“But though we no longer dream of making governments, the confederacy

of kings seem to feel no doubt of their own power to make a nation.

A government cannot be made, because its whole spirit and principles

spring from the character of the nation. There would be no difficulty

in framing a government, if the habits of a people could be changed by

a lawgiver; if he could obliterate their recollections, transform their

attachment and reverence, extinguish their animosities and correct

those sentiments which, being at variance with his opinions of public

interest, he calls prejudices. Now this is precisely the power which

our statesmen at Vienna have arrogated to themselves. They not only

form nations, but they compose them of elements apparently the most

irreconcilable. They made one nation out of Norway and Sweden; they

tried to make another out of Prussia and Saxony. They have, in the

present case, forced together Piedmont and Genoa to form a nation which

is to guard the avenues of Italy, and to be one of the main securities

of Europe against universal monarchy.

“It was not the pretension of the ancient system to form states, to

divide territory according to speculations of military convenience.

“The great statesmen of former times did not speak of their measures

as the noble lord (Lord Castlereagh) did about the incorporation

of Belgium with Holland (about which I say nothing), as a great

improvement in the system of Europe. That is the language of those

who revolutionize that system by a partition like that of Poland,

by the establishment of the Federation of the Rhine at Paris, or by

the creation of new states at Vienna. The ancient principle was to

preserve all those States which had been founded by Time and Nature,

the character of which was often maintained, and the nationality of

which was sometimes created by the very irregularities of frontier

and inequalities of strength, of which a shallow policy complains;

to preserve all such States down to the smallest, first by their own

national spirit, and secondly by that mutual jealousy which makes every

great power the opponent of the dangerous ambition of every other; to

preserve nations, living bodies, produced by the hand of Nature--not

to form artificial dead machines, called nations, by the words and

parchment of a diplomatic act--was the ancient system of our wiser

forefathers, &c. &c.…”

V.

There is also a noble strain of eloquence in the following short

defence of the slave-treaty with Spain:

“I feel pride in the British flag being for this object subjected to

foreign ships. I think it a great and striking proof of magnanimity

that the darling point of honour of our country, the British flag

itself, which for a thousand years has braved the battle and the

breeze, which has defied confederacies of nations, to which we have

clung closer and closer as the tempest roared around us, which has

borne us through all perils and raised its head higher as the storm has

assailed us more fearfully, should now bend voluntarily to the cause

of justice and humanity--should now lower itself, never having been

brought low by the mightiest, to the most feeble and defenceless--to

those who, far from being able to return the benefits we would confer

upon them, will never hear of those benefits, will never know, perhaps,

even our name.”

By far the most effective of Sir James Mackintosh’s speeches in

Parliament, however, was one that he delivered (June, 1819) against

“The Foreign Enlistment Bill,” a measure which was intended to prevent

British subjects from aiding the South American colonies in the

struggle they were then making for independence. No good report of this

oration remains, but even our parliamentary records are sufficient

to show that it possessed many of the rarer attributes of eloquence,

and moving with a rapidity and a vigour (not frequent in Sir James’s

efforts), prevented his language from seeming laboured or his learning

tedious.

It contained, doubtless, other passages more striking in the delivery,

but the one which follows is peculiarly pleasing to me--considering the

argument it answered and the audience to which it was addressed:

“Much has been said of the motives by which the merchants of England

are actuated as to this question. A noble lord, the other night,

treated these persons with great and unjust severity, imputing the

solicitude which they feel for the success of the South American cause

to interested motives. Without indulging in commonplace declamations

against party men, I must considerately say that it is a question with

me whether the interest of merchants do not more frequently coincide

with the best interests of mankind than do the transient and limited

views of politicians. If British merchants look with eagerness to the

event of the struggle in America, no doubt they do so with the hope of

deriving advantage from that event. But on what is such hope founded?

On the diffusion of beggary, on the maintenance of ignorance, on the

confirmation, on the establishment of tyranny in America? No; these are

the expectations of Ferdinand. The British merchant builds his hopes of

trade and profit on the progress of civilization and good government;

on the successful assertion of freedom--of freedom, that parent of

talent, that parent of heroism, that parent of every virtue. The fate

of America can only be necessary to commerce as it becomes accessory to

the dignity and the happiness of the race of man.”

VI.

As a parliamentary orator, Sir James Mackintosh never before or

afterwards rose to so great a height as in this debate; but he

continued at intervals, and on great and national questions, to deliver

what may be called very remarkable essays up to the end of his career.

I myself was present at his last effort of this description; and most

interesting it was to hear the man who began his public life with the

“Vindiciæ Gallicæ,” closing it with a speech in favour of the Reform

Bill. During the interval, nearly half a century had run its course.

The principles which, forty years before, had appeared amidst the storm

and tempest of doubtful discussion, and which, since that period,

had been at various times almost totally obscured, were now again on

the horizon, bright in the steady sunshine of matured opinion. The

distinguished person who was addressing his countrymen on a great

historical question was himself a history,--a history of his own time,

of which, with the flexibility of an intelligent but somewhat feeble

nature, he had shared the enthusiasm, the doubt, the despair, the hope,

the triumph.

The speech itself was remarkable. Overflowing with thought and

knowledge, containing sound general principles as to government,

undisfigured by the violence of party spirit, it pleased and instructed

those who took the pains to listen to it attentively; but it wanted the

qualities which attract or command attention.

It were vain to seek in Mackintosh for the playful fancy of Canning,

the withering invective of Brougham, the deep earnestness of Plunkett.

The speaker’s person, moreover, was gaunt and ungainly, his accent

Scotch, his voice monotonous, his action (the regular and graceless

vibration of two long arms) sometimes vehement without passion,

and sometimes almost cringing through good nature and civility. In

short, his manner, wanting altogether the quiet concentration of

self-possession, was peculiarly opposed to that dignified, simple, and

straightforward style of public speaking, which may be characterised as

“English.”

Still, it must be remembered that he was then at an advanced age,

and deprived, in some degree, of that mental, and yet more of that

physical, energy, which at an earlier period might possibly have

concealed these defects. I have heard, indeed, that on previous

occasions there had been moments when a temporary excitement gave

a natural animation to his voice and gestures, and that then the

excellence of his arguments was made strikingly manifest by an

effective delivery.

His chief reputation in Parliament, nevertheless, is not as an orator,

but as a person successfully connected with one of those great

movements of opinion which are so long running their course, and which

it is the fortune of a man’s life to encounter and be borne up upon

when they are near their goal.

VII.

Sir Thomas More, in his “Utopia” (1520), says of thieving, that, “as

the severity of the remedy is too great, so it is ineffectual.” In

Erasmus, Raleigh, Bacon, are to be found almost precisely the same

phrases and maxims that a few years ago startled the House of Commons

as novelties. “What a lamentable case it is,” observes Sir Edward Coke

(1620), “to see so many Christian men and women strangled on that

cursed tree of the gallows, the prevention of which consisteth in three

things:

‘Good education,

‘Good laws,

‘Rare pardons.’”

Evelyn, in his preface to “State Trials” (1730), observes, “that

our legislation is very liberal of the lives of offenders, making no

distinction between the most atrocious crimes and those of a less

degree.”

“Experience,” says Montesquieu, “shows that in countries remarkable

for the lenity of their laws, the spirit of its inhabitants is as

much affected by slight penalties as in other countries by severe

punishments.”[93]

This feeling became general amongst reflecting men in the middle and

towards the end of the eighteenth century.

Johnson displays it in the “Rambler” (1751). Blackstone expressly

declares that “every humane legislator should be extremely cautious of

establishing laws which inflict the penalty of death, especially for

slight offences.” Mr. Grose, in writing on the Criminal Laws of England

(1769), observes: “The sanguinary disposition of our laws, besides

being a national reproach, is, as it may appear, an encouragement

instead of a terror to delinquents.”

At this time also appeared the pamphlet of “Beccaria” (1767), which

was followed by an almost general movement in favour of milder laws

throughout Europe. The Duke of Modena (1780) abolished the Inquisition

in his states; the King of France, in 1781, the torture; in Russia,

capital punishment--never used but in cases of treason--may be said,

for all ordinary crimes, to have been done away with.

In England, where every doctrine is sure to find two parties, there

was a contest between one set of men who wished our rigorous laws to

be still more rigorously executed, and another that considered the

rigour of those laws to be the main cause of their inefficiency. A

pamphlet, called “Thoughts on Executive Justice,” which produced some

sensation at the moment, represented the first class of malcontents,

and the author declaimed vehemently against those juries, who acquitted

capital offenders because it went against their conscience to take away

men’s lives. Sir Samuel Romilly, then a very young man, replied to this

pamphlet with its own facts, and contended that the way of insuring the

punishment of criminals was to make that punishment more proportionate

to their offences.

From this pamphlet dates the modern battle which the great lawyer,

whose public career commenced with it, carried subsequently to the

floor of the House of Commons.

His exertions, however, were less fortunate than they deserved to be.

To him, indeed, we owe, in a great measure, the spreading of truths

amongst the many which had previously been confined to the few; but he

never enjoyed the substantial triumph of these truths, for the one or

two small successes which he obtained are scarcely worth mentioning.

His melancholy death took place in 1819, and Sir James Mackintosh, who

had just previously called the attention of Parliament to the barbarous

extent to which executions for forgery had been carried, now came

forward as the successor of Romilly in the general work of criminal law

reformation.

In March, 1819, accordingly, he moved for a committee to inquire into

the subject, and obtained, such being the result in a great measure of

his own able and temperate manner, a majority of nineteen. Again, in

1822, though opposed by the ministers and law-officers of the Crown, he

carried a motion which pledged the House _to increase the efficiency by

diminishing the rigour of our criminal jurisprudence_; and, in 1823,

he followed up this triumph by Nine Resolutions, which, had they been

adopted, would have taken away the punishment of death in the case

of larceny from shops, dwelling-houses, and on navigable rivers, and

also in those of forgery, sheep-stealing, and other felonies, made

capital by the “_Marriage_ and Black Act;” in short, he proposed that

sentences of death should only be pronounced when it was intended to

carry them into execution. Mr. Peel, then home secretary, opposed these

resolutions, and obtained a majority against them; but he pledged

himself at the same time to undertake, on behalf of the government, a

plan of law reform, which, although less comprehensive than that which

Sir James Mackintosh contended for, was a great measure in itself, and

an immense step towards further improvement.

Mackintosh’s success, throughout these efforts, was mainly due to

the plain unpretending manner in which he stated his case. “I don’t

mean,” he said, “to frame a new criminal code; God forbid I should

have such an idle and extravagant pretension. I don’t mean to abolish

the punishment of death; I believe that societies and individuals may

use it as a legitimate mode of defence. Neither do I mean to usurp on

the right of pardon now held by the Crown, which, on the contrary,

I wish, practically speaking, to restore. I do not even hope that I

shall be able to point out a manner in which the penalty of the law

should always be inflicted and never remitted. But I find things in

this condition--that the infliction of the law is the exception, and I

desire to make it the rule. I find two hundred cases in which capital

punishment is awarded by the statute-book, and only twenty-five in

which, for seventy years, such punishment has been executed. Why is

this? Because the code says one thing, and the moral feeling of your

society another. All I desire is that the two should be analogous, and

that our laws should award such punishments as our consciences permit

us to inflict.”

It was this kind of tone which reassured the House that it was not

perilling property by respecting life, and brought about more quickly

than less prudent management would have done that reform to which the

general spirit of the time was tending, and which must necessarily, a

few years sooner or later, have arrived.

VIII.

Thus, Sir James Mackintosh not only delivered some remarkable speeches

in Parliament, but he connected his name with a great and memorable

parliamentary triumph; nor is this all, he was true to his party,

opposing the government, though with some internal scruples, in 1820;

supporting Mr. Canning in 1827; and going again into opposition, to

the Duke of Wellington, in 1828. And yet, notwithstanding the ability

usually displayed in his speeches, notwithstanding the result of his

efforts in criminal law reform, and, more than all, notwithstanding the

constancy during late years of his politics, he held but a third-rate

place with the Whigs, and when they came into office in 1830, was

only made secretary at that board of which he had been offered the

presidency twenty years before. It is easy to say that this was because

he had not aristocratical connections. Mr. Poulett Thompson was not

more highly connected, and yet, though thirty years his junior, and far

his inferior in knowledge and mental capacity, received at the time a

higher office, and rose in ten years to the first places and honours

of the State. The one had much the higher order of intelligence, the

other the more resolute practical character. What you expected from the

first, he did not perform; the other went beyond your expectations.

