William Cobbett: A Biography in Two Volumes, Vol. 1
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Title: William Cobbett: A Biography in Two Volumes, Vol. 1
Author: Edward Smith
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM COBBETT: A BIOGRAPHY IN TWO VOLUMES, VOL. 1 ***
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: Volume II is available as Project Gutenberg ebook
number 49845.
WILLIAM COBBETT.
A BIOGRAPHY.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS,
ST. JOHN’S SQUARE.
[Illustration: _J. R. Smith pinxit._
_F. Bartolozzi R.A. sculpsit._
MR. WILLIAM COBBETT.]
WILLIAM COBBETT:
_A BIOGRAPHY_.
BY EDWARD SMITH.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
London:
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON,
CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET.
1878.
[_All rights reserved._]
“It is not by his faults, but by his excellences, that we
measure a great man.”
G. H. LEWES (_On Actors, &c._).
“Fear never but you shall be consistent in whatever variety of
actions, so that they be each honest and natural in their hour.
For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike
they seem.”
R. W. EMERSON (_Essay on Self-reliance_).
“My good blade carves the casques of men,
My tough lance thrusteth sure,
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure!”
TENNYSON (_Sir Galahad_).
NOTE.
The following pages need no Preface, with regard to their subject.
I am unwilling, however, to let the work go forth to the public without
a renewed word of thanks, to those who have given me any sort of
encouragement or assistance. My acknowledgments are especially due to
the venerable daughter of Mr. James Swann, for the use of some letters;
to the author of the “Handbook of Fictitious Names,” without whose apt
teaching in the art of Bibliography, the work might have wanted the
interesting appendix; to Mr. Job Swain, one of the last survivors of
Cobbett’s personal friends, for some reminiscences; and to Mr. Ellis
Yarnall, of Philadelphia, for copies of several letters, and for some
suggestions which have enabled the author to throw additional light on
the “Porcupine” days.
E. S.
London: _November, 1878_.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
1762-1784.
“I LOOKED BACK WITH PRIDE TO MY WAGGON-DRIVING GRANDFATHER” 1
CHAPTER II.
1784-1791.
“WHEN I HAD THE HONOUR TO WEAR A RED COAT” 30
CHAPTER III.
1792.
“I HAVE ALWAYS SHOWN MY ENMITY TO EVERY SPECIES OF PUBLIC
FRAUD OR ROBBERY” 56
CHAPTER IV.
1793-1794.
“I LIVED IN PHILADELPHIA” 94
CHAPTER V.
1794-1795.
“HEARING MY COUNTRY ATTACKED, I BECAME HER DEFENDER THROUGH
THICK AND THIN” 107
CHAPTER VI.
1796-1797.
“PETER PORCUPINE, AT YOUR SERVICE!” 146
CHAPTER VII.
1797-1799.
“AT LAST GOT THE BETTER OF ALL DIFFIDENCE IN MY OWN
CAPACITY” 180
CHAPTER VIII.
1799-1800.
“WHEN I LEFT THEM I CERTAINLY DID SHAKE THE DUST OFF
MY SHOES” 197
CHAPTER IX.
1794-1800.
“MY FAME HAD PRECEDED ME” 231
CHAPTER X.
1800.
“I RESOLVED NEVER TO BEND BEFORE THEM” 247
CHAPTER XI.
1800-1801.
“I TOOK THE LEAD, IN SINGING THE PRAISES OF PITT” 267
CHAPTER XII.
1802.
“THE THOUGHTS OF THE NATION ARE LIKE A CORK IN THE MIDDLE
OF THE OCEAN” 284
CHAPTER XIII.
1803-1805.
“I SAW THINGS IN ANOTHER LIGHT” 308
WILLIAM COBBETT: A BIOGRAPHY.
CHAPTER I.
“I LOOKED BACK WITH PRIDE TO MY WAGGON-DRIVING GRANDFATHER.”
William Cobbett was born in the parish of Farnham, in the county of
Surrey, on the 9th of March, 1762.
* * * * *
The town of Farnham is a hop-garden. It had, in olden days, one of the
most important corn-markets in the south of England. Before that, it
was a great clothing mart; and, early in Parliamentary history, was
called upon to send representatives to the “Collective Wisdom.” But,
at last, the mercantile spirit proper, as was the case with many towns
in Surrey, Kent, and Sussex, fled from Farnham; granaries took the
place of workshops; and manufactures declined. With the extinction
of the iron-furnaces of the Weald expired the once-flourishing trade
of the south of England; and agriculture became the staple pursuit of
the still-prosperous people, all over the fertile country which lies
between the Thames and the English Channel. Corn-fields took the place
of extensive sheep and cattle pastures; new grazing-downs succeeded to
the burnt-up forests, whilst hops took the pick of the land, upon which
they throve in a hitherto-unexampled manner. And Farnham, with its
deep, rich, light-brown soil, found itself with a title to give to the
best hops grown in England.
So Farnham is, to this day, a big hop-garden. In spite of a
railway-station and 10,000 inhabitants, and the proximity of a
garrison, the impression is, all around, the same. You enter the town
from London, and the first church you come to is nearly surrounded with
vines; the last building, at the other end of the long street, is an
oast-house. You may take a lodging down by the river-side, and find a
forest of hop-poles immediately outside your window, in the morning;
or taking stand on any elevation, you will see all the uplands around,
either in their luxuriant summer dress of vine, or else, so many square
miles of poles placed tent-wise, taking their winter rest, looking
like nothing so much as the encampment of a monstrous army.
They must have been clever enough in their generation, who planted
and built hereabouts nearly two thousand years ago; but he who did
the most on behalf of this part of Surrey was he who planted a small
field of hops on the upland towards Crondell, somewhere about the year
1600. By the middle of the eighteenth century the hops of Farnham were
already distinguished--“always at the top of the market;” and the
agricultural writers of that day wax eloquent over the praises of the
pleasing, fertile vale, and its “hazel-coloured,” loamy soil, and the
yearly-increasing number of acres given up to hop-culture. Arthur Young
calls the district between Farnham and Alton the finest in England.
The scenery around Farnham is not, in itself, unique; so far, that any
well-cultivated English river-valley is like almost any other, with its
low hills crowned along their summits with the evidences of prosperous
farming. But, from the top of one of these eminences, the eye soon
discovers certain characteristics, which compel a deep impression upon
the mind of singularity and beauty. The best view is, perhaps, to be
obtained from Hungry Hill, near Aldershot; the most prominent object
being Crooksbury Hill, rising from above the woods of Moor Park and
Waverley Abbey. A very odd-looking hill, covered with tall Scotch firs,
the like of which it would be difficult to name; a wide expanse of
sandy heath, now partly cultivated, stretches for many miles beyond,
until broken up into a tumultuous range of heath-clad hills; and
these, again, succeeded by the distant blue outlines of the Sussex and
Hampshire downs. The river Wey courses down the vale, passing through
the lower part of Farnham town; and after spinning merrily through the
meadows and hop-fields below, bends abruptly round in the direction of
Guildford.
The inhabitants of this district, one hundred years ago, were almost
out of the great World. The turnpike-road to Winchester and the
south-west bounded their earthly aims; upon it was situated the weekly
goal for the produce of their farms; and along it was, at a toilsome
distance, either the great metropolis at one end, or Portsmouth and her
marines at the other. With strong native prejudices, and a character
for inflexible honesty, the farmers (generally speaking) lived remote,
“equal enemies to improvements in agriculture and to relaxations in
morals;” the smallest occupiers sharing the hardest toil with their
labourers.
Before the great scarcity and dearness set in, in the last quarter of
the century--when the clocks and the brass kettles began to disappear
from the parlours, and the visions of general pauperism began to
appear--the spirit of the peasantry in the remoter parts of Surrey
was high and independent--chill penury was then uncommon with the
able-bodied. In the receipt of only seven or eight shillings a week of
average money wages, such was the cheapness of food, and so light were
the burdens which Prudence had to bear, that the labourer was healthy,
cheerful, and contented; whilst he could often explain clearly enough,
from his own observation and reflection, the merits or demerits of the
different systems and practice upon the neighbouring farms.
Of this class was the grandfather of William Cobbett.
“With respect to my ancestors, I shall go no further back than
my grandfather, and for this plain reason, that I never heard
talk of any prior to him. He was a day-labourer, and I have
heard my father say, that he worked for one farmer from the day
of his marriage to that of his death, upwards of forty years.
He died before I was born, but I have often slept beneath the
same roof that had sheltered him, and where his widow dwelt
for several years after his death. It was a little thatched
cottage with a garden before the door. It had but two windows;
a damson-tree shaded one, and a clump of filberts the other.
Here I and my brothers went every Christmas and Whitsuntide, to
spend a week or two, and torment the poor old woman with our
noise and dilapidations. She used to give us milk and bread
for breakfast, an apple-pudding for our dinner, and a piece of
bread and cheese for supper. Her fire was made of turf, cut
from the neighbouring heath, and her evening light was a rush
dipped in grease.”
George Cobbett, son of this old couple, appears to have much improved
his condition in life; and he lived to see all his boys gradually
rising in the world. WILLIAM was the third (out of four), and he gives
vivid sketches of their daily course of existence.
“My father, when I was born, was a farmer. The reader will
easily believe, from the poverty of his parents, that he had
received no very brilliant education: he was, however, learned,
for a man in his rank of life. When a little boy, he drove
the plough for twopence a day, and these his earnings were
appropriated to the expenses of an evening school. What a
village schoolmaster could be expected to teach, he had learnt,
and had besides considerably improved himself in several
branches of the mathematics. He understood land surveying
well, and was often chosen to draw the plans of disputed
territory: in short, he had the reputation of possessing
experience and understanding, which never fails, in England,
to give a man, in a country place, some little weight with his
neighbours. He was honest, industrious, and frugal; it was not,
therefore, wonderful, that he should be situated in a good
farm, and happy in a wife of his own rank, like him, beloved
and respected.
“So much for my ancestors, from whom, if I derive no honour, I
derive no shame.
“A father like ours, it will be readily supposed, did not
suffer us to eat the bread of idleness. I do not remember the
time when I did not earn my living. My first occupation was
driving the small birds from the turnip seed, and the rooks
from the peas. When I first trudged a-field, with my wooden
bottle and my satchel swung over my shoulders, I was hardly
able to climb the gates and stiles, and, at the close of the
day, to reach home was a task of infinite difficulty. My next
employment was weeding wheat, and leading a single horse at
harrowing barley. Hoeing peas followed, and hence I arrived at
the honour of joining the reapers in harvest, driving the team
and holding the plough. We were all of us strong and laborious,
and my father used to boast, that he had four boys, the eldest
of whom was but fifteen years old, who did as much work as any
three men in the parish of Farnham. Honest pride, and happy
days!…”
“I have some faint recollection of going to school to an old
woman, who, I believe, did not succeed in teaching me my
letters. In the winter evenings my father taught us all to
read and write, and gave us a pretty tolerable knowledge of
arithmetic. Grammar he did not perfectly understand himself,
and therefore his endeavours to teach us that, necessarily
failed; for, though he thought he understood it, and though he
made us get the rules by heart, we learnt nothing at all of the
principles.”
No, the book-learning was not to come yet. That was to be left until
the little world of his birthplace had become too small to hold him.
Nearly sixty years after these simple times, Mr. Cobbett is riding in
the neighbourhood, accompanied by one of his sons, and the two go out
of their way to visit the spot where he received “the rudiments of his
education.”
“There is a little hop-garden in which I used to work when
from eight to ten years old; from which I have scores of times
run to follow the hounds, leaving the hoe to do the best that
it could to destroy the weeds; but the most interesting thing
was a sand-hill, which goes from a part of the heath down to
the rivulet. As a due mixture of pleasure with toil, I with
two brothers, used occasionally to disport ourselves, as the
lawyers call it, at this sand-hill. One diversion was this: we
used to go to the top of the hill, which was steeper than the
roof of a house; one used to draw his arms out of the sleeves
of his smock-frock, and lay himself down with his arms by
his sides; and then the others, one at head and the other at
feet, sent him rolling down the hill like a barrel or a log
of wood. By the time he got to the bottom, his hair, eyes,
ears, nose, and mouth, were all full of this loose sand; then
the others took their turn; and at every roll, there was a
monstrous spell of laughter. I had often told my sons of this
while they were very little, and I now took one of them to see
the spot. But, that was not all. This was the spot where I was
receiving my education; and this was the sort of education;
and I am perfectly satisfied that if I had not received such
an education, or something very much like it; that, if I had
been brought up a milksop, with a nursery-maid everlastingly at
my heels, I should have been at this day as great a fool, as
inefficient a mortal, as any of those frivolous idiots that are
turned out from Winchester and Westminster School, or from any
of those dens of dunces called colleges and universities. It is
impossible to say how much I owe to that sand-hill; and I went
to return it my thanks for the ability which it probably gave
me to be one of the greatest terrors, to one of the greatest
and most powerful bodies of knaves and fools, that ever were
permitted to afflict this or any other country.”
In such manner the merry, sturdy, little life went on. At tying
hop-poles, or scaring birds, almost as soon as he could barely stand,
a trifling share was given to the family efforts; whilst the vigorous,
healthy senses were already open to the keenest enjoyment of nature,
and to the unexpected moments of fun which enter into the days of
boyhood. Look at this, for example (written at nearly seventy years of
age).
“When I was a very little boy, I was, in the barley-sowing
season, going along by the side of a field, near Waverley
Abbey; the primroses and blue-bells bespangling the banks on
both sides of me; a thousand linnets singing in a spreading oak
over my head; while the jingle of the traces, and the whistling
of the plough-boys saluted my ear from over the hedge; and, as
it were to snatch me from the enchantment, the hounds, at that
instant, having started a hare in the hanger on the other side
of the field, came up scampering over it in full cry, taking me
after them many a mile. I was not more than eight years old;
but this particular scene has presented itself to my mind many
times every year from that day to this. I always enjoy it over
again, &c.”
Cobbett’s political writings, during his whole career, were largely
illustrated by the incidents and occurrences of his life. This was the
line taken by his own peculiar egotism, and we are indebted to it for
numerous pictures similar to the above. Of this particular period there
is only space here for the following capital story:--
“When I was a boy, a huntsman named George Bradley, who was
huntsman to Mr. Smither, of Hale, very wantonly gave me a cut
with his whip, because I jumped in amongst the dogs, pulled a
hare from them, and got her scut, upon a little common, called
Seal Common, near Waverley Abbey. I was only about eight years
old; but my mind was so strongly imbued with the principles of
natural justice, that I did not rest satisfied with the mere
calling of names, of which, however, I gave Mr. George Bradley
a plenty. I sought to inflict a just punishment upon him; and,
as I had not the means of proceeding by force, I proceeded by
cunning in the manner that I am presently going to describe.
I had not then read the Bible, much less had I read GROTIUS
and PUFFENDORF; I, therefore, did not know that God and man
had declared, that it was laudable to combat tyranny by either
force or fraud; but, though I did not know what tyranny meant,
reason and a sense of justice taught me that Bradley had been
guilty of tyranny towards me; and the native resources of my
mind, together with my resolution, made me inflict justice on
him in the following manner:--Hounds (hare-hounds at least)
will follow the trail of a red herring as eagerly as that of
a hare, and rather more so, the scent being stronger and more
unbroken. I waited till Bradley and his pack were trailing for
a hare in the neighbourhood of that same Seal Common. They were
pretty sure to find in the space of half an hour, and the hare
was pretty sure to go up the common and over the hill to the
south. I placed myself ready with a red herring at the end of
a string, in a dry field, and near a hard path, along which,
or near to which, I was pretty sure the hare would go. I waited
a long while; the sun was getting high, the scent bad; but,
by and by, I heard the view-halloo and full cry. I squatted
down in the fern, and my heart bounded with the prospect of
inflicting justice, when I saw my lady come skipping by, going
off towards Pepperharrow; that is to say, to the south. In a
moment, I clapped down my herring, went off at a right angle
towards the west, climbed up a steep bank very soon, where
the horsemen, such as they were, could not follow; then on I
went over the roughest part of the common that I could find,
till I got to the pales of Moor Park, over which I went, there
being holes at the bottom for the letting in of the hares. That
part of the park was covered with short heath; and I gave some
twirls about to amuse Mr. Bradley for half-an-hour. Then off
I went, and down a hanger at last, to the bottom of which no
horseman could get without riding round a quarter of a mile. At
the bottom of the hanger was an alder moor, in a swamp. There
my herring ceased to perform its service. The river is pretty
rapid, I tossed it in, that it might go back to the sea, and
relate to its brethren the exploits of the land. I washed my
hands in the water of the moor; and took a turn, and stood at
the top of the hanger to witness the winding up of the day’s
sport, which terminated a little before dusk in one of the
dark days of November. After overrunning the scent a hundred
times, after an hour’s puzzling in the dry field, after all the
doubles and all the turns that the sea-borne hare had given
them, down came the whole _posse_ to the swamp; the huntsman
went round a mill-head not far off, and tried the other side of
the river: ‘_No! d-- her, where can she be?_’ And thus, amidst
conjectures, disputations, mutual blamings, and swearings a
plenty, they concluded, some of them half-leg deep in dirt, and
going soaking home at the end of a drizzling day.”
The little life, that was destined to be such a cruel thorn in the
sides of Authority, was very near being summarily extinguished about
this time; on occasion of William getting out of his depth while
bathing in the river Wey, and from which he was “pulled out by the
foot, which happened to stick up above the water.”
By the time of his reaching ten or eleven years of age he is already
getting useful, in his way, and he takes his turn with his brothers
of going the annual visit to Weyhill Fair with their father. The fair
at Weyhill, though still considerable, is not what it was then; the
hop-growers now run off to Worcester, or Burton-on-Trent; but in those
days, long before the railways, Weyhill in October was the grand centre
for sheep, hops, &c. There the yearly hirings took place, and there
the bucolic gathering from all the neighbouring counties had an annual
dissipation. We shall presently see that it was at one of these trips
Cobbett made his first acquaintance with American politics. But the
following incident--which has often been told, but cannot on that
account be omitted here--presents his first recorded look-out upon life.
“At eleven years of age, my employment was clipping of
box-edgings and weeding beds of flowers in the garden of the
Bishop of Winchester, at the Castle of Farnham, my native town.
I had always been fond of beautiful gardens; and a gardener,
who had just come from the King’s Gardens at Kew, gave such
a description as made me instantly resolve to work in these
gardens. The next morning, without saying a word to any one,
off I set, with no clothes except those upon my back, and
with thirteen halfpence in my pocket. I found that I must go
to Richmond, and I accordingly went on, from place to place,
inquiring my way thither. A long day (it was in June) brought
me to Richmond in the afternoon. Two pennyworth of bread and
cheese, and a pennyworth of small beer, which I had on the
road, and one halfpenny that I had lost somehow or other, left
threepence in my pocket. With this for my whole fortune, I was
trudging through Richmond, in my blue smock-frock, and my red
garters tied under my knees, when, staring about me, my eye
fell upon a little book in a bookseller’s window. ‘TALE OF A
TUB,’ price 3_d._ The title was so odd, that my curiosity was
excited. I had the 3_d._, but then I could have no supper. In
I went, and got the little book, which I was so impatient to
read, that I got over into a field, at the upper corner of
Kew Gardens, where there stood a haystack. On the shady side
of this, I sat down to read. The book was so different from
anything that I had ever read before; it was something so new
to my mind, that, though I could not at all understand some of
it, it delighted me beyond description; and it produced what
I have always considered a birth of intellect. I read on till
it was dark, without any thought about supper or bed. When I
could see no longer, I put my little book in my pocket, and
tumbled down by the side of the stack, where I slept till the
birds in Kew Gardens awaked me in the morning; when off I
started to Kew, reading my little book. The singularity of my
dress, the simplicity of my manner, my confident and lively
air, and, doubtless, his own compassion besides, induced the
gardener, who was a Scotchman, I remember, to give me victuals,
find me lodgings, and set me to work. And it was during the
period that I was at Kew, that the present King (Geo. IV.), and
two of his brothers laughed at the oddness of my dress, while
I was sweeping the grass-plat round the foot of the pagoda.
