FOOTNOTES
[1] Mr. Wooler had come to see his error in having joined the howl against Cobbett’s “flight” to America, and now warmly advocated his claims upon the electors of Coventry. The “Black Dwarf” gives a lively account of this contest; and Wooler, recording its disgraceful incidents, remarks that “the consequences to be apprehended from Mr. Cobbett’s appearance in the House of Commons seem to have awakened the most infernal determination to destroy him.” See vol. iv. passim.
[2] It appeared as an advertisement in the Morning Chronicle, in these terms:—“To the public.—After communicating with several gentlemen upon the subject, I, in consequence of our unanimous decision, and for the purpose of obtaining the concurrence and co-operation of others, hereby give an invitation to all such gentlemen as wish to see Mr. Cobbett placed in the House of Commons, to meet me at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, in the Strand, London, on Tuesday, the 2nd of March next, in order to devise effectual means for accomplishing that purpose, which, in the present critical situation of the country, I deem to be of the greatest importance to the welfare of that country.—Thomas B. Beevor, Hargham, near Attleborough, Norfolk, Dec. 26, 1823.
[3] According to “A Peep at the Commons” (Lond., 1820), the suffrage at Preston was nearly universal. “Nearly the whole of the inhabitants are Reformers, but, for want of the ballot at elections, undue influence has prevailed, and they have never been enabled to throw off the yoke of slavery. This town, however, is not without numbers who dare, in despite of power, to exercise their political rights.”
[4] “The general election of 1826 was a severe struggle for the popular candidates, as the most strenuous exertions were made in nearly all the constituencies to get rid of them.” Vide “Life and Correspondence of T. S. Duncombe,” i. 86.
A very complete account of this election will be found in the Morning Herald for June, 1826, passim. And the curious in such matters may consult “A Collection of Addresses, Squibs, Songs, &c.; together with the Political Mountebank, showing the changeable opinions of Mr. Cobbett, published during the contested election for the Borough of Preston, which commenced June 9th, and ended June 26th, 1826” (Blackburn, 1826).
[5] Sir Thomas Beevor presently showed a balance-sheet of the expenses, by which it appeared the cost was 1843l. 9s. 5d., whilst 1701l. 4s. 6d. had been received, leaving a small deficiency for Cobbett to make up. Some of the “subscribers’ names” are suggestive:—
A poor disciple of twenty years’ standing, 10s.
Cobbett, don’t be brow-beaten, 20s.
Nicodemus, for fear of the Jews, 25l.
To assist in getting the country out of its difficulties, so that property may become secure, 10l.
Pro bono publico, 2s. 6d.
[6] “A laugh” here, according to the reporters.
[7] “History of England from the year 1830,” Introductory Chapter.
[8] A shoal of pamphlets appeared about this time, on the Reform question, some of them being avowedly anti-Cobbett. Such were, “The Real Character and Tendency of the Proposed Reform;” “Lectures to the Labouring Classes and their Employers in the County of Sussex and elsewhere. Not by a Follower of William Cobbett”; “Imposture Unmasked; in a Letter to the Labourers and Working People of England, on the Schemes of the Church Robbers and Revolutionists with Regard to the Church. By a True Englishman” (with woodcut Vignette of Wm. C., and a “fire” in the distance); “Cobbett’s Penny Trash,” for Feb., Mar., April, 1831, “price reduced for general distribution,”—afterwards reprinted as “Cobbett’s Genuine Twopenny Trash,” and having as motto, “Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee,”—was on the now well-worn lines.
[9] The puerile notions that got afloat in some minds, when in front of difficulty, are very astonishing. Immediately after Trevor’s motion was withdrawn, a Member rose to give notice of a motion, praying his Majesty would be graciously pleased to appoint a day for a general fast throughout the kingdom! Roars of laughter saluted this new proposal for relieving starvation.
