FOOTNOTES
[1] I.e. John Gifford.
[2] The British Critic was the joint undertaking of Archdeacon Nares and the Rev. William Beloe, Prebendary of St. Paul’s. Both these gentlemen were staunch supporters of Pitt, and received their due reward in this life. They were also accomplished bibliographers and literary students, and rendered great service to literary history. The British Critic lived far into the nineteenth century.
[3] This gentleman (whose original name was John Richards Green) had got rid of his patrimony, with the assistance of the Jews, at an early age. To avoid his creditors, he took the surname of Gifford; and, having discovered acuteness and talent in writing, he soon found himself under the wing of Pitt, and became one of that statesman’s ablest supporters in the press. Having been bred to the bar, Mr. Pitt was enabled to reward his services by the magistracy of a London police-court, which he held for many years. Gifford wrote, besides several other historical works, a biography of his distinguished patron:—“A History of the Political Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt, including some Account of the Times in which he lived” (3 vols. 4to, London, 1809).
[4] John Bowles, barrister, was the author of several anti-gallican pamphlets. In one of these he warmly praises the author of “The Bloody Buoy,” who had executed a “useful and benevolent, though a most painful and disgusting task.”
[5] Mr. Heriot was a Scotchman of great native ability. He had held a commission in the Marines, and subsequently produced a novel and some poems. When the Pitt Ministry resolved to set up a newspaper, the Sun and the True Briton were established, and Mr. Heriot was chosen editor, and under his management the papers soon reached a brilliant circulation. After his retirement from the press, Mr. Heriot held a valuable appointment in Barbadoes, and subsequently became Comptroller of Chelsea Hospital, where he died in 1833.
[6] From a collection of letters received by the publisher of “The Pursuits of Literature,” which was formerly in the possession of Mathias, and now in the British Museum (Addl. MSS. 22,976).
CHAPTER X.
“I RESOLVED NEVER TO BEND BEFORE THEM.”
The Times newspaper for July 8th, 1800, announced, under date of Falmouth, July 4th, the arrival of the Lady Arabella packet from New York, viâ Halifax; adding that, “on the 20th, in lat. 50.30, long. 28.10, she was chased by a large vessel, which gained so much on her that she found it necessary to heave her guns, shot, lumber, &c., overboard, by which means she was considerably lightened, and on the following day got so much ahead that the pursuer gave up the chase.” Among the passengers, who thus escaped the rigours of a French prison, were “Mr. and Mrs. Cobbet.”
The following note is to Mr. Wright, the bookseller in Piccadilly, dated Falmouth, 8th July:—
“Dear Sir,—I arrived here, with my family, last Friday, by the Lady Arabella packet-boat, and shall set off for London to-morrow morning, travelling by the way of Bath, &c. … in a post-chaise, with Mrs. Cobbett and my two children, so that you may expect to see me in town on Saturday or Sunday next.
“I have taken the liberty to give a draft on you for 20l. I brought off only 50l. in cash; and, as I have remained here and at Halifax much longer than I thought there would be any occasion for, I was apprehensive I should fall short. Mr. Pellew, of this place, who, by-the-bye, is a brother of the gallant Sir Edward Pellew, offered me whatever I might want, and I gave him the above-mentioned draft. Do not fail to accept it, and I will be careful to lodge the cash with you before the time of payment arrives. Indeed, I will do it immediately upon my arrival.
“Pray make my most respectful compliments to Mr. William Gifford, and believe me, though in haste, your very sincere friend and most obedient servant,
“William Cobbett.
“P.S.—That part of my baggage, which I am not able to carry with me, I have sent to a waggon warehouse, directed to your care. I shall, undoubtedly, be in town before it, but if, by some accident, I should be detained longer on the road than the 17th instant, I beg the favour of you to go and claim the things (two trunks, one bale, one deal box, and one band-box) at the Swan-and-two-Necks, Lad Lane.”
