Historical Characters

V

The popularity of Mr. Canning had now become a grievous thorn in Cobbett’s side. That of Mr. Robinson (afterwards Lord Goderich) had at one time sorely galled him. But Mr. Robinson’s reputation was on the wane; the reputation of Mr. Canning, on the contrary, rose higher every day; and when that statesman, after being deserted by his colleagues, stood forward as premier of a new government, being taken up by Sir Francis Burdett, and many of the Whig leaders, Mr. Cobbett set no bounds to his choler; and, in company with Mr. Hunt, made at a Westminster dinner (in 1827) a foolish and ill-timed display of his usual hostility to the popular feeling.

His character, in sooth, was never so low as about this period, and in 1828, when he offered himself as a candidate for the place of common councilman (for Farringdon Without), he did not even find one person who would propose him for the office.

It is needless to add that he was now an utterly soured and disappointed man, and in this state the year 1830 found him. The close of that year was more full of melancholy presage for England than perhaps any which the oldest man then alive could remember. The success of the insurrection at Paris had shaken the political foundations of every state in Europe. Scarcely a courier arrived without the bulletin of a revolution. The minds of the intelligent classes were excited; they expected, and perhaps wished for, some great movement at home, analogous to those movements which a general enthusiasm was producing on the Continent. The minds of the lower classes were brutalized by the effects of a Poor Law which had taught them that idleness was more profitable than labour, prostitution than chastity, bad conduct, in short, than good. Consequently, there was on the one hand a widely-spread cry for parliamentary reform, and on the other a general rural insurrection. Amidst this state of things the ministry of the Duke of Wellington retired, and Lord Grey’s, composed of somewhat discordant materials, and with a doubtful parliamentary majority, took its place. Fires blazed throughout the country; rumours of plots and insurrections were rife, and the Register appeared with an article remarkable for its power, and which indirectly excited to incendiarism and rebellion. The Attorney-General prosecuted it. I had then just entered Parliament, and ventured to condemn the prosecution, not because the article in question was blameless, but because I thought that the period for newspaper prosecutions by government was gone by, and that they only excited sympathy for the offender. I was not wrong in that opinion; for the jury being unable to agree as to a verdict, Cobbett walked triumphantly out of court, and having gained some credit by his trial, was shortly afterwards returned to Parliament for Oldham, being at the same time an unsuccessful candidate for Manchester.

The election, however, was less the effect of public esteem than of private admiration, since the veteran journalist owed his success mainly to the influence of a gentleman (Mr. Fielden) who had the borough of Oldham pretty nearly under his control. Still, it was a success, and not an inconsiderable one. The ploughboy, the private of the 54th, after a variety of vicissitudes, had become a member of the British Legislature. Nor for this had he bowed his knee to any minister, nor served any party, nor administered with ambitious interest to any popular feeling. His pen had been made to serve as a double-edged sword, which smote alike Whig and Tory, Pitt and Fox, Castlereagh and Tierney, Canning and Brougham, Wellington and Grey, even Hunt and Waithman. He had sneered at education, at philosophy, and at negro emancipation. He had assailed alike Catholicism and Protestantism; he had respected few feelings that Englishmen respect. Nevertheless, by force of character, by abilities to which he had allowed the full swing of their inclination, he had at last cut his way, unpatronized and poor, through conflicting opinions into the great council chamber of the British nation. He was there, as he had been through life, an isolated man. He owned no followers, and he was owned by none. His years surpassed those of any member who ever came into Parliament for the first time expecting to take an active part in it. He was stout and hale for his time of life, but far over sixty, and fast advancing towards three score years and ten.

It was an interesting thing to most men who saw him enter the House to have palpably before them the real, living William Cobbett. The generation amongst which he yet moved had grown up in awe of his name, but few had ever seen the man who bore it.

The world had gone for years to the clubs, on Saturday evening, to find itself lectured by him, abused by him; it had the greatest admiration for his vigorous eloquence, the greatest dread of his scar-inflicting lash; it had been living with him, intimate with him, as it were, but it had not seen him.

