“Such are the barbarities which have been inflicted on other nations. The recollection of them will never be effaced: the melancholy story will be handed down from generation to generation, to the everlasting infamy of the Republicans of France, and as an awful warning to all those nations whom they may hereafter attempt to invade. We are one of those nations; we are the people whom they are now preparing to invade. Awful, indeed, is the warning, and, if we despise, tremendous will be the judgment. The same generals, the same commissaries, the same officers, the same soldiers, the very same rapacious and sanguinary host, that now hold Holland and Switzerland in chains—that desolated Egypt, Italy, and Germany—are at this moment preparing to make England, Ireland, and Scotland, the scenes of their atrocities. For some time past, they have had little opportunity to plunder: peace, for a while, suspended their devastations, and now, like gaunt and hungry wolves, they are looking towards the rich pastures of Britain. Already we hear their threatening howl; and if, like sheep, we stand bleating for mercy, neither our innocence nor our timidity will save us from being torn to pieces and devoured. The robberies, the barbarities, the brutalities they have committed in other countries, though at the thought of them the heart sinks and the blood runs cold, will be mere trifles to what they will commit here, if we suffer them to triumph over us. The Swiss and the Suabians were never objects of their envy; they were never the rivals of Frenchmen, either on the land or on the sea; they had never disconcerted or checked their ambitious projects, never humbled their pride, never defeated either their armies or their fleets. We have been, and we have done, all this: they have long entertained against us a hatred engendered by the mixture of envy and of fear; and they are now about to make a great and desperate effort to gratify this furious, this unquenchable, this deadly hatred. What, then, can we expect at their hands? What but torments, even surpassing those which they have inflicted on other nations? They remained but three months in Germany: here they would remain for ever; there, their extortions and their atrocities were, for want of time, confined to a part of the people; here they would be universal: no sort, no part, no particle of property would remain unseized; no man, woman, or child would escape violence of some kind or other. Such of our manufactories as are movable they would transport to France, together with the most ingenious of the manufacturers, whose wives and children would be left to starve. Our ships would follow the same course, with all the commerce and commercial means of the kingdom. Having stripped us of everything, even to the stoutest of our sons and the most beautiful of our daughters, over all that remained they would establish and exercise a tyranny such as the world never before witnessed. All the estates, all the farms, all the mines, all the land and the houses, all the shops and magazines, all the remaining manufactories, and all the workshops, of every kind and description, from the greatest to the smallest—all these they would bring over Frenchmen to possess, making us their servants and their labourers. To prevent us uniting and arising against them, they would crowd every town and village with their brutal soldiers, who would devour all the best part of the produce of the earth, leaving us not half a sufficiency of bread. They would, besides, introduce their own bloody laws, with additional severities; they would divide us into separate classes, hem us up in districts, cut off all communication between friends and relations, parents and children, which latter they would breed up in their own blasphemous principles; they would affix badges upon us, mark us in the cheek, shave our heads, split our ears, or clothe us in the habit of slaves! And shall we submit to misery and degradation like this, rather than encounter the expenses of war; rather than meet the honourable dangers of military combat; rather than make a generous use of the means which Providence has so bounteously placed in our hands? The sun, in his whole course round the globe, shines not on a spot so blessed as this great and now united kingdom. Gay and productive fields and gardens, lofty and extensive woods, innumerable flocks and herds, rich and inexhaustible mines, a mild and wholesome climate, giving health, activity, and vigour to fourteen millions of people: and shall we, who are thus favoured and endowed: shall we, who are abundantly supplied with iron and steel, powder and lead: shall we, who have a fleet superior to the maritime force of all the world, and who are able to bring two millions of fighting men into the field: shall we yield up this dear and happy land, together with all the liberties and honours, to preserve which our fathers so often dyed the land and the sea with their blood: shall we thus at once dishonour their graves, and stamp disgrace and infamy on the brows of our children; and shall we, too, make this base and dastardly surrender to an enemy whom, within these twelve years, our countrymen have defeated in every quarter of the world? No! we are not so miserably fallen: we cannot, in so short a space of time, have become so detestably degenerate; we have the strength and the will to repel the hostility, to chastise the insolence of the foe. Mighty, indeed, must be our efforts, but mighty also is the meed. Singly engaged against the tyrants of the earth, Britain now attracts the eyes and the hearts of mankind; groaning nations look to her for deliverance; justice, liberty, and religion are inscribed on her banners; her success will be hailed with the shouts of the universe, while tears of admiration and gratitude will bedew the heads of her sons who fall in the glorious contest.”
