war against the landowners and stockjobbers in England as he had done against the democrats in the United States.
To have left the Tories merely for the Whigs would in no way have expressed the conviction which was thus forced on his mind. From the point of view at which he surveyed the social condition of his country, "Caesar and Pompey were very much alike, specially Pompey." He therefore went straight over to the Radicals, and allied himself with their leaders, Major Cartwright and Sir Francis Burdett. Animated by his new ideas, the Weekly Register gradually became an enormous power in the country. All parties read it: it was so hot, spicy, and invigorating. Statesmen felt the pepper fall on their jaded consciences, and enjoyed the titillation rather than otherwise. The fashionable world, ever craving for scandal, delighted in its personalities, and entered with as much zest into the way its Editor riveted a nickname on one of his foes as a pack of dirty urchins would in hunting a poor cur with an old tin kettle tied to its tail. To people of quality he was only a blind Samson who every week made sport of them; to the suffering people he was a veritable Hercules, who had undertaken the prodigious task of cleansing the Augean stables of the British Constitution from all their foulness and corruption. He told the masses of his countrymen—its bankrupt traders and farmers, its starving artisans and labourers—that the one thing needful was Parliamentary Reform. He stretched the liberty of plain speaking to the utmost point, and beat the British Government in their endeavours to put him down.
But it was a life-long fight before he succeeded. At first he was nearly crushed. In July 1809 there was a mutiny among the militiamen at Ely. Four squadrons of German cavalry stationed at Bury were sent for, the mutiny suppressed, and the ringleaders sentenced to 500 lashes each, Cobbett's national feeling was aroused, and he wrote a strong article in his Register, making a great point of Englishmen being flogged in their own country by foreigners. He was at once prosecuted, and sentenced to pay a fine of £1000 to the king, and to suffer two years' imprisonment! to give security for his good behaviour for seven years, himself in £3000, and two sureties in £1000 each!
It was a tremendous blow. Cobbett staggered, reeled, and, as
