have several interesting articles, and they all must come in. I shall touch the Middlesex election; the miscreants shall not escape.… If there be anything worth relating, pray give me a line upon it. My address is at Mr. Harris’s china warehouse, Southampton. D---- the china ware! William was out walking with me by the beach yesterday morning, and after a long and pensive silence, he said, ‘Pa, why do you have a china-shop in your house?’ He is by no means reconciled to the crockery-ware yet.…” This period (the summer and autumn of 1804) is also to be noted as that during which Mr. Cobbett’s political opinions underwent a change. Much twaddle has been written and uttered, during the last seventy years, upon this celebrated “change.” The present biographer, heedless of all that has been said, does not intend to argue out any calumnies, from beginning to end of the story; but it is necessary here to note the first appearance of the change in question, because the selection from the correspondence, which will now be placed before the reader, makes occasional reference to Mr. Cobbett’s growing animosity to “the race that plunder the people,” to the “court-sycophants, parasites, pensioners, bribed senators, directors, contractors, jobbers, hireling lords, and ministers of state,” which, he was now beginning to discover, were not the people of England, in the strict sense of the word. He had been leading the opposition to Mr. Pitt for a year or two past, and was now for the first time showing an inclination to break altogether from the shackles of party. During his absence, Mr. Wright acted as sub-editor of the _Register_; and it will be seen that even his labours could not have been light. Nearly every letter to him, enclosing copy for the _Register_, implores him to read the MS. carefully, and “make corrections as to grammar or phraseology, and supply omissions; for I cannot read a word of it.” [Wm. C. to J. Wright.] … “I thank you for sending the selection of newspapers. They afford me excellent matter for comment. I think I have posed them about the car project.[5] They know not what to say. There are some very good things in the _Chronicle_ upon this subject. The little letter in Wednesday’s paper is delicious. The Methodist meeting[6] is not less so. That’s the tone to take. I cannot enough abhor the wretches who would revive, at this critical moment, the hideous cry of Jacobinism. This is a subject upon which the selfish dogs ought to be incessant lashed, till all the nation hates them--and the time is most proper for it. I wish you would endeavour to inculcate this notion with all whom you know. Nothing would tend more to the subjugation of the country than the revival of this most mischievous cry. I shall not cease my endeavours; but do you use yours also.