Advice to Young Men And (Incidentally) to Young Women in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life. In a Series of Letters, Addressed to a Youth, a Bachelor, ... Husband, a Father, a Citizen, or a Subject.
The English Gardener: Or a Treatise on the Situation, Soil Enclosing and Laying-Out, of Kitchen Gardens; On the Making and Managing of Hot-Beds and Green-Houses (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from The English Gardener: Or a Treatise on the S...)
Excerpt from The English Gardener: Or a Treatise on the Situation, Soil Enclosing and Laying-Out, of Kitchen Gardens; On the Making and Managing of Hot-Beds and Green-Houses
On the Formation of Shrubberies and flower-gardens; and on the Propagation and Cultivation of the several sorts of Shrubs and Flowers.
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Cottage Economy, to Which is Added The Poor Man's Friend
(Throughout this little work, I shall number the Paragraph...)
Throughout this little work, I shall number the Paragraphs, in order to be able, at some stages of the work, to refer, with the more facility, to parts that have gone before. The last Number will contain an Index, by the means of which the several matters may be turned to without loss of time; for, when economy is the subject, time is a thing which ought by no means to be overlooked.
(Travelling on horseback through southern England in the e...)
Travelling on horseback through southern England in the early 19th century, William Cobbett provides evocative and accurate descriptions of the countryside, colourful accounts of his encounters with labourers, and indignant outbursts at the encroaching cities and the sufferings of the exploited poor. Ian Dyck's new edition places these lively accounts of rural life in the context of Cobbett's political and social beliefs and reveals the volume as his platform for rural radical reform.
A grammar of the English language, in a series of letters; intended for the use of schools and of young persons in general; but more especially for ... sailors, apprentices, and plough-boys
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William Cobbett was a popular English journalist who played an important political role as a champion of traditional rural England against the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution. He was 18th century radical journalist who was one of the Industrial Revolution's most committed agitators.
Background
William Cobbett was born in Farnham, Surrey, on 9 March 1763, the third son of George Cobbett, a tavern owner and farmer, and Anne Vincent.
He was the grandson of a farm-labourer, and the son of a small farmer; and during his early life he worked on his father's farm.
Education
Cobbett was taught to read and write first by his father, and after joining the 54th (West Norfolk) Regiment of Foot in 1783, he made a good use of the soldier's copious spare time to educate himself, particularly in English grammar, and thus laid the foundation of his future career as a journalist.
Career
Cobbett moved to London when he was 19. At the age of 21, Cobbett joined the army, in which he eventually rose to the rank of sergeant major. After serving in Canada, he returned to England in 1791 and charged certain of his former officers with corruption. His charges boomeranged when the officers sought to bring countercharges against him. Rather than appear at a court-martial, Cobbett fled to France. Quickly realizing that France in the throes of revolution was no place for an Englishman, he sailed for America. In 1793, having aroused enmity by threatening to expose regimental corruption, Cobbett fled to America to escape court-martial, settling successively in Wilmington and Philadelphia, where he supported himself and his family by teaching English to French émigrés. He quickly proved himself a born writer.
Writing under the name of "Peter Porcupine" in Philadelphia, he attacked the French Revolution and defended England, then at war with France.
In his writings, he vindicated his own country, then at war with France, even daring to exhibit royal portraits in his windows. An attack on Dr. Benjamin Rush's proposed cure for yellow fever led to a lawsuit in which Cobbett was assessed $5,000 damages. His friends paid the money, but Cobbett angrily sailed for England (1800). There he started his Parliamentary Debates (subsequently Hansard) and notorious Weekly Political Register. With the profits from these ventures he combined editing in London with farming in Hampshire for which, red-faced, bluff, and hearty in manner, his appearance seemed more suited. An attack on the government for using German mercenaries to quell a mutiny resulted in his conviction and imprisonment (1810-1812) for seditious libel.
