This is going to be my first blog post of this year and of course it had to be a monster of a post - my seminar paper about William Cobbett the cantankerous old devil that thought it would be fun to ride around the country to see the relationship between land owners and the labourers. Hope you enjoy!
Context:
England benefitted greatly from the French revolution, this is because the Napoleonic War was a very costly time and it saw the creation of the “Income Tax” in 1799 to help pay for the war. The Battle of Waterloo was eventually won by the Seventh Coalition (England, Nassau, Prussia, Brunswick, Hanover and United Netherlands), and managed to defeat the leader Napoleon Bonaparte and after this the British Navy had gained total naval power – they now controlled the waterways that gave them the means to block off the French trade routes, allowing the British trade to grow.
Britain now experienced an economic boom thanks to the trans-Atlantic triangular trading of cotton, sugar and slaves (slavery was ultimately abolished in 1833 thanks to William Wilberforce and the Anti-Slavery Society). Furthermore, this time period also saw Scotland and Ireland being joined with England, consolidated by two separate “Acts of Union” one in 1707 for Scotland and the second in 1801 with Ireland, which together formed the United Kingdom. The Industrial Revolution brought about a new age of technology and this meant that many farm workers were forced off their land and made to move into cities such as Manchester to find work in these new pollution spewing factories. Manchester eventually became the centre of the Industrial Revolution – its population was rapidly increasing and this was because many former farm labourers were looking for work.
This brought about the Corn Laws. The Corn Laws were in effect from 1815 – 1846 and the laws were brought in to try and maintain the agricultural industry – it planted a gigantic import tariff on any cheap corn shipped from abroad, which meant that people would want to buy British home grown instead. It was during this period when William Cobbett wrote Rural Rides.
The people were growing increasingly restless due to the state of the country and this lead to the public calling for radical Parliamentary Reform – Cobbett, who was a huge radical, supported such campaigns and ended up in prison. Parliament was getting worried for any more outbreaks of revolution or rebellion so the Parliamentary Reform Act in 1832 was introduced – this however was more of a smoothing over than a solution.
Charles Dickens, William Cobbett and Rural Rides:
William Cobbett was born 1763 and grew up in the countryside. Cobbett worked and grew up as a farm labourer until he was 20 years old and then he went off and joined the army for 15 years. While in the army he was branded a bit bad news when he exposed a thief of stealing resources and so he fled to France and taught English refugees. Cobbett pioneered his own newspaper entitled the Political Register, which was distinctly conservative until he moved to a more radical stance as the years progressed and this is what lead to him calling for Parliamentary Reform and landed him in jail because of it. After being in jail, Cobbett’s enthusiasm and resolve was now stronger than ever, so much so that he even began campaigning against newspaper tax (which was essentially a tax on the news) and also bringing attention to freedom of speech.
The News tax had become a problem for all newspapers because the price on them skyrocketed which meant that only the more affluent people that could afford them could read them – which meant they were probably trying to freeze Cobbett out of the news market. From this introduction to Cobbett I think it’s pretty clear to see what motivates him to force reform and even his inspiration for Rural Rides.
William Cobbett was constantly angry with Parliament due to the constant flow of decisions being made without any real concern or insight into the rural lives that it was having a profound impact on. Cobbett despised the landowners that had turned their back on the community and environment that he himself grew up in, this can be seen through how he explains the existence of the farm workers as walking skeletons. One of the key themes present throughout Rural Rides is arguably a huge feeling of nostalgia – he talks about the people planting different kinds of trees (pine trees) means that they are “destroying the beauty of the estate”. As mentioned earlier Cobbett wholeheartedly believed that these landlords and landowners had no idea about the rural areas and were slowly destroying the culture that Cobbett found so familiar and safe. This is where we can see hints of nostalgia – like when you go back to a place you used to know and find that it has been altered radically.
When it comes to Cobbett, it’s always beneficial to mention Charles Dickens; though the two had their differences they were both campaigning for pretty much the same thing. That being said, Dickens was far more successful in his campaigning, he managed to make himself more approachable to the middle-classes – Dickens did attack the establishment in his famous novel “Bleak House” as he describes it as a sort of thick fog, which paints a rather macabre picture.
Cobbett and Dickens go hand in hand when it comes to their thoughts about the government being infatuated with industry and profit – here Dickens focuses primarily on the people who are living in urban areas (as opposed to Cobbett who focuses on rural) and how the industrial revolution has lead to many lives being ruined; the machines and factories produce far too much pollution so people would fall ill, places were overcrowded, poverty was rife and the poor were being majorly exploited and this was all going on within the key cities of the time so Manchester and London for example would have borderline un-inhabitable.
Jean Jacques Rousseau and Cobbett
Rousseau was born 28 June 1712 in Geneva. He was a philosopher, writer, and the driving force behind the period known as 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy had a profound impact on the French and he pretty much influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political and educational thought.
Rousseau and Cobbett had a surprising amount of equal ground when it came to their ideas, insofar as the idea of natural beauty which Rousseau alludes to in his writing primarily when he talks about the statue of man being slowly eroded by change until it is unrecognisable. This is related to how Cobbett feels that things would have been perfectly fine if the industrial revolution never happened and we allowed things to play out according to nature, not to go and make all these abhorrent machines. That being said Cobbett seems like he would be content with his success while a man like Rousseau would have wanted more and more, for example he detest the idea of any kind of land ownership so it makes sense that he would want to ban land ownership.
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