The Life and Adventures of William Cobbett. Richard Ingrams

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СКАЧАТЬ of a prosecution in a Court of Justice: but, surely no one who has the least liberality of feeling, or the least sense of decency, could think it becoming to taunt such a gentleman as Mr Addington: a gentleman who, the more he is known, the more his character will be admired. For my part, I feel no sympathy with those who think there is any wit in such titles. Mr Addington is the son of a man who most ably and skilfully practised in a liberal profession, who by his talents became justly eminent in that profession, and whose son raised himself, by his great abilities, to one of the highest offices in this country. I again say, that for any publication calling Mr Addington ‘Doctor Addington’, or for any flippancy of that nature, standing by itself, I should think it beneath the dignity of the Right honourable gentleman to make it the subject of a prosecution; but I also say, that when you see an epithet of this nature introduced, it does show the spirits with which the libel was published and that it was a systematic attack upon the whole government of Ireland, by bringing into contempt and ridicule the persons placed by his Majesty at the head of the Government.¹²

      ‘The bestowing of nicknames is a practice to which Englishmen are peculiarly addicted,’ Cobbett’s counsel William Adam answered, but he made little or no attempt to justify ‘Juverna’s’ account of the Dublin rebellion, instead devoting his speech to extolling his client as a great English patriot. Summing up, the judge, Lord Ellenborough, did nothing to disguise his bias. His final words to the jury were an ominous warning not only to Cobbett but to others who might be so foolhardy as to attack the government: ‘It has been observed [by Cobbett’s counsel] that it is the right of the British subject to exhibit the folly or imbecility of members of the Government. But gentlemen, we must confine ourselves within limits. If, in so doing, individual feelings are violated, there the line of interdiction begins, and the offence becomes the subject of penal visitation.’ Taking their cue from the learned judge, the jury brought in a verdict of guilty following deliberations which lasted for only ten minutes.

      Cobbett had secured a number of prominent individuals, including Windham, to appear as character witnesses, and it was perhaps thanks to them that he escaped a prison sentence on this occasion (the Register was fined £500). It may also have been the case that he was leniently treated in comparison with other libellers for divulging to the court the identity of ‘Juverna’ – Robert Johnson, a judge of the Irish Common Pleas. Cobbett handed over some of the manuscripts of the letters to the Attorney General, and later appeared as a Crown witness when Johnson himself was put on trial in November 1805. At first sight Cobbett’s betrayal of his contributor seems despicable. But, as his biographer E.I. Carlyle points out, it is significant that the incident was never referred to afterwards by his political enemies, and given the fact that they seized on anything, however trivial, to discredit Cobbett, the likelihood is that Johnson himself agreed to be identified as the author. After being found guilty he was allowed to resign with a pension of £1200 a year.

      The ‘Juverna’ trial and the threat of possible imprisonment will have unnerved Cobbett and shown him that he could not expect any favours from the establishment (what he called ‘The Thing’). But in the meantime, as the threat of invasion by Napoleon receded, he was beginning to become interested in matters beyond the political controversies of the day, the sort of issues he discussed with Windham in their regular exchange of letters.

      Having been out of the country for most of his adult life, Cobbett had little or no first-hand knowledge of British politics or social institutions. In the ten years he had spent in America he had retained in his memory a picture of England as he remembered it from his boyhood, a picture of rural prosperity, cottage gardens, contented villagers – an idyllic scene. In 1804, however, he went house-hunting with his wife Anne in Hampshire (prior to their settling in Botley), and saw for himself how conditions had changed:

      When I revisited the English labourer’s dwelling and that too, after having recently witnessed the happiness of labourers in America; when I saw that the clock was gone; when I saw those whom I had known the most neat, cheerful and happy beings on earth, and these my countrymen too, had become the most wretched and forlorn of human beings, I looked seriously and inquired patiently into the matter and this inquiry into the causes of the effect which had made so deep an impression on my mind, led to that series of exertions, which have occupied my whole life, since that time, to better the lot of the labourers.¹³

      What had caused the decline? Cobbett instanced two major factors: firstly, the continuing series of enclosures, whereby the common lands which traditionally provided labourers with a source of food and fuel to supplement their earnings had been taken over or ‘privatised’ by the rich farmers and landowners in the interest of ‘greater efficiency’. Secondly, the newly introduced Poor Laws, known as the Speenhamland System, intended when they were launched in 1795 to help the poorest labourers by making up their pay from the rates, but which had the effect of branding them as paupers, so robbing them of all self-respect.

      ‘The labourers are humbled, debased and enslaved,’ Cobbett wrote. ‘Until of late years, there was, amongst the poor, a horror of becoming chargeable to the parish. This feeling, which was almost universal, was the parent of industry, of care, of economy, of frugality and of early habits of labour amongst children … That men should possess spirit, that there should be any independence of mind, that there should be frankness among persons so situated, is impossible. Accordingly, whoever has had experience in such matters, must have observed, with deep regret, that instead of priding himself upon his little possessions, instead of decking out his children to the best advantage, instead of laying up in store the trifling surplus produce of the harvest month, the labourer now, in but too many instances, takes care to spend all as fast as he gets it, makes himself as poor as he can and uses all the art that he is master of to cause it to be believed that he is still more miserable than he really is. What an example for the children! And what must the rising generation be!’¹⁴

      The reason Cobbett became a champion of the farm labourers, who at this time, prior to the Industrial Revolution, made up the largest single section of the British workforce, was his own personal involvement with them at Botley and in the surrounding countryside. As always with Cobbett, he started from what he saw with his own eyes – in this case, workers living in an impoverished and demoralised state, in marked contrast to what he remembered from his own boyhood.

      When he himself began to farm and employ labourers at Botley, Cobbett refused to have anything to do with the Speenhamland System. ‘I have made it a rule,’ he wrote, ‘that I will have the labour of no man who receives parish relief. I give him, out of my own pocket, let his family be what it may, enough to keep them well, without any regard to what wages other people give: for I will employ no pauper.’

      The result, he claimed, was a contented little community: ‘It is quite delightful to see this village of Botley, when compared to the others that I know. They seem here to be quite a different race of people.’ This was no empty boast, because it was confirmed by the many witnesses like Miss Mitford who visited Cobbett at Botley. He encouraged, he said, with his workers ‘freedom in conversation, the unrestrained familiarity … without at all lessening the weight of my authority’.

      And the same principle, he said, applied with his children. By 1805 when Cobbett bought the Botley home he had four children – Anne born in America in 1795, William in 1798, John in 1800 and James in 1803. They were followed by two girls, Eleanor and Susan (born 1805 and 1807), and finally by Richard (born 1814). In spite of his workload as a journalist Cobbett took an enormous interest in the welfare and education of his children. His ideas were surprisingly liberal. Remembering, perhaps, his own harsh treatment at the hands of his father, he urged parents to make their children’s lives ‘as pleasant as you possibly can’:

      I have always admired the sentiment of ROUSSEAU upon this subject. ‘The boy dies, perhaps, at the age of ten or twelve. Of what use, СКАЧАТЬ