FOOTNOTES
[1] A portrait (vide Frontispiece), engraved by Bartolozzi, appeared at the close of 1801. Cobbett appears in the surtout and neckcloth of the period, and has sufficient dignity of mien, notwithstanding his light hair and round face, and one’s impression that he would look as well in a smock-frock.
[2] I.e., independent, not only of subsidy, but of the shackles of party.
[3] It appears in the Political Register for July 30, 1803, and may be found sometimes in old collections of pamphlets and broadsides.
[4] “Annual Register,” 1804.
[5] Lord Colchester’s “Diary,” i. 463.
[6] A very funny pamphlet appeared about this time, which may be noticed as the first one of its kind, aimed at Cobbett’s Register. The title is “Elements of Opposition” (Hatchard, 1803), and it consists of a series of rules, founded upon the opinions of Cobbett:—“How to describe a prime minister;” “How to be outrageous for the public good;” “How to talk of what you do not know,” &c., &c. The pamphlet went through several editions.
[7] “It were idle trifling to impute the distractions and general backwardness of that country to any other cause than the circumstances in which she has been placed, and the example or wish of those to whose management she has been entrusted.”—“Annual Register,” 1804.
[8] Jeremy Bentham, in an article on “The Elements of Packing, as applied to Juries,” comments on this affair. Had he been upon the jury, he “should not have regarded it as consistent with his oath and duty to join in a verdict of guilty.” Bentham, also, has a capital note on the impunity of men of family, and the punishment due to men of no family, called forth by a question of the Attorney-General. It certainly was an unnecessary piece of meanness on the part of Perceval to ask, “Gentlemen, who is Mr. Cobbett? Is he a man of family in this country? Is he a man writing purely from motives of patriotism?” &c.—“Works,” v. 66, 80, 106, &c.
The end of this affair was the prosecution of Judge Johnson himself, in the following year. Cobbett had delivered up the anonymous MS., with the admission that the envelope had the Dublin post-mark. The handwriting was then traced to the worthy judge. The newspapers which were not slavish supporters of Government greatly disapproved of the affair; the Morning Chronicle being especially bold in the expression of its contempt. The judge retired in 1806, upon a pension of 1200l. a year.
CHAPTER XIII.
“I SAW THINGS IN ANOTHER LIGHT.”
The unmistakable success which had attended the publication of “Mr. Windham’s Gazette” (as the Register was nicknamed) soon made a revolution in Cobbett’s plans for the future. It had been his cherished thought to resume a semi-rural life, visiting London once or twice a week, in the case of being enabled to relinquish the bookselling business.
It was not until 1805 that a permanent removal was made out of London; meanwhile, however, the shop in Pall Mall had long been relinquished. In March, 1803 (according to a notification in the Register), it appears that Mr. Harding had just taken the business over,[1] whilst John Morgan had also returned to Philadelphia to recommence bookselling there. Besides the ordinary trade, the firm had produced the long-promised “Selections from Porcupine’s Works,” issued in May, 1801, and dedicated to John Reeves. The list of subscribers, printed in the first volume, includes the Royal Princes, the chief supporters of Government, and about 750 other names in England and America. A second edition of his translation of Martens’ “Law of Nations” was also published in June, 1802, with the treaties brought down to the current date. It is pretty certain, therefore, that the business in Pall Mall was a flourishing concern.
Among other labours, independent of the Register, were, a translation of “L’Empire Germanique,” a tract of the period,[2] accompanied by a memoir on the political and military state of Europe; and a reproduction of the “English Grammar for Frenchmen.” And, as though he were not yet fully occupied, Mr. Cobbett must needs undertake one more grand scheme.
This was nothing less than a plan for publishing the parliamentary debates. The inadequacy of the existing reports had long since attracted Mr. Cobbett’s notice, and he had endeavoured to supply the need by printing the bulk of the debates in the early supplements to the Political Register. At last, toward the close of the year 1803, he resolved to issue, periodically, full and accurate reports, giving as his reason that the debates, “as at present communicated to the world, reflect very little credit on the nation.”
