463 TO THE LANDOWNERS OF ENGLAND. T 464 semurent or goizaoled merbluís bas_ys"{ 1899 The pinguri tuoda to sing nity for me to ask them what was bee the whole of the debates upon the subcome of their charges against me on ject. He noticed the great breach of account of the Kent and Norfolk peti-national faith took place in 1819, and tions; and also afforded me a fine oppor- that, too, against the able remonstrances tunity for showing in detail the mon of this very Ma: ATTWOOD. Di strous injustice of taking away a part It has been said that the fundholders of the incoine of the widows and or lost at one time as much as they have phans and aged persons, the means of gained since that time; and this has whose existence were deposited in the been asserted over and over again upon funds, while all the enormous pensions, the authority of MR, MUSHETT, who sinecures, grants, salaries, and all the published his tables to show it, in 1821. thousands of generals and admirals, and MUSHETT, who fell into the error of the all the millions upon millions swallowed stupid or cunning, and the babbling by the clergy, were suffered to remain Ricardo, took as his criterion the maruntouched. Nay, while sixteen hundred ket price compared with the mint price thousand pounds had been voted out of of gold; and this was the groundwork the taxes, to be given to the clergy, over of the stupid bill of Peel, in 1819, and above the immense amount of their livings, four or five of which livings are frequently in the hands of one single man. v which has produced more mischiefs to this country than all the seven plagues of Egypt would have produced if we had had them all at one time, and the bare name of which being stuck to a man, is quite sufficient to characterize him for life. This error of Mushett was the grand groundwork of that bill. It deluded the land-owners to their ruin; and it has kept the country in a state of constant and gradual decline, till all the world sees its weakness, its nakedness, and its shame, Since this pamphlet of Sir James Graham; since the unmerciful lashing which that pamphlet got from my pen, we have heard very little from the landowners about the justice of touching the interest of the debt; very little until this proposition of my LORD ALTHORP came forth. Now, with regard to that proposition in itself, the only fault that I have to find with it is, that But, suppose the criterion of RICARDO it was a round-about, indirect measure, and Mushett to have been true. How the evident tendency and the motive stands the account even according to of which were not avowed; and that MusHETT's own showing? The sublime the rate was too small to have been seignieur, LORD ELLENBOROUGH, with Cefficient, besides the operation being hair so nicely curled, and arms and complicated. If his Lordship had pro-waist so pretty and so small; this sublime -posed to take ten per cent. from the in-seignieur, in answer to LORD CARNARterest of the debt, without accompany-vox, who had been hammering away ing it with any proposition for an addi- about the advantages which the fundtional tax upon the land, there would holders had derived from the change in have been frankness and efficiency, at the currency made by Peel's stupid any rate. As it is, the measure has a bill; this sublime seignieur advised the character of furtiveness about it, which noble Lord to read a little book pubnobody likes. You clearly see what lished by Mr. Mushetts and observed, lawyers call the animus jurandi, ac-that he thought some copies of the companied with clamorous professions book ought to be bought at the public of sacred good faith." I say that expense and distributed amongst their good faith to the nation demands a Lordships. Well, then, this is a book taking away of more than a half of the of great authority, it seems, And what -interest of the debt and this was ably does this book show?, Why, adopting insisted upon by MR. MATHIAS ATT-Mushett's criterion, so unjustly in favour WOOD, though that gentleman differs of the fundholders, it makes the account from me as to the proportion. He made square up to the year 1821; when, obthe only sensible speech throughout serve, the fund-holders were gaining at CRANDEY TO WOⱭKAJ SHT OT the academies, and sell the barracks, 710 You haves to bring the crown lands too book, not forgetting Dungeness Light-house and its disinterested here. 8. Finally, you have to make at least a new distribution of the property of the church as it is called; to restore that property: to its ancient and legitimate uses; or to take it altogether, and apply the rate of about twenty per cent! Pray and children belonging to this immense mark this fore they have been gaining body.63 You have to reduce the standat the same rate ever sincej except during ing army in time of peace, break up the time that the small paper money was out, in 1824 and 1825, Thus, with the exception of those two years; they have been receiving twenty per cent. more than they ought to have received from 1821 unto the present day, even ace cording to the showing of Mushett him self. They have been receiving more than a million and