to be feared from the cowardice of politicians; a few votes in the House of Commons are worth a province: so that while the Cape of Good Hope is overrun by savages, for want of sufficient garrisons, and the troops at Cape Town are almost deprived of the benefit of divine worship, from the deficient supply of a Church Establishment, a frigate and a Lord Commissioner are yielded at the first breath, suggesting disaffection at the head quarters of Mr. Papineau. We shall take the liberty of supposing that the weakness of their rulers does not influence the British public at large-that they will throw healthy blood into the representative system of that British territory across the Atlantic, and leave Mr. Papineau in a minority, and Fecialis' without a salary. We hope to see the British capitalist also as active in setting up nations, as he has been eager to contribute to their overthrow. Much gold is not wanted in the present undertaking; fire and water are mighty elements to clear forests and work timber-framing mills; the progress of wealth, founded on labour and an abundant soil, in an untaxed country, and in neighbourhoods of simple manners, is certain-certain in its returns for the outlay of capital,-certain in the building up houses for labourers who take to Canada only their personal exertions. They have only to proceed on a cheerful understanding with the genius of the place: at the North Pole snow and ice, as building materials, were found an efficient substitute for the masonry of more genial climates; and in Canada the stout timber wall makes as comfortable a homestead as brick-work and stucco, or what is more costly in the fabric of our modish villas. There is a noble field for philanthropy, a wide area for speculation, a certain home and sufficient fortune for all who are contented to seek the reward of labour in the comfort and happiness of their families. The savage of the woods has disappeared from the shores of the Atlantic; the posterity of the tenants of the German forests, having spread over Europe their free institutions, and advanced civilization there to its height, are progressing westwardfreedom in their hearts, strength in their arm: who shall resist ?how shall happiness elude their search, or wealth escape from their exertions? WILLIAM COBBETT. (FROM A CORESPONDENT.) WE had always intended a criticism on Cobbett, but this should not have been an epitaph. Light lie the earth upon him, and lighter be the monument of criticism! If the synod critical heap mountains upon him, they will quake with his efforts to resist, even in the grave, impertinence and vain pretension. Besides, Cobbett has buried himself long ago, if Peter Porcupine' ever meant William Cobbett.' · We cannot even venture to weave a pall for the occasion, lest we should hear his voice exclaiming that it is not black enough; for he would contrast it with Castlereagh and the Six Acts,' the Manchester massacre,' the bloody old "Times," and the hell-featured' object of his latest attack. We are, moreover, scarcely assured that he is really gone a ride among the Sussex cottages, or an acre of Indian corn, a Hampshire farm, or even a gridiron, will recall him among all the public life that is so busy around us, and that is all nothing without the shadow that used to attach to them. William Cobbett a shadow! well, that's a pretty particular d-d lie, I guess,' exclaims a voice from the Hudson. True, he had more blood' than the Guillotine, more hell' than the Montgomery-Satan; but still what would he have been if Ministers had always been honest, Kings' speeches grammatical, the 'Times' gentlemanly and consistent, and the Manchester people as sleek and as well to do as the Manchester cottons, or the son of the cotton-spinner?' He did hang upon these particulars of bad government, and reposed upon his Hampshire farming, and sample corn, and his Grammar, and every thing he had done,— aye, as a shadow-we are tenacious, you shall have it-or the gridiron. Nay, we insist on it, no corporal is more a slave to his drill than Cobbett to his topics and himself. Some writers have attempted, or will attempt, to define or circumscribe the attributes of Cobbett, but let them beware: could they succeed in picturing a Sancho Panza without the knight-companion, the valorous Don Quixotte? could they extol a bass without giving us the air? Oh, ye doctrinaires! Vanity-all is vanity! Ye may sift and sort, and sort and sift, but when will you collect the elements of character? Be modest, and avow that, without such and such occurrences, you know not how the Weekly Register' would have lived half a century of weeks. And with such and such things happening, the gentlemanly Castlereagh succeeded by the polite Peel, and the sharp Canning by the peppery Stanley, and the Manchester massacre