Accordingly, on the 3rd of December, 1803, appeared the first number, price one shilling, of “Cobbett’s Parliamentary Debates.”[3] The person who was selected as reporter and editor was a man very well qualified for the task—no other than Mr. John Wright, formerly bookseller in Piccadilly. He had failed in 1801, and his bankruptcy was attributed by Cobbett, partly to taking “more delight in reading of books than in selling of them,” and partly to “the misfortune of being bookseller to Messrs. Canning, Frere, Ellis, and the other Anti-Jacobins, by whose works, though such a puffing was made over them, he lost many hundreds of pounds.”… “Seeing him once more ready to begin the world afresh, I proposed to him the editing of the parliamentary debates, of which we have now [1810] continued the publication since the year 1803.”
One more enterprise remains to be noticed. In February, 1803, was published the first number of “Le Mercure Anglois de Cobbett,” containing a “translation of such parts of the Register as may be thought useful or interesting to politicians on the continent of Europe.” There does not appear, however, any trace of the publication of more than three numbers of this “Mercure.”
Upon leaving Pall Mall, Mr. Cobbett took a house in Duke Street, Westminster. His country trips were few, for his work did not at present give him opportunity to escape from town for any lengthened period. But, in 1804, the occasion of a visit to Hampshire was prolonged so far as to revive his ardent wish for a permanent rural life. Mr. Wright (who occupied apartments at a tailor’s, at No. 5, Panton Square) was getting increasingly useful to him, and their mutual confidence was now of the closest character. And it is due to this friendship, and its ultimate rupture, that we are indebted for an ample insight into Mr. Cobbett’s personal and domestic history during the succeeding years.[4]
A letter, dated 9th August, from Lord Henry Stuart’s seat, at the Grange, near Alresford, announces the arrival of the family there, and requesting attention to some business matters, particularly the despatch of a parcel of London newspapers; then very full of the famous Middlesex election, in which the contest lay between Sir Francis Burdett and Mr. George Mainwaring. On the 13th he writes from Southampton:—
“… I received the newspapers and your letter safe. By the enclosed you will perceive that I mean not to go up for this next Register. The reason is, I have not got Mrs. Cobbett and the children settled to my mind; and, besides that, I want to take them all to the pony-races at Lindhurst, on Friday next. They have begun to breathe. We have seen the school at Twyford. The master is a noisy hawbuck. He is a Burdettite, and so is his wife. I like the place very much, and none the worse because it is that very identical school that Pope first went to. Of this circumstance the master failed not to apprise us. The boys are all very well, and very desirous to see you—William in particular, who says you must come and see him every Sunday. The pony is an excellent bargain. I shall take the whole off from here, bag and baggage, next Saturday, and go to Wickham; and on Sunday night, or Monday morning, I shall leave Wickham for London, where I shall stay during next week, and then set off to fetch home the brood for the winter. I am in the midst of a pony country, and I think I shall pick up another to take home with me. I shall write to you again to-morrow with another parcel, and again on Wednesday, so that you will have all my copy by Thursday’s post; and that you may know how to calculate, I now inform you that my copy will make exactly twenty-five columns, or twenty-six at most. I have several interesting articles, and they all must come in. I shall touch the Middlesex election; the miscreants shall not escape.… If there be anything worth relating, pray give me a line upon it. My address is at Mr. Harris’s china warehouse, Southampton. D—— the china ware! William was out walking with me by the beach yesterday morning, and after a long and pensive silence, he said, ‘Pa, why do you have a china-shop in your house?’ He is by no means reconciled to the crockery-ware yet.…”
This period (the summer and autumn of 1804) is also to be noted as that during which Mr. Cobbett’s political opinions underwent a change. Much twaddle has been written and uttered, during the last seventy years, upon this celebrated “change.” The present biographer, heedless of all that has been said, does not intend to argue out any calumnies, from beginning to end of the story; but it is necessary here to note the first appearance of the change in question, because the selection from the correspondence, which will now be placed before the reader, makes occasional reference to Mr. Cobbett’s growing animosity to “the race that plunder the people,” to the “court-sycophants, parasites, pensioners, bribed senators, directors, contractors, jobbers, hireling lords, and ministers of state,” which, he was now beginning to discover, were not the people of England, in the strict sense of the word. He had been leading the opposition to Mr. Pitt for a year or two past, and was now for the first time showing an inclination to break altogether from the shackles of party.
During his absence, Mr. Wright acted as sub-editor of the Register; and it will be seen that even his labours could not have been light. Nearly every letter to him, enclosing copy for the Register, implores him to read the MS. carefully, and “make corrections as to grammar or phraseology, and supply omissions; for I cannot read a word of it.”
[Wm. C. to J. Wright.] … “I thank you for sending the selection of newspapers. They afford me excellent matter for comment. I think I have posed them about the car project.[5] They know not what to say. There are some very good things in the Chronicle upon this subject. The little letter in Wednesday’s paper is delicious. The Methodist meeting[6] is not less so. That’s the tone to take. I cannot enough abhor the wretches who would revive, at this critical moment, the hideous cry of Jacobinism. This is a subject upon which the selfish dogs ought to be incessant lashed, till all the nation hates them—and the time is most proper for it. I wish you would endeavour to inculcate this notion with all whom you know. Nothing would tend more to the subjugation of the country than the revival of this most mischievous cry. I shall not cease my endeavours; but do you use yours also.
“Before you come down, which will be about the 7th of September, I suppose, I will tell you what we do about leaving the house. I like your idea very well. In order that you may be quite clear by Saturday, or the Friday afternoon, you shall have the last of my copy for next Register, on Wednesday morning. But you must read the proofs.…”
“… I beg you not to be out in the evening, lest some robbery should be committed. If anything should be the matter of James, pray send to Mr. Teggart immediately.…”
“… Urry received his money. And you will send me another just such sum by next post. I have had entrance money and fees to pay for seven children, clothing, trunks, &c., &c., to pay for; and we have been obliged to buy table and bed linen for ourselves, together with a suit of clothes for John and another for me, lest people should take me for a heathen philosopher.… We go to church here. I hope the saints will not be jealous at this!”
“… My articles do not make so much as I expected I should have time to write. I began yesterday at nine o’clock, and I finish now at six for the post—thirty-three hours, including eating, drinking, and sleeping time.… Pray read the whole with great care, before and after it is set up.
“We went our journey yesterday, and it is now fixed that Nanny goes to school at Winchester, and the boys at Twyford, on Saturday the 22nd instant. We shall stay at Botley till about the 2nd or 3rd of October, and then we shall go and cram ourselves into the cursed smoke again. It is just possible, however, that we may stay in the country till near the middle of the month.… In addition to the things mentioned in my memorandum, I request you to send the following by the mail-coach, in a new parcel:—
“My famous breeches.
“A new pamphlet of Lord Lauderdale, in answer to the Edinburgh reviewers, just advertised.
“Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws;—in the book-case, I believe.”
“… Now, as to the school project, it has failed. William tells me that something is continually making him cry. When he saw me, he was ready to burst. He is going back, but the others will stay. You have helped to make him so in love with home, and you must have the teaching of him another year or two. His mother cannot live without him yet, and they must be humoured.… Am I never to have my fine breeches, or did you mean only to tantalize me?”
