“I NOW BELONG TO THE PEOPLE OF OLDHAM.”
The progress of the Reform Bill is the foremost topic of the day;
and the near prospect of Mr. Cobbett’s election, by some popular
constituency, is now more obvious.[1] In the course of September, 1831,
there appears his first address to the electors of Manchester, in
response to an invitation conveyed to him from a committee formed with
the object of endeavouring to secure his return.
The objects which Cobbett now professed to have in view were
considerably in advance of those of some years previously; and their
publication, in this address, shows distinctly the rapid growth of
opinion amongst the mass of the people. Not only the abolition of
sinecures, and of all pensions the merit of which could not be readily
granted; abolition of tithes; reduction of the standing army; and an
equitable adjustment of the currency, were recapitulated, as reforms
urgently called for; but he now declared that the National Debt ought
to be wiped out, by the sale of ecclesiastical estates, the misapplied
portion of the property of corporate bodies, and all the Crown lands;
and so to reduce taxation, and the cost of its collection, as to give
some hopes of greater prosperity and happiness to “this industrious
nation.”
Of course, these things were “revolutionary” for that age. Every great
change is revolutionary; but the bad odour attaching to an epithet,
in some minds, is no index to the value of the ideas represented.
Important changes in the mode of government, particularly as to a
greatly-lessened waste of public money, naturally appeared monstrous
and wicked to the governing classes, and to their adherents; at a
period when bishops died worth half-a-million. And it came just as
naturally to the minds of the reformers, the longer the question was
delayed, that, by whatever name their proposals might be designated,
there could be nothing so monstrous and wicked as to persist in a
system which made the rich richer and the poor poorer.
The events of the past fifteen years had made a wonderful difference
in the minds of the labouring classes. The power of a cheap serial,
first exemplified in the publication of Cobbett’s twopenny _Register_,
had become fully recognized. The _Penny Magazine_, _Chambers’
Edinburgh Journal_, and similar publications were now beginning their
respective careers with astonishing success; along with a host of
political sheets. A new sort of education was spreading: that sort of
education which made men think for themselves; and, for the first time
in history, the “lower orders” were beginning to take an interest in
the affairs of other nations beside their own. Well might statesmen be
affrighted at the progress of revolution in France and Belgium, and
at the growing importance of the American Republic! The knowledge of
political good and evil, fresh from those democratic sources, might
well alarm them; for it was sinking deep into minds, the fertility of
which had been produced by their own haughty failures.
So Mr. Cobbett’s address to the electors of Manchester was denounced
as utterly subversive of the institutions of the country. However, he
went down to Manchester in the course of the winter, and delivered
several lectures, with the object of showing that his principles, on
the contrary, would tend to conserve, instead of destroy. Lord Radnor
had previously written a letter to one of the Manchester papers[2]
warmly supporting him, and offering his aid, in case of a subscription
being made. And Cobbett now found, upon visiting Manchester, that he
had already won his way into the hearts and minds of the people there.
Before he left, a dinner was given in his honour, at which Mr. John
Fielden, manufacturer, of Todmorden, presided.
The following will give an example of his general reception in
Lancashire. Most of Cobbett’s “egotism” was displayed in answer to
personal attacks, and we owe a good deal of biographical matter to
those occasions on which he chose to answer. One evening in the House
of Lords, the Earl of Falmouth, in passing a sneer over to Lord Radnor,
concerning the latter’s nomination-borough of Downton, insinuated that
the loss of that borough would be “a bad thing for Cobbett, whom the
people would scarcely elect, if left to themselves.” Lord Falmouth
had a taste of Mr. Cobbett’s lash, as a reward for his temerity; and
Cobbett concluded his paper thus:--
“I have been lecturing on politics--I have been maintaining my
_Manchester propositions_, in every great town in the north, as
far as the northern confines of Yorkshire, with the exception,
I believe, of Liverpool and Bradford; and I have everywhere
maintained that, unless those propositions be acted upon to
the full extent, a reform of the Parliament will be a delusion
and a mockery. Everywhere I have been received with every mark
of approbation.… Two or three words with my name, written by
myself, have been begged as a valuable present by more than
a hundred persons. No mark of disapprobation have I received
during the whole of half-a-hundred lectures that I have given.…
The people of England will have the sense to perceive that it
is not title and fortune that they want to represent them; but
talent, knowledge, and courage; a love of the honour of their
country; men who see in every labourer their countryman, and
who take to themselves a share of the disgrace of seeing him
robbed of the fruit of his toil. Experience has now taught the
people of England that, to be restored to their liberties and
happiness, they must rely upon one another; and though you
do not know it, the country everywhere teems with clever and
well-educated young men. During my last tour, scores--and I
might say many hundreds of young men, sometimes twenty at a
time--have crowded round me as I have been going out of the
lecturing-places; one saying, as he shook my hand, ‘That is
the hand that wrote the “Grammar;”’ another, ‘That is the hand
that wrote the “Protestant Reformation;”’ another, ‘That is
the hand that wrote the “Advice to Young Men.”’ This was the
case, more or less, at every place where I was.… Nor was this
confined to the buoyant spirits of Lancashire and Yorkshire,
where the heart seems always upon the lips; but I found it the
same everywhere.”