The gardener, seeing me fond of books, lent me some gardening
books to read; but these I could not relish after my ‘Tale of a
Tub,’ which I carried about with me wherever I went; and when
I, at about twenty [24] years old, lost it in a box that fell
overboard in the Bay of Fundy, in North America, the loss gave
me greater pain then I have ever felt at losing thousands of
pounds.”
How long the employment at Kew lasted, and how he got home again,
does not appear. The life at Farnham was probably resumed before
the approach of winter; for, either the year before this, or that
immediately succeeding, he mentions being sent down from Farnham to
Steeple Langford, in Wiltshire, with a horse; remaining at the latter
place “from the month of June till the fall of the year.”
Cobbett must have been about fourteen years of age at the time alluded
to in the following incident:--
“My father used to take one of us with him every year to
the great hop-fair at Weyhill. The fair was held at Old
Michaelmastide, and the journey was to us a sort of reward
for the labours of the summer. It happened to be my turn to
go thither the very year that Long Island was taken by the
British. A great company of hop-merchants and farmers were
just sitting down to supper as the post arrived, bringing in
the ‘Extraordinary Gazette,’ which announced the victory. A
hop-factor from London took the paper, placed his chair upon
the table, and began to read with an audible voice. He was
opposed, a dispute ensued, and my father retired, taking me by
the hand, to another apartment, where we supped with about a
dozen others of the same sentiments. Here Washington’s health,
and success to the Americans, were repeatedly toasted, and this
was the first time, as far as I can recollect, that I ever
heard the General’s name mentioned. Little did I then dream
that I should ever see the man, and still less that I should
hear some of his own countrymen reviling and execrating him.”
Although we have learned, not only to look with complacency upon
the results of the attempt to coerce the Colonies, but, also, to
wonder that there could have ever been English statesmen so deluded
as to expect anything but disaster from the contest; it has not been
sufficiently observed, that the immediate effect was the partial ruin
of the labouring poor in this country; that it is from that period that
their prosperity has declined, and their comforts have become fewer and
fewer. And what is more, before their impoverishment made it obvious
to everybody, the common people and the tradesmen showed, by their
abhorrence of the war, that they were, for once, gifted with a truer
political sagacity than their precious rulers; and that there must have
been some vague general anticipation of the consequences to them, and
to their families. Prices rose, whilst wages remained stationary; and,
from the very outset, the privations of the poor were aggravated to an
intense degree. But from that date arose the thirst of the labouring
classes for political information, which has since resulted in their
possessing so general a share in representation.
So, down at quiet Farnham, the people had hitherto been, “like the rest
of the country people in England,” neither knowing nor thinking much
about politics. The “shouts of victory or the murmurs at a defeat,”
would now and then break in upon their tranquillity for a moment; but
after the American war had continued for a short time, the people began
to be a little better acquainted with subjects of that kind. Cobbett
says, that opinions were pretty equally divided concerning the war,
at first; whilst there grew up a good deal of pretty warm discussion,
sometimes:--
“My father was a partisan of the Americans: he used frequently
to dispute on the subject with the gardener of a nobleman
who lived near us. This was generally done with good humour,
over a pot of our best ale; yet the disputants sometimes grew
warm, and gave way to language that could not fail to attract
our attention. My father was worsted, without doubt, as he
had for antagonist a shrewd and sensible old Scotchman, far
his superior in political knowledge; but he pleaded before a
partial audience: we thought there was but one wise man in the
world, and that that one was our father. He who pleaded the
cause of the Americans had an advantage too, with young minds:
he had only to represent the King’s troops as sent to cut the
throats of a people, our friends and relations, merely because
they would not submit to oppression, and his cause was gained.”
Old George Cobbett remained a staunch American in politics; but, as to
whether he was right or wrong, his son admits that he never, at that
period, formed any opinion. His own notions were those of his father,
which would have been as warmly entertained if they had been all on
the other side. The short autobiography of which the above forms a
part, was written during the early part of his pamphleteering career
in the United States; at which time he found it necessary to explain
that he had not been nursed in the lap of aristocracy, and that he did
not imbibe his then “principles or prejudices from those who were the
advocates of blind submission.” The story of this pamphlet will come in
its proper place, when its author was upwards of thirty years of age.
* * * * *
Here we have, then, probably as much as we shall ever know, of William
Cobbett’s early years. The utter obscurity of his father’s social
status is, of itself, sufficient reason why there were no admiring
friends to detect precocity, and to record its achievements: until
the age of twenty his life was made up of the ordinary occupations of
a country lad. Fairs, cricket-matches, and hare-hunts filled up the
joyous periods of recreation; and it was not till the year 1782, that
an incident occurred, which, bringing him into the bustling activity
of town-life, had the same effect upon him, that a similar change of
scene has had upon many an ardent, healthy spirit; and which estranged
him from the sequestered vale of life, for ever.
There can be little doubt, however, that a very great mental stimulus
was acquired by the trip to Kew, and the reading of Swift’s wonderful
satire.[1] The poor ploughboy, very probably, read and reread the
laughable story of Peter and Martin hundreds of times without
understanding the real drift of it; but there was enough in the book,
with its entertaining accounts of grotesque fashions and weak-minded
characters, to furnish such an impressionable spirit as Cobbett’s with
an inexhaustible store of odd ideas concerning the world outside him.
Readers of his works will notice his frequent quotation of Swift: “The
celebrated Dean of St. Patrick somewhere observes, &c., &c.” is the
opening sentence of the autobiographical sketch; and the “Political
Register,” in after-years, continued to manifest evidences of the
source and character of Cobbett’s early reading. Cobbett’s literary
style, however, was not exactly that of Dean Swift; of which the
former’s ignorance, and even contempt, of Latinity is sufficient
explanation. But his alternations of sweetness and acrimony,--his
ever-ready images,--the picturesque manner of his describing individual
characters,--his constant tendency to satire,--cannot but be ascribed,
in great measure, to the little book whose loss “cost him greater pain
than losing thousands of pounds.”
So there is, now, some difference. A head and shoulders above the
average of his mates, his mind is, likewise, on a higher level. Not so
high, but as yet to be infinitely dark as to any purpose: a healthy
spirit in a healthy body, there stood, working as hard and as cheerily
as ever; but ready for the first impulse--which impulse came, in no
uncommon way; in no more romantic style than that which sets a ball
rolling, upon the impact of the foot.
“Towards the autumn of 1782, I went to visit a relation who
lived in the neighbourhood of Portsmouth. From the top of
Portsdown, I, for the first time, beheld the sea, and no sooner
did I behold it than I wished to be a sailor. I could never
account for this sudden impulse, nor can I now. Almost all
English boys feel the same inclination: it would seem that,
like young ducks, instinct leads them to rush on the bosom of
the water.
“But it was not the sea alone that I saw; the grand fleet
was riding at anchor at Spithead. I had heard of the wooden
walls of Old England; I had formed my ideas of a ship and of a
fleet, but what I now beheld so far surpassed what I had ever
been able to form a conception of, that I stood lost between
astonishment and admiration. I had heard talk of the glorious
deeds of our admirals and sailors, of the defeat of the Spanish
Armada, and of all those memorable combats that good and true
Englishmen never fail to relate to their children about a
hundred times a year. The brave Rodney’s victories over our
natural enemies, the French and Spaniards, had long been the
theme of our praise, and the burthen of our songs. The sight of
the fleet brought all these into my mind; in confused order,
it is true, but with irresistible force. My heart was inflated
with national pride. The sailors were my countrymen, the fleet
belonged to my country, and surely I had my part in it, and
all its honours; yet, these honours I had not earned; I took
to myself a sort of reproach for possessing what I had no
right to, and resolved to have a just claim by sharing in the
hardships and the dangers.
“I arrived at my uncle’s late in the evening, with my mind full
of my sea-faring project. Though I had walked thirty miles
during the day, and consequently was well wearied, I slept not
a moment. It was no sooner daylight than I arose and walked
down towards the old castle on the beach at Spithead. For a
sixpence given to an invalid I got permission to go upon the
battlements; here I had a closer view of the fleet, and at
every look my impatience to be on board increased. In short, I
went from the Castle to Portsmouth, got into a boat, and was in
a few minutes on board the ‘Pegasus’ man-of-war, commanded by
the Right Honourable George Berkeley, brother to the Earl of
Berkeley.
“The Captain had more compassion than is generally met with in
men of his profession; he represented to me the toils I must
undergo, and the punishment that the least disobedience or
neglect would subject me to. He persuaded me to return home,
and I remember he concluded his advice with telling me, that
it was better to be led to church in a halter, to be tied to
a girl that I did not like, than to be tied to the gang-way,
or, as the sailors call it, married to Miss Roper. From the
conclusion of this wholesome counsel, I perceived that the
captain thought I had eloped on account of a bastard.
“I in vain attempted to convince Captain Berkeley,[2] that
choice alone had led me to the sea; he sent me on shore, and
I at last quitted Portsmouth, but not before I had applied to
the Port-Admiral, Evans, to get my name enrolled among those
who were destined for the service. I was, in some sort, obliged
to acquaint the Admiral with what had passed on board the
‘Pegasus,’ in consequence of which my request was refused,
and I happily escaped, sorely against my will, from the most
toilsome and perilous profession in the world.
“I returned once more to the plough, but I was spoiled for a
farmer. I had, before my Portsmouth adventure, never known
any other ambition than that of surpassing my brothers in the
different labours of the field, but it was quite otherwise now;
I sighed for a sight of the world; the little island of Britain
seemed too small a compass for me. The things in which I had
taken the most delight were neglected; the singing of the birds
grew insipid, and even the heart-cheering cry of the hounds,
after which I formerly used to fly from my work, bound o’er the
fields, and dash through the brakes and coppices, was heard
with the most torpid indifference. Still, however, I remained
at home till the following spring, when I quitted it, perhaps
for ever.
“It was on the 6th of May, 1783, that I, like Don Quixote,
sallied forth to seek adventures. I was dressed in my holiday
clothes, in order to accompany two or three lasses to Guildford
Fair. They were to assemble at a house about three miles from
my home, where I was to attend them; but, unfortunately for me,
I had to cross the London turnpike-road. The stage-coach had
just turned the summit of a hill and was rattling down towards
me at a merry rate. The notion of going to London never entered
my mind till this very moment, yet the step was completely
determined on, before the coach came to the spot where I stood.
Up I got, and was in London about nine o’clock in the evening.
“It was by mere accident that I had money enough to defray
the expenses of this day. Being rigged out for the fair, I
had three or four crown and half-crown pieces (which most
certainly I did not intend to spend), besides a few shillings
and halfpence. This my little all, which I had been years in
amassing, melted away like snow before the sun, when touched
by the fingers of the innkeepers and their waiters. In short,
when I arrived at Ludgate Hill, and had paid my fare, I had but
about half-a-crown in my pocket.
“By a commencement of that good luck, which has hitherto
attended me through all the situations in which fortune has
placed me, I was preserved from ruin. A gentleman, who was one
of the passengers in the stage, fell into conversation with
me at dinner, and he soon learnt that I was going I knew not
whither nor for what. This gentleman was a hop-merchant in the
borough of Southwark, and, upon closer inquiry, it appeared
that he had often dealt with my father at Wey Hill. He knew the
danger I was in; he was himself a father, and he felt for my
parents. His house became my home, he wrote to my father, and
endeavoured to prevail on me to obey his orders, which were
to return immediately home. I am ashamed to say that I was
disobedient. It was the first time I had ever been so, and I
have repented of it from that moment to this. Willingly would I
have returned, but pride would not suffer me to do it. I feared
the scoffs of my acquaintances more than the real evils that
threatened me.
“My generous preserver, finding my obstinacy not to be
overcome, began to look out for an employment for me. He
was preparing an advertisement for the newspaper, when an
acquaintance of his, an attorney, called in to see him. He
related my adventure to this gentleman, whose name was Holland,
and who, happening to want an understrapping quill-driver, did
me the honour to take me into his service, and the next day saw
me perched upon a great high stool, in an obscure chamber in
Gray’s Inn, endeavouring to decipher the crabbed draughts of my
employer.
“I could write a good plain hand, but I could not read the
pot-hooks and hangers of Mr. Holland. He was a month in
learning me to copy without almost continual assistance, and
even then I was of but little use to him; for, besides that I
wrote a snail’s pace, my want of knowledge in orthography gave
him infinite trouble: so that for the first two months I was a
dead weight upon his hands. Time, however, rendered me useful,
and Mr. Holland was pleased to tell me that he was very well
satisfied with me, just at the very moment when I began to grow
extremely dissatisfied with him.
“No part of my life has been totally unattended with pleasure,
except the eight or nine months I passed in Gray’s Inn. The
office (for so the dungeon, where I wrote, was called) was so
dark, that on cloudy days, we were obliged to burn candles.
I worked like a galley-slave from five in the morning till
eight or nine at night, and sometimes all night long. How many
quarrels have I assisted to foment and perpetuate between those
poor innocent fellows, John Doe and Richard Roe! How many
times (God forgive me!) have I set them to assault each other
with guns, swords, staves, and pitch-forks, and then brought
them to answer for their misdeeds before our sovereign Lord
the King seated in his Court of Westminster? When I think of
the saids and soforths, and the counts of tautology that I
scribbled over; when I think of those sheets of seventy-two
words, and those lines two inches apart, my brain turns.
Gracious Heaven! if I am doomed to be wretched, bury me beneath
Iceland snows, and let me feed on blubber; stretch me under the
burning line and deny me thy propitious dews; nay, if it be thy
will, suffocate me with the infected and pestilential air of a
democratic club-room; but save me, O save me from the desk of a
pettifogging attorney!
“Mr. Holland was but little in the chambers himself. He always
went out to dinner, while I was left to be provided for by the
_laundress_, as he called her. Those gentlemen of the law, who
have resided in the inns of court in London, know very well
what a _laundress_ means. Ours was, I believe, the oldest and
ugliest of the officious sisterhood. She had age and experience
enough to be Lady Abbess of all the nuns in all the convents of
Irish-Town. It would be wronging the witch of Endor to compare
her to this hag, who was the only creature that deigned to
enter into conversation with me. All except the name, I was
in prison, and this Weird Sister was my keeper. Our chambers
were to me, what the subterraneous cavern was to Gil Blas: his
description of the Dame Leonarda exactly suited my Laundress;
nor were the professions, or rather the practice, of our
masters altogether dissimilar.
“I never quitted this gloomy recess except on Sundays, when
I usually took a walk to St. James’s Park, to feast my eyes
with the sight of the trees, the grass, and the water. In one
of these walks I happened to cast my eye on an advertisement,
inviting all loyal young men, who had a mind to gain riches
and glory, to repair to a certain rendezvous, where they might
enter into his Majesty’s marine service, and have the peculiar
happiness and honour of being enrolled in the Chatham Division.
I was not ignorant enough to be the dupe of this morsel of
military bombast; but a change was what I wanted; besides, I
knew that marines went to sea, and my desire to be on that
element had rather increased than diminished by my being penned
up in London. In short, I resolved to join this glorious
corps; and, to avoid all possibility of being discovered by my
friends, I went down to Chatham, and enlisted into the marines
as I thought, but the next morning I found myself before a
captain of a marching regiment. There was no retreating: I had
taken a shilling to drink his Majesty’s health, and his further
bounty was ready for my reception.
“When I told the captain (who was an Irishman, and who has
since been an excellent friend to me) that I thought myself
engaged in the marines: ‘By Jasus, my lad,’ said he, ‘and you
have had a narrow escape.’ He told me that the regiment into
which I had been so happy as to enlist was one of the oldest
and boldest in the whole army, and that it was at that moment
serving in that fine, flourishing, and plentiful country,
Nova Scotia. He dwelt long on the beauties and riches of this
terrestrial Paradise, and dismissed me, perfectly enchanted
with the prospect of a voyage thither.”
FOOTNOTES
[1] It is a noteworthy circumstance that Moor Park and “my
grandmother’s cottage” should be almost within hail of each other; for
it was among these very scenes that Swift spent some of his earliest
and best years--a nice little item for any ingenious believer in
“affinities.”
When Cobbett wrote “The Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine,” he was
not aware of this coincidence, otherwise his humour would have happily
played around the topic.
[2] Afterwards Admiral Sir George Berkeley. He entered the navy at
twelve years of age, and saw a good deal of service, including the
glorious 1st of June. Died 1818, æt. sixty-five.
CHAPTER II.
“WHEN I HAD THE HONOUR TO WEAR A RED COAT.”
From the point of view which Englishmen usually take, in speaking of
success in life, it may remain an open question as to whether the
hero of this story ever really attained it. But let such question be
narrowed down to a point, from which is excluded all notions of wealth,
and personal aggrandizement: the placing of one’s feet upon a given
spot from which others have been ousted--the thing becomes clearer. The
attainment of objects upon which one has set the heart, from time to
time, can alone be called SUCCESS.
Now, this reflection is hazarded, because it is necessary for the
reader of William Cobbett’s history to observe a leading feature in his
character, from this stage onward; consisting in what may be called
the instinct of discipline. Money-making (as such) was ever with
him a process which he treated with contempt; the whole future, as
it stood before him year after year, was to promise only the comfort
of his family, and the welfare of his countrymen. All the blunders
which he committed, in the untiring pursuit of this twofold object,
were the result of undue impetuosity, the rashness of the soldier in
the heat of strife: the temporary derangement of discipline, in the
rear of a discomfited enemy. But in spite of ridicule and opposition,
and long-deferred anticipation, and, besides, slanders of the foulest
character, one after another were the dearest wishes of his heart
fulfilled; and at seventy years of age he could write:--
“I HAVE LED THE HAPPIEST LIFE OF ANY MAN THAT I HAVE EVER KNOWN. NEVER
DID I KNOW ONE SINGLE MOMENT WHEN I WAS CAST DOWN; NEVER ONE MOMENT
WHEN I DREADED THE FUTURE.”
So, if we think of the soldier’s career; what it is for the idle and
the devil-may-care; what it is to the mere adventurer; what it is
to the drudge; and what it is, as a last resource, to the outlaw;
and, then, what it is to him who deliberately makes it a school of
self-discipline, then we shall have some likelihood of understanding
why this man, only twenty years after leaving the plough-tail, had
become the Mentor of English statesmen, and wielded a pen so powerful
that no price could buy it.
It cannot be said, however, that there had been any want of parental
control in the little household at Farnham. In the foregoing chapter
are clearly to be found traces, on the part of Cobbett’s father, of
his duty in this respect; and to the gentle discipline of home must
be ascribed the readiness, with which the sterner apprenticeship of
army life was undertaken. All the sons of George Cobbett did well in
after-life. Whilst this WILLIAM, going into a rougher school than his
brothers, and submitting for a term to its rough lessons, not only with
a good grace, but with a happy foresight, distances them all.
