Historian, April 1st, 2001
Hazlitt wrote of Cobbett in The spirit of the age, 1825, that he was 'a kind of fourth estate in the politics of the country. He is not only unquestionably the most powerful political writer of the present day but one of the best writers in the language.'1 When Hazlitt penned his essay Cobbett's reputation as the scourge of the British ancien regime was well-established. For two decades he had castigated the pensioners, placemen, fundholders, stockjobbers and boroughmongers of `Old Corruption', reviled the pecuniary and sexual excesses of royalty, pilloried corpulent clergy, the Jews and 'Pars...
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