then so filled with the importance of the subject that Paine's prescience seemed to him wonderful. Words were not strong enough to describe his wisdom. He was the enlightener of the human race, the immortal Thomas Paine!
But Cobbett's enthusiasm underlay a most practical nature. His thoughts were always turned into deeds as quickly as may be. The great Englishman must not lie and rot in a foreign land: his bones must rest in his native soil, he must have a public funeral, he must be carried to his grave amidst twenty wagon-loads of flowers. Accordingly Cobbett, having had the bones exhumed, brought them across the Atlantic, and landed at Liverpool with the sacred relics in a wooden box!
But he soon found that he had committed an anachronism. The majority of Englishmen, especially the Radicals, rather prided themselves on a contempt for such things. A living fox, they thought, was better than a dead lion. To propose the worship of relics to men whose notions were all based on the idea of utility is another proof, if such were wanting, that Cobbett's Radicalism was founded on quite other grounds to those of his contemporaries.
Of course, the appearance of the relics produced a storm of ridicule; but Cobbett braved it, and if any one mockingly asked him what had become of the old Quaker's bones, he referred to them as a priceless treasure, to which he intended at some future day to pay signal honour.
When he left England his affairs were inextricably involved. His return, therefore, brought him a shoal of lawsuits. But his courage and energy were inexhaustible. He dared to go, on one occasion, and argue in his own cause, with Brougham for his adversary, in the Court of King's Bench, and, what was more, as good as beat him, for the plaintiff had asked for £3000, and tlhe jury only gave him 40s.!
He was now more entirely than ever a political man, and felt that his natural bourn was the House of Commons. He accordingly called upon the Reformers of England, Scotland, Ireland to subscribe £5000 in order that he might be sent to Parliament. He stood for Coventry early in 1820, but the opposition was so powerful that on the fourth day of the election he retired from the contest.