His own testimony to the quality of his early moral training is,
by-the-bye, worth quoting:--
“When in the army I was often tempted to take up the cards. But
the words of my father came into my mind, and rescued me from
the peril.… During this part of my life I lived amongst, and
was compelled to associate with, the most beastly of drunkards,
where liquor was so cheap, that even a soldier might be drunk
every day; yet I never, during the whole time, even _tasted_ of
that liquor: my father’s, and especially my mother’s precepts
were always at hand to protect me.”
But there is one other factor to be taken into account. It seems
that among his few acquaintances in London, was a young man who could
give him friendly counsel, from a superior social standpoint; and
consequently, with a far better knowledge of the world upon which they
were both emerging;[1] and Cobbett declares that it was to his advice
that he owed all that he ever possessed beyond the lot of a common
soldier. For after the enlistment,--
“Upon being informed by me of what I had done, he began his
answer to me in somewhat these words:--‘Now then, my dear Bill,
it is for you to determine whether you shall, all your life,
yield an abject submission to others, or whether you yourself
shall be a guider and leader of men. Nature has done her part
toward you most generously; but her favours will be of no
avail without a knowledge of grammar. Without that knowledge
you will be laughed at by blockheads; with it, you may laugh
at thousands who think themselves learned men.’ The letter was
long, full of urgent recommendation, and seasoned with the
kindest of expressions, all which I knew to be sincere. I was,
at that time, much more intent upon the beauty of my cap and
feathers, than upon anything else; but, upon seeing my friend
afterwards to take leave of him, he renewed his advice in such
a strain as to make a thorough impression upon me; and I set
about my study in good earnest.”
Not, then, of mere chance, nor even because he possessed certain
advantages in the shape of a robust, elastic frame, and a healthy mind
therein dwelling, did this man eventually put such a powerful shoulder
to the wheel of liberty. Without the personal influence of his noble
peasant-father, the affectionate firmness of his friend, the soldier’s
round of duty cheerily performed, and supplemented by self-discipline,
these natural advantages were valueless; and he no leader and guider of
men!
* * * * *
The year 1784 opened, with England at peace. The American States had
achieved independence, or as it is sometimes euphemistically put, King
George had granted it to them. Soldiers were getting their discharge,
or were being sent out to colonize New Brunswick. Recruiting was
comparatively sluggish work, and there was little need to complement
the full strength of regiments on foreign stations. The 54th, that in
which William Cobbett found himself, was then serving in Nova Scotia,
whilst the depôt was in garrison at Chatham; and here he remained about
a year. Of this life at Chatham, learning his drill, &c., there are
abundant materials for a picture, as Cobbett never tired of referring
to this period, when in after-years he would, again and again, point
a moral from his own career. The story was told at seventy years of
age, to the young men of England, as it had been told to his irritated
American neighbours, in 1796.
“My leisure time, which was a very considerable portion of
the twenty-four hours, was spent, not in the dissipation
common to such a way of life, but in reading and study. In
the course of this year I learnt more than I had ever done
before. I subscribed to a circulating library at Brompton,
the greatest part of the books in which I read more than once
over. The library was not very considerable, it is true, nor
in my reading was I directed by any degree of taste or choice.
Novels, plays, history, poetry, all were read, and nearly with
equal avidity.[2] Such a course of reading could be attended
with but little profit: it was skimming over the surface of
everything. One branch of learning, however, I went to the
bottom with, and that the most essential branch too, the
grammar of my mother-tongue. I had experienced the want of a
knowledge of grammar during my stay with Mr. Holland; but it is
very probable that I never should have thought of encountering
the study of it, had not accident placed me under a man whose
friendship extended beyond his interest.
“Writing a fair hand procured me the honour of being copyist to
Colonel Debbieg, the commandant of the garrison. I transcribed
the famous correspondence between him and the Duke of Richmond,
which ended in the good and gallant old colonel being stripped
of the reward bestowed on him for his long and meritorious
servitude.[3] Being totally ignorant of the rules of grammar,
I necessarily made many mistakes in copying, because no one
can copy letter by letter, nor even word by word. The colonel
saw my deficiency, and strongly recommended study. He enforced
his advice with a sort of injunction, and with a promise of
reward in case of success. I procured me a Lowth’s grammar, and
applied myself to the study of it with unceasing assiduity, and
not without some profit, for, though it was a considerable time
before I fully comprehended all that I read, still I read and
studied with such unremitted attention, that, at last, I could
write without falling into any very gross errors. The pains I
took cannot be described; I wrote the whole grammar out two or
three times; I got it by heart; I repeated it every morning and
every evening, and, when on guard, I imposed on myself the task
of saying it all over once every time I was posted sentinel.
To this exercise of my memory I ascribed the retentiveness of
which I have since found it capable, and to the success with
which it was attended, I ascribe the perseverance that has
led to the acquirement of the little learning of which I am
master. This study was, too, attended with another advantage:
it kept me out of mischief. I was always sober and regular in
my attendance; and not being a clumsy fellow, I met with none
of those reproofs which disgust so many young men with the
service.”
These efforts at self-education would be wonderful enough, in a
person surrounded with the comforts of life, but when we recollect
what the life of a private soldier was, until very recently, with
the temptations presented by poverty, and by dissolute associates,
and by the almost utter want of sympathy between the soldier and his
aristocratic superiors, the extreme difficulty of the case is evident.
“Of my sixpence nothing like fivepence was left to purchase
food for the day. Indeed not fourpence. For there was washing,
mending, soap, flour for hair-powder, shoes, stockings, shirts,
stocks and gaiters, pipe-clay and several other things, all
to come out of the miserable sixpence!… The whole week’s food
was not a bit too much for one day. It is not disaffection,
it is not a want of fidelity to oaths, that makes soldiers
desert, one time out of ten thousand; it is hunger, which will
break through stone walls; and which will, therefore, break
through oaths and the danger of punishment. We had several
recruits from Norfolk (our regiment was the West Norfolk); and
many of them deserted from sheer hunger. They were lads from
the plough-tail. All of them tall; for no short men were then
taken. I remember two that went into a decline and died during
the year; though when they joined us they were fine hearty
young men. I have seen them lay in their berths, many and many
a time, actually crying on account of hunger.
“The edge of my berth, or that of the guard-bed, was my seat
to study in; my knapsack was my book-case; a bit of board
lying on my lap was my writing-table.… I had no money to
purchase candle or oil; in winter-time it was rarely that I
could get any evening light but that of the fire; and only _my
turn_ even of that.… To buy a pen or a sheet of paper I was
compelled to forego some portion of food, though in a state
of half-starvation: I had no moment of time that I could call
my own; and I had to read and to write amidst the talking,
laughing, singing, whistling, and brawling of at least half a
score of the most thoughtless of men, and that, too, in the
hours of their freedom from all control. Think not lightly of
the _farthing_ that I had to give, now and then, for ink, pen,
or paper. That farthing was, alas! a great sum to me. I was
as tall as I am now; I had great health and great exercise.
The whole of the money, not expended for us at market, was
_twopence a week_ for each man. I remember (and well I may!)
that upon one occasion I, after all absolutely necessary
expenses, had, on a Friday, made shift to have a halfpenny in
reserve, which I had destined for the purchase of a red-herring
in the morning; but, when I pulled off my clothes at night, so
hungry then as to be hardly able to endure life, I found that
I had lost my halfpenny! I buried my head under the miserable
sheet and rug, and cried like a child.”
And yet the life had its amenities. Tender recollections come up, when
he visits Chatham again, nearly forty years after, of the pretty girls
of his “cap-and-feather days.” How they evinced a sincere desire to
smooth the inequalities of life; and particularly to serve out the beer
more fairly than their masters or husbands. His superior officers, too,
inspired him with a certain amount of respect and affection; whilst the
Colonel’s discovery of the _willing horse_ was, undoubtedly, a fount of
pleasure and gratification to the young recruit.
Cobbett tells, somewhere, of a poor little drummer-boy who gambled.
He gambled away all his pay, his shirts, his stockings, and all his
necessaries, even to his loaf, which was served out to him twice a
week. At last, to prevent him from begging through the streets of
Rochester and Chatham, the men were compelled to take his loaf from
him, to serve it out a slice at a time, and to see that he ate it. Here
is about the lowest depth of degradation to which a private soldier
could descend; but the moralist will see, in this anecdote, only one
other instance in which the weight or the deficiency of moral stamina
is dependent, whether in private soldier or in prince, upon the habit
of mind acquired in childhood. Beneath the parental roof must the
parental duty be done; no “prayer,” and no idle talk of reliance
on providence (so very, very often put forth, when only a plea for
laziness and indifference) will avail, unless the dictates of common
prudence are heeded, and a straightforward principle, in example, daily
shown. The riff-raff of society, in all grades, is composed of those
whose childhood was neglected.
* * * * *
Early in 1785, a detachment from the depôt at Chatham was forwarded to
head-quarters, and the event is thus described in the autobiography:--
“There is no situation where merit is so sure to meet with
reward as in a well-disciplined army. Those who command are
obliged to reward it for their own ease and credit. I was
soon raised to the rank of corporal; a rank which, however
contemptible it may appear in some people’s eyes, brought me
in a clear twopence _per diem_, and put a very clever worsted
knot upon my shoulder too.… As promotion began to dawn, I grew
impatient to get to my regiment, where I expected soon to bask
under the rays of Royal favour. The happy day of departure
at last came: we set sail from Gravesend, and, after a short
and pleasant passage, arrived at Halifax in Nova Scotia. When
I first beheld the barren, not to say hideous, rocks at the
entrance of the harbour, I began to fear that the master of
the vessel had mistaken his way; for I could perceive nothing
of that fertility that my good recruiting captain had dwelt on
with so much delight.
“Nova Scotia had no other charm for me than that of novelty.
Everything I saw was new: bogs, rocks, and stumps, mosquitoes
and bull-frogs. Thousands of captains and colonels without
soldiers, and of squires without stockings or shoes.… We stayed
but a few weeks in Nova Scotia, being ordered to St. John’s, in
the province of New Brunswick. Here, and at other places in the
same province, we remained till the month of September, 1791,
when the regiment was relieved, and sent home.”
Cobbett repeatedly declared, in after-life, that during these eight
years he was never accused of the slightest fault. As his numerous
opponents, in all their violence and unscrupulousness, never succeeded
in raking up anything, in the smallest degree, derogatory to his high
character as a soldier, the statement is, probably, as perfectly true
as need be. But he also boasts that he never wilfully disobeyed his
father or his mother. These two things are so interdependent (in the
mind of the biographer), that the reader must once more be recalled
to the idea presented in the early part of this chapter, of the
prominence due to the illustrious results of self-discipline. An idea,
which is _only_ an idea with the great majority of mankind, to their
latest hour. An idea, which gains prominence in some minds only just
in time to enable them to warn their younger fellows, of the certain
consequences of its neglect. An idea, which is eagerly embraced by some
few, who, by a happy inspiration, note that the world has been led and
guided, and governed, by the men who first put the bit and the bridle
upon their own unruly selves.
* * * * *
So William Cobbett goes to his regiment. And while others are
swilling, or gambling, or idling, he is continually training. Rapid
promotion is the result. At the end of little more than a year, he is
Sergeant-Major, having been placed in that proud position over the
heads of fifty other sergeants.
While, however, he was only corporal, he was made clerk of the
regiment, a post which brought him in an immensity of labour, a great
deal of which was due to the ignorance or unworthiness of his superior
officers. The studies, too, were not neglected:--
“I was studying at one and the same time, Dr. Lowth’s
_Grammar_, Dr. Watts’s _Logic_, the _Rhetoric_ of some fellow
whom I have forgotten, a book on _Geometry_, … Vauban’s
_Fortifications_, and (_ex-officio_) the famous Duke of York’s
_Military Exercise and Evolutions_, explaining these latter
by ground-plans.… Never did these cause me to neglect my
duty in one single particular; a duty of almost every hour in
the day, from daylight till nine o’clock at night.” … “When
I was sergeant-major … I found time to study _French_ and
_Fortification_. My _chef-d’œuvre_ in the latter was the plan
of a regular sexagon with every description of outwork. When
I had finished my plan, on a small scale, and in the middle
of a very large piece of drawing-paper, I set to work to lay
down the plan of a siege, made my line of circumvallation,
fixed my batteries and cantonments, opened my trenches,
made my approaches, covered by my gabions and fascines,--at
last effected a mine, and had all prepared for blowing up
the citadel.” … “When I was in the army, I made, for the
teaching of young corporals and sergeants, a little book on
_arithmetic_; and it is truly surprising in how short a time
they learned all that was necessary for them to know of that
necessary department of learning. I used to make each of them
copy the book.”
Those were days when a man might rise above the rank-and-file.[4]
Cobbett himself had the promise of an ensigncy, when he came to make
application for his discharge. As a matter of course, such officers,
through their skill, prudence, and general knowledge, became the crack
men of their regiments; the best practically-instructed men, perhaps,
in the army. For the rest, the average officer must have been a
curious make-up; sent into the army, often as early as fourteen years
of age--without any special training--he was there for his social
position; and, except when on active service, passed a frivolous sort
of existence; often so ignorant of his professional duties (_i.e._
everything beyond daily routine) that they were habitually shirked,
excepting when the colonel was a Tartar, or when a clever _factotum_
could be found among his subordinates.
Such a _factotum_ was the new clerk to the 54th regiment:--
“In a very short time, the whole of the business, in that way,
fell into my hands; and at the end of about a year, neither
adjutant, paymaster, or quarter-master, could move an inch
without my assistance. The _military_ part of the regiment’s
affairs fell under my care in like manner. About this time, the
new _discipline_, as it was called: (that is to say, the mode
of handling the musket, and of marching, &c., called _Dundas’s
System_) was sent out to us, in little books, which were to
be studied by the officers of each regiment, and the rules
of which were to be immediately conformed to. Though any old
woman might have written such a book, though it was excessively
foolish from beginning to end, still it was to be complied
with; it ordered and commanded a total change, and this change
was to be completed before the next annual review took place.
To make this change was left to me, who was not then twenty
[24] years of age, while not a single officer in the regiment
paid the least attention to the matter; so, that when the
time came for the annual review, I, then a _corporal_, had to
give lectures of instruction to the officers themselves, the
colonel not excepted; and, for several of them, if not for all
of them, I had to make out, upon large cards which they bought
for the purpose, little plans of the position of the regiment,
together with lists of the words of command, which they had to
give in the field.… There was I, at the review, upon the flank
of the grenadier company, with my worsted shoulder-knots, and
my great, high, coarse, hairy cap, confounded in the ranks
amongst other men, while those who were commanding me to move
my hands or my feet, thus or thus, were, in fact uttering words
which I had taught them; and were, in everything excepting mere
authority, my inferiors, and ought to have been commanded by
me.”
Several references to this period are made in the “Advice to Young
Men;” and need not be reproduced here. But the following racy story
(from the “Political Register” of Dec. 1817) must be laid under
contribution to illustrate this period of Cobbett’s life.
“The accounts and letters of the Paymaster went through my
hands, or, rather, I was the maker of them. All the returns,
reports, and other official papers were of my drawing up. Then
I became the sergeant-major to the regiment, which brought me
in close contact at every hour, with the whole of the _epaulet_
gentry, whose profound and surprising ignorance I discovered in
a twinkling. But I had a very delicate part to act with these
gentry; for, while I despised them for their gross ignorance
and vanity, and hated them for their drunkenness and rapacity,
I was fully sensible of their _power_; and I knew also the envy
which my sudden rise over the heads of so many old sergeants
had created. My path was full of rocks and pit-falls; and, as I
never disguised my dislikes or restrained my tongue, I should
have been broken and flogged for fifty different offences,
given to my supreme jackasses, had they not been kept in awe
by my inflexible sobriety, impartiality, and integrity, by
the consciousness of their inferiority to me, and by the real
and almost indispensable necessity of the use of my talents.
First, I had, by my skill and by my everlasting vigilance,
eased them all of the trouble of even _thinking_ about their
duty; and this made me their master,--a situation in which,
however, I acted with so much prudence, that it was impossible
for them, with any show of justice, to find fault. They, in
fact, resigned all the discipline of the regiment to me, and
I very freely left them to swagger about, and to get roaring
drunk out of the profits of their pillage, though I was, at the
same time, making preparations for bringing them to justice for
that pillage, in which I was finally defeated by the protection
which they received at home.
“To describe the various instances of their ignorance, and the
various tricks they played to disguise it from me, would fill
a volume. It is the custom in regiments to give out _orders_
every day from the officer commanding. These are written
by the adjutant, to whom the sergeant-major is a sort of
deputy. The man whom I had to do with was a keen fellow, but
wholly illiterate. The orders, which he wrote, most cruelly
murdered our mother tongue. But, in his absence, or during
a severe drunken fit, it fell to my lot to write orders. As
we both wrote in the same book, he used to look at these. He
saw _commas_, _semi-colons_, _colons_, _full-points_, and
_paragraphs_. The questions he used to put to me, in an obscure
sort of way, in order to know why I made these divisions, and
yet, at the same time, his attempts to disguise his object,
have made me laugh a thousand times. As I often had to draw up
statements of considerable length, and as these were so much in
the style and manner of a _book_, and so much unlike anything
he had ever seen before in man’s handwriting, he, at last, fell
upon this device: he made _me_ write, while he pretended _to
dictate_! Imagine to yourself me sitting, pen in hand, to put
upon paper the precious offspring of the mind of this stupid
curmudgeon! But here a greater difficulty than any former
arose. He that could not _write_ good grammar, could not, of
course, _dictate_ good grammar. Out would come some gross
error, such as I was ashamed to see in my handwriting. I would
stop; suggest another arrangement; but this I was, at first,
obliged to do in a very indirect and delicate manner. I dared
not let him perceive that I saw, or suspected his ignorance;
and, though we made sad work of it, we got along without any
very sanguinary assaults upon mere grammar. But this course
could not continue long, and he put an end to it in this way:
he used to tell me _his story_, and leave me to put it upon
paper; and thus we continued to the end of our connexion.
“He played me a trick upon one occasion, which was more
ridiculous than anything else, but which will serve to show how
his ignorance placed him at my mercy. It will also serve to
show a little about Commissioners sent out by the Government.
There were three or four Commissioners sent out to examine into
the state of the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
Their business was of a very extensive nature. They were to
inquire into the number of the people, the extent of their
settlements, the provisions expended upon them, and a great
variety of other matters. Upon all these several heads they
were to make _a Report_, and to subjoin to it a detail in
figures. It required great ingenuity to frame these tables
of figures, to bring the rude and undigested materials under
general heads, dividing themselves into more particular
sections, and then again subdividing themselves, and so on,
and showing, at last, a sort of total, or result of the whole.
To frame this appendix to the Report, and to execute in any
moderate space of paper required a _head_, an _eye_, and a
_hand_; and to draw up _the Report itself_ was a task of a
still superior order. The Commissioners, the name of one of
whom was Dundas … who or what he was besides, I know not; and
I have forgotten the names of the rest. But they closed their
work at Fredericton in New Brunswick, where I was with my
regiment. As the arrival of every stranger was an excuse for a
roaring drunk with our heroes, so this ceremony now took place.
