“… God send us good luck; but if not, good heart, which I trust I, at least, shall not want. My intention is to meet my accusers in a manner worthy of the advocate of truth.”
Mr. James Perry was in trouble again, early in 1810. The Attorney-General had filed information against the Morning Chronicle and the Examiner, for a paragraph in which the Whig hopes of the day were embodied. These hopes were to be fulfilled when the Prince of Wales succeeded to the throne, and the obnoxious paragraph ended with these words:—
“Of all monarchs, indeed, since the Revolution, the successor of George the Third will have the finest opportunity of becoming nobly popular.”
The interpretation put upon this by the “friends of order”[3] was, that the life of George III. stood between his people and the blessings in store for them! Mr. Perry conducted his own defence, and was acquitted; and the record as against the Examiner was forthwith withdrawn. This occurrence was a subject of rejoicing to the whole tribe of scribblers,—at least, of those who were not subsidized; and the failure of the prosecution correspondingly inflamed the minds of the administration. Peter Finnerty was another victim of this year. And, after some further halting, it was determined to bring forward the record against Mr. Cobbett, after his friends had begun to be tranquilized with the hope that he would not be molested.
It is highly probable, but for the urging to prosecution, on the part of the ministerial press, that he might have been let alone. But they would not be true to the common cause. Bound in the fetters of party, or of pence, the press was, as yet, ignorant of the latent force which has since made of it a Fourth Estate. And, with respect to Mr. Cobbett, it is impossible to withhold the conviction that the envy and the injustice of his rivals had more to do with moulding his fortunes than all other causes put together.
Wm. C. to J. W.
“Your letter, this day got, contained the best and most agreeable news.… We have all, I and my wife, six children, and every soul in the house, drunk Mr. Perry’s health. I made even little Susan lisp out the words. Pray give my kindest and most respectful compliments to him; and tell him that I do not only most heartily rejoice at his success (which, by the bye, does not surprise me), but beg leave to present my sincere thanks; in which, I trust, I only participate with the rest of the gentlemen connected with the press. Nothing but the necessity of attending to my concerns here this week would have prevented me from returning to town immediately, in order to endeavour to urge in person, what I request you to urge for me; namely, a public dinner at the Crown and Anchor, of ‘the Friends of the Liberty of the Press,’ at which we ought to pass a vote of thanks to Mr. Perry, and to proclaim some principles that may be of the utmost importance in future. Now is the time for us to assert our rights, and the respectability of our profession and character.[4]… Mr. Perry has done more good than any man of his time, and it is for us to profit by it.…”
Another public incident, of this period, was the celebrated conflict of Sir Francis Burdett with “Mr. Speaker.” Mr. Gale Jones had been imprisoned by the House of Commons; and Burdett took occasion to address his constituents,—by means of a long letter in Cobbett’s Register—denying the power of the House to imprison any but its own members. The letter was composed by Cobbett himself.
Mr. Speaker walked home from church[5] with Mr. Perceval on the following day. The latter proposed to move the House to commit Burdett to the Tower, and order the attendance of Cobbett. And so, as every one knows, the metropolis was upset, for the space of two or three months, by an indecent squabble, which brought the House into great disrespect, and made Burdett the idol of the populace. In the end, it required 50,000 soldiers and militia to get him into the Tower; but not all the king’s horses, nor all the king’s men, could rend away the mantle of ridicule which the action of ministers had brought upon themselves.
Mr. Cobbett was not ordered to attend the bar of the House. More the pity: Cobbett in Newgate, illegally imprisoned by order of the House of Commons, would have been a very different affair to Cobbett in Newgate ex The Attorney-General! Yet he was not forgotten.