William Cobbett

“ Cobbett was perhaps the most perfect specimen of the typical "John Bull" this country ever produced. Born and bred in Surrey, he knew every inch of the county, traversing it in a way scarcely any other man ever did, and coming at last to end his days there. His father was a small farmer at Farnham, and here, in a house now marked out with pride by his fellow-townsmen, William Cobbett first saw the light on the 9th of March 1762. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Not to have reverenced and believed in the Bible would have required Cobbett to do positive violence to his deepest convictions, and perhaps we may add to his very nature. For though it may seem to the superficial observer a strange thing to say, William Cobbett was, in the strictly literal meaning of the term, a very religious man. No one could entertain a more intense belief than he did in the laws which God has written in the course and constitution of nature, and of the paramount duty of every man to obey those laws. ”

“ What a noble account of his first breakfast after his arrival in America! It might serve for a month. There is no scene on the stage more amusing. How well he paints the gold and scarlet plumage of the American birds, only to lament more pathetically the want of the wild wood-notes of his native land! The groves of the Ohio that had just fallen beneath the axe's stroke “live in his description,” and the turnips that he transplanted from Botley “look green” in prose! How well at another time he describes the poor sheep that had got the tick and had bled down in the agonies of death! ”

“ Cobbett is great in attack, not in defence: be cannot fight an up-hill battle. He will not bear the least punishing. If any one turns upon him (which few people like to do) he immediately turns tail. Like an overgrown school-boy, he is so used to have it all his own way, that he cannot submit to anything like competition or a struggle for the mastery; he must lay on all the blows, and take none. He is bullying and cowardly; a Big Ben in politics, who will fall upon others and crush them by his weight, but is not prepared for resistance, and is soon staggered by a few smart blows. ”

“ The only two figures in the Exhibition that make any pretence of life are William Cobbett and the Sleeping Beauty.
A wonderful self-made man was Cobbett, who began life as a living scarecrow, armed with a shotgun, in the employment of a farmer, and, after being, [286] among other things, sergeant-major won a great reputation as a writer of English prose and attained the distinction of adding M.P. to his name in those days when Parliamentary honours were less easily achieved than they are to-day. ”

“ I agree with the late William Cobbett about picking a wife. See that she chews her food well and sets her foot down firmly on the ground when she walks, and you’re all right. Selina Goby was all right in both these respects, which was one reason for marrying her. I had another reason, likewise, entirely of my own discovering. Selina, being a single woman, made me pay so much a week for her board and services. Selina, being my wife, couldn’t charge for her board, and would have to give me her services for nothing. That was the point of view I looked at it from. ”

“ An argument does not stop to stagnate and muddle in his brain, but passes at once to his paper. His ideas are served up, like pancakes, hot and hot. Fresh theories give him fresh courage. He is like a young and lusty bridegroom that divorces a favourite speculation every morning, and marries a new one every night. He is not wedded to his notions, not he. He has not one Mrs. Cobbett among all his opinions. ”

“ The last word of this soliloquy carried me back, slap, to my own study (very much unlike that which I am in) , and bade me think of the Gridiron; bade me think of the complete triumph that I have yet to enjoy: promised me the pleasure of seeing a million of trees of my own, and sown by my own hands this very year. Ah! but the hares and the pheasants and the wild ducks! Yes, but the delight of seeing Prosperity Robinson hang his head for shame: the delight of beholding the tormenting embarrassments of those who have so long retained crowds of base miscreants to revile me ”

“ Hostlers and servants always appeared to be “doubtful whether they ought to do anything for you or not;” civility was not to be purchased with money; it seemed incompatible with freedom, and with the ideas which would convince a stranger that he was really in a land of liberty.
Now, Mr. William Cobbett, late of his Majesty’s 54th Regiment, had heard of this new country. His reading, hitherto, had been purely literary; but, plunged into the world of London—a novice in politics—he imbibes the then popular notions of republicanism, and is an enthusiastic admirer of the new ideas. ”

“ There was the wife with the baby in her arms, the husband teaching another child to walk, while four more were at play before them. I stopped and looked at them for some time, and then, turning my horse, rode up to the wicket, getting into talk by asking the distance to Horsham. I found that the man worked chiefly in the woods, and that he was doing pretty well. The wife was then only twenty-two, and the man only twenty-five. She was a pretty woman, even for Sussex, which, not excepting Lancashire, contains the prettiest women in England. He was a very fine and stout young man. ”

“ Cobbett is an exceedingly pleasant companion, and an excellent husband and father. It has been asserted that he is harsh to those who are in his service, but this appears to me to be a calumny. That he expects his labourers to perform their duty is certain, and in this he is truly their friend. Industrious himself, he hates idleness in others. ”

“ Written by a Sailor. London. Printed by George Cooke, 1806.
The setting sun now gilds the mountain tops,
The busy shepherd pens his fleecy care,
Domestic fowls now seek their fav’rite props,
And leave the fields, barn-doors, and stack-yards fare.
The following parody was satirically attributed to William Cobbett, M.P., by the Editor of The Satirist, in which paper it appeared in August, 1810. The whole of it is bitterly personal and offensive, but it must be remembered that Cobbett himself never spared the feelings or characters of his adversaries:—
Elegy in Newgate. ”