The month of June saw the triumph of the Parliamentary Reformers,
and eager preparations were made for canvass. Expectation ran high:
the newly-enfranchised took the matter into their own hands; and
amongst these were the people of Lancashire. Manchester had sent a
member to Parliament in some long past age, but had been for centuries
unrepresented, and was now to have two members. Oldham, with a
population of over 50,000, was, likewise, to elect two.
Early in July, 1832, Mr. Cobbett received a letter from an Oldham
friend, informing him that it was determined to put him in nomination;
and that two strangers having unexpectedly commenced a canvass,
his friends had at once announced his name, along with that of Mr.
John Fielden; the latter having consented to the proposal, with the
understanding that Cobbett should be his colleague, if not elected for
some other place. Several other constituencies had been thought of; but
this unmistakable earnestness on the part of Lancashire decided the
matter; and when, in the course of December, the elections came off,
Fielden and Cobbett were at the top of the poll for Oldham. The people
of Manchester had also put Mr. Cobbett in nomination, but, the result
of the contest at Oldham being made known there on the first day of the
poll, the votes intended for him were transferred to other candidates.
Meanwhile, another lecturing tour had been undertaken during the
autumn, extending into Scotland; and, if one may judge from the
reception he met with, Mr. Cobbett was now enjoying greater popularity
than at any other period of his life.[3]
The notions which Mr. Cobbett had acquired, concerning the duties
belonging to the position in which he was now placed, were quite at
variance with any known principles.
Until the æra of the Reformed Parliament it was accounted a
preposterous thing for any member to be professedly without a party;
and any one entering the House with a popular grievance at his back,
as Paull and Burdett and Wardle had done in a previous generation--and
as O’Connell and Hume in recent times--to a great extent stood alone.
They might get supporters from time to time; but such men were not
of the sort which could coalesce with the patrician nominees and the
plutocrats, who had hitherto pretended to represent the Commons of
England.
Had Mr. Cobbett entered Parliament a quarter of a century previously,
when it was within his power to do so through aristocratic influence,
he would have been the means of forming a party earnestly devoted to
the objects of Reform; and it must be regarded as a serious error
on his part, arising though it did from a sturdy regard for his own
independence, that he should refuse to do so; and expect to sway the
House of Commons, in the smallest degree, from the outside. For it was
looked upon, in those days, as something bordering on the seditious,
for any one outside the walls of Parliament to pretend to discuss
domestic politics; and an affectation of contempt was the only answer
to the cleverest and most liberal of amateur statesmanship. As for
earnestness, in the consideration of any popular question, it was not
there at all; the House of Commons of 1831-2 would never have passed
a Reform Bill, only that the clamour of the Unrepresented made the
question vital to the existence of the Whig party; and the fiercest
opponents to the popular candidates, at the elections which followed,
were the ministerialists themselves. To the very last the spectacle
was seen of the exclusive classes clinging to what they deemed a
prescriptive right to govern.
Such men, then, as Cobbett, and Silk Buckingham, and Roebuck,
coming into Parliament for the first time, found themselves there
under circumstances favourable only for the exercise of particular
individuality; and, unless the possessor of special talents, the event
proved that the individual influence of each was very small. The
old members would not even listen to them; and the general feeling
concerning the new men was that they were astonishingly harmless.
The opening scene has been often enough described. “Some very bad
characters have been returned,” says Mr. Greville.[4] Among these
“bad characters” is placed the new member for Oldham; who at once
establishes his claim to such epithet, by seating himself on the front
bench (usually occupied by ministers), and by commencing his first
speech with these words:--
“It appears to me, that, since I have been sitting here, I have
heard a great deal of vain and unprofitable conversation.”
But, really, there was nothing to be frightened at. Excepting that Mr.
Cobbett seemed to think that a Reformer should be chosen Speaker of
a Reformed Parliament, and that some disregard might be paid to the
established rules of the House, there was nothing whatever to reward
the expectations of those who had trembled at the bare thought of
this “diabolical villain” treading the floor of that sacred chamber.
There sat, night after night, one of the meekest, most inoffensive
of men. When he got up to speak, there stood a fine, tall, hale old
fellow, with a face sparkling with humour, and a voice of surprising
gentleness; only roused to vehemence when the efforts to cough him down
were somewhat too overpowering.
