Читать книгу Essential Writings Volume 1 - William 1763-1835 Cobbett - Страница 4

The political writings of our late father are contained in exactly one hundred octavo volumes, namely, of “Porcupine’s Works” twelve, and of the “Weekly Political Register” eighty-eight; the former being a selection of pamphlets and articles written in a monthly publication, and articles written in a daily paper, at Philadelphia, from the year 1794 to the year 1800; and the latter being a weekly publication on politics, begun in the year 1802, and ended with its author’s life, in June 1835.

Having undertaken to abridge these two works, it is but right that we should fully and frankly state why we do it at all; what we propose to give in the abridged shape, at what times we shall publish, and to what extent the work will go; and, in order to do this fully, we will first explain what tempted us to the undertaking. On looking at the formidable row of volumes, we could not help asking ourselves “What is the use of the works in their present shape?” For, the fame of an author must depend upon the notoriety and usefulness of his works, and, as these hundred volumes cannot be had, and therefore cannot be useful in their present shape, we resolved upon making the attempt to bring into a very much smaller compass the essence of what they contain. For this purpose we mean to take the best papers on the most interesting topics, from the earliest of our author’s writing to the last; and to bring them together in such a way, as shall make it an easy task to trace his whole literary career, and the political history of the time in which he has taken a part in politics. We at first thought of an arrangement of matters, but found it impossible to make it. The chronological order of the writings will therefore be preserved, and his first essay in print will be the first of our abridgment; and, as the work will not extend to a greater length than six volumes, a perfect index will render it almost as easy to refer to particular papers and topics, as if the arrangement had been the one that we first intended.

That the publication will be useful we have no doubt. The matters treated of in the “Register,” not only have been of interest and great importance, but they are so still, and they are becoming more and more so every day that we live.

“But why rake up the works of Porcupine? Porcupine was a Tory,” will, perhaps, be said to us by some of our friends. In the first place, Porcupine’s works will live, whether we like it or not; they have already become, if not absolutely scarce, more valuable by two fold than they were six months since; we cannot smother them, and if we could, we would not; and, as to the toryism, the publishing of selections from these works will give us the best means, and perhaps the fairest excuse, for clearing away much misapprehension on this score. The selections from Porcupine will show how greatly his objects and conduct have been misrepresented. We publish them in order to show how far his conduct was different from what the world has been taught to believe; and incidentally they will form a sort of history of American politics during an interesting period, and they will show his own progress in style and manner of writing.

It is very true that Mr. Cobbett at the age of 32, quitting France as the revolution broke out, and having lived eight years in the barracks of New Brunswick, in the condition of private soldier and then sergeant-major, did, in the United States, very warmly espouse the cause of England, of her King, Constitution, and people: it is true that when he looked on the bloody details of the revolution in France, and saw the people of America praising, imitating in their fashions and manners, and even praying for, the leaders and fraternities engaged in them; and that when he saw American writers attempting to change their old calendar for that of France, with its fructidor and ventose; and saw also the French Ambassador gravely propose to them to adopt a new French scheme of weights and measures in the place of the old English one; and a silly Scotchman attempt to persuade them to blot out all English recollections by changing the written language of their fathers, he burned with more than ordinary indignation; and it is also true, that when he saw a powerful faction, not merely in the country, but in the United States Government itself, anxious to injure his own country by procuring commercial connexions between France and America, for the avowed purpose; it is true that when he saw this, and saw an evident anxiety in the same faction, to accede to the declared wishes of France, by engaging America in war with England, he broke silence, and did his utmost to avert what must have been calamitous to her. This is all true; and it is also true, that in doing this, he did not stay to draw distinctions between English reformers and French revolutionists: all that looked with complacency on the National Convention, all that called themselves “Citizen,” were, to him, blood-thirsty operatives of the guillotine, or the abettors of those who were so. But it is not true that he ever was in his principles a tory, in the vulgar and modern sense of that word. “Tory” now means a man who would govern by corrupt means, a cruel, iron despot, a proud and greedy oppressor. These are the qualities that any ordinary man now attributes to the “Tory,” and the Tories have acquired the character by their practices. But to say that “Porcupine” is chargeable with such, is the grossest misapprehension of character that can be imagined; and we think that every sensible reader of his works will be convinced, that the great aim of them is to unite the interests of the Kingly Government of England and of the Federal Government of America. There was nothing wrong in this; it was not only commendable, but it was the duty, of an Englishman, having the power, and being in the situation to give his power effect, to do his utmost to preserve to England the friendship of her lost colonies, and to prevent their throwing their weight into the scale of France.