But the Commissioners had their _Report_ to make. And what did
my ass of an adjutant do, _but offer to do it for them_! They,
who in all likelihood, did not know how to do it themselves,
took him at his word; and there was he, in the sweetest mess
that ever vain pretender was placed in. He wanted to get some
favour from these Commissioners, and relied upon me, not only
to perform the task, but to keep the secret. But then, the
part he had to act now was full of difficulty. The Report of
these fellows was no concern of mine. It could not, by any
contrivance, be hooked in amongst my _duties_. He therefore
talked to me, at first in a sort of ambiguous manner. He said
that the Commissioners wanted him to do it,--and, d----n them,
he would not do it for them. Then, when I saw him again, he
_asked_ me something about it, showing me their rude mass of
papers at the same time. I now began to find what he would be
at; but I affected not to understand him, turned the matter
as soon as I could, and so we parted. At this time I had
long been waiting to go and see an old farmer and his family,
and to shoot wild pigeons in the woods; and, as the distance
was great, and a companion on the journey necessary, I wanted
a sergeant to go with me. The leave to do this had been put
off for a good while, and the adjutant knew that I had the
thing at heart. What does he do now, but come to me, and after
talking about the Report again, affect to lament, that he
should be so much engaged with it, that there was no hope of
my being permitted to go on _my frolic_, till he had finished
the Report. I, who knew very well what this meant, began to
be very anxious for this _finishing_, to effect which I knew
there was but one way. Tacked on to the pigeon-shooting the
report became an object of importance, and I said, ‘_Perhaps
I can do something_, sir, in putting the papers in order for
you.’ That was enough. Away he went, brought me the whole
mass, and tossing them down upon the table: ‘There,’ said he,
‘do what you like with them; for, d----n the rubbish, I have
no patience with it!’ Rubbish it really was, if we looked
only at the rude manner of the papers; but the matter would
to me, at this day, have been very interesting. I d----d the
papers as heartily as he did, and with better reason; but they
were to bring me my week’s frolic; and, as I entered into
everything with ardour, this pigeon-shooting frolic, at the
age of about 23 [27], was more than a compensation for all
the toil of this Report and its appendix. To work I went, and
with the assistance of my shooting-companion sergeant, who
called over the figures to me, I had the appendix completed
in rough draft, in two days and one night. Having the detail
before me, the Report was short work, and the whole was soon
completed. But before a _neat copy_ was made out, the thing had
to be shown to the Commissioners. It would not do to show it
them in my handwriting. The adjutant got over this difficulty
by copying the report; and having shown it, and had it highly
applauded,--‘Well then,’ said he, ‘here sergeant-major, _go and
make a fair copy_.’ This was the most shameless thing that I
ever witnessed. This report and appendix, though I hated the
job, were, such was my habit of doing everything well, executed
with so much neatness and accuracy, that the Duke of Kent,
who afterwards became Commander-in-chief in those provinces,
and who was told of this report, which was in his office at
Halifax, had a copy of it made to be kept in the office, and
carried the original with him to England as a curiosity; and of
this fact he informed me himself. The duke, from some source
or other, had heard that it was I who had been the penman upon
this occasion, though I had never mentioned it to anybody.
It drew forth a great deal of admiration at Fredericton, and
the Lieutenant-governor, General Carleton,[5] asked me in
plain terms, whether it was I who had drawn up the Report. The
adjutant had told me that I _need not say_ but it was he,
_because_ he had promised to do it himself. I was not satisfied
with his logic; but the pigeon-shooting made me say, that I
certainly would say it was done by him if any one should ask
me. And I kept my word with him; for, as I could not give the
question of the governor the _go-by_, I told him a lie at once,
and said it was the adjutant. However, I lied in vain; for,
when I came to Halifax, in my way from the United States to
England, _ten years_ afterwards, I found that the real truth
was known to a number of persons, though the thing had wholly
gone out of my mind; and after my then late pursuits, and the
transactions of real magnitude in which I had been concerned,
I was quite surprised that anybody should have attached any
importance to so trifling a thing.”
It appears that the Duke of Kent, who was Commander-in-chief at that
station a few years later, was one of the “persons” who got wind
of this affair; and in 1800, when Cobbett was returning to England
the second time, the Duke saw him, and showed that he had kept the
veritable copy as a curiosity, having had it transcribed for the use of
the Governor. Further--
“When I told him the whole story, he asked me _how much the
Commissioners gave me_; and when I told him not a farthing, he
exclaimed most bitterly, and said that thousands of pounds had,
first and last, been paid by the country for what I had done.”
It must be noted, too, that there were individual cases of benefit
arising from the example of our very smart sergeant. Several men
caught the “grammar”-fever, whilst an increasing zeal appeared, in
the performance of duty, on the part of many of his comrades. So far,
indeed, that his services to the regiment were at last recognized in
public orders. When the regiment was relieved and sent home in the
autumn of 1791, Cobbett applied for his discharge; which he obtained,
accompanied by a flattering testimonial from his major,[6] to his “good
behaviour, and the services he had rendered the regiment.”
And, with all his duties, Cobbett found time for his share of sports;
skating, fishing, shooting, and even gardening, took some portion of
his hours of liberty. He could work, and he could play, but could never
be idle for a minute.
* * * * *
It must have been in the year 1787, when Cobbett was about twenty-five
years of age, that he first saw his future wife. She was the daughter
of an artilleryman, and then only about thirteen, and, although so very
young, won the heart of our sergeant in a twinkling. Her character,
too, had been moulded by careful and untiring parents; and when the
lover came by, there was the promise of a genuine helpmeet for one, who
required in that respect a woman of unquestioned propriety, of great
industry, and of unfailing discretion. How quickly he prospered, and
the whole story of his courtship, with the one great risk that it ran
of being annulled, is all told in the “Advice to a Lover;” suffice it
to say here, that not only was there never a moment’s regret, but that
Cobbett, to the last day of his life laid all his fame and all the
earthly prosperity which he had enjoyed, to the happy choice which he
had made in his wife. The first trial came, early enough in the history
of the affair, to be a real trial, when the artillery were sent home,
and carried the sergeant’s hopes along with them, besides 140 or 150
guineas of his savings in the girl’s pocket.
FOOTNOTES
[1] This was Mr. Benjamin Garlike, who afterwards became envoy to two
or three foreign courts. He died in 1815, unmarried, ætat. forty-nine.
For a notice of him, _vide Gent. Mag._ lxxxv. 564. Cobbett met him
again, when in the full tide of fame, and says that “he had lived
so long in courts, had so long had to do with superior power, and
had so long lived in submission to the mandates of others, that he
became nervous when he heard my ordinary talk, about men in place and
authority.”
[2] Some clever _lecturer_ has said that “he had but little knowledge
of books, and even less of other men’s thoughts.” We find, however,
in “Porcupine’s Works” (1794-1800), quotations from, or references
to, Swift, Shaftesbury, Pope, Sterne, Butler, Dryden, Shakespeare,
Somerville, Racine, Montesquieu, Le Sage, Cervantes, Congreve, and
Bishop Watson, besides minor names. But such is the way of these clever
historical lecturers--cooking a man’s reputation in their own pot, and
taking the skimmings for truth.
[3] Colonel Debbieg was himself no ordinary man, and had seen active
service in various parts of the world. He entered the army in 1746,
at the age of fourteen, served in the Low Countries, and afterwards
in North America under General Wolfe, whose friendship and entire
confidence he soon acquired. He was gazetted Colonel-Commandant of
the Engineers early in 1783, but retired in a year or two; gazetted
Major-General, 1798, General 1803. He died in 1810, at an advanced age,
having employed his retirement in ingenious studies in fortification.
The circumstance in the text refers to certain letters of Debbieg
(who was a high-spirited fellow) which were addressed to his superior
officer, the Duke of Richmond, then Master-General of the Ordnance.
The Duke took offence, and demanded a court-martial on Debbieg, “for
using indecent and disrespectful expressions towards him, and injurious
and groundless expressions imputing partiality and oppression in the
discharge of his duty.” The Colonel was found guilty, and reprimanded
in open court, and ordered to apologize to the Duke, which he did, and
his arrest was then terminated. It is pretty clear that this affair,
however, did him no injury; and it is not unlikely that there was some
ground for the “expressions” which he had used. No doubt the members
of the court felt bound to protect the Duke in his official character,
even if they thought that Colonel Debbieg had right on his side; and
Cobbett must have very early learnt that military discipline did not
always go along with even-handed justice. The sequel will show what
opinion he acquired concerning the impartiality of military courts.
[4] “When I was in the army, the Adjutant-general, Sir William Fawcett,
had been a private soldier; General Slater, who had then recently
commanded the Guards in London, had been a private soldier; Colonel
Picton, whom I saw at the head of his fine regiment (the 12th, at
Chatham) had been a private soldier; Captain Green, who first had the
command of me, had been a private soldier. In the garrison of Halifax
there were no less than seventeen officers that had been private
soldiers. In my own regiment the quarter-master had been a private
soldier; the adjutant, who was also a lieutenant, had been a private
soldier. No man of sense need be told what powerful motive there was
here for good conduct in the soldiers.”
[5] General Carleton, a “very wise, mild, and just man,” as Cobbett
said of him. The General, many years afterwards, renewed acquaintance
with his quondam subaltern. He was created Baron Dorchester in 1786.
[6] Major Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Cobbett declared that Fitzgerald was
a really conscientious and humane man. He makes repeated testimony to
this effect. In point of fact, he was one of the most amiable of men,
besides a very promising young officer. His unfortunate end, a few
years after this period, is matter of history. (_Vide_ his “Life,” by
Thomas Moore.)
CHAPTER III.
“I HAVE ALWAYS SHOWN MY ENMITY TO EVERY SPECIES OF PUBLIC FRAUD OR
ROBBERY.”
Seven years of army-life had completed the drill of William Cobbett.
Master of himself, in every sense of the word, his campaign was now
to begin. Putting off his red-coat, of which he had been proud enough
withal, he entered upon the last stage of that educational process
which, sooner or later, was to bear some fruit. He had studied men
in the world of books, and he had seen something of them in the
circumscribed arena of one class, viz. the military. But of mankind
as a whole he knew almost nothing: and he would blunder on, for long
years, before getting that sort of wisdom.
However, he came back from Nova Scotia with two closely-linked ideas
uppermost in his mind--an intense affection for the soldiery and for
the classes from which they were drawn, and the deepest disgust at
the peculation which added to their natural privations. He had never
read the newspapers, and was ignorant of politics; he did not know that
the public service was at that period eaten into by corruption as far
up as the Treasury Bench, and that the specimens of venality that he
had witnessed were only examples of a system that pervaded all classes
of officialism. In point of fact, he did not know that returning to
England and obtaining his discharge, with the determination to expose
peculation, he had set his foot upon a track which would in after-years
give him the distinction of having mainly contributed to the disgrace,
the utter confusion, of “the race that plunder the people.” Beyond
all, he did not know that, far from getting any credit from any soul
upon earth, the sure reward for raking up the misdeeds of the “public
plunderers” was contumely and malignity to the bitterest degree.
* * * * *
The first thing, of course, which Cobbett attended to upon reaching
England in December, 1791, was his love affair with ANN REID. He
found her in service, with his money unbroken; and “admiration of
her conduct, and self-gratulation on this indubitable proof of the
soundness of my own judgment, were now added to my love of her
beautiful person.” So that matter was settled, from that moment, and on
the 5th of February, 1792, they were married at Woolwich. They appear
to have lived in London for a few weeks. Here is one anecdote of the
period--
“I was about two months in London; and some one led me to spend
two or three evenings in the week at Coachmakers’ Hall, where
there was a debating society[1] that held its regular sittings.
The ‘Cruelties of the Slave Trade’ was the standing subject; it
was the fashionable cant of the day; the country was in peace
and in great prosperity, and this was a sort of overflowing of
the idle feelings of the nation. The hall used to be crowded to
excess, and with as many women as men. It did not require much
talent to be eloquent upon such a subject, especially as there
was perfect _freedom as to facts_, and as to _contradiction_,
that was nearly as much as a man’s life was worth.… In
consequence of the _intense_ oratory of the Coachmakers’ Hall,
and of little lying books, and delightfully-disgusting pictures
… my _wisdom_ decided that my wife and I should never more use
sugar or coffee, these being, as the orators assured me, highly
impregnated with the sweat and blood of the poor blacks.”
The young couple adhered to this resolve until some time after they had
settled in Philadelphia.
The debating societies in London had other subjects, too, to occupy
their minds; the progress of the French Revolution having strongly
excited the popular mind. In May a proclamation was issued against
meetings and seditious writings, and as the year went on there was
increasing ferment. Although the country was at peace, His Majesty’s
ministers were really contemplating war against France; and the
Government had enough on its hands, endeavouring, at one and the
same time, to quell these feelings and to humour the military and
naval forces. It was found necessary, early in the year, to make some
important changes in the Navy Victualling Department, in consequence
of wholesale corruption, and prostitution of the public money, being
unexpectedly brought to light.[2] The sister service had also its
grievances, a stringent warrant having been issued regulating the
soldiers’ equipment, and reprobating extravagance and waste.[3] In
February, a curious item appeared in the discussion on the estimates of
the year, in the shape of an additional allowance to the soldiers’ pay,
which was distinctly a bait thrown out to humour the private soldier,
victim of the said extravagance or something worse.--Concerning which
item in the estimates we shall see presently.
Meanwhile, William Cobbett was spending his honeymoon in completing
the plans he had designed several years before, for bringing certain
officers of the 54th Regiment before a court-martial. And, as to the
history of this affair, we must have full details, because we cannot
otherwise see very clearly how he came to fail in this his first
onslaught upon public fraud.
Rapid writers have been content to say that he was bought off; that
he carefully avoided all reference to the affair; that no trace of
any allusion to it occurs in his subsequent writings; that there was
something unpleasant which would tell against himself, and so he
stopped short, &c. Indeed, the paragraph-monger began it; for the
_London Chronicle_ of the 28th March, after mentioning the holding of
the court-martial, adds that “the person who was to have prosecuted the
above officers was formerly sergeant-major of the regiment. It is said
that he has fled to France on account of some misconduct.”
No such thing at all, paragraph-monger! And, no such things at all, ye
rapid writers! You don’t know this man. You don’t know how he retires
from the unequal conflict with money, prescription, aristocratic
influence. Let him flee from anticipated vengeance, and see him return
one day, himself always incorruptible, with such a budget, such a
quiverful!--come back and tell you, with absolute calmness, that he
lays his account with “being calumniated, and with being the object of
the bitterest and most persevering malice.” And why? Because he has
made the war upon CORRUPTION his own particular business, and has found
out that the cruelties which wounded his earnest soul, in those hapless
Nova Scotia days, were just part of a system which was sapping his
country’s strength. No part nor lot would he have in it. And, rather
than seem to support it, he has spurned brilliant offers, which would
have made him rich and high-stomached; and has chosen the part, the
reward of which is calumny and annoyance of every description. See how
he glories, at last, in the conflict, and how fully he knows the nature
of his foe:--
“No sooner does a man become in any degree formidable to her
[‘corruption’], than she sets to work against him in all the
relationships of life. In his profession, his trade, his
family; amongst his friends, the companions of his sports, his
neighbours, and his servants. She eyes him all round, she feels
him all over, and if he has a vulnerable point, if he has a
speck, however small, she is ready with her stab. How many
hundreds of men have been ruined by her without being hardly
able to perceive, much less name, the cause; and how many
thousands, seeing the fate of these hundreds, have withdrawn
from the struggle, or have been deterred from taking part in
it!”
In the year 1809, Mr. Cobbett was at about the zenith of his fame.
Completely emancipated from the aristocratic influence under which he
had, several years before, appeared as a political writer in England,
his eyes were thoroughly opened to the need of Parliamentary Reform.
Early this year his energies had been principally directed on behalf
of this popular cause, but he had also dealt hardly with certain
notorious scandals. When our history comes to that period, we shall
see the various means made use of by his opponents in the endeavour to
silence him; but it is necessary now to refer to that year, because one
of those means was the circulation of a pamphlet with the following
title:--
“Proceedings of a General Court Martial held at the Horse
Guards, on the 24th and 27th of March, 1792, for the trial
of Captain Richard Powell, Lieutenant Christopher Seton, and
Lieutenant John Hall, of the 54th Regiment of Foot, on several
charges preferred against them respectively, by William
Cobbett, late Sergeant-Major of the said regiment; together
with several curious letters which passed between the said
William Cobbett and Sir Charles Gould, Judge-Advocate-General;
and various other documents connected therewith, in the order
of these dates.” [London, 1809.]
Copies of the pamphlet were distributed broadcast over the country,
and in Hampshire, where Cobbett was then living, carriage people
threw them out to the passers-by as they drove along. A very great
number must have got into circulation; and, as pamphlets go, it is not
now a particularly rare one. Of government pamphleteering we shall
have more to say anon; for the present, we will confine ourselves to
Cobbett’s full and complete answer as given in an address to the people
of Hampshire, in the “Political Register” for June 17, 1809. Full,
complete, and satisfactory it was; nobody referred to the matter again.
Even the pamphleteering system itself fell into desuetude for several
years. Other and more arbitrary means were adopted, in the attempt to
stifle this voice--to shut this mouth.
The pamphlet consisted chiefly of a selection of letters, which
passed between the accused officers, the Judge-Advocate-General, and
William Cobbett; and concluded with an account of the trial. The
three officers appeared perfectly willing to meet the charges; and
as for the prosecutor there could be no doubt as to the earnestness
of his intention,[4] _up to within about a week of the date_ first
appointed for the court-martial. That date was the 24th of March; and,
on the court assembling, no prosecutor appeared, the result being a
postponement to the 27th. On that day, the court having reassembled,
the Judge-Advocate-General was himself sworn, and deposed that he
had made ineffectual efforts to discover the prosecutor, whilst the
landlady at whose house Cobbett had lodged stated that he had removed
the previous week. This witness also produced the three last letters
of the Judge-Advocate-General to William Cobbett, unopened; which
letters stated (1) that an important witness for the prosecution was
not likely to be well enough to attend, (2) that the day of the trial
was fixed, and (3) that the trial was postponed. The charges were
then read, to the effect that the accused had made false musters,
mustered persons who were not soldiers, made false returns to the
Brigadier-general commanding at New Brunswick, misapplied work-money
earned by the non-commissioned officers and men, deducted firewood from
the allowance, and disposed of it for their own purposes, disposed
of clothing belonging to the men, and obliged them (whilst they were
clothed in rags) to accept of an inadequate sum in lieu of the said
clothing, signed false certificates respecting the clothing, and
defrauded the men of bread. After the “acquittal,” a memorandum was
submitted to the law officers of the crown, upon the whole case. Their
opinion was, that, unless there were proof of conspiracy with others,
Cobbett could not be criminally prosecuted; but that the parties
injured by his conduct, which was certainly most highly blamable, might
maintain actions upon the case against him.
Such was the offending pamphlet: on the 3rd of June, 1809, a notice
appears in the “Political Register,” of its publication, evidently
under the sanction of Government; also, that Mr. Cobbett will take
the earliest opportunity of giving a full account of the matter. He
repudiates positively every insinuation of having acted, at any time
of his life, dishonestly or dishonourably; at the same time, had the
whole of the papers connected with this affair been published without
misrepresentation he never would have noticed the thing at all, but
have left the documents to speak for themselves. A fortnight later
a double number of the “Register” contains the full account, with a
great deal more in the shape of commentary, touching the topics of
the day;--it occupies the fifth of a series of Letters to the people
of Hampshire, which Cobbett was then writing, on the subject of
Parliamentary Reform. And it is necessary, in order to do justice to
the whole story, to reproduce a great portion of it here.
