Cobbett and Mill. 489 



Thus we find Cobbett in absolute accord with that antagon- 

 ism expressed some twenty years later by Mill against the 

 paternal system of poor relief. He was equally eager to see the 

 labouring classes self-dependent, but he was entirely opposed 

 to Mill as to the causes for, and remedies of, their distress. 



When in 1807 Whitehead advocated from his seat in Parlia- 

 ment increased facilities of education as one of the chief 

 remedies for the working-man, Cobbett broke out into violent 

 abuse,^ maintaining that it was just as absurd to make a 

 Minister of State or an astronomer mow or reap, as to make 

 those who live by the sweat of their brow to learn reading and 

 writing. Education, he said, might remove men from the 

 fields to the city, but would not add by this means to their 

 happiness. He declared that the labouring classes were 

 possessed of a finished education already, and that the word 

 ignorance was misapplied when used as the opposite to book- 

 learning. 



Illustrative of this view, he related an amusing story from 

 the Law Courts. A judge and a sailor seem to have once 

 approached the subject from two opposite standpoints. " Not 

 know the meaning of the implication?^' asked the former; 

 " what an ignorant fellow you must be ! " " Well," continued 

 the latter after the interruption, " as I was saying, he took 

 hold of the painter T " The painter ! " interposed the judge ; 

 "what's that?" Upon which, the sailor retaliating in his 

 turn, accused the royal representative of ignorance. 



The scheme for further education Cobbett maintained, was 

 but an excuse for another cursed tax, and taxation was at the 

 root of all that misery which the Poor Laws were powerless to 

 counteract. " Your salt," he said to the labour class, " pepper, 

 soap, candles, sugar, tea, beer, shoes, etc., are taxed.- Though 

 a kind Providence throws up the first-named abundantly on 

 your shores, yet a bushel of it used by a middling family in 

 one year costs you in taxation about 18.s.,^ and out of your 



* Pol. Register, sub voc. " Poor Laws," 1807. 



^ Cobbett on the subject of taxation is onlj^ a degree les^ forcible than 

 Sidney Smith. 



3 " To the Industrious Class," Pol Peg., 1820. 



