William Cobbett Quotes

As to politics, we were like the rest of the country people in England; that is to say, we neither knew nor thought any thing about the matter.

All that I can boast of in my birth, is, that I was born in Old England.

After this, who will say that an Englishman ought not to despise “all the nations of Europe?” For my part I do, and that most “heartily.”

A man of all countries is a man of no country: and let all those citizens of the world remember, that he who has been a bad subject in his own country...will never be either trusted or respected.

It is not true, that the granting of the independence of America was “an advantage to England.” It was, on the contrary, the greatest evil that ever befell her. It was the primary cause of the present war, and of all the calamities which it has brought upon England and upon Europe. If England and the American States had continued united, they would have prevented France from disturbing the peace of the world. That fatal measure, though it has not curtailed our commerce, has created a power who will be capable of assisting France in any of her future projects against us, and whose neutrality, when France recovers her marine, must be purchased by us at the expense, first of commercial concessions, and, finally, by much more important sacrifices. In short, it laid the foundation of the ruin of the British empire, which can be prevented by nothing but a wisdom, and an energy, which have never yet marked the councils of our Government, in its transactions with the American States.

However roguish a man may be, he always loves to deal with an honest man.