William Cobbett - Political Register

Political Register

The government of William Pitt the Younger offered Cobbett the editorship of a government newspaper but he declined as he preferred to remain independent. His newspaper The Porcupine bore the motto "Fear God, Honour the King" first started on 30 October 1800 but it was not a success and he sold his interest in it in 1801.

Less than a month later however he started his Political Register, a weekly newspaper that appeared almost every week from January 1802 until 1835, the year of Cobbett's death. Although initially staunchly anti-Jacobin by 1804 Cobbett was questioning the policies of the Pitt government, especially the immense national debt and the profligate use of sinecures that Cobbett believed was ruining the country and increasing class antagonism. By 1807 he supported reformers such as Francis Burdett and John Cartwright.

Cobbett opposed attempts in the House of Commons to bring in Bills against boxing and bull-baiting, writing to William Windham on 2 May 1804 that the Bill "goes to the rearing of puritanism into a system".

Cobbett published the Complete Collection of State Trials in between 1804 and 1812 and amassed accounts of parliamentary debates from 1066 onwards but he sold his shares in this to T. C. Hansard in 1812 due to financial difficulties. This unofficial record of Parliamentary proceedings later became officially known as Hansard.

Cobbett intended to stand for Parliament in Honiton in 1806, but was convinced by Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald to let him stand in his stead. Both men campaigned together but were unsuccessful, for they refused to bribe the voters by 'buying' votes; it also encouraged him in his opposition to rotten boroughs and the very urgent need for parliamentary reform.

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