But official gentlemen then were even more official than they are now; and fancying that every man in office was a great man, every one out of it a small one, their especial contempt was reserved for a public writer. If, however, such persons, the scarecrows of genius, were indifferent to Cobbett’s defection, they whose standard he joined hailed with enthusiasm his conversion.
These were not the Whigs. Cobbett’s was one of those natures which never did things by halves. Sir Francis Burdett, Mr. Hunt, Major Cartwright, and a set of men who propounded theories of parliamentary reform—which no one, who was at that time considered a practical statesman, deemed capable of realization—were his new associates and admirers.
Nor was his change a mere change in political opinion. It was, unfortunately, a change in political morality. The farmer’s son had not been educated at a learned university—having his youthful mind nourished and strengthened by great examples of patriotism and consistency, drawn from Greece and Rome:—he was educating himself by modern examples from the world in which he was living, and there he found statesmen slow to reward the advocacy of their public opinions, but quick to avenge any attack on their personal vanity or individual interests. It struck him then that their principles were like the signs which innkeepers stick over their tap-rooms, intended to catch the traveller’s attention, and induce him to buy their liquors; but having no more real signification than “St. George and the Dragon,” or the “Blue Boar,” or the “Flying Serpent;” hence concluding that one sign might be pulled down and the other put up, to suit the taste of the customers, or the speculation of the landlord.
And now begins a perfectly new period in his life. Up to this date he had always been one and the same individual. Every corner of his being had been apparently filled with the same loyal hatred to Frenchmen and Democrats. He had loved, in every inch of him, the king and the church, and the wooden walls of Old England. “Who will say,” he exclaims in America, “that an Englishman ought not to despise all the nations in the world? For my part I do, and that most heartily.” What he here says of every one of a different nation from his own, he had said, and said constantly, of every one of a different political creed from his own, and his own political creed had as yet never varied. But consistency and Cobbett here separated. Not only was his new self a complete and constant contradiction with his old self—this was to be expected: but whereas his old self was one solid block, his new self was a piece of tesselated workmanship, in which were patched together all sorts of materials of all sorts of colours. I do not mean to say that, having taken to the liberal side in politics, he ever turned round again and became violent on the opposite side. But his liberalism had no code. He recognised no fixed friends—no definite opinions. The notions he advocated were such as he selected for the particular day of the week on which he was writing, and which he considered himself free on the following day to dispute with those who adopted them. As to his alliances, they were no more closely woven into his existence than his doctrines; and he stood forth distinguished for being dissatisfied with everything, and quarrelling with every one.
IV.
The first tilt which he made from the new side of the ring where he had now taken his stand was against Mr. Pitt—whom it was not difficult towards the close of his life to condemn, for the worst fault which a minister can commit—being unfortunate. Cobbett’s next assault—on the demand of the Whigs for an increase of allowance to the king’s younger sons—was against Royalty itself, its pensions, governorships, and rangerships, which he called “its cheeseparings and candle-ends!” Some Republicans on the other side of the Atlantic must have rubbed their spectacles when they read these effusions; but the editor of the Register was indifferent to provoking censure, and satisfied with exciting astonishment. Besides, we may fairly admit, that, when the King demanded that his private property in the funds should be free from taxation (showing he had such property), and at the same time called upon the country to increase the allowances of his children, he did much to try the loyalty of the nation, and gave Cobbett occasion to observe that a rich man did not ask the parish to provide for his offspring. “I am,” said he, “against these things, not because I am a Republican, but because I am for monarchical government, and consequently adverse to all that gives Republicans a fair occasion for sneering at it.”
In the meantime his periodical labours did not prevent his undertaking works of a more solid description; and in 1806 he announced the “Parliamentary Register,” which was to contain all the recorded proceedings of Parliament from the earliest times; and was in the highest degree useful, since the reader had previously to wade through a hundred volumes of journals in order to know anything of the history of the two Houses of Parliament. These more serious labours did not, however, interfere with his weekly paper, which had a large circulation, and, though without any party influence (for Cobbett attacked all parties), gave him a great deal of personal power and importance. “It came up,” says the author, proudly, “like a grain of mustard-seed, and like a grain of mustard-seed it has spread over the whole civilised world.” Meanwhile, this peasant-born politician was uniting rural pursuits with literary labours, and becoming, in the occupation of a farm at Botley, a prominent agriculturist and a sort of intellectual authority in his neighbourhood. From this life, which no one has described with a pen more pregnant with the charm and freshness of green fields and woods, he was torn by another prosecution for libel.
V.
The following paragraph had appeared in the Courier paper:
“London, Saturday, July 1st, 1809.