“ William Cobbett, who had great contempt for conventionalities, was an early riser from his boyhood,—when his first occupation was driving the small birds from the turnip-seed and the rooks from the peas ”

“ He must know that, during the ensuing winter, there must be great distress in Westminster itself; for there will be a greater mass of the working people out of employ than there ever was in any winter before; and this calamity will, too, be owing to that infernal system, which he has been supporting, to those paper-money Rooks, with whom he is closely connected, and the existence of whose destructive rags he expressed his wish to prolong: he knows all this very well: he knows that, in every quarter the distress and danger are great ”

“ The elder Mill would no doubt have gladly endorsed the saying, and it may be assumed that history has given its judgment in the same way, but history will certainly maintain the fame of the father as well as the fame of the son. A man of a very different order from any of these we have just mentioned, but who has made a reputation of his own in literature as well as in politics, closed his career within the same reign. We have already spoken in this volume of William Cobbett's command of simple, strong English, which made his prose style hardly inferior to that of Swift himself. ”

“ Such a fellow cannot be an object of what is properly called vengeance with any man who is worth a straw; but, I say, with Swift, “If a flea or a bug bite me, I will kill it if I can;” and, acting upon that principle, I, being at Hexham, put my foot upon this contemptible creeping thing, who is offering himself as a candidate for the southern division of the county, being so eminently fitted to be a maker of the laws!
The newspapers have told the whole country that Mr. John Ridley, who is a tradesman at Hexham, and occupies some land close by, has made a stand against the demand for tithes ”

“ He likes the cut and thrust, the falls, bruises, and dry blows of an argument: as to any good or useful results that may come of the amicable settling of it, any one is welcome to them for him. The amusement is over, when the matter is once fairly decided.
There is another point of view in which this may be put. I might say that Mr. Cobbett is a very honest man with a total want of principle, and I might explain this paradox thus. I mean that he is, I think, in downright earnest in what he says, in the part he takes at the time ”

“ Any [Pg 313] fool can ride a horse, and draw a cover; any groom or any stable-fellow, who is as ignorant as the horse, can do these things; but all gentlemen that go a fox-hunting [I hope God will forgive me for the lie] are scholars, Richard. It is not the riding, nor the scarlet coats, that make them gentlemen; it is their scholarship.” What he thought I do not know; for he sat as mute as a fish, and I could not see his countenance. “So,” said I, “you must now begin to learn something, and you must begin with arithmetic.” ”

“ It was nothing to him if a man was ignorant and stupid, under ordinary circumstances; but if he entrusted a man with his money, thinking that he was intelligent, and was deceived, then it was something; he had a right to say, ‘You are not what I took you for, you are an ignorant fellow; you have deceived me, you are an impostor.’ Such was the language proper to all under such circumstances: never mind their titles!
“A friend had that morning taken him to view the beautiful vale of Aylesbury, which he had never before seen ”

“ Paine said on some occasion—“What I have written, I have written”—as rendering any further declaration of his principles unnecessary. Not so Mr. Cobbett. What he has written is no rule to him what he is to write. He learns something every day, and every week he takes the field to maintain the opinions of the last six days against friend or foe. I doubt whether this outrageous inconsistency, this headstrong fickleness, this understood want of all rule and method, does not enable him to go on with the spirit, vigour, and variety that he does. He is not pledged to repeat himself. ”

“ There is at Hull one farmer going who is seventy years of age; but who takes out five sons and fifteen hundred pounds! Brave and sensible old man! and good and affectionate father! [Pg 534] He is performing a truly parental and sacred duty; and he will die with the blessing of his sons on his head for having rescued them from this scene of slavery, misery, cruelty, and crime. Come, then, Wilmot Horton, with your sensible associates, Burdett and Poulett Thomson; come into Lincolnshire, Norfolk, and Yorkshire; come and bring Parson Malthus along with you ”

“ Never mind, my Lord; you will grow less fastidious! They say, however, that he is really good to his tenants, and has told them, that he will take anything that they can give. There is some sense in this! He is a great Bible Man; and it is strange that he cannot see, that things are out of order, when his interference in this way can be at all necessary, while there is a Church that receives a tenth part of the produce of the earth.—There are some oak woods here, but very poor. Not like those, not near like the worst of those, in Hampshire and Herefordshire. ”

“ Reason is but a suppliant at the foot of thrones, and waits for their approval or rebuke. Salus populi suprema lex—may be a truism anywhere else. If reason dares to approach them at all, it must be in the shape of deference and humility, not of headstrong importunity and self-will. Instead of breathless awe, of mild entreaty, of humble remonstrance, it is Mr. Cobbett, who, upon very slight encouragement, would give the law, and the monarch who must kiss the rod. The upstart, the bully, and the dogmatist, would break out, and the King would assert himself. ”

“ I got here at nine o’clock. I stripped off my coat, and put it by the kitchen fire. In a parlour just eight feet square I have another fire, and have dried my shirt on my back. We shall see what this does for a hooping-cough. The clouds fly so low as to be seen passing by the sides of even little hills on these downs. The Devil is said to be busy in a high wind; but he really appears to be busy now in this South West wind. The Quakers will, next market day, at Mark Lane, be as busy as he. They and the Ministers and St. Swithin and Devil all seem to be of a mind. ”