanced relative to _the inutility of Corn Bills_, and relative to _the cause of further declining prices_; two points of the greatest importance in themselves, and which I was, and am, uncommonly anxious to press upon the attention of the public.

The following is a part of the speech so reported:--