When journeymen find their wages reduced, they should take time to reflect on the real cause before they fly upon their employers, who are, in many cases, in as great, or greater, distress than themselves. How many of these employers have, of late, gone to jail for debt, and left helpless families behind them! The employer’s trade falls off. His goods are reduced in price. His stock loses the half of its value. He owes money. He is ruined; and how can he continue to pay high wages? The cause of his ruin is the weight of the taxes, which presses so heavily on us all, that we lose the power of purchasing goods. But it is certain that a great many, a very large portion, of the farmers, tradesmen, and manufacturers, have, by their supineness and want of public spirit, contributed towards the bringing of this ruin upon themselves and upon you. They have skulked from their public duty. They have kept aloof from, or opposed, all measures for a redress of grievances; and, indeed, they still skulk, though ruin and destruction stare them in the face.… Instead of coming forward to apply for a reduction of those taxes which are pressing them as well as you to the earth, what are they doing? Why, they are applying to the Government to add to their receipts by passing Corn Bills; by preventing foreign wool from being imported; and many other such silly schemes. Instead of asking for a reduction of taxes, they are asking for the means of paying taxes! Instead of asking for the abolition of sinecure places and pensions, they pray to be enabled to continue to pay the amount of those places and pensions! They know very well that the salaries of the judges and of many other persons were greatly raised, some years ago, on the ground of the rise in the price of labour and provisions; why, then, do they not ask to have those salaries reduced now that labour is reduced? Why do they not apply to the case of the judges and others, the arguments which they apply to you? They can talk boldly enough to you; but they are too great cowards to talk to the Government, even in the way of petition!
I have no room, nor have I any desire, to appeal to your passions upon this occasion. I have laid before you, with all the clearness I am master of, the causes of our misery, the measures which have led to those causes, and I have pointed out what appears to me to be the only remedy—namely, a reform of the Commons’, or people’s, House of Parliament. I exhort you to proceed in a peaceable and lawful manner; but, at the same time, to proceed with zeal and resolution in the attainment of this object. If the skulkers will not join you, if the ‘decent fire-side’ gentry still keep aloof, proceed by yourselves. Any man can draw up a petition, and any man can carry it up to London, with instructions to deliver it into trusty hands, to be presented whenever the House shall meet. Some further information as to this matter in a future number. In the meanwhile, I remain, your friend, Wm. Cobbett.”
Such, then, was the clarion, which was to awaken the working-classes of England; to systematize their thoughts, and to give definiteness to their aims.
And such was, also, the stuff which was to terrify, for a little while longer, our dear old friends “Law and Order.” While the hundreds of thousands were welcoming this new gospel, were learning a practicable path for their bewildered feet: the partisans of Government were absolutely dazed, blinded, with terror; and their horror at the growth of liberal opinions (otherwise, “the floodgates of sedition”) completely disabled them from discussing domestic politics with any semblance of calmness. As for the mediocrities in power,—they had succeeded in keeping out the shifty Whigs; but here was a third party coming to the front, with claims as good as their own, and promising to acquire a force which they might withstand in vain. Ministers, in short, were alarmed; and they announced their resolve, in the words of Lord Liverpool, to pursue the “Stern path of Duty!” Lord Sidmouth (now Home Secretary), whose qualities for statesmanship no person, other than his royal patron, had been able to discover since he left the Speaker’s chair in 1802,—was at his wits’ end. And minor lights, as Mr. Wilberforce, sighed and groaned over so much blasphemy as was rife, Cobbett’s being “the most pernicious of all.”
The course of the Stern Path, as regards the subject of these pages, must be described in another chapter. Meanwhile, the immediate consequences of the publication of the first cheap Register remain to be noted.
All sorts of means were taken to hinder the circulation of the now ubiquitous journal. Booksellers who sold the Register were threatened with loss of custom; publicans were threatened with the withdrawal of their licences; hawkers and pedlars were threatened with the police.
Cheap opposition pamphlets were started.[5] The newspapers, which had been pretty quiet concerning Mr. Cobbett’s merits, ever since 1812, now began again:[6] the New Times coming out with a specially grand affair, headed “Cobbett against Cobbett,” which was subsequently issued as a broadside.