Cobbett’s short career in Parliament has, sometimes, been stigmatized
as a failure. It was not a failure. He was a very regular attendant
while his health lasted; and he never lost an opportunity of
reminding the House what he had been sent there for. And the numerous
interruptions and contradictions to which he at first became subject,
rather manifested “failure” elsewhere: viz. on the part of many
members to understand the awful exigencies of the time, and the
responsibility which they ought to have attached to their own position.
But their sensibilities were far too keen, to bear with patience Mr.
Cobbett’s frequent references to the burdens under which the people
still laboured; one member, at last, expressing an opinion that “the
constant complaints respecting the distresses of the people were of
the most injurious tendency: they were calculated to make all classes
politicians”! In short, the first reformed Parliament was, itself, a
great failure; and was rightly sent back to the country at the end of
two unproductive sessions.
It must be said, however, that the first two or three months of Mr.
Cobbett’s attendance in Parliament were not calculated to impress the
House in his favour. Although he put up with malicious references to
Tom Paine, and to agricultural incendiarism, with remarkable good
temper, there was an amount of indiscretion about his mode of bringing
up his own special topics, which mightily offended the taste of less
self-assertive people. And, upon one occasion, his mode of procedure
was so absurd, that he covered both himself and his cause with
overwhelming contempt. The circumstances were these:--
A number of gentlemen, led by Mr. Attwood, the member for Birmingham,
conceived it to be only just and proper that an inquiry should be made
into the state of the country, and the prevailing distress.[5] Lord
Althorp considered any such inquiry unadvisable, “because it might lead
to an investigation of the consequences produced by the changes in the
currency;”--he was willing to consider the subject when it came fairly
before the House, but objected to the proposed mode of entertaining
it. The motion was lost, by a narrow majority; and it was renewed,
about a month afterwards, in another form, only to fail again. Thus,
the Whig ministry set their faces against the very Reformers which they
had themselves called up.
But Mr. Cobbett wants, above all things, the very thing that Lord
Althorp deprecates: “an investigation of the consequences produced by
the changes in the currency,” and he is resolved to have it, one way
or another. And he can think of no surer means than that of fixing the
_onus_ of the public distresses upon the author of those changes in the
currency, which he had always considered to be a leading cause of the
distress.
Sir Robert Peel was, at this time, leader of the opposition, and the
most distinguished man on the Tory side,--admired alike by friend and
foe. The hopes of the Tory party were centred in Peel, for no man who
had pretended to lead them, since the days of Pitt, could boast a tenth
part of the talents which he possessed. His first important part in
public affairs had been the carrying through Parliament, in 1819, the
bill for the resumption of cash payments; a measure which Mr. Cobbett
had treated with ridicule, as one certain to be productive of prolonged
disaster to the country. Cobbett’s predictions were, to a great
extent, verified by events; and he considered himself, thenceforward,
an authority upon that abstruse topic. And he now brought forward a
resolution, to the effect that Peel’s “want of knowledge,” displayed
in his repeated failures to adjust the currency, since the year 1819,
merited his ignominious dismissal from the Privy Council.
No scheme could have been invented, better than this, in order to
show Cobbett’s headstrong ineptitude on certain occasions. To go no
farther,--the inconsistency of protesting that there was no imputation
on Peel’s honour, while proposing what would have been (for him) the
very deepest disgrace, was typical of much that explains Cobbett’s
frequent failure to impress men of cultivation and refinement; and he
gave, in this instance, a signal example of his neglect to consider
the fitness of things. Most of what he said was perfectly true, and
could not be answered, and was not answered; but the outrageous method
of bringing the question forward not only spoilt it all, but brought
down upon his head deserved derision. Fielden, and Attwood, and three
others, manfully supported him; while the rest laughed and jeered, to
their heart’s content.
It was nearly a month after this episode, before Cobbett’s voice was
again heard. At length, however, he seems to have learned the temper
of the House; and we soon find him thanking “hon. members for the
attention with which, &c.” He generally had something to say upon any
topic connected with taxation and the well-being of the people, and on
several occasions delivered long and effective speeches; as on the Poor
Laws, suppression of disturbances in Ireland, and the proposed Factory
regulations. On this last question Mr. Fielden was in the front rank
as an agitator; and was intensely gratified with the support of his
colleague, especially when Cobbett, speaking of the factory children,
alluded to “three hundred thousand of the most helpless creatures in
the world holding up their hands for mercy.” And one matter appears on
the journals of the House, upon Mr. Cobbett’s motion, which resulted in
a Select Committee.[6]
In the spring of the following year, ominous signs appeared, which
proved that the change in his habits, necessitated by his parliamentary
attendance, was telling upon Cobbett’s vigorous constitution; and he
was absent from his post for two whole months. The period which elapsed
after the dissolution, and before the meeting of the new Parliament in
1835, was not sufficient for thorough restoration to health, and he
resumed his duties with a bad cough clinging to him. On the 10th of
March, he attempted to speak upon the motion of the Marquess of Chandos
to abolish the malt-tax; but he found his voice so hoarse, that he
could not make the gentlemen immediately in front hear him; and was
obliged to sit down. He still valiantly attended, however, and spoke on
several occasions; the last being on the 25th May, in a discussion on
agricultural distress.
