The Life and Adventures of William Cobbett

Following the collapse of the Ministry of All the Talents the Whigs virtually gave up hope of forming a government, and for the next twenty-five years there was a succession of Tory ministries under a series of reactionary prime ministers, all adamantly opposed to reform of any kind. The Duke of Portland (1807–09) was followed by the lawyer Spencer Perceval (1809–12), who in turn was followed by the long-serving Lord Liverpool (1812–27), described by Disraeli as an ‘arch-mediocrity’ and referred to by Cobbett as ‘Lord Picknose’.* So opposed to any form of change was Liverpool that a Frenchman remarked that if he had been present at the Creation he would have said, ‘Conservons-nous le chaos.’

These men and their influential lieutenants Addington, who became Lord Sidmouth and Home Secretary, and the notorious Lord Castlereagh saw the purpose of government as merely to preserve the existing order. They took reassurance from Dr Johnson’s couplet (frequently quoted against them by Cobbett – though he was ignorant of its authorship):

How small, of all that human hearts endure

That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.

Ignoring the lessons of the French Revolution and convincing themselves that there was little any government could do to eradicate the inequalities and injustices in society, they were united in their determination, at all costs, to uphold the status quo, including the power of the aristocracy and its ally the Church of England, which helped to maintain a tradition of acceptance amongst the ‘lower orders’. Cobbett on the other hand proclaimed: ‘It is the chief business of a government to take care that one part of the people do not cause the other part to lead miserable lives.’ Such a view, in the eyes of Lord Liverpool, was not only deluded but dangerous. Above all, any ideas about parliamentary reform smacked of Jacobinism and had to be resolutely suppressed.

Yet there was nothing new, let alone revolutionary, about a campaign for parliamentary reform. It went back to the last decades of the eighteenth century, when it had been embraced by any number of politicians, notably Lord Grey, and even including Pitt himself. But with the spread of revolutionary ideas to England, reaction against the French Terror and the subsequent anti-Jacobin war, the country became overtaken, in Wordsworth’s words, by ‘a panic dread of change’. Following a spate of repressive measures the campaign for reform fizzled out, and the cause was kept alive only by a group of colourful individuals, all known to one another, who enjoyed loose and often temporary alliances. They had no formal organisation, though there was a wide measure of agreement as to what needed to be done.

As things stood, the majority of parliamentary seats were in the gift of wealthy landowners and members of the peerage. Others were openly put up for sale. Sitting in Parliament had little to do with benefiting the community or advocating particular policies. It was sought after for social reasons. ‘The moment a man became such [i.e. an MP],’ Cobbett’s one-time friend the diarist Thomas Creevey wrote, ‘he became at once a public man and had a position in society which nothing else could give him.’ Apart from the social advantage, being an MP was an easy means of financial gain. Members loyal to the government of the day could expect to be rewarded with sinecures or pensions (not, as we understand them, paid on retirement, but during the working life of those favoured), and their families could look forward to similar benefits. The reformers campaigned for an end to this corruption, the introduction of parliamentary constituencies based on population, and the extension of the franchise.

With Fox dead and Windham estranged from him, Cobbett now found himself more and more in the company of these reformers, ‘the dangerous, discontented half noble, half mischievous advocates for reform and innovation’, as Francis Jeffrey, editor of the Edinburgh Review, described them.3 Although government ministers and their tame journalists were doing everything possible to discredit the reformers by calling them ‘Jacobins’ and ‘Levellers’, they were all eminently respectable and in no way revolutionary. The most considerable figure among them (apart from Cobbett himself) was Sir Francis Burdett (1770–1844), a wealthy, somewhat haughty baronet married to Sophia, daughter of the banker Thomas Coutts. Thanks to his rich father-in-law Burdett had been able to buy a seat in Parliament for £4000 in 1796. A tall, slender figure and an excellent speaker, he immediately and single-handedly began to agitate for reform, proposing constituencies based on population, the right to vote being extended to freeholders, and all subject to direct taxation.4

The senior and most radical member of the group, Major John Cartwright, was born in 1740 and became known as ‘the father of reform’. Brother of the inventor Edmund, Cartwright campaigned for universal male suffrage and annual Parliaments, and had been a radical since before the French Revolution. From his home in Boston, Lincolnshire, the Major issued appeals and pamphlets and toured the country, tirelessly organising his ‘Hampden Clubs’ in towns and villages where men and women could meet to discuss the case for annual Parliaments and equal electoral districts. In 1806 Cartwright wrote a fan letter to Cobbett:

Sir, It was only lately I became a reader of your Weekly Register. Your energy, your indignant warmth against peculation, your abhorrence of political treachery, and your independent spirit command my esteem. As a token of it, I beg to present you with a few essays written to serve our injured country, which has for too long lain a bleeding prey to devouring factions, and which cannot be preserved, unless that public spirit and courage that were once the characteristics of England, can be revived.

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