William Cobbett

The English radical journalist and politician William Cobbett (1763-1835) was an advocate of parliamentary reform and a critic of the new industrial urban age.

William Cobbett was born at Farnham, Surrey, on March 9, 1763. His father, a small farmer, could afford him little schooling. Cobbett worked briefly with a copying clerk in London in 1783; he enlisted in the army in 1784 and served until 1791, mostly in Canada. In 1792 he wrote a pamphlet exposing military corruption but was unable to supply adequate evidence to press his case and fled to France and then to America.

Writing under the name of "Peter Porcupine" in Philadelphia, he attacked the French Revolution and defended England, then at war with France. During his American sojourn Cobbett wrote numerous pamphlets and founded and edited several small periodicals, including the Political Censor and Porcupine's Gazette. At this stage in his career he was clearly anti-Radical and anti-Jacobin (pro-Federalist and anti-Democrat in American terms). Cobbett savagely criticized the English scientist Joseph Priestley, who had also settled in Philadelphia, for his support of the French Revolution. But criticism of Dr. Benjamin Rush ended Cobbett's American journalistic career; he accused the famous physician and Democrat of killing patients (George Washington, among others) through his bleeding and purging technique. This brought a charge of libel against Cobbett, and he returned to England in 1800.

Britain's Tory government welcomed him as a literary asset in the struggle against republican France. He opened a bookshop in London and in 1802 began his famous Weekly Political Register. Gradually moving toward radicalism, he criticized the government's conduct of the long Napoleonic War. He was especially concerned about the war's economic repercussions on the home front. Because of his criticism of the government's handling of an army mutiny, in 1810 Cobbett was convicted of sedition and imprisoned for 2 years. Upon his release in 1812, he emerged as the great popular spokesman for the working classes. In his new, cheaper Register, he championed parliamentary reform and attacked the government for the high taxation and widespread unemployment of the postwar period.

Cobbett's newfound radicalism alarmed the government, and he went to America in 1817. On his return to England in 1819 Cobbett discovered a new enemy of the people—industrialism—and he repeatedly attacked this development in his famous Rural Rides. These essays, which praise old agricultural England, were first published in the Register and in book form in 1830.

Although his grand projects, the Parliamentary Debates and the Parliamentary History of England, were taken over by others while he was in prison, Cobbett never lost his interest in politics. He ran for Parliament unsuccessfully twice but was elected in 1832 from Oldham, following the acceptance of the Great Reform Bill. The parliamentary reform implemented by the bill fell far short of the demands of Cobbett and the Radicals, since the working class was still denied the vote. He opposed much of the legislation of the new Whig government in the reformed Parliament, especially the New Poor Law of 1834. He died on his farm near Guilford on June 18, 1835.

Cobbett has been praised as the prophet of democracy, but most of his writings look back to the old agrarian England of responsible landlords and contented tenants. He was not a profound thinker; his comments on economic matters were nearly always erroneous. Emotion rather than reason dictated many of his conclusions. But his passion for the interests of the common man and his ability to write in a jargon that was understood by the working class made him the leading English Radical of the early 19th century.

Further Reading

The range in the evaluation of Cobbett is suggested by the two standard biographies: G.D.H. Cole, William Cobbett (1925), views him as a Radical leader of the working classes, while G.K. Chesterton, William Cobbett (1925), considers him a Conservative. More recent biographies of Cobbett are William Baring Pemberton, William Cobbett (1949), and John W. Osborne, William Cobbett: His Thought and His Times (1966). Osborne more than the earlier biographers minimizes Cobbett's significance, calling him "a failure in politics … and of very limited influence in his lifetime." Mary Elizabeth Clark wrote a specialized study, Peter Porcupine in America (1939). There is a provocative chapter on Cobbett in Crane Brinton, English Political Thought in the Nineteenth Century (1933).

Additional Sources

Booth, Simon, William Cobbett: an introduction to his life and writings, Farnham Eng.: Farnham Museum Society, 1976.

