INTRODUCTION. 9 



a corrupt Government, and a brutal magistracy, of a 

 pusillanimous clergy, his love for the suffering poor was 

 greater. And Cobbett's splendid championship of a vote- 

 less class akin to that of serfs prevented him from ever 

 becoming a national hero. 



During his long life in and out of Parliament Cobbett never 

 ceased from his championship of the agricultural labourer, 

 and it should be remembered that he was to a large 

 extent an employer of labour, both on his Botley estate 

 and in his publishing office. " I will allow nothing to be 

 good with regard to the labouring classes," he once wrote, 

 " unless it makes an addition to the victuals, drink, or cloth- 

 ing. As to their minds, that is much too sublime a matter 

 for me to think about." To that simple statement Cob- 

 bett remained true all his life ; and in tilting at the dragon of 

 abuse in rural England, Cobbett had to drive his lance at a 

 monster fed by the capacious hands of landowners, farmers, 

 and politicians. 



This John Bull had forged a weapon in the heat of 

 a common fire in a noisy guard-room in No via Scotia, sur- 

 rounded by quarrelsome, half-drunken comrades, which 

 made him the most powerful fighter in the England of his 

 day, for it was there, amid the storm and stress of barrack 

 life during his eight years' service, that Cobbett made him- 

 self a master of English grammar. 



Cobbett's style was a living thing hammered out of his 

 character. Therein lay its success. He was sincere, simple, 

 colloquial and personal outrageously personal. In the 

 use of invective lay his strength. He had the common- 

 sense of the Englishman who knows that if he is to be lis- 

 tened to by the people it was no use writing like Adam 

 Smith, Ricardo or Godwin. Though Cobbett wielded his 

 pen like a bludgeon there was no confusion about his strokes, 

 no riot of pummelling which might become an incoherent 

 storm of words. Though it sometimes fell on the wrong 

 head, every blow was distinct and well-timed. 



His messages to the labourers of England in his Political 

 Register were eagerly read by all capable of reading in his 

 illiterate age. Listen to this diatribe taken from Rural 



