Cobbett might be described, in Samuel Johnson’s phrase, as a ‘good hater’. William Hazlitt – who wrote an essay ‘On the Pleasure of Hating’ – gives a vivid account of Cobbett’s pugilistic style of journalism:
As a political partisan, no one can stand against him. With his brandished club, like Giant Despair in the Pilgrim’s Progress, he knocks out their brains; and not only no individual, but no corrupt system could hold out against his powerful and repeated attacks […] In short, wherever power is, there is he against: he naturally butts at all obstacles, as unicorns are attracted to oak-trees.1
Hazlitt viewed being a good hater as a political virtue, part of an oppositional tradition in English literature and history that stretched back to John Milton and seventeenth-century republicanism. Cobbett, it might be noted, hated both Johnson and Milton.
A single chapter will inevitably fail to do justice to the full range of Cobbett’s prejudices: there are many examples in other chapters and a full Cobbett demonology would run to several volumes. Prominent among his targets are the politicians of his day; first, the radicals who welcomed the French Revolution, and then the defenders of a corrupt status quo. Cobbett belonged to a brilliant age of political satire and his journalism forms a prose equivalent to the caricatures of Gillray and Cruikshank. He was adept at satirising political speeches and invented a new kind of parliamentary sketch writing through his open letters in the Political Register. He was also remorseless when he discovered a new target for his anger and many of his feuds ran for several decades. However, aside from these personal feuds, Cobbett’s search for the root causes of bad government and economic malaise led him to a more entrenched system of corruption, which he dedicated his life to exposing. A frequently bizarre assortment of bête noires – including potatoes, pianos, paper money, Shakespeare and tea -were all symptoms of what he described, with brilliant simplicity and withering contempt, as ‘the THING’. He characterised London as ‘the Great Wen’, a swelling on the body politic, poisoning everything around it. The political economists associated with the Edinburgh Review were the target of countless diatribes against ‘Scotch feelosofers’ although when he finally visited Scotland in 1832 he was pleased to discover so many supporters there.
There is also a much uglier side to Cobbett’s hatred, which forms an uncomfortable but undeniable part of his populism. He often employed virulently anti-Semitic stereotypes, describing Jews as Christ-killers, money-lenders and financiers. In Cobbett’s rhetoric, ‘Jew’ becomes synonymous with ‘stock-jobber’, part of the corruption he associates with a system of public credit. His anti-Semitism is expressed both with violent intensity and depressing regularity. Cobbett was also a fierce opponent of the abolitionist William Wilberforce, who he viewed as campaigning against slavery abroad at the expense of agricultural labourers and factory workers in Britain. Cobbett sometimes voiced his opposition to Wilberforce through a polemical comparison between different kinds of exploitation, but at other times expressed it in racialised terms that are now abhorrent. Cobbett’s admirers have often tried to conceal or dismiss the more disturbing aspects of his work, but the crude bigotry of some of his writing is an integral part of his populism and a troubling aspect of his legacy for British journalism.
Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense and Rights of Man, was one of the primary targets of Cobbett’s anti-Jacobin writings. He re-published a scurrilous, government-sponsored Life of Thomas Paine and added his own commentary on the text, from which the following extract is taken. Cobbett also includes Rousseau and Sterne as examples of a dangerous form of Sensibility, while the closing passage is particularly ironic in light of Cobbett’s later attempt to honour Paine’s remains.
Paine’s humanity, like that of all the reforming philosophers of the present enlightened day, is of the speculative kind. It never breaks out into action. Hear these people and you would think them overflowing with the milk of human kindness. They stretch their benevolence to the extremities of the globe: it embraces every living creature—except those who have the misfortune to come in contact with them. They are all citizens of the world: country, and friends and relations are unworthy the attention of men who are occupied in rendering all mankind happy and free.
I ever suspect the sincerity of a man whose discourse abounds in expressions of universal philanthropy. Nothing is easier than for a person of some imagination to raise himself to a swell of sentiment, without the aid of one single feeling of the heart. Rousseau, for instance, is everlastingly babbling about his genre humain (human race) and his “coeur aimant et tendre” (tender and loving heart). He writes for the human race, his heart bleeds for the distresses of the human race, and in the midst of all this he sends his unfortunate bastards to the poor-house, the receptacle of misery! Virtuous and tender-hearted and sympathetic Rousseau! Certainly nothing is so disgusting as this, except it be to see the humane and sentimental Sterne wiping away a tear at the sight of a dead jack-ass, while his injured wife and child were pining away their days in a nunnery, and while he was debauching the wife of his friend.* […]
How Tom gets a living now, or what brothel he inhabits, I know not, nor does it much signify to any body here or any where else. He has done all the mischief he can in the world, and whether his carcass is at last to be suffered to rot on the earth, or to be dried in the air, is of very little consequence. Whenever and wherever he breathes his last, he will excite neither sorrow nor compassion; no friendly hand will close his eyes, not a groan will be uttered, not a tear will be shed. Like Judas he will be remembered by posterity; men will learn to express all that is base, malignant, treacherous, unnatural and blasphemous, by the single monosyllable, Paine.