Clark, Mary Elizabeth, Peter Porcupine in America: the career of William Cobbett, 1792-1800, Philadelphia: R. West, 1977 1939.

Cole, G. D. H. (George Douglas Howard), 1889-1959., William Cobbett, Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1976; Philadelphia: R. West, 1977.

Green, Daniel, Great Cobbett: the noblest agitator, Oxford Oxfordshire; New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, 1983.

Osborne, John Walter, William Cobbett, his thought and his times, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981, 1966.

Schweizer, Karl W., Cobbett in his times, Savage, Md.: Barnes &Noble Books, 1990.

Spater, George, William Cobbett, the poor man's friend, Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Williams, Raymond, Cobbett, Oxford Oxfordshire; New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. □

William Cobbett , 1763?–1835, British journalist and reformer. The son of a farm laborer, he ran away from home at 14 and later joined the British army. He resigned in order to expose abuses in the military forces, but, unable to prove his accusations, he fled to France to escape suit and thence went to the United States. In America, in his Observations on Priestley's Emigration (1794), Porcupine's Gazette (1797–99), and other pamphlets and periodicals, Cobbett defended the British monarchy and praised aristocratic government in preference to democracy. His outspoken and skillful disparagement of French Jacobinism and of the pro-French party in the United States made him a major target of the Jeffersonian Republicans. Dr. Benjamin Rush secured a $5,000 verdict against him for libel in 1799, and shortly afterward Cobbett returned to England. As the threat of French Jacobinism dwindled, Cobbett's Tory patriotism gave way to a deep concern for the condition of the working classes, especially rural workers, in the rapidly industrializing English society, and by 1807 he had become a Radical. His Political Register, begun in 1802 and published intermittently throughout the remainder of his life, was one of the greatest reform journals of the period and achieved an unparalleled influence among the working classes. For his attacks on the use of flogging as military punishment he was fined and imprisoned (1810–12). Severe financial difficulties forced him to sell his Parliamentary Debates to Hansard's printing firm (see Hansard ). After the passage (1817) of the Gagging Acts to suppress radicalism and to hinder the circulation of reform literature, Cobbett fled once again to the United States. He settled on a farm on Long Island and wrote his famous Grammar of the English Language (1818). Returning to England in 1819, he became a central figure in the agitation for parliamentary reform, but he also found time to write many books, the most important of which, Rural Rides (1830), comprises a classic portrayal of the situation of the rural worker. After the Reform Bill was passed in 1832, Cobbett was elected to Parliament, where he became a member of the Radical minority.

Bibliography: See biographies by G. D. H. Cole (3d. ed. 1947, repr. 1971), G. K. Chesterton (1926), J. Sambrook (1973), and G. Spatr (1982).

Cobbett, William (1763–1835). Radical journalist whose Political Register (1802–35) was the most influential radical paper of its time. Week after week Cobbett thundered against the political system (‘Old Corruption’) and championed the cause of labouring people, particularly the agricultural workers. His radicalism, blended with traditionalism, was individualistic, untheoretical, and non-revolutionary. He was, wrote Hazlitt, ‘a kind of 4th estate in the politics of the country’. Born and raised on a Surrey farm, Cobbett enlisted in 1784, served in Nova Scotia, and was promoted serjeant-major. On returning to England in 1791 he tried unsuccessfully to expose financial corruption in the regiment, and as a consequence had to flee to France and then to America. In Philadelphia (1792–9) Cobbett patriotically defended Great Britain, and when he returned to England in 1800 was welcomed as a Tory supporter. However, he soon became disenchanted with what he called ‘The System’ and from 1806 demanded parliamentary reform. Sentenced in 1810 to two years in Newgate gaol for seditious libel, Cobbett was henceforth regarded as a dangerous radical; and when habeas corpus was suspended in 1817 he deemed it prudent to flee to America. On his return home in 1819 he resumed farming and also wrote some of his finest pieces, published as Rural Rides. He was MP for Oldham in the reformed Parliament of 1833.

