“I SAW THINGS IN ANOTHER LIGHT.”
The unmistakable success which had attended the publication of “Mr.
Windham’s Gazette” (as the _Register_ was nicknamed) soon made a
revolution in Cobbett’s plans for the future. It had been his cherished
thought to resume a semi-rural life, visiting London once or twice
a week, in the case of being enabled to relinquish the bookselling
business.
It was not until 1805 that a permanent removal was made out of London;
meanwhile, however, the shop in Pall Mall had long been relinquished.
In March, 1803 (according to a notification in the _Register_),
it appears that Mr. Harding had just taken the business over,[1]
whilst John Morgan had also returned to Philadelphia to recommence
bookselling there. Besides the ordinary trade, the firm had produced
the long-promised “Selections from Porcupine’s Works,” issued in May,
1801, and dedicated to John Reeves. The list of subscribers, printed
in the first volume, includes the Royal Princes, the chief supporters
of Government, and about 750 other names in England and America. A
second edition of his translation of Martens’ “Law of Nations” was also
published in June, 1802, with the treaties brought down to the current
date. It is pretty certain, therefore, that the business in Pall Mall
was a flourishing concern.
Among other labours, independent of the _Register_, were, a translation
of “L’Empire Germanique,” a tract of the period,[2] accompanied
by a memoir on the political and military state of Europe; and a
reproduction of the “English Grammar for Frenchmen.” And, as though he
were not yet fully occupied, Mr. Cobbett must needs undertake one more
grand scheme.
This was nothing less than a plan for publishing the parliamentary
debates. The inadequacy of the existing reports had long since
attracted Mr. Cobbett’s notice, and he had endeavoured to supply the
need by printing the bulk of the debates in the early supplements to
the _Political Register_. At last, toward the close of the year 1803,
he resolved to issue, periodically, full and accurate reports, giving
as his reason that the debates, “as at present communicated to the
world, reflect very little credit on the nation.”
Accordingly, on the 3rd of December, 1803, appeared the first number,
price one shilling, of “Cobbett’s Parliamentary Debates.”[3] The person
who was selected as reporter and editor was a man very well qualified
for the task--no other than Mr. John Wright, formerly bookseller in
Piccadilly. He had failed in 1801, and his bankruptcy was attributed
by Cobbett, partly to taking “more delight in reading of books than in
selling of them,” and partly to “the misfortune of being bookseller to
Messrs. Canning, Frere, Ellis, and the other Anti-Jacobins, by whose
works, though such a puffing was made over them, he lost many hundreds
of pounds.”… “Seeing him once more ready to begin the world afresh, I
proposed to him the editing of the parliamentary debates, of which we
have now [1810] continued the publication since the year 1803.”
One more enterprise remains to be noticed. In February, 1803, was
published the first number of “Le Mercure Anglois de Cobbett,”
containing a “translation of such parts of the _Register_ as may be
thought useful or interesting to politicians on the continent of
Europe.” There does not appear, however, any trace of the publication
of more than three numbers of this “Mercure.”
Upon leaving Pall Mall, Mr. Cobbett took a house in Duke Street,
Westminster. His country trips were few, for his work did not at
present give him opportunity to escape from town for any lengthened
period. But, in 1804, the occasion of a visit to Hampshire was
prolonged so far as to revive his ardent wish for a permanent rural
life. Mr. Wright (who occupied apartments at a tailor’s, at No. 5,
Panton Square) was getting increasingly useful to him, and their mutual
confidence was now of the closest character. And it is due to this
friendship, and its ultimate rupture, that we are indebted for an ample
insight into Mr. Cobbett’s personal and domestic history during the
succeeding years.[4]
A letter, dated 9th August, from Lord Henry Stuart’s seat, at the
Grange, near Alresford, announces the arrival of the family there,
and requesting attention to some business matters, particularly the
despatch of a parcel of London newspapers; then very full of the
famous Middlesex election, in which the contest lay between Sir
Francis Burdett and Mr. George Mainwaring. On the 13th he writes from
Southampton:--
“… I received the newspapers and your letter safe. By the
enclosed you will perceive that I mean not to go up for this
next _Register_. The reason is, I have not got Mrs. Cobbett
and the children settled to my mind; and, besides that, I want
to take them all to the pony-races at Lindhurst, on Friday
next. They have begun _to breathe_. We have seen the school at
Twyford. The master is a noisy hawbuck. He is a Burdettite,
and so is his wife. I like the place very much, and none the
worse because it is that very identical school that POPE
first went to. Of this circumstance the master failed not to
apprise us. The boys are all very well, and very desirous to
see you--William in particular, who says you must come and see
him every Sunday. The pony is an excellent bargain. I shall
take the whole off from here, bag and baggage, next Saturday,
and go to Wickham; and on Sunday night, or Monday morning, I
shall leave Wickham for London, where I shall stay during next
week, and then set off to fetch home the brood for the winter.
