Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Rural conditions
I, pointing to France, "There the spirited and sensible people have
ridded themselves of this burden, of which our farmers so bitterly
complain." It is impossible not to recollect here, that, in numerous
petitions, sent up, too, by the _loyal_, complaints have been made that
the English farmer has to carry on a competition against the French
farmer who has _no tithes to pay_! Well, _loyal gentlemen_, why do not
you petition, then, to be relieved from tithes? What do you mean else?
Do you mean to call upon our big gentlemen at Whitehall for them to
compel the French to pay tithes? Oh, you loyal fools! Better hold your
tongues about the French not paying tithes. Better do that, at any rate;
for never will they pay tithes again.
Here is a large tract of _land_ upon these hills at Dover, which is the
property of the public, having been purchased at an enormous expense.
This is now let out as pasture land to people of the town. I dare say
that the letting of this land is a curious affair. If there were a
Member for Dover who would do what he ought to do, he would soon get
before the public a list of the tenants, and of the rents paid by them.
I should like very much to see such list. Butterworth, the bookseller in
Fleet-street; he who is a sort of metropolitan of the methodists, is
one of the Members for Dover. The other is, I believe, that Wilbraham or
Bootle or Bootle Wilbraham, or some such name, that is a Lancashire
magistrate. So that Dover is prettily set up. However, there is nothing
of this sort, that can in the present state of things, be deemed to be
of any real consequence. As long as the people at Whitehall can go on
paying the interest of the Debt in full, so long will there be no change
worth the attention of any rational man. In the meanwhile, the French
nation will be going on rising over us; and our Ministers will be
cringing and crawling to every nation upon earth who is known to possess
a cannon or a barrel of powder.
This very day I have read Mr. Canning's Speech at Liverpool, with a
Yankee Consul sitting on his right hand. Not a word now about the bits
of bunting and the fir frigates; but now, America is the lovely
daughter, who, in a moment of excessive love, has gone off with a lover
(to wit, the French) and left the tender mother to mourn! What a fop!
And this is the man that talked so big and so bold. This is the clever,
the profound, the blustering, too, and, above all things, "the high
spirited" Mr. Canning. However, more of this, hereafter. I must get from
this Dover, as fast as I can.
_Sandwich, Wednesday, 3rd Sept. Night._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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