Political Pamphlets | Page 3

them, and others (such as Ferguson and Maynwaring)
obtained such literary notoriety as they possess by their means. The
total volume of the kind produced during the quarter of a century
between the Revolution and the accession of George the First would
probably fill a considerable library. But the examples which really
deserve exhumation are very few, and I doubt whether any can pretend
to vie with the masterpieces of Defoe and Swift. Both these great
writers were accomplished practitioners in the art, and the
characteristics of both lent themselves with peculiar yet strangely
different readiness to the work. They addressed, indeed, different
sections of what was even then the electorate. Defoe's unpolished
realism and his exact adaptation of tone, thought, taste, and fancy to the
measure of the common Englishman were what chiefly gave him a
hearing. Swift aimed and flew higher, but also did not miss the lower
mark. No one has ever doubted that Johnson's depreciation of The
Conduct of the Allies was half special perversity (for he was always
unjust to Swift), half mere humorous paradox. For there was much
more of this in the doctor's utterances than his admirers, either in his
own day or since, have always recognised, or have sometimes been
qualified by Providence to recognise. As for the Drapier's Letters I can
never myself admire them enough, and they seem to me to have been
on the whole under-rather than over-valued by posterity.
The 'Great Walpolian Battle' and the attacks on Bute and other

favourite ministers were very fertile in the pamphlet, but already there
were certain signs of alteration in its character. Pulteney and Walpole's
other adversaries had already glimmerings of the newspaper proper,
that is to say, of the continual dropping fire rather than the single heavy
broadside; to adopt a better metaphor still, of a regimental and
professional soldiery rather than of single volunteer champions. The
Letters of Junius, which for some time past have been gradually
dropping from their former somewhat undue pride of place (gained and
kept as much by the factitious mystery of their origin as by anything
else) to a station more justly warranted, are no doubt themselves
pamphlets of a kind; but they are separated from pamphlets proper not
less by their contents than by their form and continuity. The real
difference is this, that the pamphlet, though often if not always personal
enough, should always and generally does affect at least to discuss a
general question of principle or policy, whereas Junius is always
personal first, and very generally last also. On the other hand, Burke,
whether his productions be called Speeches or Letters, Thoughts or
Reflections, is always a pamphleteer in heart and soul, in form and
matter. If the resemblance of his pamphlets to speeches gives the force
and fire, it is certain that the resemblance of his speeches to pamphlets
accounts for that 'dinner-bell' effect of his which has puzzled some
people and shocked others. Burke always argued the point, if he only
argued one side of it, and it is the special as it is the saving grace of the
pamphlet that it must, or at least should, be an argument, and not
merely an invective or an innuendo, a sermon or a lampoon.
Sydney Smith belonged both to the old school and the new. He was
both pamphleteer and journalist; but he kept the form and even to some
extent the style of his pamphlets and his articles well apart. I may seem
likely to have some difficulty in admitting the claim of Cobbett after
disallowing that of Junius under the definition just given, but I have no
very great fear of being unable to making it good. Much as Cobbett
disliked persons, and crotchety as he was in his dislikes, they were
always dislikes of principle in the bottom. The singular
Tory-Radicalism which Cobbett exhibited, and which has made some
rank him unduly low, was no doubt partly due to accidents of birth and
education, and to narrowness of intellectual form. But

boroughmongering after all was a Whig rather than a Tory institution,
and Cobbett's hatred of it, as well as that desire for the maintenance of
a kind of manufacturing yeomanry (not wholly different from the later
ideal of Mr. William Morris,) which was his other guiding principle
throughout, was by no means alien from pure Toryism. His work in
relation to Reform, moreover, is unmistakable--as unmistakable as is
that of Sydney Smith, who precedes him here, with regard to Catholic
Emancipation. I should have voted and written against both these
things had I lived then; but this does not make me enjoy Cobbett or
Sydney any the less.
As for the latest example I have selected, it is a crucial one. The Letters
of Malachi Malagrowther come