I am in the midst of a pony country, and I think I shall pick
up another to take home with me. I shall write to you again
to-morrow with another parcel, and again on Wednesday, so that
you will have all my copy by Thursday’s post; and that you
may know how to calculate, I now inform you that my copy will
make exactly twenty-five columns, or twenty-six at most. I
have several interesting articles, and they all must come in.
I shall touch the Middlesex election; the miscreants shall not
escape.… If there be anything worth relating, pray give me a
line upon it. My address is at Mr. Harris’s china warehouse,
Southampton. D---- the china ware! William was out walking with
me by the beach yesterday morning, and after a long and pensive
silence, he said, ‘Pa, why do you have a china-shop in your
house?’ He is by no means reconciled to the crockery-ware yet.…”
This period (the summer and autumn of 1804) is also to be noted as that
during which Mr. Cobbett’s political opinions underwent a change. Much
twaddle has been written and uttered, during the last seventy years,
upon this celebrated “change.” The present biographer, heedless of
all that has been said, does not intend to argue out any calumnies,
from beginning to end of the story; but it is necessary here to note
the first appearance of the change in question, because the selection
from the correspondence, which will now be placed before the reader,
makes occasional reference to Mr. Cobbett’s growing animosity to “the
race that plunder the people,” to the “court-sycophants, parasites,
pensioners, bribed senators, directors, contractors, jobbers, hireling
lords, and ministers of state,” which, he was now beginning to
discover, were not the people of England, in the strict sense of the
word. He had been leading the opposition to Mr. Pitt for a year or two
past, and was now for the first time showing an inclination to break
altogether from the shackles of party.
During his absence, Mr. Wright acted as sub-editor of the _Register_;
and it will be seen that even his labours could not have been light.
Nearly every letter to him, enclosing copy for the _Register_, implores
him to read the MS. carefully, and “make corrections as to grammar or
phraseology, and supply omissions; for I cannot read a word of it.”
[Wm. C. to J. Wright.] … “I thank you for sending the selection
of newspapers. They afford me excellent matter for comment. I
think I have posed them about the car project.[5] They know not
what to say. There are some very good things in the _Chronicle_
upon this subject. The little letter in Wednesday’s paper is
delicious. The Methodist meeting[6] is not less so. That’s
the tone to take. I cannot enough abhor the wretches who would
revive, at this critical moment, the hideous cry of Jacobinism.
This is a subject upon which the selfish dogs ought to be
incessant lashed, till all the nation hates them--and the time
is most proper for it. I wish you would endeavour to inculcate
this notion with all whom you know. Nothing would tend more to
the subjugation of the country than the revival of this most
mischievous cry. I shall not cease my endeavours; but do you
use yours also.
“Before you come down, which will be about the 7th of
September, I suppose, I will tell you what we do about leaving
the house. I like your idea very well. In order that you may
be quite clear by Saturday, or the Friday afternoon, you shall
have the last of my copy for next _Register_, on Wednesday
morning. But you must read the proofs.…”
* * * * *
“… I beg you not to be out in the evening, lest some robbery
should be committed. If anything should be the matter of James,
pray send to Mr. Teggart immediately.…”
* * * * *
“… Urry received his money. And you will send me another just
such sum by next post. I have had entrance money and fees
to pay for seven children, clothing, trunks, &c., &c., to
pay for; and we have been obliged to buy table and bed linen
for ourselves, together with a suit of clothes for John and
another for me, lest people should take me for a _heathen
philosopher_.… We go to church here. I hope the saints will not
be jealous at this!”