* Sterne’s writings are most admirably calculated to destroy the morals of the youth of both sexes; but it was reserved for some of the printers in the United States to give those writings the finishing touch. What the lewd author was ashamed to do, they have done for him. They have explained his double entendres and filthy inuendos by a set of the most bawdy cuts that ever disgraced the pencil.—I was shown a copy of the Sentimental Journey in this style at the shop of Citizen Thomas Bradford of Philadelphia, the only place in the city, I believe, where it is to be had.
[The Life of Thomas Paine (Philadelphia, 1796), re-printed in Porcupine’s Works, vol. IV, pp. 79–113.]
One of Cobbett’s most well-known bête noires was the potato, or – as he described it – the ‘root of extreme unction’. His anger was provoked by attempts to replace bread with a cheaper substitute in the labourer’s diet, but his hostility also stemmed from his belief that potatoes were associated with dirt, and reduced labourers to the level of hogs.
This root is become a favourite because it is the suitable companion of misery and filth. It can be seized hold of before it be half ripe, it can be raked out of the ground with the paws, and without the help of any utensils, except, perhaps, a stick to rake it from the fire, can be conveyed into the stomach, in the space of an hour. We have but one step further to go, and that is, to eat it raw, side by side with our bristly fellow-creatures, who, by the by, reject it as long as they can get at any species of grain or at any other vegetable.—I can remember when the first acre of potatoes was planted in a field, in the neighbourhood of the place where I was born; and I very well remember, that even the poorest of the people would not eat them. They called them hog-potatoes; but now, they are become a considerable portion of the diet, of those who raise the bread for others to eat.—It is not many years ago that a bill was brought into Parliament for the giving of premiums for the cultivation of this ruinous root. It was thrown out, to be sure; but the bare fact of its having been brought in, was a disgrace to the country.
[‘Price of Bread’, Political Register, 2 October 1813.]
Cobbett was particularly scathing towards the new manufacturing, mercantile and agricultural elite, comparing them unfavourably to an older and, in his eyes, more benevolent, nobility and landed gentry. For Cobbett, the upstart ranks of the new rich represented a grave threat both to ordinary labourers and projects for political reform.
It seems to me, therefore, very wonderful, that those who have property, and who do not share in the taxes, should not be eager to promote meetings to petition; but the conduct of some of your rich neighbours has more than folly in it; it is deeply tinged with tyranny. I allude to the threats which they published against all those of their workmen, who should attend the meeting on Brandon Hill,2 and which threats ought never to be forgotten by you. But this hatred to the cause of public liberty is, I am sorry to say it, but too common amongst merchants, great manufacturers, and great farmers; especially those who have risen suddenly from the dunghill to a chariot. If we look a little more closely into the influence of riches, in such a state of things as this, we shall be less surprised at this apparently unnatural feeling in men who were, but the other day, merely journeymen and labourers themselves.—As soon as a foolish and unfeeling man gets rich, he becomes desirous of making the world believe, that he never was poor. He knows, that he has neither birth nor education to recommend him to the respect of those who have been less fortunate than himself. Though they pull their hats off to him, he always suspects that they are looking back to his mean origin; and, instead of adopting that kindness towards them, and that affability which would make them cheerfully acknowledge his superiority, he endeavours, by a distant and rigid deportment, to extort from their fears that which he wants the sense to obtain from their love. So that, at last, he verifies the old maxim: “Set a beggar on horse-back, and he’ll ride to the Devil.”
