The National Register. — London, England, 1816-09-30 00:00:00

want of the means of paying tucimai e now obliged to maintain them In the character of paupers. WILLIAM DALMVMPLi.—=IdIe parish of Chessimtqa comists of about 10 tO acres, of which there arc at present three bank rur t farms of about 620 acres. These farms are under the in fluence of the bankruptcy, and arc lying in a moat deplorable state, uncultivated, except a little had wheat. SOMCRSET. "helmet . ' I.Ecee. —Our county, perhaps, in some particu lars, is mole peculiar than any others in the kingdom; almost every inhabitant having had some little property of his own, and rented some of others. The purchase of this property was often math. at a dear rate, and some part of the money borrowed on mortgage. The great depression of the markets obliged these landholders to sell the production of their 41 ti . . 4 lands to pay their rent. The mortgager became dissatisl:ol, and entered upon the premises, which have frequently been sold for less than they cost; but more fr• rpiently hate been pat a., to auction without a single real bidder. Now conies the collector of the taxes; the good. and chattels are sold, the mad goes to gaol, and his A. ill: and children to the workhouse. Fictitious credit, for rt time, enabled nosily to keep hack their corn, &c. till the markets became to their taste. This is now over; mutual confidence between man and man is utterly de • stroyed. The bills of the country banks are numerous, and in sufficient estimation, could they be obtained. The labour. ing poor have great difficulty in procuring work at very re duced wages, and are in a state little short of starvation. An erroneous opinion seems to have gone abroad, that '• tenants only feel the pressure of the times." But when a tenant be comes insolvent, the landholder must suffer also. I have an estate, which some time since produced me upwards of 8001. per annum, on which I owe 59001. Much of my land has beets •thrown upon my hands, lot which I have beets obliged to pay property tax, though I have not made a penny of it. I hate a very pretty cottage with lands adjoining, which I did let for some years at 781. per annum, for which I cannot now ob tain 401. Another property I let for a term, at 941. per annum, but the man has absconded, and cheated me of hundreds. The land is now re-let at 4al. per animus. Thus, out of 8001. per annum, when I have paid my interest and all taxes for va cant land, I shall scarcely have 2:MI. a year to maintain a wife and seven children. Servants, does, and horses, are already given up; and I may add, my ease is far from being a single one. • THOMAS ADRAIIAM.—There are many farms in this neigh bourhood in the bands of the owners, many of which farms have lately been quitted by tenants w ho could no longer.re main on them; having sunk their property, their stock has been mixed and sold, and fresh tenants cannot be procured. 1 st beg to decline stating the fArnts, as It is obnoxious to mention persons' names who want the same rent for their lands, now Wheat is at 7s. a bushel, and beef and mutton sd. per pound, as they did when wheat was ins. per bushel, and beef and mutton 10d, per pound; one year more will throw half the farms (and particularly poor farms) into the hands of the owners. SUFFOLK. • THOMAS ARCHER.—The farm., generally speaking, having been under lease for some time, and most of these leases hav ing been renewed .within three or four years, I believe there are few in this neighbourhood (near Mildenhall) which have been let at an abatement of rent; and although the farms are let at very high rents, I regret to say, I know of very few in dances indeed where the landlords have made any deduction to their tenants. We have many firm within a few miles, where, during the last two years, the whole of their produce has been scarcely sufficient to pay their rent only, and several others that have not produced sufficient to pay the rent, pro perty tax, assessed rates and parish rates. It is needless the efore to observe. that the occupiers of such farina, who by close industry and attention for many years, had gained some property, have very materially wasted ,it, and should no relief be afforded them, must unavoidably, in a very short time, be involved in the same ruin which many farmers, tilio had not been so fortunate as to make any savings t or who leave taken their occupations within three or four years, are daily furnishing the country with instances of. Indeed, it may very fairly be said, that the rent of the lands for many farms in this neigh bourhood is not paid from die produce of the land, but from the capital of the fanners. 