Cochrane (40 page)

Nor was this the opinion of a dangerous Radical. Campbell had been first Attorney-General in the Tory cabinet and then Lord Chief Justice in his turn. As for Ellenborough's refusal to grant a new trial on the grounds of the affidavits sworn by new witnesses after the first verdict, Campbell thought it "palpably contrary to the first principles of justice".
⁷⁶

Leaving to posterity the ultimate judgement in his case, Cochrane involved himself in the Radical campaigns of
1816-1818.
By the summer of
1816,
the royal family and the supporters of the ministry were giving their support to movements which might stem the tide of revolution or reform by acts of philanthropy. The economic recession which had followed the peace of
1815
offered ample scope for such work. An Association for the Relief of the Manufacturing and Labouring Poor was set up with the Duke of York and the Duke of Kent among its leaders, one of its active members being William Wilberforce.

To some of the Radicals such organisations as this were merely attempts to buy off the reformers. To others, including Cochrane, they seemed even more despicable, since the money to do the buying had been niched from the pockets of the people in the first place. When the Association for the Relief of the Manufacturing and Labouring Poor held its major meeting of
1816,
at the City of London Tavern on
29
July, Cochrane was present.

By any standard, it was a distinguished assembly. The Duke of York took the chair, flanked by his brothers, the Duke of Kent and the Duke of Cambridge. The three royal patrons were supported by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and a host of public figures. After some carefully turned sentiments on the need to show liberality to the starving, the Duke of Kent moved the motion:

That the transition from a state of extensive warfare to a system of peace has occasioned a stagnation of employment and a revulsion of trade, deeply affecting the situation of many parts of the community, and producing many instances of great local distress.

The motion was seconded, and then Cochrane rose at once to speak, among what the reports of the meeting described as equal factions of cheers and hisses. He denounced the way in which the coming of peace was cited as an excuse for the plight of the poor. Two-thirds of the money raised by the government was taken up by interest on the national debt, and too much of the rest of it went into the pockets of placemen. Cochrane turned to the Duke of Rutland, who was one of the organisers of the meeting.

I came here with the expectation of seeing the Duke of Rutland in the chair; and with some hopes as he takes the lead on this occasion, that it is his intention to surrender that sinecure of
£9000
a year which he is now in the habit of putting in his pocket. I still trust that all who are present and are also holders of sinecures have it in their intention to sacrifice them to their liberality and their justice; and that they do not come hereto aid the distresses of their country by paying half-a-crown per cent, out of the hundreds which they take from it. If they do not, all I can say is, that to me their pretended charity is little better than a fraud.

There was uproar during much of his speech, but Cochrane moved an amendment to the motion, proclaiming the national debt and vast government expenditure as the real causes of distress. The Duke of Kent hastily removed all reference to the war from his original motion, and Cochrane withdrew the amendment. What remained was a rather fatuous declaration that the country was in a bad way.

It was the Duke of Cambridge who followed his brother with a motion calling upon the "generosity" of those who had money and urging them as individuals "to afford the means of relief to their fellow-subjects". The Duke of Rutland proposed that the Association should start collecting money, and the Earl of Manvers promised that anyone who gave one hundred pounds or more would be elected to the committee. The Bishop of London moved a vote of thanks to the Duke of York, but before it could be passed Cochrane stepped forward again. He denounced the proposed subscription as an inadequate measure, laudable though the intention behind it might be. The true source of aid was in the hands o
f "the placemen, the sine
curists, and the fundholders, who must give up at least half of their ill-gotten gains". He demanded that another motion be put, placing the primary responsibility in the matter upon "the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his majesty's ministers".

There followed "violent uproar and confusion", the Bishop trying to move the vote of thanks against shouts of "Put Lord Cochrane's motion first!" and "Chair! Chair!" The Archbishop appealed to the meeting to let the vote of thanks be passed. When someone objected that if it were passed, the Duke of York would leave and the meeting would close without discussing Cochrane's motion, the Duke of Kent announced that there was "no intention to get rid of the noble lord's motion by any side wind". The vote of thanks was passed.

The Duke of York immediately rose, bowed to the meeting, and withdrew, leaving his brother to face the commotion and the cries of "Shame! Shame! A trick! A trick!" The Duke of Kent appeared genuinely bewildered.

"I hope that, as liberal Englishmen, you will consider my situation and who I am," he called out, "and that after my illustrious relatives have retired from the meeting you will not insist upon my taking the chair."

He hurried away after the Duke of York and the meeting broke up.
⁷⁷

Cochrane had at least unmasked the fraud practised by some of the advocates of philanthropy. It was not in acts of private charity but by a new policy in public finance that some of the country's ills might be cured. The sight of a man who received thousands of pounds in sinecure payments buying his way on to the committee of a charity by returning one hundred pounds of it was, at the best, ludicrous.

As a reformer, it was Cochrane who had become the principal parliamentary spokesman for those who demanded universal suffrage and annual parliaments as the surest guarantee of democracy. Samuel Bamford was one of the reformers who brought their petition to him in
1817.
The political crisis had deepened during the previous year and on the morning of Bamford's arrival, the Prince Regent had been jeered and hissed on his way to open parliament, a stone or possibly a bullet shattering the window of the royal carriage.

