MISCELLANY by Autolycus, the snapper-up
of unconsidered trifles
No 5
WILLIAM COBBETT'S RURAL RIDE REPORT I
WILLIAM COBBETT'S RURAL RIDE REPORT I
[Note: William Cobbett (1763 – 18 June 1835) was a
farmer, soldier, journalist, campaigner and finally Member of Parliament.
His Rural Rides were first published
in the Political Register, the weekly campaigning pamphlet-cum-newspaper
that he owned and edited from 1801 until his death, and many were later (1830)
collected and published in book form.
They record actual rural rides that he took
in order to report on the state of farming and the countryside generally,
reports which frequently lead him on to broader discussions, as the extract shows. Uppermost in his mind is the Government’s
treatment of the farming community, and in particular the Corn Laws, legislation operating in the United
Kingdom between 1815 and 1846, which imposed restrictions and tariffs on
imported grain. Although they were designed to keep grain prices high to favour
domestic producers, and had successfully done so in the very good harvest years
of 1819 to 1822, we find Cobbett in these extracts from 1823 commenting on what
happens in a poor harvest year, and his mind is concentrated because it is
raining for much of this rural ride (in late July), which threatens to wreck
the harvest by preventing the crops from being harvested, leaving them rotting
in the fields.
His main criticisms are aimed at William Pitt the
younger (1759– 1806) who had been Prime Minister at the end of the previous century and
briefly again from 1804 to 1806, and Lord Liverpool (1770–1828) who was
Prime Minister at the time he wrote most of these Rides. Cobbett also has opinions on ex-soldiers
begging, complaining priests, the recently settled French Wars, the need to
borrow vast sums of money to pay the cost of the French Wars, the ‘Lords of the
Loom’ (northern mill-owners), and most politicians other than himself. And the ‘boroughmongers’ (those who sold to
candidates seats for the undemocratic House of Commons). On the other hand he is
not averse to self-congratulation as the author of books telling farmers’ wives
how to be more resourceful (by hat-plaiting), and as the person who had,
single-handed, revolutionised agriculture in America while based at a farm on
Long Island, New York in 1817-1819, having fled from England for fear of being
imprisoned for seditious writings. And
inventing a cure for whooping-cough. All
in all, however, these reports are a picture of the country, its earth and
seasons, interspersed with various rural rants, which go to show how concerned
thoughtful people were about their environment.
Cobbett’s views on cities and city life may be inferred from his
nickname for London (The Wen). A "wen" is a sebaceous
cyst.]
Reigate (Surrey),
Saturday, 26 July, 1823.
Saturday, 26 July, 1823.
Came from
the Wen, through Croydon. It rained nearly all the way. The corn is good. A
great deal of straw. The barley very fine; but all are backward; and if this
weather continue much longer, there must be that “heavenly blight” for which
the wise friends of “social order” are so fervently praying. But if the wet now
cease, or cease soon, what is to become of the “poor souls of farmers” God only
knows! In one article the wishes of our wise Government appear to have been
gratified to the utmost; and that, too, without the aid of any express form of
prayer. I allude to the hops, of which it is said
that there will be, according to all appearance, none at all! Bravo! Courage,
my Lord Liverpool! This article, at any rate, will not choak us, will not
distress us, will not make us miserable by “over-production”.
At
Mearstam there is a field of cabbages, which, I was told, belonged to Colonel
Joliffe. They appear to be early Yorks, and look very well. The rows seem to be
about eighteen inches apart. There may be from 15,000 to 20,000 plants to the
acre; and I dare say that they will weigh three pounds each, or more. I know of
no crop of cattle food equal to this. If they be early Yorks, they will be in
perfection in October, just when the grass is almost gone. No five acres of
common grass land will, during the year, yield cattle food equal, either in
quantity or quality, to what one acre of land in early Yorks will produce
during three months.
Worth (Sussex),
Wednesday, 30 July.
Wednesday, 30 July.