For this is to be remarked: a man’s career is formed of the number

of little things he is always doing, whereas your opinion of him is

frequently derived, as I have already said, from something which, under

a particular stimulus, he has done once or twice, and may do now and

then.

The fact is that Mackintosh was not fit for the daily toil and struggle

of Parliament; he had not the quickness, the energy, the hard and

active nature of those who rise by constant exertions in popular

assemblies. He did very well to come out like the State steed, on great

and solemn occasions, with gorgeous caparison and prancing action, but

he did not do as the every-day hack on a plain road. He was, moreover,

inclined by his nature rather to repose than to strife; and that which

we do by effort we cannot be doing for ever--nor even do frequently

well. His reason, which was acute, told him what he should be; but he

had not the energy to be it. For instance, on returning to England,

he exclaimed: “It is time to be something decided, and I am resolved

to exert myself to the utmost in public life, if I have a seat in

Parliament, or to condemn myself to profound retirement if the doors of

St. Stephen’s are barred to me.”[94]

He had not, however, been many years a member before he accepted a

professorship (year 1818) at Haileybury College, because it left him

in the House of Commons; and refused the chair of moral philosophy

at Edinburgh (1818), because, it would have withdrawn him from it.

The great stream of public life thus passed for ever by him; he could

neither commit himself to its waves nor yet avoid lingering on its

shores. Now and then, in a moment of excitement, he would rush into it,

but it was soon again to retire to some sunny reverie, or some shady

regret, where he could quietly plot for the future, or mourn over the

past, or indulge the scheme of lettered indolence which wooed him at

the moment.

PART III.

MERITS AS A WRITER, DEATH, AND ESTIMATE OF GENERAL CAPACITY AND

CHARACTER.

History of England.--Articles in “Edinburgh Review.”--Treatise

on Ethical Philosophy.--Revolution of 1688.--Bentham’s system

of morals and politics.--His own death.--Comparison with

Montaigne.

I.

I have said that Sir James Mackintosh allowed himself to be lured

from the strife of politics by the love of letters. And what was the

species of learned labour on which his intervals of musing leisure were

employed? He read at times--this he was always able and willing to

do--for the future composition of a great historical work--the “History

of England”--which his friends and the public, with a total ignorance

of his sort of character and ability, always sighed that he should

undertake, and considered that he would worthily accomplish. But while

he read for the future composition of this work, he actually wrote

but little for it. The little he did write was undertaken at the call

of some particular impulse, and capable of being finished before that

impulse was passed away. In such writings he followed the bent of his

nature, and in them accordingly he best succeeded, as they who refer to

his contributions to the “Edinburgh Review”[95] may be well disposed

to acknowledge. At last, within a few yards of his grave, he made a

start. Life was drawing to a close, the season for action was almost

passed, and of all he had mused and read and planned for it, there

existed nothing. This thought galled him to a species of exertion, and

he is one of the very few men who, at an advanced age, crowded the most

considerable and ambitious of their works into the last years of their

life.

The volumes on “English History” brought out in Dr. Lardner’s

“Encyclopædia,” the “Life of Sir Thomas More,” which appeared in

the same publication, a “Treatise on Ethical Philosophy,” and a

commencement of the “History of the Revolution of 1688,” delivered to

the world after his death, are these works.

They all exhibit the author’s defects and merits; third-rate in

themselves, and yet at various times persuading us that he who wrote

them was a first-rate man. Let us take up, for instance, the volumes

on “English History.” The narrative is languid, and interrupted by

disquisitions: the style is in general prolix, cumbrous, cold, profuse;

nevertheless, these volumes are full of thought and knowledge; they

contain many curious anecdotes, many scattered observations of profound

wisdom, while here and there burst upon us, by surprise it must be

confessed, passages which, written under a temporary excitement,

display remarkable spirit and power. Such is the description of

Becket’s murder:

II.

“Provoked by these acts of extraordinary imprudence, Henry is said to

have called out before an audience of lords, knights, and gentlemen,

‘To what a miserable state am I reduced, when I cannot be at rest in

my own realm, by reason of only one priest; is there no one to deliver

me from my troubles?’ Four knights of distinguished rank, William

de Tracy, Hugh de Moreville, Richard Briths, and Reginald Fitz-Urse

(December 28), interpreted the King’s complaints as commands. They

repaired to Canterbury, confirmed in their purpose by finding that

Becket had recommenced his excommunications by that of Robert de Broe,

and that he had altered his course homeward to avoid the royalist

bishops on their way to court, in Normandy; they instantly went to his

house, and required him, not very mildly, to withdraw the censures of

the prelates, and take the oath to his lord-paramount. He refused. John

of Salisbury, his faithful and learned secretary, ventured at this

alarming moment to counsel peace. The primate thought that nothing was

left to him but a becoming death.

“The knights retired to put on their armour, and there seems to have

been sufficient interval either for negotiation or escape. At that

moment, indeed, measures were preparing for legal proceedings against

him.

“But the visible approach of peril awakened his sense of dignity, and

breathed an unusual decorum over his language and deportment. He went

through the cloisters into the church, whither he was followed by his

enemies, attended by a band of soldiers, whom they had hastily gathered

together. They rushed into the church with drawn swords. Tracy cried

out, ‘Where is the traitor? Where is the archbishop?’ Becket, who

stood before the altar of St. Bennet, answered gravely, ‘Here am I, no

traitor, but the archbishop.’ Tracy pulled him by the sleeve, saying:

‘Come hither, thou art a prisoner.’ He pulled back his arm with such

force as to make Tracy stagger, and said: ‘What meaneth this, William?

I have done _thee_ many pleasures; comest thou with armed men into

my church?’ ‘It is not possible that thou shouldst live any longer,’

called out Fitz-Urse. The intrepid primate replied: ‘I am ready to die

for my God, in defence of the liberties of the Church.’

“At that moment, either by a relapse into his old disorders, or to

show that his non-resistance sprung not from weakness, but from duty,

he took hold of Tracy by the habergeon, or gorget, and flung him with

such violence as had nearly thrown him to the ground. He then bowed

his head, as if he would pray, and uttered his last words: ‘To God

and St. Mary I commend my soul, and the cause of the Church!’ Tracy

aimed a heavy blow at him, which fell on a bystander. The assassins

fell on him with many strokes, and though the second brought him to

the ground, they did not cease till his brains were scattered over the

pavement.”[96]

III.

The characters of Alfred, of William I., of Henry VII., are superior

to any sketches of the same persons with which I am acquainted. The

summing up of events into pictures of certain epochs is frequently

done with much skill, and I particularly remember a short description

of the commencement of the Crusades, concluding with the capture of

Jerusalem;--the state of Europe in the thirteenth century, comprising

a large portion of history in two pages; and the death of Simon de

Montfort, with the establishment of the English Constitution. In a true

spirit of historical philosophy, Sir James Mackintosh says:

“The introduction of knights, citizens, and burgesses into the

Legislature, by its continuance in circumstances so apparently

inauspicious, showed how exactly it suited the necessities and demands

of society at that moment. No sooner had events brought forward

the measure, than its fitness to the state of the community became

apparent. It is often thus that in the clamours of men for a succession

of objects, society selects from among them the one that has an

affinity with itself, and which most easily combines with its state at

the time.”

The condition of Europe, also, just prior to the wars of the Roses, is

rapidly, picturesquely, and comprehensively sketched.

“The historian who rests for a little space between the termination

of the Plantagenet wars in France and the commencement of the civil

wars of the two branches of that family in England, may naturally

look around him, reviewing some of the more important events which

had passed, and casting his eye onward to the preparations for the

mighty changes which were to produce an influence on the character and

lot of the human race. A very few particulars only can be selected as

specimens from so vast a mass. The foundations of the political system

of the European commonwealth were now laid. A glance over the map of

Europe, in 1453, will satisfy an observer that the territories of

different nations were then fast approaching to the shape and extent

which they retain at this day. The English islanders had only one town

of the continent remaining in their hands. The Mahometans of Spain

were on the eve of being reduced under the Christian authority. Italy

had, indeed, lost her liberty, but had yet escaped the ignominy of a

foreign yoke. Moscovy was emerging from the long domination of the

Tartars. Venice, Hungary, and Poland, three states now placed under

foreign masters, guarded the eastern frontier of Christendom against

the Ottoman barbarians, whom the absence of foresight, of mutual

confidence, and a disregard of general safety and honour, disgraceful

to the western governments, had just suffered to master Constantinople

and to subjugate the eastern Christians. France had consolidated the

greater part of her central and commanding territories. In the transfer

of the Netherlands to the house of Austria originated the French

jealousy of that power, then rising in South-Eastern Germany. The

empire was daily becoming a looser confederacy under a nominal ruler,

whose small remains of authority every day continued to lessen. The

internal or constitutional history of the European nations threatened,

in almost every continental country, the fatal establishment of an

absolute monarchy, from which the free and generous spirit of the

northern barbarians did not protect their degenerate posterity. In the

Netherlands an ancient gentry, and burghers, enriched by traffic, held

their still limited princes in check. In Switzerland, the patricians of

a few towns, together with the gallant peasantry of the Alpine valleys,

escaped a master. But Parliaments and Diets, States-General and

Cortes, were gradually disappearing from view, or reduced from august

assemblies to insignificant formalities, and Europe seemed on the eve

of exhibiting nothing to the disgusted eye but the dead uniformity of

imbecile despotism, dissolute courts, and cruelly oppressed nations.

“In the meantime the unobserved advancement and diffusion of knowledge

were preparing the way for discoveries, of which the high result

will be contemplated only by unborn ages. The mariner’s compass had

conducted the Portuguese to distant points on the coast of Africa,

and was about to lead them through the unploughed ocean to the famous

regions of the East. Civilized men, hitherto cooped up on the shores

of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, now visited the whole of

their subject planet and became its undisputed sovereigns. The great

adventurer[97] was then born, who, with two undecked boats and one

frail sloop, containing with difficulty a hundred and twenty persons,

dared to stretch across an untraversed ocean, which had hitherto

bounded the imaginations as well as the enterprises of men; and who,

instead of that India renowned in legend and in story, of which he was

in quest, laid open a new world which, under the hands of the European

race, was one day to produce governments, laws, manners, modes of

civilization and states of society almost as different as its native

plants and animals from those of ancient Europe.

“Who could then--who can even now--foresee all the prodigious effects

of these discoveries on the fortunes of mankind?”

IV.

No one will deny that what I have just quoted might have been written

by a great historian; yet no one will say that the work I quote from is

a great history.

It is a series of parts, some excellent, some indifferent, but which

altogether do not form a whole. The fragment of the Revolution, though

a fragment, presents the same qualities and defects. The narrative is

poor; some of the characters, such as those of Rochester, Sunderland,

and Halifax--and some of the passages (that with which the work opens,

for instance)--are excellent; but then, these fine figures of gold

embroidery are worked here and there with care and toil, on an ordinary

sort of canvas.

The “Life of Sir Thomas More” is the only complete performance; and

this because it was a portrait which might have been taken at one

sitting.

The “Treatise on Ethics,” first published in the supplement of the

seventh edition of the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” and which has

since appeared in a separate form under the auspices of Professor

Whewell, is still more remarkable, both in its design and execution,

as characterising the author. He seems here, indeed, to have been

aware of his own capabilities, and to have accommodated his labours

to them; for his work is conceived in separate and distinct portions,

and he undertakes to write the course and progress of philosophy by

descriptions of its most illustrious masters and professors; a plan

gracefully imagined, as diffusing the charm of personal narrative over

dry and speculative disquisition.