After repeating the tale of his honourable discharge from the army, he
proceeds to say:--
“The object of my thus quitting the army, to which I was,
perhaps, more attached than any man that ever lived in the
world, was to bring certain officers to justice for having, in
various ways, wronged both the public and the soldier. With
this object in view, I went straight to London the moment I
had obtained my liberty and secured my _personal safety_,
which, as you will readily conceive, would not have been the
case if I had not first got my discharge.… This project was
conceived so early as the year 1787, when an affair happened
that first gave an insight into regimental justice. It was
shortly this: that the quarter-master, who had the issuing of
the men’s provisions to them, _kept about a fourth part of it
to himself_. This, the old sergeants told me, had been the case
for _many years_; and they were quite astonished and terrified
at the idea of my complaining of it. This I did, however; but
the reception I met with convinced me that I must never make
another complaint, till I got safe to England, and safe out
of the reach of that most curious of courts, a COURT-MARTIAL.
From this time forward I began to collect materials for an
exposure, upon my return to England. I had ample opportunities
for this, being the keeper of all the books, of every sort,
in the regiment, and knowing the whole of its affairs better
than any other man. But the winter previous to our return to
England, I thought it necessary to make extracts from books,
lest the books themselves should be destroyed. And here begins
the history of the famous court-martial. In order to be able to
_prove_ that these extracts were correct, it was necessary that
I should have a _witness_ as to their being _true copies_. This
was a very ticklish point. One foolish step here would have
sent me down to the ranks with a pair of bloody shoulders. Yet
it was necessary to have the witness. I hesitated many months.
At one time I had given the thing up. I dreamt twenty times, I
daresay, of my papers being discovered, and of my being tried
and flogged half to death. At last, however, some fresh act
of injustice toward us made me set all danger at defiance.
I opened my project to a corporal, whose name was _William
Bestland_, who wrote in the office under me, who was a very
honest fellow, who was very much bound to me for my goodness
to him, and who was, with the sole exception of myself, the
only sober man in the whole regiment. To work we went, and
during a long winter, while the rest were boozing and snoring,
we gutted no small part of the regimental books, rolls, and
other documents. Our way was this: to take a copy, sign it
with our names, and clap the regimental seal to it, so that we
might be able to swear to it when produced in court. All these
papers were put into a little box, which I myself had made for
the purpose. When we came to Portsmouth there was a talk of
searching all the boxes, &c., which gave us great alarm, and
induced us to take out all the papers, put them in a bag, and
trust them to a custom-house officer, who conveyed them on
shore to his own house, whence I removed them in a few days
after.
“Thus prepared, I went to London, and on the 14th of January,
1792, I wrote to the then Secretary at War, Sir George Yonge,
stating my situation, my business with him, and my intentions;
enclosing him a letter or petition from myself to the King,
stating the substance of all the complaints I had to make; and
which letter I requested Sir George Yonge to lay before the
King. I waited from the 14th to the 24th of January without
receiving any answer at all, and then all I heard was that he
wished to see me at the War-office. At the War-office I was
shown into an antechamber amongst numerous anxious-looking
men, who, every time the door which led to the great man was
opened, turned their eyes that way with a motion as regular and
as uniform as if they had been drilled to it. These people
eyed me from head to foot, and I never shall forget their look,
when they saw that I was admitted into paradise, without being
detained a single minute in purgatory. Sir George Yonge _heard
my story_; and that was apparently all he wanted of me. I was
to hear from him again _in a day or two_, and after waiting
for _fifteen days_, without hearing from him or any one else
upon the subject, I wrote to him again, reminding him that I
had from the first told him that I had _no other business in
London_; that my stock of money was necessarily scanty; and
that to detain me in London was to ruin me. Indeed, I had in
the whole world but about 200 guineas, which was a great deal
for a person in my situation to have saved. Every week in
London, especially as, by way of episode, I had now _married_,
took at least a couple of guineas from my stock. I therefore
began to be very impatient, and, indeed, also very suspicious
that military justice, in England, was pretty nearly akin to
military justice in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The letter
I now wrote was dated on the 10th of February, to which I
got an answer on the 15th, though the answer might have been
written in a moment. I was, in this answer, informed that
it was the intention to try the accused upon only _part of
the charges_ which I had preferred; and from a new-modelled
list of charges sent me by the Judge-advocate, on the 23rd of
February, it appeared that, even of those charges that were
suffered to remain, _the parts the most material were omitted_.
But this was not all. I had all along insisted that, unless
the court-martial were held in _London_, I could not think of
appearing in it; because, if held in a garrisoned place like
Portsmouth, the thing must be a mere mockery. In spite of this,
however, the Judge-advocate’s letter of the 23rd of February
informed me that the court was to be held at Portsmouth or
Hilsea. I remonstrated against this, and demanded that my
remonstrance should be laid before the King, which, on the
29th, the Judge-advocate promised should be done by himself;
but, on the 5th of March, the Judge-advocate informed me that
he had laid my remonstrance before--_whom_, think you? _Not the
king_, but _the accused parties_, who, of course, thought the
court ought to assemble at Portsmouth or Hilsea, and doubtless
for the very reasons that led me to object to its being held
there.
“Plainly seeing what was going forward, I, on the 7th of March,
made, in a _letter to Mr. Pitt_, a representation of the whole
case, giving him a history of the obstacles I had met with,
which letter concluded thus: ‘I have now, sir, done all a man
can do in such a case. I have proceeded regularly, and I may
add, respectfully, from first to last; if I am allowed to serve
my country by prosecuting men who have injured it, I shall do
it; if I am thwarted and pressed down by those whose office it
is to assist and support me, I cannot do it; in either case, I
shall be satisfied with having done my duty, and shall leave
the world to make a comparison between me and the men whom
I have accused.’ This letter (which, by-the-bye, the public
robbers have not published) had the effect of changing the
place of the court-martial, which was now to be held in London;
but, as to my other great ground of complaint, the leaving
of the _regimental books unsecured_, it had no effect at all;
and it will be recollected that, without those books, there
could be, as to most of the weighty charges, no proof adduced
without bringing forward _Corporal Bestland_, and the danger
of doing that will be presently seen. But now, mark well as to
these books: as to this great source of that kind of evidence
which was not to be brow-beaten, or stifled by the dangers of
the lash. Mark well these facts, and from them judge of what I
had to expect in the way of justice. On the 22nd of _January_
I wrote to Sir George Yonge, for the express purpose of having
the books secured; that is to say, taken out of the hands and
put out of the reach of the parties accused. On the 24th of
January he told me that HE HAD _taken care to give directions_
to have these documents secured. On the 18th of February, in
answer to a letter, in which I (upon information received from
the regiment) complained of the documents not having been
secured, he wrote to me--and I have now the letter before me,
signed with his own hand--that he would write to the colonel
of the regiment about the books, &c.: ‘although,’ says he, ‘I
cannot doubt but that the regimental books _have been_ properly
secured.’ This was on the 18th of February, mind; and now it
appears, from the documents which the public-robbers have put
forth, that the first time any order for securing the books was
given was on the _15th of March_, though the Secretary told
me he had done it on the _24th of January_, and repeated his
assertion in writing on the _18th of February_. There is quite
enough in this fact alone, to show the public what sort of a
chance I stood of obtaining justice.
Without these written documents nothing of importance could be
proved, unless the non-commissioned officers and men of the
regiment should happen to get the better of their dread of
the lash; and, even then, they could only speak from memory.
All, therefore, depended upon those written documents, as to
the principal charges. Therefore, as the court-martial was to
assemble on the 24th of March, I went down to Portsmouth on
the 20th, in order to know for certain what was become of the
books; and I found, as indeed I suspected was the case, that
they had _never been secured at all_; that they had been left
in the hands of the accused from the 14th of January to the
very hour of trial; and that, in short, my request as to this
point, the positive condition as to this most important matter,
had been totally disregarded. There remained, then, nothing
to rest upon with _safety_ but our extracts, confirmed by the
evidence of Bestland, the corporal, who had signed them along
with me; and this I had solemnly engaged with him not to have
recourse to, unless he was first out of the army; that is to
say, out of the reach of the vindictive and bloody lash. He was
a very little fellow, not more than about five feet high, and
had been set down to be discharged when he went to England;
but there was a suspicion of his connexion with me, and
therefore they resolved to keep him. It would have been cruel,
and even perfidious, to have brought him forward under such
circumstances; and, as there was no chance of doing anything
without him, I resolved not to appear at the court-martial,
unless the discharge of _Bestland_ was first granted.
Accordingly, on the 20th of March, I wrote from Fratton,
a village near Portsmouth, to the Judge-Advocate, stating
over again all the obstacles that had been thrown in my way,
complaining particularly that the books and documents had been
left in the possession of the accused, contrary to my urgent
request and to the positive assurances of the Secretary at
War, and concluding by demanding the discharge of a man, whom
I should name, as the only condition upon which I would attend
the court-martial. I requested him to send me an answer by the
next day, at night, at my former lodging; and told him,[5]
that unless such answer was received, he and those to whom my
repeated applications had been made, might do what they pleased
with their court-martial; for that I confidently trusted that
a few days would place me beyond the scope of their power.
No answer came, and as I had learned in the meanwhile that
there was a design to prosecute me for _sedition_, that was an
additional motive to be quick in my movements. As I was going
down to Portsmouth I met several of the sergeants coming up,
together with the music-master; and as they had none of them
been in America, I wondered what they could be going to London
for; but, upon my return, I was told by a _Captain Lane_, who
had been in the regiment, that they had been brought up to
swear that at an entertainment given to them by me before my
departure from the regiment, I had drunk ‘_the destruction of
the House of Brunswick_.’ This was false; but I knew that that
was no reason why it should not be _sworn_ by such persons, and
in such a case. I had talked pretty freely upon the occasion
alluded to; but I had neither said nor thought against the
King; and, as to the _House of Brunswick_, I hardly knew what
it meant. My head was filled with the corruptions and the
baseness in the army. I knew nothing at all about politics. Nor
would any threat of this sort have induced me to get out of
the way for a moment, though it certainly would if I had known
my danger, for glorious ‘Jacobinical’ times were just then
beginning. Of this, however, I knew nothing at all. I did not
know what the _Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act_ meant. When
you have a mind to do a thing, every trifle is an additional
motive. Lane, who had enlisted me, and who had always shown
great kindness toward me, told me they would send me to Botany
Bay; and I now verily believe, that if I had remained, I should
have furnished a pretty good example to those who wished to
correct military abuses. I did not, however, leave England from
this motive. I could not obtain a chance of success, without
exposing the back of my poor faithful friend Bestland, which
had I not pledged myself not to do, I would not have done. It
was useless to appear, unless I could have tolerable fair play;
and, besides, it seemed better to leave the whole set to do as
they pleased, than to be made a mortified witness of what it
was quite evident they had resolved to do.
“Such is the _true_ history of this affair, which had the
public-robbers given it as it stood, unmutilated, not a word
should I ever have published, by way of defence or explanation.”
Cobbett then proceeds to show the hollow and tricky nature of the
attack, by summing up the points which tend obviously to show that the
whole is a trumped-up charge against his honour and his reputation;
first stating that the five letters from himself, which appear in the
pamphlet, were the least important of twenty-seven which he actually
wrote, including one to Mr. Pitt, and one, in the shape of a petition,
to the King. He then reminds his readers that he would have scarcely
put himself to the expense of two or three months’ living in London,
and to the trouble of writing so many letters and of dancing attendance
at the Horse Guards, if he hadn’t a good case and were not in earnest
about it; that nine years had elapsed since his return to England, and
no process had been taken upon the opinion of the Attorney-General and
his colleague; that his “Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine” was
reprinted in London, in 1796, at the express desire of Mr. Canning,
_i.e._ only four years after the incident, and yet nothing had been
done to supply the omission (in that publication) of the court-martial
story; that he had, when dining with Mr. Pitt in August, 1800, talked
freely about Fitzgerald and about the army “for the express purpose of
leading him on to talk about the court-martial, but it was avoided. In
fact, they all well knew that what I had complained of was true, and
that I had been baffled in my attempts to obtain justice only because I
had neither money nor friends.” That General Carleton (late Governor of
Nova Scotia) had visited him in England, since his return, and that the
Duke of Kent had talked to him in Halifax about the regiment and its
affairs in the year 1800; yet both these distinguished officers must
have known all about the court-martial, the Governor’s name, in point
of fact, having occurred in one of the “charges.” Besides this, there
could be little doubt that the whole facts were not put before Sir
John Scott and Sir John Mitford, or their opinion would have been very
different from what it was.
Finally, he reminds his readers that he had, in the year 1805, himself
given the cue. Which was certainly the case, as may be seen by
referring to his writings of that date:--
“In the printed account of my life, there is a small chasm.
When I published that account I was in the midst of the
revilers of England, and particularly of the English army; or,
I should have then stated, that the primary cause of my leaving
the army, that the circumstance which first disgusted me, and
that finally made me resolve to tear myself from a service, to
which my whole mind and heart were devoted, was, the abuses,
the _shocking_ abuses as to money-matters, the _peculation_, in
short, which I had witnessed in it, and which I had, in vain,
endeavoured to correct. What those abuses were, by whom they
were committed, and how, after I quitted the army, I failed in
obtaining redress, it would not now, after many of the parties
are dead, be proper for me to state; but, if the ‘Society of
Gentlemen’ have, as it is more than probable they have, access
to the records of the War Office, and can obtain leave to
publish the correspondence upon the subject, the public will
then see that I have all my life, and in all situations, been
the enemy of peculation. It is, however, incumbent upon me to
state, that I have good reason to believe that my failure upon
that occasion was in no way to be ascribed to Mr. Pitt, who,
as far as a person in so obscure and perfectly friendless a
situation as I then was, could judge, was, as to the matter in
question, the friend of fair inquiry and of justice.”
We may safely dismiss this matter. Should the reader find it worth
his while to rake up this old pamphlet, and compare it with Cobbett’s
“full account,” he may find a stray divergence of date or of trifling
fact; but nothing more than, as a careless omission, will serve to
establish the good faith of the man--a class of evidence which is often
as serviceable as a statement clear and unfaltering to the minutest
detail. Why the affair went off as it did is obvious to any one who
knows the world, and the rules of society, better than Cobbett did: it
was a hopeless task, from the very first, to undertake it upon his own
responsibility, without professional assistance. A mistake, however,
which he seldom corrected through life; and the consequence being that
he as seldom succeeded in gaining a cause: he persisted, to the very
last, in being his own advocate--and with the proverbial result.
Let us turn, then, to another incident of this year. An incident which
has given the biographer a good deal of trouble; as it presents an
occasion upon which it has seemed difficult to reconcile two statements
which, at first sight, seem to vary.
For this purpose, we must again refer to a later date in the history.
In the year 1805, Mr. Cobbett made himself very offensive to the
Government over the unfortunate difficulties of Lord Melville. The
whole contest, between the Government and its opponents, was of the
hottest; and the choicest Billingsgate passed between them. One
periodical, inspired by the Pitt and Melville party, made it its
business to assail Cobbett in particular; and, on the 27th of July of
the above-mentioned year, the following passage occurred:--
“As Mr. Cobbett can hardly fail to read this review, I beg
leave, through its medium, to ask that worthy patriot if he
knows who was the author, and industrious circulator through
the army, of a pamphlet entitled _The Soldiers’ Friend_,
published about the same time, but fraught with ten times more
mischief than Paine’s ‘Rights of Man’? A pamphlet calculated to
render soldiers discontented with their situation, and incite
them to mutiny and rebellion; a pamphlet which, in short, I
have no hesitation in saying, was a considerable source of the
naval mutiny at the Nore.”
Now, by the time this effusion appeared in public, Cobbett had begun to
incur the severest displeasure of his opponents; he had created mortal
enemies by the development of his warfare upon “corruption.” Caricature
was at work, keeping pace with the most virulent attacks on the part of
the ministerial press. For all which he did not care a pin, but this
charge of sedition was more than he could stand. Perfectly happy (as
his letters of that date will show), both in his domestic pursuits and
in the general public appreciation which he was then possessing, he
enjoyed fair fight; but this beginning of dark insinuation roused him;
and, for the first time since his return to England, he entered upon a
proud and energetic boast of the services which he had rendered to his
country. The part with which we have at present to do is the answer to
the charge of sedition, which is as follows:--
“During the interval of my discharge and of my departure for
France, a proposition, preceded by a speech of the Secretary
at War, was made in parliament to augment the pay of the army.
Some parts of the speech contained matter which a person,
with whom I was acquainted, and to whom I had communicated my
information upon such subjects, thought worthy of remark in
print. Hence arose a little pamphlet, entitled the _Soldiers’
Friend_. Of this pamphlet I was not the author; I had nothing
to do either with the printing or the publishing of it; and
I never had in my possession, or ordered to be sent to any
person, or to any place, three copies of it in my life; and
I do not believe that 500 copies, in the whole, ever went
from the bookseller’s shop; a fact, however, that may easily
be ascertained by application to Mr. Ridgway, who was the
publisher of it.”
Here, then, is a distinct disavowal: a circumstance that is calculated
to worry the impartial biographer, anxious to be fair toward a
good (though sometimes ill-advised) man; the reason for its being
a disturbing factor lying in this, that the _Soldiers’ Friend_ is
enumerated, on two distinct occasions during the closing years of
Cobbett’s life, among the writings by which he had helped to benefit
his fellow-men. Let us have his own words (June, 1832):--
“The very first thing I ever wrote for the press in my life was
a little pamphlet entitled the _Soldiers’ Friend_, which was
written immediately after I quitted the army in 1791, or early
in 1792. I gave it in manuscript to Captain Thomas Morrice (the
brother of that Captain Morrice who was a great companion of
the Prince of Wales); and by him it was taken to Mr. Ridgway,
who then lived in King Street, St. James’s Square, and Mr.
Ridgway (the same who now lives in Piccadilly) published it. I
do not know that I ever possessed the pamphlet, except for a
week or two, after it was published, &c., &c.”
Now these two statements cannot, on a superficial reading, be easily
reconciled; and they form, together, an instance which may be eagerly
seized upon, on the part of those who would continue to represent
Cobbett as a man who would wilfully utter contradictory things.
But, upon examining the matter somewhat more closely, we know, even
better than Cobbett himself, something of the actual circumstances.
In the first place, the great probability is that Cobbett was not the
_originator_ of the pamphlet; that this Captain Thomas Morrice, or
somebody else (still more interested in awakening the public mind on
army-frauds) had instigated him to put his ideas upon paper. The speech
of the Secretary-at-War, above referred to, occurs in a debate upon the
army estimates, on the 15th February, 1792--a debate in which Mr. Fox,
among others, took part; and the item of an additional allowance to the
soldiers was that which was the immediate inspiration of the pamphlet;
besides being, in all likelihood, productive of some little excitement
in military circles generally.[6]
Secondly, it will be observed that the sting of the charge against
Cobbett lay in this: that he had been instrumental in spreading
sedition in the naval and military services. Now, this was totally
false. It _is_ a fact that the “Soldiers’ Friend” was afterwards
circulated largely, and provoked antagonism; but of this Cobbett
knew nothing, and could not know anything, for he had long been safe
in Philadelphia, far away from English domestic politics, and much
more concerned in earning his bread-and-cheese by hard work, than in
spreading the principles of the French Revolution. Those who made it
their business to circulate clever and spicy pamphlets, saw the merit
of this one, and reprinted it for their own objects.
How we come to be satisfied upon this point is this: the pamphlet
published by Ridgway (8vo, 6_d._) was mentioned among “new
publications,” in the “Scots Magazine” for June, 1792; and reviewed
by the “Monthly” and the “Critical” of the same month. Although
the “Critical Review” professes to know the person who had been
distributing it “on the parade in St. James’s Park,” this sixpenny
pamphlet did not long continue to burden Mr. Ridgway’s shelves. It is
possible that there is now no copy in existence. But, in the following
year, a cheap reprint appeared, without printer’s or publisher’s
name--which had an extensive circulation; for it was answered by
anti-reform tracts, such as “A Few Words to the Soldiers of Great
Britain,” “The Soldier’s and Sailor’s Real Friend,” &c.
