FOOTNOTES
[1] Cobbett’s Evening Post (Wm. C., Jun., printer and publisher, 269, Strand) was started on the 29th January, 1820, and ran for about two months. The early numbers are largely devoted to the Coventry election. On the 28th March a notice is given that the paper will be discontinued, with a remark that, “at the time when this undertaking was resolved on, it was uncertain what one could do, and could not do, in the state of slavery in which the new laws placed the press.” The Register was missed on one or two occasions, and it was found that the attempt to carry on both would be “to make both indifferent;” besides, people both preferred the Weekly Register and found that Cobbett could, in that, do better justice to his powers.
[2] Vide Loudon; also Donaldson’s “Agricultural Biography.”
[3] One of Cobbett’s bits of “verse” is upon the wickedness of repining:—
Come, little children, list’ to me
While I describe your duty,
And kindly lead your eyes to see
Of lowliness the beauty.
’Tis true your bony backs are bare,
Your lips too dry for spittle,
Your eyes as dead as whitings’ are,
Your bellies growl for vict’al;
But, dearest children, oh! believe,
Believe not treach’rous senses!
’Tis they your infant hearts deceive,
And lead into offences.
When frost assails your joints by day,
And lice by night torment ye,
’Tis to remind you oft to pray,
And of your sins repent ye.
At parching lips when you repine,
And when your belly hungers,
You covet what, by right Divine,
Belongs to Borough-mongers.
Let dungeons, gags, and hangman’s noose,
Make you content and humble,
Your heav’nly crown you’ll surely lose
If here on earth you grumble.
[4] “When I hear the Dissenters complaining of persecution, I cannot help reflecting on the behaviour of some of them towards the Catholics, with respect to whom common decency ought to teach them better behaviour. But, whether I hear in a Churchman or a Dissenter abuse of the Catholics, I am equally indignant; when I hear men, no two of whom can agree in any one point of religion, and who are continually dooming each other to perdition; when I hear them join in endeavouring to shut the Catholic out from political liberty on account of his religious tenets, which they call idolatrous and damnable, I really cannot feel any compassion for either of them, let what will befall them. There is, too, something so impudent, such cool impudence, in their affected contempt of the understanding of the Catholics, that one cannot endure it with any degree of patience. You hear them all boasting of their ancestors; you hear them talking of the English Constitution as the pride of the world; you hear them bragging of the deeds of the Edwards and the Henrys; and of their wise and virtuous and brave forefathers; and, in their next breath, perhaps, you hear them speak of the Catholics as the vilest and most stupid of creatures, and as wretches doomed to perdition; when they ought to reflect that all these wise and virtuous and brave forefathers of theirs were Catholics, that they lived and died in the Catholic faith, and that, notwithstanding their Catholic faith, they did not neglect whatever was necessary to the freedom and greatness of England. 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. There is something so unnatural, so monstrous, in a line of conduct in which we say that our forefathers are all in hell, that no one but a brutish bigot can hear of it with patience.”—Register, xix. 1286.
[5] An unusual number of “answers” to Cobbett’s book have been produced, some of which are named below. Out of the whole lot there is not one that does not, once again, manifest the inability of your controversialist, blinded with dogmatic solicitude, to escape from his mental prison-house. The reader may be tempted to look at the last on the list, as being a production of recent times; but the chances are against his cutting open any pages beyond the introductory chapter. To say no more than this argues great forbearance on the part of the present writer.
“Catholic Miracles; illustrated by George Cruikshank; to which is added a Reply to Cobbett’s Defence of the Reformation.”
“A True History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland; showing how that event has Enriched and Elevated the Main Body of the People in those Countries; in a Series of Letters addressed to all sensible and just Englishmen. In Reply to William Cobbett. By a Protestant.” (In threepenny numbers, 1 to 5 only published. London, 1825.)
“The Protestant Vindicator; or, A Refutation of the Calumnies contained in Cobbett’s History of the Reformation; including Remarks on the Principal Topics of the Popish Controversy. By Robert Oxlad.” (Serial. ? 14 numbers. London, 1826.)
“The Epistles of Ignatius and Polycarp.… With an Appendix, containing Notes, in which the Leading Arguments of Mr. Cobbett’s History are refuted.…” (1827.)