Nothing, accordingly, can be better executed than some of these

pictures. It would be difficult to paint Hobbes, Leibnitz, Shaftesbury,

more faithfully, or in more suitable colours; the contrast between the

haughty Bossuet and the gentle Fénelon is perfectly sustained; while

Berkeley the virtuous, the benevolent, the imaginative, is drawn

with a pencil which would even have satisfied the admiration of his

contemporaries:

V.

“_Berkeley._--Ancient learning, exact science, polished society, modern

literature, and the fine arts, contributed to adorn and enrich the

mind of this accomplished man. All his contemporaries agreed with the

satirist in ascribing

“‘To Berkeley every virtue under heaven!’

“Adverse factions and hostile wits concurred only in loving, admiring,

and contributing to advance him. The severe sense of Swift endured his

visions; the modest Addison endeavoured to reconcile Clarke to his

ambitious speculations. His character converted the satire of Pope into

fervid praise. Even the fastidious and turbulent Atterbury said, after

an interview with him, ‘So much understanding, so much knowledge, so

much innocence, and such humility, I did not think had been the portion

of any but angels, till I saw this gentleman.’[98] ‘Lord Bathurst told

me,’ says Warton, ‘that the members of the Scribblers’ Club being met

at his house at dinner, they agreed to rally Berkeley, who was also

his guest, on his scheme at Bermudas. Berkeley, having listened to the

many lively things they had to say, begged to be heard in his turn,

and displayed his plan with such an astonishing and animating force of

eloquence and enthusiasm that they were struck dumb, and, after some

pause, rose all up together, with earnestness exclaiming, “Let us set

out with him immediately!”’[99] It was when thus beloved and celebrated

that he conceived, at the age of forty-five, the design of devoting

his life to reclaim and convert the natives of North America; and he

employed as much influence and solicitation as common men do for their

most prized objects, in obtaining leave to resign his dignities and

revenues, to quit his accomplished and affectionate friends, and to

bury himself in what must have seemed an intellectual desert. After

four years’ residence at Newport, in Rhode Island, he was compelled,

by the refusal of government to furnish him with funds for his college,

to forego his work of heroic, or rather godlike benevolence, though not

without some consoling forethought of the fortune of a country where he

had sojourned:

“‘Westward the course of empire takes its way:

The first four acts already past,

A fifth shall close the drama with the day,

Time’s noblest offspring is its last.’

“Thus disappointed in his ambition of keeping a school for savage

children, at a salary of a hundred pounds a year, he was received

on his return with open arms by the philosophical Queen, at whose

metaphysical parties he made one, with Sherlock, who, as well as

Smallridge, was his supporter, and with Hoadley, who, following Clarke,

was his antagonist. By her influence he was made Bishop of Cloyne.

It is one of his greatest merits, that though of English extraction,

he was a true Irishman, and the first eminent Protestant, after the

unhappy contest at the Revolution, who avowed his love for all his

countrymen;[100] and contributed, by a truly Christian address to

the Roman Catholics of his diocese, to their perfect quiet during

the rebellion of 1745. From the writings of his advanced years, when

he chose a medical tract[101] to be the vehicle of philosophical

reflections, though it cannot be said that he relinquished his early

opinions, it is at least apparent that his mind had received a new

bent, and was habitually turned from reasoning towards contemplation.

His immaterialism, indeed, modestly appears, but only to purify and

elevate our thoughts, and to fix them on mind, the paramount and

primeval principle of all things. ‘Perhaps,’ says he, ‘the truths

about innate ideas may be, that there are properly no ideas on passive

objects in the mind but what are derived from sense, but that there are

also, besides these, her own acts and operations--such are notions;’ a

statement which seems once more to admit general conceptions, and which

might have served, as well as the parallel passage of Leibnitz, as the

basis of modern philosophy in Germany. From these compositions of his

old age, he then appears to have recurred with fondness to Plato, and

the later Platonists: writers from whose mere reasonings an intellect

so acute could hardly hope for an argumentative satisfaction of all its

difficulties, and whom he probably either studied as a means of inuring

his mind to objects beyond the visible diurnal sphere, and of attaching

it, through frequent meditation, to that perfect and transcendent

goodness, to which his moral feelings always pointed, and which they

incessantly strove to grasp. His mind, enlarging as it rose, at length

receives every theist, however imperfect his belief, to a communion in

its philosophic piety. ‘Truth,’ he beautifully concludes, ‘is the cry

of all, but the game of few. Certainly, where it is the chief passion,

it does not give way to vulgar cares, nor is it contented with a little

ardour in the early time of life; active perhaps to pursue, but not

so fit to weigh and revise. He that would make a real progress in

knowledge, must dedicate his age as well as youth, the latter growth as

well as first fruits, at the altar of truth.’ So did Berkeley, and such

were almost his latest words.

“His general principles of ethics may be shortly stated by himself:

‘As God is a being of infinite goodness, His end is the good of His

creatures. The general well-being of all men of all nations, of all

ages of the world, is that which He designs should be procured by

the concurring actions of each individual.’ Having stated that this

end can be pursued only in one of two ways--either by computing the

consequences of each action, or by obeying the rules which generally

tend to happiness; and having shown the first to be impossible, he

rightly infers, ‘That the end to which God requires the concurrence

of human actions, must be carried on by the observation of certain

determinate and universal rules, or moral precepts, which in their own

nature have a necessary tendency to promote the well-being of mankind,

taking in all nations and ages, from the beginning to the end of the

world.’[102] A romance, of which a journey to an Utopia in the centre

of Africa forms the chief part, called, ‘The adventures of Signor

Gaudentio di Lucca,’ has been commonly ascribed to him; probably on no

other ground than its union of pleasing invention with benevolence and

elegance.”[103]

VI.

The following short description of the practical Paley comes aptly

after that of this charming Utopian:

“_Paley._--The natural frame of Paley’s understanding fitted it more

for business and the world than for philosophy; and he accordingly

enjoyed with considerable relish the few opportunities which the

latter part of his life afforded, of taking a part in the affairs of

his country, as a magistrate. Penetration and shrewdness, firmness and

coolness, a vein of pleasantry, fruitful, though somewhat unrefined,

with an original homeliness and significancy of expression, were

perhaps more remarkable in his conversation than the restraints of

authorship and profession allowed them to be in his writings. His taste

for the common business and ordinary amusements of life, fortunately

gave a zest to the company which his neighbourhood chanced to yield,

without rendering him insensible to the pleasures of intercourse with

more enlightened society. The practical bent of his nature is visible

in the language of his writings, which, on practical matters, is as

precise as the nature of the subject requires; but, in his rare and

reluctant efforts to rise to first principles, becomes undeterminate

and unsatisfactory, though no man’s composition was more free from the

impediments which hinder a writer’s meaning from being quickly and

clearly seen. He possessed that chastised acuteness of discrimination,

exercised on the affairs of men, and habitually looking to a purpose

beyond the mere increase of knowledge, which forms the character of a

lawyer’s understanding, and which is apt to render a mere lawyer too

subtle for the management of affairs, and yet too gross for the pursuit

of general truths. His style is as near perfection, in its kind, as

any in our language. Perhaps no words were ever more expressive and

illustrative than those in which he represents the art of life to be

that of rightly setting our habits.”--“Ethical Philosophy,” p. 274.

Such are the portraits in this work; the history of ancient ethics,

and the vindication of the scholiasts also, are in themselves and as

separate compositions of great merit; but when, after admiring these

different fragments, we look at the plan, at the system which is to

result from them, or endeavour to follow out the line of reasoning

which is to bring them together--we quit the land of realities for

that of shadows, and are obliged to confess that the author has barely

sufficient vigour to make his meaning intelligible.

VII.

To give the history intended to be given by Sir James’s treatise, would

be without the scope of the present sketch; but it may not be amiss to

say something of the state of the philosophical opinions which existed

at the time of its publication, and which, in fact, called it forth.

Helvetius, the friend of Voltaire and Diderot--Helvetius, whose works

have been considered as merely the record of those opinions which

circulated around him--the most amusing, if not the most logical of

metaphysicians, wrote that everything proceeded from the senses, and

that man (for this was one of his favourite hypotheses) differed from a

monkey mainly because his hands were tenderer and more soft.

The doctrine of sensation led necessarily to that of selfishness,

since, owing what we think to what we feel, every idea is the

consequence of some pain or pleasure, and our own pains and pleasures

are thus the parents of all our emotions.

A strong reaction, however, took place in the beginning of the

nineteenth against the eighteenth century; the original existence of

certain sentiments or affections implanted by nature, was contended

for, in Germany and in Scotland, under a variety of qualifications.

The school, which said that the affections arose from this primary

source, called them disinterested, as that which contended that they

more or less directly proceeded from some cause which had reference to

ourselves, called them interested. There was but one step easily made

by both parties in carrying out their doctrines.

The philosophers who thought that self-interest, “through some

certain strainers well refined,” was the cause of all our actions and

ideas, maintained that utility was the only measure of virtue, or of

greatness. The philosophers of the opposite faction argued on the

contrary, that as many of our emotions were natural and involuntary, so

there was also a sense of wrong and right, natural and involuntary, and

connected with those emotions implanted in us.

Living in a retired part of London, visited only by his adorers and

disciples, looking rarely beyond the confines of his early knowledge,

and on the train of thinking it had inspired, an old and singular

gentleman, with great native powers of mind, almost alone resisted the

new impulse, and, classifying and extending the doctrines of the French

philosophy, established a reputation and a school of his own. The charm

of Mr. Bentham’s philosophy, however obscured by fanciful names and

unnecessary subdivisions, is its apparent clearness and simplicity.

He considers with the disciples of Helvetius--1, that our ideas do come

from our sensations, and that consequently we are selfish; 2, that man

in doing what is most useful to himself does what is right.

Very strange and fantastical notions have been propagated against the

philosopher by persons so egregiously mistaking him as to imagine that

what he thus says of mankind generally--of man, meaning every man--is

said of a man, of man separately; so that a murderer, pretend these

commentators, has only to be sure that a second murder is useful to

him by preventing the detection of the first, in order to be justified

in committing it. It were useless to dwell upon this ridiculous

construction. But in urging men to pursue the general interest of

society at large, in telling them that to do what is most for that

interest is to act usefully and thereby virtuously, Mr. Bentham found

it necessary to explain how such interest was to be discovered.

Accordingly he has propounded that the general interest of a society

must be considered to be the interest of the greatest number in that

society, and that the greatest number in any society is the best judge

of its interest. Moreover, in the further development of his doctrine,

he contends that a majority would always, under natural circumstances,

govern a minority, and that, therefore, there is a natural tendency,

if not thwarted, towards the happiness and good government of mankind.

This system of philosophy gained the more attention from its being also

a system of politics. According to Mr. Bentham, that which was most

important to men depended on maintaining what he considered the natural

law, viz., governing the minority by the majority.

VIII.

Unfortunately for the destiny of mankind, and the soundness of the

Benthamite doctrine, it is by no means certain that the majority in

any community is the best judge of its interests; whilst it is even

less certain, if it did know these interests, that it would necessarily

and invariably follow them. In almost every collection of men the

intelligent few know better what is for the common interest than the

ignorant many; and it is rare indeed to see communities or individuals

pursuing their interest steadily even when they perceive it clearly.

It would, perhaps, be more reconcilable to reason to say that the

intellect of a community should govern a community; but this assertion

is also open to objection, since a small number of intelligent men

might govern for their own interest, and not for the interest of the

society they represented. In short, though it is easy to see that the

science of government does not consist in giving power to the greatest

number, but in giving it to the most intelligent, and making it for

their interest to govern for the interest of the greatest number;

still, every day teaches us that good government is rather a thing

relative than a thing absolute; that all governments have good mixed

with evil, and evil mixed with good; and that the statesman’s task, as

is beautifully demonstrated by Montesquieu, is, not to destroy an evil

combined with a greater good, nor to create a good accompanied with a

greater evil; but to calculate how the greatest amount of good and the

least amount of evil can be combined together. Hence it is, that the

best governments with which we are acquainted seem rather to have been

fashioned by the working hand of daily experience, than by the artistic

fingers of philosophical speculation.