Mr. Cobbett’s arrival in England was early signalized by an opportunity of carrying out his principles, long since determined on, concerning the disposal of the public money:—
“From my very first outset in politics, I formed the resolution of keeping myself perfectly independent, whatever difficulty or calamity might be the consequence of it.… With the same resolution in my mind I returned to England. The first opportunity of putting it in practice was in a little matter with which Old George Rose[1] had something to do. I had brought home with me books, printed in America, enough to fill a couple of large trunks; and, having been informed by Mr. Pellew, the collector at Falmouth, that as to books not for sale, it was usual, upon an application made to the Secretary of the Treasury, to obtain a remission of the duties, I wrote to Old Rose, informing him of the circumstance, and stating to him the ground upon which my claim was founded. George did not admit the claim; he made some difficulty about it; but, finding that I had, at once, paid the duty, amounting to about ten pounds, perhaps, he caused it to be notified to me that the money should be returned to me. This offer I would not accept of, not perceiving how, except by way of a Treasury gift, such a return could be made.”
Cobbett has made several references to Mr. Pellew, the collector of customs, who appears to have lodged and entertained him, with much attention.
Upon his arrival in London, in the middle of July, Mr. Cobbett took a lodging in St. James’s Street, and began to deliberate upon his future. He had scarcely, when everything was counted up, five hundred pounds with which to begin the world anew. But he had not to wait long for a certain sort of encouragement. His fame was very widely spread among the adherents of Government; besides that, numerous gentlemen of Tory principles sought him out. Others, of independent politics, but admiring his talents and his daring, came to pay court. The Government press hailed him, and congratulated their countrymen “on the arrival of an individual … whom no corruption can seduce, nor any personal danger intimidate from the performance of his duty.”
Among these visitors were Baron Maseres; Dr. Ireland (shortly afterwards Dean of Westminster), who was especially gracious to him; the Rev. G. H. Glasse, rector of Hanwell, a well-known pamphleteer of the day, a good scholar, and chaplain to the Earl of Radnor; the Rev. William Beloe; Mr. John Penn, Sheriff of Buckinghamshire (who “took me by the hand the very week I came to England”); &c. So that, along with the immediate officials of Government, there was quite enough to turn Mr. Cobbett’s head, had he not been possessed of supreme self-command. At that moment, together with his native and acquired capacities, he had the means and the opportunity, if so disposed, of carving out an easy fortune.
But, of all his admirers, no one seems to have equalled Mr. Windham, in the warmth and eagerness with which that gentleman courted Cobbett’s friendship.
The Right Hon. William Windham (“the first gentleman of the age … the ingenious, the chivalrous, the high-souled,” according to one of Macaulay’s juster judgments) was an enthusiast; and, in the eyes of those persons who shrug their shoulders when a man acts as though he had some faith in his own opinions, whimsical. Deeply reverential toward the memory of Mr. Burke, his own genius was not unfitted to bear forth, to another generation, the name and the principles of that great man. Windham was beloved and admired by all persons of refinement and sensibility; and if he has left a name not so widely known as some of his cotemporaries, it must be laid to the account of an extreme self-consciousness, and an honourable delicacy, which prevented him from serving always in the ranks of party with unreasoning devotion.
Mr. Windham’s peculiar scare was French Jacobinism; and he, along with the leaders of the party who held similar views, thought that there could be no lasting cessation of hostilities with Buonaparte, whilst the ascendancy of the latter involved the spread of Democratic principles. Mr. Windham was, naturally, a zealous admirer of that arch anti-Jacobin, whose writings had so disturbed the bile of American Democrats; and, upon Porcupine’s arrival in London, he immediately sought his acquaintance. With Windham was associated Dr. French Laurence, another intimate friend of the lamented Burke, who also ably represented in Parliament the opinions of that statesman.
