Essential Writings Volume 3. William 1763-1835 Cobbett

After he was appointed an Ensign, he was sent to school. His father tells us of his feats in Holland. A second commission, that of Lieutenant, was given him while at school. At the age of sixteen he went to Holland; and here his father says he distinguished himself in the command of a body of men usually committed to a Lieutenant. “They were from the Supplementary Militia, and required a great deal of management.” Did they so? Then, was it well to commit them to a boy of sixteen, just come from school? Should it not have been a man to have the command of such men? At twenty-one years of age no person in the world can be fit for a Lieutenant-Colonel. He has the absolute command of a thousand men. The comfort, the happiness, the morality, the backs of a thousand men depend upon his wisdom and integrity. A person to be intrusted with such a charge, ought to be sober, considerate, compassionate, and yet firm to execute justice. Where are these to be found united with the passions inseparable from youth? Besides, is it possible, that the other officers, captains old enough, perhaps, to be his father, and who have every fair claim to prior promotion, can cordially submit to the command, and, occasionally, to the reproof, of a boy of twenty-one? What would Mr. Adam say, if he had to plead before a judge of twenty-one years of age? Yet, the Lieut.-Colonel of a Regiment (for the Colonel never commands) has powers still greater than those of a judge. He has, in the course of a year, to decide upon the cases of, perhaps, two thousand offences. He has to judge of characters; to weigh the merits of candidates for promotion; his smile is encouragement, and his frown disgrace; it depends upon him, whether the soldier’s life be a pleasure or a curse. Is not all this too much for the age of twenty-one years?

      Every desertion from the army is a loss of fifty pounds to the country; and, how many of these losses must arise from the want of wisdom and experience in commanding officers?

      But, the cost, the bare cost, of officers who do not actually serve, is immense. The younger Sheridan, for instance, has, it is notorious, been living in and about town all his lifetime. Yet, he was, sometime ago, a captain in a regiment serving abroad, and will now, I believe, be found upon the half-pay list. A return of all the officers belonging to regiments abroad, not serving with those regiments, would give us a view of the extent of this intolerable abuse. If men give money, or render secret services, for their offices, to a kept mistress, how can it be expected, that any service should be performed by them to the public? They give their money, or render secret services, for the sake of getting the pay. When Colonel French gave his money to Mrs. Clarke, it was with a view of getting three or four times the sum out of the taxes that we pay. We were the payers for Mrs. Clarke’s service of plate; we paid for her landau; we paid for her trip to Worthing; we paid for her wine-glasses at a guinea a piece; we paid for her boxes at the Opera and the play-house; and French and Sandon and Dowler and Knight and the rest of the bribing crew were merely the channel through which the money passed from the taxed people to her.

      Oh! how many hundreds, how many thousands of the people, have suffered for her; she has stated, and no one has attempted to disprove her statement; she has stated in answer to the very judicious questions of Lord Folkestone, that she received in money from her keeper only 1,000l. a year; and that this was barely sufficient to defray the expense of servants’ wages and liveries; but, that the Duke told her, if she was clever, she need never want money. Twenty thousand a year was, perhaps, not sufficient to defray the amount of all her expenses. Here is 20l. a year taken, in taxes, from each of a thousand families. It is the maintenance of 645 labourers’ families at 12s. a week, the common wages of the South of Hampshire. It is equal to the poor-rates of about 50 parishes of England and Wales, taking those parishes upon an average. It is equal to the poor-rates of 66 parishes like this of Botley. It is equal to all the direct taxes, of every sort, of 21 or 22 parishes like this. First, the farmer is deprived, by these means, of a part of his comforts and conveniences; his house contains less of goods and displays less of hospitality; from him the deprivation descends to the labourer, whose scanty and coarse food, and want of raiment and fuel, produce, besides the pinching of hunger and cold, the miseries of disease, and which disease, the never-failing effect of hunger and filth, is spreading far and wide its baleful and hereditary effects. How many widows and other females, whose incomes admit of no nominal augmentation, have suffered, and are still suffering from this accursed system? Every penny paid to Mrs. Clarke is just so much taken out of the pockets of the people. All her “four or five men servants;” all her dashing carriages, all her wines, her music; all her endless luxuries, have been taken from the comforts of this suffering nation, as clearly as if the tax-gatherers had taken the money and paid it in to her housekeeper or her tradesmen. That which has been devoured by her crowd of footmen, waitingwomen, pimps, and bawds, would, if the system of corruption and profligacy had not existed, been left to augment the hospitality of gentlemen, the conveniences of tradesmen and farmers, and the loaf of labourers and journeymen; while those, her footmen, waitingwomen, pimps and bawds, would have been compelled to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow.

