William Cobbett - Rural Rides

RURAL RIDES

WILLIAM COBBETT , journalist, farmer and politician, was born in 1763 at Farnham, Surrey. He spent his boyhood and adolescent years as a farm worker and gardener, graduating with other country lads from bird-scaring and hoeing to the honour of joining the reapers in harvest, driving team and holding plough. In 1784 he sought to enlist in the Royal Navy, but found himself in a marching regiment, the West Norfolk 54th. After a year of training at Chatham he moved with his regiment to New Brunswick, where for six years he assisted in protecting the Canadian border from American incursion, while devoting his spare time to the study of English literature and grammar. In 1791 his regiment returned to England where, having requested and received his discharge, he sought to bring embezzlement charges against his former officers. When this threatened to backfire, he made for revolutionary France and ultimately Philadelphia, where, under the pen-name Peter Porcupine, he rose to fame as a pro-British, anti-Jacobin journalist. In 1800 a steady flow of libel suits prompted Cobbett to return to England, where, after meeting with William Pitt and other Tory ministers, he resumed his career as an anti-Jacobin writer. Over the next few years, however, Cobbetts support for Church and King began to wane. In his weekly Political Register (180235), as well as in his many books, lectures and election speeches, he evolved into a potent and prolific Radical. At the same time he re-connected with rural England by leasing farms, writing agricultural manuals and developing a profound sympathy for the plight of Englands farm workers. During the 1820s he undertook his celebrated rural rides and in his book of that title promoted the cause of radical politics and radical husbandry. The rural rising of 1830 which Cobbett predicted and encouraged inspired him to work hard in support of the Great Reform Bill, and ultimately to stand for Parliament himself after the passage of the Reform Act in 1832. Elected MP for the borough of Oldham in the following year, he aimed to represent the interests of industrial as well as agricultural workers, but as a self-confessed South of England person who disliked towns, manufacturing and commerce, Cobbett maintained his preoccupation with the rural south and its village workers. He died on his Surrey farm in 1835 and lies buried at his native Farnham.

IAN DYCK is Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia. He is the author of William Cobbett and Rural Popular Culture (1992) and of articles in History Workshop, Social History and Rural History. He is editor of Citizen of the World: Essays on Thomas Paine (1988) and co-editor (with Malcolm Chase) of Living and Learning: Essays in Honour of J. F. C. Harrison (1996).

WILLIAM COBBETT

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by
IAN DYCK

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11, Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India
Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Private Bag 102902, NSMC, Auckland, New Zealand
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 5 Watkins Street, Denver Ext 4, Johannesburg 2094, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published 1830
Published in Penguin Classics 2001
7

Editorial matter copyright Ian Dyck, 2001

All rights reserved

The moral right of the editor has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-192184-6

William Cobbett composed for publication a remarkable thirty million words a total doubtless unmatched in the history of English letters. He was also wide-ranging in his interests and themes, treating of subjects as diverse as English and French grammar, beer-making, the Protestant Reformation, the English and the American garden, the virtues of gold currency and the evils of potatoes and tea. For some readers Cobbetts principal achievements lie in his literary and editorial career, such as his early use of the lead article, his collection and printing of parliamentary debates (Hansard should rightfully be called Cobbett) or his enormous contribution to English periodical journalism, most notably the eighty-nine volumes of the Political Register (180235). Others have focused upon his political platform, which in turn can be subdivided into his anti-Jacobin days in the United States (this alone yielded the twelve volumes of Porcupines Works), his Tory career in England and his subsequent stations in Whig and finally in Radical politics. Some scholars have emphasized Cobbetts fierce disdain for commerce, manufacturing, Scotch feelosofy and the so-called learned languages, while others have plumbed for his gentler side, such as his thoughts on child-rearing, the courting of the sexes and the qualities of Englishness. There is, in short, something of interest for everyone in Cobbetts legion of writing a fact reflected by the diversity of his admirers past and present, who include Karl Marx, Matthew Arnold, G. K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, Michael Foot, A. J. P. Taylor, E. P. Thompson and Richard Ingrams.

It is often remarked that Cobbett was a venal writer whose work is awash in self-contradiction and paradox. This is unjust. He contradicted himself certainly, but no more than one would expect of someone who This is all to say that Cobbetts dedication to rural England was neither an appendix nor an aside to his primary career as a political commentator. Indeed, rural England is the index and cipher to his life and thought.

It is appropriate that we have in hand Rural Rides as it is Cobbetts quintessential text on rural and agrarian England. Born and raised a farm worker, or a sort of labourer, at Famham in Surrey in 1763, Cobbett lived the life of most farm lads, receiving little formal schooling

Rural life also had its limitations for Cobbett, and in 1784 at the age of twenty-one he joined numerous other lads from the plough tail in trading the plough for the musket. After a year at Chatham his regiment (the West Norfolk 54th foot) removed to New Brunswick, where for seven years he endured snow and heat while becoming regimental copymaster and rising to the rank of sergeant-major. Contrary to the claims of some of Cobbetts detractors, his decision to flee rural England does not contradict his later enthusiasm for it, as his flight was motivated by a simple and natural longing for new horizons:

I sighed for a sight of the world; the little island of Britain seemed too small a compass for me. The things in which I had taken the most delight were neglected; the singing of the birds grew insipid, and even the heart-cheering cry of the hounds was heard with the most torpid indifference.

It was during this period of temporary ambivalence to rural life that Cobbett mastered English and French grammar, learned disrespect for authority (especially upon seeing his senior officers appropriate some of the pay of common soldiers) and ultimately ventured into print as author of an anonymous pamphlet regarding the plight of the common soldier. but by 1805 when moving to the countryside upon his purchase of a farm at Botley in Hampshire he came face to face with die poverty of southern agricultural workers: