COBBETT, WILLIAM (1763-1835), English author, jour nalist and Radical, is one of the most representative figures in English literature, and his life and writings embody the history of the common people between the revolutions of the eighteenth century and the dawn of the Victorian era. He was born at Farnham, Surrey, on March 9, 1763 (not 1766, as he himself wrongly stated). His father was a small farmer; and his grand father had been a day-labourer. As a boy, he worked in the fields, but, at 14, began his adventures by running away from home and getting work in Kew Gardens. He returned home after a while; but, at 19, after an unsuccessful attempt to join the Navy during a visit to Portsmouth, again left Farnham and, going to London on a sudden impulse, found employment as a solicitor's clerk.
Soon sickening of this occupation, he went down to Chatham, meaning to enlist in the Marines, but found himself in a line regi ment instead. After a year at the depot, during which he read hard and discursively and taught himself grammar and writing, he was drafted, as corporal, to Nova Scotia, where his regiment was stationed. Soon, however, he was shifted to Fredericton, New Brunswick, where he remained till 1791, rising rapidly to the posi tion of regimental sergeant-major. This position made him con scious of the systematic fraud and peculation which went on in the regiment—as indeed throughout the service—and he set to work to collect evidence against the principal offenders. At length, in 1791, his regiment was ordered home ; and he at once procured his discharge, with excellent testimonials. Having done this, he immediately set about bringing the defaulters to book, and demanded a court-martial of the officers against whom he had collected evidence. This was at length granted ; but Cobbett was unable to secure the discharge of his essential witness, or to get the regimental books impounded for safekeeping. In despair of getting the case fairly heard, he failed to appear at the court martial, and fled to France in March 1 i92. He had married Ann Reid, to whom he had become engaged some years before in New Brunswick, while he was awaiting the court-martial proceed ings; and she joined him in France. He remained there until the late summer of 1792 when, seeing the outbreak of war to be imminent, he took ship for America. There, first at Wilmington and later at Philadelphia, he supported himself by teaching Eng lish to the French émigrés, who were reaching the United States in large numbers.
So far Cobbett had written little. In the army, he had com posed a grammar for the use of private soldiers; but this was not published. He had also almost certainly a hand in a pamphlet exposing army abuses, published in 1793 under the title of The Soldier's Friend. But in 1794 occurred an incident which really embarked him on his long career as a political writer. Joseph Priestley, the great Unitarian Radical, came in that year to settle in the United States, and numerous addresses of welcome were presented to him by American Radical societies. These aroused Cobbett's strong pugnacious instincts; and he entered the lists as a pamphleteer with his Observations on Dr. Priestley's Emi gration (1794)• From that date until his return to England in i800, he was the most vehement and violent writer on the British side in the United States, producing a series of tirades against the French Revolution and all its works, and against all Americans who ventured to give it, or any sort of Radicalism, even the mildest support. A Bone to Gnaw for the Democrats, A Kick for a Bite, The Scare-Crow, The Cannibal's Progress (an account of the horror of the French Revolution), and a scurrilous Life of Tom Paine, are among these early pamphlets. They are all unmeasured in violence, and often outrageous, but always lively, readable and written in really virile and forthright English. Cob bett's style was almost as good in his first unpracticed writings as in the best of his more famous later work. Pre-eminent among these early pamphlets is his autobiographical Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine (the highly apposite name under which he had chosen to write) in which he defended himself against those who abused him by an account of his upbringing and early career. This pamphlet is one of the best of all his writings. He also supplemented his pamphleteering with a regular newspaper, Por cupine's Gazette.
Cobbett was soon in trouble with the law. He libelled Dr. Rush, doctor and well-known Democratic politician, accusing him of killing George Washington with his special "bleeding treat ment." This brought a heavy fine, and he then wrote scurrilous pamphlets about McKean, the judge who had tried the case, and was Rush's political ally. Before long he made the United States too hot to hold him, and in i800 he gave up the contest and re turned to England, where his writings, regularly republished, had already made him well known. He was greeted with enthusiasm as a powerful recruit to jingo journalism. He met Pitt at dinner, and was offered the editorship and ownership of one of the lead ing Government newspapers. He refused the offer, as he had already refused Government payment for his services in America, and attempted instead to start a daily newspaper of his own, The Porcupine. This speedily failed; but in 1802, with help from Dr. Laurence and William Windham, who was for some years his chief political supporter, he started the weekly Political Register, which he thereafter edited, and for the most part wrote, regularly until his death in 1835.
