“Then, putting out the Register, at the end of the 91st volume, I shall … have time to write a history of MY OWN LIFE, showing the progress of a ploughboy to a seat in parliament; beginning his career by driving the rooks and magpies from his father’s pea-fields and his mother’s chicken-yard; and ending, by endeavouring to drive the tithe and tax devourers from the fruits of the labour of his industrious countrymen.”
It was in the month of June, 1835, that Cobbett had his first, and last, serious illness.
He still dictated material for the Political Register, and continued personally to inspect his little farm, at the last by being carried in a chair. On the 16th his eldest son (writing to a friend) speaks confidently of his being in a fair way of getting strength again; and there was no very great alarm until the following day. A sudden change, however, occurred on that morning; his strength gradually wasted; and on the 18th of June, at a few minutes after one p.m., he passed away, as gently as a child would fall asleep.
FOOTNOTES
[1] “Cobbett was not only an example of self-instruction, but of public teaching. He said, on some occasion, many years ago, “It is certain that I have been the great enlightener of the people of England;” and so he was. The newspapers have not, that we are aware, adverted to our deepest obligation to him. He was the inventor of Twopenny Trash. Let the title be inscribed on his monument. The infamous Six Acts, although they suspended the machinery for awhile, of cheap political publications, could not undo what had been done, nor avert its great immediate, and far greater eventual utility. If only for that good work, honoured be the memory of old Cobbett.”—(Mr. W. J. Fox, in the Monthly Repository, for 1835, p. 487.)
[2] Profligate, by the way, is difficult to define, as a word much used by the Bowleses and the Giffords and the other Anti-Jacobins. It may be safely recommended, as a preliminary study, to the coming historian. Scurrilous is another word, which would appear to mean beating your opponent hollow.
[3] As, for example, the Game Law. This inscrutably-absurd relic of feudalism still survives among us; although certain so-called “Liberals” boast that they ruled us for thirty years, and although this was a cry that helped to bring about the Reform Bill!
Some very pathetic articles upon this topic will be found in the Register during 1824, and subsequent years.