“A Brief History of the Protestant Reformation; in a Series of Letters addressed to William Cobbett.… By the Author of ‘The Protestant.’” (1826; new ed., Glasgow, 1831.)
“The Social Effects of the Reformation.… By a Fellow of the Statistical Society.” (“From a Series of Letters which appeared … during the years 1824 and 1825.” London, 1852.)
“A Reply to Cobbett’s ‘History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland.’ Compiled and Edited by Charles Hastings Collette.” (London, 1869.)
CHAPTER XXV.
“I HAVE PLEADED THE CAUSE OF THE WORKING-PEOPLE, AND I SHALL NOW SEE THAT CAUSE TRIUMPH.”
The disinclination on the part of Mr. Cobbett to become a member of Parliament, which had long characterized his taste as a public character, was now changed into an earnest determination the other way. At any time since 1803 he could have done so, either by the good offices of Mr. Windham, or of Viscount Folkestone. But a close borough was his abomination; and his dislike for late hours and London smoke, and his general feeling of contempt for the character of the existing representation, rendered a seat in the House of Commons anything but an object of ambition. Besides, he held, for a long time, the notion, that he could render better services to his country as a representative of the press.
The daring outrages on the popular liberties, however, which had begun under the Regency, changed all this. The character of the House was still pretty much the same, even with the accession of lucky war-contractors and stock-jobbers; and the type of ministerialists was still that of the Perceval set, which had existed since 1807. But now, under Habeas Corpus Suspension, the outlook has changed:—
“The press is a very powerful engine. 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. To be sure, one man could do comparatively little, without the aid of at least another.… One man, such as I have described, would soon make other men. A knot of such men would, in a short time, grow together; and against such a knot, corruption would not live a year.”
It is the midst of the “repression” period, in the winter of 1817-18, when the news reaches him at Long Island, of men suffering severe penalties for acts of violence. He thus addresses the electors of Coventry, begging them to have “but a little patience.” … “Let us bear in mind, that a people never dies; and let us also bear in mind the final success which, in all their struggles, crowned the patience, the perseverance, the public spirit and the valour of our forefathers, who never set to work against oppression without subduing it in the end.” … But:—“I am against all desperate means. I am for trying all the gentle means that remain; and, as I have just said, the putting of proper men into Parliament appears to me to be amongst the most efficient of those means.”
Some few weeks after Cobbett’s return to England, George the Third died. A general election shortly ensued, and the opportunity of contesting one of the seats for Coventry then occurred. The voters resident in London had been for some time preparing, by public meetings, to advance Cobbett’s claims on the constituency; and he now presented himself in the city, being received with acclamations on the part of many thousands of people.
But the acclamations of the “lower orders,” as they drew Mr. Cobbett’s vehicle into and around the town, were not voting-power. The election was like elections ordinarily were in those days. Fighting, stabbing, spitting; swearing, and slandering: little hired regiments of roughs prevented anything like fair play; and, although Cobbett headed the poll on the first day, his ultimate failure was complete. Indeed, upon the second day, it was impossible for his supporters to get near the polling-booth, without the risk of being stabbed.[1]
The constituency of Coventry was a very fair one of which to make trial; being a populous manufacturing place, containing a good body of reformers, and electors numbering about 2500. But the corporation was dead against the popular candidate, actively supporting his opponents (Edward Ellice, merchant, and Peter Moore, nabob); and a cartload of money was spent in treating and ruffianism. Mr. Cobbett’s expenses were defrayed partly by a small subscription.
It was six years before another opportunity occurred of meeting a popular constituency, with any prospect of success. But the question was kept alive, of a seat in Parliament. Reformers were sanguine that the franchise was on the eve of being broadened; and the yeomanry were beginning to join them,—a circumstance which brought into being a more influential class of adherents to Mr. Cobbett and his views. One of the more zealous and active of these new friends was Sir Thomas Beevor, a young baronet of Norfolk. He had read the Register for the first time, during the American exile; and his admiration for the courageous writer so grew upon him, that he at last publicly declared himself a Cobbettite and raised a reform camp in his own county. A proposal was at length made,[2] to hold a meeting in London in support of Cobbett’s claims to a seat in Parliament; but it was relinquished, for the present, upon Cobbett’s suggestion that they might properly wait until there was a certain prospect of a dissolution.
Meanwhile, all the matters upon which the moderate reformers had set their hearts were canvassed in the Political Register from time to time: the Game laws and iniquities, Catholic emancipation, the freedom of public speech, the continued distress of the Agricultural interest; along with minor topics, from the hypocrisies in Parliament, to the extortions of the toll-farmers. Much of Mr. Cobbett’s influence had been imperilled by his last American trip, and some of its consequences. But his espousal of the cause of Queen Caroline appears to have completely restored him to his place in the popular mind; and, from that period onward, not all the base slanders which were still showered upon him, nor even his own extravagant vehemence, could rob him of his power.
In the beginning of the year 1826, a renewed effort was made, led by Sir Thomas Beevor, to bring Mr. Cobbett before some constituency. A meeting was held in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, of a very enthusiastic character; and, in a few weeks, several hundred pounds were subscribed. Cobbett, on his part, was determined to make a good fight this time; and he announced that, if elected at all, he must be chosen by persons who chose him for the good of the country, and not for their own profit: that if returned at all, it must be by no corrupt or infamous means; and must be for a place “where some considerable number of the people have something to say in the matter.”
Westminster was thought of, and so was Middlesex; both constituencies in the hands of a narrow clique. It was, however, decided to fix upon Preston, as a town affording the desirable element of a very wide suffrage.[3] Accordingly, the prorogation of Parliament, on the 31st of May, found Mr. Cobbett canvassing the electors. A famous contest ensued: the other candidates being the Hon. E. G. Stanley (afterwards 14th Earl Derby), John Wood, merchant, and Captain Barrie, R.N.; the two first being elected. The numbers were, Stanley 3041, Wood 1982, Barrie 1657, Cobbett 995. There was comparatively little ruffianism, but sufficient impediment to fair voting.[4] Mr. Cobbett talked, for some time afterward, of a petition against the return, but the idea was relinquished. Indeed, he took this defeat in remarkably good humour; and proceeded to console himself and his friends, by recounting those triumphs which he could boast of.
Those were not mean triumphs, although principally at the hands of the “lower orders.” Flags and music: shouting, exulting, and shaking of hands, attended his progress through Blackburn, Bolton, and Manchester, on his way homeward.[5]
It was now quite obvious that popular candidates stood little or no chance, even in the most popular boroughs, in the existing state of the representation. But the prospect of any reform seemed more distant than ever. In Parliament, the question was practically shelved. Lord John Russell seemed, for the time, to have a persuasion that there was little encouragement to press the matter; and Mr. Canning, soon after becoming premier in 1827, declared that he would oppose parliamentary reform to the end of his life, under whatever shape it might appear. Burdett said that “putting aside all the great questions, including among the rest that of Parliamentary Reform,”[6] he saw sufficient reason to support Canning’s administration. And Brougham did not consider that “the late opposition” stood pledged in favour of the question!
Is it any wonder that Whiggism is dead and buried? Call not the Russells and the Greys Whigs: they had deserted the practices (considered apart from the professions) of their party before becoming reformers. If Whiggism had been anything besides profession, parliamentary reform would have been undertaken twenty years before; and the Whigs, as a party, had nothing more to do with it, when it was at last undertaken, than to be the vehicle of the country’s earnest demand.
This is how it came to pass. The French and Belgian revolutions, in the year 1830, powerfully moved all the populations of Europe; and the news of that double convulsion reached the people of England at one of the saddest periods of their history. To quote Mr. Molesworth,[7] “they were going mad with misery.” Machine-breaking and rick-burning kept the country alive with alarm, and sent some poor wretches to banishment or to death. People in the towns began to growl again, as they had growled ten or twelve years before. And the leaders of reform took fresh heart; for they saw that the question could no longer be stifled, with the country in a greater state of degradation than under the Tories of 1817.
So, in the midst of all this trouble, a Reform Bill was introduced. And, looking at the subsequent history of the struggle, and its consequences, it is impossible to avoid this conclusion: that the same prosperity and public confidence, which ensued upon the Act of 1832, might have been the guerdon of the Tories, at the beginning of the century.
The writings of Mr. 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. Upon the appointment of Earl Grey’s ministry, he declared his belief that they would keep on talking, and speechifying, as of old, without any regard to the promises they had been holding out to the people. Putting a list of twenty-six questions, referring to reform, taxation, tyrannous restraints on liberty, pensions, the six Acts, reduction of the forces, poor laws and game laws, he gave his opinion that none of these things would be touched. And Mr. Cobbett was right; none of these matters were dealt with, except on pressure from without, or on the part of sturdy and independent men of the class of Joseph Hume.
All this told upon the party newly raised to power. Very naturally. But they must have felt a certain insecurity of tenure, to resort to the same mode of retaliation which their political adversaries had exercised, twenty years before. So soon does a lease of power translate itself into a mere parade of force. The Government had not been many weeks in office, before they had the abominable folly to charge Cobbett with being the instigator of the incendiary fires which were then devastating the agricultural districts of England!
This was the basest attempt to destroy Mr. Cobbett that had yet been tried. The end of it was one of the greatest triumphs of his life; and a lesson on political prosecutions, which the other side took much to heart.
The circumstances are these:—The Political Register had been, for several years past, sold at the high price of sevenpence (and sometimes one shilling for a double number), on account of the restrictive stamp laws; and it was believed that the circulation was not of that character which would bring the journal into the hands of the labouring classes, to the extent desired. Mr. Cobbett was determined, however, that he would continue, in some way or other, to instruct the labouring-classes in the elements of political and social economy. This became urgent, during the growing excitement of 1830; and the difficulty was met by reprinting portions in a cheap form, and making a monthly publication thereof. The scornful name which Canning had given to the early cheap Registers was the one adopted; and thus, on the 1st of July, came into the world the first number of “Cobbett’s Twopenny Trash, or Politics for the Poor.” The success of 1816 was repeated, and “Twopenny Trash” flew all over the kingdom: to the very particular horror of the yet undiminished number of pensioners and sinecurists, and of non-resident parsons.[8]
As the winter drew near, the accounts of the rural war were appalling. Incendiary fires, and threatening letters, were sending the farmers out of their wits; and fire-engines and man-traps became part of the farming implements. The labourers, in their ignorance, rendered desperate with hunger, proceeded from outrage to outrage, recklessly destroying food and property; quite unable to understand why anybody else could want anything to eat, if they, the producers, were to do without.
In the midst of all this, Mr. Cobbett came amongst them, both on paper and in person; endeavouring to cheer them with hopes of early relief, and to warn them against violence: “Poverty” (he said), “even in its extreme state, gives no man a right to view his rich neighbour with an evil eye, much less to do him mischief on account of his riches.”
But he also told the “King’s Ministers” how to put a stop to the fires, and that they had better do something, for the poor ignorant rural labourer “would not lay down and die;” endeavoured to palliate the conduct of the labourers, in that they could not live any longer on potatoes and salt; ridiculed the idea that more soldiers were wanted (as had been proposed) in order to keep the country quiet; taunted the Government with their apparent helplessness after so much trumpeting of “glorious” principles and good intentions.