It is a very common notion, that he wrote against the American Government; that he did nothing in America but abuse the statesmen and the people of that country. Nothing can be more false. He earnestly advocated the administrations of Washington and Adams, in opposing the French party in America, and it is not too much to say, that he gave them very efficient support. To understand this, the reader ought to be acquainted with American politics from the close of the old American war (the war of Independence) to the death of Washington; but, as it is not every reader that has the information, we cannot enter upon our task without giving a very short narrative of facts to prepare him for what we are about to place before him.

Mr. Cobbett arrived in America in the last week of October 1792, and fell immediately into the company of the numerous emigrants who had fled from France and St. Domingo to avoid the perils of revolution. He remained till August 1794, imbibing every day’s news of the tragedies that were acting under the new French Republic, and learning the politics of the one in which he was living. His mind was quickly made up upon the iniquity of the scenes in France, and it was but another step, to hold in abhorrence all who applauded the revolution. On American politics, he learned, that the constitution at first established in that country after the war of Independence, had been found inefficient soon after it was tried, and that in 1787 it was reformed; and, moreover, that this reformation had divided the leading men of America into two formidable and fierce parties; one party desiring a close imitation of the English form of Government, and the other desiring a more popular and mere republic; the distinctive marks being, that one desired to have a President and Senate elected for life, and the other a President and Senate elected for terms of years. Add to this, that the party who were the admirers of the English form, wished to conciliate the friendship and alliance of England, and that the other party wished for the friendship and alliance of France, and then we have the key to his motives for joining the English party, and pouring out his wrath upon that which favoured France. The event that provoked him to write his first essay, was something said against the English Government by Dr. Priestley, who arrived an emigrant from England in June 1794. Whatever was said by the infuriated party of America against her he could stand; but condemnation from an Englishman he could not; and, therefore, he attacked the Doctor in an anonymous pamphlet which was published at Philadelphia, which had a considerable sale, brought the writer at once into the field of strife, and made him, not long after, forsake his peaceful occupation for that boisterous one in which he passed the remainder of his days. At the age of 33, then, he published this pamphlet, on which we shall only remark here that the reader will see in it many of the excellences of his after writings; the same clearness, the same humorous bitterness, and a good deal of invective, though rather less grammatical accuracy. But of this he will be his own judge. The next publication was a pamphlet under the title of “A Bone to gnaw for the Democrats;” and the title suggests to us to explain further, that the American parties above alluded to, were known as Democrats and Aristocrats, or Federalists and Anti-federalists, or Whigs and Tories. These distinctions will be clearly understood if we take the Anti-federalist and the Federalist; for these were the real American distinctions, the others being borrowed either from France or England. At the close of the war of independence, in 1783, the thirteen States of America united under an Act of Confederation, but each State kept itself so completely sovereign in everything that concerned it, that, in matters of war and peace, and foreign commerce, there was no general government of sufficient power to give effect to the Confederation. This caused the reformation of 1787 before alluded to, which gave larger power to the Congress, and instituted an executive in the person of the President.

