Buckinghamshire, and in Berwickshire, keeping the country districts for more than eighteen months in terror.
Cobbett could scarcely contain himself when he thought of the unhappy, hopeless state of the class from whence he sprang, and the more so when he compared it with the condition of the small French agriculturists, so wonderfully altered by the Revolution. He refused as he always had done, to be quiet, and his articles were spoken of in the House of Commons as seditious. Six months elapsed and the Government determined to indict him for seditious libel Denman, Gurney, Wightman, and Maule, all of whom afterwards rose to the Bench, were retained for the Crown; Cobbett, single handed, entered the lists against them.
All through the trial he insisted on identifying himself in the most complete way with his unhappy brethren. His designation in the indictment had been "William Cobbett, labourer." Never, therefore, did he allow the Attorney-General to mention his name without obliging him to add to it the title, labourer. The speech he made in his defence took six hours, but the argument was simply the tu quoque one, and went to prove that the Whigs had completely destroyed their right to bring such a charge against him, since they had allowed their own adherents to utter things far more seditious. It was throughout an appeal to the political prejudices of at least a portion of the jury, a proceeding not unfair in a political trial where a man is his own defender. It was completely successful, for the jury were equally divided in their verdict, and had to be discharged.
Cobbett's victory concluded the era of State press prosecutions. But his animosity to the Whigs was implacable. He passed his days in traversing the country and pouring out his maledictions upon them. His great power was in the North, and here he spent most of his time in giving political lectures. At the general election in 1832 he was nominated a candidate both for Manchester and Oldham. At Manchester he stood lowest on the poll, but he was returned for Oldham in company with his friend Mr Fielden.
Cobbett's efforts to get into Parliament had been like those of the valiant man that Christian saw in the Interpreter's house. "Set down my name, sir," he said to the British public; "the
