484 History of the English Landed Interest. 



ploughing, harrowing, reaping, thrashing, feeding cattle, and 

 grooming farm-horses, would be likely to be recognised as an 

 authority on English husbandry. Cobbett did not advance 

 the science by precept or example, but he was behind the 

 scenes in all its controversies. He was an excellent forester, 

 had practised arboriculture, and written a treatise on the 

 planting of woodlands. Many years spent under a peasant's 

 roof supplied him with ample material to fill 207 pages of an 

 octavo volume, with some exceedingly valuable hints on the 

 economy of cottage life. Talking therein of the labourer's 

 pig, he declares that a flitch or two of bacon is a great source 

 of harmony between a married couple, does more to prevent 

 poaching than all the penal statutes that ever were enacted, 

 and that the pohcy of encouraging the working man to keep 

 tame animals effectually hinders him from going in search of 

 wild ones.^ 



Illustrative of Cobbett's defective insight into political 

 questions is the following piece of reasoning in the Political 

 Register of August, 1804, on the price of bread, which was 

 particularly low at this moment. Another Corn Law was being 

 passed through Parliament; this time to encourage exportation, 

 instead of, as a few years back, to discourage it, A General 

 Enclosure Bill, and the commutation of the tithe, had been 

 strongly advocated by the majority of the correspondents to the 

 Board of Agriculture^ and the Cabinet, with Pitt at its head, 

 had begun to regard both subjects as within the sphere of 

 practical politics. The chief reason, it will be remembered, for 

 these expedients was the encouragement of corn husbandry. 

 This enabled Cobbett momentarily to throw King George's 

 advisers on the horns of a dilemma. He saw in the enclosure 

 system a direct infringement of labourer's rights, and in the 

 commutation of tithes further damage to the wage-earning 

 cause. If the tithes were an impediment to the corn farmer, 

 he asked, why should funds be provided to enable him to 

 export corn on the plea that the laud has produced too much ? 

 If the proposed General Enclosure and Commutation of Tithes 



* Cottage Econoyny, containing information relative to the Itrewing of 

 beer, making of bread, keeping of cows, etc. W. Cobbett, 1822. 



