“Just how much is there here, Chancellor?”
“A great deal, Major Wolverstone, sahib, though there is no official whose task it has been to count it. It has been the habit over many years to keep the gold safe and add to it when possible. It should have been spent, so I believe, the people’s taxes used to buy things from them, but it was never so. Many lakhs, very many indeed.”
There were Portuguese coins dating back two centuries as well as gold from every nation of India and perhaps the whole of the East. The state had not been conquered in centuries and so its Treasury had never been looted.
“I see very few of gem stones, Chancellor.”
“Almost all were put into use, Major Wolverstone, worn by the women and passed down to their children.”
Wolverstone had been told that the production of the mines since the old rajah’s death had not appeared on the market. He wondered just where those stones might be, then decided that in troubled times he might himself have been inclined to tuck a little of insurance away, and gems were very portable. Better to say nothing.
“Will you accompany the convoy, Chancellor?”
“It is better that I should not leave the palace, Major Wolverstone.”
“As you will, sir. There should be a man present to watch the count at Mostyns Bank. I do not doubt their honesty, but others will raise questions in later years if there is no verification.”
“I shall beg the Judge to send a learned man to perform the task, Major Wolverstone. Thus we may all be better protected.”
A very fat servant appeared after a while, whispered in the Chancellor’s ear, was dismissed abruptly.
“From the women’s quarters, sahib. He demands to be informed, wishes to know why the rajah’s sisters were not first consulted in what seems to be the emptying of the Treasury.”
“I had thought that the women’s quarters would have only female servants, Chancellor.”
“That one ceased to be a male at an early age, Major Wolverstone.”
“Oh? Oh! I understand – a eunuch, I presume.”
“Just so, sahib. Many poor families will sell a third or fourth son, to pay off a money-lender or simply to buy food after a bad harvest.”
Wolverstone thought that to be rather nasty; he would be able in his position to ban the practice, forbidding all forms of slavery absolutely. He wondered what might happen if he did – perhaps he should take advice first. It was not impossible that the sole alternative to selling an unwanted infant son into slavery was to smother him.
"Send a message, if you would be so good, Chancellor, to the women's place that all is well and the contents of the Treasury are being taken to a secure bank. At my order."
The carts were escorted safely to Mostyns and the gold was tucked lovingly away into the bank’s vault. It was counted and double-checked and the deposit was recorded and agreement was made to pay two per centum interest annually, which would amount to more than thirty thousand English pounds, a very substantial income to the rajah’s personal purse.
“I shall pay your fee into Bensons’ account, Major Wolverstone – there is no need to make any great public fuss, I believe. One percent per annum is the normal in this sort of case, sir. I have made contact with the Company in Bombay, rather than dealing with the Board in London, and will lend one half of the amount deposited to them at the preferential rate of five per cent, that loan being made in gold coin. The remainder will be used as backing to my own bank notes and current accounts and will go out typically at thirty per cent on one or two year terms; interest rates are a little lower just recently. Bensons is generally self-financing, of course, but anything you require will be tendered at a very favourable rate, Major.”
The two gentlemen signed nothing, kept no record at all of these transactions; they were in no way unlawful, but there was no need, they thought, to risk them becoming public knowledge. The Company would ask no questions, having no wish to jeopardise the sudden windfall of gold, and, hopefully, the authorities in London would never become aware that there were questions to be asked.
“Please make arrangements to keep my personal funds separate from those of Bensons, Mr Mostyn, and perhaps annually transfer some convenient part of them to London, the bank to invest them for me there. I shall undoubtedly wish to return to England when my little rajah comes of age.”
“You are certain that the Corn Laws cannot survive for many more years, James?”
“Absolutely, Robert. The current amendment is merely the first step, the crack in the dam, one might say. Was it not for the plethora of other issues demanding instant resolution, then I am sure they would go almost immediately. But, as it stands, the Catholic question must be dealt with first, and then there is the matter of the Peelers, as the Irish call their police, I am told. Following that will come the arguments about the Franchise. The next five years will be taken up wholly with those issues. I believe that the Duke intends at an early stage after becoming Premier to increase the size of the army – there will certainly be unrest.”
“So, five years before the Corn Laws can come up again.”
James shook his head – that was far too ambitious an aim.
“From all I have been told, Robert, the first stage of Reform will open the doors to a dozen other demands, and the Police Force for London will create many others.”
James fell silent, thinking his explanation sufficient – he had heard the arguments repeatedly, was at home with them.
“Why will a Police Force in London be such a cause of political trouble?”
“If it works, and it is expected to do some immediate good in the reduction of drunken disorder in the streets – the most visible form of crime – then it will be seen as a very good thing. The immediate result must be a demand for constabularies in every other major town in the country.”
“Logical, I can see that happening.”
“Then, my lord, who is to take charge of them? The Home Office cannot do so – they will be stretched simply to have oversight of the force in the Metropolis.”
“The mayor and burgesses, or the aldermen, or the town council, one presumes… oh, bugger!”