“… I am alarmed that you have inserted Hibernicus[7] without my seeing it. I hope there is nothing violent or personal? Send me, in the parcel with the population abstract, the letter from Montrose; and pray put in nothing without my seeing it. A trip at this time would be ruinous. I am very uneasy till I see Hibernicus.… As the air of Botley is so favourable to the Muses, I shall write two more Registers in it. Indeed, we cannot quit it sooner. I think I shall, in my letters to the Grand Charlatan, make good ground for us all to stand upon. The first point, the corner-stone, is well placed.[8] … Mrs. C. sends her compliments. The boys want to see you again. There is, we think, a large day-school mixed with boarders in Dean’s Yard, Westminster, for William—will you ask? He is too young and weak to be taken from our table to sup upon bread-and-cheese and water!”
“… Observe well, that two words in Mr. Bonney’s letter must be left out—the word ‘excellent’ in the first sentence, and the word ‘pensioned’ in the last. The word ‘pensioned’ would not be safe; the word ‘excellent’ is an injury to B.’s letter, and is, on every account, much better left out; as, indeed, compliments to myself always should be, appearing as I do in my own name, and not as an editor. Take care that they are both left out.… Insert the article upon the stamp duties, but be very careful of the words.”
The foregoing extracts, from letters written in September and October, 1804, throw some light for the first time on Cobbett’s happy domestic circle; they are dated from Itchen and from Botley, at either of which places the family were then visiting. The affectionate tenderness towards his children is here shown to have been an active principle, and we shall have further glimpses as we proceed. But the most striking thing here apparent is his sensitiveness on the score of personal offence, on the part of himself or his correspondents. The galloping pace at which he wrote, and his negligence as to reviewing what he had written, were sufficiently perilous; and another “Juverna” affair was not to be thought of.
Other extracts might be made; but the references to current politics would be too obscure, without much detailed explanation. The following will show, however, the general drifting of Cobbett’s views:—
“… I am happy to think that I am likely to be of some use in uniting men in support of the throne, the Church, and the real liberties of the people, against the conspirators of loan-makers and directors, directors of all sorts, I mean; East India as well as Bank … whether I shall draw them out at last I know not. I wish I may. But they have now such a load to toil against, that I am apt to think they will desist, and by-and-by glance at my present writing as a proof of my disaffection and abandonment of principle. If it please God to give me health, that shall not serve them, though. Pray keep a good look-out, for, if they say only a word, I wish to meet it instantly.”
“… Is it really true that the cowards have given up Malta? Why, they went to war for Malta! ‘Malta,’ said Dundas, in his villainous brogue, ‘Malta! Malta! en parpatooaty, es tha trewly Breetush oabjuct of ware!’ And now he gives it up! For God’s sake look at his speech, Reg., vol. iii. p. 1662. But be sure not to talk of it to any one, as I should then be anticipated.”
“… Have you seen Reeves? I think I must come to a plain understanding with him; for I hate cold half-friendships. I think my two last numbers must have staggered such people.”
Mr. Cobbett is in town in November to attend Judge Johnson’s trial; but he is at Botley House again in January. Mr. Wright pays them another visit, too, having been desired to bring a fine large twelfth-cake, also “the portfolio with all the boys’ pictures in it.”
That some people were getting “staggered,” as Cobbett says, is by no means unlikely. He has been publicly called upon to “defend himself from the charge of not having joined the opponents of Sir Francis Burdett;” when, lo! it is discovered that an acknowledgment must be made, of at least some claim, on the part of the latter, to represent the Middlesex constituency, as against his opponent:—
“The former sentiments and expressions of Sir Francis Burdett were not, for the most part, so wrong in themselves as in the season of their application. Some of them, indeed, were such as no time or place would justify.… His language, and many of his acts, during the former election, as well as previous to it, were seditious to a degree bordering upon treason; they did, in my opinion, totally incapacitate him as a member of Parliament.… He chose to disgrace himself and his cause by an appeal to the worst passions of the worst part of the people. But if nothing of a seditious nature has appeared in the conduct of Sir Francis Burdett since that election, upon what principle will his opponents justify their resentment against him, whilst they are so ready to overlook the political sins of others?”
A few months earlier in this year, the ministerial part of the press had classed Burdett and Cobbett together as “a party endeavouring to create despondency.” This appears to have been the beginning of it; and Mr. Cobbett, on looking more dispassionately into Burdett’s claims as a politician, finds that the leading objects of both their minds are the same,—
“It will be recollected that, on the 2nd of July last, application was made to Parliament for a grant of 591,842l., wherewith to pay off the arrears of the Civil List; … Sir Francis Burdett took the liberty to say a few words to the thirty or forty persons who were about to grant this half-million of money, which was to be raised upon the people.… He objected to the ground upon which the minister had made this application, and could not see, he said, why the rise in prices and the consequent abridgment of every man’s comforts should be urged as a reason for augmenting the amount of the Civil List. He complained that there was a waste of the public money.… He did not declaim against taxes, but against their too great amount, and against the misapplication of them.…”
and protests that none but a contractor, a farmer-general, a paper-money maker, or a hired author, could find anything objectionable in the sentiments thus expressed. In short, Mr. Cobbett has discovered that the advocates of parliamentary reform are not, necessarily, a faction seeking to subvert the throne. He has had his grievance, some ten or a dozen years, against the “public-robbers;” but he has groped about, in pursuit of them, in crooked bye-ways: has even rubbed shoulders with them without knowing it: has now come in sight of the highway along which are running other pursuers, whose distant shouts have, till now, been unmeaning, because misunderstood.
He looks with abhorrence at the prospect of a revival “of those political animosities which were, during the last war and at the last peace, so fruitful in national calamity and disgrace, which destroyed all freedom of discussion and almost of intercourse; and which, while it sheltered all the follies and faults of the minister even from inquiry, exposed every word and act of every other man to misrepresentation and suspicion.”
Here, then, we have Mr. Cobbett fairly started upon his mission. Parliamentary opposition, hitherto, had meant a struggle for power and place, with the biggest share in the nation’s loaves and fishes; it would henceforth signify a determination to watch the grasping hand, to restrain the thirsty leech. And Mr. Cobbett will, at any cost, keep the nation on the alert concerning the proper disposition of its resources.
In the hope which Cobbett now indulged, of arresting, if possible, the enormous growth of the public debt, he began to advocate a union of the two opposition parties. We find him, then, about this time, obliged to defend himself from the charge of supporting Mr. Fox, whose “seditious ravings” it had once been “impossible to hear without indignation.” And the charge would naturally be indefensible on the part of a hireling. But the C. J. Fox that was now praised was not the C. J. Fox who once coquetted with Jacobins. In Cobbett’s eyes, Jacobinism was now dead and buried. The risk of anarchy had departed from British shores. The peace of Amiens had proved a failure; and the Whigs, who had opposed that treaty from one point of view, were beginning to coalesce with the Windhamites, who had opposed it from another. For some time past there had been hopes of a union of all the great men of the country, in a strong, “broad-bottom’d” administration, as the only means of restoring public confidence.
