VI
The attack on the Hanoverian troops, who had nothing to do with the question as to whether the militiamen were flogged justly or not, was doubtless most illiberal and unfair. Those troops simply did their duty, as any other disciplined troops would have done, in seeing a superior’s order executed. It was not their fault if they were employed on this service; neither were they in our country or our army under ordinary circumstances. They had lost their own land for fighting our battles; they were in our army because they would not serve in the army of the enemy.
But we can hardly expect newspaper writers to be more logical and just than forensic advocates. A free press is not a good unmixed with evil; there are arguments against it, as there are arguments for it; but where it is admitted as an important part of a nation’s institutions, this admission includes, as I conceive, the permission to state one side of a question in the most telling manner, the corrective being the juxtaposition of the other side of the question stated with an equal intent to captivate, and perhaps to mislead.
Two years’ imprisonment, and a fine of £1000 only wanted the gentle accompaniment of ear-cropping to have done honour to the Star Chamber; for, to a man who had a newspaper and a farm to carry on, imprisonment threatened to consummate the ruin which an exorbitant fine was well calculated to commence.
Cobbett was accused of yielding to the heaviness of the blow, and of offering the abandonment of his journal as the price of his forgiveness. I cannot agree with those who said that such an offer would have been an unparalleled act of baseness. In giving up his journal, Cobbett was not necessarily giving up his opinions. Every one who wages war unsuccessfully retains the right of capitulation. A writer is no more obliged to rot uselessly in a gaol for the sake of his cause, than a general is obliged to fight a battle without a chance of victory for the sake of his country. A man, even if a hero, is not obliged to be a martyr. Cobbett’s disgraceful act was not in making the proposal of which he was accused, but in denying most positively and repeatedly that he had ever made it; for it certainly seems pretty clear, amidst a good deal of contradictory evidence, that he did authorize Mr. Reeves, of the Alien Office, to promise that the Register should drop if he was not brought up for judgment; and if a Mr. Wright, who was a sort of factotum to Cobbett at the time, can be believed, the farewell was actually written, and only withdrawn when the negotiation was known to have failed. At all events, no indulgence being granted to the offender, he turned round and faced fortune with his usual hardihood. In no portion of his life, indeed, did he show greater courage—in none does the better side of his character come out in brighter relief than when, within the gloomy and stifling walls of Newgate, he carried on his farming, conducted his paper, educated his children, and waged war (his most natural and favourite pursuit) against his enemies with as gay a courage as could have been expected from him in sight of the yellow cornfields, and breathing the pure air he loved so well.
“Now, then,” he says, in describing this period of his life, “the book-learning was forced upon us. I had a farm in hand; it was necessary that I should be constantly informed of what was doing. I gave all the orders, whether as to purchases, sales, ploughing, sowing, breeding—in short, with regard to everything, and the things were in endless number and variety, and always full of interest. My eldest son and daughter could now write well and fast. One or the other of these was always at Botley, and I had with me—having hired the best part of the keeper’s house—one or two besides, either their brother or sister. We had a hamper, with a lock and two keys, which came up once a week or oftener, bringing me fruit and all sorts of country fare. This hamper, which was always at both ends of the line looked for with the most lively interest, became our school. It brought me a journal of labours, proceedings, and occurrences, written on paper of shape and size uniform, and so contrived as to margins as to admit of binding. The journal used, when my eldest son was the writer, to be interspersed with drawings of our dogs, colts, or anything that he wanted me to have a correct idea of. The hamper brought me plants, herbs, and the like, that I might see the size of them; and almost every one sent his or her most beautiful flowers, the earliest violets and primroses and cowslips and bluebells, the earliest twigs of trees, and, in short, everything that they thought calculated to delight me. The moment the hamper arrived, I—casting aside everything else—set to work to answer every question, to give new directions, and to add anything likely to give pleasure at Botley.
“Every hamper brought one letter, as they called it, if not more, from every child, and to every letter I wrote an answer, sealed up and sent to the party, being sure that that was the way to produce other and better letters; for though they could not read what I wrote, and though their own consisted at first of mere scratches, and afterwards, for a while, of a few words written down for them to imitate, I always thanked them for their pretty letter, and never expressed any wish to see them write better, but took care to write in a very neat and plain hand myself, and to do up my letter in a very neat manner.
“Thus, while the ferocious tigers thought I was doomed to incessant mortification, and to rage that must extinguish my mental powers, I found in my children, and in their spotless and courageous and affectionate mother, delights to which the callous hearts of those tigers were strangers. ‘Heaven first taught letters for some wretch’s aid.’ How often did this line of Pope occur to me when I opened the little fuddling letters from Botley. This correspondence occupied a good part of my time. I had all the children with me, turn and turn about; and in order to give the boys exercise, and to give the two eldest an opportunity of beginning to learn French, I used for a part of the two years to send them for a few hours a day to an abbé, who lived in Castle Street, Holborn. All this was a great relaxation to my mind; and when I had to return to my literary labours, I returned fresh and cheerful, full of vigour, and full of hope of finally seeing my unjust and merciless foes at my feet, and that, too, without caring a straw on whom their fall might bring calamity, so that my own family were safe, because—say what any one might—the community, taken as a whole, had suffered this thing to be done unto us.
“The paying of the workpeople, the keeping of the accounts, the referring to books, the writing and reading of letters, this everlasting mixture of amusement with book-learning, made me, almost to my own surprise, find at the end of two years that I had a parcel of scholars growing up about me, and, long before the end of the time, I had dictated my Register to my two eldest children. Then there was copying out of books, which taught spelling correctly. The calculations about the farming affairs forced arithmetic upon us; the use, the necessity of the thing, led to the study.
“By and by we had to look into the laws, to know what to do about the highways, about the game, about the poor, and all rural and parochial affairs.
“I was, indeed, by the fangs of government defeated in my fondly-cherished project of making my sons farmers on their own land, and keeping them from all temptation to seek vicious and enervating enjoyments; but those fangs—merciless as they had been—had not been able to prevent me from laying in for their lives, a store of useful information, habits of industry, care, and sobriety, and a taste for innocent, healthful, and manly pleasures. The fiends had made me and them penniless, but had not been able to take from us our health, or our mental possessions, and these were ready for application as circumstances might ordain.”