Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Contexts and possibilities
- Part II Texts
- 4 The Real Rights of Man, Thomas Spence, 1775
- 5 An Essay on the Right of Property in Land, William Ogilvie, 1782
- 6 Enquiry concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness, William Godwin, 1798
- 7 The Effects of Civilization on the People in European States, Charles Hall, 1805
- 8 A Lay Sermon Addressed to the Higher and Middle Classes on the Existing Distresses and Discontents, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817
- 9 Report to the County of Lanark, Robert Owen, 1821
- 10 A Few Doubts as to the Correctness of Some Opinions Generally Entertained on the Subjects of Population and Political Economy, ‘Piercy Ravenstone’, 1821
- 11 An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human Happiness; Applied to the Newly Proposed System of Voluntary Equality of Wealth, William Thompson, 1824
- 12 Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital or the Unproductiveness of Capital Proved with Reference to the Present Combinations amongst Journeymen, Thomas Hodgskin, 1825
- 13 Rural Rides, William Cobbett, 1830
- 14 Conclusion
- Notes
- Index
13 - Rural Rides, William Cobbett, 1830
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Contexts and possibilities
- Part II Texts
- 4 The Real Rights of Man, Thomas Spence, 1775
- 5 An Essay on the Right of Property in Land, William Ogilvie, 1782
- 6 Enquiry concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness, William Godwin, 1798
- 7 The Effects of Civilization on the People in European States, Charles Hall, 1805
- 8 A Lay Sermon Addressed to the Higher and Middle Classes on the Existing Distresses and Discontents, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817
- 9 Report to the County of Lanark, Robert Owen, 1821
- 10 A Few Doubts as to the Correctness of Some Opinions Generally Entertained on the Subjects of Population and Political Economy, ‘Piercy Ravenstone’, 1821
- 11 An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human Happiness; Applied to the Newly Proposed System of Voluntary Equality of Wealth, William Thompson, 1824
- 12 Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital or the Unproductiveness of Capital Proved with Reference to the Present Combinations amongst Journeymen, Thomas Hodgskin, 1825
- 13 Rural Rides, William Cobbett, 1830
- 14 Conclusion
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Cobbett's Rural Rides is a diary of his journeying on horseback around southern England in the years 1822–6. He ranged south of the Thames from Kent tb Somerset, and north of the Thames in Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Herefordshire, and Worcestershire. He does not treat most of the Midlands, the North, East Anglia, or parts of the British Isles outside England, though some of these areas were covered in other articles in his Political Register that were not included in the 1830 collection. Rural Rides is a description of and commentary upon what he sees and does. He describes the landscape, the crops, the towns, villages, farms and inns, the country estates, and the people he meets. The description is larded with commentary upon the times, and this is our main concern. But the commentary and the description cannot be disentangled, for his perception is coloured by his moral, social, and political concerns.
The rides begin during the nadir of the postwar agricultural depression. Prices of farm produce have collapsed, as Cobbett demonstrates in his reports of the fairs he visits. For example, at the Weyhill sheep fair of 1822, the turnover has fallen from £300,000 a few years ago to £70,000 (58). This spells ruin for farmers who rent and work the land; for rents, fixed when prices were high, remain high even though prices and therefore farming incomes have slumped.
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- Information
- Socialism, Radicalism, and NostalgiaSocial Criticism in Britain, 1775-1830, pp. 250 - 269Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1987