'lliere are many circumstances, and fresh instances so frequently occur, denoting the distress of the farmers, it would be very difficult indeed to encounter them. Every wheelwright, blacksmith, collarmiaker—in short, every tradesman could furnish you with a number of in stances, where the farmers bring obliged to pay their rent, taxes, and tithes, and parish dues, have not been able to - ter up by any means sufficient to pay any other bah., so that every tradesman's outstanding bills against the farmers are very much increased, and to such a degree, as to involve many of them in the same ruin. At the present nsoment we have two parishes, Mildenhall and [sleben', which, together Lave very few, if any, short of 100 labourers, and moat of them very hearty young men, for whom the fanners cannot find regular work. These men sic driven to apply to the parish officers for relief for the sapport of themselves and families. EIMARD GWllLT.—Laiiiio sold at Ipswich fair last year for alma: one third less than they did the'year before, and tar one balf less than they did iu 1813. _ EtwAnm Moog.—ln some cases of imoccupancy the farms are in the bands of assignees. A large farm of 3or 600 acres in the_parisli of Kesgrave was out of lease last Michaelinatt, and the tenant agreed on a renewal of his lease, bait he has since declitted aetatiiug the farm, and the landlord, Mr. Shows-, is, I undetatml, looking nit for another tenant. Another farm, in the same parish, of 3 or 40i) acres perhaps t I speak mach at random in this instance) is It {OW eupiell by a tenant, the last being a baukr 4 the kindlord, Mr. Edwards, has the fires on his own band s. of about 150 acres, in Culpho, is in the hands of iNfigliees of the late tenant. One in this parish, of about iifl acres, - on which a teauttit (Reeve) has brought up a large tinuily i very respectably, is in the hands of the last mentioned assignees, the bankrupt tenant of that farm being the owner of this. Reeve u now working as a labourer, as are his sons, being in fact on the parish, though not actually relieved out of the poor-rates. Another little farmer with a large thmily, who seven years ago, sold a small hum bar 1000 ;miners, and has sitter lived in a house of ilk own, with about 1:1 :acres of land, is now on the parish.. I could enumerate /rimy others *at I know of by rumour, but the above may softer!, as coming within my immediate knowledge. As a ;wig:qt.:At , for this county, heretofore so wealthy and happy, roelay, tearcely no hour of atty slay, passes without some oc . :menet! bringing before me some insiare:e of agricultural nistotss. I see, hoe ever, your query is confined to the farmer; even so confined, I could till my sheet with a detail of their distresses. Small farmers coming to parish officers for work— :ill classes of fraita;.r. employing more men than they Want, and ws dtl employ, if heat to their cyan choice; though they east so ill afford this, it is better than maintaining able men to do nothing, sad living upon the rates. Its my, and many other THE NATIONAL REGISTER. arislies, farmers employ all that want work, paying Yuper it.6 less than the wages of the regular or constant men. B this means, the bad effects of idleness are prevented, and the rates kept from any great increase. In other p.u•ishes, farmers take a certain nuoilier of these Mg patilimeraries. on the requisition of the overseer, accordion' to the .atilig of the farmer, pet - hap/I our man for every 40, 30, or 20 pounds, and for each man Gs. a week for his work. It' the labourer has a family, he receives sufficient out of the poor i.ltes to maintain them, and in the following proportion :—For his wife only, about Is.; if one child, .2-.; two children, 3.. 1;d.; three chit. dren, 5%. Of.; four children, tis. oil.; and so on. This has been done by the advice, and under the direction of the Ma gistrates, who have entered into minute estimates, calculation., and enquiries, on the points that lone led them to a pretty full acquaintance svith the situation of the labouring class. You can easily imagine the t ,, teirit 4.f magisterial into ;Terence in these matters of recent °evil rretive. I speak in respect of the neighbourhood of W !bridge. I believe very great benefit to have arisen to all classes trout this interference•. But lam running into too tedious a detail. Inability to pay lent and their current expellees, are other eireamstances denoting the distress of the farmers, who still hold their ground. Instead of riding, they walk to market, where within short dist:lures; instead of dining at their clubs at their different inns, many of them go home to