Worth is
ten miles from Reigate on the Brighton-road, which goes through Horley. Reigate
has the Surrey chalk hills close to it on the North, and sand-hills along on
its South, and nearly close to it also. As soon as you are over the sand-hills,
you come into a country of deep clay; and this is called the Weald
of Surrey. This Weald winds away round, towards the West, into Sussex, and
towards the East, into Kent. In this part of Surrey it is about eight miles
wide, from North to South, and ends just as you enter the parish of Worth,
which is the first parish (in this part) in the county of Sussex. All across
the Weald (the strong and stiff clays) the corn looks very well. The wheat,
where it has begun to die, is dying of a good colour, not black, nor in any way
that indicates blight. It is, however, all backward. Some few fields of white
wheat are changing colour; but for the greater part it is quite green; and
though a sudden change of weather might make a great alteration in a short
time, it does appear that the harvest must be later than usual. If we were now
to have good, bright, hot weather, for as long a time as we have had wet, the
whole of the corn in these Southern counties would be housed, and great part of
it threshed out, by the 10th of September. So that all depends on the weather,
which appears to be clearing up in spite of Saint Swithin. This Saint’s
birth-day is the 15th of July; and it is said that if rain fall on his
birth-day it will fall on forty days successively. But I believe that
you reckon retrospectively as well as prospectively; and if this be the case,
we may, this time, escape the extreme unction; for it began to rain on the 26th
of June; so that it rained 19 days before the 15th of July; and as it has
rained 16 days since, it has rained, in the whole, 35 days, and, of course,
five days more will satisfy this wet soul of a saint. Let him take his five
days; and there will be plenty of time for us to have wheat at four shillings a
bushel. But if the Saint will give us no credit for the 19 days, and will
insist upon his forty daily drenchings after the fifteenth of July; if
he will have such a soaking as this at the celebration of the anniversary of
his birth, let us hope that he is prepared with a miracle for feeding us, and
with a still more potent miracle for keeping the farmers from riding over us,
filled, as Lord Liverpool thinks their pockets will be, by the annihilation of
their crops!
This has
been a fine day; and it is clear that they expect it to continue. I saw but two
pieces of Swedish turnips between the Wen and Reigate, but one at Reigate, and
but one between Reigate and Worth. During a like distance in Norfolk or
Suffolk, you would see two or three hundred fields of this sort of root. Those
that I do see here look well. The white turnips are just up, or just sown,
though there are some which have rough leaves already. This Weald is, indeed,
not much of land for turnips; but from what I see here, and from what I know of
the weather, I think that the turnips must be generally good. The after-grass
is surprisingly fine. The lands which have had hay cut and carried from them
are, I think, more beautiful than I ever saw them before. It should,
however, always be borne in mind that this beautiful grass is by no
means the best. An acre of this grass will not make a quarter part so
much butter as an acre of rusty-looking pasture, made rusty by the rays of the
sun. Sheep on the commons die of the beautiful grass produced by
long-continued rains at this time of the year. Even geese, hardy as they are,
die from the same cause. The rain will give quantity; but without sun the
quality must be poor at the best.
I met at
Worth a beggar, who told me, in consequence of my asking where he belonged,
that he was born in South Carolina. I found, at last, that he was born in the
English army, during the American rebel-war; that he became a soldier himself;
and that it had been his fate to serve under the Duke of York, in Holland;
under General Whitelock, at Buenos Ayres; under Sir John Moore, at Corunna; and
under “the Greatest Captain,” [Sir Arthur Wellesley, later Duke of Wellington]
at Talavera! This poor fellow did not seem to be at all aware that in the last
case he partook in a victory! He had never before heard of its being a
victory. He, poor fool, thought that it was a defeat. “Why,” said he,
“we ran away, Sir.” Oh, yes! said I, and so you did afterwards, perhaps,
in Portugal, when Massena was at your heels; but it is only in certain cases
that running away is a mark of being defeated; or, rather, it is only with
certain commanders. A matter of much more interest to us, however, is that the
wars for “social order,” not forgetting Gatton and Old Sarum, have filled the
country with beggars, who have been, or who pretend to have been, soldiers and
sailors. For want of looking well into this matter, many good and just, and
even sensible men are led to give to these army and navy beggars what they
refuse to others. But if reason were consulted, she would ask what pretensions
these have to a preference? She would see in them men who had become soldiers
or sailors because they wished to live without that labour by which other men
are content to get their bread. She would ask the soldier beggar whether he did
not voluntarily engage to perform services such as were performed at Manchester
[Cobbett is referring to the so-callled Peterloo massacre of 1819]; and if she
pressed him for the motive to this engagement, could he assign any
motive other than that of wishing to live without work upon the fruit of the
work of other men? And why should reason not be listened to? Why should she not
be consulted in every such case? And if she were consulted, which would she
tell you was the most worthy of your compassion, the man who, no matter from
what cause, is become a beggar after forty years spent in the raising of food
and raiment for others as well as for himself; or the man who, no matter again
from what cause, is become a beggar after forty years living upon the labour of
others, and during the greater part of which time he has been living in a
barrack, there kept for purposes explained by Lord Palmerston, and always in
readiness to answer those purposes? As to not giving to beggars, I think there
is a law against giving! However, give to them people will, as long as they
ask. Remove the cause of the beggary, and we shall see no more beggars;
but as long as there are boroughmongers there will be beggars
enough.
