Long, long before John Forster wrote to recommend everyone to write memoirs of himself it had become the fashion to do so. “That celebrated orator,” writes Dr. Edmund Calamy, one of the most learned of our Nonconformist divines, “Caius Cornelius Tacitus, in the beginning of his account of the life of his father-in-law, Julius Agricola (who was the General of Domitian, the Emperor, here in Britain, and the first who made the Roman part of Britain a PrÆsidial province), excuses this practice from carrying in it anything of arrogance.” This excellent example was followed by Julius CÆsar, Marcus Antoninus, many emperors who kept diaries, Flavius Josephus, St. Gregory of Nazianzen, St. Augustine, to say nothing of Abraham Schultetus, the celebrated professor at Heidelberg; of the learned Fuetius; of Basompierre, the celebrated marshal of France; of the ever-amusing and garrulous Montaigne; or of our own Richard Baxter, or of Edmund Calamy himself. The fact is, it has ever been the fashion with men who have handled the pen freely to write more or less about themselves and the times in which they lived, and there is no pleasanter reading than such biographical recollections; and really it matters little whether on the world’s stage the actor acted high tragedy or low comedy so that he writes truthfully as far as he can about himself and his times. If old Montaigne is to be believed there is nothing like writing about oneself. “I dare,” he writes, “not only speak of myself, but of myself alone,” and never man handled better the very satisfactory theme. If I follow in the steps of my betters I can do no harm, and I may do good if I can show how the England of to-day is changed for the better since I first began to observe that working men and women are better off, that our middle and upper classes have clearer views of duty and responsibility, that we are the better for the political and social and religious reforms that have been achieved of late, that, in fact,

. . . through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.

The one great complaint I have to make with respect to my father and mother, to whom I owe so much, and whose memory I shall ever revere, was that they brought me into the world forty or fifty years too soon. In 1820, when I first saw the light of day, England was in a very poor way. It was what the late Earl of Derby used to call the pre-scientific era. Gross darkness covered the land. The excitement of war was over, and the lavish outlay it occasioned being stopped, life was stagnant, farmers and manufacturers alike were at low-water mark, and the social and religious and political reforms required by the times were as yet undreamed of. However, one good thing my parents did for me. They lived in a country village in the extreme east of Suffolk, not far from the sea, where I could lead a natural life, where I could grow healthy, if not wise, and be familiar with all the impulses which spring up in the heart under the influences of rural life. “Boyhood in the country,” writes William Howitt in his autobiography—“Paradise of opening existence! Up to the age of ten this life was all my own.” And thus it was with me. Existence was a pleasure, and the weather, I believe, was better then than it is now. We had summer in summer time. We had fine weather when harvest commenced, and to spend a day at one of the neighbouring farmers riding the fore horse was a delight which thrilled me with joy; and winter, with its sliding and snowballing, with its clear skies and its glittering snows, rendering the landscape lovelier than ever, made me forget the inevitable chilblains, which was the price we had to pay for all its glories and its charms.

Our little village was situated on the high road between London and Great Yarmouth, along which rolled twice a day the London and Yarmouth Royal Mail, drawn by four horses, and driven by a fat man in red, whom we raw village lads regarded as a very superior person indeed. Behind sat the guard, also in red, with a horn, which he blew lustily when occasion required. There was a time, but that was much later, when a day coach was put on, and, as it changed horses at our village inn, one of our chief delights was to see the tired, heated, smoking horses taken out, and their places filled by a new set, much given to kicking and plunging at starting, to the immense delight of the juvenile spectators. Even the passengers I regarded with awe. In fourteen hours would they not be in London where the King lived—where were the Houses of Parliament, the Bank and the Tower and the soldiers? What would I not have given to be on that roof urging on, under the midnight stars, my wild career! Now and then a passenger would be dropped in our little village. What a nine days’ wonder he was, especially if he were a Cockney and talked in the language of Cockaigne—if he had heard the Iron Duke, or seen royalty from afar. Nonconformity flourished in the village in spite of the fact that the neighbouring baronet, at the gates of whose park the village may be said to have commenced, was Sir Thomas Gooch—(Guche was the way the villagers pronounced his dread name)—for was he not a county magistrate, who could consign people to Beccles Gaol, some eight miles off, and one of the M.P.’s for the county, and did not he and his lady sternly set their faces against Dissent? If now and then there were coals and blankets to be distributed—and very little was done in that way, charity had not become fashionable then—you may be sure that no Dissenter, however needy and deserving, came in for a share.