Nevertheless, the theory, that the good of the greatest number in any

community ought to be the object which its government should strive

to attain, and the maxim, that the interest and happiness of every

unit in a community are to be treated as a portion of the interest and

happiness of the whole community, are humanizing precepts, and have,

through the influence of Mr. Bentham and of his disciples, produced,

within my own memory, a considerable change in the public opinion of

England.

Mr. Bentham’s name, then, is far more above the scoff of his

antagonists than below the enthusiasm of his disciples; and it is in

this spirit, and with a becoming respect, that Sir James Mackintosh

treats the philosopher while he combats his philosophy.

IX.

In regard to the theory of Sir James himself, if I understand it

rightly (and it is rather, as I have said, indistinctly expressed), he

accepts neither the doctrine of innate ideas disinterestedly producing

or ordering our actions, nor that of sense-derived ideas by which, with

a concentrated regard to self, some suppose men to be governed--but

imagines an association of ideas, naturally suggested by our human

condition, which, according to a pre-ordinated state of the mind,

produces, as in chemical processes, some emotion different from any of

the combined elements or causes from which it springs.

This emotion, once existing, requires, without consideration or

reflection, its gratification. In this manner the satisfaction of

benevolence and pity springs as much from a spontaneous desire as

the satisfaction of hunger; and man is unconsciously taught, through

feelings necessary to him as man, to wish involuntarily for that which,

on reflection and experience, he would find (such is the beautiful

dispensation of Providence) most for his happiness and advantage.

The union, assemblage, or incorporation, if one may so speak, of these

involuntary desires, affecting and affected by them all, becomes our

universal moral sense or conscience, which in each of its propensities

is gratified or mortified, according to our conduct.

X.

Here end my criticisms. They have passed rapidly in review the

principal works and events of Sir James Mackintosh’s life;[104] and

what have they illustrated? That, which I commenced by observing: that

he had made several excellent speeches, that he had taken an active

part in politics, that he had written ably upon history, that he had

manifested a profound knowledge of philosophy; but that he had not

been pre-eminent as an orator, as a politician, as an historian, as a

philosopher.[105] It may be doubted whether any speech or book of his

will long survive his time; but a very valuable work might be compiled

from his writings and speeches. Indeed, there are hardly any books

in our language more interesting or more instructive than the two

volumes published by his son, and which display in every page the best

qualities of an excellent heart and an excellent understanding, set off

by the most amiable and remarkable simplicity. His striking, peculiar,

and unrivalled merit, however, was that of a conversationalist. Great

good-nature, great and yet gentle animation, much learning, and a

sound, discriminating, and comprehensive judgment, made him this.

He had little of the wit of words--brilliant repartées, caustic

sayings, concentrated and epigrammatic turns of expression. But he

knew everything and could talk of everything without being tedious. A

lady of great wit, intellect, and judgment (Lady William Russell), in

describing his soft Scotch voice, said to me--“Mackintosh played on

your understanding with a flageolet, Macaulay with a trumpet.” Having

lived much by himself and with books, and much also in the world and

with men, he had the light anecdote and easy manner of society, and

the grave and serious gatherings in of lonely hours. He added also to

much knowledge considerable powers of observation; and there are few

persons of whom he speaks, even at the dawn of their career, whom he

has not judged with discrimination. His agreeableness, moreover, being

that of a full mind expressed with facility, was the most translatable

of any man’s, and he succeeded with foreigners, and in France, which

he visited three times--once at the peace of Amiens, again in 1814,

and again in 1824--quite as much as in his own country, and with

his own countrymen. Madame de Staël and Benjamin Constant prized

him not less than did Lord Dudley or Lord Byron. It was not only in

England, then, but also on the Continent, where his early pamphlet and

distinguished friendships had made him equally known--that he ever

remained the _man of promise_; until, amidst hopes which his vast and

various information, his wonderful memory, his copious elocution,

and his transitory fits of energy, still nourished, he died, in the

sixty-seventh year of his age, universally admired and regretted,

though without a high reputation for any one thing, or the ardent

attachment of any particular set of persons. His death, which took

place the 30th of May, 1832, was occasioned by a small fragment of

chicken-bone, which, having lacerated the trachea, created a wound that

ultimately proved fatal. He met his end with calmness and resignation,

expressing his belief in the Christian faith, and placing his trust in

it.

XI.

No man doing so little ever went through a long life continually

creating the belief that he would ultimately do so much. A want of

earnestness, a want of passion, a want of genius, prevented him from

playing a first-rate part amongst men during his day, and from leaving

any of those monuments behind him which command the attention of

posterity. A love of knowledge, an acute and capacious intelligence,

an early and noble ambition, led him into literary and active life,

and furnished him with the materials and at moments with the energy by

which success in both is obtained. An amiable disposition, a lively

flow of spirits, an extraordinary and varied stock of information made

his society agreeable to the most distinguished persons of his age,

and induced them, encouraged by some occasional displays of remarkable

power, to consider his available abilities to be greater than they

really were.

“What have you done,” he relates that a French lady once said to him,

“that people should think you so superior?” “I was obliged,” he adds,

“as usual, to refer to my projects.” For active life he was too much

of the academic school:--believing nearly all great distinctions to

be less than they were, and remaining irresolute between small ones.

He passed, as he himself said, from Burke to Fox in half an hour, and

remained weeks, as we learn from a friend (Lord Nugent), in determining

whether he should employ “usefulness” or “utility” in some particular

composition. Such is not the stuff out of which great leaders or

statesmen are formed. His main error as a writer and as a speaker

was his elaborate struggle against that easy idle way of delivering

himself, which made the charm of his talk when he did not think of what

he was saying. “The great fault of my manner,” he himself observes

somewhere, “is that I overload.” And to many of his more finished

compositions we might, indeed, apply the old saying of the critic,

who on being asked whether he admired a certain tragedy of Dionysius,

replied: “I have not seen it; it is obscured with language.” His early

compositions had a sharper and terser style than his later ones, the

activity of the author’s mind being greater, and his doubts and toils

after perfection less; but even these were over-prepared. Can he be

considered a failure? No; if you compare him with other men. Yes; if

you compare him with the general idea entertained as to himself. The

reputation he attained, however vague and uncertain, the writings

that he left, though inferior to the prevalent notions as to his

powers,--all placed him on a pedestal of conspicuous, though not of

gigantic elevation amongst his contemporaries. The results of his life

only disappointed when you measured them by the anticipations which

his merits had excited--then he became “the man of promise.” Could he

have arrived at greater eminence than that which he attained? if so, it

must have been by a different road. I cannot repeat too often that no

man struggles perpetually and victoriously against his own character;

and one of the first principles of success in life, is so to regulate

our career as rather to turn our physical constitution and natural

inclinations to good account, than to endeavour to counteract the one

or oppose the other.

There can be no general comparison between Montaigne and Mackintosh.

The first was an original thinker, and the latter a combiner and

retailer of the thoughts of others. But I have often pictured to myself

the French philosopher lounging away the greatest portion of his life

in the old square turret of his château, yielding to his laziness all

that it exacted from him, and becoming, almost in spite of himself, the

first magistrate of his town, and, though carelessly and discursively,

the greatest writer of his time. He gave the rein to the idleness of

his nature, and had reason to be satisfied with the employment of his

life.

On the other hand, let us look at the accomplished Scotchman,

constantly agitated by his aspirations after fame and his inclinations

for repose; formed for literary ease, forcing himself into political

conflict--dreaming of a long-laboured history, and writing a hasty

article in a review; earnest about nothing, because the objects to

which he momentarily directed his efforts were not likely to give the

permanent distinction for which he pined; and thus, with a doubtful

mind and a broken career, achieving little that was worthy of his

abilities, or equal to the expectations of his friends. I have said

there can be no general comparison between men whose particular

faculties were no doubt of a very different order; yet, had the one

mixed in contest with the bold and factious spirits of his day, he

would have been but a poor “_ligueur_;” and had the other abstained

from politics and renounced long and laborious compositions, merely

writing under the stimulus of some accidental inspiration, it is

probable that his name would have gone down to posterity as that of the

most agreeable and instructive essayist of his remarkable epoch. But at

all events that name is graven on the monument which commemorates more

Christian manners and more mild legislation: and “Blessed shall he be,”

as said our great lawyer, “who layeth the first stone of this building;

more blessed he that proceeds in it; most of all he that finisheth it

in the glory of God, and the honour of our king and nation.”

COBBETT, THE CONTENTIOUS MAN.

PART I.

FROM HIS BIRTH, IN MARCH, 1762, TO HIS QUITTING THE UNITED STATES, JUNE

1ST, 1800.

Son of a small farmer.--Boyhood spent in the country.--Runs

away from home.--Becomes a lawyer’s clerk.--Enlists as a

soldier, 1784.--Learns grammar and studies Swift.--Goes

to Canada.--Remarked for good conduct.--Rises to rank of

sergeant-major.--Gets discharge, 1791.--Marries.--Quits

Europe for United States.--Starts as a bookseller in

Pennsylvania.--Becomes a political writer of great

power.--Takes a violent anti-republican tone.--Has to suffer

different prosecutions, and at last sets sail for England.

I.

The character which I am now tempted to delineate is just the reverse

of that which I rise from describing. Mackintosh was a man of great

powers of reasoning, of accomplished learning, but of little or no

sustained energy. His vision took a wide and calm range; he saw all

things coolly, dispassionately, and, except at his first entry into

life, was never so lost in his admiration of one object as to overlook

the rest. His fault lay in rather the opposite extreme; his perception

of the universal weakened that of the particular, and the variety of

colours which appeared at once before him became too blended in his

sight for the adequate appreciation of each.

The subject of this memoir, on the contrary, though he could argue

well in favour of any opinion he adopted, had not that elevated and

philosophic cast of mind which makes men inquire after truth for the

sake of truth, regarding its pursuit as a delight, its attainment as

a duty. Neither could he take that comprehensive view of affairs which

affords to the judgment an ample scope for the comparison and selection

of opinions. But he possessed a rapid power of concentration; a will

that scorned opposition; he saw clearly that one side of a question

which caught his attention; and pursued the object he had momentarily

in view with an energy that never recoiled before a danger, and was

rarely arrested by a scruple. The sense of his force gave him the

passion for action; but he encouraged this passion until it became

restlessness, a desire to fight rather for the pleasure of fighting

than for devotion to any cause for which he fought.

While Mackintosh always struggled against his character, and thereby

never gave himself fair play, the person of whom I am now about

to speak--borne away in a perfectly opposite extreme--allowed his

character to usurp and govern his abilities, frequently without either

usefulness or aim. Thus, the one changed sides two or three times

in his life, from that want of natural ardour which creates strong

attachments; the other attacked and defended various parties with a

furious zeal, upon which no one could rely, because it proceeded from

the temporary caprice of a whimsical imagination, and not from the

stedfast enthusiasm of any well-meditated conviction. With two or three

qualities more, Cobbett would have been a very great man in the world;

as it was, he made a great noise in it. But I pass from criticism to

narrative.

II.

William Cobbett was born in the neighbourhood of Farnham, on the 9th

of March, 1762. The remotest ancestor he had ever heard of was his

grandfather, who had been a day labourer, and, according to the rustic

habits of old times, worked with the same farmer from the day of his

marriage to that of his death. The son, Cobbett’s parent, was a man

superior to the generality of persons in his station of life. He

could not only read and write, but he knew also a little mathematics;

understood land surveying, was honest and industrious, and had thus

risen from the position of labourer, a position in which he was born,

to that of having labourers under him.

Cobbett’s boyhood, I may say his childhood, was passed in the fields:

first he was seen frightening the birds from the turnips, then weeding

wheat, then leading a horse at harrowing barley, finally joining the

reapers at harvest, driving the team, and holding the plough. His

literary instruction was small, and only such as he could acquire at

home. It was shrewdly asked by Dr. Johnson, “What becomes of all the

clever schoolboys?” In fact, many of the boys clever at school are not

heard of afterwards, because if they are docile they are also timid,

and attend to the routine of education less from the love of learning

than the want of animal spirits. Cobbett was not a boy of this kind.

