far distant when, if all things went |" pledged to the property of the citi on in the present way, the landlord" zen, and not to the creditor of the would have no rents, and the parson "state. The claim of the citizen is no tithes. When the landlord shall no "prior in time, paramount in title, longer receive rent, it will be useless" superior in equity. The fortunes of for him to turn one tenant out, for" individuals were no part of the crehe can get nothing from another. To "ditor's security, expressed or imtake the lands into his own hands" plied." Little did Mr. Burke imawill be worse than nothing; for, in gine when he wrote this, that that his hands there will not be the means which we now see would ever take of paying the rents and taxes. If place in this country! And, when, authority he wanted to appeal to on in another place, he says, in the lanthis important subject, he would ap-guage of triumph, "The Jews of our peal, not to the writings of jacobins" "Change-alley have not yet dared and radicals, but to those of Mr." to hint their hopes of a mortgage Burke, the apostle of the high aris- " on the revenues of the See of Cantocracy, who, for writing the very work which he was about to cite, had already cost us, in the way of pension, 70,000l. It was debt, he would have it be remembered; it was the cry of national faith that produced the revolution in France and the overthrow of the nobility and the church. The new rulers in that country seized particularly on the church-property to pay the debts of the state; whereupon Mr. Burke exclaims, "We, in England, enter"tain a high opinion of legislative "authority; but we have never "dreamt that Parliament had any ❝right whatever to violate property, "to overrule prescription, or to force

terbury," little did he expect that there would ever come a Mr. Baring to tell us, that, from the Peer to the labourer we must pay as long as we have any thing to pay with, or that a Mr. Ricardo would arise, to tell the once proud nobility and gentry of England, that Fundholders have not only a mortgage on the estates of every one (the Archbishop of Canterbury included,) but that they are in actual possession of their estates! In conclusion, he begged and implored the Meeting to remember, that, if no reduction of debt took place, and if all things continued to go on as they were now going on, the landlord would lose his land, the a currency of their own fiction in parson his tithes, and that the Go"the place of that which is real and vernment would become the real " recognized by the law of nations." owners of the land in trust for the In another place he says, after hav- Fundholders. The farmer must reing treated with contempt the words main; for food would be wanted, national faith and public creditor, and food would be raised while there “the original faith of civil society is was land to raise it on. Messrs. Bar

86.

Q

ing and Ricardo might talk as long as they pleased about their mortgage upon the landlord's last acre, the parson's last yard of glebe, and the labourer's last mouthful; but the farmer would stand where he was (hear, hear!) nothing could move him; the labourer must be fed too; but, when the landlord shall get no

Mr. MABERLY taxed Mr. Holme Sumner with having voted against Mr. Hume's Resolution for a reduc

tion of taxation upon the moving of the Address, notwithstanding his promise to support the Petition proposed at the last Meeting, which was to the same effect.

Thanks were voted to the High Sheriff, and the Meeting was dissolved at twenty minutes past six

o'clock.

We cannot close this account with

rent, and still not leave enough for the fundholder, resort would be had to the tithes, and thus will the Aris-out observing, that the whole of the proceedings were conducted with great regularity; the Meeting was numerous and respectable in the highest degree.

tocracy and the Church of England, like those of France and Spain, be confiscated for the purpose of preserving what is termed the national faith. The end will, in all human probability, if all the present mea

On Wednesday, the 20th in

stant, there was a Meeting of farmers at the SWAN INN AT Chi

CHESTER, Mr. Stephen Wooldridge in the chair. The chief object of the meeting was to dine

sures be pushed on, be in this way, CHICHESTER MEETING. leaving the farmer the tenant of the Government, or in a bloody revolu tion. Strange, then, as it might appear to the Meeting, and grating as it might sound in the ears of those who had been accustomed to rail at Jacobins and Radicals, his real opinion was, and he could not miss this opportunity of distinctly expressing it before the county of Surrey, that if the Nobility and the Church of England were at last to be saved, it could be only by those measures which had been so long prayed for in vain by those Jacobins and Radicals. -This speech was hailed by one unaniinous shout of approbation from the vast Meeting there assembled.

