The more important result, personally, of these rural journeys, was the frequent opportunity afforded to Mr. Cobbett of meeting the farmers at their market dinners and county meetings. This added immensely to his influence; his opinions, especially on the currency, began to take hold upon men, who had hitherto read his writings with some degree of dislike and dread; and a very short time elapsed, before there were found more Cobbettites in the country towns, than in the larger centres of population.
Another series of rural rides was commenced in 1829. These were more distinctively political tours; and extended to more distant parts, including the manufacturing towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire. The reception Mr. Cobbett met with, and the overflowing attendances upon his lectures, showed, in a surprising degree, the hold he had obtained upon the minds of the working-people. Parliamentary Reform was, at last, no longer to be delayed; and while the Russells and the Greys were getting a due share of credit, for their endeavours to force on the Great Plunge, there was no questioning to whom principally belonged the distinction of having made it inevitable.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Cobbett’s Evening Post (Wm. C., Jun., printer and publisher, 269, Strand) was started on the 29th January, 1820, and ran for about two months. The early numbers are largely devoted to the Coventry election. On the 28th March a notice is given that the paper will be discontinued, with a remark that, “at the time when this undertaking was resolved on, it was uncertain what one could do, and could not do, in the state of slavery in which the new laws placed the press.” The Register was missed on one or two occasions, and it was found that the attempt to carry on both would be “to make both indifferent;” besides, people both preferred the Weekly Register and found that Cobbett could, in that, do better justice to his powers.
[2] Vide Loudon; also Donaldson’s “Agricultural Biography.”
[3] One of Cobbett’s bits of “verse” is upon the wickedness of repining:—
Come, little children, list’ to me
While I describe your duty,
And kindly lead your eyes to see