William Cobbett: A Biography in Two Volumes, Vol. 1

by Edward Smith

“We hear that Don Sans-Culotta de Carmagnola minor[4] is preparing another Diplomatic Blunderbuss. Forewarned, forearmed;—but, whether armed or not, it is to be hoped that nothing discharged from that most contemptible quarter will ever scare the people of America.”

At length, the editor receives two or three communications, which he prints: being strong appeals against foreign interference, and reflecting too plainly upon the persons who were causing the liability to that danger. That danger, however, is not so great, in the eyes of Chief Justice M’Kean, as the danger of allowing Britishers to interfere in American politics. Accordingly, the printer and publisher of Porcupine’s Gazette is served with a bill of indictment; charging him with defaming His Catholic Majesty the King of Spain, his envoy, and the Spanish nation, with the object of alienating their affections and regard from the Government and citizens of the United States.

The heat of the judge’s resentment was, perhaps, intensified by the feelings of a father-in-law; for his daughter, one of the belles of Philadelphia, had espoused the distinguished Chevalier. It was several months before the case was brought to trial; but, at length, at the November sessions (1797) the bill of indictment was presented to the Grand Jury, and Chief Justice M’Kean proceeded with his charge. He began with a “definition of the several crimes which generally fall under the cognizance of such a court, as treason, rape, forgery, murder, &c., &c. But these his honour touched slightly upon. He brushed them over as light and trifling offences, or, rather, he blew them aside as the chaff of the criminal code, in order to come at the more solid and substantial sin of LIBELLING,” and proceeded to attack the defendant with the greatest bitterness. It was in vain, however. The Grand Jury threw out the bill, to the judge’s great discomfiture.

Mr. Cobbett, with his usual alacrity and fearlessness, at once proceeded to draw up a statement of the whole affair, and produced a pamphlet under the title of the “The Republican Judge; or the American Liberty of the Press, as exhibited, explained, and exposed, in the base and partial prosecution of William Cobbett, for a Pretended Libel against the King of Spain and his Ambassador.” On reading the judge’s charge, it is difficult to believe how an honest man could have selected the comparatively mild effusions of Porcupine’s Gazette for prosecution; seeing that his own partisans had used with impunity the vilest epithets toward the “The Father of his country;” one paper, indeed, charged Washington with murder. Here is one passage from M’Kean’s speech, for example: “Libelling has become a national crime, and distinguishes us not only from all the states around us, but from the whole civilized world. Our satire has been nothing but ribaldry and Billingsgate; the contest has been, who could call names in the greatest variety of phrases; who could mangle the greatest number of characters; or who could excel in the magnitude or virulence of their lies,” &c., &c. And Mr. Cobbett showed pretty plainly, by a judicious selection of recent anti-federal blackguardisms,[5] what was the real nature of the fight. For himself, he writes in his best manner, as the following will show:—

“As to my writing, I never did slander any one, if the promulgation of useful truths be not slander. Innocence and virtue I have often endeavoured to defend, but I never defamed either. I have, indeed, stripped the close-drawn veil of hypocrisy; I have ridiculed the follies, and lashed the vices of thousands; and have done it sometimes, perhaps, with a rude and violent hand. But these are not the days for gentleness and mercy. Such as is the temper of the foe, such must be that of his opponent. Seeing myself published for a rogue, and my wife for a * * * * *; being persecuted with such infamous, such base and hellish calumny in the philanthropic city of Philadelphia, merely for asserting the truths respecting others, was not calculated, I assure you, to sweeten my temper, and turn my ink into honey-dew.

“My attachment to order and good government, nothing but the impudence of Jacobinism could deny. The object, not only of all my own publications, but also of all those which I have introduced or encouraged, from the first moment that I appeared on the public scene to the present day, has been to lend some aid in stemming the torrent of anarchy and confusion; to undeceive the misguided, by tearing the mask from the artful and ferocious villains, who, owing to the infatuation of the poor, and the supineness of the rich, have made such a fearful progress in the destruction of all that is amiable, and good, and sacred among men. To the Government of this country, in particular, it has been my constant study to yield all the support in my power. When either that Government, or the worthy men who administer it, have been traduced and vilified, I have stood forward in their defence; and that, too, in times when even its friends were some of them locked up in silence, and others giving way to the audacious violence of its foes. Not that I am so foolishly vain as to attribute to my illiterate pen a thousandth part of the merit that my friends are inclined to allow it.”

There was, however, another string to the bow, in the hand of Mr. Cobbett’s enemies—which bow, being handled with dexterity and resolution, eventually sent its weapon home.

It would appear, from an insight into the local and personal history of these stormy times, that a man’s reputation depended entirely upon the nature of his political leanings. There was not a single public character, then living, who did not suffer the penalties of partisanship. In all professions, the man who emerged ever so slightly from obscurity found himself, on one side or another, involved in a stupendous party conflict—a conflict in which no feelings were spared by his opponents, and no fulsome praise left out by his friends. His faults exposed, his weaknesses magnified, and his best actions distorted—he, in turn, heaped upon his adversaries similar contumely. To take by itself (if it were possible) the general sum of abuse, one would conclude that society was a collection of base ruffians, aiming at mutual extermination; on the other hand, ignoring all that opponents said, it would be easy to prove that everybody was a truly disinterested patriot. And Americans have such a strong tendency to eulogize the departed, that, strange to say, the grave no sooner closes over one of their statesmen or politicians, and his part in the struggle for place and power is no more, than his name is at once purged.

There is no doubt at all, that many unscrupulous men were in the front, at the time in which we are now interested—many who, having once made their influence felt, were enabled with the assistance of fortune and audacity to hold their own; in spite of public exposure, their vigour and native abilities made them necessary to their party.[6] This was the class of men that Cobbett loved to fight—a class unknown in the land whence he came: indeed, unknown to the world of men which he had himself created; for it must be noted that Mr. Cobbett had a very limited acquaintance with human nature in its depths. The reading and study, which he had gone through some years before, were all of too abstract a character to make a man of the world (as it is called). Mankind from books he knew well, an ideal Mankind, which the self-educated are especially liable to conjure up, and by means of its gigantic and perfect form, to hide that subtle, wayward, self-absorbed creature of many motives, called Man. In this superficiality, as regards the hidden springs of human action, and the consequent inability to transfer himself, mentally, into the standpoint of his antagonist, lies the key to Cobbett’s frequent failure, just when a little considerate yielding to the feelings of that antagonist would have produced conviction. There were certain rough notions of perfectibility about his conceptions of Humanity which did not admit of the smallest incline toward what he thought to be wrong. In short, he was a Soldier, from beginning to end; and as a soldier he lived, and worked, and wrote, and fought, with his face to the enemy;—which enemy must needs be dealt with uncompromisingly, if it meant fighting at all.