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XLIX.

WILLIAM COBBETT.

1762-1835.

WILLIAM COBBETT was born in 1762. He was the son of a farmer at Farnham, in Surrey, and passed his childhood in rustic occupations. When about twenty-two, he enlisted as a private soldier, and rose by merit to the rank of Sergeant-Major. On returning to England with his regiment in 1791, after a four years' stay in America, he obtained his discharge, having served eight years, during seven of which he was a noncommissioned officer. Early in 1792 he married and went to France, but in a few months, at the outbreak of the Revolution, he embarked at Havre for America, where he resided for eight years. He there commenced his career as an author and editor, and also underwent his first prosecution for the violence of his attacks on the personal and political characters of public men. He returned to England in 1800, and started first the Porcupine and then the Weekly Register, which was continued till his death, at first as a high Tory publication, and later, after Cobbett's own change of political views, as an ultra-Radical journal. He was twice prosecuted and fined for libel on different members of the Government, and in 1809 fined and imprisoned for two years. In 1817, to avoid a fourth prosecution under the 'Six Acts Bill,' he fled to America, where he remained for two years, till the repeal of the Act which had driven him into exile. He twice endeavoured to enter Parliament, and finally, in 1832, after the passing of the Reform Bill, was elected Member for Oldham. He died in 1835.

Besides his writings as a journalist, Cobbett published numerous popular Treatises. His Rural Rides abounds with descriptive passages of great beauty. As a political writer, he was celebrated for the vehemence of his language, and a certain rough vigour of style.

1. The Institution of Property.

THUS, then, we see that labour must have been the foundation of all property. Mr. Tull, who was a very learned lawyer, as well as the greatest writer on agriculture that ever lived, claimed an exclusive right to the produce of his book, because he had written it,—because it was something proceeding from the labour of his own mind; and thereupon he says, 'There is no property of any description, if it be rightfully held, which had not its foundation in labour.' And it must have been thus, because men never could have been so foolish, so lost to all sense of self-preservation, as to suffer a few persons, comparatively, to take possession of the whole earth, which God had given to all of them for a common possession, unless these comparatively few persons had first performed, or their progenitors had performed, some labour upon these several spots of earth, the like of which labour, or a part of which labour, had not been performed by men in general.

When the earth came to be more peopled than it had been for a long time, the common benefit of all demanded that some agreement should be entered into, which would secure to the possessors of particular parcels of land the exclusive possession and enjoyment of them and of their fruits, and that there should be laws to protect them in that enjoyment. When this state of things came, it was called

civil society; and laws, made by the common assent of any community of men, came to supply the place of the law of nature. These laws of civil society restrained individuals from following, in certain cases, the dictates of their own will; they protected the industrious against the depredations of the lazy; they protected the weak against the violence of the unjust strong; they secured men in possession of land, houses, and goods, that were called 'theirs.' The words 'mine' and 'thine,' which mean 'my own' and 'thy own,' were invented to designate what we now call a property in things; the meaning of the word 'property' being this, that the thing is a man's own, or the own of a body of men; and that no other man, or body of men, have any right to partake in the possession, the use, or the fruits of it. The law necessarily makes it criminal in one man to take away or injure the property of another man. It was, even before this law of civil society, a crime against natural justice to do certain things against our neighbour; to kill him, to wound him, to slander him, to expose him to suffer from want of food, or raiment, or shelter. These and many other things were crimes in the eye of the law of nature; but, to take a share of a man's victuals or clothing, to insist upon sharing a part of the good things that he might happen to have in his possession, could be no crime, because there was no positive property in anything, except in a man's body itself or, at most, in such things as he had in his immediate possession and use, or as had been produced by his labour or that of his children. For instance, a hare, a pheasant, a deer, that he had caught; beer or wine that he had made; raiment that he had made; or a dwelling-place that he had built.

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2. The National Debt and Foreign Politics in 1826.

I KNOW nothing of the politics of the Bourbons; but, though I can easily conceive that they would not like to see an end of the paper system and a consequent Reform, in England; though I can see very good reasons for believing this, I do not believe that Canning will induce them to sacrifice their own obvious and immediate interests for the sake of preserving our funding system. He will not get them out of Cadiz, and he will not induce them to desist from interfering in the affairs of Portugal, if they find it their interest to interfere. They know, that we cannot go to war. They know this as well as we do; person in England seems to know it well. without Reform! We are come to this at last. No war with this Debt; and this Debt defies every power but that of Reform. Foreign nations were, as to our real state, a good deal enlightened by 'late panic.' They had hardly any notion of our state before that. That opened their eyes,

and every sane No war for us

and led them to conclusions that they never before dreamed of. It made them see that that which they had always taken for a mountain of solid gold, was only a great heap of rubbishy, rotten paper! And they now, of course, estimate us accordingly. But it signifies not what they think, or what they do, unless they will subscribe and pay off this Debt for the people at Whitehall. The foreign governments (not excepting the American) all hate the English Reformers; those of Europe, because our example would be so dangerous to despots; and that of America, because we should not suffer it to build fleets and to add to its territories at pleasure. So that, we have not only our own borough-mongers and

tax-eaters against us; but also all foreign governments. Not a straw, however, do we care for them all, so long as we have for us the ever-living, ever-watchful, ever-efficient, and all-subduing Debt! Let our foes subscribe, I say, and pay off that Debt; for until they do that, we snap our fingers at them.

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I CANNOT quit Battle without observing, that the country is very pretty all about it. All hill, or valley. A great deal of wood-land, in which the underwood is generally very fine, though the oaks are not very fine, and a good deal covered with moss. This shows that the clay ends before the taproot of the oak gets as deep as it would go; for, when the clay goes the full depth, the oaks are always fine. The woods are too large and too near each other for harehunting; and, as to coursing, it is out of the question here. But it is a fine country for shooting and for harbouring game of all sorts. It was rainy as I came home; but the woodmen were at work. A great many hop-poles are cut here, which makes the coppices more valuable than in many other parts. The women work in the coppices, shaving the bark of the hop-poles, and, indeed, at various other parts of the business.-Little boys and girls shave hop-poles and assist in other coppice work very nicely. And it is pleasant work when the weather is dry over head. The woods, bedded with leaves as they are, are clean and dry under foot. They are warm, too, even in the coldest weather, When the ground is frozen several inches deep in the open fields, it is scarcely frozen at all in a coppice where the underwood is a good plant, and where it is nearly high enough to cut. So that the woodman's is really a pleasant

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