The rhetoric which currently surrounds us concerning the financial crisis, of politicians claiming inordinate amounts of money through 'expenses' and other such nefarious means, is not a new thing.

It is strange that overt radicalism has never been the way of the British. That successes in gaining freedoms have always been partial and incomplete. Here in a selection from a hugely popular pamphlet by William Cobbett we can see how little the worries, the targets and the arguments have progressed in 193 years.

It also makes clear, by seeing it used as a defence when perhaps Britain's importance was assured, how obnoxious the claim to importance via wealth and conquest actually is.

from LETTER TO THE JOURNEYMEN AND LABOURERS OF ENGLAND, WALES, SCOTLAND, AND IRELAND, ON THE CAUSE OF THEIR PRESENT MISERIES; ON THE MEASURES WHICH HAVE PRODUCED THAT CAUSE; ON THE REMEDIES WHICH SOME FOOLISH AND SOME CRUEL AND INSOLENT MEN HAVE PROPOSED; AND ON THE LINE OF CONDUCT WHICH JOURNEYMEN AND LABOURERS OUGHT TO PURSUE, IN ORDER TO OBTAIN EFFECTUAL RELIEF, AND TO ASSIST IN PROMOTING THE TRANQUILLITY AND RESTORING THE HAPPINESS OF THEIR COUNTRY.

Friends And Fellow-countrymen--Whatever the pride of rank, of riches, or of scholarship may have induced some men to believe, or to affect to believe, the real strength and all the resources of a country ever have sprung and ever must spring from the labour of its people; and hence it is that this nation, which is so small in numbers and so poor in climate and soil compared with many others, has, for many ages, been the most powerful nation in the world: it is the most industrious, the most laborious, and, therefore, the most powerful. Elegant dresses, superb furniture, stately buildings, fine roads and canals, fleet horses and carriages, numerous and stout ships, warehouses teeming with goods; all these, and many other objects that fall under our view, are so many marks of national wealth and resources. But all these spring from labour. Without the journeyman and the labourer none of them could exist; without the assistance of their hands the country would be a wilderness, hardly worth the notice of an invader. 

 

As it is the labour of those who toil which makes a country abound in resources, so it is the same class of men, who must, by their arms, secure its safety and uphold its fame. Titles and immense sums of money have been bestowed upon numerous Naval and Military Commanders. Without calling the justice of these in question, we may assert that the victories were obtained by you and your fathers and brothers and sons, in co-operation with those Commanders, who, with your aid, have done great and wonderful things; but who, without that aid, would have been as impotent as children at the breast. 

 

With this correct idea of your own worth in your minds, with what indignation must you hear yourselves called the Populace, the Rabble, the Mob, the Swinish Multitude; and with what greater indignation, if possible, must you hear the projects of those cool and cruel and insolent men, who, now that you have been, without any fault of yours, brought into a state of misery, propose to narrow the limit of parish relief, to prevent you from marrying in the days of your youth, or to thrust you out to seek your bread in foreign lands, never more to behold your parents or friends? But suppress your indignation, until we return to this topic, after we have considered the cause of your present misery, and the measures which have produced that cause. 

 

The times in which we live are full of peril. The nation, as described by the very creatures of Government, is fast advancing to that period when an important change must take place. It is the lot of mankind that some shall labour with their limbs and others with their minds; and, on all occasions, more especially on an occasion like the present, it is the duty of the latter to come to the assistance of the former. We are all equally interested in the peace and happiness of our common country. It is of the utmost importance that, in the seeking to obtain these objects, our endeavours should be uniform, and tend all to the same point. Such an uniformity cannot exist without an uniformity of sentiment as to public matters, and to produce this latter uniformity amongst you is the object of this address.

 

[...]

 

The object of the efforts of such writers is clearly enough seen. Keep all quiet! Do not rouse! Keep still! Keep down! Let those who perish, perish in silence! It will, however, be out of the power of these quacks, with all their laudanum, to allay the blood which is now boiling in the veins of the people of this kingdom; who, if they are doomed to perish, are at any rate resolved not to perish in silence. The writer whom I have mentioned above, says that he, of course, does not count 'the lower classes, who, under the pressure of need or under the influence of ignorant prejudice, may blindly and weakly rush upon certain and prompt punishment; but that the security of every decent fireside, every respectable father's best hopes for his children, still connect themselves with the Government.' And by Government he clearly means all the mass as it now stands. There is nobody so callous and so insolent as your sentimental quacks and their patients. How these 'decent fireside' people would stare, if some morning they were to come down and find them occupied by uninvited visitors! I hope they never will. I hope that things will never come to this pass: but if one thing more than any other tends to produce so sad an effect, it is the cool insolence with which such men as this writer treats the most numerous and most suffering classes of the people. 

 

WILLIAM COBBET