At the age of sixteen he determined to go to sea, but could not get

a captain to take him. At the age of seventeen he quitted his home

(having already, when much younger, done so in search of adventures),

and without communicating his design to any one, started, dressed

in his Sunday clothes, for the great city of London. Here, owing to

the kind exertions of a passenger in the coach in which this his

first journey was made, he got engaged after some time and trouble as

under-clerk to an attorney (Mr. Holland), in Gray’s Inn Lane.

It is natural enough that to a lad accustomed to fresh air, green

fields, and out-of-door exercise, the close atmosphere, dull aspect,

and sedentary position awaiting an attorney’s under-clerk at Gray’s

Inn must have been hateful. But William Cobbett never once thought of

escaping from what he called “an earthly hell” by a return to his home

and friends. This would have been to confess himself beaten, which

he never meant to be. On the contrary, rushing from one bold step to

another still more so, he enlisted himself (1784) as a soldier in a

regiment intended to serve in Nova Scotia. His father, though somewhat

of his own stern and surly nature, begged, prayed, and remonstrated.

But it was useless. The recruit, however, had some months to pass

in England, since, peace having taken place, there was no hurry in

sending off the troops. These months he spent in Chatham, storing his

brains with the lore of a circulating library, and his heart with

love-dreams of the librarian’s daughter.

To this period he owed what he always considered his most valuable

acquisition, a knowledge of his native language; the assiduity with

which he gave himself up to study, on this occasion, insured his

success and evinced his character. He wrote out the whole of an English

grammar two or three times; he got it by heart; he repeated it every

morning and evening, and he imposed on himself the task of saying it

over once every time that he mounted guard. “I learned grammar,” he

himself says, “when I was a private soldier on the pay of sixpence a

day. The edge of my berth, or that of the guard-bed, was my seat to

study on; my knapsack was my book-case, a bit of board lying on my lap

was my writing-table, and the task did not demand anything like a year

of my life.” Such is will. In America, Cobbett remained as a soldier

till the month of September, 1791, when his regiment was relieved and

sent home. On the 19th of November, he obtained his discharge, after

having served nearly eight years, never having once been disgraced,

confined, or reprimanded, and having attained, owing to his zeal and

intelligence, the rank of sergeant-major without having passed through

the intermediate rank of sergeant.

The following was the order issued at Portsmouth on the day of his

discharge:

“Portsmouth, 19th Dec. 1791.

“Sergeant-Major Cobbett having most pressingly applied for his

discharge, at Major Lord Edward Fitzgerald’s request, General

Frederick has ordered Major Lord Edward Fitzgerald to return

the Sergeant-Major thanks for his behaviour and conduct during

the time of his being in the regiment, and Major Lord Edward

adds his most hearty thanks to those of the General.”

III.

At this period Cobbett married. Nobody has left us wiser sentiments or

pithier sentences on the choice of a wife. His own, the daughter of

a sergeant of artillery, stationed like himself at New Brunswick, had

been selected at once. He had met her two or three times, and found

her pretty; beauty, indeed, he considered indispensable, but beauty

alone would never have suited him. Industry, activity, energy, the

qualities which he possessed, were those which he most admired, and

the partner of his life was fixed upon when he found her, one morning

before it was distinctly light, “scrubbing out a washing-tub before her

father’s door.” “That’s the girl for me,” he said, and he kept to this

resolution with a fortitude which the object of his attachment deserved

and imitated.

The courtship was continued, and the assurance of reciprocated

affection given; but before the union of hands could sanctify that of

hearts, the artillery were ordered home for England. Cobbett, whose

regiment was then at some distance from the spot where his betrothed

was still residing, unable to have the satisfaction of a personal

farewell, sent her 150 guineas, the whole amount of his savings, and

begged her to use it--as he feared her residence with her father at

Woolwich might expose her to bad company--in making herself comfortable

in a small lodging with respectable people until his arrival. It was

not until four years afterwards that he himself was able to quit

America, and he then found the damsel he had so judiciously chosen

not with her father, it is true, nor yet lodging in idleness, but

as servant-of-all-work for five pounds a year, and at their first

interview she put into his hands the 150 guineas which had been

confided to her--untouched. Such a woman had no ordinary force of

mind; and it has been frequently asserted that he who, once beyond

his own threshold, was ready to contend with every government in the

world, was, when at home, under what has been appropriately called the

government of the petticoat.

Cobbett’s marriage took place on the 3rd of February, 1792; that is,

about ten weeks after his discharge; but having in March brought

a very grave charge against some of the officers of his regiment,

which charge, when a court-martial was summoned, he did not appear to

support, he was forced to quit England for France, where he remained

till September, 1792, when he determined on trying his fortune in the

United States.

IV.

On his arrival he settled in Philadelphia, and was soon joined by Mrs.

Cobbett, who had not accompanied him out. His livelihood was at first

procured by giving English lessons to French emigrants; and it is a

fact not without interest that a celebrated person who figures amongst

these sketches--M. de Talleyrand--wished to become one of his pupils.

He refused, he says, to go to the ci-devant bishop’s house, but adds,

in his usual style, that the lame fiend hopped over this difficulty at

once by offering to come to his (Cobbett’s) house, an offer that was

not accepted. About this time Doctor Priestley came to America. The

enthusiasm with which the doctor was received roused the resentment of

the British soldier, who moreover panted for a battle. He published

then--though with some difficulty, booksellers objecting to the

unpopularity of the subject, an objection at which the author was most

indignant--a pamphlet called “Observations on Priestley’s Emigration.”

This pamphlet, on account both of its ability and scurrility, made a

sensation, and thus commenced the author’s reputation, though it only

added 1_s._ 7½_d._ to his riches. But he was abusing, he was abused.

This was to be in his element, and he rose at once, so far as the

power and peculiarity of his style were concerned, to a foremost place

amongst political writers. This style had been formed at an early

period of life, and perhaps unconsciously to himself.

“At eleven years of age,” he says in an article in the _Evening Post_,

calling upon the reformers to pay for returning him to Parliament, “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 me

such a description of them as made me instantly resolve to work in

those gardens. The next morning” (this is the early adventure I have

previously spoken of), “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 three

pence 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, on the outside of which was written ‘The Tale of a

Tub, price 3_d._’ The title was so odd that my curiosity was excited. I

had the threepence; but then I could not have any 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 understand some parts of

it, it delighted me beyond description, and produced what I have always

considered a sort of birth of intellect.

“I read on until it was dark without any thought of 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 the Kew

Gardens awakened 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 lively and confident air, and doubtless his own compassion

besides, induced the gardener, who was a Scotchman, I remember, to give

me victuals, find me lodging, and set me to work; and it was during

the period that I was at Kew that George IV. and two of his brothers

laughed at the oddness of my dress while I was sweeping the grass-plot

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 years old--lost it in a box that

fell overboard in the Bay of Fundy, in North America, the loss gave me

greater pain than I have since felt at losing thousands of pounds.”

V.

Many had cause to remember, this evening passed under a haystack at

Kew. The genius of Swift engrafted itself naturally on an intellect so

clear and a disposition so inclined to satire as that of the gardener’s

boy.

Cobbett’s earliest writings are more especially tinged with the

colouring of his master. Take for instance the following fable, which

will at all times find a ready application:

“In a pot-shop, well stocked with wares of all sorts, a discontented,

ill-formed pitcher unluckily bore the sway. One day, after the

mortifying neglect of several customers, ‘Gentlemen,’ said he,

addressing himself to his brown brethren in general--‘gentlemen, with

your permission, we are a set of tame fools, without ambition, without

courage, condemned to the vilest uses; we suffer all without murmuring;

let us dare to declare ourselves, and we shall soon see the difference.

That superb ewer, which, like us, is but earth--these gilded jars,

vases, china, and, in short, all those elegant nonsenses whose colour

and beauty have neither weight nor solidity--must yield to our strength

and give place to our superior merit.’ This civic harangue was received

with applause, and the pitcher, chosen president, became the organ of

the assembly. Some, however, more moderate than the rest, attempted to

calm the minds of the multitude; but all the vulgar utensils, which

shall be nameless, were become intractable. Eager to vie with the bowls

and the cups, they were impatient, almost to madness, to quit their

obscure abodes to shine upon the table, kiss the lip, and ornament the

cupboard.

“In vain did a wise water-jug--some say it was a platter--make them

a long and serious discourse upon the utility of their vocation.

‘Those,’ said he, ‘who are destined to great employments are rarely the

most happy. We are all of the same clay, ’tis true, but He who made us

formed us for different functions; one is for ornament, another for

use. The posts the least important are often the most necessary. Our

employments are extremely different, and so are our talents.’

“This had a most wonderful effect; the most stupid began to open their

ears; perhaps it would have succeeded, if a grease-pot had not cried

out in a decisive tone: ‘You reason like an ass--to the devil with you

and your silly lessons.’ Now the scale was turned again; all the horde

of pans and pitchers applauded the superior eloquence and reasoning

of the grease-pot. In short, they determined on an enterprise; but

a dispute arose--who should be the chief? Every one would command,

but no one obey. It was then you might have heard a clatter; all put

themselves in motion at once, and so wisely and with so much vigour

were their operations conducted, that the whole was soon changed--not

into china, but into rubbish.”

VI.

The tendency of this tale is manifest. It was in opposition to the

democratic spirit mainly because such was the ruling spirit of the

country in which the author had come to reside--a democratic spirit

which has since developed itself more fully, but which then, though

predominant, had a powerful and respectable party to contend against.

The constitution of the United States had indeed perfectly satisfied

none of its framers. Franklin had declared that he consented to it, not

as the best, but as the best that he could then hope for. Washington

expressed the same opinion. It necessarily gave birth to two parties,

which for a time were held together by the position, the abilities,

and the reputation of the first president of the new Republic. They

existed, however, in his government itself, where Jefferson represented

the Democratic faction, and Hamilton the Federal or Conservative one.

To the latter the president--though holding the balance with apparent

impartiality--belonged; for he was an English gentleman, of a firm

and moderate character, and, moreover, wished that the government

of which he was the head should be possessed of an adequate force.

The great movement, however, in France--which he was almost the only

person to judge from the first with calm discernment--overbore his

views and complicated his situation. Determined that the United States

should take only a neutral position in the European contest, he was

assailed on all sides--as a tyrant, because he wished for order--as

a partisan of Great Britain, because he wished for peace. To those

among the native Americans, who dreamt impossible theories, or desired

inextricable confusion, were joined all the foreign intriguers, who,

banished from their own countries, had no hopes of returning there but

as enemies and invaders. “I am called everything,” said Washington,

“even a Nero.”[106] His continuance in the presidency, to which he was

incited by some persons to pretend for a third time, had indeed become

incompatible with his character and honour.

The respect which he had so worthily merited and so long inspired was

on the wane. The cabinet with which he had commenced his government

was broken up; his taxes, in some provinces, were refused; a treaty

he had concluded with England was pretty generally condemned; and as

he retired to Mount Vernon, the democratic party saw that approaching

triumph which the election of their leader to the presidency was soon

about to achieve. The cry against Great Britain was fiercer; the shout

for Jefferson was louder than it had ever been before.

VII.

At this time Cobbett, then better known as Peter Porcupine, a name

which on becoming an author he had assumed, and which had at least the

merit of representing his character appropriately, having quarrelled

with a legion of booksellers, determined to set up in the bookselling

line for himself; and in the spring of 1796, he took a house in Second

Street for that purpose.

Though he was not so universally obnoxious then as he subsequently

became, his enemies were already many and violent--his friends warm,

but few. These last feared for him in the course he was entering upon;

they advised him, therefore, to be prudent--to do nothing, at all

events, on commencing business, that might attract public indignation;

and, above all, not to put up any aristocratic portraits in his windows.