The Political Register, with which Cobbett's name was always from 1802 chiefly associated, began its career as an extreme anti Jacobin journal. It strongly opposed Addington and the Peace of Amiens, and called loudly for a renewal of the war with France. But after Pitt's return to power and the renewal of the war, Cobbett slipped gradually into opposition, and found him self in alliance with Windham and with Fox, the latter of whom he had hitherto vehemently denounced. In 1806, in the Ministry of All the Talents, his friends came to power ; but Cobbett soon fell into opposition to them also. He was by this time denouncing the "Pitt system" as the root of all evil, and attacking in par ticular the methods of pursuing the war, the multiplication of pensions and sinecures, and the dangerous growth of the National Debt. When the Ministry of All the Talents broke up in 1807, he was already definitely a Radical, at war equally with Whig and Tory, and beginning to cry out for peace and parliamentary reform as well as for "economical reform." So far, Cobbett was merely an outstanding political journalist, whose writings, however trenchant, had given little indication of his peculiar quality as a democratic leader. But from about 1805 a new tone begins to appear in his work. From 1800 to 18o5 he had lived in London; but in the latter year he bought a sub stantial farm at Botley, near Southampton, and spent most of his time in the country. The change opened his eyes to the great contrast between the countryside as he remembered it in his boyhood and as it had become under stress of war-time prices and enclosure. He realized for the first time the misery of the labour ing classes, the effects of the Speenhamland system of poor relief, of the enclosure movement, of the great revolution in agrarian conditions that was then at its height. It roused his indignation —the indignation of one who was himself by nature and nurture a yeoman. It completed his conversion to Radicalism, which he expressed as the cause of the dispossessed and suffering labourers of rural England.
Cobbett, the one articulate voice among the suffering people of the countryside, brought a new note into Radical agitation. At once, he became a power. But his power brought penalties. In 1809 there was a minor mutiny among the soldiers at Ely, over unfair deductions from pay. The mutiny was suppressed, and the ringleaders were flogged under the eyes of German mer cenaries. Cobbett wrote, denouncing the floggings, and was prose cuted for sedition. A fine of f i,000, two years in Newgate gaol, bail in f3,0o0 and the finding of two sureties at f I,000 each, were his punishment.
From Newgate, under the lax prison discipline of the time, Cobbett continued to edit the Register, and wrote his famous Paper against Gold, in which he denounced the war-time inflation of the currency, and the financial policy of Pitt and his successors. His imprisonment, however, brought him financial ruin. He went bankrupt. His farm at Botley was sold; and most of his valuable properties passed out of his hands. The Register he barely saved. Three great publishing enterprises on which he was engaged had to be sold—the State Trials (known as Howell's, from the editor whom Cobbett employed), the Parliamentary History of England, and the Parliamentary Debates, which were bought by his printer, Hansard, and thereafter bore the latter's name. All these were originated by Cobbett, though the actual editorship, under his control, had been mainly left to others.
When Cobbett emerged from prison in 1812, he appeared to be ruined. But he had still the Register, and the ending of the war, in 1815, brought him his chance. Prices fell, indeed; but the cessation of war demand and the prostration of Europe after the long struggle led to widespread unemployment and distress. In the industrial districts, unrest grew; and the farmers, pressed down by high taxation, were also in a condition of active discon tent. The Government had no plans for dealing with the crisis; and Cobbett with his demands for parliamentary reform and a reduction of the heavy interest on the National Debt, became the central figure in a nation-wide agitation. In 1816, he began the issue of a cheap unstamped Register (denounced as Cobbett's "two-penny trash") addressed particularly to the journeymen and labourers of the Northern and Midland counties. He became suddenly the most influential leader of the working classes. But by this time the Government, alarmed at hunger-riots and move ments of despair and discontent, was embarking on a campaign of repression which recalled Pitt's measures in the years follow ing the French Revolution. In 1817 Lord Sidmouth, the Home Secretary, passed his "Gagging Bills" and procured the suspen sion of the Habeas Corpus Act. Widespread arrests of Radical leaders followed; and Cobbett, in order to avoid arrest, fled to the United States, where he remained until 1819.
