satisfied. However, mind, to deceive us now. I am, my Lords, Your Lordships' Most obedient Servant Aud constant Friend, KENTISH JOURNAL. been drawn from other parts of the kingdom to be expended on Barracks, Magazines, MartelloTowers, Catamarans, and all the excuses for lavish expenditure, which the war for the Bourbons gave rise to. All things will return; these rubbishy flimsy things, on this common, will first be de-. serted, then crumble down, then swept away, and the cattle, sheep, pigs and geese will once more graze upon the common, which will again furnish heath, furze and. TUESDAY, DEC. 4, 1821. Elver-turf for the labourers on the neighton Farm, near Faversham, Kent. bouring lands.-After you leave -THIS is the first time, since I Dartford the land becomes exwent to France, in 1792, that cellent. You come to a bottom I have been on this side of Shoot-of chalk, many feet from the surers' Hill. The land, generally face, and when that is the case the speaking, from Deptford to Dart- land is sure to be good; no wet ford is poor, and the surface ugly at bottom; no deep ditches, no by nature, to which ugliness there water furrows, necessary; suffihas been made, just before we ciently moist in dry weather, and came to the latter place, a con- no water lying about upon it in siderable addition by the inclosure wet weather for any length of of a common, and by the sticking time. The chalk acts as a filterup of some shabby-genteel houses, ing-stone, not as a sieve, like gravel, surrounded with dead fences and and not as a dish, like clay. The things called gardens, in all man-chalk acts as the soft stone in ner of ridiculous forms, making, Herefordshire does; but it is not all together, the bricks, hurdle- so congenial to trees that have rods and earth say, as plainly as tap-roots-Along through Gravesthey can speak, "Here dwell va-end towards Rochester the counnity and poverty." This is a little try presents a sort of gardening excrescence that has grown out of scene. Rochester (the Bishop of the immense sums, which have which is, or lately was, tax Col lector for London and Middlesex) | cere desire to do their best to is a small but crowded place, smooth the inequalities of life, and to give us, "brave fellows," as often as they could, strong beer, when their churlish masters or fathers or husbands would have drenched us to death with small. This, at the out-set of life, gave me a high opinion of the judgment and justice of the female sex; an opinion which has been confirmed by the observations of lying on the south bank of the beautiful Medway, with a rising ground on the other side of the city. Stroud, which you pass through before you come to the bridge, over which you go to enter Rochester; Rochester itself, and Chatham, form, in fact, one main street of about two miles and a half in length. Here I was got into the scenes of my cap-and-fea-my whole life. This Chatham ther days! Here, at between has had some monstrous wens sixteen and seventeen, I enlisted stuck on to it by the lavish expenfor a soldier. Upon looking up diture of the war. These will towards the fortifications and the moulder away. It is curious barracks, how many recollections enough that I should meet with erowded into my mind! The a gentleman in an inn at Chatham girls in these towns do not seem to give me a picture of the houseto be so pretty as they were thirty- distress in that enormous wen, eight years ago; or, am I not so which, during the war, was stuck quick in discovering beauties as I on to Portsmouth. Not less than was then? Have thirty-eight fifty thousand people had been years corrected my taste, or made drawn together there! These are me a hyper critic in these matters! now dispersing. The coagulated Is it that I now look at them with blood is diluting and flowing back the solemness of a "professional through the veins. Whole streets man," and not with the enthu- are deserted, and the eyes of the siasm and eagerness of an ama- houses knocked out by the boys teur?" I leave these questions that remain. The jack-daws, as 66 for philosophers to solve. One much as to say, Our turn to be thing I will say for the young wo-inspired and to teach is come,” are beginning to take possession of the Methodist chapels. The men of these towns, and that is, that I always found those of them that I had the great happiness to gentleman told me, that he had be acquainted with, evince a sin-been down to Portsea to sell half a street of houses, left him by a relation; and that nobody would give him any thing for them further than as very cheap fuel and rubbish! Good God! And is this " 66 not the wen be dispersed? Yes, and I shall see the eyes out of thousands of houses, if I live but a very few years. Let builders and owners of houses take warning; for such scenes are going to take place, as never yet entered into their speculations. This dispersion of the wen is the only real difficulty that I see in settling the prosperity?" Is this the prosperity of the war?" Have I not, for twenty long years, been regretting the existence of these unnatural embossments; these white - swellings, these odious affairs of the nation and restoring wens, produced by Corruption it to a happy state. But, disand engendering crime and mi-persed it must be; and, if there sery and slavery? We shall see be half a million, or more, of peo the whole of these wens aban-ple to suffer, the consolation is, doned by the inhabitants, and, at that the suffering will be divided last, the cannons on the fortifica-into half a million of parts. As tions may be of some use in battering down the buildings.