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English to some refugees from France. Now and again he went backward and forward between America and England, but it was in Philadelphia that he was first known as a writer. Under the signature of Peter Porcupine he published the "Porcupine Papers," which were chiefly made up of sarcastic and vehement attacks upon public men. Cobbett had begun as a sort of Tory, or, at all events, as a professed enemy of all Radical agitators, but he gradually became a Radical agitator himself, and when he finally settled in England he soon began to be recognized as one of the most powerful {156} advocates of the Radical cause in or out of Parliament. He wrote a strong, simple Anglo-Saxon style, and indeed it is not too much to say that, after Swift himself, no man ever wrote clearer English prose than that of William Cobbett. He had tried to get into Parliament twice without success; but at last he succeeded in obtaining a seat as the representative of the borough of Oldham, a place which he represented until the time of his death, and which was represented by members of his family in the memory of the present generation. He had started a paper called _The Weekly Political Register_, and in this he championed the Radical cause with an energy and ability which made him one of the most conspicuous men of the time. [Sidenote: 1831--The prosecution of Cobbett] Lord Grey's Government was probably not very anxious to prosecute Cobbett, if a prosecution could have been avoided, but it was feared, perhaps, by the members of the Cabinet that some of his writings would be used by the opponents of reform as an illustration of the principles on which reform was founded, and the practices which it would encourage if the Government failed to take some decided action. It was therefore decided to institute the prosecution for the article which had been published in the previous December. The Guildhall, where the case was to be tried, was crowded to excess, and the prisoner was loudly applauded when he stood in the court. He was one of the heroes of the hour with large numbers of the people everywhere, and the court would have been crowded this day in any case; but additional interest was given to the sitting by the fact that Cobbett had summoned for witnesses for his defence Lord Grey, Lord Brougham, Lord Althorp, and Lord Durham. The summoning of these witnesses was one of Cobbett's original and audacious strokes of humor and of cleverne
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