“I HAVE ALWAYS SHOWN MY ENMITY TO EVERY SPECIES OF PUBLIC FRAUD OR ROBBERY.” Seven years of army-life had completed the drill of William Cobbett. Master of himself, in every sense of the word, his campaign was now to begin. Putting off his red-coat, of which he had been proud enough withal, he entered upon the last stage of that educational process which, sooner or later, was to bear some fruit. He had studied men in the world of books, and he had seen something of them in the circumscribed arena of one class, viz. the military. But of mankind as a whole he knew almost nothing: and he would blunder on, for long years, before getting that sort of wisdom. However, he came back from Nova Scotia with two closely-linked ideas uppermost in his mind--an intense affection for the soldiery and for the classes from which they were drawn, and the deepest disgust at the peculation which added to their natural privations. He had never read the newspapers, and was ignorant of politics; he did not know that the public service was at that period eaten into by corruption as far up as the Treasury Bench, and that the specimens of venality that he had witnessed were only examples of a system that pervaded all classes of officialism. In point of fact, he did not know that returning to England and obtaining his discharge, with the determination to expose peculation, he had set his foot upon a track which would in after-years give him the distinction of having mainly contributed to the disgrace, the utter confusion, of “the race that plunder the people.” Beyond all, he did not know that, far from getting any credit from any soul upon earth, the sure reward for raking up the misdeeds of the “public plunderers” was contumely and malignity to the bitterest degree. * * * * * The first thing, of course, which Cobbett attended to upon reaching England in December, 1791, was his love affair with ANN REID. He found her in service, with his money unbroken; and “admiration of her conduct, and self-gratulation on this indubitable proof of the soundness of my own judgment, were now added to my love of her beautiful person.” So that matter was settled, from that moment, and on the 5th of February, 1792, they were married at Woolwich. They appear to have lived in London for a few weeks. Here is one anecdote of the period--