The storm began by a motion, on the part of Mr. Trevor, member for New Romney, aimed at “the publication entitled Cobbett’s Register, of the 11th of December;” which he said contained a malicious libel on “the authorities of the State,” and a gross and unwarrantable attack on “the members of the Church by law established.” The motion was opposed on the ground that a prosecution, such as was aimed at, would be both impolitic and ill-timed; and that the proper corrective was an improved state of the public mind, by the diffusion of sound knowledge and useful instruction. It was ultimately agreed to leave the matter to the discretion of Ministers.[9]
About the same time, one Thomas Goodman, a Sussex labourer, was sentenced to death for arson; and there appeared in the newspapers a short “confession,” which had been wrung from him by a Sussex parson. A few days after, a longer confession appeared; and after that a third, still longer. Mr. Thomas Goodman was eventually respited, and never heard of more; and his escape could only be accounted for, by any rational mind, in his having inculpated Cobbett as the wicked instigator of his crime.[10]
The animus of the clergy was especially shewn toward Mr. Cobbett, on account of his attacks on the tithes: which he continued to maintain were (originally) in part intended for the use of the poor. The “gross and unwarrantable attack” alluded to by Mr. Trevor, was the showing-up of a Suffolk parson; who had made an infamous and lying attack upon Cobbett. Now, some of the more sensible parsons were endeavouring to meet the sad necessities of the day; one worthy Norfolk clergyman, for example, on being petitioned for a reduction of his tithes, sent answer that he “should be satisfied with whatever they might send him.” But the fat pluralists, and the numerous lazy class of that day, were too blind with selfish rage to listen to any reason. The present sufferer from Cobbett’s lash was one of these.[11]
So, with idle shepherds cursing, and newspapers inventing new calumnies, the Government thought they had a case; and an indictment was preferred against Mr. Cobbett, for “a libel, with the intent to raise discontent in the minds of the labourers in husbandry, and to incite them to acts of violence, and to destroy corn-stacks, machinery, and other property.” After some delays, the affair was at last heard in the Court of King’s Bench, on the 7th July, 1831; Lord Tenterden being judge on the occasion, and Sir Thomas Denman, as Attorney-General, conducting the prosecution. The principal Cabinet Ministers were on the bench, (having been subpœnaed by the defendant); as also was his old friend, the Earl of Radnor, who had voluntarily determined to give Cobbett an opportunity of calling him as a witness, if he chose. The defendant appeared in person.
From beginning to end of this trial, it was a manifest error. Denman began with the ridiculous statement that “he understood” that the defendant had “entered the court at the head of a large number of persons whom he had called together by notice;” and proceeded to exhort the jury “to yield to nothing like menace or intimidation, which conduct so improper is calculated and probably intended in some degree to produce.” And his whole speech was one long, groundless imputation, unsupported by a shred of evidence; and based on the fact (which nobody denied, for it was indisputable) which the defendant had clearly pointed out: the close connexion between the reckless conduct of the labourers, on the one hand, and the cause of that conduct; and its results (such as the cheapening of food, and the sudden reduction of the tithes) on the other.
The “extract” from the offending number of the Register, which formed the basis of the indictment, did not include those parts of the essay, which said that the acts of the labourers were unlawful; which quoted the current newspaper stories about the Suffolk clergy who could not get in their tithes: which reminded the Whigs how their praises had been derived from yet-unfulfilled promises: which hit at the newspapers and the borough-mongers; which quoted Bacon and Blackstone; which advocated honesty and freedom of election; which proclaimed, “I am for a Government of King, Lords, and Commons; but, let what else will come, I am for the freedom, the happiness and greatness of England; and, above all things, for the good feeding and clothing of those who raise all the food, and make all the clothing!” No: these would have been the remainder of his argument, and would have enabled a jury not only to understand its whole drift and tenour, but to pronounce the writer a truly wise and patriotic man.
Some of the jury did, evidently, consider the matter a gross absurdity; for, being locked up all night, the twelve were unable to agree to a verdict, and they were forthwith discharged.[12]
Mr. Cobbett’s long speech, in his defence, must have made some of his audience feel grievously uncomfortable. No one was spared; not a soul, whose delinquencies could possibly illustrate the case. There were the Cabinet Ministers sitting in a row before him (including the Chancellor, Brougham), being scolded for their perfidy toward the people; there was the Attorney-General himself, whose promotion in his profession had actually been retarded, on account of his firm adherence to the Whig cause—now prosecuting the press with greater zeal than his Tory predecessor; there were the magistrates who had extorted or invented Goodman’s confession; and there were the party newspapers, with their transparent falsehoods, weather-cock principles, and questionable motives: all scolded anew. All who had contributed, in any degree, to the climax which ended in this trial, were covered with deserved ridicule.