So, the matter seems clearer. Cobbett is in London, preparing for the
grand exposure; he has sympathizers, who durst not, however, show
themselves. This Captain Morrice (or somebody) thinks that the speech
on the army estimates contains “matter worthy of remark in print.”
William Cobbett not only agrees with him (somebody), but he is burning
with the desire to set right certain cases of practical injustice, with
which he is only too familiar: (of the quarter-master of the regiment
defrauding the men of their rice and peas by means of short weights,
and so forth,--to the tune of unutterable meannesses.) William Cobbett
has the pen of a ready writer, and a grasp of hard facts withal. Hence
arises a “little pamphlet:” a little pamphlet, published in respectable
octavo form, by a highly respectable house; addressed to the
aristocratic and well-to-do section of society, and published at their
very doors. With this printing and publishing W. Cobbett has “nothing
to do;” and he never sees it again after a week or so. But there’s some
real stuff in it; and, next year, real stuff is much in vogue!
Those were lively times, in 1792. The extreme “horrors” of the French
Revolution had not yet been displayed; and the news from France, with
the new and glorious doctrines of Liberty and Equality, were being
eagerly embraced by a large section of the English people. Besides
the Society of Free Debate, there were others established in London,
which soon caused alarm on the part of the Government; for their
influence and consequence rapidly grew, on account of the frequency
and publicity of their meetings, and the readiness with which all
persons were invited to come and deliver their sentiments. Of course,
ministerial alarm soon took action. The king’s proclamation appeared in
May: new life was put into the magisterial office; the trumpery police
force of that day was reorganized; and prosecutions for libel became
frequent. “Not a pamphlet or paper was published, in which any measure
of government was animadverted on or disapproved of, but proceedings
were immediately commenced against the parties who either wrote,
edited, printed, or published it.”[7]
So, London is no place for our ex-sergeant, even if his plans are not
already formed. With all his loyalty, he is beginning to think there
must be something in republicanism. And he will carry out his notion
of going to the United States of America; after having visited France,
with the object of perfecting himself in the language of that country:--
“From the moment that I resolved to quit the army, I also
resolved to go to the United States of America, the fascinating
and delusive description of which I had read in the works
of Raynal. To France I went for the purpose of learning to
speak the French language, having, because it was the language
of the military art, studied it by book in America. To see
fortified towns was another object; and how natural this was
to a young man who had been studying fortification, and who
had been laying down Lille and Brisach upon paper, need not be
explained to those who have burnt with the desire of beholding
in practice that with which they have been enamoured in theory.”
As matters stood, then, in March, 1792, there was no longer any
occasion for delay; and it appears that he landed in France before the
month was out: very much startled and amused, by the way, at seeing
written up over a shop-door in Calais,--“_Ici l’on a des Assignats, dès
cent francs à un sou._” He settled at Tilq, a little village near St.
Omer, and remained there for about five months. He found the people so
unexpectedly kind and hospitable, to a degree that he had never been
accustomed to, that all those prejudices, with which Englishmen, at
that time, regarded their brave and impulsive neighbours, and which
prejudices were fully developed in his own breast--were dispelled
in a few weeks. What with his newly-married bliss, and his perfect
health, and his zealous reading and study, this must have been the very
happiest period of Cobbett’s life. He did intend to go to Paris for
the winter, but the troublous times prevented that purpose:--
“I perceived the storm gathering: I saw that a war with England
was inevitable, and it was not difficult to foresee what would
be the fate of Englishmen in that country, where the rulers
had laid aside even the appearance of justice and mercy. I
wished, however, to see Paris, and had actually hired a coach
to go thither. I was even on the way, when I heard at Abbeville
that the king was dethroned and his guards murdered. This
intelligence made me turn off towards Havre-de-Grâce, whence I
embarked for America.”
[APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III.]
EXTRACTS FROM
“THE SOLDIERS’ FRIEND; or, Considerations on the late pretended
Augmentation of the Subsistence of the private Soldiers.
“[Motto] ‘Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the
law.’--_Goldsmith._
“Written by a Subaltern. Price Twopence, or one hundred copies, 10_s._
6_d._ 1793.
“Amongst the many curious manœuvres of the present
administration, I do not recollect one that marks more
strongly its character than the late alteration in the pay
and establishment of the army. The augmentation (as they
would insinuate it is) of the pay of the British soldiers is
represented as arising from a consideration of the wretchedness
of their situation; and the pretended reduction of the foot
forces is held out to the public as an act of œconomy. The
people, I am much afraid, are satisfied with this.… The
situation of the privates in our marching regiments of foot
was really so miserable, that every one endued with the least
compassion, must rejoice to find that a _morsel of bread_ has
been by any means added to that scanty meal; and the enormous
load of taxes, that press out the very vitals of the people,
ensures a favourable reception to every reduction, or pretended
reduction, of public expense, let it be ever so trifling or
absurd.…
“I propose to make a few observations on the alteration that
has taken place in the soldiers’ pay; in doing which, although
I shall be very concise, I have the vanity to think I shall
discover a little better information on the subject than the
Secretary at War did at his opening of it in the House of
Commons; when he observed (after having stated the saving that
would arise from the reduction in the infantry) that ‘against
this saving he had to mention an increase that had been made to
the pay of the private soldiers to the amount of 23,000_l._ The
situation of the privates had long been admitted to have been
extremely hard. It had in _former years_ been the regulation
that a soldier should receive three shillings a week for his
subsistence. It has _of late years so happened_ that he had not
had for that purpose above eighteenpence or two shillings. This
was evidently too little for the bare purpose of existence.
By the late regulation his pay was to be made adequate to the
subsistence the common soldier _formerly enjoyed_, an object
which he was confident would meet with the warm approbation of
every man.’…
“As the Secretary observed, ‘the situation of the privates
had long been admitted to have been extremely hard;‘ but
people had not the least notion that it ’had so happened of
late years, that the soldier had only eighteenpence or two
shillings a week for his subsistence.’ Men of humanity thought
the soldier’s situation hard, but every one thought that he
received _three shillings a week_ for his subsistence; and why
any man unacquainted with the abuses of the army should think
otherwise I cannot imagine, seeing that there is an Act of
Parliament, a law of the land, that declares it shall be so.”
[After reciting the regulations that existed, and which were yearly
renewed in each Mutiny Act, he proceeds:--]
“It has _so happened!_ and for years too! astonishing! It
has _so happened_ that an Act of Parliament has been most
notoriously and shamefully disobeyed for years, to the extreme
misery of thousands of deluded wretches (our countrymen), and
to the great detriment of the nation at large; it has _so
happened_ that not one of the offenders has been brought to
justice for this disobedience, even now it is fully discovered;
and it has _so happened_ that the hand of power has made
another dive into the national purse, in order--not to add to
what the soldier ought to have received; not to satisfy _his_
hunger and thirst; but to gratify the whim or the avarice of
his capricious and plundering superiors.”
[After a good deal more, to the same effect, the writer reverts to the
new demand upon the national purse by the Secretary at War:--]
“This is certainly the most curious mode of rectifying abuses
that ever was heard of; and it points out in the clearest
light the close connexion that exists between the _ruling
Faction_ in this country and the military officers; and this
connexion ever must exist while we suffer ourselves to be
governed by a _Faction_. If any other body of men had thus
impudently set the laws of the land at defiance,--if _a gang
of robbers_, ornamented with red coats and cockades, had
plundered their fellow-citizens, what would have been the
consequence? They would have been brought to justice, hanging
or transportation would have been their fate; but, it seems,
the Army is become a _Sanctuary_ from the power of the law.
Nor shall we be at all surprised at this, if we consider that
a standing army is the great instrument of oppression, and
that a very numerous one may in a little time be necessary. I
am not, therefore, blaming the ministry for this proceeding.
I really think they have acted with a great deal of prudence
in procuring the 23,000_l._ for their supporters; but (as it
was all amongst friends) I think the business might have been
opened in a more unequivocal manner; as thus, in the language
of truth:--
“‘The situation of the privates has long been admitted to
be extremely hard. It is a law (which in former years was
obeyed) that a soldier shall receive three shillings a week
for his subsistence. It has so happened that of late years
the officers have thought proper to despise this law, and to
give the soldier only eighteenpence or two shillings. This is
evidently too little for the bare purpose of existence; and
though he has subsisted on it of late years, and might with
our good will have done so to the day of judgment, as there
now is a necessity to humour the wretch a little, _for reasons
best known to ourselves_; we have, by a late regulation, made
his pay adequate to what he always ought to have enjoyed: an
object that we are confident must meet the warm approbation of
our majority in this House. The public burden will, indeed, be
increased by this, but it is certainly much better to tax the
people to their last farthing than to wound the _honour_ of
our trusty and well-beloved, the officers of the army, by any
odious and _ungentlemanlike_ investigation of their conduct.’
“It particularly becomes you, the British Soldier, to look upon
this matter in its proper light. The pretended addition to
your subsistence is, in fact, no addition at all; you will now
receive no more than you always ought to have received.… If you
should have the fortune to become a non-commissioned officer,
and were to deduct but a penny from a man unlawfully, you know
the consequences would be breaking and flogging, and refunding
the money so deducted; but here you see your officers have been
guilty of the practice for years, and now it is found out not a
hair of one of their heads is touched; they are even permitted
to remain in the practice, and a sum of money is taken from the
public to coax you with, now it seems likely that you may be
wanted.…
“Soldiers are taught to believe everything they receive _a
gift from the Crown_. Cast this notion from you immediately,
and know that there is not a farthing you receive but comes
out of the _public purse_. What you call your _King’s Bounty_,
or _Queen’s Bounty_, is no bounty from either of them: it
is 12_s._ 2_d._ a year of the public money, which no one can
withhold from you; it is allowed you by an Act of Parliament,
while you are taught to look upon it as a present from the King
or Queen!--I feel an indignation at this I cannot describe--I
would have you consider the nature of your situation, I would
have you know that you are not the servant of _one man_ only;
a British soldier never can be that. You are a servant of the
whole nation, of your countrymen, who pay you, and from whom
you can have no separate interests. I would have you look upon
nothing that you receive as _Favour_ or a _Bounty_ from Kings,
Queens, or Princes; you receive the wages of your servitude; it
is your property, confirmed to you by Acts of the Legislature
of your country, which property your rapacious officers ought
never to seize on, without meeting with a punishment due to
their infamy.”
“FINIS.”
FOOTNOTES
[1] This was The Society of Free Debate, one of several which had just
been set on foot. For some interesting particulars of these societies
_vide_ “Memoirs of John Thelwall” (London, 1837).
[2] _Public Advertiser_, April 10, 1792.
[3] _Scots Magazine_, Jan., 1792.
[4] “I have placed myself in London, sir, and have continued here ever
since the 26th December last, for no other purpose than the prosecution
of this affair” (Letter of 23rd February).
“I must beg leave, sir, _once more_ to request that you will be pleased
to lay my representation of this matter [_locale_ of the court-martial]
before the King, and that as soon as possible” (4th March).
“If my accusation is without foundation, the authors of cruelty have
not yet devised the tortures I ought to endure” (11th March).
The letter of the 16th March expresses the astonishment of the writer
that _the greatest part of the charges were to be left out_!--which
throws much light on the subject.
[5] This accounts for the paragraph in the _London Chronicle_; a thing
which is inexplicable till one comes to this sentence.
[6] Not to interrupt the thread of the narrative, we will append
to this Chapter one or two extracts from the “Soldiers’ Friend”--a
course which will at one and the same time tell the whole story of the
grievance, and introduce us to the first essay of Cobbett’s pen.
[7] “Memoirs of John Thelwall,” i. 89.
CHAPTER IV.
“I LIVED IN PHILADELPHIA.”
The Quaker city may well be the pride of the American nation. Founded
by William Penn, shortly after his settlement of Pennsylvania in the
year 1682, it has become, after the lapse of two centuries, the most
important town in the United States. Second to New York only in the
matter of population, it is, at present, the first manufacturing
city in the whole country; whilst it has long held supremacy as the
centre of literary and philosophical activity. In the centenary year
of 1876, Philadelphia possessed no less than 146 daily and weekly
newspapers, and twenty public libraries: no bad sign of the state of
intellectual advancement of a town containing about seven hundred
thousand inhabitants. The population consists largely of members of
the Society of Friends, or of their descendants; but there is always
a considerable foreign element in the city: the Irish numbering about
one-seventh, the Germans one-thirteenth, and the English one-thirtieth.
There are at least 400 churches and chapels, and more than 400 public
schools; and 100 hospitals and asylums.
The causes of the prosperity of Philadelphia are not difficult to
be discovered. It is noticeable, that all flourishing capitals are
marked by strong cosmopolitan features, with a background of national
characteristic. The characteristic basis of the Pennsylvanian is
his Quaker ancestry; and upon this has been grafted, in varying
proportions, the religious and political notions, the manners,
customs, and national prejudices, of English, Scotch, German, Irish,
Welsh, Swedish, and other emigrants, ever since the middle of the
last century. The capital of the state took the full-flow of this
tide of immigration; further augmented during and after the war of
independence, by a number of French people seeking for that peace and
security which was denied them in their native land. With all these
varying elements, however, the frugal, patient, industrious Quaker
spirit has pervaded the place; and reduced all this complexity to
some sort of harmony. Of party spirit there has, naturally, been much
activity; indeed, at the period of our history, it prevailed more
extensively than in almost any other town in the United States; but
the cultivation of knowledge, of the useful arts, and of commercial
enterprise, have been the agents in producing the prosperous and
beautiful capital of Pennsylvania.
The city of Philadelphia would appear to have been the pole, one
hundred years ago, which attracted alike the inquiring traveller and
the political fugitive. The Abbé Raynal had collected and published, in
1770, an account of the American colonies,[1] which produced a profound
sensation in Europe. It was translated into almost every European
language. The literary characteristics of the book were great animation
and plausibility; and, although it excited many strictures, from the
political facts being largely mixed up with rhetorical allusions to
the wrongs and errors of past generations, the work was, for a time,
exceedingly popular, and furnished a basis for much of the cotemporary
information on America. The unfortunate Jean Pierre Brissot, who was
at Philadelphia in or about the year 1788, declared that Raynal had
exaggerated everything; and Cobbett always qualified any allusion to
the Abbé’s writings by some expression or other, to a similar effect.
Brissot adds, however, his own impressions of the city, which were high
enough, both with reference to the beauty of its situation and of its
public buildings, and to the prosperity of its inhabitants.
An English traveller,[2] who visited the States in 1795-6, gave some
curious particulars of the condition of society in Philadelphia at
that period. Quakers appeared to number about one quarter of the
whole population. The average Philadelphian was represented as being
deficient in hospitality and politeness towards strangers:--
“Amongst the uppermost circles in Philadelphia, pride,
haughtiness, and ostentation are conspicuous.… In the manners
of the people in general, there is a coldness and reserve, as
if they were suspicious of some designs against them, which
chills to the very heart those who come to visit them. In
their private societies a _tristesse_ is apparent, near which
mirth and gaiety can never approach. It is no unusual thing,
in the genteelest houses, to see a large party of from twenty
to thirty persons assembled, and seated round a room, without
partaking of any other amusement than what arises from the
conversation, most frequently in whispers, that passes between
the two persons who are seated next to each other. The party
meets between six and seven in the evening; tea is served with
much form; and at ten, by which time most of the company are
wearied with having so long remained stationary, they return
to their own homes. Still, however, they are not strangers to
music, cards, dancing, &c.”
Until about 1779 no public amusements were suffered in the city; but,
after a few years later, Philadelphia would seem to have got a little
gayer,[3] at least in the winter time--when the Congress and the State
Assembly were sitting, and President Washington made his annual stay
of some weeks. The President’s birthday became a special anniversary,
when all the citizens (except Quakers) would make a point of paying him
a visit. Concerts and public assemblies were held, and two or three
theatres, even, were started. The great political revolution, in point
of fact, produced a social one of quite as definite a character, even
in prim Philadelphia. As concerning the manners of the lower classes,
Weld records a sad deficiency: they would return impertinent answers to
questions couched in the most civil terms, and would insult a person
bearing the appearance of a gentleman, on purpose to show how highly
they estimated the principles of liberty and equality. Hostlers and
servants always appeared to be “doubtful whether they ought to do
anything for you or not;” civility was not to be purchased with money;
it seemed incompatible with freedom, and with the ideas which would
convince a stranger that he was really in a land of liberty.
* * * * *
Now, Mr. William Cobbett, late of his Majesty’s 54th Regiment,
had heard of this new country. His reading, hitherto, had been
purely literary; but, plunged into the world of London--a novice in
politics--he imbibes the then popular notions of republicanism, and
is an enthusiastic admirer of the new ideas. The eloquent pages of
Tom Paine,--unanswerable in themselves, yet, at that day, rigorously
proscribed,--help to intoxicate; and, boiling with indignation (as
he says) at the abuses he had witnessed, he has, indeed, become a
republican. That is, a theoretical republican: for, when he soon comes
to see all sides of republicanism, he reverts to his intrinsic love for
the constitution under which he was born.
And to this new land of liberty he will go.
He landed in Philadelphia in October, 1792, and, for a short time, took
up his residence at Wilmington, a little port[4] on a creek of the
Delaware, about twenty-eight miles below Philadelphia. Here Cobbett
found the very thing to give him a start in life; for the place was
swarming with French emigrants, who wanted, above all things, to learn
the English language. After a little time it appears that he found
Philadelphia itself a better field for his energies; and, accordingly,
having removed thither, he soon had as many pupils as he could attend
to. This occupation was the occasion, also, which produced the “English
Grammar for Frenchmen:”--
“When I afterwards came to teach the English language to French
people in Philadelphia, I found that none of the grammars,
then to be had, were of much use to me. I found them so
defective, that I wrote down instructions and gave them to my
scholars in manuscript. At the end of a few months, this became
too troublesome; and these manuscript instructions assumed the
shape of a grammar in print, the copyright of which I sold
to Thomas Bradford,[5] a bookseller in Philadelphia, for 100
dollars (or 22_l._ 11_s._ 6_d._); which grammar, under the
title of _Maître d’Anglais_, is now in general use all over
Europe.”
Cobbett seems to have held a rather qualified opinion upon this French
grammar: for he elsewhere says it was “a very hasty production,” and
that it was so defective that he was almost ashamed to look into it
[1829]; but that it had the great merit of “_clearness_, and of making
the learner see the _reason_ of the rules.” Yet the book still holds
its own; and it has been repeatedly reprinted in France, Belgium, &c.[6]
Besides the teaching of English to the emigrants, there was some
translating done for the booksellers. The first of any importance,
and which Cobbett alludes to somewhere as his “_coup d’essai_ in the
authoring way,” was the work of Von Martens on the “Law of Nations;” at
that date a book of considerable authority:--
“Soon after I was married, I translated, for a bookseller
in Philadelphia, a book on the Law of Nations. A member of
Congress had given the original to the bookseller, wishing for
him to publish a translation. The book was the work of a Mr.
Martens, a German jurist, though it was written in French. I
called it _Martens’s Law of Nations_.… I translated it for a
quarter of a dollar (thirteenpence halfpenny) a page; and, as
my chief business was to go out in the city to teach French
people English, I made it a rule to earn a dollar while my wife
was getting the breakfast in the morning, and another dollar
after I came home at night, be the hour what it might; and I
have earned many a dollar in this way, sitting writing in the
same room where my wife and only child were in bed and asleep.”