John F. C. Harrison

Cobbett, William (1763–1835), British journalist, served in the army in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and fled to the U.S. (1792) to escape litigation resulting from his unsubstantiated exposés of army frauds. In Philadelphia he opened a bookstore, published Porcupine's Gazette (1797–99), and with delightful effrontery got into one scrape after another, reflected in his vituperative Federalist pamphlets against Republican friends of France. These include A Bone to Gnaw for the Democrats (1795), A Kick for a Bite (1795), The Scare‐Crow (1796), and a scurrilous Life of Tom Paine (1796). This era is described in good homespun prose in The Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine (1796). For two years he was a farmer on Long Island, after a return stay in England. During this second sojourn, Cobbett wrote his Grammar of the English Language for working‐class students, as well as the graphic journal A Year's Residence in the United States (1818–19). Information about his life in America is also recorded in the Political Register (English), which he edited (1802–35), The American Gardener (1821), and Advice to Young Men (1829). Peter Porcupine in America (1940), by M.E. Clark, is a biography of Cobbett.

Cobbett, William (1763–1835). Radical journalist whose Political Register (1802–35) was the most influential radical paper of its time. Week after week Cobbett thundered against the political system (‘Old Corruption’). Born and raised on a Surrey farm, Cobbett enlisted in 1784, served in Nova Scotia, and was promoted serjeant‐major. On returning to England in 1791 he tried unsuccessfully to expose financial corruption in the regiment, and had to flee to France and then to America. In Philadelphia (1792–9) Cobbett patriotically defended Great Britain, and when he returned to England in 1800 was welcomed as a Tory supporter. However, he soon became disenchanted with what he called ‘The System’ and from 1806 demanded parliamentary reform. Sentenced in 1810 to two years in Newgate gaol for seditious libel, Cobbett was henceforth regarded as a dangerous radical, and when habeas corpus was suspended in 1817 he fled to America. On his return home in 1819 he resumed farming and also wrote some of his finest pieces, published as Rural Rides. He was MP for Oldham in the reformed Parliament of 1833.

Cobbett, William (1763–1835), enlisted as a soldier and served in New Brunswick from 1784 to 1791. He brought an accusation of peculation against some of his former officers, and in 1792 retired, first to France then to America, to avoid prosecution. There he published The Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine (1796), a provocatively pro-British work, and his Works (1801), critical of America. He returned to England in 1800, and became an anti-Radical journalist, founding and writing Cobbett's Political Register in 1802. Soon his views began to change, and from about 1804 he wrote in the Radical interest, suffering two years' imprisonment for his attack on flogging in the army. He published Parliamentary Debates, afterwards taken over by Hansard, and State Trials. The reflections assembled in 1830 as Rural Rides began to appear in the Political Register from 1821. His History of the Protestant ‘Reformation’ in England and Ireland appeared in 1824; his Advice to Young Men in 1829. He became MP for Oldham in 1832.

Cobbett, William (1763–1835) English journalist and political reformer. He fought for the British in the American Revolution, and his criticism of the fledgling democracy in the United States forced his return to England. In 1802, Cobbett founded the weekly newspaper Political Register. He was an outspoken critic of abuses of political power and was imprisoned (1810–12) for his attack on flogging in the army and forced into exile (1817–19) in the USA. On his return, Cobbett toured England in the campaign for parliamentary reform. His masterpiece, Rural Rides (1830), describes the conditions of rural workers. He was elected to Parliament in 1832.

Cobbett, William (1763–1835) British writer and political reformer. He started his political life as a Tory, but later became a radical; the change is reflected in Cobbett's Political Register, a periodical that he founded in 1802 and continued for the rest of his life. Cobbett was one of the leaders of the campaign for political and social reform after 1815, although he had already spent two years in prison for his outspoken criticism of flogging in the army (1810–12).