a half a year, which is more than they ought to have re-it to national and secular uses. These ceived, even according to this account, things you have to do, my Lord Grey, which is all in their favour; and yet an before you will ever have the consent outery is raised, and a ministry are to be of this nation to take one farthing from driven from their posts, if they persevere the interest of the debt, in any shape, or in taking eight hundred thousand pounts under any name or guised of payat nda a year from these fund holders 145div او ༄། It is no longer ago than last winter Ah! my Lord Grey, look at the motto that Sir James Graham showed that one to this Register Look at the words hundred and thirteen men, almost all of that I addressed to your Lordship in them belonging to the two Houses of 1822! Do look, I pray you, at the Parliament, received six hundred and whole of that letter which I inserted in fifty thousand pounds a year amongst the last Register! Do, pray, believe them. We know well that there are that your situation is precisely that of about fifty Bishops, who have from ten the old French government in 1789! to forty thousand pounds a year each. It did not possess the power of lightening Take them at an average of fifteen the burdens of the people, without the thousand (and that is very low); and assistance of the people themselves; and here are seven hundred and fifty thouit did not call the people to its assistance sand pounds a year amongst fifty men. till it was too late. You have yet time And, while we have these facts staring to call the people to your aid'; but you us in the face, will the nation hear of a have but one way under heaven of ac- proposition for deducting a part of the complishing that object; and that is, by incomes which the widows and orphans giving them short parliaments, extensive and aged people have in the funds! suffrage, and the ballots You have, Can we think of doing such a thing as however, something to do in the money this; and can you think of doing it way, before I, for one, shall ever give under the pretence of easing the burmy consent to the taking of one single dens of the people, while you make us farthing from the interest of the debt, pay the pensions to LADY MORNINGYou have, 1. To scratch out all pen ron, to the sister of CANNING, and his sions not merited by well-known public widow, to the children of Fox, and to services. 2. You have to do away with women innumerable who never can have every sinecure of every description. rendered any service to the country! 3. You have to take away the grants You have begun at the wrong end. and allowances, and all useless salaries, A friend of mine, very partial in his and take away every charge not useful opinion of my writings, confines himself for the public service. 4. You have to to this single compliment: "Cobbett give us less than five Generals to every always begins at the right end," a regiment of soldiers, and less than two compliment which I have always en. Admirals to every ship of the line.deavoured to deserve. You have be5. You have to reduce the dead-weight gun at the wrong end. You have beto reward for services actually rendered, gun with the many instead of beginning and to lop off all that is given to widows with the few: you have begun with that which the folly of former Ministers to observe that the eyes of all the peoand Parliaments, and particularly their ple seem now to be directed to this restupid malignity against me, have made source. There is no one cries out the people regard as sacred, never to be against the funds; not a single petition touched; and you have left untouched is there for taking a penny from the every-thing on which the people look thirty millions a year which these funds with a grudging eye. Sir James Gra-cost, while, from one end of the country ham's pensioners and sinecure people, to the other, the air rings with the cries and the enormous revenues of the of the people to take away the property bishops and the clergy, are great marks of the church, in some shape or other. on which all eyes are fixed. The fund- How like the state of things in France, holders, though they, like Queen Bess's in the year 1789! The people there paupers, are, in reality, "every-where," did not seem to know that there was are seen by nobody; are, in many in-any-thing unjust or any-thing burdenstances, as poor as the rest of us; they some in the debt; but, as soon as their receive what they receive unseen; they tongues were let loose, began to find are unenvied, unhated; they receive out that the church was the cause of all what is regarded as their due; and the their poverty and sufferings. To work benefit to the nation in taking from they went, therefore, and took that prothem it would be difficult to make the perty to begin with; and this the clergy mass understand, while their complaints most richly deserved, for having fawould be heard in every town and vil-voured the government and upheld it in lage in the kingdom; and every-where contracting the debt. In speaking of the contrast would be drawn between the seizure of the church property in their