FOOTNOTES
[1] Keeping watch, in the times of which we are speaking, was not exclusively from the constable’s point of view. The hand of intrigue was always prepared, in order to purchase silence, as it had been for a century past. When the Hunts were about to enter prison on account of their libel upon the Regent, they had the opportunity of refusing an immunity from punishment if they would consent to hold their tongues for the future. And an offer was sent to Cobbett to remit the 1000l. fine, just before his release in 1812, if he would promise not to support the cause of the Princess of Wales.
[2] The Courier was generally suspected of being a subsidized paper. The Edinburgh Review characterized it thus:—“A paper of shifts and expedients, of base assertions and thoughtless impudence. It denies facts on the word of a minister, and dogmatizes by authority.”
[3] One likes to hear both sides, when there is a trifling difference of opinion:—
“If Cobbett and Hunt were really honest men, and really wished well to the cause of Reform, they would abstain from meddling with it.… If a man wants to repair his mansion, and an adviser comes and tells him that he will do no good except he pull it altogether down and rebuild it, the owner immediately begins to think it better that he should continue to live in the old house as it is rather than run such risks.”—Times, Jan. 28, 1817.
“Mr. Cobbett, whose sincerity in the cause of the country can no longer be questioned by any party,” &c., &c.
“He has increased his circulation to forty and fifty thousand per week; and thus his work tends to counteract the unprincipled sophistry of certain of the daily newspapers and of their satellites through the country. As Mr. C. gives no quarter to the partisans of war and corruption, and to the sinecurists and peculators who devour the substance of the people, and as he is the able advocate of the vital question of Parliamentary Reform, we conceive it to be our duty to recommend his Register to the favourable attention of our liberal and enlightened readers.”—Monthly Magazine, January, 1817.
[4] It appears from a memorandum, printed in Mr. Yonge’s “Life and Administration of Lord Liverpool” (vol. ii. 298), that Robert Southey recommended, if he did not primarily suggest, these severities. He names “Cobbett, Hone, and the Examiner, &c.,” as the writers who are to be stopped, and thinks that their imprisonment should be “such as will prevent them from carrying on their journals.”
[5] “Not he who demands rights, but he who abjures them, is an anarchist.”—J. Horne Tooke.
[6] “As might be expected, falsehoods out of number, and in every garb, have been circulated in regard to a man who never compromised with his convictions.”—Monthly Magazine, May, 1817.