8 INTRODUCTION. 



service funds, no Government was ever rich enough to buy 

 this doughty champion of the labouring classes. 



Though pugnacious in print, and in a public assembly, 

 surely no husband or father was more gentle than Cobbett. 

 There is no more tender picture of married life than that of 

 Cobbett in Philadelphia stealing out barefooted and stopping 

 out all night long in order to drive away the dogs with stones, 

 who barked incessantly near the house in which his young 

 wife lay ill and sleepless. 



At one time this peasant very nearly became the uncrowned 

 king of England. He even wrote letters for the Queen of 

 England to her royal husband. He faced two State trials for 

 sedition. He suffered two years' imprisonment and a fine of 

 ji, 00 as a penalty for pouring out a volume of vitriolic 

 irony on the heads of the Government for inflicting five 

 hundred lashes on the bare backs of English soldiers whilst 

 a German legion stood on guard. By imposing the savage 

 fine of 1,000 and keeping him between prison walls for two 

 years the Government thought they had completely broken 

 the spirit of this Free-Lance. They ruined him financially, 

 it is true, but they never broke the power of that lance which 

 sharpened its point upon prison walls. It struck deeper than 

 ever into the vitals of oppression and corruption ; and when 

 twenty years afterwards he was again indicted by the Govern- 

 ment for sedition this man whom Brougham as Minister 

 appealed to, not without success, to subdue by the power 

 of his pen the Luddite riots Cobbett left the Court 

 triumphant and became the First Man in the reign of the 

 First Gentleman of Europe. 



Cobbett, it should be remembered, had no organisation 

 at his back as Arch had, and yet so great a leader was he of 

 the rural democracy, that it was to him the Government 

 had to turn to stay desperate hungry men from burning 

 ricks and breaking up machinery. 



At the end of his defence he threw out this defiant chal- 

 lenge : " My last breath shall be employed in praying to 

 God to bless my country and to curse the Whigs to everlast- 

 ing, and revenge I bequeath that to my children and the 

 labourers of England." But great as was his hatred of 