Settling down on a hired farm at North Hempstead, Long Is land, Cobbett set himself to write. He sent the copy regularly for the Political Register, which continued to be published by his agents in England. But he also embarked on other literary work. To the respite which exile gave him from daily political preoccu pations we owe the beginning of his great literary period. Hith erto he had written much excellent journalism, but no important book. But between 1817 and 1819 he produced not only his Journal of a Year's Residence in the United States of America, but also his famous Grammar of the English Languag6, which, despite its faults of scholarship, is still probably the best intro duction to correct virile English for the working-class student. In America, too, he projected certain others of the important books which he produced, from this time onwards, with profuse mental vigour.
Although the repression was by no means over—indeed, the "Six Acts" were not passed until after his return—Cobbett came back to England late in 1819, and assumed his place as the out standing leader of working-class radical agitation. From 1819 to 1832 his history is, in one aspect, the history of the agitation for parliamentary reform. But he found scope for other activities as well, above all for his well-known Rural Rides through the southern half of England. His accounts of these appeared in the Register between 182o and 183o, in which year they were first published in book form.
Rural Rides, certainly Cobbett's best widely read book except the Grammar, are difficult to describe. They are, in part, a plain account of what he saw in the English countryside—of good farming and of bad, of rotten boroughs and the country houses of bankers, stock-jobbers and successful army contractors, and above all of the misery and starvation of the common people. But they are far more than this. They abound in digressions, in racy snatches of autobiography, in topical political tirades, and everywhere in abundant outflowings of Cobbett's own forceful and appealing personality. Though they were composed in haste and sent off to the Register without chance of revision, they were astonishingly well written. Rural Rides are Cobbett at his best, showing more sides of the man than appeared in any other of his works.
But Rural Rides, and the ceaseless "rustic harangues" which accompanied them, did not, even with the added burden of con ducting the Register and actively guiding a large section of the reform movement, at all exhaust Cobbett's energies. Books, and mostly good books, flowed from him—Cottage Economy and the Sermons in 1822, The History of the Protestant Reformation in England (questionable history this, but vigorous writing) in 1824-26, The Woodlands in 1825, Advice to Young Men (next to Rural Rides his best book) and The English Gardener in 1829, and a host of others. Moreover, in 182o-21 he wholeheartedly espoused the cause of Queen Caroline against the king, acted as one of her regular advisers before the famous trial, and wrote ceaselessly on her behalf. He even composed a number of her own letters and messages concerned with the case. And in his hands the defence of the Queen became also a means of rallying the forces of the Reformers.
Meanwhile, in 182o, he had rid himself by bankruptcy of some of his financial worries, and had settled down to rebuild his shat tered fortunes by means of his pen. Botley had been given up, and for awhile he had no land. But soon he developed a flourish ing seed-farm in Kensington, and began to deal also in American trees, and in a variety of imported seeds and plants. Especially he urged the cultivation of maize ("Cobbett's corn"), of the locust tree, and of Swedish turnips, as well as the introduction of the straw-plait manufacture from home-grown grasses. His seed farm and his agricultural writings brought him a large following among the farming classes.
In 183o, with the fall of Wellington and the end of the long period of Tory ascendancy, the reform agitation came to a head. The Whigs, under Lord Gray, assumed office, and reform became the one political question of the day. Immediately upon this change followed the hunger movement of the rural labourers in the southern and eastern counties, known as "the last labourer's revolt." The opponents of the movement sought to trace these troubles to Cobbett's influence, and the Whig Government, anx ious to prove its respect for property and to reassure the prop ertied classes as the subject of reform, prosecuted him. Refusing to employ counsel, Cobbett defended himself in a masterly speech, which thoroughly turned the tables on his opponents. The jury disagreed, and no further attempt was made to molest him. The revolt, however, was savagely repressed.