by the uprooting of our rural population and farming wealth, and the bloody old Times' by the 'weathercock journal,'-how can Cobbett be spared? Ye morning journals, increase your double sheet by advertisements; ye Monthlies, swell your wrapper with puffs; when will you gain a character like the Weekly Register,' which never puffed but ' ourselves,'-never was tempted by the vulgar egotism of the common advertisement? And, with all your attempts, what do you achieve? to bandy explanation and contradiction from day to day, or month to month, with our contemporary,' until your readers begin to think you may be all wrong. Cobbett had no such shuttlecock game in hand. Swear by my gridiron! do you think that it has been there since 1819 for you to grin through? Now who could touch up" Heddekushun" like me?" And so we read and tremble, and through the loopholes of terrible expressions we see William Cobbett studying the humanities, or tending his farm, until another week call him forth to put the hook in the nose of the monster, the many-headed public. But this is holy ground. When we read such precepts as we remember with delight on domestic duties, and know they were backed by so exemplary practice, we regret that such a man should ever have been taken away from those high duties to earn the cruel retaliation of our late (Heaven grant that it have passed away!) dynasty of oligarchists, and to deal out vengeance at those publishing periods. If for cruel insults offered to those dear relations Cobbett's periodical invective have been called forth; if'! has he not been cruelly attacked in those dear and holy interests, and do the Doctrinaires discover that Cobbett's writings had the qualities of (see Times,' June 20, 1835) coarseness, brutality, and tedious repetition? Why, against such tyrants and against their successors, or against all governments, if all balance between cowardice and cruelty, what could he utter, but that they were cruel and cowardly and the vilest of their race; how could he be coarse and brutal against such monsters who wield a giant's power to do wrong? How many an injured father and husband have pined in the impotency of their revenge, and died in the hope of meeting their oppressor in more equal field, and, like Ugolino (of Dante), gnawing the skull of the detested in their imagined hell! And those who have not waited for the posthumous consummation of revenge, what have they done? they have unseated kings, and sat on their thrones-aye, conquerors have grown out of the ranks' before now. Our soldier lived in the age of press-prosecutions and Weekly Registers: has he not wielded his weapon well? One of the race of the Tomkinses, who have to do' for their families, did he not boldly step up from his hearth at the call of humanity? And that prosecution which followed, and that fine which was exacted and paid-one thousand pounds from a journalist who did not live upon advertisements, one thousand pounds from a father of a family of small children, with a wife on the puerperal crisis, one thousand pounds and his personal liberty from a man beginning life, and only not so borne down with the hard task of building up his house in this taxed country as not to hear unmoved the cries of the outraged militia-men flogged by, or under the surveillance of, our foreign mercenaries! If there be poetry in the passions, was there none in Cobbett's vindictiveness? Shall servile editors and simpering critics wonder at the Register and its plain-speaking? What martyr to a passion is nice in choosing his attitude, or hesitates to take up what weapon is at hand? Detestable is the partisan's faint praise to a buried rival!-outrageous all that has appeared in the Times' and its followers on this subject since the melancholy event! This is not intended as criticism, it is sympathy with the spirit of Cobbett; may it be near us, in its most terrible attitude, if ever, like him, I have cause to speak the vengeance of a man. But shall it ever happen again that an Englishman at home shall suffer from systems of government adapted to the meridian of Persia ?