dinner. ►do not • this as a distres.sing part, only as denoting a feeling of the times. Few of those who do remain to diun drink wine, as they almost all did, until lately. This is no great hardship, nor that their daugh ters conic no longer to the milliners or dancing-masters, etc. who have thus lust by their best customers. Even gentlemen of comfortable incomes (say 60111 one to two or three thousand a year) depending on the rents and profits of land, are unable to pay their tradesman's hills. A uu•dical man, in great prac tice, instead of receiving 3001. from the neighbouring farmers, as lie usually does, on account of his hills, at Christmas, did not this year recelse 241. ii. short, the pressure is very great. I give it as my opinion, not farmed hastily, but necessarily somewhat vaguely, that it' the farmers of Suffolk had, for the last year, ,their farms rent free, they would not have made any money of them. Labour, taxes, tvtlie, and tradesmen's hills, would, I think, have absorbed the whole produce. I farm 150 acres of my own; it is a highly improved little farm, that I estimate at 3001. a year rent (it would have let for more three years ago), and 1091. fur interest of capital employed. The produce of the year coding last Michaelmas was 1501. less titan my outgoings, and I go pretty closely to work. Perhaps 501. may have been expeuded in dm' ' g and permanent im provements; still I cannot reckon my loss at less than 5001. however, I do not offer as an approximation to the average result of the loss of farmers, and I cannot easily ac count how I happened to be so much out of pocket; for the year before last I got 3001. over my yearly expences, and the year before upwards of 5001. It thus appears to me, that such of us as have capital are living on It; those who have not (or credit, which conies to the same thing) must sink. Those who were rich are virtually bankrupts; those who were poor are paupers. W. CHAPLIN.—There is a general distress among the far mers, owing to the low price of corn. lam quite sure the taxes, rates, 1 1 / 4 e. will not be paid fur the time to come, without a distress being made upon their stock for the payment. 1 believe the depression on stock is much the same now as on corn : 1 myse•lt keep 590 ewes : in Augnst 1813, I sold my lambs for 265. 6d. each; in 1814, for 21s. each; and in 1913, for only 17s. The two last years they were not interior to the first. JOHN HAYWARD.—The different failures of merchants, mil lerv, butchers, Sze. are. ; also the great loss that arises from putting off business by ties low price that live and dead Mock, implements, and every other :wade are now selling ; so that I consider, if a man gives up his feria, he loses two-thirds of his property ; and if lie keeps it on at the present low price of corn, 'tis very probable lie will lose the whole. ItosERT Fta.Lert.—Tbe country suffers beyond all possible calculation, as there seems to be almost a total stop to the cir culation of paper and specie. Labourers have nothing to do ; and I consider, and am owe, that if the poor laws are not revised very soon, that the country cannot be at peace long : for, if the labouring hands are out of employ, they will assemble to gether, and lay plans to deceive the Magistrate, the church wardens and overseers, which is daily the case already here. The poor .know the farmers to be without money, or we should not be in peace now. ll.—Causes. DR. M. MACQUEEN.-01 the various evils that combine against the agricultural interest, tithes end poor -rates, as these are now constituted, appear to me to have the moat extensive operation, far more than the Income tax, or perhaps the whole War-taxes together. Tithes should never be paid by the far mer: they operate as a discouragement to his industry and en terprise, and are a constant source of ill-will towards the Clergy, and the Established Church in general, especially in the many instances where they are gathered for the benefit of some rich Dignitary, or other man of rank, whom the parishioners never see nor hear. In regard to the poor-rates, I always view these as coupled with the Idleness and depravity of the working classes. And on this subject I would observe, that the morals, as well as manners, of the lower orders of the community here, hare been degenerating since the earliest ages of the 'French Revolution. The doctrine of equality, and the Rights of Man is not yet forgotten, but fondly cherished, and reluctantly abandoned. They consider their respective parishes as their right an,: inheritance, to which they are entitled to resort, under every real and imaginary grievance, however it may have