* * * * *
“… My articles do not make so much as I expected I should have
time to write. I began yesterday at nine o’clock, and I finish
now at six for the post--thirty-three hours, including eating,
drinking, and sleeping time.… Pray read the whole with great
care, before and after it is set up.
“We went our journey yesterday, and it is now fixed that
Nanny goes to school at Winchester, and the boys at Twyford,
on Saturday the 22nd instant. We shall stay at Botley till
about the 2nd or 3rd of October, and then we shall go and
cram ourselves into the cursed smoke again. It is just
possible, however, that we may stay in the country till near
the middle of the month.… In addition to the things mentioned
in my memorandum, I request you to send the following by the
mail-coach, in a new parcel:--
“My famous breeches.
“A new pamphlet of Lord Lauderdale, in answer to the Edinburgh
reviewers, just advertised.
“Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws;--in the book-case, I believe.”
* * * * *
“… Now, as to the school project, it has failed. William tells
me that something is continually making him cry. When he saw
me, he was ready to burst. He is going back, but the others
will stay. You have helped to make him so in love with home,
and you must have the teaching of him another year or two.
His mother cannot live without him yet, and they must be
humoured.… Am I never to have my fine breeches, or did you mean
only to tantalize me?”
* * * * *
“… I am alarmed that you have inserted HIBERNICUS[7] without my
seeing it. I hope there is nothing violent or personal? Send
me, in the parcel with the population abstract, the letter
from MONTROSE; and pray put in nothing without my seeing it.
A trip at this time would be ruinous. I am very uneasy till I
see Hibernicus.… As the air of Botley is so favourable to the
Muses, I shall write two more _Registers_ in it. Indeed, we
cannot quit it sooner. I think I shall, in my letters to the
Grand Charlatan, make good ground for us all to stand upon.
The first point, the corner-stone, is well placed.[8] … Mrs.
C. sends her compliments. The boys want to see you again.
There is, we think, a large day-school mixed with boarders
in Dean’s Yard, Westminster, for William--will you ask? He
is too young and weak to be taken from our table to sup upon
bread-and-cheese and water!”
* * * * *
“… Observe well, that two words in Mr. Bonney’s letter must
be left out--the word ‘excellent’ in the first sentence, and
the word ‘pensioned’ in the last. The word ‘pensioned’ would
not be safe; the word ‘excellent’ is an injury to B.’s letter,
and is, on every account, much better left out; as, indeed,
compliments to myself always should be, appearing as I do in my
own name, and not as an editor. Take care that they are both
left out.… Insert the article upon the stamp duties, but be
very careful of the words.”
The foregoing extracts, from letters written in September and October,
1804, throw some light for the first time on Cobbett’s happy domestic
circle; they are dated from Itchen and from Botley, at either of which
places the family were then visiting. The affectionate tenderness
towards his children is here shown to have been an active principle,
and we shall have further glimpses as we proceed. But the most striking
thing here apparent is his sensitiveness on the score of personal
offence, on the part of himself or his correspondents. The galloping
pace at which he wrote, and his negligence as to reviewing what he had
written, were sufficiently perilous; and another “Juverna” affair was
not to be thought of.
Other extracts might be made; but the references to current politics
would be too obscure, without much detailed explanation. The following
will show, however, the general drifting of Cobbett’s views:--
“… I am happy to think that I am likely to be of some use in
uniting men in support of the throne, the Church, and the
real liberties of the people, against the conspirators of
loan-makers and directors, directors of all sorts, I mean; East
India as well as Bank … whether I shall draw them out at last I
know not. I wish I may. But they have now such a load to toil
against, that I am apt to think they will desist, and by-and-by
glance at my present writing as a proof of my disaffection and
abandonment of principle. If it please God to give me health,
that shall not serve them, though. Pray keep a good look-out,
for, if they say only a word, I wish to meet it instantly.”
* * * * *
“… Is it really true that the cowards have given up Malta?
Why, they went to war for Malta! ‘Malta,’ said Dundas, in his
villainous brogue, ‘Malta! Malta! en parpatooaty, es tha trewly
Breetush oabjuct of ware!’ And now he gives it up! For God’s
sake look at his speech, _Reg._, vol. iii. p. 1662. But be sure
not to talk of it to any one, as I should then be anticipated.”