This is the very worst species of aristocracy. It has all the pride and none of the liberal sentiments of the nobility and great gentry; and, the farming and manufacturing aristocracy is worse, a great deal, than the mercantile, because the latter must have more knowledge of the world, which is a great corrector of insolent and stupid pride. As to the farmers, who have grown into riches all of a sudden, they are the most cruel and hardened of all mankind. There are many of them, who really look upon their labourers as so many brutes; and, though they can scarcely spell their own names or pronounce the commonest words in an intelligible manner, they give themselves airs, which no gentleman ever thought of. I have heard sentiments from men of this description, which would not have disgraced the lips of negro-drivers or of a Dey of Algiers. Such men are always seeking to cause their origin to be forgotten. They would, with their hands, pull down their superiors, and, with their feet, trample down their inferiors; but, as they are frequently tenants, and, as their meanness is equal to their upstart pride; as they are afflicted with
“Meanness that soars, and pride that licks the dust,” their chief aim is to trample into the very ground all who are beneath them in point of pecuniary circumstances, in order that they may have as few equals as possible, and that there may be as wide a distance as possible between them and their labourers.
Such men are naturally enemies to any Reform that would restore the great mass of the people to liberty and happiness; and, so blinded are they by these their base passions, that they almost prefer being ruined themselves to seeing their labourers enjoy their rights.
[‘An Address to the Men of Bristol’, Political Register, 11 January 1817.]
Cobbett was a longstanding opponent of the Reverend Thomas Malthus, who argued in An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) that the rate of population growth will always outstrip increases in the food supply. Malthus’s theory holds that ‘vice and misery’ – including war, famine, disease, delayed marriage and prostitution – are the natural results of the tendency towards overpopulation, and irreducible by poor relief.
PARSON,
I have, during my life, detested many men; but never any one so much as you. Your book on POPULATION contains matter more offensive to my feelings even than that of the Dungeon-Bill. It could have sprung from no mind not capable of dictating acts of greater cruelty than any recorded in the history of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Priests have, in all ages, been remarkable for cool and deliberate and unrelenting cruelty; but it seems to have been reserved for the Church of England to produce one who has a just claim to the atrocious pre-eminence. No assemblage of words can give an appropriate designation of you; and, therefore, as being the single word which best suits the character of such a man, I call you Parson, which, amongst other meanings, includes that of Boroughmonger Tool.
It must be very clear to every attentive reader of your book on Population, that it was written for the sole purpose of preparing before-hand a justification for those deeds of injustice and cruelty, of which the Parish Vestry Bill3 appears to be a mere prelude. The project will fail: the tyrants will not have the power to commit the deeds, which you recommend, and which they intend to commit. But, that is no matter. It is right that the scheme should be exposed; in order that, as we ought to take the will for the deed, we may be prepared to do justice to the schemer and to the intended executors of the scheme.
In your book you shew, that, in certain cases, a crowded population has been attended with great evils, a great deal of unhappiness, misery and human degradation. You then, without any reason to bear you out, predict, or leave it to be clearly inferred, that the same is likely to take place in England. Your principles are almost all false; and your reasoning, in almost every instance, is the same. But, it is not my intention to waste my time on your abstract matter. I shall come, at once, to your practical result; to your recommendation to the Boroughmongers to pass laws to punish the poor for marrying. […]
The bare idea of a law to punish a labourer and artisan for marrying; the bare idea is enough to fill one with indignation and horror. But, when this is moulded into a distinct proposal and strong recommendation we can hardly find patience sufficient to restrain us from breaking out into a volley of curses on the head of the proposer, be he who he may. […]
To suppose such a thing possible as a Society, in which men, who are able and willing to work, cannot support their families, and ought, with a great part of the women, to be compelled to lead a life of celibacy, for fear of having children to be starved; to suppose such a thing possible is monstrous. But, if there should be such a Society, every one will say, that it ought instantly to be dissolved; because a state of nature would be far preferable to it. However, the laws of England say, that no person shall be without a sufficiency of food and raiment; and, as we shall see, this part of our laws is no more than a recognition of those principles of the social compact, of which I have just been speaking.
[‘To Parson Malthus. On the Rights of the Poor; and on the cruelty recommended by him to be exercised towards the Poor’, Political Register, 8 May 1819.]
Cobbett tried to warn his readers that tea and coffee were detrimental to their health, encouraging them to brew their own beer, or replace (taxed) tea and coffee with a cheaper substitute made from roasted wheat. With characteristic precision, he calculated that giving up tea for a year could save £11. 7s. 2d.