-But, what is to be the fate of the great wen of all? The monster, called, by the silly coxcombs of the press, "the metropolis of the empire?" What is to become of that multitude of towns that has been stuck up around it? The village of Kingston was smothered in the town of Portsea; and why? Because taxes, drained from other parts of the kingdom, were brought thither. Who, except such people as "Walter the base," does that taxes drawn up to one point not see, that it is taxes, which | produced these effects; they must have swelled out London? Who have a "penitentiary," for indoes not see, that these taxes stance, to check the evil, and that must cease to be carried thither they must needs have in the Wen! in such quantities? And, must So that here were a million of if the swelling out of London, naturally produced by the Funding system, were not sufficient; as if the evil were not sufficiently great from the inevitable tendency of the system of loans and funds, our pretty gentlemen must resort to positive institutions to augment the population of the Wen. They found that the increase of the Wen produced an increase of thieves and prostitutes, an increase of all sorts of diseases, an increase of miseries of all sorts; they saw, pounds, drawn up in taxes, em- | about thirty inches distant from ployed not only to keep the thieves each other. In short, as far as and prostitutes still in the Wen, soil goes, it is impossible to see but to bring up to the Wen work-a finer country than this. You men to build the penitentiary, who frequently see a field of fifty and whose families, amounting, acres, level as a die, clean as a perhaps, to thousands, make an garden and as rich. Mr. Birkaddition to the cause of that crime beck need not have crossed the and misery, to check which is the Atlantic and Allyghany into the object of the Penitentiary! Peo- bargain to look for land too rich ple would follow, they must fol- to bear wheat; for here is a plenty low, the million of money. How- of it. In short, this is a country ever, this is of a piece with all the of hop-gardens, cherry, apple, rest of their goings on. They pear and filbert orchards, and and their predecessors, ministers quickset hedges. But, alas! and House, have been collecting what, in point of beauty, is a together all the materials for a dreadful explosion; and, if the explosion be not dreadful, other heads must point out the means of prevention. country without woods and lofty trees! And here there are very few indeed. I am now sitting in a room, from the window of which I look, first, over a large and level field of rich land, in which the drilled wheat is finely come up, and which is surrounded by clipped quickset hedges with a row of apple trees running by the sides of them; next over a long succession of rich meadows, which are here called marshes, the shortest grass upon which will fatten sheep or oxen; next, over a little Wednesday, 5 Dec. The land in quitting Chatham is chalk at bottom; but, before you reach SITTINGBOURNE, there is a vein of gravel and sand under, but a great depth of loam above. About Sittingbourne the chalk bottom comes again, and continues on to this place, where the land appears to me to be as good as it can possibly be. Mr. WILLIAM WALLER, at whose house I am, has grown, this year, MangelWurzel, the roots of which weigh, I think, on an average, twelve that runs along it; rich fields, pounds, and in rows, too, at only pastures and orchards lie all branch of the salt water which runs up to Faversham, beyond that, on the Isle of Shepy, which rises a little into a sort of ridge around me; and yet, I declare, that I a million times to one prefer as a spot to live on, the heaths, the miry coppices, the wild woods and the forests of Sussex and Hampshire. I went that he is a great advocate for corn-bills! I suppose he does not wish to let people who have leases see the bottom of the evil. He may get his rents for this year; but it will be his last year, Thursday, 6 Dec.-" Agricul- if the interest of the Debt be not tural distress" is the great topic very greatly reduced. Some peoof general conversation. The ple here think, that corn is Webb Hallites seem to prevail smuggled in even now! Perhaps here. The fact is, farmers in ge- it is, upon the whole, best that the neral read nothing but the news-delusion should continue for a papers; these, in the Wen, are year longer; as that would tend under the controul of the Corrup- to make the destruction of the systion of one or the other of the tem more sure, or, at least, make factions; and, in the country, the cure more radical. nine times out of ten, under the controul of the parsons and landlords, who are the magistrates, as they are pompously called, that is to say, Justices of the peace. From such vehicles what are farmers to learn! They are, in general, thoughtful and sensible men; but, their natural good sense is perverted by these publications, had it not been for which we never should have be a reformed parliament. Pretty seen "a sudden transition from little VAN, that beauty of all beauwar to peace" lasting seven years, ties; that orator of all orators; and more sudden in its destructive that saint of all saints; that finaneffects at last than at first. Sir cier of all financiers, said, that, Edward Knatchbull and Mr. Ho- if Mr. HUME were to pare down neywood are the members of the the expences of government to "Collective Wisdom" for this his wish, there would be others, country. The former was, till of "the Hunts, Cobbetts and Carlate, a Tax-Collector. I hear, liles, who would still want the Friday, 7 Dec. through Faversham. A very pretty little town, and just ten minutes walk from the market-place up to the Dover turnpike-road. Here are the powder-affairs that Mr. HUME So well exposed. An immensity of buildings and expensive things. Why are not these premises let, or sold? However, this will never be done, until there |