To suppose such a thing possible as a society, in which men, who are able and willing to work, cannot support their families, and ought, with a great… - William Cobbett

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.

I was a countryman and a father before I was a writer on political subjects.... Born and bred up in the sweet air myself, I was resolved that [my children] should be bred up in it too.

If all men were upon an equality in point of means, England would become what the wilds of America are, inhabited by wild men; nobody would work except just to provide food and raiment for the day; and our country would become the most beggarly upon the earth, instead of being what it formerly was (and I hope and trust will be again) the pride of its people and the envy of the world.