At length, in 1832, the Reform Act became law. Cobbett, though he had no love for the Whigs, had urged the workers to support it, on the ground that no more liberal measure stood any chance of immediate success. At the election which followed he was elected M.P. for Oldham, as the colleague of John Fielden, the Radical manufacturer. He had stood at Manchester also, but withdrew on learning of his success at Oldham.
This was not Cobbett's first parliamentary contest. He had stood unsuccessfully for Coventry in 182o and for Preston in 1826. Indeed, for many years he had been seeking to force his way into parliament. At sixty-eight years of age, he found him self a member, as strongly in opposition to the reformed parlia ment of 1832 as he could have been to the unreformed parlia ments of earlier years. His'two and a half years of parliamentary life he passed as the leader of a tiny group of extreme radicals, supported sometimes by O'Connell and his Irish, but always fighting for forlorn hopes. Especially, he put up an unavailing struggle against the "new poor law" of 1834, and his last weeks of life were spent in the endeavour to run a campaign against the act when it had been passed into law.
It is usually said that Cobbett was not a success as a parlia mentarian. He could hardly have been so, for he accepted none of the rules of the game. He remained to the end the leader of an essentially extra-parliamentary crusade. But already his health was failing. He had been always an indefatigable worker, rising very early and doing a good part of a day's labour before other men were astir. Now severe colds and coughs began to trouble him; but he insisted on adding assiduous attention to his parlia mentary duties to his other multifarious activities. In 1835 his health gave way under the strain, and, on June 18, he died of an attack of influenza. His sons attempted for a few months to carry on the Register; but it was nothing without his vigorous editorials, and was speedily discontinued.
Cobbett was survived by his wife and by seven children. Anne, the eldest (1795-1877), wrote The English Housekeeper and other works. Both she and the two other daughters, Eleanor and Susan, remained unmarried. The three eldest sons all went to the bar. William (1798-1878) wrote The Law of Turnpikes and other legal works, and edited the Register for a while after his father's death. John Morgan (1800-1877) wrote several books, stood un successfully for Oldham in 1835, and successfully, as an Inde pendent, in 1852. He held the seat till 1865, and again, as a Con servative, from 1872 to 1877. He married John Fielden's daugh ter in 1851. James Paul (1803-1881) wrote A Ride in France, Journal of a Tour in Italy, etc., and stood for Bury as a Radical in 1837. Richard Baverstock Brown, the youngest son (1814 1875) became a solicitor in Manchester, and was active there in the Chartist movement.
of Cobbett's important writings have been mentioned above. Besides a host of pamphlets, his other books include Porcupine's Works (selections from his early American writings, in 12 vols., 18o1) ; A Collection of Facts and Observations relative to the Peace with Bonaparte (18o1) ; Letters to Addington, in the Fatal Effects of the Peace with Bonaparte (1802) ; Letters to Lord Hawkes bury, on the Peace (1802) ; The Political Proteus (an attack on R. B. Sheridan, 1804) ; Letters on the Late War between the United States and Great Britain (1815) ; The Pride of Britannia Humbled (New York, 1815) ; Paper against Gold (1815) ; The American Gardener (1821) ; Collective Commentaries (1822) ; French Grammar (1824) ; The Poor Man's Friend (1826) ; A Treatise on Cobbett's Corn (1828) ; The Emigrants' Guide (1829) ; History of the Regency and Reign of George IV. (183o) ; Lectures on the French and Belgian Revolutions (183o) ; Spelling Book (1831) ; Tour in Scotland (continuing Rural Rides, 1832) ; Manchester Lectures (1832) ; Geographical Dictionary (1832) ; French and English Dictionary (1833) ; Four Letters to the Hon. John Stuart Wortley (1834) ; Life of Andrew Jackson Lectures on the Political State of Ireland (1834) ; Legacy to Labourers (1835) ; Legacy to Parsons (1835) ; Legacy to Peel, (1836). Six volumes of selections from the Register, under the title, Cobbett's Political Works, were published in 1835-36.
Of the lives, the most recent is by G. D. H. Cole (1924) . There are other lives by Huish (1836), E. Smith (1878), E. I. Carlyle (19o4), and Lewis Melville (1913) . (G. D. H. C.)