      Taxation, when excessive, must produce misery; and especially when the taxes are applied to the purposes of luxury. It is necessary, at this time, in particular, that the people should clearly perceive this truth. Suppose there to exist a community of a hundred persons, all of whom labour, in one way or another, usefully to the community. Let ten of them cease to labour, and let them live upon the labour of the other ninety; and the consequence must be, that the ninety must work one-tenth harder upon the same quantity of food, and raiment, and fuel, or that each will have one-tenth less than he used to have, of these necessaries of life. Hence a general decrease in productions, or a general increase of the miseries growing out of labour not sufficiently fed; hence the fall of some into utter inability to supply their wants; and hence the increase of the number of paupers in this country has kept an exact pace with the increase of the taxes, or, in other words, with the increase of the number of persons who are not engaged in productive labour.

      The immense sums received by Mrs. Clarke were not devoured by her. She did not consume more food than before she was the Duke’s kept mistress. But, she was enabled to keep a crowd of persons, of various descriptions, who, had they not been so maintained, must have laboured for their bread.

      This is a view of the subject of which the people should never, for one moment, lose sight. This is the way, in which they are directly affected by the hellish system, which has now been proved to exist. From this view of it, they will not, I trust, be diverted by any attempts to induce them to attach most importance to the meanness, or even the immorality, of the parties. These are quite sufficient to excite national disgust and hatred; but, the main thing is for the people to see the robberies, and to be able clearly to trace to these, and such like robberies, their own privations and miseries.

      Now is the time for the people to ask the revilers of Sir Francis Burdett, whether he was so very much to blame, when he told the Electors of Westminster, that no good was to be expected, till we could “tear out the leaves of the accursed Red Book.” Col. French, and Col. Knight, and Capt. Donovan, and Capt. Sandon, and Mr. Dowler, and the rest of the numerous petticoat-patronized crew, are all to be found in that Red Book, the leaves of which he wished to tear out. His voice will, I trust, now be heard by those who were before misled; if, indeed, there could be any such. I trust that now, the venal declaimers about “Jacobinism” will no longer be able to blind the understanding of any man, however simple that man may be. The man, who now affects to believe, that a deep-rooted system of corruption does not prevail, must be an arrant knave; and, of course, none but an arrant knave will affect to believe, that a radical reform of that system, and a speedy one too, is not necessary to the preservation of the throne, as well as of the remaining liberties of the people.

      But, in the mean time, and, indeed, as necessarily conducive to this reform, let the people bear in mind, that it is their money that has been sported with; that it was not Col. French’s money nor Mr. Dowler’s money that the Duke of York’s kept mistress took, and that was expended upon her footmen, chariots, musicians, singers, players, dancers, parasites, pimps, and bawds, but in the end, the money of the people. This is the important truth for them to keep in view. Let every father of a family consider how much less, from this cause, he will have to bequeath to his children. When those, who formerly lived in affluence from the rent of their estates, reflect how they have been obliged to dismiss servant after servant; sell horse after horse; abridge pot after pot of the ale that formerly gladdened the heart of the comer; aye, and to cut down tree after