Mr. Windham was, at this time, Pitt’s Secretary-at-War; and, according to the entry in his diary,[2] he appears to have met Cobbett for the first time on the 7th of August, 1800 (probably at Windham’s official residence). Mr. Cobbett’s references to this occurrence represent Mr. Pitt as having been very polite to him on the occasion, and as having inspired him with great admiration for his person and manners. He was altogether pleased and gratified by his reception, and by the ready condescension with which the company present conversed with him. But, of course (as he said more than thirty years afterward), “it was natural for Pitt and his set to look at me a little, to see what they could make of so efficient a piece of stuff.” Mr. Pitt’s habitual austerity and hauteur pretty generally disappeared at the dinner-table; and Cobbett saw him, for the first time, at one of these happy moments. So that, what with his very natural pride at the invitation, and his satisfaction at finding that the King’s ministers were such highly-agreeable fellows, he felt more than ever disposed to use his talents in the support of monarchy. He resolved to set up a daily paper; and left Mr. Windham’s dinner-table with that resolve uppermost in his mind.
That Mr. Pitt miserably erred, in the prosecution of the European war, has long since been established, with all minds not wedded to the notion that our rulers are of Divine appointment. What opposition there was to his ideas, in his own day, was considered to proceed only from the partisans of revolution; and it was easy to apply the term “disaffected,” to humanitarians who hated war, or to the suffering poor who wanted bread. But, notwithstanding that the Government expenditure was over fifty millions per annum,[3] and that the ordinary expenses of housekeeping had increased 300 per cent. in seven years, the war was popular with all classes that had anything to fear from modern doctrines. The political ignorance of even the majority of the House of Commons of that day would put to shame the very students of our time. And it is not too much to say that, had Lord Grenville been anything of a statesman beyond the name, he would scarcely have treated Napoleon’s overtures for peace, made at the close of the year 1799, with mere contempt, and allowed a fair opportunity for a general pacification to pass away because he must have, as a basis, the reinstatement of the Bourbons upon the throne of France. Ministers wanted to come out of the contest, in point of fact, with GLORY; and any peace, which did not involve the attainment of the objects with which the war was, professedly, being carried on, was certain also to involve their prestige, if not their places. This may be said without any disparagement to their honour. Mr. Pitt, Mr. Windham, Lord Grenville,—all of them and their supporters, honestly believed that their mission was, not only to keep French principles out of England, but to smother them throughout Europe. Sternly, earnestly, they kept to their purpose; forgetting, or, more probably, never having taken to heart, the prodigious expansion which the eighteenth century had produced in the human mind, and the certainty of its development in the line of liberty; whilst confounding, in one heterogeneous estimate, the unstable Gaul, the restless Pole, the high-spirited Celt, and the conservative Briton.
So Mr. Pitt’s supporters in the press, reflecting the fearsome notions of their chief, and dreading, as from the Evil One himself, the faintest breath of democracy, could only regard the “masses” as unfit for more than the mere semblance of political rights. The impossibility of phlegmatic John Bull ever permitting, on his own soil, such follies and excesses as the French Jacobins had perpetrated never entered their minds. “Law and Order,” as personified in George III. and his ministers, was the only antithesis to “Anarchy.” Some of these writers lived to see the perilous consequences of the repressing system; and a few survived to note the blessings which flowed from general political enlightenment. Some, to the very last, shut their eyes to the inevitable, and could prognosticate only decay; others, sooner or later, discerned the signs of the times, and served worthily in the van of progress. Of these latter, one of the first, one of the most earnest, one of the bravest, was Mr. William Cobbett.
And it is not uninteresting to note that, on the very morrow of Mr. Windham’s dinner-party, the dimness began to clear away from Cobbett’s mind. Better and nobler hopes for the future of England, founded upon something more solid than class-prescriptions, unfolded themselves; the veil began to part, behind which was hidden the framework of misgovernment alike with the skeletons of its framers; a glimmer of dawn, the expansion of which was soon to light up a path, so startlingly and unexpectedly distinct from his previous conceptions, appeared,—a path, not upon the mossy turf of favour and privilege, leading on to other mossy turves, but one trending up-hill, among stones and briers—which stones would, at last, beaten down into the earth by later footsteps, provide a firm foot-hold—which briers, refreshed by successive showers, would yet emit a sweet and blessed odour!