* * * * *
“… Have you seen Reeves? I think I must come to a plain
understanding with him; for I hate cold half-friendships. I
think my two last numbers must have staggered such people.”
Mr. Cobbett is in town in November to attend Judge Johnson’s trial; but
he is at Botley House again in January. Mr. Wright pays them another
visit, too, having been desired to bring a fine large twelfth-cake,
also “the portfolio with all the boys’ pictures in it.”
* * * * *
That some people were getting “staggered,” as Cobbett says, is by no
means unlikely. He has been publicly called upon to “defend himself
from the charge of not having joined the opponents of Sir Francis
Burdett;” when, lo! it is discovered that an acknowledgment must be
made, of at least some claim, on the part of the latter, to represent
the Middlesex constituency, as against his opponent:--
“The former sentiments and expressions of Sir Francis Burdett
were not, for the most part, so wrong in themselves as in the
season of their application. Some of them, indeed, were such
as no time or place would justify.… His language, and many of
his acts, during the former election, as well as previous to
it, were seditious to a degree bordering upon treason; they
did, in my opinion, totally incapacitate him as a member of
Parliament.… He chose to disgrace himself and his cause by an
appeal to the worst passions of the worst part of the people.
But if nothing of a seditious nature has appeared in the
conduct of Sir Francis Burdett since that election, upon what
principle will his opponents justify their resentment against
him, whilst they are so ready to overlook the political sins of
others?”
A few months earlier in this year, the ministerial part of the press
had classed Burdett and Cobbett together as “a party endeavouring to
create despondency.” This appears to have been the beginning of it; and
Mr. Cobbett, on looking more dispassionately into Burdett’s claims as a
politician, finds that the leading objects of both their minds are the
same,--
“It will be recollected that, on the 2nd of July last,
application was made to Parliament for a grant of 591,842_l._,
wherewith to pay off the arrears of the Civil List; … Sir
Francis Burdett took the liberty to say a few words to the
_thirty or forty persons_ who were about to grant this
half-million of money, which was to be raised upon the people.…
He objected to the ground upon which the minister had made this
application, and could not see, he said, why the rise in prices
and the consequent abridgment of every man’s comforts should be
urged as a reason for augmenting the amount of the Civil List.
He complained that there was a waste of the public money.… He
did not declaim against taxes, but against their too great
amount, and against the misapplication of them.…”
and protests that none but a contractor, a farmer-general, a
paper-money maker, or a hired author, could find anything objectionable
in the sentiments thus expressed. In short, Mr. Cobbett has discovered
that the advocates of parliamentary reform are not, necessarily, a
faction seeking to subvert the throne. He has had his grievance,
some ten or a dozen years, against the “public-robbers;” but he has
groped about, in pursuit of them, in crooked bye-ways: has even rubbed
shoulders with them without knowing it: has now come in sight of the
highway along which are running other pursuers, whose distant shouts
have, till now, been unmeaning, because misunderstood.
He looks with abhorrence at the prospect of a revival “of those
political animosities which were, during the last war and at the
last peace, so fruitful in national calamity and disgrace, which
destroyed all freedom of discussion and almost of intercourse; and
which, while it sheltered all the follies and faults of the minister
even from inquiry, exposed every word and act of every other man to
misrepresentation and suspicion.”
Here, then, we have Mr. Cobbett fairly started upon his mission.
Parliamentary opposition, hitherto, had meant a struggle for power and
place, with the biggest share in the nation’s loaves and fishes; it
would henceforth signify a determination to watch the grasping hand,
to restrain the thirsty leech. And Mr. Cobbett will, at any cost,
keep the nation on the alert concerning the proper disposition of its
resources.
In the hope which Cobbett now indulged, of arresting, if possible, the
enormous growth of the public debt, he began to advocate a union of the
two opposition parties. We find him, then, about this time, obliged to
defend himself from the charge of supporting Mr. Fox, whose “seditious
ravings” it had once been “impossible to hear without indignation.” And
the charge would naturally be indefensible on the part of a hireling.