The speech occupied several hours, and it would take nearly fifty of our pages to reproduce it. The points relied on for the defence were, that the indictment contained only garbled extracts from an article which had, as a whole, the exact opposite of the tendency imputed to it; that the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (of which society Brougham and Denman were both leading members!) had recently asked Cobbett’s permission to reprint his celebrated Letter to the Luddites against machine-breaking and other violence, with the same objects in view that he had himself; that Mr. Goodman, labourer and incendiary, had been pardoned, or had unaccountably disappeared, since his “confession,” and that there was a letter (which Cobbett produced, and read) written by Goodman himself, totally different in style and spelling; that the Times newspaper had recently libelled the judges, and called the close-borough members “the hired lacqueys of public delinquents,” and yet was unmolested as long as it continued to puff the Ministry; that a declaration from the tradesmen and labourers in and around Battle (who had heard Cobbett’s lectures), made it clear that the persons who had produced the three confessions were.… No, Mr. Cobbett did not apply to their conduct the terms that it deserved, but contented himself with reading the declaration; and, the notorious fact that he had spent the best part of his life in the endeavour to instruct the labouring classes, in the arts of happiness and goodness.
The speech of the defendant was occasionally interrupted by applause; and once by the judge, on the score of irrelevancy; an objection, however, which was not sustained. And a stray joke or two shone out, as when Cobbett spoke of Mr. Gurney (junior counsel) as “a mere truffle-hunter; he neither sees nor smells anything but the immediate object of his search,” in allusion to his special search of the Register for indictable matter; or in his sarcastic reference to the “open, fair, and candid,” professions of the Attorney-General, which he said were traceable not to the wig on his head, but to the whig in his heart; and in such a passage as this, his humour would prevail:—
“Such are the odious and foul calumnies which have been heaped upon me, that I dare say you expected to see me hoofed and horned, a pair of horns on my head and hoofs up to my knees, terminating with a cloven foot.”
Upon the whole, this speech was a wonderful performance for a man in his seventieth year. Mr. Cobbett had far too often relied upon his own powers in legal defence; yet his failures as an advocate were failures which any member of the bar might have been proud of. And, in the present case, the charge of sedition was so utterly base and trumpery, that the cause of the prosecution really gave power to his own, by furnishing him with a handle for the bitterest expressions of contempt. He certainly lashed into the Whigs most unmercifully, from time to time; as opportunity brought them again to his mind. For example:—
“The noble marquis (Blandford) informed me in a letter, that it had been currently reported in the House of Commons and the Club Houses, that I had been connected with some of the fires and had run away! Run away, indeed! Who was I to run from? What! I run from the Greys, the Lambs, the Russells, and the Broughams? I! Gentlemen, contempt comes to my aid, or I should suffocate with indignation at the thought! No, I have not run away; that base faction has brought me here, and I thank them for it; because it enables me to clear myself from the false and scandalous calumnies which they have been circulating against me.”
And, having reviewed the whole charge, and its collaterals, Mr. Cobbett wound up his address as follows—in terms which form a strikingly truthful sketch, not only of the position in which he then stood, but of the position which he occupies (with all his faults) in the hearts and minds of his fellow-countrymen—a brave, earnest, upright, and patriotic man.
“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; but, thank God, gentlemen, you will not let them effect it on the present occasion.
“I have little else to add, except to state what evidence I shall lay before you. The first witness I shall call will be the Lord Chancellor, and I will put in the letter to the Luddites, and which by delivery to Lord Brougham for publication, I, in point of law, republished at the very time when I was said to be endeavouring to stir up the labourers to sedition and outrage. I will then call his Lordship to prove the fact respecting the application for it, and he will tell you that I stipulated no terms, but that the whole of the letter should be published. I shall then call the Earl of Radnor, who knows me and all my sentiments well, and he will tell you whether I am a likely man to design and endeavour to do that which this ‘false, scandalous, and malicious’ Whig indictment charges me with wishing to do. I shall also call several persons of the highest respectability from Kent, Sussex, and other parts of the country, to prove that I have not done anything to stir up disturbance, but that I have done a great deal to prevent it and to restore quiet. I shall then call Lord Melbourne to prove that the sentence on Goodman was not executed, but that he was sent out of the country, whereas Cook was put to death. When the jury shall have heard all this, and shall have read over the various publications, I have not the slightest doubt but that they will dismiss with scorn and contempt this groundless charge of the Whig Attorney-General. This is the second time in my life that I have been prosecuted by an Attorney-General, and brought before this court. I have been writing for thirty years, and only twice out of that long period have I been brought before this court. The first time was by an apostate Whig. What, indeed, of evil have the Whigs not done? Since then, although there have been six Attorneys-General, all Tories, and although, were I a crown lawyer, I might pick out plenty of libels from my writings, if this be a libel, yet I have never for twenty-one years been prosecuted until this Whig government came in. But the Whigs were always a most tyrannical faction; they always tried to make tyranny double tyranny; they were always the most severe, the most grasping, the most greedy, the most tyrannical faction whose proceedings are recorded in history. It was they who seized what remained of the Crown lands; it was they who took to themselves the last portion of Church property; it was they who passed the monstrous Riot Act; it was they also who passed the Septennial Bill. The Government are now acquiring great credit for doing away with the rotten boroughs; but if they deserve credit for doing them away, let it be borne in mind that the Whigs created them. They established an interest in the regulation, and gave consistency and value to corruption. 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!