Cobbett’s plan was decided. His shop opened on a Monday, and he spent

all the previous Sunday in so preparing it that, when he took down

his shutters on the morning following, the people of Philadelphia

were actually aghast at the collection of prints, arrayed in their

defiance, including the effigies of George III., which had never

been shown at any window since the rebellion. From that moment the

newspapers were filled, and the shops placarded, with “A Blue Pill for

Peter Porcupine,” “A Pill for Peter Porcupine,” “A Boaster for Peter

Porcupine,” “A Picture of Peter Porcupine.” Peter Porcupine had become

a person of decided consideration and importance.

“Dear father,” says the writer who had assumed this name, in one of

his letters home, “when you used to set me off to work in the morning,

dressed in my blue smock-frock and woollen spatterdashes, with a bag of

bread and cheese and a bottle of small beer over my shoulder, on the

little crook that my godfather gave me, little did you imagine that I

should one day become so great a man.”

VIII.

Paine’s arrival in America soon furnished fresh matter for invective.

Paine, like Priestley, was a Republican; and was, like Priestley,

hailed with popular enthusiasm by the Republicans. Cobbett attacked

this new idol, therefore, as he had done the preceding one, and even

with still greater virulence. This carried him to the highest pitch of

unpopularity which it was possible to attain in the United States, and

it was now certain that no opportunity would be lost of restraining

his violence or breaking his pen. In August, 1797, accordingly, he was

indicted for a libel against the Spanish minister and his court; but

the bill was ignored by a majority of one; and indeed, it would have

been difficult for an American jury to have punished an Englishman

for declaring the Spanish king at that time “the tool of France.” A

question was now raised as to whether the obnoxious writer should not

be turned out of the United States, under the Alien Act.

This having been objected to by the Attorney General, a new course of

prosecution was adopted. Nearly all Cobbett’s writings were brought

together into one mass, and he was charged with having published

throughout them libels against almost every liberal man of note in

America, France, and England. Under such a charge he was obliged

to find recognisances for his good behaviour to the amount of 4000

dollars, and it was hoped by a diligent search into his subsequent

writings to convict him of having forfeited these recognisances.

His enemies, indeed, might safely count on his getting into further

troubles; nor had they long to wait. A Doctor Rash having at this time

risen into great repute by a system of purging and bleeding, with which

he had attempted to stop the yellow fever, Cobbett, who could ill

tolerate another’s reputation, even in medicine, darted forth against

this new candidate for public favour with his usual vigour of abuse.

“Can the Rush grow up without mire, or the flag without water?” was

his exclamation, and down went his ruthless and never-pausing flail on

poor Dr. Rush’s birth, parentage, manners, character, medicine, and

everything that was his by nature, chance, or education. This could not

long continue; Cobbett was again indicted for a libel.

In tyrannies justice is administered unscrupulously in the case of a

political enemy; in democracies also law must frequently be controlled

by vulgar prejudice and popular passion. This was seen in the present

case. The defendant pleaded, in the first place, that his trial should

be removed from the Court of the State of Pennsylvania to that of the

United States. It was generally thought that as an alien he could claim

to have his cause thus transferred. This claim, however, was refused

by the chief justice, whom he had recklessly affronted; and the trial

coming on when a jury was pretty certain to be hostile, Cobbett

was assessed in damages to the amount of 5000 dollars; nor was much

consolation to be derived from the fact that on the 14th December, the

day on which he was condemned for libelling Rush, General Washington

died, in some degree the victim of that treatment which the libelled

doctor had prescribed.

The costs of the suit he had lost, added to the fine which the adverse

sentence had imposed, made altogether a considerable sum. Cobbett was

nearly ruined, but he bore himself up with a stout heart; and for a

moment turning round at bay faced his enemies, and determined yet to

remain in the United States. But on second thoughts, without despairing

of his fortunes, he resolved to seek them elsewhere; and set sail for

England. This he did on the 1st of June, 1800; shaking the dust from

his feet on what he then stigmatised as “that infamous land, where

judges become felons, and felons judges.”

PART II.

FROM JUNE 1ST, 1800, TO MARCH 28TH, 1817, WHEN, HAVING ALTOGETHER

CHANGED HIS POLITICS, HE RETURNS TO AMERICA.

Starts a paper, by title _The Porcupine_, which he had

made famous in America.--Begins as a Tory.--Soon verges

towards opposition.--Abandons _Porcupine_ and commences

_Register_.--Prosecuted for libel.--Changes politics, and

becomes radical.--Prosecuted again for libel.--Convicted

and imprisoned.--Industry and activity though confined in

Newgate.--Sentence expires.--Released.--Power as a writer

increases.--Government determined to put him down.--Creditors

pressing.--He returns to the United States.

I.

The space Cobbett filled in the public mind of his native land was

at this time, 1800, considerable. Few, in fact, have within so brief

a period achieved so remarkable a career, or gained under similar

circumstances an equal reputation. The boy from the plough had become

the soldier, and distinguished himself, so far as his birth and term

of service at that time admitted, in the military profession; the

uneducated soldier had become the writer; and, as the advocate of

monarchical principles in a Republican state, had shown a power and a

resolution which had raised him to the position of an antagonist to the

whole people amongst whom he had been residing. There was Cobbett on

one side of the arena, and all the democracy of democratic America on

the other!

He now returned to the Old World and the land for which he had been

fighting the battle. His name had preceded him. George III. admired

him as his champion; Lord North hailed him as the greatest political

reasoner of his time (Burke being amongst his contemporaries); Mr.

Windham--the elegant, refined, classical, manly, but whimsical Mr.

Windham--was in raptures at his genius; and though the English people

at this time were beginning to be a little less violent than they

had been in their hatred of France and America, the English writer

who despised Frenchmen and insulted Americans, was still a popular

character in England.

Numerous plans of life were open to him; that which he chose was the

one for which he was most fitting, and to which he could most easily

and naturally adapt himself. He again became editor of a public

paper, designated by the name he had rendered famous, and called _The

Porcupine_.

The principles on which this paper was to be conducted were announced

with spirit and vigour. “The subjects of a British king,” said Cobbett,

“like the sons of every provident and tender father, never know his

value till they feel the want of his protection. In the days of

youth and ignorance I was led to believe that comfort, freedom, and

virtue were exclusively the lot of Republicans. A very short trial

convinced me of my error, admonished me to repent of my folly, and

urged me to compensate for the injustice of the opinion which I had

conceived. During an eight years’ absence from my country, I was not an

unconcerned spectator of her perils, nor did I listen in silence to the

slander of her enemies.

“Though divided from England by the ocean, though her gay fields were

hidden probably for ever from my view, still her happiness and her

glory were the objects of my constant solicitude. I rejoiced at her

victories, I mourned at her defeats; her friends were my friends, her

foes were my foes. Once more returned, once more under the safeguard

of that sovereign who watched over me in my infancy, and the want of

whose protecting arm I have so long had reason to lament, I feel an

irresistible desire to communicate to my countrymen the fruit of my

experience; to show them the injurious and degrading consequences of

discontent, disloyalty, and innovation; to convince them that they are

the first as well as happiest of the human race, and above all to warn

them against the arts of those ambitious and perfidious demagogues who

could willingly reduce them to a level with the cheated slaves, in the

bearing of whose yoke I had the mortification to share.”

II.

The events even at this time were preparing, which in their series of

eddies whirled the writer we have been quoting into the midst of those

very ambitious and perfidious demagogues whom he here denounces. Nor

was this notable change, under all the circumstances which surrounded

it, very astonishing. In the first place, the party in power, after

greeting him on his arrival with a welcome which, perhaps, was more

marked by curiosity than courtesy, did little to gratify their

champion’s vanity, or to advance his interests. With that indifference

usually shown by official men in our country to genius, if it is

unaccompanied by aristocratical or social influence, they allowed the

great writer to seek his fortunes as he had sought them hitherto, pen

in hand, without aid or patronage.

In the second place, the part which Mr. Pitt took on the side of

Catholic emancipation was contrary to all Cobbett’s antecedent

prejudices: and then Mr. Pitt had treated Cobbett with coolness one day

when they met at Mr. Windham’s. Thus a private grievance was added to a

public one.

The peace with France--a peace for which he would not illuminate,

having his windows smashed by the mob in consequence--disgusted him yet

more with Mr. Addington, whose moderate character he heartily despised;

and not the less so for that temporising statesman’s inclination

rather to catch wavering Whigs than to satisfy discontented Tories.

These reasons partly suggested his giving up the daily journal he had

started (called, as I have said, _The Porcupine_), and commencing the

_Weekly Political Register_, which he conducted with singular ability

against every party in the country. I say against every party in the

country; for, though he was still, no doubt, a stout advocate of kingly

government, he did not sufficiently admit, for the purposes of his

personal safety, that the king’s government was the king’s ministers.

Thus, no doubt to his great surprise, he found that he, George III.’s

most devoted servant, was summoned one morning to answer before the

law for maliciously intending to move and incite the liege subjects of

his Majesty to hatred and contempt of his royal authority.

The libel made to bear this forced interpretation was taken from

letters in November and December, 1803, signed “Juverna,” that appeared

in the _Register_, and were not flattering to the government of Ireland.

III.

If we turn to the state of that country at this time, we shall find

that the resignation of Mr. Pitt, and the hopeless situation of the

Catholics, had naturally created much discontent. Mr. Addington, it

is true, was anything but a severe minister; he did nothing to rouse

the passions of the Irish, but he did nothing to win the heart, excite

the imagination, or gain the affection of that sensitive people. The

person he had nominated to the post of Lord Lieutenant was a fair type

of his own ministry, that person being a sensible, good-natured man,

with nothing brilliant or striking in his manner or abilities, but

carrying into his high office the honest intention to make the course

he was enjoined to pursue as little obnoxious as possible to those whom

he could not expect to please. In this manner his government, though

mild and inoffensive, neither captivated the wavering nor overawed

the disaffected; and under it was hatched, by a young and visionary

enthusiast (Mr. Emmett), a conspiracy, which, though contemptible as

the means of overturning the established authority, was accompanied at

its explosion by the murder of the Lord Chief Justice, and the exposure

of Dublin to pillage and flames. The enemies of ministers naturally

seized on so fair an occasion for assailing them, and Cobbett, who held

a want of energy to be at all times worse than the want of all other

qualities, put his paper at their disposal.

In the present instance, the writer of “Juverna’s” letters, calling

to his aid the old story of the wooden horse which carried the Greeks

within the walls of Troy, and exclaiming, “Equo ne credite Teucri!”

compared the Irish administration, so simple and innocuous in its

outward appearance, but containing within its bosom, as he said, all

the elements of mischief, to that famous and fatal prodigy of wood; and

after complimenting the Lord Lieutenant on having a head made of the

same harmless material as the wooden horse itself, thus flatteringly

proceeded: “But who is this Lord Hardwicke? I have discovered him to be

in rank an earl, in manners a gentleman, in morals a good father and a

kind husband, and that, moreover, he has a good library in St. James’s

Square. Here I should have been for ever stopped, if I had not by

accident met with one Mr. Lindsay, a Scotch parson, since become (and

I am sure it must be by Divine Providence, for it would be impossible

to account for it by secondary causes) Bishop of Killaloe. From this

Mr. Lindsay I further learned that my Lord Hardwicke was celebrated for

understanding the mode and method of fattening sheep as well as any man

in Cambridgeshire.”

The general character of the attack on Lord Hardwicke may be judged

of by the above quotation, and was certainly not of a very malignant

nature. It sufficed, however, to procure a hostile verdict; and the

Editor of the _Political Register_ was declared “Guilty of having

attempted to subvert the King’s authority.”

