Not the least important contribution to the cause of the people, on the part of Mr. Cobbett, was his “History of the Reformation.” A curiosity in literature; a clumsy, hastily-drawn indictment; the sport of Protestant controversialists; the work yet served a noble purpose. The scale of misrepresentation and calumny had been too long on one side, and there wanted a thumping weight to restore the balance. And when the world discovered that the story of the Reformation in England had its very dark as well as its very bright side: when people learned what utterly selfish ends it had promoted: the world took a long step forward; stepped up to scrutinize it closely. And if the world found that the rough rude hand of this literary pre-raphaelite had brought some features into disgusting prominence, it was no more than was to be expected, sooner or later. The mere controversy, concerning the mutual recriminations of Papists and Protestants, and concerning their cutting of each other’s throats, is nothing. All that will be going on when the New Zealander comes. But the political nature of that great convulsion, and its important social results, particularly with regard to the shameless transfer of property into the hands of court-favourites, had need to be shown up with a relentless hand. The occasion, of this “History of the Reformation” being projected, was the rapidly-growing feeling on the subject of Emancipation. Mr. Cobbett had long proclaimed equality of political rights for the Catholic, the Unitarian, and the Jew; and regarded them as oppressed people, as long as their theological disabilities remained.[4] We laugh now-a-days, at such fears as then existed concerning the removal of these disabilities; but we are out of the wood; and the few persons of superior mental stature who, in those times, persisted in declaring to the cowards beneath them, that there was more safety in moving on, than in standing still, had to make their voices heard above a fearful din, of incrimination, and calumny, and petty party strifes. So, by the time that the cause of Emancipation had taken hold of the public mind: when the press, at last, took it up warmly, and O’Connell was leading the agitation in Ireland: Cobbett had lashed himself into a perfect fury, toward the opponents of religious equality, and toward the inheritors of the Church domains. The ease-loving character of the parsons of his day, the growth of a plutocracy, and the debased condition of the poor: spake too ominously of national decadence. The increasing perils of the country, with all parties trying, at last, to propitiate the Parliamentary Reformers at the same time that they had mortal dread of them, kept his mind at fever-heat; and Mr. Cobbett was less than ever disposed to stay his voice or his pen, when conviction had once seized him. He had nothing to gain, and nothing to lose, by expressing his convictions. Given a fight, he was certain to be seen in the thickest of it.