At Cochrane's lodgings in Palace Yard, Bamford and his companions were served with wine by Kitty, "a slight and elegant young lady, dressed in white and very interesting". Bamford was impressed by the homeliness and the hospitality of their reception, compared with the more formal and less generous treatment offered by Burdett. Cochrane was carried shoulder-high, in an armchair, through the gathering columns of Radical supporters, to the door of Westminster Hall. The great scroll of the petition went with him. At forty-two years old, the impression which he then conveyed to Bamford was still predominantly that of a youthful man.

He was a tall young man; cordial and unaffected in his manner. He stooped a little, and had somewhat of a sailor's gait in walking ; his face was rather oval; fair naturally, but now tanned and sun-freckled. His hair was sandy, his whiskers rather small and of a deeper colour; and the expression of his countenance was calm and self-possessed.
⁷⁸

While Cochrane tried to present the petitions of the reformers to the House, the crowd outside was addressed by Henry Hunt. In the Commons, Cochrane brought forward two petitions, one from
20,000
citizens of Bristol and its neighbourhood, the other from Yorkshire. The petitioners complained of national poverty and unemployment, protesting that it was futile to attempt relief by giving soup to the starving while so much of the nation's wealth was eaten up by sinecure payments. Cochrane summarised their views vigorously.

The petitioners have a full and immovable conviction - a conviction which they believe to be universal throughout the kingdom - that the House does not, in any constitutional or rational sense, represent the nation; that, when the people have ceased to be represented, the Constitution is subverted; that taxation without representation is a state of slavery.

This provoked ministerial protest that the petitions were an insulting libel on the House of Commons. They were rejected by
135
votes to
48.
On
5
February, he presented another petition signed by
24,000
Londoners, which suffered the same rejection. Cochrane angrily denounced the alternative remedies of charitable donations to the poor, recommended by the ministers. Lord Castlereagh, "the bellwether of the House of Commons", and thirteen other men had drawn
£309,861
from the country's revenue during the previous year. They had handed back exactly
£1505
for "sinecure soup", as their charity was now called.
⁷⁹

The government responded to such attacks by suspending the Habeas Corpus Act and beginning a resolute campaign against the opposition press. During the following year, eighteen major prosecutions for seditious libel were brought in King's Bench. It may be a tribute to Cochrane's denunciations of Lord Ellenborough that there were acquittals in fourteen cases, as a result of Ellenborough's failure to control the irrepressible William Hone, who defended himself in the three most crucial trials.

The political choice for the reformers lay between open revolution and a broad alliance of those opposed to the ministry. Cochrane favoured the latter, since revolution might merely replace a corrupt parliament by a military despotism, whether revolutionary or ministerial. As the Whig party and the reformers moved more closely together, Cochrane wrote:

I have resolved to steer another political course, seeing that the only means of avoiding military despotism from the country is to unite the people and the Whigs, so far as they can be induced to co-operate, which they must do if they wish to preserve the remainder of the Constitution.

But while English politics moved first to crisis and then to resolution, he was also preoccupied with several concerns of his own.
⁸⁰

Cochrane was now plagued by the legacies of disputes which had all but faded from the public mind. The matter of prize money for the Basque Roads affair had still not been settled after eight years. Gambier insisted that it should be divided among the entire fleet, while Cochrane argued that only the men of the ships who had actually attacked the French ought to have a share in it. He felt so strongly over this that he addressed his case to the Prince Regent and the Privy Council, complaining that the Admiralty court had accepted evidence from men who were nine miles away from the things which they purported to describe. Moreover, there had been a long wrangle in court as to whether Cochrane, who was regarded as having committed perjury by denying his part in the Stock Exchange fraud, was competent to give evidence in any court of law. The action was adjourned from term to term until the point at which he was no longer able to be present to continue with it. He put his case into print, addressing it to the Royal Navy and the public, and contented himself with that.
⁸¹

In other respects, the law functioned with remorseless efficiency where he was concerned. After his election for Honiton in
1806,
he had been persuaded to give a banquet for his supporters which had, in the event, been turned into a public treat. Discovering the trick too late, he had then refused to pay the bill for
£1200
which the evening's celebrations had incurred. The matter had never been decided and his creditors were still demanding payment ten years later. By the spring of
1817,
they succeeded in getting a court order for his house at Holly Hill, in Hampshire. Cochrane decided to fight to the end. "I still hold out," he wrote, as the sheriff of Hampshire and twenty-five constables laid siege to the house, "though the castle has several times been threatened in great force.
..
. Explosion-bags are set in the lower embrasures, and all the garrison is under arms." This letter was probably intercepted by the officers of the law, since they treated the defences of Holly Hill with great respect thereafter. The explosion-bags contained only powdered charcoal, but they had heard of Cochrane's defence of Fort Trinidad, and his monstrous proposal for the defence of
78
Piccadilly, and did not regard martyrdom as part of their profession.
⁸²

After a month or more, one of the officers managed to slip through an open window and catch Cochrane sitting peaceably at breakfast. The siege was over and the ancient bill was paid under considerable protest. During the latter half of
1817,
Cochrane began to sell his house and his possessions, collecting all that remained of his wealth and preparing to embark on the most unlikely adventure of all.