Nothing New on the Land (The Agricultural Lord Palfrey Book 3), page 17
“Rational, but will not the King dismiss him for refusing his command, my lord?”
Young Daffydd was still not entirely at home with the realities of power at Westminster, was interested for having a seat promised within a few months when its current and aged holder withdrew into private life.
“He has the right to do so, but he cannot govern without a government. He must have a prime minister and cabinet as well as some two dozens of lesser ministers. They must be supported by a majority in the House of Commons and must be able to negotiate with the Lords, at minimum. Should he dismiss Lord Liverpool, then he would have to appoint, within two or at most three days, another prime minister, who must have the support at Westminster. Just at the moment, it is the case that Liverpool can manage a majority but no other man can.”
“I see, I believe, my lord. How very peculiar! Why is Lord Liverpool so gifted?”
“Some like him; many owe him for favours delivered; many more expect future rewards and trust him eventually to come good. He can manage the House of Commons and no other can. Additionally, the elected members are generally at the moment in the Tory interest, which he leads.”
“So… To replace Lord Liverpool, the King must first identify a prominent Tory who will carry Commons and Lords with him. Not easily done when Liverpool has the loyalty of the bulk of them.”
“Precisely. The King has his loyalists who will offer him unquestioning support – why, I know not. But there are far too few of them to give him a government. He might try to wed part of the Tories with some of the Whigs, but there is no obvious leader for that purpose and a great deal of personal animosity to overcome. Without an election to send a majority of Whigs to Westminster, and them led by a King’s Friend, he will not appoint a prime minister of his own choosing and desire. The attempt to do so would cost him dearly, because Liverpool on his reappointment would have both power and desire to hurt the King. Easily enough done – he could encourage publication of any number of poorly hidden scandals. It suits Liverpool to have a crippled King who must tread with care in his presence. If it ceased to suit him, Georgy-Porgy could quickly be forced to abdicate and to leave the country. He could easily end up as Governor of a colonial possession, tucked away out of sight and effectively in prison, unable ever to leave Jamaica or Bermuda or wherever he was put. Had the Prince Regent been a man of integrity and honour, he could have brought back to the Crown many of the powers lost during his father’s madness. Because he is a vicious, corrupt, perverted beast, he has lost everything and his successors will not regain those powers. They no longer accrue to the King. We have had a Revolution in England, far more effective than that of the French. We have made actual changes that are irreversible. The French have lost almost everything they gained in 1789. From King to Emperor and back to King now – the French have gained nothing in the years in which the English, very quietly, have turned their country upside-down.”
That was a bold set of statements yet difficult to counter. The great period of change had led an agricultural kingdom to become a trading and manufacturing oligarchy of wealth. The real Revolution had occurred in the land that had apparently led the fight against Change.
“A paradox, my lord. Our great Hero, Lord Nelson, born to a minor squire and parson, deep in the sticks. The Duke of Wellington, indeed, no more than an Irish younger son. The bulk of our political figures deriving from the aristocracy, one must admit, but that aristocracy itself not representing old birth. Fewer than a dozen titles date back two centuries, I believe. We are the country of Progress! How very peculiar!”
Daffydd refilled his glass, passed the decanter along the table, puzzled by the facts his own intellect could not deny.
“This is not how it should be, my lords! We change by stealth, denying that anything is different. We still have a King, George IV, but comparing his powers to say George II, the two should not have the same title! They are wildly different in all they can do.”
“Exactly so. And all without a revolution, Daffydd!”
The younger man laughed, entertained that a matter of a very few miles had led to such different countries with wildly diverging fates.
“It is no more than twenty-two miles from Dover to Calais, my lords. Yet the disparity between the two is an ocean wide. Why?”
“Who can answer that, sir? It is a question that philosophers may debate for a lifetime. Far too great for country gentlemen over a glass of port!”
Montgomerie’s heir, barely emancipated from the schoolroom, ventured to speak, to enquire whether it would affect them eventually.
“Can we continue as we are in this new country, gentlemen? What will be the place of the landowner such as us?”
Sir Rhodri asked the same.
“A good question, young Michael. I sit here on top of nearly ten thousand acres of uplands, worth nearly three thousand a year now, due to the agricultural changes Daffydd has instituted, and wonder just how much this new country has left me behind, and how much further that will be ten years from now. Can we survive, Palfrey?”
Honesty, and a fourth glass of port, led Nat to shake his head.
“No, Sir Rhodri. We must change or be left behind by this new world. When the whole country is in flux, so must we be. I have this year committed myself to a substantial investment in oil palm in the Gold Coast – hardly what might be expected of a landholder in remotest Dorset! I have holdings in Calcutta which are wealthy and growing. I am looking about me for more by way of overseas investments, because I cannot even stay as wealthy as I am if I do not. I see no hope for the future other than by making the most of the empire we are creating. We cannot stand still, Sir Rhodri. If we do not push forwards, we shall fall back. So, gentlemen – we can no longer be rural landholders. We must be more, or we shall become less.”