The last time I was brought before this court, I was sent out of it to two years’ imprisonment among felons, and was condemned to pay, at the expiration of the two years, a fine of 1000l. to the King, which the King took and kept. But this was not all; I was bound, too, in a penalty of 5000l. myself, and obliged to procure two sureties in 2500l. each, to keep the peace for seven years.… I was carried seventy miles from my family, and shut up in a jail, doubtless with the hope that I should expire from stench and mortification of mind. It pleased God, however, to bless me with health, and, though deprived of liberty, by dint of sobriety and temperance, I outlived the base attempt to destroy me. What crime had I committed? For what was it that I was condemned to this horrible punishment? Simply for writing a paragraph in which I expressed the indignation I felt at an English local militiaman having been flogged under a guard of German bayonets! I only expressed the indignation I felt, and I should have been a base creature indeed, if I had not expressed it. But now, military flogging excites universal indignation. If there be at present any of the jury alive who found me guilty and sentenced me to that punishment, what remorse must they not feel for their conduct when they perceive that every writer in every periodical of the present day, even including the favourite publication of the Whig Attorney-General, are now unanimous in deprecating the system of military flogging altogether! Yes, for expressing my disapprobation of that system, I was tossed into a dungeon like Daniel into the lions’ den. But why am I now tossed down before this court by the Attorney-General? What are my sins? I have called on the Government to respect the law; I have cautioned them that hard-hearted proceedings are driving the labourers to despair; that is my crime. If the Government really wish to avoid disturbances in the country, let them give us back the old laws; let them give the people the old game law, and repeal the new law; and let them do away with the other grinding laws that oppress the poor. I have read with horror which I cannot describe, of a magistrate being accused to the Lord Chancellor of subornation of perjury; I have read of that magistrate being reinstated, and I have shuddered with horror at supposing that a poor starving labourer may be brought before such a man, and in conjunction with another such magistrate, may be doomed to seven years’ transportation for being out at night, and such a magistrate may be himself a game-preserver! This is a monstrous power, and certainly ought to be abolished. The ministry, however, will perhaps adopt the measures I have recommended, and then prosecute me for recommending them. Just so it is with parliamentary reform, a measure which I have been foremost in recommending for twenty years. I have pointed out and insisted upon, the sort of reform that we must have; and they are compelled already to adopt a large part of my suggestions, and avowedly against their will. They hate me for this; they look upon it as I do, that they are married to Reform, and that I am the man who has furnished the halter in which they are led to church. For supplying that halter they have made this attack on me through the Attorney-General, and will slay me if they can. The Whigs know that my intention was not bad. This is a mere pretence to inflict pecuniary ruin on me, or cause me to die of sickness in a jail; so that they may get rid of me, because they can neither buy nor silence me. It is their fears which make them attack me, and it is my death they intend. In that object they will be defeated; for, thank heaven, you stand between me and destruction. If, however, your verdict should be—which I do not anticipate—one that will consign me to death, by sending me to a loathsome dungeon, I will with my last breath pray to God to bless my country and curse the Whigs; and I bequeath my revenge to my children and the labourers of England.”
The result of this trial was hailed with great satisfaction by nearly all the newspapers. And the chief significance of the episode lies in this: that from that month of July, 1831, the press of this kingdom has been free from political persecution. There can be no doubt whatever, that this trial settled the question as to whether the press was to be gagged or not. The newspapers were good enough to admit so much.