Peter Porcupine

William Cobbett (9 March 1763 – 18 June 1835) was an English pamphleteer, journalist, politician, and farmer born in Farnham, Surrey. He was one of an agrarian faction seeking to reform Parliament, abolish "rotten boroughs", restrain foreign activity, and raise wages, with the goal of easing poverty among farm labourers and small land holders. Cobbett backed lower taxes, saving, reversing commons enclosures and resisting the 1821 gold standard. He opposed borough-mongers, sinecurists, bureaucratic "tax-eaters" and stockbrokers. His radicalism furthered the Reform Act 1832 and gained him one of two newly created seats in Parliament for the borough of Oldham. His polemics range from political reform to religion, including Catholic emancipation. His best known book is ''Rural Rides'' (1830, in print). He argued against Malthusianism, saying economic betterment could support global population growth.

Early life (1763–1791)

William Cobbett was born in Farnham, Surrey, on 9 March 1763, the third son of George Cobbett, a farmer and publican, and Anne Vincent.Ian Dyck,
Cobbett, William (1763–1835)
, ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 23 July 2011. He was taught to read and write by his father and he started working from an early age. He later said: "I do not remember a time when I did not earn my living. My first occupation was driving small birds from the turnip seed, and the rooks from the peas."G. D. H. Cole, ''The Life of William Cobbett'' (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1971), pp. 16-18. He worked as a farm labourer at Farnham Castle, and also worked briefly as a gardener in the King's garden at Kew.S. Clifford-Smith, "William Cobbett: cottager's friend", ''Australian Garden History'', 19 (5), 2008, pp. 4–6. His rural upbringing gave him a lifelong love of gardening and hunting.

On 6 May 1783, he took a stage coach to London and spent eight or nine months as a clerk in the employ of a Mr. Holland at Gray's Inn. He joined the 54th (West Norfolk) Regiment of Foot in 1783. In his spare time, he improved his knowledge of English grammar. Between 1785 and 1791, Cobbett was stationed with his regiment in New Brunswick and sailed from Gravesend in Kent to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Cobbett was in Saint John, Fredericton and elsewhere in New Brunswick until September 1791, as he was promoted through the ranks to sergeant major, the most senior rank of non-commissioned officer.

Cobbett returned to England with his regiment, landing at Portsmouth on 3 November 1791. He obtained his discharge from the army on 19 December 1791. In Woolwich during February 1792, he married an American-born woman, Anne Reid (1774–1848), whom he had met while stationed at Fort Howe in Saint John. Their children were Anne (1795–1877), William (1798–1878), John (1800–1877), James Paul (1803–1881), Eleanor (1805–1900), and Susan (1807–1889).

Refuge in France and the United States (1792–1800)

Cobbett had developed an animosity towards some officers, suspecting them of corruption, and gathered evidence on the matter while in New Brunswick. His charges against them were ignored. He wrote ''The Soldier's Friend'' in 1792, in protest against the low pay and harsh treatment of enlisted men in the British army. Sensing that he was about to be indicted in retribution, he fled from Britain to France in March 1792 to avoid imprisonment. Cobbett had intended to stay a year to learn the French language, but due to the French Revolution and French Revolutionary Wars in progress, he sailed for the United States in September 1792.

Cobbett arrived at Wilmington, and settled in Philadelphia during the spring of 1793. Cobbett initially prospered by teaching English to Frenchmen and translating texts from French to English. He later claimed that he had become a political writer by accident: during an English lesson one of his French students read aloud from a New York newspaper the addresses of welcome that the Democrats had sent to Joseph Priestley upon his arrival in America, along with Priestley's replies. His student applauded the anti-British sentiments that were expressed, and he quarrelled with Cobbett, who then resolved to "write and publish a pamphlet in defence of my country." His ''Observations on the Emigration of Dr. Priestley'', which was published anonymously in 1794, was a violent attack on Priestley.Green, ''Great Cobbett'', p. 127.