“Can we not preserve our dignities, keeping all that is best of the past, my lord?”
“I doubt it. Sir Rhodri. I think we must push into modernity. Difficult for those of us deep in the sticks, but it must be done. There is no choice. Forward and upwards must be the motto!”
“Wool and barley; a little of wheat; a rotation of roots and beans. I see little chance of progress there, my lord!”
“Whiskey!”
“I beg your pardon, Daffydd? My lord has a good brandy to hand on the table.”
“No, sir. I was not demanding more to drink now. Barley is the base for whiskey. The distilled spirit is far more valuable than the grain and will no doubt sell in the big towns of England. Was we to set up our own still, I do not doubt we could add much to the value of our produce, and possibly before long buy in from our neighbours, much to their pleasure.”
A few minutes of discussion agreed that distilled spirits were a possibility. An alternative to cheap gin would surely be welcome in the country.
A full proposal was not to be discussed over the table – that was best left to a sober morning – but the two Welsh landowners agreed there was a strong possibility of a future source of income in strong waters.
“Another change in the making, my lords. How many more such are in discussion over the country as a whole?”
Hundreds, possibly thousands, they suspected. Some would fail but many would prosper, bringing the whole country along in their wake.
Nat inspected the slate workings, was properly amazed by them, made his tentative enquiry of possibility of steam applied to the trackway, left Lord Montgomerie wondering whether he could refuse to examine the prospect.
“I have heard of steam kettles, Palfrey. They explode on occasion, I believe.”
“Generally when mishandled, or so I understand, Montgomerie. I am told that where the strain is greatest it is better to instal steam winches, stationary engines to pull the loads uphill on long winding ropes. On the flat lands and where the slope is trivial, then it becomes possible to use a mobile engine, of which there are many sorts proposed. I believe one of the first of such is to be found in the coal mines of South Wales, though I know none of the details of such.”
“Slate is so very heavy that one must look to machinery where possible, Palfrey. The problem we face, of course, is that we have a great mountainside of the valuable rock, and will need to cut further and further into its depths over the years. That must demand assistance to the strong arms and broad backs of our quarrymen, but not to cost so very much as to drive us out of the market. I will confess, Palfrey, that the ten thousands a year which was a source of delightful extra to me just a few years back is now an essential to my existence! My planned expenditures all include that as a necessity!”
Nat laughed and concurred.
“Five years since and I was quietly budgeting how to spend my two pounds a week left after paying my mess bill and was able, just, to plan an existence. Now, I look at thirty thousand a year as a reasonable modicum! I spend some time every week looking at the ways in which I may increase future income, allowing for the probability that I shall find new ways of spending my money if I am not very careful. It is ridiculous, is it not? Spending increases to empty the purse allocated to it!”
They laughed and accepted the nature of reality.
“I shall send letters this week, Palfrey, attempting to discover a steam engineer who may come into my Welsh wilds to introduce us to the modern world. I wonder if that will be easy.”
“Oh, I do not doubt the problem will be to choose between the candidates, Montgomerie! Every young man who has studied Natural Philosophy, necessarily in Scotland, will be looking for a patron, an open purse for the manufacture of a most modern steam engine. There must be a hundred a year of newly educated steam engineers unleashed upon the country, to add to the existing thousands of the self-taught such as the famous Mr Watt, men who have looked at the lid of their kettle on the fire and wondered if that wasted movement might not be put somehow to work. Young men have wild ideas – that is the nature of the world, my lord! Some of them take their wildness to war, often with remarkable success. In the absence of a respectable war just now, their bubbling brains must lead them to steam. I much suspect that was I now to be unleashed fresh upon the world, I would set to building steam engines in gleeful certainty of instant success.”
Montgomerie much doubted that would apply to him.
“You are an enthusiast, Palfrey! In all you do, you have a need to be the best. You must control that wild intellect of yours – though thinking on it, why should you? Come back to us next year and you will see coal smoke fouling our atmosphere, I doubt not. You leave me with no choice!”
Chapter Fourteen
“The coronation is to be held on July 19th, my lord. Any later in the year would interfere with the harvest, and demand that many of the more rural lords would remain on their estates, and give an excuse to the remainder not to turn up. I do not doubt that our beloved King would like to delay a little further, to set memories at rest, but he has no real choice in the matter. He must have a full procession behind him to satisfy his own self-importance. His extra year of planning has added greatly to the vulgarity of the occasion – jewels on everything! It is reliably said he has spent a quarter of a million on the affair.”
Nat responded with a wry grin.
“Spent or simply promised to pay, O’Rourke?”
The emigre Irishman laughed outright.
“Spent, my lord. I am told he has been reduced to tears of outrage and has been repeatedly cupped to control his overwrought soul, but the overwhelming response has been to demand cash on the nail. Tradesmen know better than to allow credit to Prinny. What he has wanted, he has paid for in advance. The same has been applied to all those acting on his behalf – cash on the nail, my lord!”
“Good! We are a nation of shopkeepers, after all, and the shopkeepers have made their voice heard.”
