io INTRODUCTION. 



Rides, which has become a classic of English literature. 

 After showing that honest labourers were far worse off than 

 felons, he breaks out with : 



"Oh, you wish to keep up the price of corn for the good of the 

 poor devils of labourers who have hardly a rag to cover them ! 

 Admirable feeling, tender-hearted souls ! Did not oh, oh ! 

 care even about the farmers ! It was only for the sake of the 

 poor naked devils of labourers. . . . This was the only reason 

 for their wanting corn to sell at a high price I ..." 



And Cobbett had lived through days when wheat was 1205. 

 a quarter, and wages driven down to 6s. a week ! 



It was when he was mounted, riding across the English 

 counties, that Cobbett did his finest work, and not inside 

 Parliament. 



" The ruffians," he wrote, " owing, and solely owing to my 

 having lost my voice at Coventry, have kept me out of the House ; 

 but they have not kept me out of hearing. I have since last 

 autumn been in seventeen counties making Rustic Harangues, 

 which have produced far more effect than any speeches in 

 Parliament." 



It was at one of these meetings, a stormy one, where it was 

 resolved that Cobbett should be ejected from the room. 



" I rose," he wrote with that touch of sublime egotism 

 of his, " that they might see the man they had to put out." 

 He was sixty years of age then, and yet he dominated the 

 whole room. It was as the author of Rural Rides that 

 Cobbett entered into his kingdom and became the St. George 

 of the English labourer. 



When elected to the House of Commons in 1832 at the 

 advanced age of seventy, he was still the irrepressible and 

 almost the only champion of the agricultural labourer. 



John O'Connell declared that in the House " he was 

 quite as dogmatical and downright as in his written diatribe, 

 and he had quite as much sarcastic audacity of self-possession 

 as though he were a wealthy patrician member of that tuft- 

 hunting House." With the pertinacity ofaKeir Hardiehe 

 moved a very drastic amendment to the Address in answer 

 to the Speech from the Throne. He moved that all the words 

 after " Most Gracious Majesty " be omitted ! The House 