In 1795, Cobbett wrote ''A Bone to Gnaw for the Democrats'', which attacked the pro-French Democratic Party.Cole, ''Life of William Cobbett'', p. 59. He replied to his critics with ''A Kick for a Bite'', which was his first work to be published under the pseudonym "Peter Porcupine"; a reviewer had compared him to a porcupine, which pleased him. He took the side of the Federalists, who were led by Alexander Hamilton, because they were friendlier to Britain than were the pro-French Democrats led by Thomas Jefferson.Cole, ''Life of William Cobbett'', p. 64.

In January 1796, he began writing a monthly tract, ''The Censor''. It was discontinued after eight releases, and replaced by ''Porcupine's Gazette'', a daily newspaper which ran from March 1797 until the end of 1799.Edward Smith,
Cobbett, William
, Leslie Stephen, ed., ''Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume XI'' (1887). Talleyrand, at the time a French spy in America, tried but failed to bribe Cobbett to join the French cause.

Cobbett opened a bookstore in Philadelphia in July 1796. Its shop-window displayed a large portrait of George III and its interior featured a huge painting of " Lord Howe's Decisive Victory over the French". This provocative display attracted considerable attention. He reprinted and published much of the extreme loyalist literature then current, including George Chalmers's hostile biography of Thomas Paine, as well as his own version, reproducing Chalmer's work interspersed with contemptuous comments.

After Spain entered into an alliance with France against Britain, Cobbett expressed his anger through further pamphleteering that was highly critical of Spanish King Charles IV, in ''Porcupine's Gazette''. The Spanish foreign minister in Philadelphia asked the United States government to prosecute Cobbett for libel of the Spanish king. Cobbett was arrested on 18 November 1797. He was tried in the State Court of Pennsylvania by Chief Justice Thomas McKean (who was also the Spanish minister's father-in-law). Despite McKean's criticism of Cobbett in his summing up, the grand jury threw out case against him by a one-vote majority.

Cobbett also campaigned against physician and abolitionist Benjamin Rush, whose advocacy of bleeding during the yellow fever epidemic may have caused many deaths. Rush won a libel suit against Cobbett. Cobbett never fully paid the $8,000 judgement, but instead fled to New York and during 1800 via Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Falmouth, Cornwall.

The British government was grateful to Cobbett for supporting Britain's interests in America: the Duke of Kent hailed him as "this great British patriot"; the British representative in America, Robert Liston, offered him a "great pecuniary reward" (which he turned down), and the Secretary at War, William Windham, said that Cobbett deserved a statue of gold for the services he had rendered to Britain in America.

Return to England and ''The Political Register'' (1800–1810)

Cobbett's American writings were reprinted in Britain, with John Wright acting as his agent. In August 1800, Windham invited Cobbett to dinner with the Prime Minister, William Pitt, and contributors to the '' Anti-Jacobin'', including George Canning. Pitt's government offered Cobbett the editorship of a government newspaper, but he chose to remain independent. His own paper, ''The Porcupine'', bearing the motto "Fear God, Honour the King", started on 30 October 1800, but without success, and he sold his interest in it in 1801. Less than a month later, he started the '' Political Register'', a newspaper that appeared almost every week from January 1802 until 1835, the year of Cobbett's death. Windham and French Laurence had suggested the idea of a weekly newspaper to Cobbett and Windham raised the money to fund it by private subscription.

When the British government signed a preliminary peace agreement with France in October 1801, Cobbett emerged as one of its foremost opponents, and in the pages of ''The Porcupine'' and in his ''Letters to Lord Hawkesbury'', he denounced the agreement as humiliating to Britain and advantageous to France. When news of the ratification arrived on 10 October, Cobbett refused to illuminate the windows of his house in celebration and it was attacked by a mob, which smashed all the windows.Cole, ''Life of William Cobbett'', p. 76. When the Peace of Amiens was signed in March 1802, Cobbett again refused to illuminate his windows and the Royal Horse Guards had to protect his house from the mob.

War broke out again between Britain and France in May 1803 and Napoleon planned to invade England, assembling the '' Grande Armée'' at Boulogne. In June, ''The Morning Post'' appealed to all newspapers to print articles for "the purpose of arousing the people to the defence of the country". Cobbett immediately began a pamphlet, ''Important Considerations for the People of the Kingdom'', warning the country of the consequences of a French invasion. Cobbett declined an offer of payment from the government and his pamphlet was published anonymously in July.Cole, ''Life of William Cobbett'', p. 81. The Prime Minister, Henry Addington, ordered copies to be sent to every parish in England and it had an immediate effect on public opinion.