treatment and that of the fat pen- France, BURKE gives the following sioners and the clergy. There is no warning to England:-"Nations are argument by which a deduction from " wading deeper and deeper into an the funds could be justified, or palliated, 66 ocean of boundless debt. Public which would not apply with ten-fold" debts, which at first were a security force to a total sweeping away of the "to governments, by interesting many pension and sinecure lists, and to all the" in the public tranquillity, are likely in other reductions of which I have spoken" their excess to become the means above; and this argument would be "of their subversion. If governments applied, too, by every man in the king-" provide for these debts by heavy imdom who had one spark of spirit in him." positions, they perish by becoming odiIf you had begun at the right end; if "ous to the people. If they do not proyou had taken the Norfolk petition and "vide for them, they will be undone by conned it over well; if you had acted" the efforts of the most dangerous of upon that petition with firmness, still" all parties; I mean an extensive disthe fundholder people would have op-" contented monied interest, injured posed you; but what would their op" and not destroyed." These words position have been, and what would it are well worthy of the attention of the be now were you to propose a real re- landowners of England. Between form of the Parliament? Would you have fallen down at once before this combination? Would you have been driven out of a deliberate plan without even a sign of resistance? these two dangerous rocks the Ministry and the aristocracy of England now stand. The heavy impositions have made the people discontented with the Government. The Government has We are now come to this point: just made a slight attempt to get rid of something must give way you cannot the neccessity of these heavy imposi make the funds give way the labour-tions; and it has just had a sample of ing classes will have meat and bread; the efforts of this "most dangerous of and therefore something else must all parties." Here are the two dangive way. That something seems to gers between which the Government be the church; and it is truly curious stands. To save itself from the former, it must greatly lighten the impositions; there is no way of extricating ourselves and to save itself from the latter, it from the difficulty other than by calling must call in the people and have them in the people to lend their aid in mak heart and hand with it; but, to do this, ing a total change in the whole of this it has no earthly means but to make a system of sway. To preserve the "inReform of the Parliament that shall stitutions of the country" is become a satisfy the people. sort of slang. It seems to come out of Things are now, however, arrived at the mouth like the hum of a new tune. that pass, that the debt cannot be Agreed, with all my heart. I am for touched without touching the church, preserving the institutions of the counand without touching the church the try; but then comes the question: What first of the two. The cry is so loud are the institutions of the country? and so general, that until the church According to my notions, mortgages be touched, and pretty rudely, the peo- on the labour of the child in the ple will never hear of touching the cradle, bands of villains met to gamdebt. For my part, I shall always pro-ble in Change-alley, bank-notés made test against it, and oppose it with all a legal tender as occasion may remy might; not because I think the quire, exchequer bills, loans and scrip, claims of the present fundholders just; and bonuses, by which beggars are but because it will be good for the made gentlemen in twenty-four hours; country to repeal, or greatly to change, according to my notions, these are the church establishment. The debt is no institutions of the country. Justices the sheet-anchor of our hope for the of the peace, removable at the pleasure obtaining of our rights. It secures to of the Crown, authorised to inflict peus the making of some efforts at last to cuniary and even corporeal punishment take from us the other heavy burdens. without trial by jury, and with such I would a million times rather that trial empowered to transport men for all the interest of the debt should their lives; these justices very often, remain undiminished, than that it too, being clergymen of the church, or should be swept away, and the army, officers in the army or navy. Accordthe thousands of generals, the acade-ing to my notions, these are not instimies, the barracks, the dead weight, tutions of the country. I do not regard the pensions, the sinecures, the parson the new trespass law, Sturges Bourne's magistrates, Sturges Bourne's bills, the bills and the transportation for poachnew trespass law, and the transporta- ing law, as institutions of the country, tion-for-poaching law remain. A mil-any more than I regard a band of folion times rather let it all continue than reigners upon the pension-list as being see the debt swept away and the rest of an institution of the country. Can I the system remain. We