VI.
In the new Parliament elected in January 1835, and which met on the 19th February, Cobbett was again member for Oldham. But his health was already much broken by the change of habits, the want of air, and the confinement which weighs on a parliamentary life. He did not, however, perceive this; it was not, indeed, his habit to perceive anything to his own disadvantage. He continued his attendance, therefore, and was in his usual place during the whole of the debate on the Marquis of Chandos’s motion for a repeal of the Malt Tax, and would have spoken in favour of the repeal but for a sudden attack of the throat, to which it is said that he was subject. On the voting of Supplies, which followed almost immediately afterwards, he again, notwithstanding his indisposition, exerted himself, and on the 25th of May persisted in voting and speaking in support of a motion on Agricultural Distress. At last, he confessed he was knocked up, and retired to the country, where for some little time he seemed restored. But on the night of the 11th of June, 1835, he was seized with a violent illness, and on the two following days was considered in extreme danger by his medical attendant. He then again rallied, and on Monday, the 15th, talked (says his son in an account of his death, published on the 20th of June), in a collected and sprightly manner, upon politics and farming, “wishing for four days’ rain for the Cobbetts’ corn and root crops,” and on Wednesday could remain no longer shut up from the fields, but desired to be carried round the farm, and criticised the work which had been done in his absence. In the night, however, he grew more and more feeble, until it was evident (though he continued till within the last half-hour to answer every question that was put to him) that his agitated career was drawing to a close. At ten minutes after one P.M. he shut his eyes as if to sleep, leant back, and was no more—an end singularly peaceful for one whose life had been so full of toil and turmoil.
The immediate cause of his death was water on the chest. He was buried, according to his own desire, in a simple manner in the churchyard of Farnham, in the same mould as that in which his father and grandfather had been laid before him. His death struck people with surprise, for few could remember the commencement of his course, and there had seemed in it no middle and no decline; for though he went down to the grave an old man, he was young in the path he had lately started upon. He left a gap in the public mind which no one else could fill or attempt to fill up, for his loss was not merely that of a man, but of a habit—of a dose of strong drink which all of us had been taking for years, most of us during our whole lives, and which it was impossible for any one again to concoct so strongly, so strangely, with so much spice and flavour, or with such a variety of ingredients. And there was this peculiarity in the general regret—it extended to all persons. Whatever a man’s talents, whatever a man’s opinions, he sought the Register on the day of its appearance with eagerness, and read it with amusement, partly, perhaps, if De la Rochefoucault is right, because, whatever his party, he was sure to see his friends abused. But partly also because he was certain to find, amidst a great many fictions and abundance of impudence, some felicitous nickname, some excellent piece of practical-looking argument, some capital expressions, and very often some marvellously-fine writing,[108] all the finer for being carelessly fine, and exhibiting whatever figure or sentiment it set forth, in the simplest as well as the most striking dress. Cobbett himself, indeed, said that “his popularity was owing to his giving truth in clear language;” and his language always did leave his meaning as visible as the most limpid stream leaves its bed. But as to its displaying truth, that is a different matter, and would be utterly impossible, unless truth has, at least, as many heads as the Hydra of fable; in which case our author may claim the merit of having portrayed them all.
This, however, is to be remarked—he rarely abused that which was falling or fallen, but generally that which was rising or uppermost. He disinterred Paine when his memory was interred, and attacked him as an impostor amongst those who hailed him as a prophet. In the heat of the contest and cry against the Catholics—whom, when Mr. Pitt was for emancipating them, he was for grinding into the dust—he calls the Reformation a devastation, and pronounces the Protestant religion to have been established by gibbets, racks, and ripping-knives. When all London was yet rejoicing in Wellington hats and Wellington boots, he asserts “that the celebrated victory of Waterloo had caused to England more real shame, more real and substantial disgrace, more debt, more distress amongst the middle class, and more misery amongst the working class, more injuries of all kinds, than the kingdom could have ever experienced by a hundred defeats, whether by sea or by land.” He had a sort of itch for bespattering with mud everything that was popular, and gilding everything that was odious. Mary Tudor was with him “Merciful Queen Mary;” Elizabeth, as I have already observed, “Bloody Queen Bess;” our Navy, “the swaggering Navy;” Napoleon, “a French coxcomb;” Brougham, “a talking lawyer;” Canning, “a brazen defender of corruptions.”
His praise or censure afforded a sort of test to be taken in an inverse sense of the world’s opinion. He could not bear superiority of any kind, or reconcile himself to its presence. He declined, it is said, to insert quack puffs in his journal, merely, I believe, because he could not bear to spread anybody’s notoriety but his own; while he told his correspondents never to write under the name of subscriber—it sounded too much like master. As for absurdity, nothing was too absurd for him coolly and deliberately to assert: “The English government most anxiously wished for Napoleon’s return to France.” “There would have been no national debt and no paupers, if there had been no Reformation.” “The population of England had not increased one single soul since he was born.” Such are a few of the many paradoxes one could cite from his writings, and which are now before me.
Neither did his coarseness know any bounds. He called a newspaper a “cut-and-thrust weapon,” to be used without mercy or delicacy, and never thought of anything but how he could strike the hardest. “There’s a fine Congress-man for you! If any d——d rascally rotten borough in the universe ever made such a choice as this (a Mr. Blair MacClenachan), you’ll be bound to cut my throat, and suffer the sans culottes sovereigns of Philadelphia—the hob-snob snigger-snee-ers of Germanstown—to kick me about in my blood till my corpse is as ugly and disgusting as their living carcases are.” “Bark away, hell-hounds, till you are suffocated in your own foam.” “This hatter turned painter (Samuel F. Bradford), whose heart is as black and as foul as the liquid in which he dabbles.”
“It is fair, also, to observe that this State (Pennsylvania) labours under disadvantages in one respect that no other State does. Here is precisely that climate which suits the vagabonds of Europe; here they bask in summer, and lie curled up in winter, without fear of scorching in one season, or freezing in the other. Accordingly, hither they come in shoals, just roll themselves ashore, and begin to swear and poll away as if they had been bred to the business from their infancy. She has too unhappily acquired a reputation for the mildness or rather the feebleness of her laws. There’s no gallows in Pennsylvania. These glad tidings have rung through all the democratic club-rooms, all the dark assemblies of traitors, all the dungeons and cells of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Hence it is that we are overwhelmed with the refuse, the sweeping, of these kingdoms, the offal of the jail and the gibbet. Hence it is that we see so many faces that never looked comely but in the pillory, limbs that are awkward out of chains, and necks that seem made to be stretched.”
It would be difficult to put together more pithy sentences, or more picturesque abuse than is set forth in the scurrilous extracts I have been citing; yet Cobbett’s virulence could be conveyed in a more delicate way whenever he thought proper:
“Since then, Citizen Barney is become a French commodore of two frigates, and will rise probably to the rank of admiral, if contrary winds do not blow him in the way of an enemy.”
His mode of commencing an attack also was often singularly effective from its humour and personality: “He was a sly-looking fellow, with a hard, slate-coloured countenance. He set out by blushing, and I may leave any one to guess at the efforts that must be made to get a blush through a skin like his.” Again: “Having thus settled the point of controversy, give me leave to ask you, my sweet sleepy-eyed sir!”