But his time was come: his place in the House of Commons knew him no
more; and, when the House assembled on the evening of the 19th June, a
whisper circulated upon the benches to the effect that the member for
Oldham was dead.
FOOTNOTES
[1] According to a private letter, addressed to his friend Thomas
Mellersh of Godalming, there were proposals to elect him at Manchester,
at Glasgow, at Oldham, at Preston, and at Dudley.
[2] “With respect to the measures which ought to be adopted, I have no
hesitation in saying that my decided opinion is that, for the safety
of the State, the eternal peace of the country, the well-being of the
people, the preservation of property, and the maintenance of anything
like liberty, measures must be adopted to the full extent of any that
have ever as far as I recollect been proposed by Mr. Cobbett. I am
persuaded that he has all these objects sincerely at heart. I wholly
acquit him of any personal ambition, except probably that anxious
desire for fame, and that wish to live in the grateful recollection
of his countrymen, which are the signs of an exalted and of a noble
spirit. Sordid views of interest he certainly has none--no petty
ambition. The good of the people is what he seeks; his fame--the mere
fact of his being thought of to represent Manchester--is the assurance
that he has the means of promoting it.”
This extract is of no mean value, as testimony from a man who had known
him personally for thirty years. The Committee at once printed the
letter in broadside.
[3] Tait’s _Edinburgh Magazine_ (Nov. 1832) describes Cobbett’s
reception in Edinburgh in very generous terms, declaring that Pasta,
Paganini, nor Fanny Kemble created half such sensation. “He presented
himself before an impatient house, filled from floor to ceiling, which
rose to greet him in a tumultuous rapture. His appearance is highly
favourable; his ease, tact, and self-possession are unrivaled. He was
neither overpowered nor taken by surprise with these demonstrations of
the modern Athenians.”
“Mr. Cobbett is still of stately stature, and must in youth have been
tall. He must then, in physiognomy, person, and bearing, have been a
fine specimen of the true Saxon breed;--
“The eyes of azure, and the locks of brown,
And the blunt speech, that bursts without a pause,
And free-born thoughts, which league the soldier with the laws.”
… His thin, white hairs and high forehead, the humour lurking in the
eye, and playing about the lips, betokened something more than the
squire in his gala suit; still, the altogether was of this respectable
and responsible kind. His voice is low-toned, clear, and flexible, and
so skilfully modulated, that not an aspiration was lost of his nervous,
fluent, unhesitating, and perfectly correct discourse. There was no
embarrassment, no flutter, no picking of words; nor was the speaker
once at fault, or in the smallest degree disturbed, by those petty
accidents and annoyances which must have moved almost any other man.…
He is, indeed, a first-rate comic actor, possessed of that flexible,
penetrative power of imitation which extends to mind and character, as
well as to their outward signs. His genius is, besides, essentially
dramatic. We have often read his lively characteristic dialogues with
pleasure and amusement, but to see him act them, and personate Lord
Althorp, pommelled and posed by the future Member for Oldham, was a
degree beyond this. He was in nothing vehement or obstreperous, though
everybody had anticipated something of this kind; and his subdued tone
and excellent discretion gave double point to his best hits.… The
humour of his solemn irony, his blistering sarcasm, but especially his
sly hits and unexpected or random strokes and pokes on the sore or weak
sides of the Whigs, told with full effect. To oratory, in the highest
sense of the term, Mr. Cobbett never once rises, but he is ever a wily,
clear, and most effective speaker.”
“Mr. Cobbett expressed himself highly gratified with his reception in
Edinburgh. In Glasgow, and other parts of the country, he has been,
if that were possible, still more popular. And at this we rejoice,
as evidence of affection for the cause to which, whatever fastidious
persons may think, Cobbett has been a useful, rough pioneer, and most
powerful auxiliary.”
The Rev. George Gilfillan gives (“Gallery of Literary Portraits,” 2nd
Ser.) an animated account of Cobbett’s appearance in Edinburgh, and is
very fair, albeit shrewd enough, in his entire estimate of Cobbett’s
character.
[4] “Memoirs,” ii. 335.
[5] _Vide_ the _Courier_ newspaper, March, 1833.
[6] It appeared, from a petition presented to the House of Commons
by Mr. Cobbett, that a policeman, one William Popay, had been acting
the part of an amateur spy, by joining several political unions of
the time, and had even urged their members to the adoption of violent
courses. This discovery, and the debate thereon, produced great
excitement at the time; and Popay was, in consequence of the report of
the Committee, dismissed from the police force.