“Just so, brother. The old towns, most of them boroughs, have their local councils. Most of the new industrial towns have none. In many places the sole repository of authority is the Bench of Magistrates – and it is not envisaged that the local courts shall have control of their policemen. That would be a recipe for tyranny indeed!”
“So… to have police forces, which is now seen as desirable, there must be some form of local government. Should it be elected councils such as the boroughs have or Prefects appointed by the government on the French pattern?”
“Sod the Frogs!”
It seemed that the question was not available for rational argument.
“What would these councils do, James?”
“Police, first and foremost. Then must come general good order and public health – sewers and water. Then, most difficult of all, the Poor Law.”
“That will take a decade to argue in itself. Nothing to be done about the Corn Laws for at least ten years, James.”
If the issue of the Corn Laws was to be left to fester for ten or more years then rational reform could be forgotten. The parties on both sides would have become entrenched in their arguments and reason would have been eroded by hatred. There would eventually be a straight fight between Agrarian and Industrial interests, the richest party to win – the Corn Laws would go and English farming would be consigned to poverty.
“Ten years, at least, James – that gives the Family time to protect itself to an extent.”
James was not sure that he understood.
“Henry Star tells me that the American Plains – Prairies, I believe them to be called – will be capable of producing wheat quite literally by the millions of tons. We are to set up a Works for him, producing the agricultural machinery invented at the Thingdon manufactury, by the way. You can see what will happen to
the price of wheat, of course.”
James had learned in his years at Westminster; he nodded and said nothing.
“It will fall, massively. American ships will unload twice as much as every farm in England can harvest.”
“Oh! What are we to do?”
“A very good question, James!”
Robert returned to the estate still uncertain that anything at all could be done yet knowing that something must.
He called his new agent – nearly four years employed, but that still made him ‘new’ as far as the tenants were concerned - to conference.
“The Corn Laws, Mr Thynne, will be repealed well within our lifetimes, probably no more than ten to fifteen years hence. The word in London is that this is a certainty.”
Thynne had never been to London, was a Norfolk man who had served five of his six years as a midshipman but had never been promoted, had been set ashore with a limp after a lucky fall from the rigging. He had explained that it was ‘lucky’ inasmuch that it had not killed him, but it had effectively finished his career, there being four or five wholly fit men competing for every sea-going vacancy at his rank. He had returned as a supernumerary younger son to his father’s small estate where he had applied himself sufficiently to the modern agriculture to become agent to the Andrews at a remarkably early age. He knew cereal farming very well, was not sure that he was familiar with any other sort.
“If the price of wheat then falls, my lord, then the tenants will rapidly discover poverty.”
“That, or find an alternative, Mr Thynne.”
“Brewer’s barley? We would need our own brewery to make that profitable, my lord. We are too far removed from the markets of London and Birmingham to produce directly for the table. Beef cattle, perhaps, walking them south to Smithfield in London… Not entirely practical, I suspect, my lord. Potatoes, perhaps, but again, one must get them to market. There is always rape-seed to press for lamp oil, but I do not know how much of that is demanded, or what the price is. I shall find out, my lord."
Thynne shook his head – the great advantage of wheat was that it could be transported and stored for months at a time, it did not grow stale or rot away easily and there was always a call for more flour.
“Horses seem the most likely bet, Mr Thynne. We have our own small stud of heavy horses on the Home Farm, and that could be expanded substantially. As well, there is a need for working van and carriage horses. I read that there is one horse for every four people in this country. The new railways will carry people on the stage-routes within a few years, but there will still be need for tens of thousands of horses in every large town. As the country grows, so there will be a call for more and more. There is a profit to be made in Ireland where they have the additional cost of shipping the horses across the water, so we should be able to do well enough here, or so I would hope.”
“We have Joshua Barney as well, my lord, a repository of knowledge and skills. I suspect his lady wife would approve of a shift away from the digging and delving aspects of farming further towards the gentility of stock-rearing.”
Thynne did not like Mrs Barney – he considered her to be too full of airs and graces for her position in life.
Mrs Barney, Miss Thame that was, found her new existence to be irritating in some aspects – she had to fit in to the life she had chosen. She accepted that it was entirely an existence of her own selection, and she was happy to be Joshua’s wife – he was a good man and she loved him, and was sure that he felt the same for her. Their son cemented the relationship as well – a stolid little boy, one with farmer written all over him. Her mother would not visit at the Old Waste, and she had never expected her to, but she was welcome in what had been her own home. Her brother had made no contact with her since she had fled to Joshua’s arms, but he wrote to her mother regularly from the Cape where he managed tens of thousands of acres of sheepwalk for my lord and he seemed happy and well off.
The problem was that she was not born to the land – she did not know how to work in the dairy and had never fed chickens in her life, still less wrung their necks and plucked and drawn them ready for the oven. She had kept her own little flower bed at home, but had no idea of a large kitchen garden. Joshua had had to hire a kitchen maid to carry out the tasks every other farm wife was proud to call her own.
