“I cannot... perceive any ground for hoping that any practical good would, while the funding system exists in its present extent, result from the adoption of any of those projects, which have professed to have in view what is called Parliamentary Reform... when the funding system, from whatever cause, shall cease to operate upon civil and political liberty, there will be no need of projects for parliamentary reform. The parliament will, as far as shall be necessary, then reform itself.”
Quote by William Cobbett
“Having still in my recollection so many excellent men, to whose grandfathers, upon the same spots, my grandfather had yielded cheerful obedience and reverence, it is not without sincere sorrow that I have beheld many of the sons of these men driven from their fathers' mansions, or holding them as little better than tenants or stewards, while the swarms of Placemen, Pensioners, Contractors, and Nabobs... have usurped a large part of the soil.”
“All my plans in private life; all my pursuits; all my designs, wishes, and thoughts, have this one great object in view: the overthrow of the ruffian Boroughmongers. If I write grammars; if I write on agriculture; if I sow, plant, or deal in seeds; whatever I do has first in view the destruction of those infamous tyrants.”
“But what is to be the fate of the great wen of all? The monster, called, by the silly coxcombs of the press, "the metropolis of the empire"?”
Source: Rural Rides (Two Volumes in One)
“Good government is known from bad government by this infallible test: that under the former the labouring people are well fed and well clothed, and under the latter, they are badly fed and badly clothed.”
Source: The Progress of a Plough-boy to a Seat in Parliament: As Exemplified in the History of the Life of William Cobbett, Member for Oldham
“But I do not remember ever having seen a newspaper in the house; and, most certainly, that privation did not render us less industrious, happy, or free.”
Source: Beauties of Cobbett
“Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada are the horns, the head, the neck, the shins, and the hoof of the ox, and the United States are the ribs, the sirloin, the kidneys, and the rest of the body.”
Source: The Progress of a Plough-boy to a Seat in Parliament: As Exemplified in the History of the Life of William Cobbett, Member for Oldham
“I was a countryman and a father before I was a writer on political subjects... Born and bred up in the sweet air myself, I was resolved that my children should be bred up in it too.”
“A full belly to the labourer was, in my opinion, the foundation of public morals and the only source of real public peace.”
Source: The Progress of a Plough-boy to a Seat in Parliament: As Exemplified in the History of the Life of William Cobbett, Member for Oldham
“If the people of Sheffield could only receive a tenth part of what their knives sell for by retail in America, Sheffield might pave its streets with silver.”
Source: Rural Rides: In the Counties of Surrey ... [etc.] in the Years 1821, 1822, 1823, 1825, 1826, 1829, 1830 and 1832, with Economical and Political Observations Relative to Matters Applicable To, and Illustrated By, the State of Those Counties Respectively
“I view tea drinking as a destroyer of health, an enfeebler of the frame, an en-genderer of effeminancy and laziness, a debaucher of youth and maker of misery for old age. Thus he makes that miserable progress towards that death which he finds ten or fifteen years sooner than he would have found it if he had made his wife brew beer instead of making tea.”