Mr. H. SUMNER defended his Parliamentary conduct at considerable length.

with me, and to hear what I had

to say upon the prospects which the farmers now had. I went on

from Epsom, and got to Chichester on Tuesday evening.—There

was a dinner at the Swan Inn at 2 o'clock, Mr. STEPHEN WOOL

DRIDGE in the Chai. The tables

in this room being filled, and they spot where I had the honour to contained about 150 persons, the address them.-The following is farmers from the other market-a sketch of this rustic harangue. rooms in the city came to the To put an hour's talk into print dining-room after the dinner was is a thing out of the question withover; forming, all together, a body out a great deal more time than is of about four hundred persons, now (Thursday noon) left me. I chiely farmers. The chairman, have endeavoured to preserve the who was the gentleman that had main points, which I have copied invited me to Chichester (and from notes taken by a gentleman whom, by the by, I had never connected with the Morning Chroseen or heard of till this invita- nicle. I beg the reader to contion) first gave, as toasts, the sider duly these arguments in supKing, the Memory of the late port of a reduction of taxation, Queen Caroline, and the Royal I beg the farmers, in particular, family. He then gave my health to consider these arguments. Unas that of a person likely to be able to point out to the meeting

the cause of, and a remedy for the present distress. I endeavoured

to make good the opinion which he had expressed in what degree I succeeded must be left to the

decision of the reader. I had the

commonly anxious am I upon this score; being but too well convinced, that, if the present session should pass over without a very great reduction of taxes, the consequences will be such as I do not think proper to describe. However, the landlords, and particu

pleasure to see, that I produced larly the nobility, have, in their great impression on the minds of own hands, the power of saving so many persons, who, in a few themselves. If they do not choose hours, would depart to be scat-to do it, I can see no reason for tered over all the surrounding my experiencing any particular country within thirty miles of the chagrin on the subject. I have

laid the consequences fairly be-1" mond and Lord Selsea had not fore them; and, as the affair is" raised their rents during the

theirs, to them must be left the decision.

"war, and that, therefore, the "farmers in the neighbourhood "of Chichester were not in dis"tress, and wanted no Cobbett

"Mr. COBBETT, having thanked the Meeting for the honour they" to talk to them on the subject." had done him, said, that he could He (Mr. C.) was ignorant as to by no means hold out a hope to the facts stated in this letter; them that he was able to perform those who rented under the two the task that the too high opinion of the worthy Chairman had assigned him; but, that he would endeavour, not to make what is

1

noblemen therein mentioned best knew whether their rents had been raised during the war; but, supposing the fact to be true; supposing their rents not to have been raised a penny during the war, yet, if those tenants believed, that

called a speech, one of those things by the making of which the arch impostor had so largely contributed towards producing the they could now pay the rents of present ruin; but, he would en- the year 1790, he (Mr. C.) was deavour to communicate to the sure, that they stood in need of Meeting some really useful in-" Cobbett," or of somebody else, formation as to matters in which to show them their error, and to they were all so 'deeply interested, -In consequence of the public announcement of the fact that he had been invited to attend at this meeting, a writer in a Brighton PITAL, which proved that the newspaper had said, that "Cob- prices of flour, meat and cheese, "bett was not wanted at Chiches-were higher in the year 1790 than "ter, for that the Duke of Rich- at this time; and then he asked,

save them from ruin.-That the prices were lower now than before the war, he showed by referring to returns from GREENWICH HOS

whether, with the present increas-wheat fell to 2s. 6d. a bushel, it ed burdens, it was possible for the was to pay 1007. a year rent; and

so on. Nothing, at the first blush, could be more fair, more honour

farmer to pay the rents of that year?-He had, upon a recent occasion, shown the error onable, than this; it was, on the part which that liberal Nobleman Earl of this nobleman, a repairing the Fitzwilliam had acted, when he so injury inflicted by the papergenerously reduced his rents forty-system; restoring, in his opinion, five per cent, and he would now, the balance of justice broken by in illustration of the question just the shifting of the currency. But, put to the meeting, mention a though he (Mr. C.) had heard, similar error into which another and thought the fact very progreat and respectable Nobleman bable, that Mr. HUSKISSON had (the Marquis of Stafford) had been the adviser of this measure fallen. His Lordship, in order to reduce his rents to a just standard; was convinced that the measure in order to obviate the evils of was founded in a great oversight fluctuating prices, and, of course, of those who advised and who fluctuating means of paying rents; with this laudable object in view,

of the Noble Marquis, he (Mr. C.)

adopted it.-If, indeed, the whole of the outgoings of the farmers consisted of rent, then nothing could be more completely just than

his Lordship had settled the terms of a corn rent with his tenants, which terms were these: taking the voluntary offer of the Noble 10s. a bushel for wheat to be the Marquis; but, every farmer knew, price adequate to the paying of not one out of the hundreds that the war-rent, and supposing a farm then to have paid 4001. a year rent, the same farm, wheat being at 5s, a bushel, was to pay

now did him the honour to hear him did not well know, that the rent formed but a comparatively small portion of the outgoings of

2001. a year rent; and, if the a farm. To have made the ar