William Cobbett was a radical journalist and politician who lived from 1763 to 1835. He originated from Farnham, Surrey (about 45 minutes from here) where his father was a farmer and inn keeper. In his early life, he was a crow scarer and plough boy on his father’s farm before moving to London in 1783 where he found work as a clerk. He then joined the army in 1784, which took him to Canada until 1791 when he discovered the quartermaster stealing funds. He tried to expose this by writing a pamphlet, but did not have enough evidence and was accused of being a trouble maker and so fled to France with his new wife. They soon moved to America where Cobbett taught English to French refugees. It was here that he launched his career as a journalist, under the name “Peter Porcupine”.
During his time in the United States he wrote many pamphlets and founded and edited several small periodicals, including The Political Censor and The Porcupine Gazette. However, due to some of his accusations, a libel suit was filed against him and he returned to England in 1800. He was welcomed as a “literary asset” and opened a bookshop before starting the famous Weekly Political Register in 1802. His turn to radicalism and criticism of the government's handling of an army mutiny had serious consequences, in 1810 Cobbett was convicted of sedition and was in prison for 2 years. He was released in 1812, and emerged as a great popular spokesman for the working classes, setting up a cheaper periodical, the Register in which he championed the working classes and parliamentary reform, while condemning the government for high taxes and widespread unemployment. He went back to America in 1817 and returned in 1819 to find industrialisation in full swing, which he repeatedly attacked in his group of essays Rural Rides, which I will be focusing on.
Although his more political projects, the Parliamentary Debates and the Parliamentary History of England, were taken over by others while he was in prison, he never lost his interest in politics. He ran for Parliament unsuccessfully twice but was elected in 1832 from Oldham, following the acceptance of the Great Reform Bill which was passed that year. The parliamentary reform that succeeded this fell short of the demands of Cobbett and the Radicals, since the working class was still denied the vote. He opposed much of the legislation of the new Whig government in the reformed Parliament, especially the New Poor Law of 1834, which effectively criminalised the poor and was designed to be rid of them, either by locking them away in workhouses or by shipping them off to the colonies.
Cobbett has been praised as the prophet of democracy, but most of his writings are idealist in the way that they look back to the old agrarian England of responsible landlords and contented tenants. He is not thought of as a particularly profound thinker; his comments on economic matters were rarely solid and emotion rather than reason decided many of his conclusions. But the fact that he himself grew up a farmer’s son mean that he was very passionate about the interests of the common man, and his ability to write in a way that was understood by the working class made him the leading English Radical of the early 19th century and a very effective journalist and social commentator.
Cobbett was very interested in the plight of the working class, and he famously thought that “when farmers became gentlemen, labourers became slaves”, referring to the Act of Enclosure which forced poor labourers from the common land to the cities and, ultimately, helped the industrial revolution which Cobbett opposed. One belief of Cobbett’s was that “men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talent” (Advice to Young Men: And (Incidentally) to Young Women in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life (1829)). He liked to see people earning a living, and thought that “unless people will do their duty, they will have themselves, and only themselves, to thank for their ruin” (Rural Rides page 42), however this soon became almost impossible for the peasantry. He blamed the government and thought that rapid industrialisation was going to destroy traditional ways of life, a view that was reinforced on his travels during Rural Rides when he noted that farm workers had been reduced to “walking skeletons”. He therefore had no time for a government that taxed the poor into workhouses, or the army who he saw as free loaders, or the church and its tithes (a proportion of crops paid yearly to the church). He was a very passionate man and thus a very passionate journalist.
He is often seen as the first real journalist, as he did proper research and got first hand experience of what he was writing about. This is exemplified in Rural Rides which was originally published in the Register and in 1830 took book form. It was the rising tax on newspapers that lead him to publish pamphlets, such as the Two Penny Trash, which achieved a circulation of 40,000, instead of weekly periodicals. He was a champion of the people, often writing in support of revolutions such as the Swing Riots, against the industrialisation of farming, and was not one to mince his words. His journalistic philosophy was to “sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think about what you shall write”, showing him as a very practical man. He was also critical of other journalism around at the time, as he was famously quoted to say; “The very hirelings of the press, whose trade it is to buoy up the spirits of the people. Have uttered falsehoods so long, they have played off so many tricks, that their budget seems, at last, to be quite empty” (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/william_cobbett.html).
In rural rides he explores what it is that is causing “a state of things, where all is out of order; where self-preservation, that great law of nature, seems to be set at defiance” (page 19). He was appalled by the taxes and tithes that reduced farmers to poverty and pushed them off what was once common land. This view is typified on page 27 when he says “all that mass of wealth that is vulgarly called church property; but which is, in fact, public property, and may, of course, be disposed of as the Parliament shall please”. The anger coming through here is moving to the reader and, throughout the essays, his love of the country and everyone in it is shown through the venom in his words.
Rural Rides was researched and written when Cobbett was in his sixties, showing his intense dedication to the cause. He sums up his intention when writing it; “that I may see as many farmers as possible, and that they may hear my opinions and I theirs” (page 26). He is holding out a hand to the less educated people, trying to spread knowledge and debate, in the hope that it may somehow spread to government. His want for someone to speak out is shown on page 33; “Unless, then, we speak out here... we shall not only be totally ruined, but we shall deserve it”. He was a big believer in speaking out for your rights, although he was never a violent man or a protestor. The main philosophy that he lived by was that “if they all... come boldly forward, everything will be done necessary to preserve themselves and their country” (page 40), however I think that this was idealistic as the government has to be willing to listen before talking can do any good. His belief that “The noble men and gentlemen, who are in Parliament, and who are disposed to adopt measures of effectual relief, cannot move with any hope of success unless backed by the yeomen and farmers” was, in my view, misled, because governments and monarchies have been ruling for centuries without the explicit support of the peasantry, and if the government is as corrupt as Cobbett believes them to be, they will find their way around a few lowly dissenters who do not even have a vote. Cobbett died on his farm near Guilford on June 18, 1835.
Bibliography
Cobbett, W, Rural Rides in the Counties of Surrey, Kent , Sussex, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Somersetshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Hertfordshire. (1830)
William Cobbett, Advice to Young Men: And (Incidentally) to Young Women in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life (1829). Letter I: To A Youth
http://www.answers.com/topic/william-cobbett
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/william_cobbett.html
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/123318/William-Cobbett
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRcobbett.htm
http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/text/contents_page.jsp?t_id=Cobbett
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