at the cost of conniving at official corruption, he now disdained the thought of political advancement if it was to be obtained at the cost of stifling his opinions.
A year before his return from America, the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland had been passed. It was notorious that it had been effected by the most disgraceful means. However, Mr Pitt tried to reconcile himself and the greater portion of the public to the transaction, by the plea that it would enable the Government more easily to remove the Catholic disabilities. But when the question was settled, Mr Pitt found that the King was so obstinately opposed to Catholic relief, that, if the idea was pressed, it would in all probability drive him out of his senses. Pitt accordingly resigned, and a ministry composed of men pledged against the claims of the Roman Catholics came in. Now, Cobbett's conservatism was of a much more antique and thorough character than that of the Tory gentlemen with whom he was allied. He had a rooted conviction that in every sense the Old times, the Old ways, and the Old laws were better than the New. He reverenced every institution which he could trace back to those times. "The Crown, the Mitre, and the Bible"—this was the sign over his shop in Pall Mall. He firmly believed England was a far happier country, and had a larger, more prosperous, and nobler population in Catholic times than in Protestant ones.
Nothing, therefore, was more consistent than that he, high-flying Tory as he was, should sympathise deeply with wrongs suffered by the professors of the old form of faith. When, therefore, this question came to be a party one, he was compelled to ally himself with the Radicals. Driven by the force of circumstances into new connections, he came to see things in a fresh light, but it was always from the old standpoint. Catholic Emancipation was the bridge which led him from one party to the other; but, Tory or Radical, his root convictions were the same from the beginning of his life to the end.
Soon after his arrival in England he started the Weekly Register, a periodical he kept up until the day of his death. In 1803 there appeared in that journal a series of anonymous letters attacking the various members of the Irish Government. The
