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PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR, AT NO. 11, BOLT-COURT,

FLEET-STREET.

1830.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS.

VOLUME 69.

DA20
C6
v.69-10

No. 1.-To Mr. Weston, on his Letters rela- | No. 15.-Mr. Cobbett's Address to his Political

tive to Paper Money. -Northern Tour.-

Friends -Address to the Tax-payers of

The Press. The Irish. -Mr. Western's

Letter. Letter to the Duke of Welling-
ton.-Turnpike Manual.-Martens's Law

England and Scotland, on the subject of
a Seat in Parliament.

No. 2.-Northern Tour. To the Readers of
the Register.-Extract from the Dublin
Evening Post.-Extract from the Leeds

No. 18.-Eastern Tour ended. -Midland Tour
begun.-The Seat in Parliament.-Dedi-
cation to W. Cobbett, Esq.-Cobbett's
Corn.-To Mr. Cobbett. - Another Ser-
mon.-Advice to Young Men.

No. 19.-To Mr. Huskisson.-Emigration.
Seat in Parliament.

No. 20. Το Mr. Haywood, now or late of
Sheffield. The Seat in Parliament.-
Midland Tour.-Postscript to the Emi-
grant's Guide. Swedish Turnip Seed.-
Another Sermon.-New Edition of Emi-
: grant's Guide.

No. 21. To the Readers of the Register.-

Doctor's Preface. -Extract from Barton.

:-Midland Tour.-Catholics and Jews.
Seed.-Another Sermon.

Advice to Young Men.-American Trees. No. 22. - Letter to Mr. Davenport-To Law-

-Norfolk County Meeting.

No. 10. -Treatment of Men applying for

Parish Relief. - Seat in Parliament.-The

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Bancroft Libra

COBBETT'S WEEKLY POLITICAL REGISTER...

VOL. 69.-No. 1.]

LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 2D, 1830.

"Property is of no value, property does not "exist; that which we call property is not "property, unless there be a standard of value. "It is the money of a country, and nothing "else, that can make property of any use. To the mass of the people, the land can be " of no more use than the vacant space above " it, unless there be money whereby to deter

"mine and denominate value, and to cause labour to be performed on it, and to remove

[Price 7d.

poach or starve." He means, of course, that he shall poach, and that he cannot and will not starve.

** its produce to the backs and mouths of the and contempt that they will deserve,

*"people. Seeing, then, that money gives

value to every thing; that it is the main

"cement of civil society, what a monstrous "thing it is, that this thing should be left to "the direction of bands of men, who have no "general interest with the people at large in "this respect; but who must wish to gain by "the money; and whose gain must be detri

mental to the nation at large."-Register,

15th May, 1819.

TO

MR. WESTERN,

It is thus that you speak of reduction of taxes: you, indeed, in the petition in which you were concerned at Colches ter, very kindly tell the Ministers and the Parliament, that the expenditure cannot be materially reduced. Therefore, we must, according to you, re-augment the quantity of money. You never seem to think of the eternal disgrace and infamy which the Government and the Parliament, of which last you are a member, must bring upon themselves; you never seem to think of the hatred aye, and that they will receive, too, not only from the people of this country, but from all mankind, if they now return to those filthy and abandoned rags by the means of which they brought us, according to their own confession, to within forty-eight hours of barter. You never seem to think of this: you forget the solemn declaration of the Parliament, that it never would lower the standard. In short, you seem to regard the covering of the whole of the Government with infamy as nothing at all; and really

On his Letters recently published, rela- one would think that you had been extive to the Money Affair.

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pressly retained in my service by a high fee, to accelerate the period of holding the Grand Feast of the Gridiron.

"We must retrace our steps"! Oh, you must, must you? When do you mean to stop, then? When one of your carters is backing a cart, he generally knows where to stop; but can you tell me where you will stop, when you begin to

You are in the field again, I see, and are pushing hard for the return of the false and base paper-money. You very frequently observe, that we must either bave the false money; the base and depreciated money; the "worthless rags"; go back? Will you stop at 1826? The villanous, the cheating, monopo- Will you stop at 1822? Will you stop zing, blood-shedding, panic-striking, at 1819? Oh, no! You must run all hellish paper-money; that we must have the way back to 1814, and unlimited this, or a great reduction of the taxes; bank restriction; and then out will bat then you immediately fly off from this latter remedy, as if it were a thing by no means to be thought seriously of; but mentioned as an impossibility, or something next to impossible; just as bank at the bottom, dashing itself, the man puts the alternative, "I must horse, and the harness, all to atoms.

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come the assignats, and your whole system goes to pieces like a cart going back down hill, dragging the poor horse after it, and, finally, coming against a

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I-am for retracing the steps, too; but is not round ringing, where the big I'am for turning the horse and cart bell comes in always last; and where about, and going steadily over the rough there is regularity, and consistency: and uphill road, till I get upon the fair yours is a peal of bob-major, but, at and level (plain of 1791; before the every change, we hear the big bell. accursed small paper-money made its You are a fine ringer; it is a pity you appearance, to the disgrace of England. had not confined your studies to that enThat alternative which you look at with tertaining pursuit. When I am reading so much terror, and from which you you, I am every now-and-then delighted recoil, as a guilty man recoils from a at your invectives against the double ghost; that alternative, the reduction and treble taxes; but before the senof expenses, and taking off of taxes, and tence is out, before the change comes rectifying contracts, and bringing in to a close, I always find my ears dinned resources now dilapidated and wasted; that alternative which contemplated an end to military sway, and the return of civil government; which contemplates the return of the barrel of beer to the labourer's cottage: that alternative, I am decidedly for; I prove it to be just; I prove it to be practicable; I prove it to be necessary to the happiness of the people and the safety of the state. I like

with the accursed big bell; and I have observed that you never write one single paragraph, at the most, without convineing us that all you have in view is the infamous paper-money.