[10] One has only to read these confessions once in order to detect the clumsiness of the forgery. Here is the second one:—
“I Thomas Goodman once heard of one Mr. Cobbit going A bout gaving out lactures at length he came to Battel and gave one their and their was a gret number of peopel came to hear him and I went he had verrey long conversation concerning the state of the country and tilling them that they was verry much impose upon and he said he would show them the way to gain their rights and liberals [liberties] and he said it would be verry Proper for every man to keep gun in his house espesely young men and that they might prepare themselves in readiness to go with him when he called on them and he would show them which way to go on and he said that peopel might expect firs their as well as others places. This is the truth and nothing But the truth of A deying man.”
[11] “An Address to those whom it may concern, but principally the Poor, containing an Account of the late Trials and Executions which have taken place, with a Brief Statement of the Causes that, directly or indirectly, occasioned those Acts of Insubordination which have disgraced the Annals of our Country. By the Rev. Charles Day, LL.B.” (Ipswich, 1831.) This was intended as an “antidote” to the writings of men who had “no regard for you, they want rebellion,” &c., &c. Here is a bit of Mr. Day’s logic:—“Cobbett positively asserts that he everywhere did his best to put a stop to the fires, &c.; he nevertheless informs us that he did exhort the farmers to call the people together in their several parishes, to explain the matter to them, and to call upon them all to join in a petition to Parliament for a reduction of taxes and tithes! Now, who is there, even among the poor, that cannot see what all this means? It amounts to this: let the employer make common cause with the employed, and go hand in hand in denouncing the Government of the country, and the clergy of the Church of England, and this will be quite as revolutionary as any Republican can wish: down with the Constitution! down with the Church!”
[12] An intimate friend of Mr. Cobbett’s, still living, has furnished the writer of these pages with some reminiscences of this affair. Mr. Seeley, the well-known bookseller, a bitter opponent of Cobbett’s, was on the jury; but the foreman, a Mr. Wilkinson, was a vigorous Cobbettite; and these two led the parties in the struggle. Cobbett begged his friend to attend him in court, for then “he should have confidence.” As a matter of fact, Denman’s insinuation about a mob was utterly baseless, for Cobbett only had two or three friends with him. The people waited in court all night, and the cheering and uproar were tremendous when the result was announced.
CHAPTER XXVI.
“I NOW BELONG TO THE PEOPLE OF OLDHAM.”
The progress of the Reform Bill is the foremost topic of the day; and the near prospect of Mr. Cobbett’s election, by some popular constituency, is now more obvious.[1] In the course of September, 1831, there appears his first address to the electors of Manchester, in response to an invitation conveyed to him from a committee formed with the object of endeavouring to secure his return.
The objects which Cobbett now professed to have in view were considerably in advance of those of some years previously; and their publication, in this address, shows distinctly the rapid growth of opinion amongst the mass of the people. Not only the abolition of sinecures, and of all pensions the merit of which could not be readily granted; abolition of tithes; reduction of the standing army; and an equitable adjustment of the currency, were recapitulated, as reforms urgently called for; but he now declared that the National Debt ought to be wiped out, by the sale of ecclesiastical estates, the misapplied portion of the property of corporate bodies, and all the Crown lands; and so to reduce taxation, and the cost of its collection, as to give some hopes of greater prosperity and happiness to “this industrious nation.”
Of course, these things were “revolutionary” for that age. Every great change is revolutionary; but the bad odour attaching to an epithet, in some minds, is no index to the value of the ideas represented. Important changes in the mode of government, particularly as to a greatly-lessened waste of public money, naturally appeared monstrous and wicked to the governing classes, and to their adherents; at a period when bishops died worth half-a-million. And it came just as naturally to the minds of the reformers, the longer the question was delayed, that, by whatever name their proposals might be designated, there could be nothing so monstrous and wicked as to persist in a system which made the rich richer and the poor poorer.
The events of the past fifteen years had made a wonderful difference in the minds of the labouring classes. The power of a cheap serial, first exemplified in the publication of Cobbett’s twopenny Register, had become fully recognized. The Penny Magazine, Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, and similar publications were now beginning their respective careers with astonishing success; along with a host of political sheets. A new sort of education was spreading: that sort of education which made men think for themselves; and, for the first time in history, the “lower orders” were beginning to take an interest in the affairs of other nations beside their own. Well might statesmen be affrighted at the progress of revolution in France and Belgium, and at the growing importance of the American Republic! The knowledge of political good and evil, fresh from those democratic sources, might well alarm them; for it was sinking deep into minds, the fertility of which had been produced by their own haughty failures.