Here is his own account; and the man, or the woman, who can read it without emotion, need scarcely go on with this history:—
“When I returned to England, in 1800, after an absence from the country parts of it of sixteen years, the trees, the hedges, even the parks and woods, seemed so small! It made me laugh to hear little gutters, that I could jump over, called rivers! The Thames was but a creek! But when, in about a month after my arrival in London, I went to Farnham, the place of my birth, what was my surprise! Everything was become so pitifully small! I had to cross in my post-chaise the long and dreary heath of Bagshot; then, at the end of it, to mount a hill, called Hungry Hill; and from that hill I knew that I should look down into the beautiful and fertile vale of Farnham. My heart fluttered with impatience, mixed with a sort of fear, to see all the scenes of my childhood; for I had learnt, before, the death of my father and mother. There is a hill, not far from the town, called Crooksbury Hill, which rises up out of a flat, in the form of a cone, and is planted with Scotch fir-trees. Here I used to take the eggs and young ones of crows and magpies. This hill was a famous object in the neighbourhood. It served as the superlative degree of height. ‘As high as Crooksbury Hill’ meant, with us, the utmost degree of height. Therefore, the first object that my eyes sought was this hill. I could not believe my eyes! Literally speaking, I, for a moment, thought the famous hill removed, and a little heap put in its stead; for I had seen, in New Brunswick, a single rock, or hill of solid rock, ten times as big, and four or five times as high! The post-boy going down hill, and not a bad road, whisked me in a few minutes to the Bush Inn, from the garden of which I could see the prodigious sand-hill where I had begun my gardening works. What a nothing! But now came rushing into my mind, all at once, my pretty little garden, my little blue smock-frock, my little nailed shoes, my pretty pigeons that I used to feed out of my hands, the last kind words and tears of my gentle and tender-hearted and affectionate mother. I hastened back into the room. If I had looked a moment longer, I should have dropped. When I came to reflect, what a change! I looked down at my dress—what a change! What scenes I had gone through! How altered my state! I had dined the day before at a Secretary of State’s in company with Mr. Pitt, and had been waited upon by men in gaudy liveries! I had had nobody to assist me in the world—no teachers of any sort—nobody to shelter me from the consequences of bad, and no one to counsel me to good, behaviour. I felt proud. The distinctions of rank, birth, and wealth, all become nothing in my eyes; and from that moment (less than a month after my arrival in England) I resolved never to bend before them.”
The determination to start a daily paper was wise on the part of Mr. Cobbett, as far as his experience in Philadelphia had shown how possible it was for him to entertain a large circle of readers; but unwise, in that he had scarce capital enough with which to print the numbers for a single week. Yet the opportunity for carrying out his plan without risk was placed at his disposal; and there are few incidents in Cobbett’s whole career which redound so greatly to his credit as the refusal of this offer. The pride with which, in after-years, he told and retold the story, may be estimated very differently by different minds; but the spirit with which the refusal was made is unexceptionable. There was no other way out of it, if he meant Independence. If glimpses of grandeur had really not contaminated that honest heart, nor weakened the impulses of that patriotic soul, how should he live, and move, and work, and fight, with his hands not free?
