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William Cobbett in North America
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2011
Extract
Of his seventy-two years of life, William Cobbett spent approximately fifteen in North America, about one-third of his adulthood. This period is accounted for in three separate visits, each of which represents a distinct phase in Cobbett's life.
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- Copyright © British Association for American Studies 1961
References
REFERENCES
1.The biography of greatest relevance to this study is Clark, Mary Elizabeth, Peter Porcupine in America: The career of William Cobbett 1792 – 1800 (Philadelphia, 1939) Cobbett re-published his first American writings in 1801 in twelve volumes under the short title of Porcupine's Works, The complete title of the collection is Porcupine's Works; containing various Writings and Selections, exhibiting a faithful picture of the United States of America; of their Governments, Laws, Politics, and Resources; of the characters of their Presidents, Governors, Legislators and Military Men, and of the Customs, Manners, Morals, Religion, Virtues and Vices of the People: comprising also a Complete Series of Historical Documents and Remarks, from the End of the War in 1783, to the Election of the President, in March, 1801.Google Scholar
2.A second edition of the pamphlet published in 1793 apparently reached a wide public and was alleged to have been one of the factors provoking the mutiny at the Nore in 1797. See G. D. H. Cole, The Life of William Cobbett, pp. 43 ff.Google Scholar
3.The Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine (2nd Edition, Philadelphia, October, 1796) pp.30–32 The italics are mine Cf. Cole, op. cit., pp. 45–6.Google Scholar
4.The original of this letter is in the J. Pierpont Morgan Library. The implausible suggestion has been made that the fact that Cobbett wrote not to Washington, but to Jefferson “the great Democratic leader, throws some light on Cobbett's political opinions at this time”. (Cole, op. cit., p. 50). A much more likely explanation is that an ambassador would naturally address any such letter of introduction to the Secretary of State rather than to the President.Google Scholar
5.There are however a few exceptions, when his theme made closer definition necessary. At one point he defines as American only “those who were born in the United States, or were inhabitants of them at the peace of 1783”. (Political Censor for April 1796). In another passage he makes a further distinction: “… as an Englishman I shall be excused for not thinking myself upon a level with every patriot every negro, and every democrat that pleased to call me his fellow citizen; as an Englishman, as a calf of John Bull, I shall hope to be permitted, in short, I will be permitted, to bellow out the truth without disguise. “(A Little Plain English, p. 1).Google Scholar
7.The Cobbetts' second child was still-born on 15 March 1794. On 3 June, 1794 their first child, Tony (born in Wilmington on 3 January, 1793), died suddenly and unaccountably.Google Scholar
8.See also the biography of Priestley, The Crucible by J.G. Gillam, Chapters XXVII–XXVIII.Google Scholar
9.Priestley wrote a restrained reply to Cobbett's outburst, entitled A Twist of Birch for a butting calf.Google Scholar
10.He quoted several stanzas of a “democratic” song, beginning, God save the Guillotine, Till England's King and Queen, Her power shall prove……. Nevertheless, one passage reads: “The English are no favourites of mine; I care very little if their Island were swallowed by an Earthquake “.Google Scholar
11.The pamphlet itself, dated 6 March 1795, was an excursion into literary criticism, for the purpose of lampooning the works of Mrs. Susanna Rowson, then reigning queen of the Philadelphia theatre, who also wrote sentimental stories. Cobbett never had an easier target and he made hilarious fun at the expense of “this amiable authoress”. This theme enabled him to indulge in an outburst of anti-feminism: “… the authority of the wife (in this country) is so unequivocally acknowledged, that the reformers of the reformed church have been obliged (for fear of losing all their custom) to raze the word obey from their marriage service. I almost wonder they had not imposed it upon the husband.…” So much for those who have attributed American matriarchy to the influence of the frontier in the nineteenth century.!Google Scholar
12.The full title was A Little Plain English, addressed to the People of the United States, on the Treaty, negotiated with His Britannic Majesty, and on the conduct of the President thereto.Google Scholar
13.This American enterprise thus foreshadowed Cobbett's later Parliamentary Debates which he started in England in 1804; Cobbett's Parliamentary Debates were printed from 1807 by T. C. Hansard and sold to Hansard's in 1811.Google Scholar
14.A Bone to Gnaw, p. 49.Google Scholar
15.Political Censor, April 1796. (Porcupine's Works, III, 164).Google Scholar
16.Political Censor, March 1796. (Porcupine's Works, HI, 69).Google Scholar
18.Porcupine's Works, IV, 3.Google Scholar
19.In 1799 he extended the Gazette by launching a rural edition, the Country Porcupine.Google Scholar
21.Cobbett published in The Rushlight John Brickell's Observations on the Medical Treatment of General Washington, in his last illness; addressed to his Physicians, Messrs. Craik and Dick which included the sentence: “Thus we see by their own statement, that they drew from a man in the sixty-ninth year of his age, the enormous quantity of eighty-two ounces, or about two quarts and a half of blood in about thirty hours.”Google Scholar
22.See Selections from Cobbett's Political Works by John, M. and Cobbett, James P. (London, 1835), I, pp.173–191.Google Scholar
23.Open letter to the New York public papers: Porcupine's Works, XII, pp. 108–10.Google Scholar
24.Towards the end of his life Cobbett wrote his well-known Emigrant's Guide (1829). His Plan of Parliamentary Reform (1830) contains a long passage (pp. 8–10) in which he answers objections to some of his proposals (universal suffrage, election by ballot, abolition of financial qualifications for M. Ps.) by appealing to American precedent: “we have the most complete answer in the experience of the United States of America.” As late as 1834 he wrote (or rather reprinted in abridged form, with his own somewhat ill-informed comments) a Life of Andrew Jackson. Jackson's attack upon paper money and upon the Second Bank of the United States had obvious appeal to Cobbett - but with many other aspects of Jacksonian democracy he could scarcely have been in sympathy.Google Scholar
25.A Year's Residence, paragraph 980.Google Scholar
26.A Year's Residence, paragraph 424.Google Scholar
28.Cobbett gave a rather gruesome account of the exhumation in the Political Register, XXXV, 382. Subsequent events are described in an anonymous pamphlet (sometimes erroneously attributed to Cobbett himself) published in 1847, entitled A Brief History of the Remains of the Late Thomas Paine from the Time of their Disinterment in 1819 by the Late William Cobbett, M.P., down to the Year 1846. The curious attribution of this document to Cobbett's authorship arises from a printer's error on the title page, a full-stop appearing after the date 1819.Google Scholar
29.Conway, Moncure Daniel, The Life of Thomas Paine, ed. by Mrs. Bonner, Hypatia Bradlaugh (London, 1909), p. 327, footnote. In Appendix A of this book, “The Cobbett Papers”, Mrs. Bonner published for the first time a document written by Cobbett apparently in 1819 entitled Thomas Paine, A Sketch of his Life and Character.Google Scholar