“It was Bonaparte said that, was it not, my lord?”
“So I believe. It did not occur to him that he was defeated by counter-jumpers if that was the case. Despite all his military glory, we won!”
“We did too, my lord! Bad luck, Boney!”
Nat made no comment on O’Rourke’s use of ‘we’, though he was certain in his own mind that his attorney and agent had never come within a hundred miles of the French in arms.
“‘Cupped’, by the way, O’Rourke? I know he is in his cups frequently enough but that is new to me.”
“Blood, my lord, normally taken by the half pint. Said to reduce the humours, or some such. He is of the opinion it calms his rages.”
“Cures the pox, does it?”
“Nothing will do that, my lord. Quite possibly it reduces the flow of blood to his overheated brain.”
Nat shook his head, unable to comprehend His Gracious Majesty’s problems, turning back to his own financial interests.
“I am actively looking for overseas investments, O’Rourke, in the lands that we are making into an empire of our own. Botany Bay, South Africa, West Africa, Malta, Canada – all offer possibilities. I would be obliged if you would put your ear to the ground and winnow out the honest proposals from the criminally speculative. I am involved with Sir Angus Gould in the Gold Coast Plantations business, by the way, and will keep that on the straight and narrow. It will offer a lot of money, maybe twenty years hence.”
“Gould – that is the baronet from Poole originally and now with an estate close to ours, is it not, my lord? I believe him to have been very much involved with the Gentlemen, in their day.”
Nat grinned – that was the Sir Angus he knew.
“A little surprising such a one should have been granted a title, my lord?”
“Not at all, O’Rourke. I asked, rather strongly, for it.”
“And to he that asks, all may be given – provided only he has influence in a sufficiency.”
“Just that, O’Rourke. Additionally, the Earl Digby, the Lord Lieutenant of Dorset, has very little pull in Poole. Through Sir Angus, he now has a degree of influence there, sufficient already to show a degree of good order prevailing in what once was the rowdiest seaport in England.”
“Gould has been tamed, you would suggest, my lord?”
“To an extent, certainly. He mentioned to me, by the way, that his name is not that his father was born to. He found it wise to modify its original nature.”
“Ah! Gould is Scottish by nature, which suggests that his father was a Jew.”
“Just that, O’Rourke.”
“And O’Rourke is definitely Paddy in origin?”
“That also, of course.”
“You would prefer me to show less outrageous in my nomenclature, my lord?”
“Me? I do not care. If I did, I would have never placed my estate and business in your hands. It does seem to me that you will do better not to be visibly Irish when the next uprising occurs and the Mob seeks windows to smash.”
That was acceptable.
“It could be dealt with, my lord, was I to become a partnership, as is common among attorneys. Parmenter and Drudge, Attorneys at Law, the brass plate should read.”
“Which will you be?”
“Both, my lord. All correspondence to be addressed to the partnership and my name disappears with no need to make a change. I will be seen to be no more than a mere clerk, and who cares whether a pen-pusher is Irish?”
“Who indeed? Have you any knowledge of overseas prospects just now?”
“Mining in Canada, primarily, my lord. Copper, zinc, an amount of silver and gold, often associated with lead. The mines do not find it easy to attract funds, particularly since two last year were found to be fraudulent, simply to be non-existent. They took the better part of fifty thousands between them and the fraudsters and the money quite equally disappeared. There are few speculators who wish to indulge in North American mines just now, which means that those who will take a risk are in the way of picking up large returns.”
“You know of such a proposal?”
O’Rourke did – he would not have mentioned Canada otherwise.
“In the wilds close to Hudson’s Bay, my lord. Not easily reached but offering high values. The mine itself underground and so workable through the winters. Ores to be smelted on site and ingot metal transported by sea in the summer months. The Hudson’s Bay Company willing to give its licence to the miners – that I have checked here in London. Shipping coke in and metals out, the Hudson’s Bay Company selling them foodstuffs and taking its cut that way as well as a fee for using its port facilities. It seems legitimate, my lord.”
“Do we know anything of the proprietors?”
“There’s the problem, my lord. They are Canadian mining men. There is no way to know anything at all of them. They may be intending to work their mine for thirty years and retire, full of virtue. It is possible they will spend a year skimming off a top layer of gold and silver and then to disappear with their pockets full. The only thing I can be within reason certain of is that there is a mine and it has values of precious and non-ferrous metals.”
“That demands we send a man of ours out to watch all that is happening, and to seek out other prospects in the colony. Not me – I ain’t going to Canada!”
“A fine country, my lord! I am not going there either.”
“A younger son of a family known to us? None of an age in the Dorset area.”
“The Higginbotham family, my lord?”
“Ineligible, O’Rourke. They are Cotton Kings, an amount richer than me.”
“Are they, by God! That I did not know, my lord. Why do they not have a seat in the Lords?”
“They have just picked up a baronetcy and the patriarch, Major Higginbotham, is looking to his elder son to become baron in the fulness of days. Is the present King more honest than the Prince Regent? Would he guarantee to deliver a properly paid-for barony?”