And this is the story [he is addressing Mr. George Rose]:—
“John Heriot was at that time the proprietor of two newspapers, called the Sun and the True Briton—the former an evening and the latter a morning paper. I had heard that these two papers had been set on foot by you, who were then one of the Secretaries of the Treasury, and that, when set on foot, the profits of them had been given to Heriot. Now mark, that Mr. Hammond, who was then Under-Secretary of State in the Foreign Department, offered to me the proprietorship of one of those papers as a gift; and I remember very well that he told me that this offer was made in consequence of a communication with you, or your colleague Mr. Long, I forget which. This was no trifling offer. The very types, presses, &c., were worth a considerable sum. Mr. Hammond, who was a very honest as well as a very zealous and able man, had behaved with great kindness to me; had invited me frequently to his house, where I dined, I recollect, with Sir William Scott, with Lord Hawkesbury (now Lord Liverpool), and several other persons of rank; and, in short, had shown me so much attention, that I felt great reluctance in giving the following answer to his offer:—‘I am very much obliged to you, and to the gentlemen of whom you speak, for this offer; but, though I am very poor, my desire is to render the greatest possible service to my country, and I am convinced that, by keeping myself wholly free, and relying upon my own means, I shall be able to give the Government much more efficient support than if any species of dependence could be traced to me. At the same time, I do not wish to cast blame on those who are thus dependent; and I do not wish to be thought too conceited and too confident of my own powers and judgment to decline any advice that you, or any one in office, may at any time be good enough to offer me; and I shall always be thankful to you for any intelligence or information that any of you may be pleased to give me.’ Mr Hammond did not appear at all surprised at my answer; and I shall always respect him for what he said upon hearing it. His words were nearly these:—‘Well, I must say that I think you take the honourable course, and I most sincerely wish it may also be the profitable one.’ I ought not, upon this occasion, to omit to say that I always understood that Lord Grenville, who was then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was not one of those who approved of the baseness and dependence of the press.”
He also ventured to remind Mr. Hammond
“of the fable of the wolf and the mastiff, the latter of which, having one night, when loose, rambled into a wood, met the former all gaunt and shagged, and said to him, ‘Why do you lead this sort of life? See how fat and sleek I am! Come home with me and live as I do, dividing your time between eating and sleeping.’ The ragged friend having accepted the kind offer, they then trotted on together till they got out of the wood, when the wolf, assisted by the light of the moon, the beams of which had been intercepted by the trees, spied a crease, a little mark, round the neck of the mastiff. ‘What is your fancy,’ said he, ‘for making that mark round your neck?’ ‘Oh!’ said the other, ‘it is only the mark of my collar that my master ties me up with.’ ‘Ties you up!’ exclaimed the wolf, stopping short at the same time; ‘give me my ragged hair, my gaunt belly, and my freedom;’—and, so saying, he trotted back to the wood.”
Opportunities for reflecting upon the comparative states of dependence and independence crowded apace. He could scarcely turn, among his new circle of friends, without discovering some new Government parasite, some new candidate for ministerial favour, some new office-hunter or aspiring sinecurist. Mr. Pitt disdained the society of newspaper-people, but was only too willing to pay them for their praises. And it must not be left unnoticed that the practice of liberally rewarding this class of writers has often been justified by circumstances. The case in point, viz. the fight which was going on against democracy, required that the enemy should be fought with his own weapons; only it very unfortunately happened that all the talent was on the other side, and, where quality was lacking, the fight must needs be kept up with the aid of gold and silver. Mr. Cobbett would, indeed, have been worth buying, if his price could have been named; while there was a Paine, or a Thelwall, or a Godwin to be withstood.
The following brilliant and humorous passage of Cobbett’s, written in his old age, will complete our illustration of this topic:—
“At the time of my return, the great Government writers and political agents were John Reeves, who had been chairman of the Loyal Association against Republicans and Levellers; John Bowles; John Gifford; William Gifford; Sir Frederick Morton Eden, Bart.; the Reverend Mr. Ireland, now Dean of Westminster; the Reverend John Brand; the Reverend Herbert Marsh, now Bishop of Peterborough; Mallet Du Pan; Sir Francis D’Ivernois; and Nicholas Vansittart. These were all pamphlet-writers, supporting Pitt and the war through thick and thin. They, looking upon me as a fellow-labourer, had all sent their pamphlets to me at Philadelphia; and all of them, except Marsh, Vansittart, and the two Frenchmen, had written to me laudatory letters. All but the parsons called themselves ’Squires in the title-pages of their pamphlets. Look at me now! I had been bred up with a smock-frock upon my back; that frock I had exchanged for a soldier’s coat; I had been out of England almost the whole of my time from the age of [twenty]. We used to give in those times the name of ’Squire to none but gentlemen of great landed estates, keeping their carriages, hounds, and so forth: look at me, then, in whose mind my boyish idea of a ’Squire had been carried about the world with me: look at me, I say, with letters from four ’Squires and from Reverends on my table; and wonder not that my head was half turned! Only think of me (who, just about twelve years before, was clumping about with nailed shoes on my feet, and with a smock-frock on my back) being in literary correspondence with four ’Squires, two Reverends, and a Baronet! Look at me, and wonder that I did not lose my senses! And if I had remained in America, God knows what might have happened.
