526 Letter on Affairs in general. [Nov. 
beer, tea, sugar, candles, soap ;—and the difference in nominal’ price be- 
tween these items of expenditure now and fifteen ‘years ago—which is 
the real_increase of value in the fundholder’s dividend—the aggregate 
decrease in their nominal price will not amount to thirty per ‘cen.—I 
question if it will amount to twenty-five :—then take the increased rental 
of land—take the general rental of the kingdom—taking in ‘all the dif- 
ferent characters of increase—the increased rent of corn land—the in- 
creased rent of orchard and pasture—the enormous increased. price of. all 
land applied to agricultural purposes in the neighbourhood of Jarge 
towns—and the still more enormous increase upon the miles of land let 
upon building leases—let at £50, £100, and sometimes £200 an acre! 
and see then whether the increased vaJue of the rent-roll, instead of 
shewing—as the stock has done—an improvement of thirty or thirty-five 
per cent., does not shew an advance of considerably more than one 
hundred ? 
Cobbett, whose last four or five numbers—his ride through Glouces- 
tershire and Wiltshire—have been admirable, and whose mere faculty 
of calling hard names amounts to a curiosity—Cobbett surprises me 
by the regret which he expresses, whenever (in passing from village to 
village) he finds the “old landed gentry” of the counties “ driven out,” 
as he terms it, by the cotton and fund people. I confess I do not quite 
perceive the reasonableness of this regret. I do not see how a system 
under which mere farmers made (and wasted) large sums, and a system 
under which the value of land has certainly risen most unprecedently, 
should have “ driven” any land-owner to the letting of some fund-holder 
or cotton-spinner into his property? A trader may be “driven out,” 
because his means, as Shylock terms it, are “in supposition.” His 
business is to risk the property which he has, in order to gain more. 
But how—except by extravagance, or improvidence—casualties to which 
all. classes of interest are liable, and for which few have a right to 
claim much pity and consideration—how there has been any thing in 
the system of the last thirty years—bating earthquakes, inundations, and 
personal absurdities—to “ drive out” a gentleman who then possessed an 
estate of £2,000 a year, and was contented to live upon it !—Taxation | 
might make it advisable for him to keep one carriage, perhaps, instead of 
two; while half his brother land-holders of the continent were reduced 
to keep no carriage at all: but how there has arisen any thing to “ drive 
him out,” I confess I am at a loss to conjecture. i 
One fact, however, seems pretty clear—that, “‘ Driven out,” or not, the 
public burthens,—and, first of them, the land-owners’ MONOPOLY must 
come down. The productive power of the country—that is to say 
the labour of the people,—cannot go on paying the claims of the pro- 
perty of the country,—the rent of the land,—the charges of the govern- 
ment,—the dues of the church,—and the interest of the fundholder,— 
at the rate at which all those annuities are charged upon it—much 
longer. New markets must be opened to our commerce; for the old 
ones are becoming, and in the nature of things must become, inde- 
pendent of us. What miraculous gift do Englishmen imagine’ that 
they have beyond all other people, that they should go on (as their 
legislators tell them they do, and can do) surpassing the manufac- 
tures of every nation in the world; and yet find none of. the most en- 
lightened nations about. them, possessing the same means with them- 
selves, and excited by their example, capable, after years of exertion, 
