A smile[5] arose on Cobbett’s face as the terms of this dread sentence were unfolded,--a sentence which must needs either crush its victim into irrevocable ruin, or so press down upon an unknown and unsuspected buoyancy, as to bring upon its authors a recoil from the effects of which they would never escape. From that hour, the sword which had been so near laying by to rust, had its blade new tempered, whilst the scabbard was clean cast away for ever. FOOTNOTES [1] Augustus de Morgan gives a story which he had from Francis Place. Place was, with others, advising Cobbett as to the proper line of defence. “Said Place, ‘You must put in the letters you have received from Ministers, Members of the Commons, from the Speaker downwards, about your _Register_, and their wish to have subjects noted. You must then ask the jury whether a person so addressed must be considered as a common sower of sedition, &c. You will be acquitted; nay, if your intention should get about, very likely they will manage to stop proceedings.’ Cobbett was too much disturbed to listen; he walked about the room, ejaculating, ‘D---- the prison!’ and the like. He had not the sense to follow the advice, and was convicted.” _Vide_ “Budget of Paradoxes,” p. 119. [2] Robert Huish, who is by no means favourably disposed towards Cobbett, says upon this point, “The truth was on Cobbett’s side, as every one can substantiate who had ever the misfortune to reside in the place where the German mercenaries were quartered.” [3] “The use which Sir Vicary Gibbs generally made of his power of issuing _ex officio_ informations was to lay an information against the offending writers, but not to proceed to trial, exacting a promise from them that, if he did not pursue it, they would write nothing offensive to the Government, and thus holding it _in terrorem_ over their heads.”--Andrews’s “British Journalism,” ii. 57. [4] This omitting to write for two or three weeks, together with the rumoured dropping of the _Register_, created tremendous sensation among the scribbling fraternity. The _Morning Chronicle_ returned to Cobbett all the warm feelings which Perry had received from him. The _Examiner_, on the other hand, was mercilessly unjust. That vigorous paper was then in its early priggish days, and could brook no rivalry. Leigh Hunt looked with contempt upon all the set of Cobbetts and Cochranes, as not Reformists after his sort, and he now proceeded to attack Cobbett violently for his timidity, and for his whining about being torn from his home, &c.; adding that politicians must be prepared to endanger individual freedom for the sake of the general good. But then the “spirit of martyrdom had been inculcated” in the Hunts from the very cradle.