Horsham (Sussex),
Thursday, 31 July.
Thursday, 31 July.
I left
Worth this afternoon about 5 o’clock, and am got here to sleep, intending to
set off for Petworth in the morning, with a view of crossing the South Downs
and then going into Hampshire through Havant, and along at the southern foot of
Portsdown Hill, where I shall see the earliest corn in England. From Worth you
come to Crawley along some pretty good land; you then turn to the left and go
two miles along the road from the Wen to Brighton; then you turn to the right,
and go over six of the worst miles in England, which miles terminate but a few
hundred yards before you enter Horsham. This is a very nice, solid, country
town. Very clean, as all the towns in Sussex are. The people very clean. The
Sussex women are very nice in their dress and in their houses. The men and boys
wear smock-frocks more than they do in some counties. When country people do
not they always look dirty and comfortless. This has been a pretty good day;
but there was a little rain in the afternoon; so that St. Swithin keeps on as
yet, at any rate.
Billingshurst (Sussex),
Friday Morning, 1 Aug.
Friday Morning, 1 Aug.
This
village is 7 miles from Horsham, and I got here to breakfast about seven
o’clock. A very pretty village, and a very nice breakfast in a very neat little
parlour of a very decent public-house. The landlady sent her son to get me some
cream, and he was just such a chap as I was at his age, and dressed just in the
same sort of way, his main garment being a blue smock-frock, faded from wear,
and mended with pieces of new stuff, and, of course, not faded. The sight of
this smock-frock brought to my recollection many things very dear to me. This
boy will, I dare say, perform his part at Billingshurst, or at some place not
far from it. If accident had not taken me from a similar scene, how many
villains and fools, who have been well teazed and tormented, would have slept
in peace at night, and have fearlessly swaggered about by day! When I look at
this little chap; at his smock-frock, his nailed shoes, and his clean, plain,
and coarse shirt, I ask myself, will anything, I wonder, ever send this chap
across the ocean to tackle the base, corrupt, perjured Republican Judges of
Pennsylvania? Will this little, lively, but, at the same time, simple boy, ever
become the terror of villains and hypocrites across the Atlantic? What a chain of
strange circumstances there must be to lead this boy to thwart a miscreant
tyrant like Mackeen, the Chief Justice and afterwards Governor of Pennsylvania,
and to expose the corruptions of the band of rascals, called a “Senate and a
House of Representatives,” at Harrisburgh, in that state!
I had no
rain; and got to Petworth, nine miles further, by about ten o’clock.
Petworth (Sussex),
Friday Evening, 1 Aug.
Friday Evening, 1 Aug.
No rain,
until just at sunset, and then very little. I must now look back. From Horsham
to within a few miles of Petworth is in the Weald of Sussex; stiff land, small
fields, broad hedge-rows, and invariably thickly planted with fine, growing oak
trees. The corn here consists chiefly of wheat and oats. There are some
bean-fields, and some few fields of peas; but very little barley along here.
The corn is very good all along the Weald; backward; the wheat almost green;
the oats quite green; but, late as it is, I see no blight; and the farmers tell
me that there is no blight. There may be yet, however; and therefore our
Government, our “paternal Government,” so anxious to prevent “over
production,” need not despair as yet, at any rate. The beans in the
Weald are not very good. They got lousy before the wet came; and it came rather
too late to make them recover what they had lost. What peas there are look
well. I see very few sheep. There are a good many orchards along in the Weald,
and they have some apples this year; but, in general, not many. The apple trees
are planted very thickly, and, of course, they are small; but they appear
healthy in general; and in some places there is a good deal of fruit, even this
year. As you approach Petworth, the ground rises and the soil grows lighter.
There is a hill which I came over, about two miles from Petworth, whence I had
a clear view of the Surrey chalk-hills, Leithhill, Hindhead, Blackdown, and of
the South Downs, towards one part of which I was advancing. The pigs along here
are all black, thin-haired, and of precisely the same sort of those that I took
from England to Long Island, and with which I pretty well stocked the American
states. By-the-by, the trip, which Old Sidmouth and crew gave me to America,
was attended with some interesting consequences; amongst which were the
introducing of the Sussex pigs into the American farmyards; the introduction of
the Swedish turnip into the American fields; the introduction of American apple
trees into England; and the introduction of the making, in England, of the
straw plat, to supplant the Italian; for, had my son not been in America, this
last would not have taken place; and in America he would not have been, had it
not been for Old Sidmouth and crew. One thing more, and that is of more
importance than all the rest, Peel’s Bill arose out of the “puff-out”
Registers; these arose out of the trip to Long Island; and out of Peel’s Bill
has arisen the best bothering that the wigs of the Boroughmongers ever
received, which bothering will end in the destruction of the Boroughmongering.
