Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Rural conditions
Lord Onslow lives near Merrow. This is the man that was, for many years,
so famous as a driver of four-in-hand. He used to be called _Tommy
Onslow_. He has the character of being a very good landlord. I know he
called me "a d----d _Jacobin_" several years ago, only, I presume,
because I was labouring to preserve to him the means of still driving
four-in-hand, while he, and others like him, and their yeomanry cavalry,
were working as hard to defeat my wishes and endeavours. They say here,
that, some little time back, his Lordship, who has, at any rate, had the
courage to retrench in all sorts of ways, was at Guildford in a gig with
one horse, at the very moment, when Spicer, the Stock-broker, who was a
Chairman of the Committee for prosecuting Lord Cochrane, and who lives
at Esher, came rattling in with four horses and a couple of out-riders!
They relate an observation made by his Lordship, which may, or may not,
be true, and which therefore, I shall not repeat. But, my Lord, there is
another sort of courage; courage other than that of retrenching, that
would become you in the present emergency: I mean _political_ courage,
and especially the courage of _acknowledging your errors_; confessing
that you were wrong when you called the reformers Jacobins and
levellers; the courage of now joining them in their efforts to save
their country, to regain their freedom, and to preserve to you your
estate, which is to be preserved, you will observe, by no other means
than that of a Reform of the Parliament. It is now manifest, even to
fools, that it has been by the instrumentality of a base and fraudulent
paper-money that loan-jobbers, stock-jobbers and Jews have got the
estates into their hands. With what eagerness, in 1797, did the
nobility, gentry, and clergy rush forward to give their sanction and
their support to the system which then began, and which has finally
produced, what we now behold! They assembled in all the counties, and
put forth declarations that they would take the paper of the Bank, and
that they would support the system. Upon this occasion the county of
Surrey was the very first county; and on the list of signatures the very
_first_ name was _Onslow_! There may be sales and conveyances; there may
be recoveries, deeds, and other parchments; but this was the real
transfer; this was the real signing away of the estates.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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