The Life and Adventures of William Cobbett. Richard Ingrams

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СКАЧАТЬ the passing of a Sedition Act by Washington in 1798 which made it illegal ‘to write, print, utter or publish any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the Government of the United States’. Although the Act was intended to be used against French writers – by this time the USA had broken off relations with France and was preparing for war – Webster decided it could equally well be used against people like Cobbett. Affecting, like many of his type, not to have personally seen the attacks, he wrote to the Secretary of State Timothy Pickering: ‘The violence and resentment of the English knows no bounds. They are intolerably insolent and strive, by all possible means to lessen the circulation of my papers.’ (He need not have bothered, as by that stage proceedings were already under way.)

      A more formidable opponent than Webster was Thomas McKean (1734–1817), a lawyer of Scottish descent who involved himself in politics, became one of the most ardent advocates of separation prior to the war with Britain, and was a signatory of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The following year McKean became the Chief Justice of Pennsylvania (a post he occupied for twenty years), and he was elected President of Congress in 1781. Though a keen Democrat and francophile, McKean was deeply conservative in matters of law, besides being, in the words of his contemporary Thomas Rodney, a man ‘of great vanity, extremely fond of power and entirely governed by passions, ever pursuing the object present with warm, enthusiastic zeal without much reflection or forecast’.⁷ A recent biographer describes him as ‘almost pathological in his insistence upon deference in his political and judicial capacities’. Among other insults, Cobbett called him ‘a little upstart tyrant’, or ‘Mrs McKean’s husband’ (the suggestion being that he was under the thumb of his dominating wife).

      Already needled by these jibes, McKean was only too happy to act when his prospective son-in-law Don Carlos Martinez de Yrujo, the Spanish Ambassador, complained of certain disobliging comments which Cobbett made about himself and the Spanish King Charles IV, who had appointed him. On 18 August 1796 Cobbett was arrested and charged with criminal libel (the first of a long series of such setbacks). In a lengthy indictment McKean expressed his distaste not just for Cobbett but for all forms of satire against public figures (such as himself): ‘where libels are printed against persons employed in a public capacity they receive an aggravation, as they tend to scandalize the government by reflecting those who are entrusted with the administration of public affairs’. Political journalism had got quite out of hand, in McKean’s view:

      Everyone who has in him the sentiments of either a Christian or a gentleman cannot but be highly offended at the envenomed scurrility that has raged in pamphlets and newspapers … in so much that libelling has become a kind of national crime, and distinguishes us not only from all the states around us, but from the whole civilized world …

      Impressed with the duties of my station, I have used some endeavours for checking these evils, by binding over the editor and printer of one of them, licentious and virulent beyond all former example, to his good behaviour; but he still perseveres in his nefarious publications; he has ransacked our language for terms of reproach and insult, and for the basest accusations against every ruler and distinguished character in France and Spain, with which we chance to have any intercourse, which it is scarce in nature to forgive …

      McKean created something of a precedent by appearing as both judge and witness at the trial, but despite this the jury sided with Cobbett by a majority of one. Not content with the verdict, McKean now made efforts to have Cobbett deported from the United States as an undesirable alien. When these failed he compiled a selection of Cobbett’s writings, including various alleged libels on public figures. Following a trial Cobbett was bound over for $4000 to be of good behaviour, at which point a more prudent man might have left McKean alone. Cobbett however was determined not to be silenced. He was especially eager to prove that despite the First Amendment the American press was no more free than the British. In a pamphlet, ‘The Democratic Judge’ (1798), he railed against the iniquity of the proceedings, pointing out (inter alia) that his comments about the King of Spain and his Ambassador were mild stuff compared to some of the scurrilous comments on George III and his allies which McKean had allowed freely to circulate. In the English edition (copies of which no doubt reached America) Cobbett tore into McKean in what must be one of the most defamatory attacks ever launched against a public figure:

      His private character is infamous. He beats his wife and she beats him. He ordered a wig to be imported for him by Mr. Kid, refused to pay for it, the dispute was referred to the court of Nisi Prius; where (merely for want of the original invoice which Kid had lost) the Judge came off victorious! He is a notorious drunkard. The whole bar, one lawyer excepted, signed a memorial, stating, that so great a drunkard was he, that after dinner, person and property were not safe in Pennsylvania. He has been horsewhipped in the City Tavern, and kicked in the street for his insolence to particular persons; and yet this degraded wretch is Chief Justice of the State!

      McKean, a proud, vain man, was not the sort of person to forget such an attack. In 1797, following the second of two outbreaks of yellow fever in Philadelphia, a further opportunity for prosecution arose as a result of Cobbett’s libels of another of the city’s most distinguished citizens, Dr Benjamin Rush. Rush (1745–1813) was, like McKean, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence, a close friend of Noah Webster and a fanatical republican. He had begun his career as a lawyer but changed to medicine, studying at Edinburgh University and St Thomas’s Hospital, London (where he met Dr Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith and Joshua Reynolds). Returning to Philadelphia, he began to practise medicine and had already made a name for himself when the War of Independence broke out. Rush was appointed Surgeon General to the armies, but quarrelled with George Washington and returned to his medical practice. Though a pioneer in many medical and veterinary fields (he has been credited with the possibly dubious distinction of being the founder of American psychiatry), his approach to more conventional medical matters was misguided, to put it mildly. Following the lead of the famous Edinburgh physician John Brown, Rush came to believe that nearly all ailments, even the common cold, sore throat or headache, were caused by ‘a state of excessive excitability of a spasm in the blood vessels’, and hence in most cases called for the one treatment of ‘depletion’ through bleeding and purging. ‘This conception was so simple that it came to hold for his speculative mind all the fascination of an ultimate panacea.’⁸

      The test of Rush’s theory came in 1793 when the first of the epidemics of yellow fever struck Philadelphia, resulting in the death of several thousand citizens. Basing his remarks on Rush’s own account (published in 1794), Cobbett later described the doctor’s technique, prior to his discovery of bleeding.

      At the first breaking out of the Yellow Fever, he made use of ‘gentle purges’; these he laid aside, and had recourse to ‘a gentle vomit of ipecacuanha’; next he ‘gave bark in all its usual forms, of infusion, powder and tincture, and joined wine, brandy and aromatics with it’; this was followed by ‘the application of blisters to the limbs, neck and head’; these torments were succeeded by ‘an attempt to rouse the system by wrapping the whole body in blankets dipped in warm vinegar’; he next ‘rubbed the right side with mercurial ointment, with a view of exciting the action of the vessels through the medium of the liver’; after this he again returned to bark, which he gave ‘in large quantities and in one case ordered it to be injected into the bowels once in four hours’; and, at last, having found that wrapping his patient in blankets dipped in warm vinegar did no good, he directed buckets full of cold water to be thrown frequently upon them!!!

      Surprising as it may seem his patients died!

      Rush was not a bad man, in fact he was a very conscientious and industrious practitioner. But he was excessively vain, quick-tempered and lacking in humour (he must have been painfully aware that the high death rate disproved his claim that the yellow fever was no more dangerous than measles or influenza). The attack coming from an Englishman, СКАЧАТЬ