William Cobbett
born March 9, 1763, Farnham, Surrey, Eng.
died June 18, 1835, London
English popular journalist who played an
important political role as a champion of
traditional rural England against the changes
wrought by the Industrial Revolution.
His father was a small farmer and innkeeper.
Cobbett’s memories of his early life were
pleasant, and, although he moved to London when
he was 19, his experiences on the land left
their impressions on his life. Cobbett’s careers
as a journalist and, for the last three years of
his life, as a member of the House of Commons
were devoted to restoring his ideal of rural
England in a country rapidly being transformed
by the Industrial Revolution into the world’s
foremost manufacturing nation.
Although
he embraced advanced political ideas, Cobbett
was at heart not a radical but instead deeply
conservative, even reactionary. His object was
to use radical means to break the power of what
he regarded as a selfish oligarchy and thus
establish the earlier England of his
imagination. In his England, political parties,
the national debt, and the factory system would
not exist. Instead, all classes would live in
harmony on the land. Despite this seemingly
backward-looking viewpoint, Cobbett’s writings
were widely read, in part because of his lucid,
racy style but mainly because he struck a
powerful chord of nostalgia at a time when rapid
economic changes and war with France had
produced widespread anxiety.
At the
age of 21, Cobbett joined the army, in which he
eventually rose to the rank of sergeant major.
He taught himself English grammar and thus laid
the foundation of his future career as a
journalist. After serving in Canada, he returned
to England in 1791 and charged certain of his
former officers with corruption. Although
venality was all but general in the army, indeed
in the whole of public life, his charges
boomeranged when the officers sought to bring
countercharges against him. Rather than appear
at a court-martial, Cobbett fled to France.
Quickly realizing that France in the throes of
revolution was no place for an Englishman, he
sailed for America, settling in Philadelphia,
where he supported himself and his family by
teaching English to French émigrés.
An
effusive welcome accorded Joseph Priestley by
radical republican groups in the United States
after the radical scientist had left England in
1794 drew Cobbett into controversy. Convinced
that Priestley was a traitor, Cobbett wrote a
pamphlet, Observations on the Emigration of
Joseph Priestley. It launched his career as a
journalist. For the next six years he published
enough writings against the spirit and practice
of American democracy to fill 12 volumes. His
violent journalism won him many enemies and the
nickname “Peter Porcupine.” After paying a heavy
fine in a libel judgment, Cobbett returned to
England in 1800.
The Tory
government of William Pitt welcomed Cobbett and
offered to subsidize his powerful pen in further
publishing ventures. But Cobbett, whose
journalism was entirely personal and always
incorruptible, rejected the offer and in 1802
started a weekly, Political Register, which he
published until his death in 1835. Though the
Register at first supported the government, the
Treaty of Amiens (1802) with France disgusted
him, and he promptly called for a renewal of the
war. Cobbett believed that commercial interests
were dictating English foreign policy and were
responsible for all that was wrong with the
country. In 1805 he announced that England was
the victim of a “System,” which debauched
liberty, undermined the aristocracy and the
Church of England, and almost extinguished the
gentry. His conviction grew in the following
year after he witnessed the widely accepted
corruption in parliamentary elections. Cobbett’s
career as an orthodox Tory was over. Advocacy of
radical measures brought him into an uneasy
association with reformers. Cobbett and the
radicals could never be close, however, since
his goals were so different from theirs.
Cobbett
was at his best when condemning specific abuses.
He spent two years in jail (1810–12) and paid a
fine of £1,000 after denouncing the flogging of
militiamen who had protested against unfair
deductions from their pay. He also recognized
that unrest among the poor was caused by
unemployment and hunger and not, as the
government had alleged, by a desire to overthrow
English society. Cobbett could see no solution
to economic distress without a reform of
Parliament and reduction of interest on the
national debt. In 1816, at the height of his
influence, he was able to reach the common man
by putting out the Political Register (denounced
as Cobbett’s “two-penny trash”) in a cheap
edition that avoided the heavy taxes on ordinary
newspapers. The government, seeing sedition in
even the most moderate proposals for change,
repressed dissent, and the following year
Cobbett was forced to flee to the United States
to avoid arrest.
Renting
a farm on Long Island, New York, Cobbett
continued to edit and write for the Political
Register, which was published by his agents in
England. When he returned to England at the end
of 1819, his influence had waned and he was
insolvent. During the 1820s he supported many
causes in an attempt to regain his standing and
in the hope that they would lead to the changes
in England’s political and economic system that
he desired. He unsuccessfully tried to be
elected to the House of Commons in 1820 from
Coventry and in 1826 from Preston. His famous
tours of the countryside began in 1821 and were
to lead to his greatest book, Rural Rides, which
was an unrivalled picture of the land.
Although
he had no love for the Whigs, Cobbett supported
the parliamentary Reform Bill of 1832, which,
despite its limited nature, he sensed was the
best that could be had. In 1830 agricultural
labourers in his beloved southern England had
rioted in protest against their low wages.
Cobbett defended them and as a result was
prosecuted in 1831 by a Whig government that was
anxious to prove its zeal in moving against
“sedition.” Acting as his own counsel, Cobbett
confounded his opponents and was set free. Yet,
despite this threat of another jail term, he
supported his persecutors on the issue of
parliamentary reform.
In 1832
Cobbett was elected to Parliament as a member
from Oldham. At 69 years of age he found the
nocturnal schedule of Parliament an unpleasant
contrast to his lifelong preference for early
rising and working in the morning. Essentially
an individualist and a man of action, he chafed
at parliamentary routine. Most members of the
House of Commons did not respect him, and
Cobbett’s parliamentary career was a failure.
The unnatural hours hastened his death, from
influenza, in 1835.
Passionate and prejudiced, Cobbett’s prose, full
of telling phrases and inspired ridicule, was
completely personal. He had no theoretical
understanding of the complicated issues about
which he wrote. While his views of the ideal
society were retrograde, no one could excel him
in specific criticisms of corruption and
extravagance, harsh laws, low wages, absentee
clergymen—indeed, nearly everything that was
wrong with England.
John W. Osborne