This, however, was not all. Mr. Plunkett, then Solicitor-General for

Ireland, had pleaded against Mr. Emmett, whose father he had known,

with more bitterness than perhaps was necessary, since the culprit

brought forward no evidence in his favour, and did not even attempt

a defence. Mr. Plunkett, moreover, had himself but a short time

previously expressed rather violent opinions, and, when speaking of

the Union, had gone so far as to say that, if it passed into a law, no

Irishman would be bound to obey it. In short, the position in which

he stood was one which required great delicacy and forbearance, and

delicacy and forbearance he had not shown. “Juverna” thus speaks of him:

“If any one man could be found of whom a young but unhappy victim of

the justly offended laws of his country had, in the moment of his

conviction and sentence, uttered the following apostrophe: ‘That viper,

whom my father nourished, he it is whose principles and doctrines

now drag me to my grave; and he it is who is now brought forward

as my prosecutor, and who, by an unheard-of exercise of the royal

prerogative, has wantonly lashed with a speech to evidence the dying

son of his former friend, when that dying son had produced no evidence,

had made no defence, but, on the contrary, acknowledged the charge and

submitted to his fate’--Lord Kenyon would have turned with horror from

such a scene, in which, if guilt were in one part punished, justice

in the whole drama was confounded, humanity outraged, and loyalty

insulted.”

These observations, made in a far more rancorous spirit than those

relating to Lord Hardwicke, could not fail to be bitterly felt by the

Solicitor-General, who was probably obliged, in deference to Irish

opinion, to prosecute the editor of the paper they appeared in.

He did so, and obtained 500_l._ damages.

Luckily for Cobbett, however, he escaped punishment in both suits;

for the real author of these attacks, Mr. Johnson, subsequently Judge

Johnson, having been discovered, or having discovered himself, Cobbett

was left without further molestation. But an impression had been

created in his mind. He had fought the battle of loyalty in America

against a host of enemies to the loss of his property, and even at

the hazard of his life. Shouts of triumph had hailed him from the

British shores. The virulence of his invectives, the coarseness of his

epithets, the exaggeration of his opinions, were all forgotten and

forgiven when he wrote the English language out of England. He came to

his native country; he advocated the same doctrines, and wrote in the

same style; his heart was still as devoted to his king, and his wishes

as warm for the welfare of his country; but, because it was stated in

his journal that Lord Hardwicke was an excellent sheep-feeder, and Mr.

Plunkett a viper--(a disagreeable appellation, certainly, but one soft

and gentle in comparison with many which he had bestowed, fifty times

over, on the most distinguished writers, members of Congress, judges

and lawyers in the United States--without the regard and esteem of his

British patrons being one jot abated)--he had been stigmatised as a

traitor and condemned to pay five hundred pounds as a libeller.

He did not recognise, in these proceedings, the beauties of the British

Constitution, nor the impartial justice which he had always maintained

when in America, was to be found in loyal old England. He did not see

why his respect for his sovereign prevented him from saying or letting

it be said that a Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was a very ordinary man,

nor that a Solicitor-General of Ireland had made a very cruel and

ungenerous speech, when the facts thus stated were perfectly true. The

Tory leaders had done nothing to gain him as a partisan, they had done

much that jarred with his general notions on politics, and finally they

treated him as a political foe. The insult, for such he deemed it, was

received with a grim smile of defiance, and grievous was the loss which

Conservative opinions sustained when those who represented them drove

the most powerful controversialist of his day into the opposite ranks.

Nor can the value of his support be estimated merely by the injury

inflicted by his hostility. When Cobbett departed from his consistency,

he forfeited a great portion of his influence. With his marvellous

skill in exciting the popular passions in favour of the ideas he

espoused; with his nicknames, with his simple, sterling, and at all

times powerful eloquence, it is difficult to limit the effect he

might have produced amongst the classes to which he belonged, and

which with an improved education were beginning to acquire greater

power, if acquainted with their habits and warmed by their passions,

he had devoted his self-taught intellect to the defence of ancient

institutions and the depreciation of modern ideas.

But official gentlemen then were even more official than they are now;

and fancying that every man in office was a great man, every one out

of it a small one, their especial contempt was reserved for a public

writer. If, however, such persons, the scarecrows of genius, were

indifferent to Cobbett’s defection, they whose standard he joined

hailed with enthusiasm his conversion.

These were not the Whigs. Cobbett’s was one of those natures which

never did things by halves. Sir Francis Burdett, Mr. Hunt, Major

Cartwright, and a set of men who propounded theories of parliamentary

reform--which no one, who was at that time considered a practical

statesman, deemed capable of realization--were his new associates and

admirers.

Nor was his change a mere change in political opinion. It was,

unfortunately, a change in political morality. The farmer’s son

had not been educated at a learned university--having his youthful

mind nourished and strengthened by great examples of patriotism and

consistency, drawn from Greece and Rome:--he was educating himself by

modern examples from the world in which he was living, and there he

found statesmen slow to reward the advocacy of their public opinions,

but quick to avenge any attack on their personal vanity or individual

interests. It struck him then that their principles were like the signs

which innkeepers stick over their tap-rooms, intended to catch the

traveller’s attention, and induce him to buy their liquors; but having

no more real signification than “St. George and the Dragon,” or the

“Blue Boar,” or the “Flying Serpent;” hence concluding that one sign

might be pulled down and the other put up, to suit the taste of the

customers, or the speculation of the landlord.

And now begins a perfectly new period in his life. Up to this date he

had always been one and the same individual. Every corner of his being

had been apparently filled with the same loyal hatred to Frenchmen and

Democrats. He had loved, in every inch of him, the king and the church,

and the wooden walls of Old England. “Who will say,” he exclaims in

America, “that an Englishman ought not to despise all the nations in

the world? For my part I do, and that most heartily.” What he here says

of every one of a different nation from his own, he had said, and said

constantly, of every one of a different political creed from his own,

and his own political creed had as yet never varied. But consistency

and Cobbett here separated. Not only was his new self a complete and

constant contradiction with his old self--this was to be expected: but

whereas his old self was one solid block, his new self was a piece of

tesselated workmanship, in which were patched together all sorts of

materials of all sorts of colours. I do not mean to say that, having

taken to the liberal side in politics, he ever turned round again and

became violent on the opposite side. But his liberalism had no code.

He recognised no fixed friends--no definite opinions. The notions

he advocated were such as he selected for the particular day of the

week on which he was writing, and which he considered himself free on

the following day to dispute with those who adopted them. As to his

alliances, they were no more closely woven into his existence than his

doctrines; and he stood forth distinguished for being dissatisfied with

everything, and quarrelling with every one.

IV.

The first tilt which he made from the new side of the ring where he had

now taken his stand was against Mr. Pitt--whom it was not difficult

towards the close of his life to condemn, for the worst fault which

a minister can commit--being unfortunate. Cobbett’s next assault--on

the demand of the Whigs for an increase of allowance to the king’s

younger sons--was against Royalty itself, its pensions, governorships,

and rangerships, which he called “its cheeseparings and candle-ends!”

Some Republicans on the other side of the Atlantic must have rubbed

their spectacles when they read these effusions; but the editor of the

_Register_ was indifferent to provoking censure, and satisfied with

exciting astonishment. Besides, we may fairly admit, that, when the

King demanded that his private property in the funds should be free

from taxation (showing he had such property), and at the same time

called upon the country to increase the allowances of his children, he

did much to try the loyalty of the nation, and gave Cobbett occasion

to observe that a rich man did not ask the parish to provide for

his offspring. “I am,” said he, “against these things, not because

I am a Republican, but because I am for monarchical government, and

consequently adverse to all that gives Republicans a fair occasion for

sneering at it.”

In the meantime his periodical labours did not prevent his undertaking

works of a more solid description; and in 1806 he announced the

“Parliamentary Register,” which was to contain all the recorded

proceedings of Parliament from the earliest times; and was in the

highest degree useful, since the reader had previously to wade through

a hundred volumes of journals in order to know anything of the

history of the two Houses of Parliament. These more serious labours

did not, however, interfere with his weekly paper, which had a large

circulation, and, though without any party influence (for Cobbett

attacked all parties), gave him a great deal of personal power and

importance. “It came up,” says the author, proudly, “like a grain of

mustard-seed, and like a grain of mustard-seed it has spread over the

whole civilised world.” Meanwhile, this peasant-born politician was

uniting rural pursuits with literary labours, and becoming, in the

occupation of a farm at Botley, a prominent agriculturist and a sort of

intellectual authority in his neighbourhood. From this life, which no

one has described with a pen more pregnant with the charm and freshness

of green fields and woods, he was torn by another prosecution for libel.

V.

The following paragraph had appeared in the _Courier_ paper:

“London, Saturday, July 1st, 1809.

“Motto.--The mutiny amongst the Local Militia, which broke out at

Ely, was _fortunately_ suppressed on Wednesday by the arrival of four

squadrons of the German Legion Cavalry from Bury, under the command of

General Auckland.

“Five of the ringleaders were tried by a court-martial, and sentenced

to receive _five hundred lashes each_, part of which punishment they

received on Wednesday, and a part was remitted. A stoppage for their

knapsacks was the ground of complaint which excited this mutinous

spirit, and occasioned the men to surround their officers and demand

what they deemed their arrears. The first division of the German Legion

halted yesterday at Newmarket on their return to Bury.”

On this paragraph Cobbett made the subjoining observations:

“‘Summary of politics. Local Militia and German Legion.’ See the motto,

English reader, see the motto, and then do, pray, recollect all that

has been said about the way in which Bonaparte raises his soldiers.

Well done, Lord Castlereagh! This is just what it was thought that your

plan would produce. Well said, Mr. Huskisson! It was really not without

reason you dwelt with so much earnestness upon the great utility of

the foreign troops, whom Mr. Wardle appeared to think of no utility at

all. Poor gentleman! he little thought how great a genius might find

employment for such troops; he little imagined they might be made the

means of compelling Englishmen to submit to that sort of discipline

which is so conducive to producing in them a disposition to defend the

country at the risk of their lives. Let Mr. Wardle look at my motto,

and then say whether the German soldiers are of no use. _Five hundred

lashes each!_ Ay, that is right; flog them! flog them! flog them; they

deserve it, and a great deal more! They deserve a flogging at every

meal time. Lash them daily! Lash them daily! What! shall the rascals

dare to _mutiny_, and that, too, when the _German_ Legion is so near at

hand? Lash them! Lash them! Lash them! they deserve it. Oh! yes, they

deserve a double-tailed cat. Base dogs! what, mutiny for the sake of

the price of a knapsack! Lash them! flog them! base rascals! mutiny for

the price of a goat-skin, and then upon the appearance of the German

soldiers they take a flogging as quietly as so many trunks of trees.”

VI.

The attack on the Hanoverian troops, who had nothing to do with the

question as to whether the militiamen were flogged justly or not, was

doubtless most illiberal and unfair. Those troops simply did their

duty, as any other disciplined troops would have done, in seeing a

superior’s order executed. It was not their fault if they were employed

on this service; neither were they in our country or our army under

ordinary circumstances. They had lost their own land for fighting our

battles; they were in our army because they would not serve in the army

of the enemy.

But we can hardly expect newspaper writers to be more logical and just

than forensic advocates. A free press is not a good unmixed with evil;

there are arguments against it, as there are arguments for it; but

where it is admitted as an important part of a nation’s institutions,

this admission includes, as I conceive, the permission to state one

side of a question in the most telling manner, the corrective being the

juxtaposition of the other side of the question stated with an equal

intent to captivate, and perhaps to mislead.

Two years’ imprisonment, and a fine of £1000 only wanted the gentle

accompaniment of ear-cropping to have done honour to the Star Chamber;

for, to a man who had a newspaper and a farm to carry on, imprisonment

threatened to consummate the ruin which an exorbitant fine was well

calculated to commence.

Cobbett was accused of yielding to the heaviness of the blow, and

of offering the abandonment of his journal as the price of his

forgiveness. I cannot agree with those who said that such an offer

would have been an unparalleled act of baseness. In giving up his

journal, Cobbett was not necessarily giving up his opinions. Every

one who wages war unsuccessfully retains the right of capitulation.