Federalist, Aristocrat, and Tory, mean the same; and Anti-federalist, Democrat, and Whig, mean the same. The principal federalists were, Washington, Adams, Hamilton, Jay, and Pinkney; and the principal anti-federalists were, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Rush, and Randolph. We take such names only as will be found most noticed in the writings that we are about to republish. In all the political strife of the eight years (from 1792 to 1800) in which Mr. Cobbett moved in America, the prominent question was, “Which country shall we seek to be allied with—England or France?” The anti-federalists were for France, and the federalists were for England. The mode of warfare, therefore, was to blacken the former as democratic traitors, ready to hand their country over to France for bribes received from that country; and with the other party, to blacken the federalists as aristocrats, who wished to bring America again under the monarchical yoke of England. He is innocent of political warfare who will not give the parties credit for doing the amplest injustice to each other! For, although there might have been reason to suspect the subordinate men on both sides, it is impossible to believe that there was any design in the minds of such men as Jefferson or Washington to sell or give up their country to either France or England. Both, however, were hunted through their official career as suspicious, and both seem to have been pursued to the last by the exaggerations of their furious party opponents. They have paid the price of greatness as all great men do. This pamphlet, then, was an attack upon the French, or anti-federal, party; and the object of the author was, to decoy the French Republic, and hold up England to favour in the eyes of the American people. It is obvious enough, that it was not his intention to pull down the Government of General Washington, but to counteract those unfavourable impressions that were industriously made against England, to bring the Americans into a friendly feeling towards her; and, no English reader ought to consider this as an attack on his own opinions, however popular they may be. The pamphlet was very successful, had an immense sale, and was, as all Mr. Cobbett’s anonymous writings have been, attributed to different men of learning and importance. The anti-federalists felt the shafts which he flung at them, and unwisely compared him to the porcupine, a name which he instantly adopted, as he many years afterwards adopted that of Lord Castlereagh’s “two-penny trash.”

His business, from the very first week of his landing in America, was that of teacher of English to the French emigrants, who abounded in Philadelphia and its neighbourhood, and at this he earned between four and five hundred pounds a-year. His first pamphlet brought him no money, although it had a large sale; he wrote others, and sold the manuscript and copyright; but, at so low a price, that, whatever the bookseller may have done, the author earned only one hundred pounds in two years. The proof of their having been valuable, is, that he wanted to buy them back, years after they had been published, and though he offered as much for them as he had originally taken, the bookseller refused his offer. He became an important writer, and, as he very proudly expresses it, “stood alone,” to bear the abuse and falsehoods of a teeming press. In the spring of 1796, he took a shop in Philadelphia for the purpose of selling his own writings, before which he had written some of the best of his pamphlets. The two principal ones are, “A Little Plain English,” and “A New Year’s Gift to the Democrats;” the first being a refutation of arguments put forth against the treaty of amity and commerce with England, entered into by the President Washington in 1794-5, through the mediation of Mr. Jay, and which treaty, being the first fruits of the reform of the constitution, threw the French party into violences bordering on treason. It is impossible to read it without admiring the ability with which the subject is handled; and it is impossible that an Englishman, even now, should not admire the boldness and energy of the man who could make so strong a defence for his country single-handed. In the progress of the ferment about the British treaty, a most awkward exposure of the Secretary of State, Randolph, was made, and in a manner as curious as the whole affair was awkward. England being then at war with France, a French vessel from America, carrying dispatches from the French Minister at Philadelphia, was taken in the Channel; the French captain threw the dispatches overboard, and they fell into the hands of the English Government. Being found to contain an account of the American Secretary of State’s treachery towards his own country, in concert with the French Minister, the English Government sent them to the President of America; and this affair furnished the friends of England with a weapon against the friends of France that “Porcupine” used effectively in the “New Year’s Gift to the Democrats,” the second of the two pamphlets above alluded to. The affair caused the immediate ratification of the British Treaty, which had been held in suspense by the Secretary’s intrigues, and it ended in his disgrace.

In 1796, Mr. Cobbett, having quarrelled with his bookseller, opened a shop, and, in a manner truly characteristic of him, bade defiance to his opponents. His friends feared for his personal safety, for the people were infected with the love of France. “I saw,” he says, “that I must at once set all danger at defiance, or live in everlasting subjection to the prejudices and caprice of the democratical mob. I resolved on the former; and as my shop was to open on a Monday morning, I employed myself all day on Sunday in preparing an exhibition, that I thought would put the courage and the power of my enemies to the test. I put up in my windows, which were very large, all the portraits that I had in my possession of kings, queens, princes and nobles. I had all the English Ministry, several of the bishops and judges, the most famous admirals, and in short every picture that I thought likely to excite rage in the enemies of Great Britain. Early on the Monday morning, I took down my shutters. Such a sight had not been seen in Philadelphia for twenty years!” The daring of this act produced excessive rage; the newspapers contained direct instigations to outrage, and threats were conveyed to him in the openest manner; but there were many amongst his political opponents, and even the people, who admired the “Englishman”; and, that the Government itself felt as it ought to do, will be seen in the course of our Selections.