I speak of the world’s majority; for a few persons had met him at county and public meetings, at elections, and also in courts of justice. But to most members of Parliament the elderly, respectable-looking, red-faced gentleman, in a dust-coloured coat and drab breeches with gaiters, was a strange and almost historical curiosity. Tall and strongly built, but stooping, with sharp eyes, a round and ruddy countenance, smallish features, and a peculiarly cynical mouth, he realized pretty nearly the idea that might have been formed about him. The manner of his speaking might also have been anticipated. His style in writing was sarcastic and easy – such it was not unnatural to suppose it might also be in addressing an assembly; and this to a certain extent was the case. He was still colloquial, bitter, with a dry, caustic, and rather drawling delivery, and a rare manner of arguing with facts. To say that he spoke as well as he wrote, would be to place him where he was not – among the most effective orators of his time. He had not, as a speaker, the raciness of diction, nor the happiness of illustration, by which he excels as a writer. He wanted also some physical qualifications unnecessary to the author, but necessary to the orator, and which he might as a younger man have naturally possessed or easily acquired. In short, he could not be at that time the powerful personage that he might have been had he taken his seat on the benches where he was then sitting, when many surrounding him were unknown – even unborn. Still, I know no other instance of a man entering the House of Commons at his age, and becoming at once an effective debater in it. Looking carelessly round the assembly so new to him, with his usual self-confidence he spoke on the first occasion that presented itself, proposing an amendment to the Address; but this was not his happiest effort, and consequently created disappointment. He soon, however, obliterated the failure, and became rather a favourite with an audience which is only unforgiving when bored.

It was still seen, moreover, that nothing daunted him; the murmurs, the “Oh!” or more serious reprehension and censure, found him shaking his head with his hands in his pockets, as cool and as defiant as when he first stuck up the picture of King George in his shop window at Philadelphia. He exhibited in Parliament, too, the same want of tact, prudence, and truth; the same egotism, the same combativeness, and the same reckless desire to struggle with received opinions, that had marked him previously through life, and shattered his career into glittering fragments, from which the world could never collect the image, nor the practical utility of a whole.

A foolish and out-of-the-way motion, praying his Majesty to strike Sir Robert Peel’s name off the list of the Privy Council, for having proposed a return to cash payments in 1819. was his wildest effort and most signal defeat, the House receiving Sir Robert, when he stood up in his defence, with a loud burst of cheers, and voting in a majority of 298 to 4 in his favour.

Cobbett, however, was nothing abashed; for this motion was rather a piece of fun, in his own way, than anything serious; and in reality he was less angry with Sir Robert Peel, on account of his financial measures in 1819, than on account of his being the most able speaker in Parliament in 1833.

VI

In the new Parliament elected in January 1835, and which met on the 19th February, Cobbett was again member for Oldham. But his health was already much broken by the change of habits, the want of air, and the confinement which weighs on a parliamentary life. He did not, however, perceive this; it was not, indeed, his habit to perceive anything to his own disadvantage. He continued his attendance, therefore, and was in his usual place during the whole of the debate on the Marquis of Chandos’s motion for a repeal of the Malt Tax, and would have spoken in favour of the repeal but for a sudden attack of the throat, to which it is said that he was subject. On the voting of Supplies, which followed almost immediately afterwards, he again, notwithstanding his indisposition, exerted himself, and on the 25th of May persisted in voting and speaking in support of a motion on Agricultural Distress. At last, he confessed he was knocked up, and retired to the country, where for some little time he seemed restored. But on the night of the 11th of June, 1835, he was seized with a violent illness, and on the two following days was considered in extreme danger by his medical attendant. He then again rallied, and on Monday, the 15th, talked (says his son in an account of his death, published on the 20th of June), in a collected and sprightly manner, upon politics and farming, “wishing for four days’ rain for the Cobbetts’ corn and root crops,” and on Wednesday could remain no longer shut up from the fields, but desired to be carried round the farm, and criticised the work which had been done in his absence. In the night, however, he grew more and more feeble, until it was evident (though he continued till within the last half-hour to answer every question that was put to him) that his agitated career was drawing to a close. At ten minutes after one P.M. he shut his eyes as if to sleep, leant back, and was no more – an end singularly peaceful for one whose life had been so full of toil and turmoil.

