DESOLATION 239 



more wages, and things were dearer. Worse off, indeed, we 

 were; for the other tradesmen, of whom we had to purchase 

 necessaries, did not reduce their charges according to provisions 

 and wages. However, we struggled through this ; for in those 

 days the deer were in the forest, and we had our milch cow, 

 pigs, and plenty of turf. When the new law passed, the run of 

 our milch cow was taken away, and, it not being in our power 

 to keep her up a part of the year, she was forced to be sold for 

 little or nothing. It was hard, indeed, sir, for my poor husband 

 to bear up against it all. To hear them, as called themselves 

 free-traders, say it was wrong to keep the deer to eat up the 

 pasture, but that the pasture should be for the good of us all ! 

 Good of us all, indeed ! the moment the free-trade party altered 

 the law, and destroyed the deer, then there was no pasturage at 

 all for half the year for our milch cow, nor for nothing else, and 

 the forest laws as to turf and other things were made more 

 restrictive to the poor than ever. Well, sir, my husband could 

 not bear to see our altered condition ; the milk of our cow was 

 like taking a little fortune from us: so, one day, in a fit of 

 anger, he set fire to the furze, and was detected and sent to 

 prison." 



The tale told by this poor woman was not a singular one ; 

 there were many of the cottagers on the New Forest similarly 

 reduced in circumstances : and if we stand on yonder rising 

 ground, we shall see the very face of nature changed. The scene, 

 as far as the eye could reach, though in summer, offers little more 

 than a barren desert. On one hand were the bleached stumps 

 of furze and trees that had been widely consumed by the act of 

 nocturnal incendiaries, while, on the other, all the gorse that had 

 escaped the various conflagrations had been cut, of whatever age 

 it might be if old enough to be set fire to, by the order of the 

 Commission now at the head of affairs. Instead of the rich 

 green forest that used to mantle in gold in May and June in its 

 ferns and broom, a barren expanse was everywhere to be seen, 

 and not a deer nor a bird about it : 