He had already begun a monthly periodical work, one number of which had been published before he became his own publisher, called the “Prospect from the Congress Gallery;” which contained State papers, the substance of speeches made in the House of Representatives (the gallery of which he attended), and his own remarks upon them. He changed the title to that of “The Political Censor,” and carried it on with great success till March 1797, when he thought that he must have something that would put him more on a level with his opponents, a daily newspaper. Then it was that he began the “Porcupine’s Gazette,” which immediately acquired a large number of readers, and in which he carried on his warfare upon more equal terms as to time, and enraged his enemies beyond all common bounds. In argument he was far beyond them, and his cruel satire raised a storm of abuse that is yet living in tradition throughout the United States: they accused him of being a flogged deserter from the army, who had subsequently earned his living by picking pockets in the streets of London; and, so slight was their respect for sex, that they made an attack which caused the following refutation in the Censor: “Since the sentimental dastard, who has thus aimed a stab at the reputation of a woman, published his ‘Pill,’ I have shown my marriage certificate to Mr. Abercrombie, the minister of the church opposite me.” The selections from this Gazette will be but few, for they consist principally of personalities on such opponents, who were not of sufficient importance to create any interest now. Many are extremely good in themselves; and, though they were called abusive, allowance should be made where the provocation was so great. They are witty, rather than abusive, for wit sanctifies harsh terms, whatever puny critics may say. That which would be merely vulgar in a vapid writing, becomes wit when genius puts the point to it. Pope, Dryden, and Swift, have used hard words, and in their day were called abusive, too, but their very epithets are admired in ours. Wit can take liberties that dulness must not.

To say that there was no error in the writings of a man beginning his career at 33 years of age, having been born under a roof where knowledge was not to be gained, educated in a barrack, and always without a guide, would be impertinence; but he who says that a man thus qualified, and with a mind made by nature of the most vehement kind, is to answer rigidly for every error in giving his thoughts to the public once during every week for the space of nearly 40 years, demands that perfection of mind, that abundance of knowledge, and that foresight into events, which no man has hitherto shown. In “Porcupine’s” writings then, he always assumes that the English Government, both in its form and in its practices, is the most perfect of governments; but he did it while living at three thousand miles from that Government, and in a country where casual travellers now find it extremely difficult to preserve the republican notions with which they start from home. In the early stages of his political life, he was both scholar and teacher, and therefore, to forbid any change of opinion, would have been to forbid him to make progress. He always owns his changes of opinion, and gives the reason, following the rule laid down by Lord Chatham, who was himself accused of inconsistency:—“The extent and complication of political questions is such, that no man can justly be ashamed of having been sometimes mistaken in his determinations; and the propensity of the human mind to confidence and friendship is so great, that every man, however cautious, however sagacious, or however experienced, is exposed sometimes to the artifices of interest, and the delusions of hypocrisy; but it is the duty, and ought to be the honour, of every man to own his mistake, whenever he discovers it, and to warn others against those frauds which have been too successfully practised upon himself.” [Life, &c., vol. 1., p. 42.] And if the politicians of our day were to be tried upon this point, what havoc might be made! Indeed one has but to read the debates of the Parliament for examples.