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. An attack on Dr. Benjamin Rush led to a lawsuit in which Cobbett was assessed $5, 000 damages. He accused the famous physician and Democrat of killing patients (George Washington, among others) through his bleeding and purging technique. His friends paid the money, but Cobbett angrily sailed for England in 1800.
He opened a bookshop in London and in 1802 began his famous Weekly Political Register.
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.
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.
Cobbett's real importance dates from the period of unemployment and agricultural distress following the War of 1812. His Register, which reached the working classes, deprecated violence, urging instead parliamentary reform. Nevertheless the authorities took alarm and repealed habeas corpus. Cobbett again fled to America (1817). Here he settled, wrote, and farmed at North Hempstead, Long Island, but avoided politics. His Register naturally suffered through his absence, and when in 1819 fire consumed his house on Long Island he wisely returned to England. Cobbett next tried to popularize the cultivation of locust trees, with seeds brought from America; however he went bankrupt.
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. 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 then embarked on his great creative period, producing in 15 years 50 books and pamphlets, the best known and popular being Cottage Economy, Advice to Young Men, and (most famous of all) Rural Rides, which dealt with the political and agricultural conditions in the English countryside. Their constant theme was the virtue of self-respect derived from honest work and abundant living "which is the great test of good government and the sure basis of national greatness and security." The man who was "poor and contented" was invariably execrated. Cobbett was elected for Oldham in the first reformed Parliament, but he disappointed the expectations of his constituents. Late hours and close atmosphere, moreover, undermined his health, and he died peacefully at his farm, Normandy, near Guildford, on June 18, 1835.
Under the pen name "Peter Porcupine," he supported the Anglophile Federalists and assailed the Democrats in numerous startlingly titled pamphlets (e.g., "The Bloody Buoy, thrown out as a Warning to the Political Pilots of America, or a Faithful Relation of a Multitude of Horrid Barbarities, such as the Eye never Witnessed until the Commencement of the French Revolution"). Britain's Tory government welcomed Cobbett as a literary asset in the struggle against republican France. Gradually moving toward radicalism, he criticized the government's conduct of the long Napoleonic War.
He opposed much of the legislation of the new Whig government in the reformed Parliament, especially the New Poor Law of 1834. 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.
More than any man Cobbett helped to develop the political conscience of the British workingman. Yet he was never a socialist, hardly even a radical. In his nostalgia for 18th-century England, still uncontaminated by industrialism, he was almost a Tory. Cobbett belonged to no political party. He was a political Ishmaelite, an individualist whose opinions changed with every mood.
Views
Too often passion and prejudice warped his judgment, as when he pursued with ceaseless venom stockbrokers, boroughmongers (men who traded in parliamentary seats for boroughs), pensioners, and political hacks, who he believed had no roots in the soil and produced nothing.
Passionate and prejudiced, Cobbett’s prose, full of telling phrases and inspired ridicule, was completely personal. He had no theoretical understanding of the complicated issues about which he wrote. While his views of the ideal society were retrograde, no one could excel him in specific criticisms of corruption and extravagance, harsh laws, low wages, absentee clergymen—indeed, nearly everything that was wrong with England.
For by fulminating against the new plutocracy and deploring the passing of the Old Order, he spoke for the wage-slaves in the recently built factories of industrial Britain and the inarticulate laborers of a countryside that was Cobbett's first and last love, the foundation on which rested his entire philosophy.
Quotations:
"Good government is known from bad government by this infallible test: that under the former the labouring people are well fed and well clothed, and under the latter, they are badly fed and badly clothed."
"Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honored by the name of "speculation"; but which ought to be called Gambling."
Personality
Yet, though a grand hater, who in his invective neither sought nor gave quarter, Cobbett was fundamentally warmhearted and kind. Emotion rather than reason dictated many of his conclusions.
Quotes from others about the person
Thomas Carlyle saw in him "the pattern John Bull of his century, strong as a rhinoceros and with singular humanities shining through his thick skin."
Connections
In Woolwich in February 1792, Cobbett married Anne Reid, whom he had met while stationed at Fort Howe in Saint John.