“Luckily I came to England, and that steadied my head pretty quickly. To my utter astonishment and confusion, I found all my ’Squires and Reverends, and my Baronet too—all, in one way or other, dependents on the Government, and, out of the public purse, profiting from their pamphlets. John Reeves, Esquire, who was a barrister, but never practised, I found joint patentee of the office of King’s Printer—a sinecure worth, to him, about 4000l. a year, which he had got for thirty years, just then begun. John Bowles, Esquire, (also a briefless barrister) I found a Commissioner of Dutch Property; and the public recollect the emoluments of that office, as exposed in 1809. John Gifford, Esquire, I found a Police Magistrate, with a pension of 300l. a year besides. William Gifford, Esquire, I found sharing the profits of Canning’s anti-Jacobin newspaper (set up and paid for by the Treasury), and with a sinecure of 329l. a year besides. My Baronet I found with rent-free apartments in Hampton Court Palace, and with what else I have forgotten. My Reverend John Brand I found with the living of St. George, Southwark, given him by Lord Loughborough (then Chancellor), he already having a living in Suffolk. My Reverend Ireland I found with the living of Croydon, or the expectancy of it, and also found that he was looking steadily at old Lord Liverpool. The Reverend Herbert Marsh I found a pension-hunter, and he soon succeeded to the tune of 514l. a year. Mallet Du Pan I found dead, but I found that he had been a pensioner, and I found his widow a pensioner, and his son in one of the public offices. And Nicholas Vansittart, Esquire, who had written a pamphlet to prove that the war had enriched the nation, I found, O God! a Commissioner of Scotch Herrings! Hey, dear! as the Lancashire men say; I thought it would have broken my heart!
“Of all these men, Reeves and William Gifford were the only ones of talent—the former a really learned lawyer, and, politics aside, as good a man as ever lived—a clever man; a head as clear as spring water; considerate, mild, humane; made by nature to be an English judge. I did not break with him on account of politics. We said nothing about them for years. I always had the greatest regard for him; and there he now is in the grave, leaving, the newspapers say, two hundred thousand pounds, without hardly a soul knowing that there ever was such a man! The fate of William Gifford was much about the same: both lived and died bachelors; both left large sums of money; both spent their lives in upholding measures which, in their hearts, they abhorred, and in eulogizing men whom, in their hearts, they despised; and, in spite of their literary labours, the only chance that they have of being remembered, for even ten years to come, is this notice of them from a pen that both most anxiously wished to silence many years ago. Amongst the first things that Reeves ever said to me was: ‘I tell you what, Cobbett, we have only two ways here; we must either kiss,—or kick them; and you must make your choice at once.’ I resolved to kick. William Gifford had more asperity in his temper, and was less resigned. He despised Pitt and Canning and the whole crew; but he loved ease, was timid; he was their slave all his life, and all his life had to endure a conflict between his pecuniary interest and his conscience.
“As to the rest of my ’Squires and other dignified pamphleteers, they were a low, talentless, place-and-pension-hunting crew; and I was so disgusted with the discoveries that I had made, that I trembled at the thought of falling into the ranks with them. Love of ease was not in me; the very idea of becoming rich had never entered into my mind; and my horror at the thought of selling my talents for money, and of plundering the country with the help of the means that God had given me wherewith to assist in supporting its character, filled me with horror not to be expressed.”