A writer is no more obliged to rot uselessly in a gaol for the sake

of his cause, than a general is obliged to fight a battle without a

chance of victory for the sake of his country. A man, even if a hero,

is not obliged to be a martyr. Cobbett’s disgraceful act was not in

making the proposal of which he was accused, but in denying most

positively and repeatedly that he had ever made it; for it certainly

seems pretty clear, amidst a good deal of contradictory evidence, that

he did authorize Mr. Reeves, of the Alien Office, to promise that the

_Register_ should drop if he was not brought up for judgment; and if a

Mr. Wright, who was a sort of factotum to Cobbett at the time, can be

believed, the farewell was actually written, and only withdrawn when

the negotiation was known to have failed. At all events, no indulgence

being granted to the offender, he turned round and faced fortune with

his usual hardihood. In no portion of his life, indeed, did he show

greater courage--in none does the better side of his character come

out in brighter relief than when, within the gloomy and stifling walls

of Newgate, he carried on his farming, conducted his paper, educated

his children, and waged war (his most natural and favourite pursuit)

against his enemies with as gay a courage as could have been expected

from him in sight of the yellow cornfields, and breathing the pure air

he loved so well.

“Now, then,” he says, in describing this period of his life, “the

book-learning was forced upon us. I had a farm in hand; it was

necessary that I should be constantly informed of what was doing. I

gave all the orders, whether as to purchases, sales, ploughing, sowing,

breeding--in short, with regard to everything, and the things were in

endless number and variety, and always full of interest. My eldest son

and daughter could now write well and fast. One or the other of these

was always at Botley, and I had with me--having hired the best part

of the keeper’s house--one or two besides, either their brother or

sister. We had a hamper, with a lock and two keys, which came up once a

week or oftener, bringing me fruit and all sorts of country fare. This

hamper, which was always at both ends of the line looked for with the

most lively interest, became our school. It brought me a journal of

labours, proceedings, and occurrences, written on paper of shape and

size uniform, and so contrived as to margins as to admit of binding.

The journal used, when my eldest son was the writer, to be interspersed

with drawings of our dogs, colts, or anything that he wanted me to have

a correct idea of. The hamper brought me plants, herbs, and the like,

that I might see the size of them; and almost every one sent his or her

most beautiful flowers, the earliest violets and primroses and cowslips

and bluebells, the earliest twigs of trees, and, in short, everything

that they thought calculated to delight me. The moment the hamper

arrived, I--casting aside everything else--set to work to answer every

question, to give new directions, and to add anything likely to give

pleasure at Botley.

“Every hamper brought one letter, as they called it, if not more, from

every child, and to every letter I wrote an answer, sealed up and

sent to the party, being sure that that was the way to produce other

and better letters; for though they could not read what I wrote, and

though their own consisted at first of mere scratches, and afterwards,

for a while, of a few words written down for them to imitate, I always

thanked them for their pretty letter, and never expressed any wish to

see them write better, but took care to write in a very neat and plain

hand myself, and to do up my letter in a very neat manner.

“Thus, while the ferocious tigers thought I was doomed to incessant

mortification, and to rage that must extinguish my mental powers,

I found in my children, and in their spotless and courageous and

affectionate mother, delights to which the callous hearts of those

tigers were strangers. ‘Heaven first taught letters for some wretch’s

aid.’ How often did this line of Pope occur to me when I opened the

little fuddling letters from Botley. This correspondence occupied a

good part of my time. I had all the children with me, turn and turn

about; and in order to give the boys exercise, and to give the two

eldest an opportunity of beginning to learn French, I used for a part

of the two years to send them for a few hours a day to an abbé, who

lived in Castle Street, Holborn. All this was a great relaxation to

my mind; and when I had to return to my literary labours, I returned

fresh and cheerful, full of vigour, and full of hope of finally seeing

my unjust and merciless foes at my feet, and that, too, without caring

a straw on whom their fall might bring calamity, so that my own family

were safe, because--say what any one might--the community, taken as a

whole, had suffered this thing to be done unto us.

“The paying of the workpeople, the keeping of the accounts, the

referring to books, the writing and reading of letters, this

everlasting mixture of amusement with book-learning, made me, almost to

my own surprise, find at the end of two years that I had a parcel of

scholars growing up about me, and, long before the end of the time, I

had dictated my _Register_ to my two eldest children. Then there was

copying out of books, which taught spelling correctly. The calculations

about the farming affairs forced arithmetic upon us; the _use_, the

_necessity_ of the thing, led to the study.

“By and by we had to look into the laws, to know what to do about the

highways, about the game, about the poor, and all rural and parochial

affairs.

“I was, indeed, by the fangs of government defeated in my

fondly-cherished project of making my sons farmers on their own land,

and keeping them from all temptation to seek vicious and enervating

enjoyments; but those fangs--merciless as they had been--had not been

able to prevent me from laying in for their lives, a store of useful

information, habits of industry, care, and sobriety, and a taste for

innocent, healthful, and manly pleasures. The fiends had made me and

them penniless, but had not been able to take from us our health,

or our mental possessions, and these were ready for application as

circumstances might ordain.”

VII.

At length, however, Cobbett’s punishment was over; and his talents

still conferred on him sufficient consideration to have the event

celebrated by a dinner, at which Sir Francis Burdett presided. This

compliment paid, Cobbett returned to Botley and his old pursuits,

literary and agricultural. The idea of publishing cheap newspapers,

under the title of “Twopenny Trash,” and which, not appearing as

periodicals, escaped the Stamp Tax, now added considerably to his

power; and by extending the circulation of his writings to a new

class,--the mechanic and artisan, in urban populations,--made that

power dangerous at a period when great distress produced general

discontent--a discontent of which the government rather tried to

suppress the exhibition, than to remove the causes. Nor did Cobbett

speak untruly when he said, that the suspension of the Habeas Corpus,

and the passing of the celebrated “Six Acts,” in the year 1817, were

more directed against himself than against all the other writers

of sedition put together. But notwithstanding the exultation which

this position gave him for a moment, he soon saw that it was one

which he should not be able to maintain, and that the importance he

had temporarily acquired had no durable foundation. He had no heart,

moreover, for another midsummer’s dream in Newgate. Nor was this all.

Though he had not wanted friends or partisans, who had furnished him

with pecuniary aid, his expenses had gone far beyond his means; and I

may mention as one of the most extraordinary instances of this singular

person’s influence, that the debts he had at this time been allowed to

contract amounted to no less than £34,000, a sum he could not hope to

repay.

For the first time his ingenuity furnished him with no resource, or his

usual audacity failed him; and with a secrecy, for which the state of

his circumstances accounted, he made a sudden bolt (the 28th of March,

1817) for the United States, informing his countrymen that they were

too lukewarm in their own behalf to justify the perils he incurred

for their sakes; and observing to his creditors that, as they had not

resisted the persecutions from which his losses had arisen, they must

be prepared to share with his family the consequences of his ruin.

Sir Francis Burdett had been for many years, as we have seen, his

friend and protector, and had but recently presided at the festival

which commemorated his release from confinement; but Sir Francis

Burdett was amongst those from whom Cobbett had borrowed pretty

largely; and though the wealthy baronet could scarcely have expected

this money to be repaid, yet, having advanced it to a political

partisan, he was not altogether pleased at seeing his money and his

partisan slip through his fingers at the same time; and made some

remarks which, on reaching Cobbett’s ears, irritated a vanity that

never slept, and was only too ready to avenge itself by abuse equally

ungrateful and unwise.

PART III.

FROM QUITTING ENGLAND IN 1817 TO HIS DEATH IN 1835.

Settles on Long Island.--Professes at first great

satisfaction.--Takes a farm,--Writes his Grammar.--Gets

discontented.--His premises burnt.--He returns to England,

and carries Paine’s bones with him.--The bones do not

succeed.--Tries twice to be returned to Parliament.--Is not

elected.--Becomes a butcher at Kensington.--Fails there and

is a bankrupt.--His works from 1820 to 1826.--Extracts.--New

prosecution.--Acquitted.--Comes at last into Parliament for

Oldham.--Character as a speaker.--Dies.--General summing up.

I.

The epoch of Cobbett’s flight from England was decidedly the one most

fatal to his character. So long as a man pays his bills, or sticks

to his party, he has some one to speak in his favour; but a runaway

from his party and his debts, whatever the circumstances that lead

to his doing either, must give up the idea of leaving behind him any

one disposed to say a word in his defence. Cobbett probably did give

up this idea, and, having satisfied himself by declaring that the

overthrow of the regular laws and constitution of England had rendered

his person as a public writer insecure, and his talents unprofitable,

in his native country, seemed disposed to a divorce from the old world,

and to a reconciliation with the new. At all events, he viewed America

with very different eyes from those with which he had formerly looked

at it. The weather was the finest he had ever seen; the ground had

no dirt; the air had no flies; the people were civil, not servile;

there were none of the poor and wretched habitations which sicken the

sight at the outskirts of cities and towns in England; the progress of

wealth, ease, and enjoyment evinced by the regular increase of the size

of the farmers’ buildings, spoke in praise of the system of government

under which it had taken place; and, to crown all, four Yankee mowers

weighed down eight English ones! During the greater part of the time

that these encomiums were written, Cobbett was living at a farm he had

taken on Hampstead Plains, Long Island, where he wrote his grammar, the

only amusing grammar in the world, and of which, when it was sent to

his son in England, 10,000 copies were sold in one month.

A year, however, after his arrival at Long Island, a fire broke out on

his premises and destroyed them. The misfortune was not, perhaps, an

untimely one.

Whatever Cobbett might have been able to do in the United States as

a farmer, he did not seem to have a chance there of playing any part

as a politician. He was not even taken up as a “lion,” for his sudden

preference for Republican institutions created no sensation amongst men

who were now all heart and soul Republicans. He was not a hero; and he

could not, consistently with his present doctrines, attempt to become

a martyr. He had, to be sure, the satisfaction of saying bitter things

about the tyranny established in his native land; but these produced no

effect in America, where abuse of monarchical government was thought

quite natural, and he did not see the effect they produced at home.

Moreover, they did not after all produce much effect even there. His

periodical writings were like wine meant to be drunk on the spot, and

lost a great deal of their flavour when sent across the wide waters of

the ocean. They were, indeed, essentially written for the day, and for

the passions and purposes of the day. Arriving after the cause which

had produced them had ceased to excite the public mind, their sound and

fury were like the smoke and smell of an explosion without its noise or

its powers of destruction. Cobbett saw this clearly, though even to his

own children he would never confess it.

II.

The condition of England, moreover, at this moment excited his

attention, perhaps his hopes. A violent policy can never be a lasting

one. The government was beginning to wear out the overstretched

authority that had been confided to it and the community was beginning

to feel that you should not make (to use the words of Mr. Burke) “the

extreme remedies of the State its daily bread.” On the other hand, the

general distress, which had created the discontent that these extreme

remedies had been employed to suppress, was in no wise diminished. The

sovereign and the administration were unpopular, the people generally

ignorant and undisciplined, neither the one nor the other understanding

the causes of the prevalent disaffection, nor having any idea as to how

it should be dealt with.

Such is the moment undoubtedly for rash or designing men to propagate

wild theories; and such is also the moment when bold men, guided by

better motives, will find, in a country where constitutional liberty

cannot be entirely destroyed, the means of turning the oppressive

measures of an unscrupulous minister against himself. With the one

there was a chance of war against all government, with the other a

chance of resistance against bad government. The revolutionist and the

patriot were both stirring, whilst a vague idea prevailed amongst many,

neither patriots nor revolutionists, that our society was about to be

exposed to one of those great convulsions which overturn thrones and

change the destiny of empires.

Cobbett was probably too shrewd to look on such a crisis as a

certainty; but he was very probably sanguine enough to build schemes on

it as a possibility. Besides, there were strife and contention in the

great towns, and murmurings in the smaller hamlets; and, where there

were strife and contention and murmurings, such a man as Cobbett could

not fail to find a place and to produce an effect. This was sufficient

to make him feel restlessly anxious to re-appear on the stage he had

so abruptly quitted. But he was essentially an actor, and disposed to

study the dramatic in all his proceedings. To slink back unperceived to

his old haunts, and recommence quietly his old habits, would neither

suit his tastes, nor, as he thought, his interests. It was necessary

that his return should be a sensation. Too vain and too quarrelsome

to pay court to any one, he had through life made friends by making

enemies. His plan now was to raise a howl against the returning exile

as an atheist and a demagogue amongst one portion of society, not

doubting that in such case he would be taken up as the champion of

civil and religious liberty by another.

III.