It is curious, and very useful, thus to trace events to their causes.
Soon after
quitting Billingshurst I crossed the river Arun, which has a canal running
alongside of it. At this there are large timber and coal yards, and kilns for
lime. This appears to be a grand receiving and distributing place. The river goes down to Arundale, and, together with the valley that
it runs through, gives the town its name. This valley, which is very pretty,
and which winds about a good deal, is the dale of the Arun: and the town is the
town of the Arun-dale. To-day, near a place called Westborough Green, I saw a
woman bleaching her home-spun and home-woven linen. I have not seen such a
thing before, since I left Long Island. There, and, indeed, all over the
American States, North of Maryland, and especially in the New England States,
almost the whole of both linen and woollen used in the country, and a large
part of that used in towns, is made in the farmhouses. There are thousands and
thousands of families who never use either, except of their own making. All but
the weaving is done by the family. There is a loom in the house, and the weaver
goes from house to house. I once saw about three thousand farmers, or rather
country people, at a horse-race in Long Island, and my opinion was, that there
were not five hundred who were not dressed in home-spun coats. As to linen, no
farmer’s family thinks of buying linen. The Lords of the Loom have taken from
the land, in England, this part of its due; and hence one cause of the poverty,
misery, and pauperism that are becoming so frightful throughout the country. A
national debt and all the taxation and gambling belonging to it have a natural
tendency to draw wealth into great masses. These masses produce a power of congregating
manufactures, and of making the many work at them, for the gain of a few.
The taxing Government finds great convenience in these congregations. It can
lay its hand easily upon a part of the produce; as ours does with so much
effect. But the land suffers greatly from this, and the country must finally
feel the fatal effects of it. The country people lose part of their natural
employment. The women and children, who ought to provide a great part of the
raiment, have nothing to do. The fields must have men and boys; but
where there are men and boys there will be women and girls; and
as the Lords of the Loom have now a set of real slaves, by the means of whom
they take away a great part of the employment of the countrywomen and girls,
these must be kept by poor-rates in whatever degree they lose employment through
the Lords of the Loom. One would think that nothing can be much plainer than
this; and yet you hear the jolterheads congratulating one another upon
the increase of Manchester, and such places! My straw affair will certainly
restore to the land some of the employment of its women and girls. It will be
impossible for any of the “rich ruffians;” any of the horse-power or
steam-power or air-power ruffians; any of these greedy, grinding ruffians, to
draw together bands of men, women and children, and to make them slaves, in the
working of straw. The raw material comes of itself, and the hand, and the hand
alone, can convert it to use. I thought well of this before I took one single
step in the way of supplanting the Leghorn bonnets. If I had not been certain that
no rich ruffian, no white slave holder, could ever arise out of it, assuredly
one line upon the subject never would have been written by me. Better a million
times that the money should go to Italy; better that it should go to enrich
even the rivals and enemies of the country; than that it should enable these
hard, these unfeeling men, to draw English people into crowds and make them
slaves, and slaves too of the lowest and most degraded cast.
As I was
coming into this town I saw a new-fashioned sort of stone-cracking. A man had a
sledge-hammer, and was cracking the heads of the big stones that had been laid
on the road a good while ago. This is a very good way; but this man told me
that he was set at this because the farmers had no employment for many of
the men. “Well,” said I, “but they pay you to do this!” “Yes,” said he. “Well,
then,” said I, “is it not better for them to pay you for working on their
land?” “I can’t tell, indeed, Sir, how that is.” But only think; here is
half the haymaking to do: I saw, while I was talking to this man, fifty people
in one hay-field of Lord Egremont, making and carrying hay; and yet, at a
season like this, the farmers are so poor as to be unable to pay the labourers
to work on the land! From this cause there will certainly be some falling off
in production. This will, of course, have a tendency to keep prices from
falling so low as they would do if there were no falling off. But can this benefit
the farmer and landlord? The poverty of the farmers is seen in their diminished
stock. The animals are sold younger than formerly. Last year was a year
of great slaughtering. There will be less of everything produced; and the
quality of each thing will be worse. It will be a lower and more mean concern
altogether.