The drink, which has come to supply the place of beer has, in general, been tea. It is notorious, that tea has no useful strength in it; that it contains nothing nutricious; that it, besides being good for nothing, has badness in it, because it is well known to produce want of sleep in many cases, and, in all cases, to shake and weaken the nerves. It is, in fact, a weaker kind of laudanum, which enlivens for the moment and deadens afterwards. At any rate it communicates no strength to the body; it does not, in any degree, assist in affording what labour demands. It is, then, of no use. And, now, as to its cost, compared with that of beer. I shall make my comparison applicable to a year, or three hundred and sixty five days. I shall suppose the tea to be only five shillings the pound; the sugar only seven pence; the milk, only two pence a quart. The prices are at the very lowest. I shall suppose a tea pot to cost a shilling, six cups and saucers two shillings and sixpence, and six pewter spoons eighteen pence. How to estimate the firing I hardly know; but certainly there must, in the course of the year, be two hundred fires made that would not be made, were it not for tea drinking. Then comes the great article of all, the time employed in this tea making affair […] the wretched thing amounts to a good third part of a good and able labourer’s wages. For this money, he and his family may drink good and wholesome beer, and in a short time, out of the mere savings from this waste, may drink it out of silver cups and tankards. In a labourer’s family, wholesome beer, that has a little life in it, is all that is wanted in general. […] I view the tea drinking as a destroyer of health, an enfeebler of the frame, an engenderer of effeminacy and laziness, a debaucher of youth, and a maker of misery for old age.
[Cottage Economy (London, 1822), paras 23–9.]
In one of his most famous and memorable phrases, Cobbett characterized London as ‘the Great Wen’. A ‘wen’ is a swelling, boil or sebaceous cyst, defined in Johnson’s Dictionary as ‘a dangerous fleshy excrescence’. Cobbett viewed the capital as a poisonous swelling on the body politic and in the following passage describes how London draws a constant stream of people, goods and money towards it, slowly destroying the health of the nation.
Let me, Sir, beg of you just to take a ride out round this WEN. When you come back you will tell me that you see the foundations and part structure of about three thousand new houses. I shall then ask you, whence this can arise? You will hardly have the face to tell me, that it is a proof of increasing national prosperity; and I have the vanity to think, that, after getting you to sit down, to forget, for a quarter of an hour, all the allurements of Whitehall, and all the botheration of its neighbourhood; I am really of opinion, that I should make you confess, that there is something radically wrong; and that, at last, some dreadful scenes must arise, unless measures of prevention be adopted. In short, it is to suppose a man an idiot, to suppose him not to perceive, that this monstrous WEN is now sucking up the vitals of the country.
And by what means does it suck up those vitals, but by the means of that enormous taxation, which takes away the capital of the farmer, the rent of the landlord, and the wages of the labourer? Having taken a ride round London, you then ought to take a ride round the country; go into the country towns, see the wasting tradesmen and their families; but, above all things, go to the villages, and see the misery of the labourers; see their misery, compared to the happy state in which they lived before the swellings out of this corrupt and all-devouring WEN. When I tell you that the villages, the homesteds, the cottages, are growing daily more and more out of repair, you will say it is not true; therefore, let that tell for nothing. But you will not deny the wretchedness of the labourers! The landlords and the farmers can tell their own tale. They tell their own tale in remonstrances and prayers, addressed to the House. Nobody tells the tale of the labourer.
[‘To Mr. Canning’, Political Register, 22 February 1823.]
William Wilberforce led the campaign first for the abolition of the slave trade and then, in the 1820s, for the emancipation of slaves in the West Indies. In this open letter, Cobbett responded to Wilberforce’s Appeal to the religion, justice and humanity of the inhabitants of the British empire in behalf of the negro slaves in the West Indies, which contrasted the conditions of slaves in the West Indies with those enjoyed by ‘free British labourers’. Wilberforce had begun his career as a supporter of parliamentary reform, but from 1812 represented a pocket borough controlled by Lord Calthorpe, his wife’s cousin. He supported the repressive measures of Lord Liverpool’s government at the end of the Napoleonic Wars and in the wake of the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, in which 11 people were killed and several hundred injured when the yeomanry cavalry charged into a crowd demanding universal suffrage and annual parliaments.
