Read William Cobbett biography
If the people of Sheffield could only receive a tenth part of what their knives sell for by retail in America, Sheffield might pave its streets with silver.
William Cobbett, Rural Rides, (1830). |
Men of integrity are generally pretty obstinate, in adhering to an opinion once adopted.
William CobbettProtestations of impartiality I shall make none. Theyare always useless and are besides perfect nonsense, when used bya news-monger.
William CobbettAll Middlesex is ugly, notwithstanding the millions upon millionswhichit iscontinuallysucking up fromtherestof the kingdom.
William CobbettDEAL is a most villainous place. It is full of filthy-looking people.Great desolationof abomination has beengoing on here.
William CobbettThe town of GUILDFORD, which (taken with its environs) I, who have seen so many, many towns, think the prettiest, and, taken all together, the most agreeable and most happy-looking, that I ever saw in my life.
William CobbettWESTBURY, a nasty odious rotten-borough, a really rotten place.
William CobbettFrom a very earlyage, I had imbibed the opinion, that it was every man's duty to do all that lay in his power to leave his countryas good as he had found it.
William CobbettHowever roguish a man may be, he always loves to deal with an honest man.
William CobbettNothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt.
William CobbettI have always said, that, without commerce...this island could not possibly continue to be great...but, it is the system of rendering every thing commercial; of making merchants and bankers into Lords; of making a set of fund-dealers the distributors of honours and rewards...it is this system that I reprobate.
William CobbettI cannot...perceive any ground for hoping that any practical good would, while the funding system exists in its present extent, result from the adoption of any of those projects, which have professed to have in view what is called Parliamentary Reform...when the funding system, from whatever cause, shall cease to operate upon civil and political liberty, there will be no need of projects for parliamentary reform. The parliament will, as far as shall be necessary, then reform itself.
William CobbettThe very hirelings of the press, whose trade it is to buoy up the spirits of the people ... have uttered falsehoods so long, they have played off so many tricks, that their budget seems, at last, to be quite empty.
William CobbettHaving still in my recollection so many excellent men, to whose grandfathers, upon the same spots, my grandfather had yielded cheerful obedience and reverence, it is not without sincere sorrow that I have beheld many of the sons of these men driven from their fathers' mansions, or holding them as little better than tenants or stewards, while the swarms of Placemen, Pensioners, Contractors, and Nabobs...have usurped a large part of the soil.
William CobbettIt is no small mischief to a boy, that many of the best years of his life should be devoted to the learning of what can never be of any real use to any human being. His mind is necessarily rendered frivolous and superficial by the long habit of attaching importance to words instead of things; to sound instead of sense.
William CobbettTo suppose such a thing possible as a society, in which men, who are able and willing to work, cannot support their families, and ought, with a great part of the women, to be compelled to lead a life of celibacy, for fear of having children to be starved; to suppose such a thing possible is monstrous.
William CobbettBut what is to be the fate of the great wen of all? The monster, called, by the silly coxcombs of the press, "the metropolis of the empire"?
William CobbettBut I do not remember ever having seen a newspaper in the house; and, most certainly, that privation did not render us less industrious, happy, or free.
William CobbettMen of integrity are generally pretty obstinate in adhering to an opinion once adopted.
William CobbettI would have these good people to recollect, that the laws of this country hold out to foreigners an offer of all that liberty of the press which Americans enjoy, and that, if this liberty be abridged, by whatever means it may be done, the laws and the constitution, and all together, is a mere cheat; a snare to catch the credulous and enthusiastic of every other nation; a downright imposition on the world.
William CobbettGrammar, perfectly understood, enables us, not only to express our meaning fully and clearly, but so to express it as to enable us to defy the ingenuity of man to give to our words any other meaning than that which we ourselves intend them to express.
William CobbettNouns of number, or multitude, such as Mob, Parliament, Rabble, House of Commons, Regiment, Court of King's Bench, Den of Thieves, and the like.
William CobbettSit down to write what you have thought, and not to think what you shall write.
William CobbettA full belly to the labourer was, in my opinion, the foundation of public morals and the only source of real public peace.
William CobbettI view tea drinking as a destroyer of health, an enfeebler of the frame, an en-genderer of effeminancy and laziness, a debaucher of youth and maker of misery for old age. Thus he makes that miserable progress towards that death which he finds ten or fifteen years sooner than he would have found it if he had made his wife brew beer instead of making tea.
William Cobbett