She was useful in the stables, she believed, bringing on the young stock and adding much to their value as riding horses, particularly ponies for the children of the genteel. The Barneys were now well-known across the whole county as the place for aspiring parents to go to for the betterment of their children – riding skills being a sign of the blue-blooded.
It was in their minds that the farmyard, new-built on enclosure a generation before, should be extended to reflect their increased prosperity and changing circumstances, but that would require the permission of the landlord, and the recommendation of the Agent. Both would probably be available, but it was a humiliation to have to go cap in hand as supplicants; equally, however, my lord would be expected to cough up some at least of the cost – it cut both ways.
Mr Thynne paid them a visit, out of the ordinary run of things, explained that my lord was in residence for a while and had come up with new ideas.
“Wheat, Mr Barney, may well have less than twenty years left in it. Its price will hold up for the while, but before either of us go out to grass my lord believes that it will fall to less than half it is today.”
“That’ll bugger us all, if so be it comes to ‘appen, Mr Thynne.”
“My lord condescended to explain his reasoning to me, Mr Barney, and I cannot but agree.”
Joshua was unimpressed by that information. Thynne was, in his opinion, such a crawler that he would never so much as consider disagreement with the landlord.
“America, Mr Barney – a vast country with a hundred acres of arable for every one of ours, or so they say. It is to be opened up to farmers over the next decades, with the production of huge quantities of wheat and barley and maize, more than can possibly be consumed in their own cities.”
If that was so then the end result was obvious.
“They’ll send it across the ocean, then, Mr Thynne. What of they old Corn Laws, sir?”
“They will go, so says my lord. The people in the new towns in the North Country are against them, and they will gain in seats in the House of Commons inside a very few years.”
Joshua raised an eyebrow to his wife, busily pouring tea and presenting cake to justify her presence in man’s business. She nodded – Thynne was making sense.
“No choice then, Mr Thynne, but to get out of wheat over the next few years.”
“I agree, Mr Barney. My lord believes we have at least a decade to make the changes, but not more than twenty years at the very outside.”
“More horses seems the answer, Mr Thynne. Turn the fields to oats and beans more than to wheat and, maybe, build up a beef herd too – there’s a bit of money in the towns hereabouts, enough to get a price for butcher’s meat. Not too hard a task to make the change, but it’ll take money, sir. Iffen I’s to keep more horses to breed from, then they’s going to be fewer to send to market for five years or so.”
Mrs Barney tutted to herself – her husband’s accent, carefully taught, was failing under the strain.
“My lord is aware that there will be costs, Mr Barney. I am sure that he will be amenable to discussion at the next renewal of your tenancy, which is due in somewhat less than three years, I believe.”
“That’s fair enough, Mr Thynne, I shall be ‘appy enough to do my part, sir. Not like all of they buggers round ‘ere, I don’t doubt!”
“I have little fear that the new tenants will cooperate, Mr Barney.”
“Wasn’t the new men I were thinkin’ of, Mr Thynne!”
That left only Marchant, sat up on his hillsides with his flocks of sheep.
“I believe that the price of wool must fall as well, Mr Barney, and that earlier than for wheat. There are thousan
ds, not of acres but of square miles, of pasture lands in the newly settled parts of the world, South America as well as the Cape and Botany Bay, and they are already sending woolpacks into English ports. My lord and Lord Star own substantial acreages between them, I know, and they are by no means the greatest of English holders.”
“I heard tell of that, Mr Thynne. What’s Marchant to do different, sir?”
“I do not know, Mr Barney. Good sheep land is commonly of little other use at all. Beef cattle, perhaps? But they do not do so very well on the hilltops. Hogs do not like the cold winds and will not thrive, leaving aside the question of feed. Horses in spring and summer, but not in the wet and cold months. The land will simply become less valuable, producing a far lower income – his rent will fall, of course, but so will his profit. He may be able to change to mutton more than to wool, which will help a little, but every other sheep farmer will do the same, so pushing that price down as well. Hard times are coming for the land, Mr Barney, and I see no future at all for farming, except close to towns where small men can grow vegetables and poultry for the table.”
“Mama, my lord is here!”
“Thank you, Patrick. Back to your book, now, you have another thirty minutes yet.”
Robert watched approvingly as the lad scampered back to his schoolroom, obedient to command and showing no resentment.
“Has he never asked just who and what I am, Judy?”
She shook her head.
“He knows that you are part of our little family, Bobby-me-dear, and will soon enough be of an age to put two and two together, I doubt not. He is a bright lad, after all. As for that, he is close to outstripping my learning, my dear, must very soon need the care of a good school or of a tutor.”
“He is what, nearly eight years of age?”
“Big and bright for it, too.”
“What of the day school in town? Will it serve?”
“Two big classrooms, Latin and Greek and precious little else, eight to twelve year olds in one, thirteen to eighteen in the other, all together and sorting themselves out by whatever little ability they can show.”
A Parade Of Virtue (A Poor Man At The Gate Series Book 9) Page 19