INTRODUCTION 



savage man, and the abolition of machinery would make life 

 impossible. But notwithstanding such moderate counsels his 

 position as champion of the labourers of England was a dangerous 

 one ; for his followers were excitable and desperate. At the end 

 of 1816, when rioting began in London, in the boldness of panic 

 the government passed several emergency statutes, including one 

 suspending the Habeas Corpus Act. Cobbett s seven years of 

 pledged good behaviour had not yet expired, and under this new 

 and ominous power he could be thrown into prison at the whim 

 of any timid or ambitious underling ; and since his plain courage 

 was always dashed with prudence, early in 1817 he once more 

 fled from England, writing in a farewell to his readers from 

 Liverpool : 



&quot; I have no desire to write libels. I have written none 

 here. Lord Sidmouth was sorry to say that I had not 

 written anything that the Law Officers could prosecute 

 with any chance of success. I do not remove for the pur 

 pose of writing libels, but for the purpose of being able to 

 write what is not libellous. I do not retire from a combat 

 with the Attorney- General but from a combat with a 

 dungeon, deprived of pen, ink, and paper. A combat with 

 the Attorney- General is quite unequal enough. That, 

 however, I would have encountered. I know too well 

 what a trial by Special Jury is. Yet that, or any sort of 

 trial , I would have stayed to face. So that I could have 

 been sure of a trial, of whatever sort, I would have run the 

 risk. But against the absolute power of imprisonment, 

 without even a hearing, for time unlimited, in any jail in 

 the kingdom, without the use of pen, ink, and paper, and 

 without any communication with any soul but the keepers 

 against such a power it would have been worse than 

 madness to attempt to strive.&quot; 



It was no mere voluble demagogue who declared : 



&quot; I will never become a Subject or a Citizen in any other 

 state, and will always be a foreigner in every country but 

 England. Any foible that may belong to your character 

 I shall always willingly allow to belong to my own. And 

 the celebrity which my writings have obtained, and which 

 they will preserve, long and long after Lords Liverpool 

 and Sidmouth and Castlereagh are rotten and forgotten, 

 I owe less to my own talents than to that discernment and 

 that noble spirit in you, which have at once instructed 

 my mind and warmed my heart : and my beloved country 

 men, be you well assured, that the last beatings of that 

 heart will be love for the people, for the happiness and the 

 renown of England ; and hatred of their corrupt, hypo 

 critical, dastardly and merciless foes.&quot; 

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