WILBERFORCE,
I HAVE you before me in a canting pamphlet […] You talk a great deal about the partiality of the laws in the West Indies. What you say about the inhumanity of these laws is right enough; but have you Wilberforce, have you ever done any thing to mitigate the laws which exist in this country with regard to those free British labourers of which you so cantingly talk? Never have you done one single act, in favour of the labourers of this country; but many and many an act have you done against them. In this canting and rubbishy pamphlet, you bring forward in the way of charge against the West India planters and Assemblies, the following: that “the killing of a slave was not to be punished, according to their laws, unless the killing were committed wantonly, or from bloodimindedness or cruel intention. And,” say you, “lest there should be any disposition to visit the crime too severely, it was specially enacted, that, ‘if any Negro or other slave, while under punishment by his master, or master’s order, for running away, or any other crimes or misdemeanors towards his said master, unfortunately shall suffer in life or member, which seldom happens, no person whatever shall be liable to any fine therefore.’” This is pretty damnable, to be sure: this is tyranny: here is horrible slavery: the tyrants ought to be stricken down by thunderbolts, or to be otherwise destroyed. But, Wilberforce, listen to me a bit; did you never hear of a parcel of people, who were assembled at Manchester on the 16th August, 1819. These were persons whom you call free British labourers. Well then, these labourers had not run away from any masters. They had committed no crimes or misdemeanors towards any masters. About five hundred of them were, nevertheless, killed or wounded: they suffered “in life or member.” And pray, WILBERFORCE, was any body punished for killing and wounding them? Did any body pay any fines for killing and wounding these free British labourers? Were not those who committed the killing and wounding thanked for their good conduct on that occasion? Did you ever object to those thanks? Did you not object to any parliamentary inquiry into the conduct of those who caused that killing and wounding? Well then, this was all right, was it?
[‘To William Wilberforce’, Political Register, 30 August 1823.]
Cobbett’s attacks on modern finance and public credit often include violent expressions of anti-Semitism. The following extract from A History of the Protestant “Reformation” moves from the beginning of the stock market, Bank of England and national debt, created in the 1690s to fund war with France, to the Catholic prohibition on usury. However, as Leonora Nattrass argues, this passage is more complicated than simple bigotry: here, Cobbett both identifies with medieval prejudices and historicises them, retaining the post-Reformation rise of capitalism as his primary target.4
Thus arose loans, funds, banks, bankers, bank-notes and a NATIONAL DEBT; things that England had never heard or dreamed of, before this war for “preserving the Protestant religion as by law established;” things without which she had had a long and glorious career of many centuries, and had been the greatest and happiest country in the world; things which she never would, and never could, have heard of, had it not been for what is audaciously called the “REFORMATION,” seeing that to lend money at interest; that is to say, for gain; that is to say, to receive money for the use of money; seeing that to do this was contrary, and still is contrary to the principles of the Catholic Church; and, amongst Christians, or professors of Christianity, such a thing was never heard of before that which is impudently called “THE REFORMATION.” […] JEWS did it; but, then Jews had no civil rights. They existed only by mere sufferance. They could be shut up, or banished, or even sold, at the king’s pleasure. They were regarded as a sort of monsters, who professed to be the lineal descendants and to hold the opinions of those who had murdered the SON OF GOD AND SAVIOUR OF MEN. They were not permitted to practise their blasphemies openly. If they had synagogues, they were unseen by the people. The horrid wretches themselves were compelled to keep out of public view on Sundays, and on Saints’ days. They were not allowed to pollute with their presence the streets or the roads of a Christian country, on days set apart for public devotion. In degraded wretches like these USURY, that is, receiving money for the use of money, was tolerated, just for the same cause that incest is tolerated amongst dogs.
[A History of the Protestant “Reformation”in England and Ireland (London, 1829), para. 403.]
Throughout Rural Rides, Cobbett’s descriptions of the landscape and people of southern England are punctuated with angry tirades. He is particularly angry when he comes across evangelical preachers, accusing them of forcing religion on the poor without doing anything to alleviate their poverty.
Coming through the village of BENENDEN, I heard a man, at my right, talking very loud about houses! houses! houses! It was a Methodist parson, in a house, close by the road side. I pulled up, and stood still, in the middle of the road, but looking, in silent soberness, into the window (which was open) of the room in which the preacher was at work. I believe my stopping rather disconcerted him; for he got into shocking repetition. ‘Do you KNOW,’ said he, laying great stress on the word KNOW: ‘do you KNOW, that you have ready for you houses, houses I say; I say do you KNOW; do you KNOW that you have houses in the heavens not made with hands? Do you KNOW this from experience? Has the blessed Jesus told you so?’ And, on he went to say, that, ifJesus had told them so, they would be saved, and that if he had not, and did not, they would be damned. Some girls whom I saw in the room, plump and rosy as could be, did not seem at all daunted by these menaces; and indeed, they appeared to me to be thinking much more about getting houses for themselves in this world first: just to see a little before they entered, or endeavoured to enter, or even thought much about, those ‘houses’ of which the parson was speaking: houses with pig-styes and little snug gardens attached to them, together with all the other domestic and conjugal circumstances, these girls seemed to be preparing themselves for. The truth is, these fellows have no power on the minds of any but the miserable.
