480 History of the English Landed Interest. 



ment in 1819 they converted him into a hero, and themselves into 

 a laughing-stock for all the discontented people in the kingdom. 

 Cobbett evaded the Gagging Act and fled to America, but he 

 took care to avoid the imputation of cowardice by means pecu- 

 liar to his genius. One of the first Weekly Registers which came 

 across the Atlantic contained a description of a fight between 

 a butcher and a drover at Barnet Fair. Each, armed with the 

 weapon of his trade, attempted to get the better of the other, 

 the drover parrying with his ox-goad the stabs of the other's 

 knife. No one, says Cobbett, accused the drover of cowardice 

 for not defending himself with his fists against the butcher's 

 steel, and no one, therefore, could justly accuse himself of this 

 failing when he used " the long arm " to evade imprisonment. 

 A single glance at the portrait of this demagogue will 

 suffice to show the reader that such a bull-dog face might be 

 coaxed, but not coerced. Lord Cochrane, his neighbour, knew 

 how to manage him, and once got him to pour water on the 

 flames of popular discontent just at the height of the Luddite 

 riots. His address to journeymen and labourers throughout 

 England in I8I6 calmed the frenzy of the working classes, but 

 stirred to madness the Government to whose assumed blunder- 

 ing Cobbett took care to attribute the disturbances. The 

 Luddites were bands of labourers and artizans who went from 

 place to place destroying the machinery. They either adopted 

 or received their name from one Ned Ludd, a Leicestershire idiot, 

 who had initiated this senseless policy some thirty years before. 

 Cobbett treated them as if their intelligence was not much 

 superior to that of their notorious prototype. Li a letter ad- 

 dressed to them in November of the same year, he terms them 

 " Friends and Fellow Countrymen " ; begs them not to mistake 

 him for one of those who presume that men are ignorant be- 

 cause they are poor ; refuses to enter into a discussion on the 

 causes of the quarrel between themselves and their em- 

 ployers, and confines his subject to the relationship of mankind 

 with machinery. AVith admirable tact he first makes the 

 most of their limited intelligence, pointing out that with 

 savages the machine is unknown ; it is the produce of the 

 mind of man, and is thercibre confined to those civilised com- 



