William Cobbett: A Biography in Two Volumes, Vol. 2Smith, Edward
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William Cobbett: A Biography in Two Volumes, Vol. 2
Smith, Edward
Cobbett, William 1763-1835
“Whatever the pride of rank, of riches, or of scholarship, may
have induced some men to believe, or to affect to believe,
the real strength and all the resources of a country ever
have sprung, and ever must spring, from the _labour_ of its
people, and hence it is, that this nation, which is so small
in numbers, and so poor in climate and soil compared with many
others, has, for many ages, been the most powerful nation in
the world: it is the most industrious, the most laborious,
and, therefore, the most powerful. Elegant dresses, superb
furniture, stately buildings, fine roads and canals, fleet
horses and carriages, numerous and stout ships, warehouses
teeming with goods; all these, and many other objects that
fall under our view, are so many works of national wealth
and resources. But all these spring from _labour_. Without
the journeyman and the labourer none of them could exist;
without the assistance of their hands, the country would be a
wilderness, hardly worth the notice of an invader.
“As it is the labour of those who toil which makes a country
abound in resources, so it is the same class of men who must,
by their arms, secure its safety, and uphold its fame. Titles
and immense sums of money have been bestowed upon numerous
naval and military commanders. Without calling the justice
of these in question, we may assert that the victories were
obtained by you and your fathers, and brothers and sons, in
co-operation with those commanders, who, with _your_ aid, have
done great and wonderful things; but who, without that aid,
would have been as impotent as children at the breast.
“With this correct idea of your own worth in your minds, with
what indignation must you hear yourselves called the populace,
the rabble, the mob, the swinish multitude; and with what
greater indignation, if possible, must you hear the projects
of these cool, and cruel, and insolent men, who, now that you
have been, without any fault of yours, brought into a state
of misery, propose to narrow the limits of parish relief, to
prevent you from marrying in the days of your youth, or to
thrust you out to seek your bread in foreign lands, never
more to behold your parents or friends? But, suppress your
indignation, until we return to this topic, after we have
considered the _cause_ of your present misery, and the measures
which have produced that cause.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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