The following picture is equal to anything ever sketched by Hogarth, and is called “A Summary of Proceedings of Congress,” November, 1794:
“Never was a more ludicrous farce acted to a bursting audience. Madison is a little bow-legged man, at once stiff and slender. His countenance has that sour aspect, that conceited screw, which pride would willingly mould into an expression of disdain, if it did not find the features too skinny and too scanty for its purpose. His thin, sleek air, and the niceness of his garments, are indicative of that economical cleanliness which expostulates with the shoeboy and the washerwoman, which flies from the danger of a gutter, and which boasts of wearing a shirt for three days without rumpling the frill. In short, he has, take him altogether, precisely the prim, mean, prig-like look of a corporal mechanic, and were he ushered into your parlour, you would wonder why he came without his measure and his shears. Such (and with a soul which would disgrace any other tenement than that which contains it) is the mortal who stood upon his legs, confidently predicting the overthrow of the British monarchy, and anticipating the pleasure of feeding its illustrious nobles with his oats.”
Again, let us fancy the following sentences, imitating what the gentlemen of the United States call “stump speaking,” delivered with suitable tone and gesture on the hustings: “The commercial connection between this country (America) and Great Britain is as necessary as that between the baker and the miller; while the connection between America and France may be compared to that between the baker and the milliner or toyman. France may furnish us with looking-glasses, but without the aid of Britain we shall be ashamed to see ourselves in them; unless the sans culottes can persuade us that threadbare beggary is—a beauty. France may deck the heads of our wives and daughters (by the bye, she shan’t those of mine) with ribbons, gauze, and powder; their ears with bobs, their cheeks with paint, and their heels with gaudy parti-coloured silk, as rotten as the hearts of the manufacturers; but Great Britain must keep warm their limbs and cover their bodies. When the rain pours down, and washes the rose from the cheek, when the bleak north-wester blows through the gauze, then it is that we know our friends.”
Cobbett’s talent for fastening his claws into anything or any one, by a word or an expression, and holding them down for scorn or up to horror—a talent which, throughout this sketch, I have frequently noticed—was unrivalled. “Prosperity Robinson,” “Œolus Canning,” “The Bloody Times,” “the pink-nosed Liverpool,” “the unbaptized, buttonless blackguards” (in which way he designated the disciples of Penn),[109] were expressions with which he attached ridicule where he could not fix reproach, and it is said that nothing was more teasing to Lord Erskine than being constantly addressed by his second title of “Baron Clackmannan.”
VII.
I have alluded, at the commencement of this sketch, to the fact that if the life of Mackintosh was in contradiction to his instincts, and forced to adapt itself to his wishes or ideas, that of Cobbett was ruled by his instincts, to which all ideas and wishes were subordinate. His inclinations were for bustle and strife, and he passed his whole life in strife and bustle. This is why the sap and marrow of his genius show themselves in every line he sent to the press. But at the same time his career warns us how little talents of the highest order, even when accompanied by the most unflagging industry, will do for a man, if those talents and that industry are not disciplined by stedfast principles and concentrated upon noble objects. It is not to be understood, indeed, when I say that a man should follow his nature, that I mean he should do so without sense or judgment; your natural character is your force, but it is a force that you must regulate and keep applied to the track on which the career it has chosen is to be honourably run. I would not recommend a man with military propensities to enter the church; I should say, “Be a soldier, but do not be a military adventurer. Enlist under a lawful banner, and fight for a good cause.”
Cobbett acknowledged no banner; and one cannot say, considering the variety of doctrines he by turns adopted and discarded, that he espoused any cause. Nor did he consider himself bound by any tie of private or political friendship. As a beauty feels no gratitude for the homage which she deems due to her charms, so Cobbett felt no gratitude for the homage paid to his abilities. His idea of himself was that which the barbarian entertains of his country. Cobbett was Cobbett’s universe; and as he treated mankind, so mankind at last treated him. They admired him as a myth, but they had no affection for him as a person. His words were realities, his principles fictions.
It may indeed be contended that a predominant idea ran winding through all the twistings and twinings of his career, connecting his different inconsistencies together; and that this was “a hatred for tyranny.” “He always took his stand,” say his defenders, “with the minority:” and there is something in this assertion. But there is far less fun and excitement in fighting a minority, with a large majority at one’s back, than in coming out, at the head of a small and violent minority, to defy and attack a body of greater power and of larger numbers. It was this fun and excitement which, if I mistake not, were Cobbett’s main inducements to take the side he took in all the contests he engaged in, whether against the minister of the day, or against our favourite daughter of the eighth Henry, who reigned some centuries before his time. Still the tendency to combat against odds is always superior to the tendency to cringe to them, and a weak cause is not unfrequently made victorious by a bold assertion.
It must be added also, in his praise, that he is always a hearty Englishman. He may vary in his opinions as to doctrines and as to men, but he is ever for making England great, powerful, and prosperous—her people healthy, brave, and free. He never falls into the error of mistaking political economy for the whole of political science. He does not say, “Be wealthy, make money, and care about nothing else.” He advocates rural pursuits as invigorating to a population, although less profitable than manufacturing. He desires to see Englishmen fit for war as well as for peace. There is none of that puling primness about him which marks the philosophers who would have a great nation, like a good boy at a private school, fit for nothing but obedience and books. To use a slang phrase, there was “a go” about him which, despite all his charlatanism, all his eccentricities, kept up the national spirit, and exhibited in this one of the highest merits of political writing. The immense number of all his publications that sold immediately on their appearance, sufficiently proves the wonderful popularity of his style; and it is but just to admit that many of his writings were as useful as popular.
A paper written in 1804, on the apprehended invasion, and entitled “Important Considerations for the People of this Kingdom,” was placed (the author being unknown) in manuscript before Mr. Addington, who caused it to be printed and read from the pulpit in every parish throughout the kingdom. For many years this paper was attributed to other eminent men; and it was only when some one thought of attacking Cobbett as an enemy of his country, that he confessed the authorship of a pamphlet, to the patriotism of which every Englishman had paid homage.