VII
I have alluded, at the commencement of this sketch, to the fact that if the life of Mackintosh was in contradiction to his instincts, and forced to adapt itself to his wishes or ideas, that of Cobbett was ruled by his instincts, to which all ideas and wishes were subordinate. His inclinations were for bustle and strife, and he passed his whole life in strife and bustle. This is why the sap and marrow of his genius show themselves in every line he sent to the press. But at the same time his career warns us how little talents of the highest order, even when accompanied by the most unflagging industry, will do for a man, if those talents and that industry are not disciplined by stedfast principles and concentrated upon noble objects. It is not to be understood, indeed, when I say that a man should follow his nature, that I mean he should do so without sense or judgment; your natural character is your force, but it is a force that you must regulate and keep applied to the track on which the career it has chosen is to be honourably run. I would not recommend a man with military propensities to enter the church; I should say, “Be a soldier, but do not be a military adventurer. Enlist under a lawful banner, and fight for a good cause.”
Cobbett acknowledged no banner; and one cannot say, considering the variety of doctrines he by turns adopted and discarded, that he espoused any cause. Nor did he consider himself bound by any tie of private or political friendship. As a beauty feels no gratitude for the homage which she deems due to her charms, so Cobbett felt no gratitude for the homage paid to his abilities. His idea of himself was that which the barbarian entertains of his country. Cobbett was Cobbett’s universe; and as he treated mankind, so mankind at last treated him. They admired him as a myth, but they had no affection for him as a person. His words were realities, his principles fictions.
It may indeed be contended that a predominant idea ran winding through all the twistings and twinings of his career, connecting his different inconsistencies together; and that this was “a hatred for tyranny.” “He always took his stand,” say his defenders, “with the minority:” and there is something in this assertion. But there is far less fun and excitement in fighting a minority, with a large majority at one’s back, than in coming out, at the head of a small and violent minority, to defy and attack a body of greater power and of larger numbers. It was this fun and excitement which, if I mistake not, were Cobbett’s main inducements to take the side he took in all the contests he engaged in, whether against the minister of the day, or against our favourite daughter of the eighth Henry, who reigned some centuries before his time. Still the tendency to combat against odds is always superior to the tendency to cringe to them, and a weak cause is not unfrequently made victorious by a bold assertion.
It must be added also, in his praise, that he is always a hearty Englishman. He may vary in his opinions as to doctrines and as to men, but he is ever for making England great, powerful, and prosperous—her people healthy, brave, and free. He never falls into the error of mistaking political economy for the whole of political science. He does not say, “Be wealthy, make money, and care about nothing else.” He advocates rural pursuits as invigorating to a population, although less profitable than manufacturing. He desires to see Englishmen fit for war as well as for peace. There is none of that puling primness about him which marks the philosophers who would have a great nation, like a good boy at a private school, fit for nothing but obedience and books. To use a slang phrase, there was “a go” about him which, despite all his charlatanism, all his eccentricities, kept up the national spirit, and exhibited in this one of the highest merits of political writing. The immense number of all his publications that sold immediately on their appearance, sufficiently proves the wonderful popularity of his style; and it is but just to admit that many of his writings were as useful as popular.
A paper written in 1804, on the apprehended invasion, and entitled “Important Considerations for the People of this Kingdom,” was placed (the author being unknown) in manuscript before Mr. Addington, who caused it to be printed and read from the pulpit in every parish throughout the kingdom. For many years this paper was attributed to other eminent men; and it was only when some one thought of attacking Cobbett as an enemy of his country, that he confessed the authorship of a pamphlet, to the patriotism of which every Englishman had paid homage.
Again, in 1816, the people of the northern and midland counties being in great distress, attributed their calamities to machinery, and great rioting and destruction of property was the consequence. Cobbett came forward to stop these vulgar delusions. But he knew the nature of the public mind. It was necessary, in order to divert it from one idea, to give it another. So, he ridiculed the idea of distress proceeding from machinery, and attributed it to misgovernment. Of his twopenny pamphlet, called “A Letter to Journeymen and Labourers,” 30,000 copies were sold in a week, and with such advantage that Lord Brougham, in 1831, asked permission to republish it. Much in his exaggerations and contradictions is likewise to be set down to drollery rather than to any serious design to deceive. I remember the late Lady Holland once asking me if I did not think she sometimes said ill-natured things; and on my acquiescing, she rejoined: “I don’t mean to burn any one, but merely to poke the fire.” Cobbett liked to poke the fire, to make a blaze; but in general—I will not say always—he thought more of sport than of mischief.
At all events, this very spirit of change, of criticism, of combativeness, is the spirit of journalism; and Cobbett was not only this spirit embodied, but—and this renders his life so remarkable in our history—he represented journalism, and fought the fight of journalism against authority, when it was still a doubt which would gain the day.
Let us not, indeed, forget the blind and uncalculating intolerance with which the law struggled against opinion from 1809 to 1822. Writers during this period were transported, imprisoned, and fined, without limit or conscience; and just when government became more gentle to legitimate newspapers, it engaged in a new conflict with unstamped ones. No less than 500 vendors of these were imprisoned within six years. The contest was one of life and death. Amidst the general din of the battle, but high above all shouts more confused, was heard Cobbett’s bold, bitter, scornful voice, cheering on the small but determined band, which defied tyranny without employing force. The failure of the last prosecution against the Register was the general failure of prosecutions against the Press, and may be said to have closed the contest in which government lost power every time that it made victims.
Such was Cobbett—such his career! I have only to add that, in his family relations, this contentious man was kind and gentle. An incomparable husband, an excellent father; and his sons—profiting by an excellent education, and inheriting, not, perhaps, the marvellous energies, but a great portion of the ability, of their father—carry on with credit and respectability the name of a man, who, whatever his faults, must be considered by every Englishman who loves our literature, or studies our history, as one of the most remarkable illustrations of his very remarkable time.