Petworth is a
nice market town; but solid and clean. The great abundance of stone in
the land hereabouts has caused a corresponding liberality in paving and wall
building; so that everything of the building kind has an air of great strength,
and produces the agreeable idea of durability. Lord Egremont’s house [Petworth
House] is close to the town, and, with its out-buildings, garden walls, and
other erections, is, perhaps, nearly as big as the town; though the town is not
a very small one. The Park is very fine, and consists of a parcel of those
hills and dells which Nature formed here when she was in one of her most
sportive modes. I have never seen the earth flung about in such a wild way as
round about Hindhead and Blackdown; and this Park forms a part of this ground.
From an elevated part of it,and, indeed, from each of many parts of it, you see
all around the country to the distance of many miles. From the South East to
the North West, the hills are so lofty and so near, that they cut the view
rather short; but for the rest of the circle you can see to a very great
distance. It is, upon the whole, a most magnificent seat... If I had time, I
would make an actual survey of one whole county, and find out how many of the
old gentry have lost their estates, and have been supplanted by the Jews, since
Pitt began his reign. I am sure I should prove that in number they are one-half
extinguished. But it is now that they go. The little ones are, indeed,
gone; and the rest will follow in proportion as the present farmers are exhausted.
These will keep on giving rents as long as they can beg or borrow the money to
pay rents with. But a little more time will so completely exhaust them that
they will be unable to pay; and as that takes place, the landlords will lose
their estates. Indeed many of them, and even a large portion of them, have, in
fact, no estates now. They are called theirs; but the mortgagees and
annuitants receive the rents. As the rents fall off, sales must take place,
unless in cases of entails; and if this thing go on, we shall see Acts passed
to cut off entails, in order that the Jews may be put into full
possession. Such, thus far, will be the result of our “glorious victories” over
the French! Such will be, in part, the price of the deeds of Pitt, Addington,
Perceval, and their successors. For having applauded such deeds; for having
boasted of the Wellesleys; for having bragged of battles won by money
and by money only, the nation deserves that which it will receive; and
as to the landlords, they, above all men living, deserve punishment. They put
the power into the hands of Pitt and his crew to torment the people; to keep
the people down; to raise soldiers and to build barracks for this purpose.
These base landlords laughed when affairs like that of Manchester took place.
They laughed at the Blanketteers. They laughed when Canning jested about
Ogden’s rupture. Let them, therefore, now take the full benefit of the measures
of Pitt and his crew. They would fain have us believe that the calamities they
endure do not arise from the acts of the Government. What do they arise from,
then? The Jacobins [radical left-wingers] did not contract the Debt of
800,000,000l. sterling. The Jacobins did not create a Dead Weight
of 150,000,000l. The Jacobins did not cause a pauper-charge of
200,000,000l. by means of “new enclosure bills,” “vast improvements,”
paper-money, potatoes, and other “proofs of prosperity.” The Jacobins did not
do these things. And will the Government pretend that “Providence” did it? That
would be “blasphemy” indeed.——Poh! These things are the price of efforts to
crush freedom in France, lest the example of France should produce a reform
in England. These things are the price of that undertaking; which, however,
has not yet been crowned with success; for the question is not yet
decided. They boast of their victory over the French. The Pitt crew boast
of their achievements in the war. They boast of the battle of Waterloo. Why!
what fools could not get the same, or the like, if they had as much money
to get it with? Shooting with a silver gun is a saying amongst
game-eaters. That is to say, purchasing the game. A waddling, fat fellow
that does not know how to prime and load will, in this way, beat the best shot
in the country. And this is the way that our crew “beat” the people of France.
They laid out, in the first place, six hundred millions which they borrowed,
and for which they mortgaged the revenues of the nation. Then they contracted
for a “dead weight” to the amount of one hundred and fifty millions. Then they
stripped the labouring classes of the commons, of their kettles, their bedding,
their beer-barrels; and, in short, made them all paupers, and thus fixed on the
nation a permanent annual charge of about 8 or 9 millions, or a gross debt of
200,000,000l. By these means, by these anticipations, our crew did what
they thought would keep down the French nation for ages; and what they were
sure would, for the present, enable them to keep up the tithes and other
things of the same sort in England. But the crew did not reflect on the consequences
of the anticipations! Or, at least, the landlords, who gave the crew their
power, did not thus reflect. These consequences are now come, and are coming;
and that must be a base man indeed who does not see them with pleasure.
To be continued
as far as Portsdown Hill