—if so, the English language must strain itself for expression of such injuries. THE ROEBUCK PAMPHLETS. LARGER and more rapid grow the daily strides which are making towards that desirable goal-free and untaxed knowledge. The iniquitous laws which have so long impeded the free circulation o. opinion, without which human progression lies stagnant, are daily becoming more powerless; long have they been objects of hatred to the people, but that hatred is fast changing into contempt. The ruling Whigs, like the ruling Tories, are fond of such laws, are determined not to destroy them, and will only suffer them to become obsolete when they cannot maintain them longer; when the majority of the nation make known their determination to resist them, to do battle against knowledge taxes,' even as Hampden resisted shipmoney. I am not an advocate of law-breaking in general; I think it far better to alter a law by the force of opinion, than to break it by the force of will. But in this case a most barbarous and unbearable tyranny is exerted. The means of knowledge, the means of instruction, the means of understanding the very laws themselves, and the means of expressing opinion, all are alike denied, with stupidity equalled in nothing but wickedness. A man with a starving body, if he take food to appease the pangs of hunger, even though that food be the property of another, is not held criminal; the laws against theft were not intended to apply to such cases, and if they had been so intended, common sense would have negatived them and even thus the common sense of the nation negatives the laws which tend to starve the human mind. Laws made expressly to prevent the dissemination of opinion are ever a blighting mischief, tending to defeat the progress of truth; they are utterly untenable by any reasoning process, and the friends of freedom and improvement, are justified in warring upon them as they would war on pirates. No quarter should be given to an enemy who denies his adversary the freedom of speech, and cuts out his tongue for talking. The Inquisition could not exceed this atrocity. : The unstamped press have fought the battle, as all battles of the kind are fought by the public, with untiring purpose. Their name is legion, for they are many.' The public never tires-ot any really good thing. The matter published by the unstamped press has assuredly not been distinguished so much by philosophical disquisition as by furious resistance; but what then? It is not while the battle for freedom is raging that the combatants draw plans for future public edifices. The speech which is intended to arouse the free-born warrior to the lion-mood, is not as the debate of the council-chamber. When it may be definitely settled that opinion shall be free, it will be time enough for opinion to throw off the helm and cuirass of the warrior, and don the flowing robe of the philosopher. When we have won our land fairly, we will debate how to cultivate it in the best manner. Time was that William Cobbett was held to be a prophet by large numbers of people, because he was the first in the field to fight the opinion-battles of the poor man; but as intellect expanded, and knowledge advanced, it is remarkable that some of the keenest criticisers of his unphilosophic effusions were the writers of the unstamped press. They detected and followed him up, exposing the errors in his writings which militated against the welfare of the people, and combated the sensual doctrine he advocated, of making beer, bread, and bacon, the acme of a labourer's longings in return for hard labour. Simultaneous with the period of his decease appeared the first of a new series of pamphlets, edited by John Arthur Roebuck, M.P., having for their object the instruction of the people on all subjects of political and social importance; and at the same time, the exposure of the machinations of their open enemies and false friends. If these pamphlets be carried on in the same spirit with which they have been commenced, they will play no mean part in the elevation of a people second to none on the round globe for their capabilities, and only hitherto kept back because their rulers conceived themselves interested in their ignorance. My opinion of the powers of J. A. Roebuck has been given before. There are not wanting those who decry him as an adventurer,' ready to side with any party for the sake of ambition; as one not to be trusted; one who will make of the people a ladder, and who, having climbed on their shoulders to power, will forthwith kick them away. It is a most detestable spirit which so commonly seeks to decry superior ability; which seeks the miserable equality of pulling others down to its own level, instead of raising itself to theirs: but let the objectors have the benefit of their argument, and what does it amount to? The word adventurer,' in their vocabulary, means a man who without riches contrives to attain influence over his fellows. Riches are in their estimation the only security for honesty; they hold them to be a sort of bail for good behaviour, or, as they phrase it, 'respectability.' There certainly have been examples enough of poor men rising to eminence by advocating the cause of the poor, and then betraying them by selling their political freedom. William Pitt, and Edmund Burke, and George Canning, all began with what is called opposition,' and ended with being time-servers. But rich men also have done this, as witness one Francis Burdett, in our own times. There are other 6 6 |