Cobbett formed a close friendship with Windham, who became his patron and shared his anti-Jacobinism and his love of rural and athletic sports. The Evangelical movement was campaigning to reform the sports and recreations of the common people, intending to replace bull-baiting, boxing, singlestick, wrestling and racing with Sunday Schools and psalm singing. Cobbett in the ''Register'' criticised the Evangelicals' hostility to rural and athletic sports, "which string the nerves and strengthen the frame, which excite an emulation in deeds of hardihood and valour, and which imperceptibly instill honour, generosity, and a love of glory. Men thus formed are pupils unfit for the puritanical school; therefore it was, that the sect were incessantly labouring to eradicate, fibre by fibre, the last poor remains of English manners." Cobbett supported Windham in opposing attempts in the House of Commons to introduce bills against boxing and bull-baiting; he wrote to Windham that the bill "goes to the rearing of puritanism into a system."

Although initially staunchly anti- Jacobin, by 1804 Cobbett was questioning the policies of the Pitt government, especially the immense national debt and profligate use of sinecures, which Cobbett believed were ruining the country and increasing class antagonism. By 1807, he was endorsing reformers such as Francis Burdett and John Cartwright.

Cobbett published the ''Complete Collection of State Trials'' between 1804 and 1812 and amassed accounts of parliamentary debates from 1066 onwards, but financial difficulties obliged him to sell his shares in it to T. C. Hansard in 1812. This unofficial record of parliamentary proceedings later became known officially as Hansard.

Cobbett intended to campaign for Parliament in Honiton in 1806, but was persuaded by Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald to let him campaign in his stead. Both men campaigned together but failed, having refused to bribe voters by "buying" votes. This situation encouraged his opposition to rotten boroughs and belief in parliamentary reform.

Prison (1810–1812)

Cobbett was found guilty of treasonous libel on 15 June 1810, after objecting in ''The Register'' to the flogging at Ely, Cambridgeshire of local militiamen by Hanoverians. During his two years' incarceration at Newgate Prison, he wrote the pamphlet ''Paper Against Gold'', warning of the dangers of paper money, and many essays and letters. On his release, a dinner in his honour in London was attended by 600 people and directed by Sir Francis Burdett, who like Cobbett was a strong advocate of parliamentary reform.

"Two-Penny Trash" (1812–1817)

By 1815 the tax on newspapers had reached four pence a copy. As few people could afford to pay six or seven pence for a daily newspaper, the tax restricted the circulation of most journals to those with fairly high incomes. Cobbett could sell only about a thousand copies a week. Nonetheless, he began criticising William Wilberforce for endorsing the Corn Laws, for his personal wealth and opposition to bull and bear-baiting, and particularly for his approval of "the fat and lazy and laughing and singing negroes".

In 1816 Cobbett began publishing the ''Political Register'' as a pamphlet. It now sold for only two pence and soon had a circulation of 40,000. Critics termed it "two-penny trash", a phrase Cobbett adopted. It became the main newspaper read by the working class.
Radical campaigner Samuel Bamford later wrote:

At this time the writings of William Cobbett suddenly became of great authority; they were read on nearly every cottage hearth in the manufacturing districts of South Lancashire, in those of Leicester, Derby, and Nottingham; also in many of the Scottish manufacturing towns. Their influence was speedily visible. He directed his readers to the true cause of their sufferings—misgovernment; and to its proper corrective—parliamentary reform.

This made Cobbett a dangerous man. In 1817, he became aware that the government was planning to arrest him for sedition. With the government intending to suspend ''habeas corpus'', and fearing arrest for his arguably seditious writings, Cobbett again fled to the United States. On Wednesday 27 March 1817, he embarked at Liverpool for New York on the ship ''Importer'', with D. Ogden as master, accompanied by his two eldest sons, William and John.

Refuge in the United States (1817–1819)

Cobbett lived for two years on a farm on Long Island, where he wrote ''Grammar of the English Language''. With help from William Benbow

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