The National Register. — London, England, 1808-01-04 00:00:00

THE NATIONAL REGISTER. whom he has not, at one time, represented as the noblest, at another, as the vilest of men. Mr. Pitt was, with him, at one period, the wise, the great, the heaven-born minister ; hut now, Mr. Pitt is in his evee, the most weak, worthless minister that ever ruled a nation : the greatest curse that Britain ever saw ; a Net retch, whose very ashes he thinks himself called upon to insult and trample. !Nil. Fox was once branded as the most diaboli cal of incendiaries ; and Tin' Political Rc;i.xter• actually first at trneted notice by a whimsical attempt to prove, that this states man bad gone to l'aris to concert schemes vi ith Bonaparte against his country : and now, Mr. Fox is venerated as the only person, in either party, who had any share of wisdom or virtue. It is but two years since the nation nas louldly warned against Burdett, as a firebrand, who must be either extinguish ed, or set his country in flames : and now, this same fireband is discovered to be a very pillar of light to direct our darkness, the only man to whom W C must look for salvation. Commerce was once idolized as " the life-blood of the nation;" and now, The Political Register glories in assuming the motto of " Perish " Commerce !" Mr. Cobbett does not deny these inconsistencies, hut he assures us, that nothing is more pardonable. Every man, he argues, must grow wiser by experience; mid as soon as he has discover ed his errors, the best thing he can do, is, like him, to recant them, and strenuously propagate his more enlightened opinions. 'Chic may be a decent apology for tl r. Cobbetes tergiversations, but it is a poor amends to those whom he has successively mis led. Suppose the nation had all along listened to his opinions, they would find themselves in a fine condition when his eyes be came opened. Ile was once a furious Anti-Jacobin, and thought that the nation could only he saved from destruction, by weeding out, by banishment, or the scaffold, all the accursed race of Democrats. If his advice had been taken at that period, what an aukward figure would the national councils make now that he has discovered the Anti-Jacobin to have been a set of in funous scoundrels. and these same Democrats the only honest men in the kingdom! Poor Horne Tooke, and Sir Francis Bur dett, would not at this day have had ears to hear the applause, now showered upon them. At present, Mr. Cobbett assures us, " that capital, credit, and commerce, tend to weaken rather " than strengthen our country.; tend to produce her subjuga " tion, rather than to preserve her independence." (Vol. xii. p. 839.) Suppose we should take all this for undoubted truth, and manfully set about rooting out these fatal inmates, till we should be as free from them as a bankrupt, who had ,just paid sixpence in the pound ; would it not be un fortunate, if Mr. Cobbett should .just then happrn to discover that he had been in a very great error, that commerkv, credit, and capital, had been the real sources of our national greatness, and that we must now become slaves to Bonaparte, .s ithout further murmur, since we had deprived ourselves of the only means of resisting him ! In short, it appears front Mr. Cob betes own confessions, that however confidently he makes any statement, and though he he ready to stake his body and soul on its veracity, yet we must not, at our peril, believe one word of it, till he has had at least five or six years to detect its errors. If we may believe Mr. Cohbett, hi; political sagacity is very amazing; for there is scarcely a political occurrence which he does not assure us he distinctly foresaw—after it has taken place. But when we look at his prophecies, before the event, they are generally of a very different cast. We select the most recent instance, his speculations about the emigration of the Portuguese Government, a Measure dictated by so many imperi ous 4:irenkotatices, that it would have been most strange had it JAN. 4. not taken place. In hie Number of October 24, p. 632, he ridicules " the Brazil lelventnre," as " so very romantic as " to merit not a moment of serious attention." Your weeks af terwards, p. 801, he again pours contempt on the expatriation project, assuring us, that " none but sheer fools ever gave cre " dit to it ; and that none but sheer knaves ever pretended to " give credit to it." In his Number of December 26, the actual accomplishment of this derided project, obliges him to confess his surprise : hut he solaces his mortification, by asserting that the Brazils are worse than " the very worst country in Europe," and abound in nothing hut " venemous reptiles !" But neither ignorance or prejudice delude this singular writer into such absurdities, or lead him so far beyond the bounds of truth and honesty, as an insatiable vanity which seizes and de vours every thing that can be brought within its grasp. The most harmless indications of this passion appear in the fulsome complimentary letters with which the pages of his Register arc continually loaden : for instance, a correspondent in the Number for December 26, expresses his full conviction, " that " unless the higher ranks follow Mr. Cobbett's advice, a few " years only will he necessary to complete the destruction of " our national prosperity." But a much snore glaring indi cation of this principle was exhibited in his late attack on the Learned Languages. The frequent blunders into which he had been led by his want of education, exceedingly mortified his vanity, and incited him to the curious task of proving that learning was a thing of no value under the sun. He began with a furious onset on the Learned Languages ; and finding that his arguments produced no impression, unless on such as were as ignorant as himself, he now contents himself with expressing an utter contempt of universities, professors, and whatever bears the appearance of a regular education. " When I see L.L. D. " in a title page," says he, " if I am not well acquainted with " the name that precedes it, I instantly throw down the book, as.. the work of one who has obtained his certificate of learning " from our well educated neighbours to the North, at the price " of a second-hand wig." But the most curious display of his vanity appears in those charges which he brings against other writers as plagiarists from his Register. As he is perpetually writing, he necessarily throws out a number of random observations on a great variety of political topics: and when any of these topics happen after wards to be treated of systematically by some other author, he makes no scruple, from a few similar thoughts, to infer that the work has been stoles from him. A curious example of this ha lately occurred with regard to a pamphlet published by a Mr. Spence, where, from the principles of the French Economists, hich he adopts, the author endeavour; to prove the indepen dence of Britain on Commerce. This doctrine Mr. Cohbett zea lously espouses : and prudently forgetting that it was original] y promulgated by the Economistv,and taking for granted that Mr. Spence claims the merit of the discovery, he ransacks the page; of his Register, and thence produces several paragraphs to prove that he himself was the author of the doctrine, and that Mr. Spence is a notorious plagiarist. For some time, Mr. Spence beard in silence these singular exhibitions of vanit: - , amazed in what they would end ; but he has, at length, published an answer to the charges of plagiarism. Ile there shows Mr. Cob bett, that the very doctrines, now in question, were held by Aristotle two thousand years ago, enlarged and fully explained by the French Economists in the last century, and treated of by many authors in our own country. tie shows, that his pamphlet was in the printers hands before several of the alleged plagia rised passages had a ppeared ; and that, in particular, the ex • ._ _ _ ,~:~..