A man who changes his opinion because he now knows more than he did, is not only not to blame for the change, but is dishonest if he does not avow it. Indeed, it can scarcely be called a change of the mind; it is becoming possessed of more information. The mind is not active, shifting of itself; it is passive, and receives impressions. It is the conduct which changes; and unless it can be shown that change of conduct arises from corrupt or other unworthy motives, a change of it is no crime. Something may, indeed, be said of the temerity of the man who speaks with great confidence on any topic before his knowledge and experience warrant it; but who is to decide when a man is to begin? Lord Grey, in abandoning his own famous Petition of 1793, said that a difference had arisen between his “present sentiments and his former impressions,” and he excused it by saying that “he, indeed, must have either been prematurely wise, or must have learned little by experience, who, after a lapse of twenty years, can look upon a subject of this nature” (Reform) “in all respects in precisely the same light” (Speech on the State of the Nation, 1810). Mr. Hobhouse accused Lord Grey of “apostacy” in thus abandoning short Parliaments, and “electors as numerous as possible.” [Defence of the People, pp. 62, 183], but even he has since joined Lord Grey’s Government, which not only refused to give us that radical reform for which both had so ably contended, but denied even the pittance of triennial Parliaments! Now these changes of conduct take place in men who have the least possible excuse for any change at all. They are bred, for the most part, under the roofs of statesmen; they are carefully educated for statesmen; they have every chance which association with clever and experienced men can give them; they have all the means afforded to them of gaining the best information; and God knows they have due leisure to imbibe precepts, digest their reading, and to reflect on what they hear and read; and yet we find them change! Lord John Russell, in 1823, wrote a solemn book upon the Constitution, and, of course, weighed every principle, and almost every word that it contains, before he put it forth. His Lordship, in that book, admits the venality and mischiefs of rotten boroughs, but concludes that it would be unwise to make a change; questions whether the remedy would not be worse than the disease; and yet, in seven years after, he applied the famous “Russell purge,” which cleared the body-politic of the baneful obstruction. In another part of the same book, Lord John emphatically inveighs against the unconstitutional practices of the Tory Government, in proportioning our standing army to those of foreign powers; and yet, in 1833, he sat quietly by, while Sir John Hobhouse, the Secretary at War, brought in his Army Estimates, and told the House of Commons, that “when gentlemen were called upon to vote how many troops we should keep up, it was most necessary and proper that they should be put in possession of the exact amount of the forces maintained by other powers;” and he made no remark even, much less did he give any opposition, when Sir John Hobhouse had finished reading his Tables of the relative numbers kept up in each of the continental states, as compared with our own.

Do we mean to apply this, then, and say, “because these statesmen have done these things, another has a right to do so?” Not at all. It would be mere recrimination, which is a bad defence; but the fact is, that more is made of it in one case than in the other, which is unjust. The able writing of Mr. Cobbett caused this, no doubt. He produced effect, and that caused hostility. Unable to answer him, his opponents always tried to lessen his effect, by showing that he once thought with them. Indeed, before he had had time to change his opinions at all, they made use of his name, to push into notice their own absurdities, and published as his what he had never written. He complains of this in Porcupine (vol. 4, p. 19). And when his views and conduct had changed, then they had nothing so formidable for him as his former self. The same might be done by every other man who has lived long, and written or spoken much, provided always he have been of sufficient importance to make it worth the trouble. In short, great changes of views and conduct must always happen in times of change; and he who would hold, as an unqualified proposition, that a man’s views are never to change, is not above contending that a doctor shall not change his medicines to suit the changed condition of his patient. There are men whose pride and boast it is, that they have never changed in their lives; that they have always adhered to one notion. A finger-post can say as much; for, with equal merit and more modesty, it always stands in the same place where it was first planted, and “most consistently” says the same thing; but, not unfrequently, in these improving times, when roads are turned and shortened, we see its awkward arm flying off in the wrong direction, promulgating a mischievous delusion, though still and for ever the very type of “consistency” in gesture and in language.

