The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1861-04-02 00:00:00

LORD SYDNEY G. OSBORNE AT THE
BLA NDFORD FARMERS' CLUB.

There is a remarkable difference between the
villages of the poet and tho villages of reality.
Auburn and Tyburn are strangely different
places; as different as the sheep-breeding coun-
ties of England and tho Arcadia of Seventeenth-
century Romances, where the happy peasants
wear small clothes of pink cud blue satin, and
carry shepherds' crooks fashioned of polished
satin-wood, filleted with fantastic and graceful
knots of peach blossom riband• It is a pretty
life in Auburn, with the nightly dance round the
Maypole, garlanded with roses, while the old
people sit under the village tree, and the lover
presses his suit under the hawthorn°, that per-
reniel head of cauliflower, which remains per-
petually in blossom for that useful purpose.
That pretty parsonage and the village church,
the exact colour of an old stilton cheese, form
picturesque objects through the trees. Observe
the smooth glossy hair of the village youth, their
lavender jerkins, the roses in their shoes, their
scarlet cloaks and unspotted white aprons!
Alas! and a sigh is fitting so poetical a dream!
The charming vil:age of Auburn is to be found
now only in stage "drops." Goldsmith's village is
indeed deserted, and a railway station covers its
site. The Maypole has been cut down for rail-
way sleepers, and the exquisite old peasant who
played with his grandchildren and sported such
! an immaculate blue coat with gilt buttons haa
become sadly rheumatic. The son is more than
suspected of poaching, and gossips will talk re-
specting his daughter. The itinerant old sol-
dier has been seized as a vagrant, and the school-
master whose "one small head" contained too
much has been transported for forgery. The
truth is, the dream-village that Goldsmith once
wandered into, and whose name is to be found
in no English guide-book; it. nightly dances,
the simple, decent cottages, woodbined and
honeysuckled, are vanished into "air, thin air,"
like the stage coach and other interesting
fossils.
We also much feared that about the same
time that some unnoticed earthquake se-allowed
up Auburn—the model village—that model land-
lord and fine country gentleman, Sus ROGER DE
COVERLEY, must have departed this life, de-
servedly lamented. We rejoice to find, how-
ever, that this waa not the case. Lord Ossoaws
produced him at the last meeting of the Bla.nd-
ford Farmers' Club, in the full possession of his
faculties, enjoying robust health and tha most
buoyant spirit.; and if landowners and tenant
farmers were possessed of disinterested benevo-
lence towards each other—that charity which we
are taught to believe actuates the conduct of
angels—we might feel inclined to endorse the
doctrine of his Lordship respecting mutual con-
fidence and annual hiring'. But as these classes
are partakers of the same frail humanity as other
men, we cannot see wherein exists the difference
in the principle of hiring a house in a town or a
hundred acres of land in the country. In either
case, prudence would suggest, if the tenant con-
templates investing a large amount of capital in
extensive improvements, that he should be pro-
tected by a lease. Without some guarantee of
that kind he would be placed in a wrong position
both towards the owner of the property and to-
wards himself. He may have the highest confi-
dence in the honour and integrity of his landlord,
but he cannot toll what contingency may arise,
never be certain that he or his heirs will receive
the reward of his labours. Mutual confidence is
unquestionably a valuable commodity. It is a
necessary ingredient in carrying on the business
of life. No Government can carry on the
affairs of a nation—except by physical force,—
only so far as that Government possesses
the confidence of the people. Withhold
confidence, and all credit would be extin-
guished, all commercial transactions would
cease, business would be stopped, and
people would even be afraid to venture out
of doors. But it is one thing to place confidence
in one's neighbour, and another thing to tempt
that neighbour to take an advantage over you.
The text is time-worn which says, "the best way
to preserve peace is to be prepared for war."
Those who started our volunteer movement
pointed out its desimblity, not because they be-
lieved Napoleon at that time really contemplated
• descent upon our shores, but as a guarantee of
our own security. It was not regarded by us as
a menace to our neighbours across the Channel,,
but as a preservative against temptation, on ac-
count of our defenceless position. In a similar
light may a lease be regarded. It is acting upon
the principle we all act upon when we lock our
leo, at night.
to 08BORNE'r; partiality for yearly holdings
seems to.iis to have led him unconsciously to form
but a somewhat low estimate of the intellect and
conscientiousne‘ of.tcukant fernier'. His Lord-
ship no doubt spoke few his own experience
when he expressed his opition that there were
"but few, if any landlords, who would try to
restrain in their tenants the freest exercise of
the franchise," but he evidently cannot say
with the old woman in the story, "r know all
about it, for I've been in the oven myself." It
is certainly not paying a very high. compliment
to the intelligence of any man to say - he has no
party feeling in political matters, no conscientious
scruples to overcome to vote either white of- black
simply to please a friend. Man is so constituted
that if he be intelligent he must necessarily,
think; while such is the correlation of the iolv.
tellect and the mind, that one cannot think

deeply without its producing corresponding emo-
tions to act in a given direction. The tenant
farmer is as deeply interested in political matters
as any class of the community, and to argue
that he possesses no conscientious scruples in
politics is simply to set him down as a simpleton,
or. a man devoid of principle. There can, we
think, be no gainsaying the fact, that where
the landlord himself possesses "strong political
feelings," and not over-nice scruples of consci-
ence, his tenantry, if under a yearly holding,
would possess a far less amount of freedom of
action, than if they possessed a twenty one
year's lease. There are but few instances, if any,
perhaps, where an actual command is given;
but an intimation that "the Duke's" interest is
with so and so, that "the Squire" asks as "a
favour" the vote the tenant has to give may be
recorded for such a candidate, are hints pretty
well understood. It might not, we think, be
very difficult, for some of our readers to point
to instanoes where these "favours" if not granted
implied a rise in the rent or a notice to quit