Friday Dear Sir, I Presented Your Petition Today, but the Speaker Would Not Allow It to Be Referred to the Committee Which Will
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Friday Dear Sir, I presented your Petition today, but the Speaker would not allow it to be referred to the Committee which will sit after our short Holidays the end of next week because it objects in fact to the principle of the Bill. It will therefore be desirable that you should, after seeing the Bill, attend, as I understand it will be essentially, prepare another Petition against such clauses as you particularly object to – the second Reading took place on the day that your letter reached me, & the Petition was not given to me till the following one – no purpose desired on your part opposition to the to the second Reading, & Mr Leake told me that it was to pass by consent without resistance. Mr Williams told me otherwise afterwards, but you seem to have been tardy in taking defensive measures. Ld Ellenborough’s Bill applies to Exchanges of Common Land, & would probably not meet the present case, of which the object may in fact be useful, if the enclosure of the Cow Common & compulsory tithe assurances be abased now. The allotment proposed for the Poor must probably be desirable. Yrs faithfully, Harcourt This letter was sent by ‘FREE post, of 16 W 16 1834’, to The Revd. R Pryce, Aston, Bampton. It is marked (in a different had and in brown ink) “not Bampton Devon Try Witney Oxon”, and countersigned “W Harcourt” (William Harcourt was the MP for the area). Letter on hardship to follow inclosure of the open fields of Aston My dear Sir, A Bill has been read a first time in the House of Commons, & is immediately to be submitted to the consideration of a Committee, the object of which is to authorize the enclosure of (‘Aston & Coate’ crossed out) the Common Fields of Aston & Coate. This Bill has had its origin with Mrs Horde and her newly- appointed agent, the former of whom is the owner in possession of, I believe, somewhat more than half the parish, and upon the deaths of certain persons other lands will come to her possession which will increase her possessionary property to something under 2/3rd of the lands of the parish. You will know that by a recent report of a Committee of, & from the language of every Member who spoke in a still more recent debate in your House, that the distress of the Farmers is very great, & I can from my personal observation advise you that nowhere is that distress more prevalent than in Aston – nowhere is there a place where the small profits arising from the employment of Agricultural Capital and Agricultural Toil has had a more severe effect upon the minds & physical acceprities of that description of the population of this country which is placed a little above the peasant, than it has had in Aston, the place in which I live. Just at this time when every shilling that can be collected by the poor proprietor is immediately demanded by the Mortgage Creditor, or the Overseer, or for the necessary expenditure of procuring seed and labour in order to the cultivation of the soil, it has suddenly occurred to the mind of Mrs Horde that an Inclosure would be desirable & she is now through her Agent Mr Leakey, a Solicitor at Witney, endeavouring by every means in her power to obtain an Act of Parliament for that purpose. It is perfectly unnecessary for me to minutely detail the means by which the remaining property of the poorer proprietors will thus be transferred from them to their richer neighbours. It is sufficient that I should remind you, that every increased expense must necessarily place them in the hands of money- lenders & their Attorneys; & as it has been said of prisoners that the distance from their prisons to their graves is very short, so it may with equal truth and propriety be predicated, that the distance from the grasp of the greedy money- lender & his Attorney to the ruin of the poverty-stricken borrower is short indeed! Suffer me then, my dear Sir, as a Christian – Minister, as a Christian Minister did I say, suffer me as a Man professing the common feelings of our common nature to implore your assistance upon this occasion as a Member of Parliament, as a British Senator, as one whose duty and true interest it is, as I am sure it will be your gratification & delight to protect and defend my poor friends and neighbours at Aston from the misery that awaits them if this Inclosure Bill should pass into a Law. The eyes of the Country are upon you. Hitherto it has been often objected, with what truth I shall not stop to enquire, that in practice the wealthy and powerful have exercised more influence over the necessitous and feeble than the theory of our constitution ever admitted them to have the right to exercise. If hereafter it shall be found that the late work of reform shall have had only the effect of changing the Ministers of the Crown & placing in the Commons of England different men without any salutary change of Measures, I shall, I must own, from that time have a worse opinion of human nature than, after some acquaintance with the World, I have hitherto entertained. Two measure are now I believe in contemplation in Parliament which it seems to me will very much supersede the necessity of Inclosure Bills; the one introduced by Lord Ellenborough for facilitating the Exchange of Lands in Common fields; the other introduced by Lord Althorp for commuting and redeeming Tithes. The haste manifested in preparing a Bill to inclose Aston pending these measures, & without waiting to see whether their operation might not be more beneficial to the Proprieties than the passing an Inclosure Act would be extraordinary if the interests of the Proprietors, alone were meant to be consulted. But there are hidden springs at work in the machine which have the effect of impelling it in the direction in which it is by interested persons wished it should move, and in a direction opposite to that in which the real interests of the Proprietors would require it to move. A Petition is about to be presented to the House of Commons signed by almost all the Proprietors of Aston, and I do hope in the House & in the Committee it will have your support, by which you will at the same time that you will do justice to your own benevolent feelings and to your Senatorial character, confer an additional obligation on. My dear sir ? Jones It is the intention of some of the Aston proprietors to wait upon you as soon as or before the Bill goes into Committee. *************************** Reply: Friday Dear Sir, I presented your Petition today, but the Speaker would not allow it to be referred to the Committee which will sit after our short Holidays at the end of next week, because it objects in fact to the principle of the Bill. It will therefore be desirable that you should, after seeing the Bill altered as I understand it will be effectively, prepare another Petition against such clause as you particularly object to – the second Reading took place on the day that your letter reached me, & the Petition was not given to me till the following one – no person desired on your past opposition to the second Reading, & Mr Keake told me that it goes to ?committee by consent without resistance. Mr Williams told me otherwise afterwards; but you seem to have been already in taking defensive measures. Lord Ellenborough’s Bill applies to Exchanges of Common Land, & would probably not meet the present case, of which the object may in fact be useful, if the enclosure of the Cow Common & comfortability tithe arrangements be based & over. The allotment proposed for the Poor must probably be desirable. Yrs faithfully, Harcourt These letters were recovered from a box full of solicitor’s papers after the publication of this booklet. They show the correspondence in 1834 between Rev. B Price, of Aston, Bampton, and Mr George Harcourt, who was the Member of Parliament for Oxfordshire from 1831 to 1862. Mr Pryce, who lived in Aston, was hoping to forestall the passing of the Inclosure Bill for Aston and Bampton, pending the passing of a different Bill which he hoped would lessen the hardship suffered by small farmers under the Inclosure Act. The imprint of a seal can still be seen at the top left-hand corner of Mr Price’s letter. My dear Sir A Bill has been read a first time in the House of Commons, & is immediately to be submitted to the consideration of a Committee, the object of which is to authorize the enclosure of (Aston & Coate - crossed out) the Common Fields of Aston & Coate. This Bill has had its origin with Mrs Horde and her newly appointed Agent, the former of whom is the owner in possession of, I believe, somewhat more than half the parish, & upon the deaths of certain persons other lands will come to her possession which will increase her possessionary property to something under 2/3 (?) of the lands of the Parish. You will know that by a recent report of a Committee of, & from the language of every Member who spoke in a still more recent debate in your House, that the distress of the Farmers is very great; & I can from my personal observation assure you that nowhere is that distress more prevalent than in Aston – nowhere is there a place where the small profits arising from the employment of Agricultural Capital and Agricultural Toil, has had a more severe effect upon the minds & physical necessities of that description of the population of this country which is placed a little above the peasant, than it has had in Aston, the place in which I live.