“Motto.—The mutiny amongst the Local Militia, which broke out at Ely, was fortunately suppressed on Wednesday by the arrival of four squadrons of the German Legion Cavalry from Bury, under the command of General Auckland.
“Five of the ringleaders were tried by a court-martial, and sentenced to receive five hundred lashes each, part of which punishment they received on Wednesday, and a part was remitted. A stoppage for their knapsacks was the ground of complaint which excited this mutinous spirit, and occasioned the men to surround their officers and demand what they deemed their arrears. The first division of the German Legion halted yesterday at Newmarket on their return to Bury.”
On this paragraph Cobbett made the subjoining observations:
“‘Summary of politics. Local Militia and German Legion.’ See the motto, English reader, see the motto, and then do, pray, recollect all that has been said about the way in which Bonaparte raises his soldiers. Well done, Lord Castlereagh! This is just what it was thought that your plan would produce. Well said, Mr. Huskisson! It was really not without reason you dwelt with so much earnestness upon the great utility of the foreign troops, whom Mr. Wardle appeared to think of no utility at all. Poor gentleman! he little thought how great a genius might find employment for such troops; he little imagined they might be made the means of compelling Englishmen to submit to that sort of discipline which is so conducive to producing in them a disposition to defend the country at the risk of their lives. Let Mr. Wardle look at my motto, and then say whether the German soldiers are of no use. Five hundred lashes each! Ay, that is right; flog them! flog them! flog them; they deserve it, and a great deal more! They deserve a flogging at every meal time. Lash them daily! Lash them daily! What! shall the rascals dare to mutiny, and that, too, when the German Legion is so near at hand? Lash them! Lash them! Lash them! they deserve it. Oh! yes, they deserve a double-tailed cat. Base dogs! what, mutiny for the sake of the price of a knapsack! Lash them! flog them! base rascals! mutiny for the price of a goat-skin, and then upon the appearance of the German soldiers they take a flogging as quietly as so many trunks of trees.”
VI.
The attack on the Hanoverian troops, who had nothing to do with the question as to whether the militiamen were flogged justly or not, was doubtless most illiberal and unfair. Those troops simply did their duty, as any other disciplined troops would have done, in seeing a superior’s order executed. It was not their fault if they were employed on this service; neither were they in our country or our army under ordinary circumstances. They had lost their own land for fighting our battles; they were in our army because they would not serve in the army of the enemy.
But we can hardly expect newspaper writers to be more logical and just than forensic advocates. A free press is not a good unmixed with evil; there are arguments against it, as there are arguments for it; but where it is admitted as an important part of a nation’s institutions, this admission includes, as I conceive, the permission to state one side of a question in the most telling manner, the corrective being the juxtaposition of the other side of the question stated with an equal intent to captivate, and perhaps to mislead.
Two years’ imprisonment, and a fine of £1000 only wanted the gentle accompaniment of ear-cropping to have done honour to the Star Chamber; for, to a man who had a newspaper and a farm to carry on, imprisonment threatened to consummate the ruin which an exorbitant fine was well calculated to commence.
Cobbett was accused of yielding to the heaviness of the blow, and of offering the abandonment of his journal as the price of his forgiveness. I cannot agree with those who said that such an offer would have been an unparalleled act of baseness. In giving up his journal, Cobbett was not necessarily giving up his opinions. Every one who wages war unsuccessfully retains the right of capitulation. A writer is no more obliged to rot uselessly in a gaol for the sake of his cause, than a general is obliged to fight a battle without a chance of victory for the sake of his country. A man, even if a hero, is not obliged to be a martyr. Cobbett’s disgraceful act was not in making the proposal of which he was accused, but in denying most positively and repeatedly that he had ever made it; for it certainly seems pretty clear, amidst a good deal of contradictory evidence, that he did authorize Mr. Reeves, of the Alien Office, to promise that the Register should drop if he was not brought up for judgment; and if a Mr. Wright, who was a sort of factotum to Cobbett at the time, can be believed, the farewell was actually written, and only withdrawn when the negotiation was known to have failed. At all events, no indulgence being granted to the offender, he turned round and faced fortune with his usual hardihood. In no portion of his life, indeed, did he show greater courage—in none does the better side of his character come out in brighter relief than when, within the gloomy and stifling walls of Newgate, he carried on his farming, conducted his paper, educated his children, and waged war (his most natural and favourite pursuit) against his enemies with as gay a courage as could have been expected from him in sight of the yellow cornfields, and breathing the pure air he loved so well.