COBBETT 143 



have an 023portunity of making a speech was the main 

 motive for my going to dine at an inn, at any hour, 

 and especially at seven clock at night.' That, at 

 any rate, is frank enough. 



After he had been thus holding forth on ruin, 

 past, present, and to come, for half an hour or so, it 

 seems to have occurred to the landlord that the com- 

 pany upstairs were drinking very little for so large a 

 concourse, and he accordingly forced his way through 

 the crowd, up the staircase, and along the passage into 

 the dining-room. Cobbett had already cast an un- 

 favourable eye upon that licensed victualler, and 

 describes him as ' one Sutton, a rich old fellow, who 

 wore a round-skirted sleeved fustian waistcoat, with a 

 dirty white apron tied round his middle, and with no 

 coat on ; having a look the eagerest and the sharpest 

 that I ever saw in any set of features in my whole 

 lifetime ; having an air of authority and of master- 

 ship, which, to a stranger, as I was, seemed quite 

 incompatible with the meanness of his dress and the 

 vulgarity of his manners : and there being, visible to 

 every beholder, constantly going on in him a pretty 

 even contest between the servility of avarice and the 

 insolence of wealth.' 



The person who called forth this severe description 

 having forced his way into the room, some one called 

 out that he was causing an interruption, to which he 

 replied that that was, in fact, what he had come to 

 do, because all this speechifying injured the sale of his 

 liquor ! Can it be doubted that this roused all the 

 lion in Cobbett's breast ? He first of all tells us that 

 ' the disgust and abhorrence which such conduct could 



