Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Rural conditions
looking at these crops one wonders whence are to come the hands to clear
them off.
A very pleasant ride to-day; and the pleasanter for my having set the
wet Saint at defiance. It is about thirty miles from Petworth to
Fareham; and I got in in very good time. I have now come, if I include
my _boltings_, for the purpose of looking at farms and woods, a round
hundred miles from the Wen to this town of Fareham; and in the whole of
the hundred miles I have not seen one single wheat-rick, though I have
come through as fine corn countries as any in England, and by the
homesteads of the richest of farmers. Not one single wheat-rick have I
seen, and not one rick of any sort of corn. I never saw nor heard of the
like of this before; and if I had not witnessed the fact with my own
eyes I could not have believed it. There are some farmers who have corn
in their barns, perhaps; but when there is no _rick_ left, there is very
little corn in the hands of farmers. Yet the markets, St. Swithin
notwithstanding, do not rise. This harvest must be three weeks later
than usual, and the last harvest was three weeks earlier than usual. The
last crop was begun upon at once, on account of the badness of the wheat
of the year before. So that the last crop will have had to give food
for thirteen months and a half. And yet the markets do not rise! And yet
there are men, farmers, mad enough to think that they have "got past the
bad place," and that things will come about, and are coming about! And
Lethbridge, of the Collective, withdraws his motion because he has got
what he wanted: namely, a return of good and "_remunerating_ prices!"
The _Morning Chronicle_ of this day, which has met me at this place, has
the following paragraph. "The weather is much improved, though it does
not yet assume the character of being fine. At the Corn Exchange since
Monday the arrivals consist of 7,130 quarters of wheat, 450 quarters of
barley, 8,300 quarters of oats, and 9,200 sacks of flour. The demand for
wheat is next to Zero, and for oats it is extremely dull. To effect
sales, prices are not much attended to, for the demand cannot be
increased at the present currency. The farmers should pay attention to
oats, for the foreign new, under the King's lock, will be brought into
consumption, unless a decline takes place immediately, and a weight will
thereby be thrown over the markets, which under existing circumstances
will be extremely detrimental to the agricultural interests. Its
distress however does not deserve much sympathy, for as soon as there
was a prospect of the payment of rents, the cause of the people was
abandoned by the Representatives of Agriculture in the Collected Wisdom,
and Mr. Brougham's most excellent measure for increasing the consumption
of Malt was neglected. Where there is no sympathy, none can be expected,
and the land proprietors need not in future depend on the assistance of
the mercantile and manufacturing interests, should their own distress
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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