SOURCE: "The Revolution of 1832: Cobbett," in English Political Thought in the Nineteenth Century, Ernest Benn Limited, 1933, pp. 61-74.

In the following excerpt, Brinton provides an overview of Cobbett's political thought, especially in regard to its effect on the Reform Bill of 1832.

To write about Cobbett as a political thinker implies, in a sense, a false start. For, properly speaking, Cobbett never thought at all. Let us hasten to add that this remark is not a snobbishly intellectualist condemnation of Cobbett, but an attempt to give to the word thought a decently precise meaning. To think implies an effort on the part of the thinker to construct a coherent scheme out of the material of his experience, yet independent of his desires. The possibility of complete detachment on the part of the thinker may well be an illusion, but it is an indispensable illusion. Without it, thought is as...