[Rural Rides, ed. I. Dyck (London, 2001), pp. 140–1 (31 August 1823).]
Cobbett frequently expressed his animosity towards ‘Scotch feelosofers’, the school of political economy associated with the Edinburgh Review. While his changing views towards Scotland are discussed in more detail in a later chapter, the following tirade from Rural Rides shows Cobbett’s view of ‘Scotch’ political economy as a cruel and oppressive system of alienated labour.
I have never been able clearly to comprehend what the beastly Scotch feelosofers mean by their ‘national wealth’; but, as far as I can understand them, this is their meaning: that national wealth means, that which is left of the products of the country over and above what is consumed, or used, by those whose labour causes the products to be. This being the notion, it follows, of course, that the fewer poor devils you can screw the products out of, the richer the nation is. This is, too, the notion of BURDETT as expressed in his silly and most nasty, musty aristocratic speech of last session. What, then, is to be done with this over-produce? Who is to have it? Is it to go to pensioners, placemen, tax-gatherers, dead-weight people, soldiers, gendarmerie, police-people, and, in short, to whole millions who do no work at all? Is this a cause of ‘national wealth’? Is a nation made rich by taking the food and clothing from those who create them, and giving them to those who do nothing of any use? […]
What a twist a head must have before it can come to the conclusion, that the nation gains in wealth by the government being able to cause the work to be done by those who have hardly any share in the fruit of the labour! What a twist such a head must have! The Scotch feelosofers, who seem all to have been, by nature, formed for negro-drivers, have an insuperable objection to all those establishments and customs which occasion holidays. They call them a great inderance, a great bar to industry, a great drawback from ‘national wealth’. I wish each of these unfeeling fellows had a spade put into his hand for ten days, only ten days, and that he were compelled to dig only just as much as one of the common labourers at Fulham. The metaphysical gentleman would, I believe, soon discover the use of holidays! But, why should men, why should any men, work hard? Why, I ask, should they work incessantly, if working part of the days of the week be sufficient? Why should the people at MILTON, for instance, work incessantly, when they now raise food and clothing and fuel and every necessary to maintain well five times their number? And, pray, say, thou conceited Scotch feelosofer, how the ‘national wealth’ can be increased by making these people work incessantly, that they may raise food and clothing, to go to feed and clothe people who do not work at all?
[Rural Rides, ed. I. Dyck (London, 2001), pp. 291–3 (30 August 1826).]
Cobbett grew ever angrier as he grew older, and years of political persecution made him increasingly paranoid. Here, he defends his strident style of journalism.
How many well-meaning people have exclaimed, “It is a pity that Cobbett is so violent”; such persons never ask themselves whether they would think a man too violent who should knock down and break the limbs of a ruffian, who is coming, knife in hand, to cut his throat, and that too, without the smallest provocation on earth. This has been my state: when I began to write, I had attacked no writer, I fell foul of nobody in the shape of a “literary gentleman.” I was as modest as a maid, and dealt in qualifications, and modifications, and mitigations to the best of my poor powers in the line of palavering; but when I discovered that it was envy that was at work in my assailants, I called to mind the saying of Swift; namely, “The moment a man of real talent makes his first appearance before the public, the whole battalion of dunces beat to arms and sally forth against him; and down he falls for ever, if he have not courage as well as talent.” These are nearly his words; and I am infinitely indebted to him for having enabled me to read these words. They occurred to me, when I was first unprovokedly assaulted; and I instantly resolved to proceed in the very way in which I have always proceeded, giving three, four, or ten blows for one; and never, in any case, ceased to pursue the assailant, in some way or other, until he was completely down.
[‘Cobbett’s Egotism’, Political Register, 26 January 1828.]
1 Hazlitt, ‘Character of Cobbett’ in The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, ed. P.P Howe (21 vols, London, 1931), VIII, pp. 53–4.
2 Brandon Hill, Bristol, a popular site for reform meetings.
3 The 1818 Act for the Regulation of Parish Vestries established a voting system in parish vestries, determined by contribution to the poor rates, as part of the reorganisation of parish poor relief.
4 See L. Nattrass, The Politics ofStyle (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 164–7.