Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Rural conditions
This mild, this gentle, this good-humoured sort of correction is _not
enough_ for our present rulers. But mark the consequence; gaols ten
times as big as formerly; houses of correction; tread-mills; the hulks;
and the country filled with _spies_ of one sort and another,
_game-spies_, or other spies, and if a hare or pheasant come to an
untimely death, _police-officers_ from the Wen are not unfrequently
called down to find out and secure the bloody offender! _Mark this_,
Englishmen! Mark how we take to those things which we formerly ridiculed
in the French; and take them up too just as that brave and spirited
people have shaken them off! I saw, not long ago, an account of a Wen
police-officer being sent into the country, where he assumed _a
disguise_, joined some poachers (as they are called), got into their
secrets, went out in the night with them, and then (having laid his
plans with the game-people) assisted to take them and convict them.
What! is this _England_! Is this the land of "manly hearts?" Is this the
country that laughed at the French for their submissions? What! are
police-officers kept for this? Does the law say so? However, thank God
Almighty, the estates are passing away into the hands of those who have
had borrowed from them the money to uphold this monster of a system. The
Debt! The blessed Debt, will, at last, restore to us freedom.
Just after I quitted Benenden, I saw some bunches of _straw_ lying upon
the quickset hedge of a cottage garden. I found upon inquiry, that they
were bunches of the straw of grass. Seeing a face through the window of
the cottage, I called out and asked what that straw was for. The person
within said, it was to make _Leghorn-plat_ with. I asked him (it was a
young man) how he knew how to do it. He said he had got a little book
that had been made by Mr. Cobbett. I told him that I was the man, and
should like to see some of his work; and asked him to bring it out to
me, I being afraid to tie my horse. He told me that he was a _cripple_,
and that he could not come out. At last I went in, leaving my horse to
be held by a little girl. I found a young man, who has been a cripple
for fourteen years. Some ladies in the neighbourhood had got him the
book, and his family had got him the grass. He had made some very nice
plat, and he had knitted the greater part of the crown of a bonnet, and
had done the whole very nicely, though, as to the knitting, he had
proceeded in a way to make it very tedious. He was knitting upon a
block. However, these little matters will soon be set to rights. There
will soon be persons to teach knitting in all parts of the country. I
left this unfortunate young man with the pleasing reflection that I had,
in all likelihood, been the cause of his gaining a good living, by his
labour, during the rest of his life. How long will it be before my
calumniators, the false and infamous London press, will, take the whole
of it together, and leave out its evil, do as much good as my pen has
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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