Those who were to decide were, at length, brought together, and they took two minutes over it.
FOOTNOTES
[1] “In after-life he [‘my father’] described the ‘Hydra’ as a hell upon the waters, and the brutal flogging of the sailors for the most trivial offences as something too horrible for contemplation. ‘Often,’ he used to say, ‘have I wondered that men, who were treated as if they had neither hearts nor souls, should yet, in the hour of danger and of duty, forget their wrongs and indignities, act like true heroes, and pour out their heart’s blood with sublime unselfishness for a country that treated them so detestably.’—Charles Mackay, “Forty Years’ Recollections,” i. p. 13.
[2] On the previous 25th of October, the occasion of the King’s entering the fiftieth year of his reign, there had been great “rejoicings.” The Parliamentary Reformists, however, did not approve of it, holding that the prosperity of the country was a hypocritical and delusive cry. Mr. Cobbett boasted of his refusal to subscribe toward giving the twelve hundred thousand paupers “that rarity, that luxury, a bellyful,” and gave very good reasons for it. The Whig papers, too, heaped much derision upon the affair. One of the incidents of the day was a fellow sticking up a placard at Charing Cross, in these terms: “May God disperse the votaries of Cobbett, as the clouds of this day!”
[3] The friends of order were fairly proficient in the language of the fish-market; e.g., “To the indignation and execration of the British nation do we therefore consign this damning specimen of the abominable and infamous sentiments by which the base faction are impelled in their most unprincipled and diabolical pursuits,” was the remark of the Post, at the close of its comments upon the wicked Chronicle.
[4] The “profession and character” of the fraternity had just been roughly assailed in Parliament by Mr. Windham. The question of excluding reporters from the gallery of the House of Commons was one which would come up at intervals, and it was one upon which most public men changed their opinions, from time to time, according to circumstances. Mr. Windham was now for shutting the gallery; and he described the publishers of the Debates as bankrupts, lottery-office keepers, footmen, and decayed tradesmen, and he had heard “that they were a sort of men who would give into corrupt misrepresentations of opposite sides.” As Mr. Wright was the only person among the parliamentary reporters who could be put under the head of “bankrupts,” the Political Register gave Mr. Windham a castigation.
The venal writers of the day, of course, called this black treachery and ingratitude. But then such writers had no interest in upholding the craft—rather the other way. Of this class was the Satirist, or Monthly Meteor, one of the foulest pieces of rubbish that ever disgraced the periodical press. This paper recommended that Cobbett’s article (which was in extremely temperate terms) should be framed and glazed by every public man, as a warning never to trust this wretch, &c.
The Satirist was one long-drawn libel. The editor must have been utterly insusceptible of shame, or else must have been in the habit of deadening his moral feelings by artificial means. Even the good and patriotic Whitbread was represented as one who delighted in practising, upon his own estate, that tyranny against which he declaimed in the House of Commons. As for Finnerty, he is always “the miscreant,” and Mr. Wardle, “the l——r.” Wright is described as “the poor devil who now corrects Cobbett’s bad English, edits his Parliamentary History, brushes his coat, puffs him in coffee-houses and debating-shops, and does all his other dirty work,” &c.
It is very difficult to please everybody. The Examiner presently began to write down Mr. Windham, supporting itself with this affair of the reporters, and howled at Mr. Cobbett for not doing the same. The fact being that Cobbett was especially careful to avoid needless animadversions upon his old friend.