The progress of the Reform Bill is the foremost topic of the day; and the near prospect of Mr. Cobbett’s election, by some popular constituency, is now more obvious.[1] In the course of September, 1831, there appears his first address to the electors of Manchester, in response to an invitation conveyed to him from a committee formed with the object of endeavouring to secure his return.
The objects which Cobbett now professed to have in view were considerably in advance of those of some years previously; and their publication, in this address, shows distinctly the rapid growth of opinion amongst the mass of the people. Not only the abolition of sinecures, and of all pensions the merit of which could not be readily granted; abolition of tithes; reduction of the standing army; and an equitable adjustment of the currency, were recapitulated, as reforms urgently called for; but he now declared that the National Debt ought to be wiped out, by the sale of ecclesiastical estates, the misapplied portion of the property of corporate bodies, and all the Crown lands; and so to reduce taxation, and the cost of its collection, as to give some hopes of greater prosperity and happiness to “this industrious nation.”
Of course, these things were “revolutionary” for that age. Every great change is revolutionary; but the bad odour attaching to an epithet, in some minds, is no index to the value of the ideas represented. Important changes in the mode of government, particularly as to a greatly-lessened waste of public money, naturally appeared monstrous and wicked to the governing classes, and to their adherents; at a period when bishops died worth half-a-million. And it came just as naturally to the minds of the reformers, the longer the question was delayed, that, by whatever name their proposals might be designated, there could be nothing so monstrous and wicked as to persist in a system which made the rich richer and the poor poorer.
The events of the past fifteen years had made a wonderful difference in the minds of the labouring classes. The power of a cheap serial, first exemplified in the publication of Cobbett’s twopenny Register, had become fully recognized. The Penny Magazine, Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, and similar publications were now beginning their respective careers with astonishing success; along with a host of political sheets. A new sort of education was spreading: that sort of education which made men think for themselves; and, for the first time in history, the “lower orders” were beginning to take an interest in the affairs of other nations beside their own. Well might statesmen be affrighted at the progress of revolution in France and Belgium, and at the growing importance of the American Republic! The knowledge of political good and evil, fresh from those democratic sources, might well alarm them; for it was sinking deep into minds, the fertility of which had been produced by their own haughty failures.
So Mr. Cobbett’s address to the electors of Manchester was denounced as utterly subversive of the institutions of the country. However, he went down to Manchester in the course of the winter, and delivered several lectures, with the object of showing that his principles, on the contrary, would tend to conserve, instead of destroy. Lord Radnor had previously written a letter to one of the Manchester papers[2] warmly supporting him, and offering his aid, in case of a subscription being made. And Cobbett now found, upon visiting Manchester, that he had already won his way into the hearts and minds of the people there. Before he left, a dinner was given in his honour, at which Mr. John Fielden, manufacturer, of Todmorden, presided.
The following will give an example of his general reception in Lancashire. Most of Cobbett’s “egotism” was displayed in answer to personal attacks, and we owe a good deal of biographical matter to those occasions on which he chose to answer. One evening in the House of Lords, the Earl of Falmouth, in passing a sneer over to Lord Radnor, concerning the latter’s nomination-borough of Downton, insinuated that the loss of that borough would be “a bad thing for Cobbett, whom the people would scarcely elect, if left to themselves.” Lord Falmouth had a taste of Mr. Cobbett’s lash, as a reward for his temerity; and Cobbett concluded his paper thus:—
“I have been lecturing on politics—I have been maintaining my Manchester propositions, in every great town in the north, as far as the northern confines of Yorkshire, with the exception, I believe, of Liverpool and Bradford; and I have everywhere maintained that, unless those propositions be acted upon to the full extent, a reform of the Parliament will be a delusion and a mockery. Everywhere I have been received with every mark of approbation.… Two or three words with my name, written by myself, have been begged as a valuable present by more than a hundred persons. No mark of disapprobation have I received during the whole of half-a-hundred lectures that I have given.… The people of England will have the sense to perceive that it is not title and fortune that they want to represent them; but talent, knowledge, and courage; a love of the honour of their country; men who see in every labourer their countryman, and who take to themselves a share of the disgrace of seeing him robbed of the fruit of his toil. Experience has now taught the people of England that, to be restored to their liberties and happiness, they must rely upon one another; and though you do not know it, the country everywhere teems with clever and well-educated young men. During my last tour, scores—and I might say many hundreds of young men, sometimes twenty at a time—have crowded round me as I have been going out of the lecturing-places; one saying, as he shook my hand, ‘That is the hand that wrote the “Grammar;”’ another, ‘That is the hand that wrote the “Protestant Reformation;”’ another, ‘That is the hand that wrote the “Advice to Young Men.”’ This was the case, more or less, at every place where I was.… Nor was this confined to the buoyant spirits of Lancashire and Yorkshire, where the heart seems always upon the lips; but I found it the same everywhere.”
The month of June saw the triumph of the Parliamentary Reformers, and eager preparations were made for canvass. Expectation ran high: the newly-enfranchised took the matter into their own hands; and amongst these were the people of Lancashire. Manchester had sent a member to Parliament in some long past age, but had been for centuries unrepresented, and was now to have two members. Oldham, with a population of over 50,000, was, likewise, to elect two.
Early in July, 1832, Mr. Cobbett received a letter from an Oldham friend, informing him that it was determined to put him in nomination; and that two strangers having unexpectedly commenced a canvass, his friends had at once announced his name, along with that of Mr. John Fielden; the latter having consented to the proposal, with the understanding that Cobbett should be his colleague, if not elected for some other place. Several other constituencies had been thought of; but this unmistakable earnestness on the part of Lancashire decided the matter; and when, in the course of December, the elections came off, Fielden and Cobbett were at the top of the poll for Oldham. The people of Manchester had also put Mr. Cobbett in nomination, but, the result of the contest at Oldham being made known there on the first day of the poll, the votes intended for him were transferred to other candidates.