Note 3 — Chapter XXII · “BETWEEN SILENCE AND A DUNGEON LAY MY ONLY CHOICE.”
Reading edition
One likes to hear both sides, when there is a trifling difference of opinion:—
“If Cobbett and Hunt were really honest men, and really wished well to the cause of Reform, they would abstain from meddling with it.… If a man wants to repair his mansion, and an adviser comes and tells him that he will do no good except he pull it altogether down and rebuild it, the owner immediately begins to think it better that he should continue to live in the old house as it is rather than run such risks.”—Times, Jan. 28, 1817.
“Mr. Cobbett, whose sincerity in the cause of the country can no longer be questioned by any party,” &c., &c.
“He has increased his circulation to forty and fifty thousand per week; and thus his work tends to counteract the unprincipled sophistry of certain of the daily newspapers and of their satellites through the country. As Mr. C. gives no quarter to the partisans of war and corruption, and to the sinecurists and peculators who devour the substance of the people, and as he is the able advocate of the vital question of Parliamentary Reform, we conceive it to be our duty to recommend his Register to the favourable attention of our liberal and enlightened readers.”—Monthly Magazine, January, 1817.