It is curious that while you are thus sounding the big bell, and ringing more changes to get at that sound than any set of ringers in Essex can get upon six bells, at any rate; while you are at

the idea of retracing your steps; but I this, calling aloud for the return to the am for going back the full length; I am paper-money, you profess your confifor going back to the point whence we dence in the wisdom of the Duke of Weldeparted, when the miseries and dis-lington; and your high respect for his grace of England began; and not for character. Why, Sir, if he were to adopt stopping at the point where those mi- the measure that you recommend, he

series and disgrace were consummated.

would not only be, but would be thought and called, the most cowardly and contemptible creature that ever disgraced the earth by treading upon it. Every argument that you have offered him, if arguments yours are to be called, was offered to him before the Scotch Small-note Bill was passed. You can suggest nothing that was not dinned into his ears before.

You vary your descriptions and definitions; so that sometimes one thinks you want one thing, and sometimes that you want another. Even your petition from Colchester contains a mass of selfcontradictions. You want the malt and beer-tax repealed: you want a sixth part of the taxes taken off; and yet you cannot, for the life of you, see how the He said that he clearly understood the expenditure can be diminished! But subject: he was the Prime Minister at you want, at the same time, a return to the time, as he is now; he gave every as the vile paper-money; and what do surance that mortal man could give, that you want a repeal of taxes for, if you he never would consent to the repeal of thus really diminish their amount in the law of 1826. He was told of the

evils that he would inflict by enforcing that law: his answer was, that temporary evil must be suffered for the sake of ensuring permanent good; and he ex

one half? To render the several parts of your writings consistent with one another, I defy mortal man; but, amidst all the confusion and all the inconsistency, one perceives a constant grunting pressed his determination to adhere to running along through the whole of the bill in a manner the most positive your lucubrations; a constant grunting that words could enable him to do. He in one's ear; or, rather, an ever-recur- has hitherto persevered: an immense ring grunt after the base paper-money, mass of ruin and misery has been occajust as one hears the sound of the big sioned by the bill; and if he were now bell in a peal of bob-major. Yours to give way, what language would af

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ford terms of reprobation sufficient just- | Wellington would be in the eyes of all
ly to designate his conduct? I trust the world, if he were to lend an ear to
that he will not give way: I trust that your eternal peal of bob-major.

he will rigidly adhere to the bill: I trust
That he will not do this base thing
that he will return to the taxes of the I take for granted; and, therefore, I

year 1791: this is not only my hope,
but my belief; and to say that I be-
lieve the contrary, would be to say, by im-
plication, that I regard him as the mean-
est and most stupid man upon the face
of the earth!

think it worth while, which otherwise I
should not, to warn him of the dangers
that now beset him. LOCKE! what do
you quote LOCKE for? LOCKE knew no-
thing about paper-money, and said no-
thing about it. He never said anything
about small notes. You might have
quoted other people, who did know some-
thing about this matter. Locke has said
nothing upon the subject of paper-mo-
ney, which had not been said, and better
said, by others, a thousand years before

His case is this: he was one of the
Ministry who adopted the measure of
1826; the measure had his approbation
at that time, as a measure necessary for
the safety of the state: he has since de-
clared that it was absolutely necessary
to the safety of the state. When told he was born; for this was a science
that the ancients understood as well as

LOCKE; if LOCKE were your guide, why
did not you count LocKE in opposition
to the passing of Peel's Bill? You were
in the house at the time; you were in
doors at the time: why, then, did not
you quote Locke against the passing of
the bill? You can now complain of that
bill; you can now represent it as the
cause of the ruin of the country: why
did you not then oppose that bill? You
are one of the men who passed the bill;
and yet you set yourself up as a doctor
of this science; and complain of the Go-
vernment for having changed the value
of money, and having doubled the taxes.
While you were approving of this

of the evils which it would inflict upon the people, he answered, that the pre- the moderns; and that Moses under sent evil was nothing compared to the stood better than LocKE; but, of the evil if the bill were not carried into ef- tricks of paper-money makers, neither fect: he reprobated the false credit Moses, nor the ancients, nor LOCKE, which paper-money gave rise to, and he knew anything. But if you must quote justly reprobated it: he gave powerful reasons, unanswerable reasons, for preferring the King's coin to the base paper-money. He insisted upon the wisdom of bringing the nation back to its former habits of expense. Upon these grounds, he has proceeded with this bill: he has caused the suffering to take place to a prodigious extent: he has gone on till the one-pound notes have nearly disappeared, and until the fives have followed them to a pretty great extent; and shall he stop now? Shall he be guilty of the wanton cruelty of having produced all this suffering without any chance of any good in return; or shall he confess himself to have been totally bill, you had had an opportunity of ignorant of what he was about? Will reading my predictions with regard to you hang him up upon one or other of this very bill. In a letter addressed to fur the horns of this disgraceful dilemma; your friend Tierney, published in Lonyou who profess to be his friend; you don in the month of September, 1818, who profess to admire him and rely on I told you, that if such a bill as that him? I, for my part, who make no were passed, it would produce all the such professions, should blush, as an effects of which you so bitterly comEnglishman should blush, at the thought plain; and yet you talk of LOCKE, and of being under the control; I under do not talk of me. Indeed you could the control, did I say? I should blush not talk of me, and of my accurate preat the thought of there being an English dictions, my repeated warnings, with cat, whose happiness could possibly be out suggesting to the mind of every affected by the measures of a being so in- reader of your letters, that it would be اله expressibly contemptible as the Duke of extremely desirable for you to remain at

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