Edward Smith

“ I challenge all those, whom I ever conversed with, to say, that I ever uttered a wish to see overthrown any one of the Constitutional establishments of the kingdom; and, I most solemnly declare that I never associated with any man who professed, even in private, to entertain any such wish; but, on the contrary, all those with whom I have ever been intimate in politics, have always had in view the preservation of all the establishments and orders of the kingdom, as one of the objects of a timely reform of the Parliament. ”

“ A mutual affection, a powerful impulse, equal to that out of which this wonderful sagacity arises, will, I hope, always exist between me and my hard-used countrymen; an affection which my heart assures me, no time, no distance, no new connexions, no new association of ideas however enchanting, can ever destroy, or in any degree enfeeble or impair.... Never will I own as my friend him who is not a friend of the people of England. I will never become a Subject or a Citizen in any other State, and will always be a foreigner in every country but England. ”

“ Corruption trembles at the very thought of it. The press has done wonderful things. But, great as I know its power to be, I know it to be a mere trifle compared to a seat in Parliament, filled by an able, a sober, an industrious, an active, a vigilant, a resolute, an experienced, and an incorruptible man, who would devote his time and his mind to the service of the country. ”

“ All the celebrity which my writings have obtained, and which they will preserve long and long after Lords Liverpool, and Sidmouth, and Castlereagh are rotten and forgotten, I owe less to my own talents than to that discernment, and that noble spirit in you, which have at once instructed my mind and warmed my heart: and, my beloved countrymen, be you well assured that the last beatings of that heart will be, love for the people, for the happiness, and the renown of England ”

“ But it cannot be said that there was any deterioration in Cobbett’s literary style, beyond the warmth of expression engendered by fiercer animosity. The best known works of William Cobbett belong to the last twenty years of his life; and if they are painfully full of personal hatreds, it must be recollected that those were, indeed, times to try men’s souls; the oppressor and the oppressed had seldom been, in England, in such close conflict; and a leader and guider of men, on the side of the latter, had need to be fierce and uncompromising. ”

“ Age never came upon him in crabbed form. There was a soft, genial nature about Mr. Cobbett, which no surface vehemence could exorcise. Even, when dealing his heaviest blows upon the heads of the poor “borough-mongers,” or when pouring his most terrible sarcasms around, his energy was the energy of warmth; as though heated with his own heart’s blood. It would be difficult to find any one essay among his writings, which, fairly analyzed, did not betray honest, impetuous affection for the cause immediately on hand. You cannot fail, as you read, to recognize the unpaid advocate. ”

“ Cobbett had been very severe upon the Whigs. There does not appear any time, in his whole political life, when he had not more or less distrusted them. And, now that the leaders of the party were in power, the individuals themselves were not spared. Cobbett hit off with accuracy, and with bitterest irony, their waverings and inconsistencies. No sooner had George the Fourth shuffled off this mortal coil, than he announced a “History of the Regency and the late Reign;” and, as the successive numbers of the work appeared, the Whigs had the felicity of seeing their old place-hunting fully exposed. ”

“ It was known, at this period, that newspaper-writers had been warned, and that a severe example would be made of the first offender.
The Attorney-General, then, is on the watch; and woe betide the wretch who defies Sir Vicary Gibbs!
And who is to be the victim? Shall it be James Perry or Redhead Yorke? or those daring young brothers, whose Examiner is slashing away at everything and everybody they choose to disagree with, and who have just had such a narrow escape over Major Hogan? ”

“ Elegant dresses, superb furniture, stately buildings, fine roads and canals, fleet horses and carriages, numerous and stout ships, warehouses teeming with goods; all these, and many other objects that fall under our view, are so many works of national wealth and resources. But all these spring from labour. Without the journeyman and the labourer none of them could exist; without the assistance of their hands, the country would be a wilderness, hardly worth the notice of an invader. ”

“ This is the most famous place in all England for coursing. I was here, at this very inn, with a party eighteen years ago; and the landlord, who is still the same, recognized me as soon as he saw me. There were forty brace of greyhounds taken out into the field on one of the days, and every brace had one course, and some of them two. The ground is the finest in the world: from two to three miles for the hare to run to cover, and not a stone, nor a bush, nor a hillock. It was here proved to me that the hare is by far the swiftest of all English animals ”

“ Violence, on the part of Mr. Cobbett’s opponents, did not cease—and he had, unfortunately, by his own imprudence, placed the means of violence in their hands. In the first place, the incident of Paine’s bones, coming at the time it did, was enough to damn any man’s reputation for discretion as to the fitness of things—nothing could have been more inopportune. In America, it was true, people were beginning to understand Paine, and republish his works. But in England, he was known only by his theology; and was branded as an Atheist, by the hirelings who could not, or dare not try to, refute him. ”

“ There never lived, probably, a writer to equal Cobbett in rural description: one who could, in the midst of some angry polemic, so readily turn off for a moment and present his reader with a country picture; perfectly life-like, glowing with colour and realism: who could make a mere gardening book entertaining.
Whilst in Long Island, Mr. Cobbett had prepared an “American Gardener,” which he published, soon after his return to England; dedicating it to one of his neighbours out there. ”

