William Cobbett

William Cobbett (March 9, 1763 – June 18, 1835) was a radical agriculturist and prolific journalist. He was born at Farnham, Surrey. He thought that the reform of Parliament and the abolition of the rotten boroughs would help cure the poverty of the farm labourers. Cobbett constantly attacked the borough-mongers, sinecurists and tax-eaters. He opposed the Corn Laws, a tax on imported grain. Through the many apparent inconsistencies in Cobbett's life, one strand continued to run: an ingrained opposition to authority and a suspicion of novelty. Early in his career, he was a "loyalist" supporter of King and Country; later, he joined (and arguably helped inspire) the burgeoning radical movement. One particularly "seditious" rhyme attributed to Cobbett was:

England (1819-1835)

In 1820 he stood for Parliament in Coventry but finished bottom of the poll.

Related Topics:
1820 - Coventry

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• Cobbett was not content to let the stories come to him, he went out like a good reporter and dug them up, especially the story that he returned to time and time again in the course of his writings: the plight of the rural Englishman. He began riding around the country on horseback making observations of what was happening in the towns and villages. Rural Rides, a work which Cobbett is best known for today, first appeared in serial form in the Political Register running from 1822 to 1826; it was published in book form in 1830
• extract taken from the Biography

In 1830 he was charged with seditious libel for writing a pamphlet entitled Rural War which applauded those who were smashing farm machinery and burning haystacks: he won the case. From 1831 until his death, he farmed at Normandy, a village in Surrey. In 1832 he was finally elected a Member of Parliament for Oldham in Lancashire in 1832.

Related Topics:
Normandy - Surrey - Oldham - Lancashire - 1832

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By now however Macaulay, a fellow member, remarked that his faculties were impaired by age; indeed that his paranoia had developed to the point of insanity.

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He was a gifted journalist, though later generations have taken offence at his some of his apparently anti-Semitic and racist views. He provides an alternative view of rural England in the age of an Industrial Revolution with which he was not in sympathy.

Related Topics:
Anti-Semitic - Racist - Industrial Revolution

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