ot a
coincidence, that in standing for a moment where this Englishman stood,
I again find myself confronted by the German soldier.

The son of a small Surrey farmer, a respectable Tory and churchman,
ventured to plead against certain extraordinary cruelties being
inflicted on Englishmen whose hands were tied, by the whips of German
superiors; who were then parading in English fields their stiff foreign
uniforms and their sanguinary foreign discipline. In the countries from
which they came, of course, such torments were the one monotonous means
of driving men on to perish in the dead dynastic quarrels of the north;
but to poor Will Cobbett, in his provincial island, knowing little but
the low hills and hedges around the little church where he now lies
buried, the incident seemed odd--nay, unpleasing. He knew, of course,
that there was then flogging in the British army also; but the German
standard was notoriously severe in such things, and was something of an
acquired taste. Added to which he had all sorts of old grandmotherly
prejudices about Englishmen being punished by Englishmen, and notions of
that sort. He protested, not only in speech, but actually in print. He
was soon made to learn the perils of meddling in the high politics of
the High Dutch militarists. The fine feelings of the foreign mercenaries
were soothed by Cobbett being flung into Newgate for two years and
beggared by a fine of L1000. That small incident is a small transparent
picture of the Holy Alliance; of what was really meant by a country,
once half liberalised, taking up the cause of the foreign kings. This,
and not "The Meeting of Wellington and Blucher," should be engraved as
the great scene of the war. From this intemperate Fenians should learn
that the Teutonic mercenaries did not confine themselves solely to
torturing Irishmen. They were equally ready to torture Englishmen: for
mercenaries are mostly unprejudiced. To Cobbett's eye we were suffering
from allies exactly as we should suffer from invaders. Boney was a
bogey; but the German was a nightmare, a thing actually sitting on top
of us. In Ireland the Alliance meant the ruin of anything and
everything Irish, from the creed of St. Patrick to the mere colour
green. But in England also it meant the ruin of anything and everything
English, from the Habeas Corpus Act to Cobbett.

After this affair of the scourging, he wielded his pen like a scourge
until he died. This terrible pamphleteer was