Porcupine’s forcible writings were soon known to the Government in England. He received invitations from some of its ablest writers and partizans to return home, and he left America for England in 1800. But, here we must remark, that even the English agents of the Government in America found him too self-willed and independent, to venture to give him decided and open approbation. He mentions (Porcupine, vol. 4, p. 63) that, being in a shop, unknown or unobserved, he heard himself characterized by the English consul as “a wild fellow;” and upon this he remarks, in the same page (published in 1796), “I shall only observe, that when the King bestows on me about five hundred pounds sterling a year, perhaps I may become a tame fellow, and hear my master, my friends, and my parents, belied and execrated, without saying a single word in their defence.” ^{Ref 002} It was the same when he came home. Though the Government had discernment enough to see in him a man of great power, and a strong acquisition to any government that could have him for an advocate, it never had him in fact, and never thought it had. He came home at the time above stated, full of that confidence which the success of his writings had naturally given him; he was immediately sought for by the late Mr. Windham, was by him introduced to Mr. Pitt, at a dinner-party, invited to Mr. Windham’s house, was offered a share in the “True Briton” newspaper, with printing-machines and type ready furnished; but refusing this offer, he set up a newspaper called “Porcupine’s Gazette,” which, as it did not suit his fancy, he gave up shortly, and opened a bookseller’s shop in Pall-mall, in partnership with his friend, Mr. John Morgan, an Englishman, with whom he was acquainted in Philadelphia. In this shop he might have made what fortune he pleased; for never was man more favourably circumstanced. He had the choicest connexion that a tradesman could wish for, and as much of it as would have sated the appetite of the most thrifty man; but then, he had no sooner entered upon this promising career, than he (1801) disputed the policy of the Peace of Amiens, then about to be made; and, as he would speak out, he quarrelled with the Government, and in a series of letters to Lord Hawkesbury and Mr. Addington, exposed their folly as manifested in the treaty; broke off from the friendships that had been lavished upon him, and again almost “stood alone” against the English Government, as he had done against its foes while in America. In this stand, however, he concurred in opinion with Mr. Windham, whose integrity and thoroughly English heart he always respected highly. In January 1802, he began the Political Register (calling it the Annual Register), which ultimately became what he never intended, a weekly Essay on Politics. It soon acquired a great sale and reputation; contributors to it were numerous and excellent; and, though its conductor wrote with his usual force, there is a moderation in the papers written by him at this time, which makes them somewhat tame in comparison with those which he wrote in America, and those which he has written since, when personal hostility mixed itself in the controversy. They are more dignified, but less personal; and are for that reason the best specimens of his force in argument. His maxim (professed to be borrowed from Swift) was, “If a flea or a louse bite me, I’ll kill it if I can;” and though this maxim made him too fond of killing fleas—too fond of striking at mean objects; yet the spirit of his writings would not have been half what it was, but for the sallies of humour that it brought into play. He was not long left to this species of repose; for the Government began to feel his powerful detections, and to fear the effects of a publication becoming so popular and wide of circulation. Its own scribes were, of course, let loose upon him; and others, prompted by a wish to show their value, or by envy of a man who was gaining so much both of fame and wealth, were nowise behind: accordingly, he was soon engaged in personal strife again. Paragraphs incessant, and pamphlets of all dimensions, appeared against him; but the favourite mode of attack was that of publishing in his name, and in close imitation of the Register, slanders on himself; and so far was this carried, that its readers were actually served through the post with the fabrication instead of the Register! He was “fool,” “vulgar,” “incendiary,” “knave,” “libeller,” “coward;” when rich, lucre was his object; when poor, they smote him for his poverty: in short, a war with the whole legion of the press of England he waged, with scarcely a truce, from 1804 till the day, when death having put an end to the conflict, they came forward simultaneously, some to confess his power, some to express the pride of countrymen, some to deplore the loss of one so useful; and one, the chief organ of the party to which he had been most opposed, to bestow on him the title of “last of the Saxons.”

We have fulfilled our promise to state fully our reasons for publishing these selections; but full as this Preface is, we have been tempted, more than once, to make it a vehicle for answering some current misrepresentations of the day. We have abstained with difficulty; and shall conclude, by stating, as a summary, that the work will be published in weekly numbers, which, at the end of four weeks, may be had in parts, and, at the end of three months, in volumes; that, according to our present calculations, the volumes will be altogether six in number; and that a full index will conclude the publication.

John M. Cobbett,

James P. Cobbett.

London,

1st November, 1835.