When I revisited the English labourer’s dwelling and that too, after having recently witnessed the happiness of labourers in America; when I saw that the clock was gone; when I saw those whom I had known the most neat, cheerful and happy beings on earth, and these my countrymen too, had become the most wretched and forlorn of human beings, I looked seriously and inquired patiently into the matter and this inquiry into the causes of the effect which had made so deep an impression on my mind, led to that series of exertions, which have occupied my whole life, since that time, to better the lot of the labourers.13
What had caused the decline? Cobbett instanced two major factors: firstly, the continuing series of enclosures, whereby the common lands which traditionally provided labourers with a source of food and fuel to supplement their earnings had been taken over or ‘privatised’ by the rich farmers and landowners in the interest of ‘greater efficiency’. Secondly, the newly introduced Poor Laws, known as the Speenhamland System, intended when they were launched in 1795 to help the poorest labourers by making up their pay from the rates, but which had the effect of branding them as paupers, so robbing them of all self-respect.
‘The labourers are humbled, debased and enslaved,’ Cobbett wrote. ‘Until of late years, there was, amongst the poor, a horror of becoming chargeable to the parish. This feeling, which was almost universal, was the parent of industry, of care, of economy, of frugality and of early habits of labour amongst children … That men should possess spirit, that there should be any independence of mind, that there should be frankness among persons so situated, is impossible. Accordingly, whoever has had experience in such matters, must have observed, with deep regret, that instead of priding himself upon his little possessions, instead of decking out his children to the best advantage, instead of laying up in store the trifling surplus produce of the harvest month, the labourer now, in but too many instances, takes care to spend all as fast as he gets it, makes himself as poor as he can and uses all the art that he is master of to cause it to be believed that he is still more miserable than he really is. What an example for the children! And what must the rising generation be!’14
The reason Cobbett became a champion of the farm labourers, who at this time, prior to the Industrial Revolution, made up the largest single section of the British workforce, was his own personal involvement with them at Botley and in the surrounding countryside. As always with Cobbett, he started from what he saw with his own eyes – in this case, workers living in an impoverished and demoralised state, in marked contrast to what he remembered from his own boyhood.
When he himself began to farm and employ labourers at Botley, Cobbett refused to have anything to do with the Speenhamland System. ‘I have made it a rule,’ he wrote, ‘that I will have the labour of no man who receives parish relief. I give him, out of my own pocket, let his family be what it may, enough to keep them well, without any regard to what wages other people give: for I will employ no pauper.’
The result, he claimed, was a contented little community: ‘It is quite delightful to see this village of Botley, when compared to the others that I know. They seem here to be quite a different race of people.’ This was no empty boast, because it was confirmed by the many witnesses like Miss Mitford who visited Cobbett at Botley. He encouraged, he said, with his workers ‘freedom in conversation, the unrestrained familiarity … without at all lessening the weight of my authority’.
And the same principle, he said, applied with his children. By 1805 when Cobbett bought the Botley home he had four children – Anne born in America in 1795, William in 1798, John in 1800 and James in 1803. They were followed by two girls, Eleanor and Susan (born 1805 and 1807), and finally by Richard (born 1814). In spite of his workload as a journalist Cobbett took an enormous interest in the welfare and education of his children. His ideas were surprisingly liberal. Remembering, perhaps, his own harsh treatment at the hands of his father, he urged parents to make their children’s lives ‘as pleasant as you possibly can’:
I have always admired the sentiment of ROUSSEAU upon this subject. ‘The boy dies, perhaps, at the age of ten or twelve. Of what use, then, all the restraints, all the privations, all the pain that you have inflicted upon him? He falls, and leaves your mind to brood over the possibility of you having abridged a life so dear to you.’ I do not recollect the very words; but the passage made a deep impression upon my mind, just at the time, too, when I was about to become a father … I was resolved to forgo all the means of making money, all the means of making a living in any thing like fashion, all the means of obtaining fame or distinction, to give up everything, to become a common labourer, rather than make my children lead a life of restraint and rebuke.15
Cobbett moved to Botley with the welfare of his children in mind. He wanted them, first of all, to be healthy and to be able to play out of doors:
Children, and especially boys, will have some out-of-doors pursuits: and it was my duty to lead them to choose such pursuits as combined future utility with present innocence. Each has his flower-bed, little garden, plantation of trees, rabbits, dogs, asses, horses, pheasants and hares; hoes, spades, whips, guns; always some object of lively interest, and as much earnestness and bustle about the various objects as if our living had solely depended upon them.
Cobbett did not believe in forcing ‘book-learning’ on his children at an early age. There were no rules or regulations:
I accomplished my purpose indirectly. The first thing of all was health which was secured by the deeply-interesting and never-ending sports of the field and pleasures of the garden. Luckily these two things were treated in books and pictures of endless variety: so that on wet days, in long evenings, these came into play. A large, strong table in the middle of the room, their mother sitting at her work, used to be surrounded with them, the baby, if big enough, set up in a high chair. Here were ink-stands, pens, pencils, india rubber, and paper, all in abundance, and everyone scrabbled about as he or she pleased. There were prints of animals of all sorts; books treating of them – others treating of gardening, of flowers, of husbandry, of hunting, coursing, shooting, fishing, planting, and, in short, of everything with regard to which we had something to do. One would be trying to imitate a bit of my writing, another drawing the pictures of some of our dogs or horses, a third poring over Bewick’s Quadrupeds, and picking out what he said about them; but our book of never-failing resource was the French MAISON RUSTIQUE or FARMHOUSE … Here are all the four-legged animals from the horse down to the mouse, portraits and all; all the birds, reptiles, insects … and there was I, in my leisure moments to join this inquisitive group, to read the French, and tell them what it meaned in English, when the picture did not sufficiently explain itself. I have never been without a copy of this book for forty years, except during the time that I was fleeing from the dungeons of CASTLEREAGH and SIDMOUTH in 1817, and, when I got to Long Island, the first book I bought was another MAISON RUSTIQUE.16
Cobbett was busily writing at this time, but he never let it interfere with his children’s pursuits: ‘My occupation to be sure was chiefly carried on at home,’ he remembered. ‘Many score of papers have I written amidst the noise of children and in my whole life never bade them be still. When they grew up to be big enough to gallop about the house I have written the whole day amidst noise that would made [sic] some authors half mad. That which you are pleased with, however noisy, does not disturb you.’
The children were teased by friends about not going to school, and his wife Nancy was especially anxious about it, but Cobbett