So Mr. Cobbett’s address to the electors of Manchester was denounced as utterly subversive of the institutions of the country. However, he went down to Manchester in the course of the winter, and delivered several lectures, with the object of showing that his principles, on the contrary, would tend to conserve, instead of destroy. Lord Radnor had previously written a letter to one of the Manchester papers[2] warmly supporting him, and offering his aid, in case of a subscription being made. And Cobbett now found, upon visiting Manchester, that he had already won his way into the hearts and minds of the people there. Before he left, a dinner was given in his honour, at which Mr. John Fielden, manufacturer, of Todmorden, presided.
The following will give an example of his general reception in Lancashire. Most of Cobbett’s “egotism” was displayed in answer to personal attacks, and we owe a good deal of biographical matter to those occasions on which he chose to answer. One evening in the House of Lords, the Earl of Falmouth, in passing a sneer over to Lord Radnor, concerning the latter’s nomination-borough of Downton, insinuated that the loss of that borough would be “a bad thing for Cobbett, whom the people would scarcely elect, if left to themselves.” Lord Falmouth had a taste of Mr. Cobbett’s lash, as a reward for his temerity; and Cobbett concluded his paper thus:—
“I have been lecturing on politics—I have been maintaining my Manchester propositions, in every great town in the north, as far as the northern confines of Yorkshire, with the exception, I believe, of Liverpool and Bradford; and I have everywhere maintained that, unless those propositions be acted upon to the full extent, a reform of the Parliament will be a delusion and a mockery. Everywhere I have been received with every mark of approbation.… Two or three words with my name, written by myself, have been begged as a valuable present by more than a hundred persons. No mark of disapprobation have I received during the whole of half-a-hundred lectures that I have given.… The people of England will have the sense to perceive that it is not title and fortune that they want to represent them; but talent, knowledge, and courage; a love of the honour of their country; men who see in every labourer their countryman, and who take to themselves a share of the disgrace of seeing him robbed of the fruit of his toil. Experience has now taught the people of England that, to be restored to their liberties and happiness, they must rely upon one another; and though you do not know it, the country everywhere teems with clever and well-educated young men. During my last tour, scores—and I might say many hundreds of young men, sometimes twenty at a time—have crowded round me as I have been going out of the lecturing-places; one saying, as he shook my hand, ‘That is the hand that wrote the “Grammar;”’ another, ‘That is the hand that wrote the “Protestant Reformation;”’ another, ‘That is the hand that wrote the “Advice to Young Men.”’ This was the case, more or less, at every place where I was.… Nor was this confined to the buoyant spirits of Lancashire and Yorkshire, where the heart seems always upon the lips; but I found it the same everywhere.”
The month of June saw the triumph of the Parliamentary Reformers, and eager preparations were made for canvass. Expectation ran high: the newly-enfranchised took the matter into their own hands; and amongst these were the people of Lancashire. Manchester had sent a member to Parliament in some long past age, but had been for centuries unrepresented, and was now to have two members. Oldham, with a population of over 50,000, was, likewise, to elect two.
Early in July, 1832, Mr. Cobbett received a letter from an Oldham friend, informing him that it was determined to put him in nomination; and that two strangers having unexpectedly commenced a canvass, his friends had at once announced his name, along with that of Mr. John Fielden; the latter having consented to the proposal, with the understanding that Cobbett should be his colleague, if not elected for some other place. Several other constituencies had been thought of; but this unmistakable earnestness on the part of Lancashire decided the matter; and when, in the course of December, the elections came off, Fielden and Cobbett were at the top of the poll for Oldham. The people of Manchester had also put Mr. Cobbett in nomination, but, the result of the contest at Oldham being made known there on the first day of the poll, the votes intended for him were transferred to other candidates.
Meanwhile, another lecturing tour had been undertaken during the autumn, extending into Scotland; and, if one may judge from the reception he met with, Mr. Cobbett was now enjoying greater popularity than at any other period of his life.[3]
The notions which Mr. Cobbett had acquired, concerning the duties belonging to the position in which he was now placed, were quite at variance with any known principles.
Until the æra of the Reformed Parliament it was accounted a preposterous thing for any member to be professedly without a party; and any one entering the House with a popular grievance at his back, as Paull and Burdett and Wardle had done in a previous generation—and as O’Connell and Hume in recent times—to a great extent stood alone. They might get supporters from time to time; but such men were not of the sort which could coalesce with the patrician nominees and the plutocrats, who had hitherto pretended to represent the Commons of England.
Had Mr. Cobbett entered Parliament a quarter of a century previously, when it was within his power to do so through aristocratic influence, he would have been the means of forming a party earnestly devoted to the objects of Reform; and it must be regarded as a serious error on his part, arising though it did from a sturdy regard for his own independence, that he should refuse to do so; and expect to sway the House of Commons, in the smallest degree, from the outside. For it was looked upon, in those days, as something bordering on the seditious, for any one outside the walls of Parliament to pretend to discuss domestic politics; and an affectation of contempt was the only answer to the cleverest and most liberal of amateur statesmanship. As for earnestness, in the consideration of any popular question, it was not there at all; the House of Commons of 1831-2 would never have passed a Reform Bill, only that the clamour of the Unrepresented made the question vital to the existence of the Whig party; and the fiercest opponents to the popular candidates, at the elections which followed, were the ministerialists themselves. To the very last the spectacle was seen of the exclusive classes clinging to what they deemed a prescriptive right to govern.
Such men, then, as Cobbett, and Silk Buckingham, and Roebuck, coming into Parliament for the first time, found themselves there under circumstances favourable only for the exercise of particular individuality; and, unless the possessor of special talents, the event proved that the individual influence of each was very small. The old members would not even listen to them; and the general feeling concerning the new men was that they were astonishingly harmless.
The opening scene has been often enough described. “Some very bad characters have been returned,” says Mr. Greville.[4] Among these “bad characters” is placed the new member for Oldham; who at once establishes his claim to such epithet, by seating himself on the front bench (usually occupied by ministers), and by commencing his first speech with these words:—
“It appears to me, that, since I have been sitting here, I have heard a great deal of vain and unprofitable conversation.”
But, really, there was nothing to be frightened at. Excepting that Mr. Cobbett seemed to think that a Reformer should be chosen Speaker of a Reformed Parliament, and that some disregard might be paid to the established rules of the House, there was nothing whatever to reward the expectations of those who had trembled at the bare thought of this “diabolical villain” treading the floor of that sacred chamber. There sat, night after night, one of the meekest, most inoffensive of men. When he got up to speak, there stood a fine, tall, hale old fellow, with a face sparkling with humour, and a voice of surprising gentleness; only roused to vehemence when the efforts to cough him down were somewhat too overpowering.
Cobbett’s short career in Parliament has, sometimes, been stigmatized as a failure. It was not a failure. He was a very regular attendant while his health lasted; and he never lost an opportunity of reminding the House what he had been sent there for. And the numerous interruptions and contradictions to which he at first became subject, rather manifested “failure” elsewhere: viz. on the part of many members to understand the awful exigencies of the time, and the responsibility which they ought to have attached to their own position. But their sensibilities were far too keen, to bear with patience Mr. Cobbett’s frequent references to the burdens under which the people still laboured; one member, at last, expressing an opinion that “the constant complaints respecting the distresses of the people were of the most injurious tendency: they were calculated to make all classes politicians”! In short, the first reformed Parliament was, itself, a great failure; and was rightly sent back to the country at the end of two unproductive sessions.