are much better off now than we should be if we had no debt and had all the rest. The question now is, What is next to be tried? and whether the Ministry who are unable to carry this little point, will condescend to niggle along from expedient to expedient, without attempting any great and radical change, Mr. Attwood well observed, that we were a pretty object for Europe to contemplate, trying to reduce taxes, for the relief of the nation, at a moment when common prudence, decent pride, called upon us to show ourselves ready for war. However to this I always said it must come to this it is come; and have read Blackstone, and regard a standing army in time of peace, and barracks and military academies and dead-weights, as so many" institutions of the country!" Why, then, I sup pose I must regard the hired overseers, the making of men and women to draw carts like beasts of burden, the putting of men up to auction like negroes in the colonies, the making of labourers live upon a pound and a quarter of bread, and a halfpenny a day for food and clothing, the making of them live upon potatoes or starve; I suppose I must regard these asinstitutions of the country!" Faith, but I will not so regard them! I know them to be all departures from the in to have set aside, in their several ways, the institutions of my country; and I restoring to my country those institutions. 472 -roirsoildng yboold In Yo stitutions of my country. I know them only one link in a chain of efforts to implicate me in those acts of violence to which the labourers of the southern and western counties were urged, not by writings or by speeches, but by more In conclusion, let it be observed, that than half-starvation. The country was the landowners have now received a in a state of alarm; there were the most blow which is only a foretaste of that powerful motives amongst the landwhich is to come. They will be afraid owners and the farmers to cause it to to stir again. By taking off the taxes be believed, by the rest of the comupon malt and hops, they would give a munity, that the labourers had not been good blow in return; but to do this driven by hunger to commit the acts, they have not the courage. They will but had been stimulated to them by droop down, suffer the thing to go on, others. First, the stimulators were still be afraid to take the people by Frenchmen, and SCOTT ELDON actually the hand; till at last, too feeble to re- told the Lords, that he was informed, sist, even if they had the courage, their that "one county jail was full of fate will be very much like that of the foreigners;" and the famous tax-eater, old landowners of France. I hope, or LORD SIDNEY, told the people of Kent, in rather I wish, that it may be the con- an address, published in the newspapers, trary of this, but, as I well know that that the French were doing this in order this must be the end, unless the people to devastate England; a charge which be appealed to by a real and radical the French aristocrats, have retaliated, reform, I am very much afraid that the by asserting that the fire-setters in that evil will come in its full magnitude. country are paid by the English! This This is the light in which I view the charge against foreigners was, howfate of this apparently trifling attempt ever, soon dropped, and was followed on the part of the ministers. In itself by the story about "domestic conthe defeat is nothing. But it says this spirators" assembled in London, and to the landowners: Fires or no fires, sending emissaries about the country, rents or no rents, tithes or no tithes, in gigs, curricles, landaus, post-chaises, you shall pay the interest of the debt in or on horse-back. This story being full tale, and in sovereigns of full laughed at by the people in London and weight and fineness. This is what the in the great towns, a more secret agency, fundholders say, while the middle and or stimulus, was sought for; and as lower class are calling for a reduction TRUTH afforded no clue to any such of rents and an abolition of tithes. instigation, LIES were resorted to; and Such is the state of the landowners of as I had, for many years, been comEngland; such is what they are doomed plaining of the cruel treatment of the to endure for their conduct of the last farm-labourers, I (all other sources havforty years, and particularly for the ing failed) was pitched upon as the contempt and scorn and malice with cause of all the mischief, especially as I which they have repaid the advice which had recently been lecturing in parts of has been so disinterestedly given them KENT and SUSSEX. This was, too, a by WM. COBBETT. fine opportunity for paying me off for old scores; for the Protestant Reformation, and for my other hard blows, especially those at the Parsons and there clearly was a simultaneous assault meditated, that should either destroy my life, or stop my pen, or, which was thought most likely, TO MAKE ME FLEE THE COUNTRY... MARQUIS OF BLANDFORD AND HIS PARSONS. To the Readers of the Register. Kensington, 16th February, 1831: MY FRIENDS, The plan of the attack was laid, and the attack begun, by that MOST BLOODY |