The churches round were mostly filled by the baronet’s relatives, who came into possession of the family livings as a matter of course, and took little thought for the souls of their parishioners. In fact, very few people did go to church. In our chapel, of which my father was the minister for nearly forty years, we had a good congregation, especially of an afternoon, when the farmers with their families, in carts or gigs, put in an appearance. One of the ejected had been the founder of Nonconformity in our village, and its traditions were all of the most honourable character. A wealthy family had lived in the hall, which Sir Thomas Gooch had bought and pulled down, one of whom had been M.P. for the county in Cromwell’s time, and had left a small endowment—besides, there was a house for the minister—to perpetuate the cause, and it was something amidst the Boeotian darkness all round to have a man of superior intellect, of a fair amount of learning, of unspotted life, of devoted piety, such as the old Nonconformist ministers were, ever seeking to lead the people upward and onward; while the neighbouring gentry and all the parsons round, I am sorry to say, set the people a very bad example. In our time we have changed all that, and the Church clergy are as zealous to do good as the clergy of any other denomination. But that things have altered so much for the better, I hold is mainly due to the great progress made all over the land by Dissent, which woke up the Church from the state of sloth and luxury and lethargy which had jeopardised its very existence. Really, at the time of which I write and in the particular locality to which I refer, decent godly people were obliged to forsake the Parish Church, and to seek in the neighbouring conventicle the aids requisite to a religious life. At the same time, there was little collision between Church and Dissent. The latter had its own sphere, supporting, in addition to its local work, the Bible Society, the Tract Society, the London Missionary Society, and the Anti-Slavery Society. It had also its Sunday-school, very much inferior to what they are now; and, if possible, secured a day school on the British and Foreign plan. Dissenters paid Church rates, which the wealthy Churchmen were not ashamed to collect. They gave the parson his tithes without a murmur, and politically they were all on the side of the Whigs, to whom they were indebted for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts—barbarous laws—which had ostracised intelligent and conscientious Dissenters from all parochial and municipal and Parliamentary life. When I was a boy no one could be a parish constable without going through the hideous farce of taking the Sacrament at his Parish Church. It was the Dissenters who created the public opinion which enabled Sir Robert Peel and the Iron Duke to grant Roman Catholic emancipation. It was they who carried reform and abolished rotten boroughs, and gave Manchester and Sheffield and Birmingham the representatives which the Tories, and especially the parsons, would have denied them. To be a reformer was held by the clergy and gentry to be a rogue and rascal of the first rank. I cannot call to mind any public action taken in support of the suffering and the poor to which the clergy and the gentry in our village, or in any of the villages round, lent any support whatever. As regards the great Anti-Slavery agitation, for instance, the only meeting on the subject was held in our chapel, where a Captain Pilkington came down from London to lecture, and touched all our hearts as he showed the lash and the chains, and the other instruments of torture which that cruel system sanctioned and required, and you may be quite sure that when next day I, with boyish pride, pardonable under the circumstances, was sent round to get signatures for a petition to Parliament on the subject, it was not long before I got my paper filled. Naturally the Dissenters were active in the work, for had not one of their number—poor Smith, missionary at Demerara—been foully murdered by Demerara magistrates and planters because he took the part of the black slave against his white owner and tyrant? Yet I was disgusted, after remembering the effect produced in our Suffolk village by the captain’s eloquence, to read thirty years after in Sir George Stephens’s “Anti-Slavery Recollections,” that “Pilkington was a pleasing lecturer, and won over many by his amiable manners, but that he wanted power, and resigned the duty in about six months.” In our simple village it was enough for us that a lecturer or speaker came from London; or as the country people called it Lunnen. That was a sufficient guarantee for us of his talent, his respectability, and his power. Since then the scales have fallen even from the eyes of the rustic, and he no longer sees men as trees walking. Railways have rendered the journey to London perilously easy. Hodge, in the vain hope to better himself, has left his village home, its clear skies, its bracing air, its healthy toil, its simple hours, and gone to live in the crowded slums. It may be that he earns better wages, but you may buy gold too dear. A healthy rustic is far happier in his village. It is there he should strive to live, rather than in the town; and a time may come when English legislators will have wisdom enough to do something to plant the people on the land, rather than compel them to come to town, to be poisoned by its bad air, its dangerous companionship, and its evil ways.

As regards intelligence, we were in a poor way. On Saturdays The Suffolk Chronicle appeared, much to the delight of the Radicals, while the Tories were cheered by The Ipswich Journal. At a later time The Patriot came to our house, and we got an idea of what was going on in the religious and Dissenting world. Foster’s Essays were to be seen on many shelves, and later on the literary and religious speculations of Isaac Taylor, of Ongar, and Dick’s writings had also a wonderful sale. I fancy no one cares much now for any of the writers I have named. Such is fame!