been ineorre'd ; and if their request be not granted, they Ay to the next Magistrate, who - is frequently the Parson of the parish, and obtain an order to the Overseers. Hence they are become cureless and improvident, negligent us to their labour, and im patient of routs - out :of their earning too, a large proportion is spent at the ale-house, a misconduct for which they deem themselves accountable to no authority. To obtiiate this coin plicateL mischief; Saving Ranks should be encouraged; the l c latidlirs themselves, and the princii, a l far m rs , oug ht t o be w Members of such Institutions, by ay of girl' them 'mom rageinent. The Magistrates sh o uld b e 11101 P unwrous, and armed with mneh more power than they hold ander the exist ing laws. The poor and labouring man should be taught to depend taietly on himself, on his industry, sobriety, and good behaviour, and to expect relief only in cases wherein the dis. tress was urgent and manifest, add proceeding from causes that are natund and inevitable. Hence would. follow all ame lioration of their conduct amtemnforts, togeffier with a dimi nution of the intolerable contributions that are now levied for their support. Connected with the MOMS and conditions of the lower orders, I would remark on the great number of ale bowies in every part of the country, the common resort of the men when the liminess of the day is ekred. These houses are now almost all bought up by the neighbouriog brewers, who place in them trusty Sii rants to sell their sophisticated compo sitions, a soft liptorisb, iatoxicattog liquor, extracted Ism SEPTEMBER SO. cheap and se,”•et ingredients. 'flans they absorb a very large portion of the earnings of the people, an4miarss to themselves sumptuous fort mica at the expenee of the industry and ine!•als of tho !attaining ChiSeli. This traffic nosh , assuredly to be pot down by some legislative authority. No public brewer should he alinwed to possess an aledsonse, but every etiermtagemeut ' ca to publicans to blew their own beer, and the number should be considerably reduced. I should think one third of the present number were amply sufficient. The Magistrates should nut may he more in number than they now are, but the M : i fistracy ought to oe coidined, chiefly, if not entirely, to country Gentlemen, to the absolute exclusion of the Clergy, It is my opinion, that the ceclesiastical and civil filiwtions should always be left separate, as by their union, on great and small occasion:, confusion and mischief have too frequently been the result. The Lord Lieutenants of the counties should hive the power to name as many Magistrates as they Wee right, under a strong penalty in event of refusal. Euw tun PLATT.—The arrears'. of rent in this county are (from every information I have platilied) very general, and very alarming in their amount.—The circulation of paper is much diminished, owing to, and in proportion tt ith, the reduc tion in value of the farmer's capital, and the several articles of agricultural produce; but I do not know that the country suf fers thereby ; at any rate, I ant sure that the country has suf fered II mute by the firmer excessive issue of country bank-notes. J. A. PF:ARsON.—I believe it is ascertained, that from the recent failures of some of the banks, and the curtailed circula• tion of others, the quantity of paper cannot have been dimi nished less than two millions and a half, or perhaps three mil lions, in this county; and as the remaining banks find it neces sary to be more cautions in affording the accommodations which had, in better times, been usual, the most serious incon venience has arisen to the public, fur want of a sufficient quan tity of paper. JOSLPH PENNDIGTON.—I do not consider that, ny particular distress has arisen out of the diminished circulation or paper from country banks—perhaps the ease with which money, or rather paper, was borrowed at these banks, whilst farmers were making profits, may have led to extravagance. MR. EDW. Moon.—'flee country does, I think, suffer from a diminished circulation of paper. This is, in fact, the cause and effect °I one distress, and the distress itself. We have of late hail no other circulating medium than paper; while we could obtain poper we were wealthy-110W we can no longer get paper for our produce we are poor. The bankers, knowing the state of affairs; seeing farmers breaking in all directions; that the cash balances in their hands are comparatively trifling; and, in many cases, the balance is on the wrong side of the book, of course, limit their credits and their issuer. MR. THOS. ABRAHAM.