equest for its
publication in the _Register_.[307] Cobbett was at this time in prison
for his attack upon flogging militia men; and, though still more hostile
to government, was bound to be more cautious in his line of assault. The
plan was not published, whether because too daring or too dull; but it
was apparently printed. Bentham's opinion of Cobbett was anything but
flattering. Cobbett, he thought in 1812, was a 'vile rascal,' and was
afterwards pronounced to be 'filled with the _odium humani generis_--his
malevolence and lying beyond everything.'[308] Cobbett's radicalism, in
fact, was of the type most hostile to the Utilitarians. John Hunt, in
the _Examiner_, was 'trumpeting' Bentham and Romilly in 1812, and was
praised accordingly.[309] Bentham formed an alliance with another
leading Radical. He had made acquaintance by 1811 with Sir F. Burdett,
to whom he then appealed for help in an attack upon the delays of
Chancery.[310] Burdett, indeed, appeared to him to be far inferior to
Romilly and Brougham, but he thought that so powerful a 'hero of the
mob' ought to be turned to account in the good cause.[311] Burdett seems
to have courted the old philosopher; and a few years later a closer
alliance was brought about. The peace of 1815 was succeeded by a period
of distress, the more acutely felt from the disappointment of natural
hopes of prosperity; and a period of agitation, met by harsh repression,
followed. Applications were made, to Bentham for permission to use his
'Catechism,' which was ultimately published (1818) in a cheap form by
Wooler, well known as the editor of the democratic _Black Dwarf_.[312]
Burdett applied for a plan of parliamentary reform. Henry Bickersteth
(1783-1851), afterwards Lord Langdale and Master of the Rolls, at this
time a rising barrister of high character, wrote an appeal to Bentham
and Burdett to combine in setting forth a scheme which, with such
authority, must command general acceptance. The result was a series of
resolutions moved by Burdett in the House of Commons on 2nd June
1818,[313] demanding universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and vote by
ballot. Bentham had thus accepted the conclusions reached in a different
way by the believers in that 'hodge-podge' of absurdities, the
declaration of the rights of man. Curiously enough, his assault upon
that document appeared in Dumont's French version in the year 1816, at
the very time when he was accepting its practical conclusions.