The immediate cause of his death was water on the chest. He was buried, according to his own desire, in a simple manner in the churchyard of Farnham, in the same mould as that in which his father and grandfather had been laid before him. His death struck people with surprise, for few could remember the commencement of his course, and there had seemed in it no middle and no decline; for though he went down to the grave an old man, he was young in the path he had lately started upon. He left a gap in the public mind which no one else could fill or attempt to fill up, for his loss was not merely that of a man, but of a habit – of a dose of strong drink which all of us had been taking for years, most of us during our whole lives, and which it was impossible for any one again to concoct so strongly, so strangely, with so much spice and flavour, or with such a variety of ingredients. And there was this peculiarity in the general regret – it extended to all persons. Whatever a man’s talents, whatever a man’s opinions, he sought the Register on the day of its appearance with eagerness, and read it with amusement, partly, perhaps, if De la Rochefoucault is right, because, whatever his party, he was sure to see his friends abused. But partly also because he was certain to find, amidst a great many fictions and abundance of impudence, some felicitous nickname, some excellent piece of practical-looking argument, some capital expressions, and very often some marvellously-fine writing,¹⁰⁸ all the finer for being carelessly fine, and exhibiting whatever figure or sentiment it set forth, in the simplest as well as the most striking dress. Cobbett himself, indeed, said that “his popularity was owing to his giving truth in clear language;” and his language always did leave his meaning as visible as the most limpid stream leaves its bed. But as to its displaying truth, that is a different matter, and would be utterly impossible, unless truth has, at least, as many heads as the Hydra of fable; in which case our author may claim the merit of having portrayed them all.

This, however, is to be remarked – he rarely abused that which was falling or fallen, but generally that which was rising or uppermost. He disinterred Paine when his memory was interred, and attacked him as an impostor amongst those who hailed him as a prophet. In the heat of the contest and cry against the Catholics – whom, when Mr. Pitt was for emancipating them, he was for grinding into the dust – he calls the Reformation a devastation, and pronounces the Protestant religion to have been established by gibbets, racks, and ripping-knives. When all London was yet rejoicing in Wellington hats and Wellington boots, he asserts “that the celebrated victory of Waterloo had caused to England more real shame, more real and substantial disgrace, more debt, more distress amongst the middle class, and more misery amongst the working class, more injuries of all kinds, than the kingdom could have ever experienced by a hundred defeats, whether by sea or by land.” He had a sort of itch for bespattering with mud everything that was popular, and gilding everything that was odious. Mary Tudor was with him “Merciful Queen Mary;” Elizabeth, as I have already observed, “Bloody Queen Bess;” our Navy, “the swaggering Navy;” Napoleon, “a French coxcomb;” Brougham, “a talking lawyer;” Canning, “a brazen defender of corruptions.”

His praise or censure afforded a sort of test to be taken in an inverse sense of the world’s opinion. He could not bear superiority of any kind, or reconcile himself to its presence. He declined, it is said, to insert quack puffs in his journal, merely, I believe, because he could not bear to spread anybody’s notoriety but his own; while he told his correspondents never to write under the name of subscriber – it sounded too much like master. As for absurdity, nothing was too absurd for him coolly and deliberately to assert: “The English government most anxiously wished for Napoleon’s return to France.” “There would have been no national debt and no paupers, if there had been no Reformation.” “The population of England had not increased one single soul since he was born.” Such are a few of the many paradoxes one could cite from his writings, and which are now before me.

Neither did his coarseness know any bounds. He called a newspaper a “cut-and-thrust weapon,” to be used without mercy or delicacy, and never thought of anything but how he could strike the hardest. “There’s a fine Congress-man for you! If any d – d rascally rotten borough in the universe ever made such a choice as this (a Mr. Blair MacClenachan), you’ll be bound to cut my throat, and suffer the sans culottes sovereigns of Philadelphia – the hob-snob snigger-snee-ers of Germanstown – to kick me about in my blood till my corpse is as ugly and disgusting as their living carcases are.” “Bark away, hell-hounds, till you are suffocated in your own foam.” “This hatter turned painter (Samuel F. Bradford), whose heart is as black and as foul as the liquid in which he dabbles.”

“It is fair, also, to observe that this State (Pennsylvania) labours under disadvantages in one respect that no other State does. Here is precisely that climate which suits the vagabonds of Europe; here they bask in summer, and lie curled up in winter, without fear of scorching in one season, or freezing in the other. Accordingly, hither they come in shoals, just roll themselves ashore, and begin to swear and poll away as if they had been bred to the business from their infancy. She has too unhappily acquired a reputation for the mildness or rather the feebleness of her laws. There’s no gallows in Pennsylvania. These glad tidings have rung through all the democratic club-rooms, all the dark assemblies of traitors, all the dungeons and cells of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Hence it is that we are overwhelmed with the refuse, the sweeping, of these kingdoms, the offal of the jail and the gibbet. Hence it is that we see so many faces that never looked comely but in the pillory, limbs that are awkward out of chains, and necks that seem made to be stretched.”