As a boy it seemed to me I had too much of the Assembly’s Catechism and Virgil, to whose poetic beauties I was somewhat blind. I resolved to run away, as I fancied there was something better and brighter than village life. Religion was not attractive to me. Sunday was irksome. The land was barren, from Dan to Beersheba. I longed for the conflict and excitement and life of the distant town, and I ran away unconscious of the pain I should inflict on parents I dearly loved. Oh, that running away! If I live—and there is little chance of that—to the age of Methuselah I shall never forget it! It took place in the early morn of a long summer’s day. The whole scene rises distinctly before me. I see myself giving a note to my sister for father and mother when they came down to breakfast, I see myself casting an eye to the bedroom window to see if there was any chance of their being up and so stopping the enterprise on which I had set my mind. Happily, as I thought, the blinds were down and there was nothing to forbid my opening the garden gate and finding myself on the London road. I was anxious to be off and yet loth to leave. I had a small parcel under my arm, consisting of very small belongings; and I was free of Latin and the Assembly Catechism, free as the air—my own master. All the world was hushed in slumber. There was no one to stop me or bid me return to the roof where I had been happy, and to the parents whom I was to return to, to love more than I had ever done before, and whom it then saddened me to think that I might never see again. Not a soul was in the street, and the few shops which adorned it were shut up—cottagers and shopkeepers, they were all in the arms of Morpheus. I hastened on, not wishing to be seen by any one; but there was no fear of that, only cows, horses at grass, and pigs and hens and birds were conscious of my flight, and they regarded me with the indifference with which a Hottentot would view an ape. In my path was a hill on which I stayed awhile to take a last look at the deserted village. The white smoke was then curling up from the chimneys and the common round of daily life was about to begin. How peaceful it all seemed. What a contrast to my beating heart! There was not one of those cottages behind into which I had not been with my father as he visited the poor and the afflicted—not a lane or street along which I had not trundled my hoop with boyish glee—not a meadow into which I had not gone in search of buttercups and cowslips and primroses or bird’s nests. I only met one man I knew, the miller, as he came from the mill where he had been at work all night, and of him I stood somewhat in awe, for once when the mill was being robbed he had sat up alone in darkness in the mill till the robbers came in, when he looked, through a hole in the upper floor, as they were at their wicked work below, and had thus identified them; and I had seen them in a cart on their way to Beccles gaol. Perhaps, thought I, he will stop me and ask me what I am about; but he did nothing of the kind, and henceforth the way was clear for me to London, where I was to fight the battle of life. Did I not write poetry, and did not I know ladies who were paid a guinea a page for writing for the Annuals, and could not I do the same? And thus thinking I walked three miles till I came to a small beershop, where I had a biscuit and a glass of beer. The road from thence was new to me, and how I revelled in the stateliness of the trees as I passed a nobleman’s (Earl Stradbrooke’s) mansion and park. In another hour or so I found myself at Yoxford, then and still known as the Garden of Suffolk. There lived a Mr. Bird, a Suffolk poet of some note in his day. On him I called. He gave me a cordial welcome, kept me to dinner, and set me to play with his children. Alas! Yoxford was to me what Capua was to Hannibal—I got no further; in fact, my father traced me to the house, and I had nothing for it but to abandon my London expedition and return home. I don’t think I was very sorry that my heroic enterprise had thus miscarried. What annoyed me most was that I was sent home in an open cart, and as we got into the street all the women came to their doors to see Master James brought back. I did not like being thus paraded as a show. I found my way to the little attic in which I slept, not quite so much of a hero as I had felt myself in the early morn.

It was a stirring time. The nation was being stirred, as it was never before or since, with the struggle for Reform. The excitement reached us in our out-of-the-way village. We were all Whigs, all bursting with hope. Yet some of the respectable people who feared Sir Thomas Gooch were rather alarmed by my father’s determination to vote against him—the sitting Member—and to support the Liberal candidate. People do not read Parliamentary debates now. They did then, and not a line was skipped. I was a Radical. An old grocer in the village had lent me Hone’s “House that Jack Built,” and similar pamphlets, all illustrated by Cruikshank. My eyes were opened, and I had but a poor opinion of royalty and the Tory Ministers and the place men and parasites and other creeping vermin that infest courts. It is impossible to believe anything more rotten than that glorious Constitution which the Tories told us was the palladium of our liberties, the glory of our country, and the envy of surrounding nations. The Ministry for the time being existed by bribery and corruption. The M.P. bought his seat and sold his vote; the free and independent electors did the same. The boroughs were almost entirely rotten and for sale in consequence of the complicated state of voting in them, and especially in those incorporated by charter. In one borough the right was acquired by birth, in another by servitude, in another by purchase, in a fourth by gift, in a fifth by marriage. In some these rights were exercised by residents, in others by non-residents; in one place by the mayor or bailiff and twelve aldermen only, as at Buckingham, Malmesbury, &c.; in another by eight aldermen or ten or twelve burgesses, as at Bath, Andover, Tiverton, Banbury, &c.; in another by a small number of burgesses—three or four or five, as at Rye, Winchelsea, Romney, &c. As to what was called long ago tenure in boroughs there was no end to its absurdity. At Midhurst the right was in the possession of a hundred stones erected in an open field; at Old Sarum it was in the remaining part of the possession of a demolished castle; at Westbury in a long wall. In many other places it was in the possession of half-a-score or a dozen old thatched cottages, the conveyances to which were made on the morning of election to a few trusty friends or dependents, who held a farcical election, and then returned them to the proprietor as soon as the business was finished. In the little borough of Aldeburgh, where Crabbe was born, the number of electors was eighty, all the property of a private individual; at Dunwich, a little further on the coast, the number of voters was twelve; at Bury St. Edmunds the number of voters was thirty-seven; another little insignificant village on the same coast was Orford, where the right of election was in a corporation of twenty individuals, composed of the family and dependents of the Marquis of Hertford. No wonder the popular fury swept away the rotten boroughs, and no wonder that the long struggle for reform ended in the triumph, not so much of the people, as the middle-class.