The animus of the clergy was especially shewn toward Mr. Cobbett, on account of his attacks on the tithes: which he continued to maintain were (originally) in part intended for the use of the poor. The “gross and unwarrantable attack” alluded to by Mr. Trevor, was the showing-up of a Suffolk parson; who had made an infamous and lying attack upon Cobbett. Now, some of the more sensible parsons were endeavouring to meet the sad necessities of the day; one worthy Norfolk clergyman, for example, on being petitioned for a reduction of his tithes, sent answer that he “should be satisfied with whatever they might send him.” But the fat pluralists, and the numerous lazy class of that day, were too blind with selfish rage to listen to any reason. The present sufferer from Cobbett’s lash was one of these.[11]
So, with idle shepherds cursing, and newspapers inventing new calumnies, the Government thought they had a case; and an indictment was preferred against Mr. Cobbett, for “a libel, with the intent to raise discontent in the minds of the labourers in husbandry, and to incite them to acts of violence, and to destroy corn-stacks, machinery, and other property.” After some delays, the affair was at last heard in the Court of King’s Bench, on the 7th July, 1831; Lord Tenterden being judge on the occasion, and Sir Thomas Denman, as Attorney-General, conducting the prosecution. The principal Cabinet Ministers were on the bench, (having been subpœnaed by the defendant); as also was his old friend, the Earl of Radnor, who had voluntarily determined to give Cobbett an opportunity of calling him as a witness, if he chose. The defendant appeared in person.
From beginning to end of this trial, it was a manifest error. Denman began with the ridiculous statement that “he understood” that the defendant had “entered the court at the head of a large number of persons whom he had called together by notice;” and proceeded to exhort the jury “to yield to nothing like menace or intimidation, which conduct so improper is calculated and probably intended in some degree to produce.” And his whole speech was one long, groundless imputation, unsupported by a shred of evidence; and based on the fact (which nobody denied, for it was indisputable) which the defendant had clearly pointed out: the close connexion between the reckless conduct of the labourers, on the one hand, and the cause of that conduct; and its results (such as the cheapening of food, and the sudden reduction of the tithes) on the other.
The “extract” from the offending number of the Register, which formed the basis of the indictment, did not include those parts of the essay, which said that the acts of the labourers were unlawful; which quoted the current newspaper stories about the Suffolk clergy who could not get in their tithes: which reminded the Whigs how their praises had been derived from yet-unfulfilled promises: which hit at the newspapers and the borough-mongers; which quoted Bacon and Blackstone; which advocated honesty and freedom of election; which proclaimed, “I am for a Government of King, Lords, and Commons; but, let what else will come, I am for the freedom, the happiness and greatness of England; and, above all things, for the good feeding and clothing of those who raise all the food, and make all the clothing!” No: these would have been the remainder of his argument, and would have enabled a jury not only to understand its whole drift and tenour, but to pronounce the writer a truly wise and patriotic man.
Some of the jury did, evidently, consider the matter a gross absurdity; for, being locked up all night, the twelve were unable to agree to a verdict, and they were forthwith discharged.[12]
Mr. Cobbett’s long speech, in his defence, must have made some of his audience feel grievously uncomfortable. No one was spared; not a soul, whose delinquencies could possibly illustrate the case. There were the Cabinet Ministers sitting in a row before him (including the Chancellor, Brougham), being scolded for their perfidy toward the people; there was the Attorney-General himself, whose promotion in his profession had actually been retarded, on account of his firm adherence to the Whig cause—now prosecuting the press with greater zeal than his Tory predecessor; there were the magistrates who had extorted or invented Goodman’s confession; and there were the party newspapers, with their transparent falsehoods, weather-cock principles, and questionable motives: all scolded anew. All who had contributed, in any degree, to the climax which ended in this trial, were covered with deserved ridicule.
The speech occupied several hours, and it would take nearly fifty of our pages to reproduce it. The points relied on for the defence were, that the indictment contained only garbled extracts from an article which had, as a whole, the exact opposite of the tendency imputed to it; that the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (of which society Brougham and Denman were both leading members!) had recently asked Cobbett’s permission to reprint his celebrated Letter to the Luddites against machine-breaking and other violence, with the same objects in view that he had himself; that Mr. Goodman, labourer and incendiary, had been pardoned, or had unaccountably disappeared, since his “confession,” and that there was a letter (which Cobbett produced, and read) written by Goodman himself, totally different in style and spelling; that the Times newspaper had recently libelled the judges, and called the close-borough members “the hired lacqueys of public delinquents,” and yet was unmolested as long as it continued to puff the Ministry; that a declaration from the tradesmen and labourers in and around Battle (who had heard Cobbett’s lectures), made it clear that the persons who had produced the three confessions were.… No, Mr. Cobbett did not apply to their conduct the terms that it deserved, but contented himself with reading the declaration; and, the notorious fact that he had spent the best part of his life in the endeavour to instruct the labouring classes, in the arts of happiness and goodness.
The speech of the defendant was occasionally interrupted by applause; and once by the judge, on the score of irrelevancy; an objection, however, which was not sustained. And a stray joke or two shone out, as when Cobbett spoke of Mr. Gurney (junior counsel) as “a mere truffle-hunter; he neither sees nor smells anything but the immediate object of his search,” in allusion to his special search of the Register for indictable matter; or in his sarcastic reference to the “open, fair, and candid,” professions of the Attorney-General, which he said were traceable not to the wig on his head, but to the whig in his heart; and in such a passage as this, his humour would prevail:—
“Such are the odious and foul calumnies which have been heaped upon me, that I dare say you expected to see me hoofed and horned, a pair of horns on my head and hoofs up to my knees, terminating with a cloven foot.”
Upon the whole, this speech was a wonderful performance for a man in his seventieth year. Mr. Cobbett had far too often relied upon his own powers in legal defence; yet his failures as an advocate were failures which any member of the bar might have been proud of. And, in the present case, the charge of sedition was so utterly base and trumpery, that the cause of the prosecution really gave power to his own, by furnishing him with a handle for the bitterest expressions of contempt. He certainly lashed into the Whigs most unmercifully, from time to time; as opportunity brought them again to his mind. For example:—