“ Even the Reformists, themselves, felt a shudder of dismay pass over them; whilst the Examiner class of scribblers fell upon the caitiff with their envious sneers, retailing the lies and imputations invented and cast about by their own enemies! But, perhaps the unkindest cut of all was on the part of the Chronicle, when that great bulwark of whiggism, and mock-Reformist, informed its readers that Cobbett had gone off to America because the circulation of the Register had fallen so low, through the operations of Sidmouth’s acts. ”

“ I wholly acquit him of any personal ambition, except probably that anxious desire for fame, and that wish to live in the grateful recollection of his countrymen, which are the signs of an exalted and of a noble spirit. Sordid views of interest he certainly has none—no petty ambition. The good of the people is what he seeks; his fame—the mere fact of his being thought of to represent Manchester—is the assurance that he has the means of promoting it. ”

“ While the dead Borough-mongers, and the base slaves who have been their tools, moulder away under unnoticed masses of marble and brass, the tomb of this ‘Noble of Nature’ will be an object of pilgrimage with the people.... Let this be considered the act of the Reformers of England, Scotland, and Ireland. In their name we opened the grave, and in their name will the tomb be raised. We do not look upon ourselves as adopting all Pain [214] e’s opinions upon all subjects. He was a great man, an Englishman, a friend of freedom, and the first and greatest enemy of the Borough and Paper System. ”

“ Not that, however, the warfare upon Corruption was to cease. He was there “to uphold the honour of England,” and to “aim deadly blows against her tyrants.” And no better proof of the need of his lash could be found, than is furnished by the continued attacks upon his character.
But he had the ear of millions of people, who were suffering, more or less undeservedly, from the tyranny and misgovernment of irresponsible persons; and what was it, that the supporters of the Irresponsible classes continued their falsehoods and malignity? ”

“ They established an interest in the regulation, and gave consistency and value to corruption. [272] Then came the excise laws, which were brought in by the Whigs; and from them, too, emanated that offensive statute by which Irish men and Irish women may be transported without judge or jury. There is, indeed, no faction so severe and cruel; they do everything by force and violence: the Whigs are the Rehoboam of England; the Tories ruled us with rods, but the Whigs scourge us with scorpions! ”

“ Friends and Fellow-Countrymen,—
“Whatever the pride of rank, of riches, or of scholarship, may have induced some men to believe, or to affect to believe, the real strength and all the resources of a country ever have sprung, and ever must spring, from the labour of its people, and hence it is, that this nation, which is so small in numbers, and so poor in climate and soil compared with many others, has, for many ages, been the most powerful nation in the world: it is the most industrious, the most laborious, and, therefore, the most powerful. ”

“ You are compelled to pay the borough-mongers a heavy tax on your candles and soap. You dare not make candles and soap, though you have the fat and the ashes in abundance. If you attempt to do this, you are taken up and imprisoned; and if you resist, soldiers are brought to shoot you. This is freedom, is it? Now we, here, make our own candles and soap. Farmers sometimes sell soap and candles, but they never buy any. A labouring man, or a mechanic, buys a sheep now and then. Three or four days’ work will buy a labourer a sheep to weigh sixty pounds, with seven or eight pounds of loose fat. ”

“ That it should be imputed to the poor, that it was their IGNORANCE and VICE which had brought them low: that any other cause, but the increase of luxurious idlers, and the draining of the national resources by exorbitant taxation, could lie at the root of the evil: that a generation of plutocrats should have grown up, who looked upon the “lower orders” as of less consequence than their horses, their dogs, and their poultry, was not to be borne in silence, whilst the pen of a ready writer was at hand to defy such thoughtless misrepresentation. ”

“ With this correct idea of your own worth in your minds, with what indignation must you hear yourselves called the populace, the rabble, the mob, the swinish multitude; and with what greater indignation, if possible, must you hear the projects of these cool, and cruel, and insolent men, who, now that you have been, without any fault of yours, brought into a state of misery, propose to narrow the limits of parish relief, to prevent you from marrying in the days of your youth, or to thrust you out to seek your bread in foreign lands, never more to behold your parents or friends? ”

“ The fact is, that I am the watchman, the man on the tower, who can be neither coaxed, nor wheedled, nor bullied; and I have expressed my determination never to quit my post until I obtain a cheap government for the country, and by doing away with places and pensions, prevent the people’s pockets from being picked. These men know that if I were to get into the House of Commons under a reformed parliament, I should speedily effect that object, and therefore they are resolved to get rid of me by some means or other ”

“ It is really very stupid, as well as very insolent, to talk in this way of the Catholics, to represent them as doomed to perdition who compose five-sixths of the population of Europe; to represent as beastly ignorant those amongst whom the brightest geniuses and the most learned men in the world have been and are to be found; but still, the most shocking part of our conduct is to affect to consider as a sort of outcasts of God as well as man those who have, through all sorts of persecution, adhered to the religion of their and our forefathers. ”

“ Let us, therefore, congratulate ourselves, that we have great constitutional principles and laws, to which we can refer, and to which we are attached.
When journeymen find their wages reduced, they should take time to reflect on the real cause before they fly upon their employers, who are, in many cases, in as great, or greater, distress than themselves. How many of these employers have, of late, gone to jail for debt, and left helpless families behind them! The employer’s trade falls off. ”