It would be difficult to put together more pithy sentences, or more picturesque abuse than is set forth in the scurrilous extracts I have been citing; yet Cobbett’s virulence could be conveyed in a more delicate way whenever he thought proper:

“Since then, Citizen Barney is become a French commodore of two frigates, and will rise probably to the rank of admiral, if contrary winds do not blow him in the way of an enemy.”

His mode of commencing an attack also was often singularly effective from its humour and personality: “He was a sly-looking fellow, with a hard, slate-coloured countenance. He set out by blushing, and I may leave any one to guess at the efforts that must be made to get a blush through a skin like his.” Again: “Having thus settled the point of controversy, give me leave to ask you, my sweet sleepy-eyed sir!”

The following picture is equal to anything ever sketched by Hogarth, and is called “A Summary of Proceedings of Congress,” November, 1794:

“Never was a more ludicrous farce acted to a bursting audience. Madison is a little bow-legged man, at once stiff and slender. His countenance has that sour aspect, that conceited screw, which pride would willingly mould into an expression of disdain, if it did not find the features too skinny and too scanty for its purpose. His thin, sleek air, and the niceness of his garments, are indicative of that economical cleanliness which expostulates with the shoeboy and the washerwoman, which flies from the danger of a gutter, and which boasts of wearing a shirt for three days without rumpling the frill. In short, he has, take him altogether, precisely the prim, mean, prig-like look of a corporal mechanic, and were he ushered into your parlour, you would wonder why he came without his measure and his shears. Such (and with a soul which would disgrace any other tenement than that which contains it) is the mortal who stood upon his legs, confidently predicting the overthrow of the British monarchy, and anticipating the pleasure of feeding its illustrious nobles with his oats.”

Again, let us fancy the following sentences, imitating what the gentlemen of the United States call “stump speaking,” delivered with suitable tone and gesture on the hustings: “The commercial connection between this country (America) and Great Britain is as necessary as that between the baker and the miller; while the connection between America and France may be compared to that between the baker and the milliner or toyman. France may furnish us with looking-glasses, but without the aid of Britain we shall be ashamed to see ourselves in them; unless the sans culottes can persuade us that threadbare beggary is – a beauty. France may deck the heads of our wives and daughters (by the bye, she shan’t those of mine) with ribbons, gauze, and powder; their ears with bobs, their cheeks with paint, and their heels with gaudy parti-coloured silk, as rotten as the hearts of the manufacturers; but Great Britain must keep warm their limbs and cover their bodies. When the rain pours down, and washes the rose from the cheek, when the bleak north-wester blows through the gauze, then it is that we know our friends.”

Cobbett’s talent for fastening his claws into anything or any one, by a word or an expression, and holding them down for scorn or up to horror – a talent which, throughout this sketch, I have frequently noticed – was unrivalled. “Prosperity Robinson,” “Œolus Canning,” “The Bloody Times,” “the pink-nosed Liverpool,” “the unbaptized, buttonless blackguards” (in which way he designated the disciples of Penn),¹⁰⁹ were expressions with which he attached ridicule where he could not fix reproach, and it is said that nothing was more teasing to Lord Erskine than being constantly addressed by his second title of “Baron Clackmannan.”

VII

I have alluded, at the commencement of this sketch, to the fact that if the life of Mackintosh was in contradiction to his instincts, and forced to adapt itself to his wishes or ideas, that of Cobbett was ruled by his instincts, to which all ideas and wishes were subordinate. His inclinations were for bustle and strife, and he passed his whole life in strife and bustle. This is why the sap and marrow of his genius show themselves in every line he sent to the press. But at the same time his career warns us how little talents of the highest order, even when accompanied by the most unflagging industry, will do for a man, if those talents and that industry are not disciplined by stedfast principles and concentrated upon noble objects. It is not to be understood, indeed, when I say that a man should follow his nature, that I mean he should do so without sense or judgment; your natural character is your force, but it is a force that you must regulate and keep applied to the track on which the career it has chosen is to be honourably run. I would not recommend a man with military propensities to enter the church; I should say, “Be a soldier, but do not be a military adventurer. Enlist under a lawful banner, and fight for a good cause.”

Cobbett acknowledged no banner; and one cannot say, considering the variety of doctrines he by turns adopted and discarded, that he espoused any cause. Nor did he consider himself bound by any tie of private or political friendship. As a beauty feels no gratitude for the homage which she deems due to her charms, so Cobbett felt no gratitude for the homage paid to his abilities. His idea of himself was that which the barbarian entertains of his country. Cobbett was Cobbett’s universe; and as he treated mankind, so mankind at last treated him. They admired him as a myth, but they had no affection for him as a person. His words were realities, his principles fictions.

