This passage is from a Botley Register, of 1813; but it will represent Cobbett’s notions and feelings on the matter during all his life—from the scarcity-period at the beginning of the century (when bills were introduced in Parliament to “encourage” the growth of potatoes; and Ministers of State, at their grand dinners, used fried potato-cakes, as a substitute for bread), to the time when he came to predict a disastrous Irish famine. And it would be hard to deny the force of his arguments; the burden of which was, that in order to keep a people in a condition of semi-barbarism, little else was necessary than to cause potatoes to be the general food of the country. A knife (he pointed out) which even savages rarely dispense with, is not required by the feeder on potatoes. No forethought, and only a minimum of industrious attention, are needed. The love of ease, so natural to mankind, soon prevails, in the absence of incitement to labour—a safe commonplace; but one of vital importance to be borne in mind, when the thoughtless, and the ignorant, and the purse-proud are content to see a whole class of their fellow-beings ranked just above the swine.
Some curious notions used to get afloat, concerning cheap food for the poor. There was the Duke of Richmond’s celebrated discovery of the nourishing qualities of curry-powder; and the recipe of another clever fellow, for making flint-soup. Milk, produced by animals fed upon stewed straw, was discovered to have great fattening properties.…
Yet, with all this considerate device, the ungrateful wretches still whined for their beer and bread and bacon, the dietary of their forefathers. And the editor of a certain “diabolical” publication persisted in telling them that they ought to have it, and they could have it; for, at the time that the ordinary Wiltshire fare was 1¼ pound of bread and a halfpenny per day, he was giving to his own labourers, at Barn Elm, 1 lb. of meat or bacon, 1½ lb. of flour, besides cheese and beer, per day; and three shillings a week in money.
And there was so much wanton cruelty and insolence, under the poor-relief system of those days. Gangs of labourers would be set to work, the leader having a bell round his neck; men were set to draw carts, like so many convicts, instead of using wheel-barrows; and, when there was no immediate work on hand, you might see one carrying a heavy stone up and down; or digging a hole in the ground one day, and filling it up again the next. How all this went on, in England, for ten or twelve years, scarce half a century ago, is past comprehending. It is, however, a fact, that people could not only permit it, but permit it without shame; and could venture to call those persons “diabolical villains,” who blushed for the country which proclaimed itself “the envy of surrounding nations.”
Those who blushed for their country: those who spent their lives in the endeavour to arrest the hand of her oppressors: justly scorned the pleas of submission and contentment, put forth by many well-meaning persons in the shape of “religious” tracts. The man before us (one of that class who practise a good deal more than they preach; who act righteously before they inculcate righteousness on the part of others) could only see, in these precious handbills, inducements to submit to social degradation. But, in truth, acute suffering on the part of the labouring-classes was teaching them as much as Mr. Cobbett, or any one else, could do. To see the name of some fat pluralist on the title-page of a tract against “repining;” to listen to advice and exhortation, based on the comforting prospects of another and better world, on the part of men who were themselves making sure of this one; to see the names of the committees and promoters of this officious piety, and find that they were, in many instances, the names of those who had given a helping-hand to repression; and who continued to inculcate passive obedience, and the extreme naughtiness of the poor wretches in wanting to know something about the real causes of their misery, was too much for millions of the unprivileged and unendowed. They could see, plainly enough, who were the real Sowers of the Wind. And, perhaps, the Church of England has come to see, for herself, how we have reaped a whirlwind of religious indifference; in spite of “revivals,” and “restorations,” and “extensions,” and “functions,” and potterings without number.[3]
Not the least important contribution to the cause of the people, on the part of Mr. Cobbett, was his “History of the Reformation.” A curiosity in literature; a clumsy, hastily-drawn indictment; the sport of Protestant controversialists; the work yet served a noble purpose. The scale of misrepresentation and calumny had been too long on one side, and there wanted a thumping weight to restore the balance. And when the world discovered that the story of the Reformation in England had its very dark as well as its very bright side: when people learned what utterly selfish ends it had promoted: the world took a long step forward; stepped up to scrutinize it closely. And if the world found that the rough rude hand of this literary pre-raphaelite had brought some features into disgusting prominence, it was no more than was to be expected, sooner or later. The mere controversy, concerning the mutual recriminations of Papists and Protestants, and concerning their cutting of each other’s throats, is nothing. All that will be going on when the New Zealander comes. But the political nature of that great convulsion, and its important social results, particularly with regard to the shameless transfer of property into the hands of court-favourites, had need to be shown up with a relentless hand.
The occasion, of this “History of the Reformation” being projected, was the rapidly-growing feeling on the subject of Emancipation. Mr. Cobbett had long proclaimed equality of political rights for the Catholic, the Unitarian, and the Jew; and regarded them as oppressed people, as long as their theological disabilities remained.[4] We laugh now-a-days, at such fears as then existed concerning the removal of these disabilities; but we are out of the wood; and the few persons of superior mental stature who, in those times, persisted in declaring to the cowards beneath them, that there was more safety in moving on, than in standing still, had to make their voices heard above a fearful din, of incrimination, and calumny, and petty party strifes.
So, by the time that the cause of Emancipation had taken hold of the public mind: when the press, at last, took it up warmly, and O’Connell was leading the agitation in Ireland: Cobbett had lashed himself into a perfect fury, toward the opponents of religious equality, and toward the inheritors of the Church domains. The ease-loving character of the parsons of his day, the growth of a plutocracy, and the debased condition of the poor: spake too ominously of national decadence. The increasing perils of the country, with all parties trying, at last, to propitiate the Parliamentary Reformers at the same time that they had mortal dread of them, kept his mind at fever-heat; and Mr. Cobbett was less than ever disposed to stay his voice or his pen, when conviction had once seized him. He had nothing to gain, and nothing to lose, by expressing his convictions. Given a fight, he was certain to be seen in the thickest of it.