Note 4 — Chapter XV · “I DID DESTROY THEIR POWER TO ROB US, ANY LONGER, WITHOUT THE ROBBERY BEING PERCEIVED.”

“The Learned Languages” was the title of a controversy which arose in the Register early in 1807. Mr. Cobbett was out of his sphere on this topic, and his correspondents (who were at all humorous) saw a ready application of the fable concerning a fox who had lost his tail. Others were more serious, and thought that the knowledge of the Latin and Greek classics “kept together the higher orders of society, and separate from the lower orders.”