“This is the most famous place in all England for coursing. I was here, at this very inn, with a party eighteen years ago; and the landlord, who is still the same, recognized me as soon as he saw me. There were forty brace of greyhounds taken out into the field on one of the days, and every brace had one course, and some of them _two_. The ground is the finest in the world: from two to three miles for the hare to run to cover, and not a stone, nor a bush, nor a hillock. It was here proved to me that the hare is by far the swiftest of all English animals; for I saw three hares in one day _run away_ from the dogs. To give dog and hare a fair trial, there should be but _one_ dog; then, if that dog got so close as to compel the hare _to turn_, that would be a proof that the dog ran fastest. When the dog, or dogs, never get near enough to the hare to induce her to turn, she is said, and very justly, to run away from them; and, as I saw three hares do this in one day, I conclude that the hare is the swifter animal of the two.” [6] The first genuine piece of criticism upon Cobbett’s writings, which had any real talent, was an article by Francis Jeffery in the _Edinburgh Review_ for July, 1807. But it had the same conspicuous failure which attended all partisan writers, and Whigs above all, in their efforts to define political consistency. This article furnished the material out of which all subsequent attacks upon Cobbett’s alleged “tergiversation” would seem to have been founded. While, however, there was abundant material for comparison, there was no impugning the justness of his reasons for a change of views; nor, indeed, was any attempt made to do so. Both Jeffery and his copiers studiously avoided arguing out Cobbett’s conclusions. It was all-sufficient, in the eye of a party writer, to wreck a man’s reputation who had once openly forsaken a cause. And yet, the reviewer, near the opening of his article, says the _Register_ “can only be acceptable to men of some vigour of intellect, and some independence of principle.” That was the very root of the matter. Imagine the _Edinburgh_ of that day being acceptable to men of any independence of principle! The very number in question has an article on Catholic Relief, which not only contains sentiments differing from Jeffery’s, but the very opposite to those enunciated by the same review only three years before. But there was one leading difference between the Whig writer and Mr. Cobbett--they were place-hunters and he was not, and no awkward “comparisons” could wipe out this notorious fact. [7] “An Appeal to the Public and a Farewell Address to the British Army, by Brevet-Major Hogan, who Resigned his Commission in consequence of the Treatment he experienced from the Duke of York, and of the System that prevails in the Army respecting Promotion” (London, 1808).