But the C. J. Fox that was now praised was not the C. J. Fox who once
coquetted with Jacobins. In Cobbett’s eyes, Jacobinism was now dead
and buried. The risk of anarchy had departed from British shores. The
peace of Amiens had proved a failure; and the Whigs, who had opposed
that treaty from one point of view, were beginning to coalesce with the
Windhamites, who had opposed it from another. For some time past there
had been hopes of a union of all the great men of the country, in a
strong, “broad-bottom’d” administration, as the only means of restoring
public confidence.
So, although Mr. Cobbett is ready to admit the claim of the heaven-born
minister to a place among the great, he now declines any longer to
support him, as hitherto. Not only that: he proceeds to instruct Mr.
Pitt on the causes of his failure as a statesman. Rather cool, this,
for the _quondam_ ploughboy! But he must needs prove that Mr. Pitt has
deserted his principles, in order to justify his own new position. As
to the charge of versatility, he thinks that “inconsistency” means “the
difference between profession and practice.” The best exposition of
this “difference” is found in an article of the _Register_, toward the
close of the year 1805:--
“If I praised Mr. Pitt, it was Mr. Pitt the ‘heaven-born’
minister, with regard to whose character I had participated in
the adoption of those notions so prevalent amongst the ignorant
crowd about twenty years ago. It was Mr. Pitt the corner-stone
of the confederacy against republican France: Mr. Pitt who had
openly and solemnly vowed never to make peace with France till
the political balance of Europe should be completely restored,
and till safety and tranquillity could be obtained for England;
it was this Mr. Pitt that I praised, and not the Mr. Pitt who
advised, who defended, and who extolled the peace of Amiens.
The Mr. Pitt that I praised, as a financier, was the Mr. Pitt
who, in the year 1799, declared that he would carry on the
war for any length of time without the creation of new debt;
and not the Mr. Pitt who, in less than two years afterwards,
justified the peace as necessary for the husbanding of our
resources, having, in the interim, created new debt to the
amount of about seventy millions sterling. If I praised Mr.
Pitt, as an upright public man, as a real patriot, it was the
Mr. Pitt who began his career with professions of incorruptible
purity, and who, in the warmth of his zeal, had proposed to
reform the Parliament itself, rather than not cut off the means
of corruption; and not the Mr. Pitt who procured to be passed
the bill relating to the Nabob of Arcot’s debts (of which bill
I had never yet heard); nor the Mr. Pitt who, notwithstanding
the information of Mr. Raikes, suffered the practices of Lord
Melville and Trotter to go on unchecked; no, no; not the Mr.
Pitt who lent forty thousand pounds of the public money,
without interest, to two members of Parliament--never making,
or causing to be made, any record or minute of the transaction,
and never communicating any knowledge of it even to the cabinet
ministers.… The English Constitution that I extolled was that
Constitution which, to use the words of Mr. Pitt himself (in
his early days), carefully watches over the property of the
people; that Constitution which effectually prevents any
misapplication of the public money, or severely punishes those
who may be guilty of such misapplication; and which, above all
things, provides that the money raised upon the people, by the
consent of their representatives, shall not in any degree, or
under any name, be _given_ to those representatives by the
ministers of the crown, and especially in a _secret_ manner.
This Constitution I hope yet to see preserved in its purity;
and were it not for that hope, neither hand nor pen would I
move in its defence. But it will be so preserved, or we are
the most base of mankind.”
A number of persons were now ready to support these views of Mr.
Cobbett; and a still greater number, animated by fear, or by envy,
assailed him with the utmost virulence. His friends told him that the
circulation of the _Register_ would be diminished if he persisted in
opposing Pitt; that the advocacy of Burdett would operate unfavourably
upon its reputation. He assured them all, however, that he was
receiving better support than ever, and that the great majority of
his correspondents acknowledged, that conviction of the truth of his
reasonings, and of the rectitude of his motives, was stealing into
their minds.
If there was one man who could stand up before the country with
pure hands, that man was William Pitt. But it was not given to him
to inspire other men by his example in this matter. The system of
political corruption was too strongly holden for the best-intentioned
reformer to undertake its reduction, without risking his political
existence. The creed, common to Whigs and Tories, that the king and
the country were to be ruled for the exclusive benefit of the “ruling”
families, was the basis of the system; and only a SAMSON, who should
himself perish amid the wreck, might essay its destruction.