—The diminished circulation of paper is general throughout the kintdom ; thiescanisot be local ; this has been the greatest evil, and it is impossible to foresee the consequence. The Bankers can give no assistance, and I very much doubt if more than three-fourths of them are solvent; and if the day should come (and it is by no means improbable) that credit should receive a severer shock than it has already, and if these persona should be called upon to pay in specie or bank paper, one-fourth of what is now considered property, would be annihilated; and this would he attended with a far thee reduction in the price of farm produce, and add to the present distress. It has been the practice of late years to throw every burden on the farmers ; a thing little thought of, but which is more grievous in many parishes than the poor rates • I mean the highway rate, wad statute labour for repair i.ig the roads.—What reason can there be why the public, who use the roads, should not keep them in repair? Why is a fir mer to make smooth and fair roads, for others to enjoy them almost free of expense MR. Anent:rt.—One very grand cause, which has already plunged many farmers and their families into the greatest dis tress, is the difficulty that prevailed a few years since in hiring farms at any rent whatever. This induced many men of good property to purchase land at very high prices, sooner than waste their property he remaining out of business. In order to retain capital enough in hand to cultivate their farms, they bor. owed- (what they could then do with cute) half, and in some eases, two-thirds of the amount of their purchase monies. The martgagees have called in or required payment of the !Mats ad vanced. The estates have been offered for public or private sale, but the proprietors have not been able to obtain sufficient to pay off the mortgages, and the property they themselves ori ginally possessed, and all their subsequent labour and improve ments, are swallowed up, and they themselves become penny less. There can be no doubt whatever, eat the diminished cir culation of paper, if not the main spring, is one of the princi pal works in the machinery to effect the farmer's ruin. Whilst the country bankers were able to accommodate men of respect. ability and credit with a temporary lean of their notes, every market was supplied with merchants and others, who arc always ready to buy, at a fair price, watever article the farmer had to dispose of. These means ti iavine ceased, the farmer can scarcely find a buyer for any thing he has to seal, except the coonlintr. The consumer , are not able to take oft the supplies which the general want of money compels the farmers to bring to market. The consumer selects his commodity, and has the opportunity of under-rating the value of the articles offered to him, which lie does not fail to improve. Perhaps not more than one-third of the corn or stock offered by the farmer for sale, is disposed of, so that every market day is os erloa di d with corn and stock, which. if a more general circulation of paper moncy prevailed, would have been previnwily disposed of to merchants, or what are called middle-men. This of course occasions a very material depression in the price of vs hatever article the farmer has to dispose of. Ido not consider the state of the labouring poor to be very little, if any, improvi d shire the year 191 1, or 1812. For although the article of bread might, liven an average, nearly double the present price, the then flourishing state at the farmers enabled them to capend a great deal of money in various improvements about their films. This furnished the labourers with regular work at good usages, and if such wages were not adequate to the maintenance of their families, the farmers made up the deficiency by the pa rochial rates. Now the farmers have neither the spirit our the means. Scarce any man employs one labourer more than he is compelled to do. This occasions a very large proportion of the labourers to be out of employ, during a great pail ut the year. I I I.—Remedies. lion. and Ray. 11. C. Cwt..— Iu addition to the modification of such taxes as immediately affect agriculture, especially the War alalt Duty, I conceive that the most effectual remedy for alleviating the iliffioulty of the owners and occupiers of land, would be found in relieving them, if it were possible, trout a portion of that very heavy and increasing berthen —the main tenance of the poor. J. W. Aatate.—Relieve the tenant by doing away his Proper ty Tnxiitstl lierse 'fax ; take off the War Drily on Malt, cons mete the thee, the great bar to the real improvement et the soil, when . ileuwatleil Us Iliad. Let the whole commodity pay