The wonderful activity of Cobbett’s pen, at and after this date, can only be appreciated by a glance at the volumes of his celebrated journal. On every topic that arose he had something to say. Much of what he said was accepted by the reflecting part of the public; many of his predictions were verified, and many falsified by events; and many of his opinions he learned to alter. But underneath the whole lies a burning desire for English prosperity, unimpaired by the faintest token of self-seeking. To enumerate the topics of the day would involve the delineation of his opinions thereon. They will have to be studied by the future historian.
It will be sufficient for our purpose to note, therefore, that the Political Register had already become the vehicle for the ventilation of most of the questions which were agitating the public mind, from invasion down to vaccination. Often loaded with prejudice, but very generally pervaded with liberality, the views of his correspondents partook of his own ardent spirit, contributing largely to the enlightenment of the public mind.
That topic which most of all contributed to revolutionize his relations with his early political friends was the question of Finance. He began to examine this subject in the year 1803, after having read Adam Smith, Chalmers, and others in vain, and at last lighted upon Mr. Paine’s “Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance.” This pamphlet, he says, was the means of opening his eyes; and from May in this year he began to urge a reduction of the interest on the national debt, and the policy of discovering some means of redistributing the wealth of the country.
But that which, for the time, influenced Cobbett’s career, was his unsparing criticism upon the ministry of the day. Mr. Addington had been an object of ridicule from the moment of the first rumour of his appointment as premier; and his puerile efforts at statesmanship only served to confirm the original verdict of the public. Narrow-minded and presuming, he was utterly unfit for a position of authority, in which he would have to pass beyond the mere traditions of office. As a personal favourite, however, of the king he was endured for a while, until his obvious incapacity rendered it imperative that the destinies of the country should be entrusted to other hands. The want of decision and energy in the conduct of the war, and the waste and mismanagement of the military and naval resources of the country, were highly disappointing to a people whose patriotism for two whole years was artificially stimulated by rumours of invasion. “Another inactive and inglorious year sunk the British nation in her own eyes, and in those of Europe.”[4] This is the general verdict of the cotemporary chronicler, on reviewing the circumstances which led to Mr. Pitt’s resumption of office in May, 1804. Until near the period, however, when the crash came, the self-conceit of this clever ministry was superior to any free comments; they seemed fated to bring upon themselves overwhelming disgrace. It is true, there was opposition in Parliament (as well as in the press), but opposition was ascribed to anything but its real cause, and was treated with disdain. Upon the report of the address, when Parliament reassembled in November, 1803, Mr. Windham ventured to express his dissatisfaction with the incompetency of the ministry, but “no reply was made to him.”[5]
So the Weekly Political Register was in its glory. The editor was determined to contribute his share of effort toward relieving the country from the benefit of Mr. Addington’s services, and transmitting his name to posterity “with all the contempt it deserved.”[6]
It is not surprising, then, that Mr. Cobbett was now being closely watched, in order that an opportunity might arise for retaliation. Mr. Cobbett was helping to ruin the king’s ministers; the ministers would try and settle Mr. Cobbett. But it must be on some side issue; there was no need for poor Mr. Addington’s name to come in. There would soon be rope enough, one way or other.
The affairs of Ireland were again in a muddle. Robert Emmet’s insurrection had just occurred, and martial law was eventually proclaimed. Mr. Fox protested in vain against the system under which that country was governed, as also did the Political Register.[7] A correspondent (Mr. Robert Johnson, a Judge of the Irish Common Pleas) sent some letters, signed “Juverna,” containing an able, but rather bitter, series of comments upon recent events, to which the editor gave a prominent place in his journal (November-December, 1803). These letters opened the flood-gates of wrath; and Mr. Cobbett was, accordingly, prosecuted in the following May for publishing “certain libels upon the Earl of Hardwicke, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland,” and others.
“Juverna” had stated, among other matters, that “the government of a harmless man was not necessarily a harmless government;” that Lord Hardwicke “was in rank an earl, in manners a gentleman, in morals a good father and a good husband;” that “he had a good library in St. James’s Square,” and was “celebrated for understanding the modern method of fattening sheep as well as any man in Cambridgeshire;” and he wanted to know if the Viceroy was “one of that tribe who have been sent over to us to be trained up here into politicians, as they train the surgeons’ apprentices in the hospitals, by setting them at first to bleed the pauper patients?”