It must be said, however, that the first two or three months of Mr. Cobbett’s attendance in Parliament were not calculated to impress the House in his favour. Although he put up with malicious references to Tom Paine, and to agricultural incendiarism, with remarkable good temper, there was an amount of indiscretion about his mode of bringing up his own special topics, which mightily offended the taste of less self-assertive people. And, upon one occasion, his mode of procedure was so absurd, that he covered both himself and his cause with overwhelming contempt. The circumstances were these:—
A number of gentlemen, led by Mr. Attwood, the member for Birmingham, conceived it to be only just and proper that an inquiry should be made into the state of the country, and the prevailing distress.[5] Lord Althorp considered any such inquiry unadvisable, “because it might lead to an investigation of the consequences produced by the changes in the currency;”—he was willing to consider the subject when it came fairly before the House, but objected to the proposed mode of entertaining it. The motion was lost, by a narrow majority; and it was renewed, about a month afterwards, in another form, only to fail again. Thus, the Whig ministry set their faces against the very Reformers which they had themselves called up.
But Mr. Cobbett wants, above all things, the very thing that Lord Althorp deprecates: “an investigation of the consequences produced by the changes in the currency,” and he is resolved to have it, one way or another. And he can think of no surer means than that of fixing the onus of the public distresses upon the author of those changes in the currency, which he had always considered to be a leading cause of the distress.
Sir Robert Peel was, at this time, leader of the opposition, and the most distinguished man on the Tory side,—admired alike by friend and foe. The hopes of the Tory party were centred in Peel, for no man who had pretended to lead them, since the days of Pitt, could boast a tenth part of the talents which he possessed. His first important part in public affairs had been the carrying through Parliament, in 1819, the bill for the resumption of cash payments; a measure which Mr. Cobbett had treated with ridicule, as one certain to be productive of prolonged disaster to the country. Cobbett’s predictions were, to a great extent, verified by events; and he considered himself, thenceforward, an authority upon that abstruse topic. And he now brought forward a resolution, to the effect that Peel’s “want of knowledge,” displayed in his repeated failures to adjust the currency, since the year 1819, merited his ignominious dismissal from the Privy Council.
No scheme could have been invented, better than this, in order to show Cobbett’s headstrong ineptitude on certain occasions. To go no farther,—the inconsistency of protesting that there was no imputation on Peel’s honour, while proposing what would have been (for him) the very deepest disgrace, was typical of much that explains Cobbett’s frequent failure to impress men of cultivation and refinement; and he gave, in this instance, a signal example of his neglect to consider the fitness of things. Most of what he said was perfectly true, and could not be answered, and was not answered; but the outrageous method of bringing the question forward not only spoilt it all, but brought down upon his head deserved derision. Fielden, and Attwood, and three others, manfully supported him; while the rest laughed and jeered, to their heart’s content.
It was nearly a month after this episode, before Cobbett’s voice was again heard. At length, however, he seems to have learned the temper of the House; and we soon find him thanking “hon. members for the attention with which, &c.” He generally had something to say upon any topic connected with taxation and the well-being of the people, and on several occasions delivered long and effective speeches; as on the Poor Laws, suppression of disturbances in Ireland, and the proposed Factory regulations. On this last question Mr. Fielden was in the front rank as an agitator; and was intensely gratified with the support of his colleague, especially when Cobbett, speaking of the factory children, alluded to “three hundred thousand of the most helpless creatures in the world holding up their hands for mercy.” And one matter appears on the journals of the House, upon Mr. Cobbett’s motion, which resulted in a Select Committee.[6]
In the spring of the following year, ominous signs appeared, which proved that the change in his habits, necessitated by his parliamentary attendance, was telling upon Cobbett’s vigorous constitution; and he was absent from his post for two whole months. The period which elapsed after the dissolution, and before the meeting of the new Parliament in 1835, was not sufficient for thorough restoration to health, and he resumed his duties with a bad cough clinging to him. On the 10th of March, he attempted to speak upon the motion of the Marquess of Chandos to abolish the malt-tax; but he found his voice so hoarse, that he could not make the gentlemen immediately in front hear him; and was obliged to sit down. He still valiantly attended, however, and spoke on several occasions; the last being on the 25th May, in a discussion on agricultural distress.
But his time was come: his place in the House of Commons knew him no more; and, when the House assembled on the evening of the 19th June, a whisper circulated upon the benches to the effect that the member for Oldham was dead.