As early as 1802 Mr. Cobbett had ventured upon a sarcasm with reference
to the clerkship to “the Pells.” This celebrated sinecure, worth
3000_l._ a year, was in the power of Pitt to take to himself without
reproach: as is well known he declined, and it fell into the hands of
Addington, who bestowed it upon his son, then only twelve years of age.
Cobbett thought this was setting decency at defiance; seeing that the
immaculate minister, about this time, persecuted a poor tradesman of
Plymouth[9] for doing what everybody around was doing.
A stray shaft or so was discharged from time to time; but not till
three years after did the fight really commence. At last, in 1805, with
the exposure of Lord Melville’s naval mal-administration, the whole
matter was ripe for discussion; and in August of that year appears the
first of those curious pension-lists,[10] which were, for the ensuing
quarter of a century, the stock-in-trade of radical grievance-mongers.
It was now open war. Mr. Cobbett, for the second time in his life,
found himself _standing alone_. Aristocratic friends were deserting
him, whilst the new ones were yet only gathering. As for the abuse,
with which he was favoured by his opponents, it was as unreasoning as
it was disgraceful.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Harding was succeeded by John Budd before the year was out.
[2] Also printed in the Supplement to vol. ii. of the _Register_.
[3] This undertaking has long since made the name of Hansard famous;
but this is the place to remind the reader, that its origin, and
successful issue for a number of years, is one of the long-forgotten
public services of William Cobbett. The original form is still retained.
[4] Addl. MSS. 22,906-7, in the British Museum, is a collection,
formerly in the possession of the late Mr. Dawson Turner, from which
some of the interesting letters in the text addressed to Mr. Wright are
derived. The cause of their preservation will appear in the sequel.
[5] A curious device of Mr. Pitt’s, by which 10,000 men could be
transferred, in a few hours, to any part of the coast. It provoked a
good deal of current satire.
[6] In support of Mainwaring’s candidature for Middlesex.
[7] On the Irish Additional Force Bill, in _Register_ of Sept. 29. The
letter was not absolutely free from provocable matter.
[8] The first of a series of letters to Mr. Pitt, on the “Causes of the
Decline of Great Britain.” Cobbett upbraids the heaven-born minister
with having deserted his own principles, and thus exposed his former
staunch supporters (among whom is C.) to the charge of having deserted
_him_.
[9] One Hamlin, a tinman, who had offered Addington a large sum of
money for an appointment in the Customs. He was prosecuted, fined, and
imprisoned, although he solemnly declared his ignorance of the crime,
having seen for years Government places publicly advertised for sale,
besides having probably received money for his vote from the agents of
the Government itself.
[10] After Cobbett’s first list of pensions, &c., the plan was copied
by others, and the lists at last swelled, under different hands, to
a volume of several hundred pages:--“The Black Book; or, Corruption
Unmasked. Being an Account of Places, Pensions, and Sinecures, the
Revenues of the Clergy and Landed Aristocracy; the Salaries and
Emoluments in Courts of Justice and the Police Department; the
Expenditure of the Civil List; the Amount and Application of the Droits
of the Crown and Admiralty; the Robbery of Charitable Foundations; the
Profits of the Bank of England, arising from the Issue of its Notes,
Balances of Public Money, Management of the Borough Debt, and other
Sources of Emolument; the Debt, Revenue, and Influence of the East
India Company; the State of the Finances, Debt, and Sinking Fund. To
which is added Correct Lists of Both Houses of Parliament, showing
their Family Connexions, Parliamentary Influence, the Places and
Pensions held by Themselves or Relations; distinguishing also those who
Voted against Catholic Emancipation, and for the Seditious Meeting and
Press Restriction Bills. The whole forming a Complete Exposition of the
Cost, Influence, Patronage, and Corruption of the Borough Government.”
(London, John Fairburn, 1820.) This interesting volume kept increasing
in bulk until the æra of the Reform Bill.
END OF VOL. I.
GILBERT AND RIVINGTON PRINTERS, ST. JOHN’S SQUARE, LONDON.