Note 6 — Chapter XVI · “THEY NATURALLY HATE ME.”

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.