Another task of similar character was the translation of “A
Topographical and Political Description of the Spanish part of St.
Domingo,” the author of which was Moreau de St. Méry,[7] one of the
more distinguished of the French emigrants. This worthy man’s shop,
at No. 84, South Front Street, was probably a favourite resort of the
_literati_, as he was a person of considerable attainments, and a
member of the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia; whilst the bulk
of his expatriated fellow-countrymen consisted, without doubt, of a
cultivated class of men. Louis Philippe and his brothers were there.
Talleyrand was there for a time,[8] and Cobbett recalls the fact, many
years after, of having met him in St. Méry’s house.
Several of Cobbett’s best anecdotes of Philadelphian life are
associated with Frenchmen; here is one:--
“A Frenchman, who had been driven from St. Domingo to
Philadelphia, by the Wilberforces of France, went to church
along with me one Sunday. He had never been in a Protestant
place of worship before. Upon looking round him, and seeing
everybody _comfortably seated_, while a couple of good stoves
were keeping the place as warm as a slack oven, he exclaimed,
‘_Pardi! on se sert Dieu bien à son aise ici!_’”
It need not be imagined, however, that he had no American friends. On
the contrary, as we shall see in the sequel, he made some friendships
that lasted through life.
FOOTNOTES
[1] “Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du
commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes.” The author was assisted by
Diderot, and others; and, at last (about 1780) the work was forbidden
in France. Raynal lived to regret the extreme notions which he had
advocated, and actually appeared at the bar of the National Assembly
(in the month of May, 1791), there, to the surprise and displeasure
of his audience, boldly to expostulate with them on their rash
and ruinous courses; the principal charge being that they had too
literally followed his principles, and reduced to practice the reveries
and abstracted ideas of a philosopher, without having previously
adapted and accommodated them to men, times, and circumstances!
Raynal exercised a great deal of influence upon his generation, and
may be considered as having contributed largely to the uprooting of
institutions which resulted from the French Revolution; and this
singular piece of moral courage was displayed at an advanced period of
his life, when he had little to fear from any possible violence; the
usual consequence, in those days, of reaction in opinion.
[2] Isaac Weld. See his “Travels through the States of North America,
and the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, during the years 1795,
1796, and 1797” (2 vols., London, 1800).
[3] According to Brissot, even the Quakers were getting less strict,
some of them being inclined to lapse into luxury, and have carpets!
[4] Now a flourishing town, with several newspapers, and extensive
manufactures.
[5] Thomas Bradford, a leading Philadelphian of the period, was one of
the members of a family that exercised a good deal of influence in the
city for a long course of years. He died in 1838, at the advanced age
of ninety-four. His father was Colonel William Bradford, a hero of the
Revolutionary War, and his great grandfather William Bradford, one of
the fellow-emigrants of Penn. This founder of the family was the first
printer in Pennsylvania, and he lived to see some of his descendants
amongst the most useful and esteemed citizens of Philadelphia. The
Bradfords, during an entire century (1719-1819), published and
conducted a newspaper in the city. Thomas Bradford was among the
founders of the American Philosophical Society. His son, Thomas, became
a judge of the United States.
[6] The actual title, at first, was “Le Tuteur Anglais, ou grammaire
regulière de la langue Anglaise, en deux parties, &c. (à Philadelphie,
chez Thomas Bradford, 1795).”
The 35th Edition (Paris, 1861: Baudry) has the following remarks in
the preface, after alluding to the original success of the work: “La
clarté de sa méthode l’a fait accueillir en France avec un plus vif
empressement encore qu’en Amerique; ce qui s’explique parfaitement, car
cette grammaire étant à l’usage des Français, il fallait que son mérite
fut bien réel pour obtenir dans un pays étranger un succès qui n’a
fait que grandir depuis. Sa supériorité incontestable sur les autres
ouvrages du même genre ne peut donc faire doute, et ce qui le prouve,
c’est que le public et la plupart des professeurs les plus en renommée
parmi ceux qui ont conservé leur libre arbitre n’ont cessé de se servir
de cette grammaire.”
A republication of this grammar was undertaken by Mons. L. H. Scipion,
Comte Du Roure, who made large additions, with critical emendations,
to Cobbett’s book (5th Edit. Paris, 1816). This gentleman adds his
testimony to the general estimation in which the work was held, both
in America and Europe, and says, “Ce qui distingue avantageusement
le travail de M. Cobbett, c’est qu’il _raisonne_ souvent, et oblige,
plus souvent encore, le lecteur à raisonner.” But he must needs
give currency to a report which he had heard, that Cobbett was not
the real author of the _Maître d’Anglais_:--“Plusieurs personnes,
bien dignes de foi, m’ont assuré qu’il était tres-eloigné, surtout
en 1795, de posséder suffisamment la langue Française pour pouvoir
écrire dans cette langue; et que d’ailleurs M. Cobbett, très-célèbre
écrivain politique sans doute, n’avait pas fait dans sa jeunesse
toutes les études classiques que la composition d’une Grammaire rend
indispensables. _Peut-être ai-je été mal informé_”! A little bit of
national pique, let us suppose. Of course we know more about Mons.
Cobbett’s classical studies. And Mons. Du Roure got a little wiser on
that point, if he read the No. of the “Political Register” for Feb. 21,
1818.
[7] Médéric Louis Elie Moreau de St. Méry, a Frenchman of good family.
He had passed a somewhat distinguished career as a legislator, in his
native country, until the period of the Revolution; when he had to flee
from Robespierre. Having safely reached the United States with his
family, he became a merchant’s clerk for a short time, and eventually
opened a bookseller’s shop, to which was afterwards added a printing
office. He wrote and published several works in Philadelphia, and
returned to France in 1799. Died 1819, ætat. sixty-nine.
[8] The residence of Talleyrand in America is an obscure period in his
history. We may learn more of it when the long-expected memoirs are
published. The first part of his exile was spent in the neighbourhood
of New York, and time hung heavily on his hands, for his pecuniary
resources were scanty; and, indeed, this period was afterwards one
of the most painful memories of his life. There does not appear any
foundation for the suspicion that Talleyrand was a spy in the pay of
the French Government, although it is probable enough that he kept
his eyes open on his own account. At last he determined (as he wrote
to Madame Genlis) to try and retrieve his fortunes with mercantile
speculations; and in this he was successful. Towards the close of
1795, he sent a petition for the revocation of his banishment,
which was ultimately granted, and he returned to France in the
course of the following year. (_Vide_ “Biographie Universelle;” also
Touchard-Lafosse: “Hist. Polit. de Talleyrand.”)
A singular contribution to Talleyrand’s history occurs in “Men and
Times of the Revolution,” by Elkanah Watson (New York, 1856, pp. 387,
388). It will serve to refute the notion that he had any particular
mission. “In the years 1794 and 1795, I resided in the northern suburbs
of Albany, known as the Colonie. Monsr. Le Contaulx, formerly of Paris,
a very amiable man, was my opposite neighbour. His residence was the
resort of the French emigrants. During that period, Count Latour Dupin,
a distinguished French noble, made a hair-breadth escape from Bordeaux
with his elegant and accomplished wife, the daughter of Count Dillon.
They were concealed in that city for six terrible weeks, during the
sanguinary atrocities of Tallien, and arrived at Boston with two trunks
of fine towels, containing several hundred in each, the only property
they had been able to save from the wreck of an immense estate.… They
purchased a little farm upon an eminence nearly opposite Troy. Here
they were joined by Talleyrand, who had arrived about the same time
in Albany, also an exile and in want. I became intimate with them.…
They avowed their poverty, and resided together on the little farm,
suffering severe privations, bringing to Albany the surplus produce
of their land, and habitually stopping, with their butter and eggs,
at my door. They yielded with a good grace to their humiliating
condition. In the year following, I was surrounded in my office by a
group of distinguished Frenchmen; the Count, Talleyrand, Volney, the
philosophical writer and traveller, Mons. Pharoux, … and Desjardins,
a former Chamberlain of Louis XVI.” This intercourse at length
terminated, through the avowed dislike of the _émigrés_ to American
institutions, habits, and customs.
CHAPTER V.
“HEARING MY COUNTRY ATTACKED, I BECAME HER DEFENDER THROUGH THICK AND
THIN.”
Nearly two years had elapsed, before Cobbett’s life was disturbed by
any greater excitement than would be furnished by his daily pursuits
as a teacher of the French language. Even in Philadelphia, where party
spirit was strong, and antipathy to England was particularly manifest,
a busy, hard-working man, with his bread to earn, and who had no
natural taste for politics, had no need to interfere--and Cobbett would
not have interfered, probably, had not the occasion been brought about
almost by accident. The little republicanism which had leavened his
mind, whilst in London, had disappeared, when he came to see more of
human nature in his new country; and the municipal contests, and the
flaring speeches and writings, which excited less industrious minds,
had no charm for him. “Newspapers,” he says, “were a luxury for which
I had little relish, and which, if I had been ever so fond of, I had
not time to enjoy.”
But a circumstance occurred, about the middle of the year 1794, which
aroused Cobbett’s native spirit; and offered, at the same time, an
opportunity for its exercise:--
“One of my scholars, who was a person that we in England should
call a coffee-house politician, chose, for once, to read his
newspaper by way of lesson; and, it happened to be the very
paper which contained the addresses presented to Dr. Priestley
at New York, together with his replies. My scholar, who was a
sort of republican, or at best, but half a monarchist, appeared
delighted with the invectives against England, to which he
was very much disposed to add. Those Englishmen who have been
abroad, particularly if they have had time to make a comparison
between the country they are in and that which they have left,
well know how difficult it is, upon occasions such as I have
been describing, to refrain from expressing their indignation
and resentment; and there is not, I trust, much reason to
suppose, that I should, in this respect, experience less
difficulty than another.
“The dispute was as warm as might reasonably be expected
between a Frenchman, uncommonly violent even for a Frenchman,
and an Englishman not remarkable for _sang-froid_; and, the
result was, a declared resolution, on my part, to write and
publish a pamphlet in defence of my country, which pamphlet
he pledged himself to answer; his pledge was forfeited; it is
known that mine was not. Thus, sir [he is addressing Mr. Pitt],
it was, that I became a writer on politics. ‘Happy for you,’
you will say, ‘if you had continued at your verbs and your
nouns.’ Perhaps it would: but the fact absorbs the reflection;
whether it was for my good, or otherwise, I entered on the
career of political writing; and, without adverting to the
circumstances under which others have entered on it, I think
it will not be believed that the pen was ever taken up from a
motive more pure and laudable. I could have no hope of gain
from the proposed publication itself, but, on the contrary, was
pretty certain to incur a loss; no hope of remuneration, for
not only had I never seen any agent of the British government
in America, but was not acquainted with any one British subject
in the country. I was actuated, perhaps, by no very exalted
notions of either loyalty or patriotism; the act was not much
an act of refined reasoning, or of reflection; it arose merely
from _feeling_, but it was that sort of feeling, that jealousy
for the honour of my native country, which I am sure you will
allow to have been highly meritorious, especially when you
reflect on the circumstances of the times and the place in
which I ventured before the public.
“Great praise, and still more, great success, are sure to
operate, with young and zealous men, as an encouragement to
further exertion. Both were, in this case, far beyond my
hopes, and still farther beyond the intrinsic merits of my
performance. The praise was, in fact, given to the boldness of
the man who, after the American press had, for twenty years,
been closed against every publication relative to England, in
which England and her king were not censured and vilified,
dared not only to defend but to eulogize and exalt them; and,
the success was to be ascribed to that affection for England,
and that just hatred of France, which, in spite of all the
misrepresentations that had been so long circulated, were still
alive in the bosoms of all the better part of the people; who
openly to express their sentiments, only wanted the occasion
and the example which were now afforded them.”
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY was one of the most estimable of men. Among those who
have thrust back the barriers of Ignorance, he holds no mean place,
whether as a student of natural philosophy, or as a Christian teacher.
But he belongs to a period when the Pioneer had to suffer for his
opinions.
Born in 1733, he early evinced the qualities of a thorough student,
mastered several European and Eastern languages, spent his spare cash
in scientific instruments, and entered the ministry as an inflexible
opponent of the cruel notions of “eternal wrath.” He was a man rather
inclined to take always the heterodox side of things, as one who had
discovered that most popular doctrines, in politics and religion, were
founded on baseless traditions. Priestley’s contributions to science
brought him within the fold of the Royal Society; and he was pursuing
his studies at the same time that he had charge of an important
dissenting congregation at Birmingham, when the French Revolution
broke out, in 1789. By this time he was known as an ardent and honest
controversialist, and had numerous warm friendships among the advanced
Liberals of London and Paris; and his position at Birmingham was
becoming hazardous, on account of the denunciations he underwent on
the part of the orthodox in Church and State. Matters came to a crisis
in the summer of 1791; when, a feast being held for the purpose of
celebrating the fall of the Bastille, a mob assembled, highly strung
with loyalty; which, after disturbing the diners, broke the windows of
the hotel, proceeded to demolish Priestley’s and another meeting-house,
his dwelling, and the houses of several other influential dissenters.
In short, there was a genuine riot, for which the county had to pay.
And Dr. Priestley had to leave Birmingham. Nor did three years of
London life, with the fierce controversies of the day, serve to console
him. Having succeeded his friend, the celebrated Dr. Richard Price,
as pastor of a meeting at Hackney, he fought alternately with French
sceptics and with English “divines;” but age was creeping upon him;
his beloved scientific pursuits were being neglected; and he looked
wistfully to the new land of liberty and toleration. His domestic
hearth was a happy one, and he could at least take that with him
wherever he went. So, in the spring of 1794, he set sail for America.
His departure, however, was the signal for a good deal of affectionate
demonstration. Addresses were presented to him, and he left his
native shores with the good wishes and the regrets of thousands. But,
flattering as this was, it was nothing to the reception Priestley
experienced on his arrival at New York. He found himself welcomed to
“a country worthy of him;” to a land where reason had “successfully
triumphed over the artificial distinctions of European policy and
bigotry;” by those who had “beheld with the keenest sensibility the
unparalleled persecutions” which had attended him in his native country.
So, the Philadelphia newspapers of June, 1794, published these
addresses--the most noted of which were from the Tammany Society of
New York, the Democratic Society of the same, the Republican Natives
of Great Britain and Ireland resident in the City of New York, the
Medical Society of New York, and the American Philosophical Society
of Philadelphia. The Philadelphia newspapers, ready for all sorts of
fiery attack upon England, printed these addresses in full, along with
Dr. Priestley’s grateful replies. One of Mr. Cobbett’s intelligent
pupils, in his studious zeal, produces such a newspaper, that his
English exercises may be presented in the English of the day. As one of
his own omelettes, he will have his English served up fresh; no musty
Addison nor dry Delolme for him; no stale oligarchical stuff, ready
for hatching into villainy and oppression; but the sweet, new-laid
principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Which principles,
as exemplified in their latest fruits, Monsieur le Maître d’Anglais
abhors, with all his heart and soul.
Accordingly, there forthwith appeared an anonymous pamphlet, under
the title of “Observations on Priestley’s Emigration;” consisting
of a review of the circumstances which had driven the Doctor from
Birmingham, and eventually from England; and a running commentary upon
the republican addresses which had been presented to him. The whole
tenour of the tract, however, consisted in its expressed horror of the
ruin and desolation which the theorists had brought upon France, and
in pointing out what would be (in the mind of the writer) the logical
result of the new ideas being disseminated in England. Priestley’s
emigration, in point of fact, was made the peg on which to hang an
anti-revolution tirade. Certain sound principles, however, were
enunciated: an extract or two will serve to show this, and, by the
felicitous terms in which they are conveyed, to display the wonderful
command which Cobbett had already acquired over his native tongue.
“System-mongers are an unreasonable species of mortals; time,
place, climate, nature itself, must give way. They must have
the same governments in every quarter of the globe; when,
perhaps, there are not two countries which can possibly admit
of the same form of government at the same time. A thousand
hidden causes, a thousand circumstances and unforeseen events,
conspire to the forming of a government. It is always done by
little and little. When completed, it presents nothing like a
system; nothing like a thing composed, and written in a book.
It is curious to hear people cite the American government as
the summit of human perfection, while they decry the English;
when it is absolutely nothing more than the government which
the kings of England established here, with such little
modifications as were necessary on account of the state of
society and local circumstances. If, then, the Doctor is come
here for a change of government and laws, he is the most
disappointed of mortals. He will have the mortification to
find in his ‘_asylum_’ the same laws as those from which he
has fled, the same upright manner of administering them, the
same punishment of the oppressor, and the same protection of
the oppressed. In the courts of justice he will every day see
precedents quoted from the English law-books; and (which to
him may appear wonderful) we may venture to predict, that it
will be very long before they will be supplanted by the bloody
records of the revolutionary tribunal.”
“Even supposing his intended plan of improvement had been the
best in the world, instead of the worst, the people of England
had certainly a right to reject it. He claims as an indubitable
right, the right of thinking for _others_, and yet he will not
permit the people of England to think for _themselves_.… If the
English choose to remain slaves, bigots, and idolaters, as the
Doctor calls them, that was no business of his; he had nothing
to do with them. He should have let them alone; and, perhaps
in due time, the abuses of their government would have come
to that ‘natural termination,’ which he trusts, ‘will guard
against future abuses.’ But no, said the Doctor, I will reform
you--I will enlighten you--I will make you free.--You shall
not, say the people.--But I will! says the Doctor. By ----, say
the people, you shall not! ‘_And when Ahithophel saw that his
counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and
gat him home to his house, to his city, and put his household
in order, and hanged himself, and died, and was buried in the
sepulchre of his father._’”
“I am one of those who wish to believe that foreigners come
to this country from choice, and not from necessity.… The
most numerous, as well as the most useful, are mechanics.
Perhaps a cobbler, with his hammer and awls, is a more valuable
acquisition than a dozen philosophi-theologi-politi-cal
empirics, with all their boasted apparatus.”
Mr. Thomas Bradford was again his publisher. The circumstance is fully
related in the American autobiography:--
“When the ‘Observations’ on the Emigration of this ‘martyr to
the cause of liberty’ were ready for the press, I did not,
at first, offer them to Mr. Bradford. I knew him to retain a
rooted hatred against Great Britain, and concluded, that his
principles would prevent him from being instrumental in the
publication of anything that tended to unveil one of its most
bitter enemies. I therefore addressed myself to Mr. Carey.[1]
This was, to make use of a culinary figure, jumping out of the
frying-pan into the fire. Mr. Carey received me as booksellers
generally receive authors (I mean authors whom they hope to
get but little by): he looked at the title from top to bottom,
and then at me from head to foot.--‘_No, my lad_,’ says he, ‘I
don’t think it will suit.’”--_My lad!_ God in heaven forgive
me! I believe that, at that moment, I wished for another yellow
fever to strike the city; not to destroy the inhabitants, but
to furnish me too with _the subject of a pamphlet_, that might
make me rich. Mr. Carey has sold hundreds of the ‘Observations’
since that time, and therefore I dare say he highly approved of
them, when he came to a perusal. At any rate, I must not forget
to say, that he behaved honourably in the business; for, he
promised not to make known the author, and he certainly kept
his word, or the discovery would not have been reserved for the
month of June, 1796. This circumstance, considering Mr. Carey’s
politics, is greatly to his honour, and has almost wiped from
my memory that contumelious ‘my lad.’
