Not only this: Mr. Cobbett’s was a measure full and running over;—
“My house was always open to give them victuals and drink whenever they happened to come to it, and to supply them with little things necessary to them in case of illness; and in case of illness their wages always went on just as if they had been well.”
Seventy years will pass away, and carry off with them most direct evidence, leaving little beyond shadowy traditions. But there are, yet living at Botley, aged persons who were long in Mr. Cobbett’s service, as gardeners and farm-labourers. And these persons, one and all, represent his days at Botley as a time of exceptional comfort and well-being; and his service as one of well-paid, hard-working earnestness. Hated and envied by some of his neighbours, he was maligned, and abused, and misrepresented, as earnest people always are;[11] but there were a far greater number, who welcomed the current of joy, and freedom, to which he had given rise. And the recollection of his name will still restore a transient smile to the withered features of a man, whose lengthened span of life may be due, in great measure, to the habits of industry and thrift and independence acquired in the service of William Cobbett.
FOOTNOTES
[1] All this sketch (in Cobbett’s own words, written in 1832) is as faithful as it is graphic. The event provided ample resource for the witlings of the day. See, for example, “A History of the Westminster Election in November, 1806,” with its coloured picture of the hustings; also, “The Rising Sun; a Serio-comic Satiric Romance,” vol. ii., in which Paull’s bottle-holder appears as Mr. Cobwell, a man of great talents and strength of mind,” &c.
[2] Afterwards collected into a volume, under the title of “The Political Proteus: a view of the Character and Conduct of R. B. Sheridan, Esq.,” &c., and published by Budd and others. Sheridan’s “dramatic loyalty” (as it was happily expressed), was a constant theme of the caricaturists of the day. Cobbett makes a note, in one of his “summaries,” of twenty-five public pledges which Sheridan had abandoned, and promises that they shall be “detailed one of these days.”
[3] The misunderstanding between Burdett and Paull culminated in a duel, in which both were wounded. The affair was a rather silly one, and brought out some wit. Mr. Paull was a little, fiery man, or he would have succeeded better as a politician. Mr. Horne Tooke said to him one day, “You are a bold man, and I am certain you’ll succeed; only, as Cobbett says, keep yourself cool.”
[4] “The Learned Languages” was the title of a controversy which arose in the Register early in 1807. Mr. Cobbett was out of his sphere on this topic, and his correspondents (who were at all humorous) saw a ready application of the fable concerning a fox who had lost his tail. Others were more serious, and thought that the knowledge of the Latin and Greek classics “kept together the higher orders of society, and separate from the lower orders.”
[5] Afterwards Earl Grey, who carried the Reform Bill of 1832.