So, although Mr. Cobbett is ready to admit the claim of the heaven-born minister to a place among the great, he now declines any longer to support him, as hitherto. Not only that: he proceeds to instruct Mr. Pitt on the causes of his failure as a statesman. Rather cool, this, for the quondam ploughboy! But he must needs prove that Mr. Pitt has deserted his principles, in order to justify his own new position. As to the charge of versatility, he thinks that “inconsistency” means “the difference between profession and practice.” The best exposition of this “difference” is found in an article of the Register, toward the close of the year 1805:—
“If I praised Mr. Pitt, it was Mr. Pitt the ‘heaven-born’ minister, with regard to whose character I had participated in the adoption of those notions so prevalent amongst the ignorant crowd about twenty years ago. It was Mr. Pitt the corner-stone of the confederacy against republican France: Mr. Pitt who had openly and solemnly vowed never to make peace with France till the political balance of Europe should be completely restored, and till safety and tranquillity could be obtained for England; it was this Mr. Pitt that I praised, and not the Mr. Pitt who advised, who defended, and who extolled the peace of Amiens. The Mr. Pitt that I praised, as a financier, was the Mr. Pitt who, in the year 1799, declared that he would carry on the war for any length of time without the creation of new debt; and not the Mr. Pitt who, in less than two years afterwards, justified the peace as necessary for the husbanding of our resources, having, in the interim, created new debt to the amount of about seventy millions sterling. If I praised Mr. Pitt, as an upright public man, as a real patriot, it was the Mr. Pitt who began his career with professions of incorruptible purity, and who, in the warmth of his zeal, had proposed to reform the Parliament itself, rather than not cut off the means of corruption; and not the Mr. Pitt who procured to be passed the bill relating to the Nabob of Arcot’s debts (of which bill I had never yet heard); nor the Mr. Pitt who, notwithstanding the information of Mr. Raikes, suffered the practices of Lord Melville and Trotter to go on unchecked; no, no; not the Mr. Pitt who lent forty thousand pounds of the public money, without interest, to two members of Parliament—never making, or causing to be made, any record or minute of the transaction, and never communicating any knowledge of it even to the cabinet ministers.… The English Constitution that I extolled was that Constitution which, to use the words of Mr. Pitt himself (in his early days), carefully watches over the property of the people; that Constitution which effectually prevents any misapplication of the public money, or severely punishes those who may be guilty of such misapplication; and which, above all things, provides that the money raised upon the people, by the consent of their representatives, shall not in any degree, or under any name, be given to those representatives by the ministers of the crown, and especially in a secret manner. This Constitution I hope yet to see preserved in its purity; and were it not for that hope, neither hand nor pen would I move in its defence. But it will be so preserved, or we are the most base of mankind.”
A number of persons were now ready to support these views of Mr. Cobbett; and a still greater number, animated by fear, or by envy, assailed him with the utmost virulence. His friends told him that the circulation of the Register would be diminished if he persisted in opposing Pitt; that the advocacy of Burdett would operate unfavourably upon its reputation. He assured them all, however, that he was receiving better support than ever, and that the great majority of his correspondents acknowledged, that conviction of the truth of his reasonings, and of the rectitude of his motives, was stealing into their minds.
If there was one man who could stand up before the country with pure hands, that man was William Pitt. But it was not given to him to inspire other men by his example in this matter. The system of political corruption was too strongly holden for the best-intentioned reformer to undertake its reduction, without risking his political existence. The creed, common to Whigs and Tories, that the king and the country were to be ruled for the exclusive benefit of the “ruling” families, was the basis of the system; and only a Samson, who should himself perish amid the wreck, might essay its destruction.
As early as 1802 Mr. Cobbett had ventured upon a sarcasm with reference to the clerkship to “the Pells.” This celebrated sinecure, worth 3000l. a year, was in the power of Pitt to take to himself without reproach: as is well known he declined, and it fell into the hands of Addington, who bestowed it upon his son, then only twelve years of age. Cobbett thought this was setting decency at defiance; seeing that the immaculate minister, about this time, persecuted a poor tradesman of Plymouth[9] for doing what everybody around was doing.
A stray shaft or so was discharged from time to time; but not till three years after did the fight really commence. At last, in 1805, with the exposure of Lord Melville’s naval mal-administration, the whole matter was ripe for discussion; and in August of that year appears the first of those curious pension-lists,[10] which were, for the ensuing quarter of a century, the stock-in-trade of radical grievance-mongers. It was now open war. Mr. Cobbett, for the second time in his life, found himself standing alone. Aristocratic friends were deserting him, whilst the new ones were yet only gathering. As for the abuse, with which he was favoured by his opponents, it was as unreasoning as it was disgraceful.