490 History of the English Landed Interest, 



hardly-won earnings, the State abstracts all the annuities and 

 pensions bestowed on undeserving sycophants and their de- 

 scendants." "In the daj's of old Fortescue," he says, "the 

 English were clothed in woollens throughout, but that was a 

 time before the nation had become mortgaged." 



During one of his rural rides he passed through a " recluse '' 

 hamlet, and over the door of a place not half so good as a 

 hen-ioost, his indignant eye detected the words, "Licensed tc 

 deal in tea and tobacco." "Even here," he writes, " the tax- 

 ing thing had reached, and had permitted some wretched 

 individual to serve out cat lap to his equally wretched fellows 

 for the sake of collecting funds for pensions and sinecures."^ 

 He therefore implores the working classes to leave the tax 

 gatherer behind, and seek in America that Hvelihood which is 

 denied them at home, pointing out that a short month's voyage 

 without danger or hardship will land them on the shores of 

 freedom and plenty.^ 



Ten years later he relates in his Eastern Tour how he saw 

 the industrious classes fleeing from the country in every direction. 

 From the North and West Ridings he watched the crowded 

 wagons making for the canals leading to the ports of embarka- 

 tion. " Ten large ships," he writes, " have gone this spring 

 laden with these fugitives from the fangs of taxation." Amidst 

 this bustle of departure Cobbett hurries in and out, exhorting 

 the emigrants to select the United States in preference to 

 those viilanous colonies which are held for no earthly purpose 

 but that of furnishing a pretence of giving money to the 

 relations and dependants of the aristocracy." ^ 



So jealous was he of the rights of the labouring class under 

 the old economy of pauper relief that he views with the 

 greatest suspicion any attempts of the legislature to improve 

 it. In 1834 the Earl of Radnor had addressed his peers in 

 favour of a general system of centralisation. He was anxious 

 to take the administration of local poor-relief out of the hands 

 of the overseers and guardians, and establish a board of com- 



' Rural Bides : " Ride from Burghclere to Petersfield," Nov. 7, 1825. 

 2 " To the Industrious Class," Ful. Reg., 1820. 

 » Rural Rides : '' Spittal," Ap. 19, 1830. 