It may indeed be contended that a predominant idea ran winding through all the twistings and twinings of his career, connecting his different inconsistencies together; and that this was “a hatred for tyranny.” “He always took his stand,” say his defenders, “with the minority:” and there is something in this assertion. But there is far less fun and excitement in fighting a minority, with a large majority at one’s back, than in coming out, at the head of a small and violent minority, to defy and attack a body of greater power and of larger numbers. It was this fun and excitement which, if I mistake not, were Cobbett’s main inducements to take the side he took in all the contests he engaged in, whether against the minister of the day, or against our favourite daughter of the eighth Henry, who reigned some centuries before his time. Still the tendency to combat against odds is always superior to the tendency to cringe to them, and a weak cause is not unfrequently made victorious by a bold assertion.

It must be added also, in his praise, that he is always a hearty Englishman. He may vary in his opinions as to doctrines and as to men, but he is ever for making England great, powerful, and prosperous – her people healthy, brave, and free. He never falls into the error of mistaking political economy for the whole of political science. He does not say, “Be wealthy, make money, and care about nothing else.” He advocates rural pursuits as invigorating to a population, although less profitable than manufacturing. He desires to see Englishmen fit for war as well as for peace. There is none of that puling primness about him which marks the philosophers who would have a great nation, like a good boy at a private school, fit for nothing but obedience and books. To use a slang phrase, there was “a go” about him which, despite all his charlatanism, all his eccentricities, kept up the national spirit, and exhibited in this one of the highest merits of political writing. The immense number of all his publications that sold immediately on their appearance, sufficiently proves the wonderful popularity of his style; and it is but just to admit that many of his writings were as useful as popular.

A paper written in 1804, on the apprehended invasion, and entitled “Important Considerations for the People of this Kingdom,” was placed (the author being unknown) in manuscript before Mr. Addington, who caused it to be printed and read from the pulpit in every parish throughout the kingdom. For many years this paper was attributed to other eminent men; and it was only when some one thought of attacking Cobbett as an enemy of his country, that he confessed the authorship of a pamphlet, to the patriotism of which every Englishman had paid homage.

Again, in 1816, the people of the northern and midland counties being in great distress, attributed their calamities to machinery, and great rioting and destruction of property was the consequence. Cobbett came forward to stop these vulgar delusions. But he knew the nature of the public mind. It was necessary, in order to divert it from one idea, to give it another. So, he ridiculed the idea of distress proceeding from machinery, and attributed it to misgovernment. Of his twopenny pamphlet, called “A Letter to Journeymen and Labourers,” 30,000 copies were sold in a week, and with such advantage that Lord Brougham, in 1831, asked permission to republish it. Much in his exaggerations and contradictions is likewise to be set down to drollery rather than to any serious design to deceive. I remember the late Lady Holland once asking me if I did not think she sometimes said ill-natured things; and on my acquiescing, she rejoined: “I don’t mean to burn any one, but merely to poke the fire.” Cobbett liked to poke the fire, to make a blaze; but in general – I will not say always – he thought more of sport than of mischief.

At all events, this very spirit of change, of criticism, of combativeness, is the spirit of journalism; and Cobbett was not only this spirit embodied, but – and this renders his life so remarkable in our history – he represented journalism, and fought the fight of journalism against authority, when it was still a doubt which would gain the day.

Let us not, indeed, forget the blind and uncalculating intolerance with which the law struggled against opinion from 1809 to 1822. Writers during this period were transported, imprisoned, and fined, without limit or conscience; and just when government became more gentle to legitimate newspapers, it engaged in a new conflict with unstamped ones. No less than 500 vendors of these were imprisoned within six years. The contest was one of life and death. Amidst the general din of the battle, but high above all shouts more confused, was heard Cobbett’s bold, bitter, scornful voice, cheering on the small but determined band, which defied tyranny without employing force. The failure of the last prosecution against the Register was the general failure of prosecutions against the Press, and may be said to have closed the contest in which government lost power every time that it made victims.

Such was Cobbett – such his career! I have only to add that, in his family relations, this contentious man was kind and gentle. An incomparable husband, an excellent father; and his sons – profiting by an excellent education, and inheriting, not, perhaps, the marvellous energies, but a great portion of the ability, of their father – carry on with credit and respectability the name of a man, who, whatever his faults, must be considered by every Englishman who loves our literature, or studies our history, as one of the most remarkable illustrations of his very remarkable time.