“From Mr. Carey I went to Mr. Bradford, and left the pamphlet
for his perusal. The next day I went to him to know his
determination. He hesitated, wanted to know if I could not
make it a little _more popular_, adding that, unless I could,
he feared that the publishing of it would endanger _his
windows_. ‘More popular,’ I could not make it. I never was of
an accommodating disposition in my life. The only alteration
I would consent to was in the title. I had given the pamphlet
the double title of ‘The Tartuffe Detected; or, Observations,’
&c. The former was suppressed, though, had I not been pretty
certain that every press in the city was as little free as that
to which I was sending it, the ‘Tartuffe Detected’ should have
remained; for the person on whom it was bestowed merited it
much better than the character so named by Molière.
“These difficulties, and these fears of the bookseller, at
once opened my eyes with respect to the boasted liberty of the
press. Because the laws of this country proclaim to the world,
that every man may write and publish freely, and because I
saw the newspapers filled with vaunts on the subject, I was
fool enough to imagine that the press was really free for
every one. I had not the least idea, that a man’s windows
were in danger of being broken, if he published anything that
was _not popular_. I did, indeed, see the words _liberty_ and
_equality_, the _rights of man_, the _crimes of kings_, and
such like, in most of the booksellers’ windows; but I did not
know that they were put there to save the glass, as a free
republican Frenchman puts a cockade tricolor in his hat to save
his head. I was ignorant of all these _arcana_ of the liberty
of the press.
* * * * *
“The work that it was feared would draw down punishment on
the publisher, did not contain one untruth, one anarchical,
indecent, immoral, or irreligious expression; and yet the
bookseller feared for his windows! For what? Because it was
not _popular enough_. A bookseller in a _despotic_ state fears
to publish a work that is ‘too popular,’ and one in a free
state fears to publish a work that is not ‘popular enough.’ I
leave it to the learned philosophers of the ‘Age of Reason’ to
determine in which of these states there is the most liberty
of the press; for, I must acknowledge, the point is too nice
for me: fear is fear, whether inspired by a Sovereign Lord the
King, or by a Sovereign People.
“The terms on which Mr. Bradford took the ‘Observations,’
were what booksellers call _publishing it together_. I beg
the reader, if he foresees the possibility of his becoming an
author, to recollect this phrase well. Publishing it together
is thus managed: the bookseller takes the work, prints it, and
defrays all expenses of paper, binding, &c. and the profits,
if any, are divided between him and the author.--Long after
the ‘Observations’ were sold off, Mr. Bradford rendered me an
account (undoubtedly a very just one) of the sales. According
to this account, my share of the profits (my share only)
amounted to the enormous sum of _one shilling and sevenpence
halfpenny_, currency of the State of Pennsylvania (or, about
elevenpence three farthings sterling), quite entirely clear of
all deductions whatsoever!
“Now, bulky as this sum appears in words at length, I presume,
that when 1_s._ 7½_d._ is reduced to figures, no one will
suppose it sufficient to put a coat upon my back. If my poor
back were not too broad to be clothed with such a sum as this,
God knows how I should bear all that has been, and is, and
is to be, laid on it by the unmerciful democrats. Why! 1_s._
7½_d._ would not cover the back of a Lilliputian; no, not even
in rags, as they sell here.”
The allusion to the _coat_ was occasioned by a report, which Cobbett
thought fit to notice, that Mr. Bradford had provided him with the
means of procuring one. Whether the “Observations” proved remunerative
or not, it is certain that the tract was immediately reprinted in
London, by Stockdale, and noticed in the magazines; and we will
presently refer to the comments which were raised in England by the new
politician.
Meanwhile the pamphlet was read, and became notorious; and its author
had discovered where his strength lay. He would prepare another
onslaught upon the anti-federalists.
In order, however, that we may understand the position which Cobbett
soon came to occupy as a politician, it will be necessary to take
a glimpse of the leading questions which were agitating the public
mind of America. The chief cities of the United States, receiving, as
they did, the overflowings of European ebullition, had also their own
internal squabbles, and were become so many centres of revolutionary
intrigue; and the perils and the strife thus engendered opened the
field of political adventure to many an aspiring mind. It was a period
of terrible personal animosities, both in Europe and America: men’s
friendships, and men’s reputations, never had a harder lot, in the
face of differences of opinion.
* * * * *
The Revolution, which culminated in the Declaration of Independence in
the year 1776, did not, in all respects, ultimately suit the tastes
of the whole American people. A numerous section, after the immediate
cause of the quarrel with the mother country had been despatched,
remained “loyal;” and would have been well pleased to see re-union with
England. Others, again, satisfied with Independence, were yet desirous
that the Constitution should be as near as possible on a monarchical
plan, with a basis of government centralized at the capital. A still
larger class,--daily augmented, too, by the arrival of English, Irish,
and French refugees,--were for republicanism pure and simple.
France had given support to the infant republic, from the first; having
recognized “Independence” in 1778, and, from that date, continued to
give aid in the shape of food supplies and war material, during the
progress of the conflict. The treaty of peace being concluded with
Great Britain, in the year 1783, and the States settling down to
consider their future, it was soon discovered that the Constitution,
which had first been hastily framed, was inadequate for the purposes
of good government; there was no power to compel individual states,
where unanimity, or, at least, general consent, was desirable.[2] A new
Constitution was therefore promulgated, by which absolute power was
lodged in a central Federal Congress of the States. From that date the
two prominent political parties came into existence: the one, known as
the Federalist, strongly in favour of centralization; the other, the
anti-Federalist or Democratic party, which was for independent state
sovereignty, and which was too deeply republican in its nature not to
fear the risks, which centralized power would entail upon the new-born
liberties of the nation. The leading partisans on the former side were
Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay; whilst Thomas
Jefferson and James Madison were the most eminent among the Democratic
leaders. It must be noted, however, that the statesmen of both parties
were unanimous on the point of republicanism _per se_: their aim was
one object, about which there could be no further question; their
differences consisted in the consideration of the best means of
attaining it.
Mr. Jefferson had been minister to France; and returned to America in
1790, to take a part in the administration. He has left upon record
his experience, upon resuming his place in society, of the reaction
against extreme republicanism which had already taken place;[3] other
testimony, of similar bearing, could be adduced, but it is hardly
necessary for our purpose, considering the amount of support which
Cobbett received during the whole period of his residence in America.
There seems to have been, in point of fact, a Federal majority from
the very first,--and, when the European war broke out, early in 1793,
this section of the nation sympathized, generally speaking, with the
English. A strong anti-British feeling prevailed, however, among the
Democrats, which was displayed in the most fiery and intemperate
language,[4] and found particular vent in a hearty enthusiasm for the
French cause. The first outbreak of the French revolution was hailed
with joy by the extreme republicans; and, at last, when Mr. Pitt came
to think that England was called upon to declare war against France,
in defence of the old European doctrines, this hatred of England was
naturally intensified. Washington’s proclamation of neutrality was in
vain, to check the ardour of the pen-and-ink warriors; and the constant
arrival of proscribed persons was just so much fuel added to the
flames. Another outbreak of war, between England and America, was even
apprehended; and would have taken place, but for the moderate counsels
which prevailed in the minds of Washington and his advisers.
At this juncture, there arrived as ambassador to the United States,
one GENEST,[5] a man eminently fitted for the useful task of
stirring up strife; and it is, indeed, difficult to believe that
the man was not selected with this object in view. Of the strongest
republican principles, he thoroughly scorned the traditions of
diplomacy; and landed at Charleston [April 1793] more with the air
of a newly-appointed provincial governor than with that of envoy
from a friendly nation. Several weeks elapsed before he presented
his credentials to Washington: meanwhile, he was actually engaged in
superintending the fitting-out of privateers! And on his arrival
at Philadelphia there were festivities and congratulations, and
speeches, to be attended to, before he could condescend to wait upon
the President. His subsequent conduct was all of a piece with this;
till, the President having found it necessary to repudiate a French
vice-consul on account of his gross infractions of neutrality, Genest’s
high-toned appeal upon the matter obliged Washington, at last, to
consider the question of demanding his recall. This was effected in the
following year.[6]
But all this did not happen without largely affecting the temper of the
American people. Although Washington generously distinguished between
the conduct of the minister and “the friendly spirit of the nation
which sent him;” although, as Jefferson records, the Government were
“determined to see, in these proceedings, but the character of the
individual, and not to believe that they were by instructions from his
employers,” yet it was undoubtedly a new spur to the active spirit of
democracy. The Philadelphia politicians, especially, raved and stormed
over the iniquities of Britain and the virtues of France.
A more serious trouble to the American Government arose, soon after
the war between England and France had continued some time. As, when
the young Republic was fighting for its life, they had been assisted
by the French, so they now shipped large aids, chiefly in the shape
of provisions, to the French ports. These cargoes were unquestionably
contraband; and the British Government, holding that view, ordered
that all American vessels be detained,--those laden with corn to
be seized,--and a reasonable price to be paid for the cargoes and
freights. Later on, another order was issued, directed against American
cargoes which consisted of provisions and stores for the French
colonies. All this naturally irritated the Americans; they considered
it simply an infraction of their independence; and they were not
disposed tamely to yield to a power which, in the eyes of many, was not
unlikely to dream of future reconquest.
Some alarm was also aroused by the conduct of the British troops in
Canada, who retook possession of certain frontier forts, which had
been ceded to America at the treaty of peace. At the same time, public
attention was directed to a conference held between Lord Dorchester,
the Governor of Canada, and several Indian tribes; on which occasion
language was held by the Governor, which seemed to carry with it a
willingness on the part of England to proceed to hostilities, upon a
given contingency.
Fortunately, however, the disposition of the American Administration
was such, that the fury of the Democrats was powerless to disturb its
equanimity; and the only serious step, which the Government was induced
to take, was to lay an embargo upon the British shipping in American
ports, for the space of thirty days.[7] It was necessary, however, to
come to an understanding; accordingly, an envoy, in the person of Mr.
Jay, repaired to England with full powers, in the hope that existing
difficulties might be removed, and a proper feeling of amity be
secured, between the two nations.
Mr. Jay’s mission was eminently successful, as regarded the two
Governments; but the Treaty in which it resulted only served to
make the breach wider, that existed between the Democrats and their
opponents. His return to America was signalized by an unexampled
storm of invective and abuse; and Jay had, in fact, to retire from
public life.[8] The principle that the flag does not cover the
merchandise was the feature which gave the greatest offence; but the
real objections were sentimental, and were, in fact, brewing as soon as
Jay’s appointment as envoy became known.[9] The treaty was the work of
the Washington administration, the members of which were known to be
favourably disposed towards England; and it was considered likely to
injure the relations existing between America and France. Its opponents
maintained, from the first, that the disposition of Great Britain being
naturally hostile to the United States, there could be no prospect of
real reciprocity; and, when the document arrived, their first thought
was that its ratification would give umbrage to the French. That,
if the United States could convert the evil disposition of England
into one of amity and peace, the projected treaty would be too high
a price to pay for the change; and if there must be war with either
Great Britain or France, it were “more politic for the state, and more
congenial with the sentiments of the people, to engage the former,” as
France would give aid “with all the energy of her triumphant arms;”
whilst, in the case of a war with France, the Americans could neither
count upon the affections, nor rely upon the power, of Great Britain.
But what served, much more, to augment the numbers and vehemence of the
Radical party, and to foment bad feeling between the two countries,
was the constant stream of refugees from the United Kingdom. Mr.
Pitt’s repressive measures were in full force; and the year 1794
witnessed some of the most glaring instances of tyranny that had been
displayed in England since the days of James the Second. Frequent
trials for “sedition” only served to inflame and to energize the spirit
of free inquiry; and men boldly talked of revolution. Some suffered
imprisonment, many more managed to escape; and of those who escaped,
many found a free asylum in Pennsylvania. Some of these men were of
good education and great natural ability; and all were inspired with
the hopes of the day: an imminent deliverance of mankind, generally,
from all kinds of despotism whatsoever.
So, this is how it was in Philadelphia, in these lively times. The most
enlightened and philosophical city in the United States was, at the
same time, the hot-bed of democracy: the home of all that was aspiring
in the human heart and mind. Thus, we can understand something of
the feelings which animate the breast of Mr. William Cobbett, ardent
Loyalist. He knows little of theoretical politics; his short experience
of republicanism has only, at present, served to show him that man
is little better off as the subject of a sovereign people, than as
a subject of a sovereign king; provided that similar constitutional
principles prevail. His recollections of Tom Paine’s animated book,
and his former enthusiasm for republicanism, are--as in the minds of
thousands of his cotemporaries--crushed and buried beneath the torrent
of blood and tears which has been shed in France. A natural reaction
has set in: his native land, with all her faults, comes back to his
memory as a land of average comfort and well-being; and the thought is
uppermost that, perish “liberty and equality,” if all their results
are to consist in a murdered king, and in the home of his childhood
desolated by the bloodthirsty apostles of progress.
One of these emigrants was Mr. James Thomson Callender. His reading
of English history had caused his mind to dwell, somewhat heavily,
upon the underhand means which ministers and parties had used, to
carry their points, during the last century. Abuses in Church and
State: this is the sort of _pabulum_ for the public taste, and Mr.
Callender, accordingly, undertakes to put them all into a popular
form, under the title of “The Political Progress of Britain.”[10] The
result is, that he is a fugitive before many weeks are over his head,
and any further attacks which he has to make, upon the government of
Mr. Pitt and his predecessors, must be offered from the other side of
the Atlantic. The pamphlet, republished in Philadelphia, comes under
the eye of our neophyte politician, and Mr. Cobbett sniffs war. The
“Political progress” presented just the sort of topic which would serve
as provocation: here was another villain maligning his country, and the
wretch must be made an example of.
Accordingly, on the 8th of January, 1795, Mr. Thomas Bradford has for
sale, “A Bone to Gnaw for the Democrats;” consisting of a review of
Callender’s book, followed by a still more daring attack upon the
democratic press and upon the numerous clubs connected with the party.
The “Bone to Gnaw” was a distinct advance upon the “Observations.”
The writer had evidently begun to discuss, and to wrangle. And the
discovery that he had the power to wield a very vigorous pen soon
brought the inclination to use it. There is a good deal of coarseness,
as we should look at it now-a-days, but that was the temper of the
times. The pamphlet raised up a host of enemies, whilst the number of
Cobbett’s admirers proportionately increased; and readers were found,
both in England and America, to give their warmest approbation.
But, among others, was “one Smith, a malignant democrat,” who had
started an “American Monthly Review.” In reviewing “A Bone to Gnaw,”
he endeavoured to weaken the writer’s nerve by attacking his grammar
and composition. To very little purpose, except to bring Mr. Cobbett
up, smiling, with a rejoinder. For, in February, was published “A Kick
for a Bite,” consisting principally of a humorous lesson in the art of
criticism, addressed to the editor of the _Review_; and in March, Part
II. of “A Bone to Gnaw for the Democrats.”
It was about this date, January or February, 1795, when some newspaper
correspondent likened the new federalist writer to a porcupine. The
idea was instantly adopted; and Cobbett announces himself to the
editor of the “American Monthly Review,” as “PETER PORCUPINE, at your
service.” Thus arose one of the most famous of pseudonyms.[11] It was a
long while before the bearer of it was generally known, _i.e._ beyond
a very small circle of acquaintances; yet it appears that the “British
Critic,” as early as Dec. 1795, had discovered the owner of the name.
But the publication of a name, pseudonymous or otherwise, furnished
as it were a handle for opponents; one insisted on calling him “Mr.
Hedgehog,” another styled him “the pork-patriot,” and so on. Beyond
the play upon words, however, and fresh showers of Billingsgate upon
the British name, there was very little talent in these early attacks
upon Mr. Cobbett. One of them, which has survived, is excessively tame,
although the writer undertakes to wring Porcupine’s nose, and humble
his vanity and presumption; and proceeds to insinuate, that he conceals
himself through fear of the horsewhip; and that he is neither more nor
less than an obscure pedagogue, whose moral rectitude would not bear
the test of scrutiny beyond the Atlantic.”[12]
“A Bone to Gnaw, Part II.,” is taken up by a denunciation of the
Society of United Irishmen, a democratic club in Dublin, which had
published an account of its proceedings; and of the acts of the
French Convention at Lyons, where unheard-of cruelties had just been
perpetrated. The following bit of humour conveys so many ideas,
illustrative of the prevailing topics of controversy, that it is worth
while reproducing here:--
“It would have been unpardonable in a society like that of
the _United Irishmen_, if, among their numerous addresses,
none was to be found to the firebrand philosopher, Priestley.
‘Farewell,’ say they, in their consolatory address to
him,--‘farewell, great and good man! Your change of place
will give room for the matchless activity of your genius; and
you will take a sublime pleasure in bestowing on Britain the
benefit of your future discoveries.’ Every honest man ought
to wish that this were true; for the doctor has already made
some discoveries of the utmost importance to future chemical
emigrants, if he could be prevailed on to publish them. He
might let his brethren into the secret of buying land (or
rather _rock_) at a dollar an acre, and selling it again at
ninepence-halfpenny. This is a sort of anti-chemistry, by which
copper is extracted from silver; and the process by which it is
accomplished must certainly be a _desideratum_ in the learned
world. The doctor might also favour curious foreigners with the
feats of those American magi, vulgarly called land-surveyors,
whose potent art levels the mountain with the valley, makes the
rough way smooth, the crooked straight; whose creative pencil
calls into being nodding woods and verdant lawns; and, like the
rod of Moses, makes rivulets gush from the solid rock.
“‘Farewell,’ continue the _United Irishmen_, ‘farewell, great
and good man; but, before you go, we beseech a portion of your
parting prayer’ (down upon your marrow-bones, reader) ‘for
Archibald Hamilton Rowan, Muir, Palmer, Margarot, and Gerald,
who are now, like you, preparing to cross the bleak ocean.
Farewell! soon will you embrace your sons on the American
shore, Washington will take you by the hand, and the _shade_
of Franklin look down, with calm delight on the first statesman
of the age, extending his protection to its first philosopher.’
Here is certainly some mistake in the close of this farewell.
What do they mean by the shade of Franklin looking _down_? To
look _down_ on a person one must be in an elevated situation;
and I fancy it is pretty generally believed, by those who
understand the geography of the invisible world, that
Franklin’s _shade_, as it is termed, has taken a different
route, &c.”
Meanwhile, the ferment of the public mind over the British Treaty was
now so intensified, that the people were becoming frantic with rage.
Jay was hung in effigy, and the democratic press poured forth upon his
head an untiring volley of misrepresentation and abuse. In Virginia,
there was an open threat of secession, in case of the treaty being
ratified. At Boston, there were riots. The treaty reached America in
March, but was not presented to the Senate till early in June; but its
articles got wind, in some way or other, and were fully discussed by
the press and the radical clubs long before being entertained by the
Legislature.
An opportunity soon occurred, for Mr. Cobbett to produce another
apology for Anti-Gallic principles. A pamphlet appeared, in the course
of the summer, under the title of “The Letters of Franklin,” dealing
with the treaty question, in a strongly dissuasive manner.[13]
In August, therefore, Mr. Bradford had another work, at the hands of
the now-celebrated Peter Porcupine, entitled, “A Little Plain English,
addressed to the People of the United States, on the Treaty, &c., in
answer to ‘The Letters of Franklin.’” This is, in some respects, one
of the best of Cobbett’s writings. It is almost purely argumentative,
and there is a sobriety of tone, and a seriousness about its logic,
which contrast well with the humour, and even buffoonery, in which he
had previously indulged. There was less to joke about. His oppone
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