Advice to Young Men by William Cobbett

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COBBETT'S ADVICE TO YOUNG MEN

And (Incidentally) to Young Women, in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life.
In a Series of Letters, Addressed to a Youth, a Bachelor, a Lover,
a Husband, a Father, a Citizen, or a Subject.

by

WILLIAM COBBETT

(From the Edition of 1829)
London
Henry Frowde
1906
Oxford: Horace Hart
Printer to the University

INTRODUCTION

1. It is the duty, and ought to be the pleasure, of age and experience
to warn and instruct youth and to come to the aid of inexperience. When
sailors have discovered rocks or breakers, and have had the good luck to
escape with life from amidst them, they, unless they be pirates or
barbarians as well as sailors, point out the spots for the placing of
buoys and of lights, in order that others may not be exposed to the
danger which they have so narrowly escaped. What man of common humanity,
having, by good luck, missed being engulfed in a quagmire or quicksand,
will withhold from his neighbours a knowledge of the peril without which
the dangerous spots are not to be approached?

2. The great effect which correct opinions and sound principles, imbibed
in early life, together with the good conduct, at that age, which must
naturally result from such opinions and principles; the great effect
which these have on the whole course of our lives is, and must be, well
known to every man of common observation. How many of us, arrived at
only forty years, have to repent; nay, which of us has not to repent, or
has not had to repent, that he did not, at an earlier age, possess a
great stock of knowledge of that kind which has an immediate effect on
our personal ease and happiness; that kind of knowledge, upon which the
cheerfulness and the harmony of our homes depend!

3. It is to communicate a stock of this sort of knowledge, in
particular, that this work is intended; knowledge, indeed, relative to
education, to many sciences, to trade, agriculture, horticulture, law,
government, and religion; knowledge relating, incidentally, to all
these; but, the main object is to furnish that sort of knowledge to the
young which but few men acquire until they be old, when it comes too
late to be useful.

4. To communicate to others the knowledge that I possess has always been
my taste and my delight; and few, who know anything of my progress
through life, will be disposed to question my fitness for the task. Talk
of rocks and breakers and quagmires and quicksands, who has ever escaped
from amidst so many as I have! Thrown (by my own will, indeed) on the
wide world at a very early age, not more than eleven or twelve years,
without money to support, without friends to advise, and without
book-learning to assist me; passing a few years dependent solely on my
own labour for my subsistence; then becoming a common soldier and
leading a military life, chiefly in foreign parts, for eight years;
quitting that life after really, for me, high promotion, and with, for
me, a large sum of money; marrying at an early age, going at once to
France to acquire the French language, thence to America; passing eight
years there, becoming bookseller and author, and taking a prominent part
in all the important discussions of the interesting period from 1793 to
1799, during which there was, in that country, a continued struggle
carried on between the English and the French parties; conducting
myself, in the ever-active part which I took in that struggle, in such a
way as to call forth marks of unequivocal approbation from the
government at home; returning to England in 1800, resuming my labours
here, suffering, during these twenty-nine years, two years of
imprisonment, heavy fines, three years self-banishment to the other side
of the Atlantic, and a total breaking of fortune, so as to be left
without a bed to lie on, and, during these twenty-nine years of troubles
and of punishments, writing and publishing, every week of my life,
whether in exile or not, eleven weeks only excepted, a periodical paper,
containing more or less of matter worthy of public attention; writing
and publishing, during _the same twenty-nine years_, a grammar of the
French and another of the English language, a work on the Economy of the
Cottage, a work on Forest Trees and Woodlands, a work on Gardening, an
account of America, a book of Sermons, a work on the Corn-plant, a
History of the Protestant Reformation; all books of great and continued
sale, and the _last_ unquestionably the book of greatest circulation in
the whole world, the Bible only excepted; having, during _these same
twenty-nine years_ of troubles and embarrassments without number,
introduced into England the manufacture of Straw-plat; also several
valuable trees; having introduced, during _the same twenty-nine years_,
the cultivation of the Corn-plant, so manifestly valuable as a source of
food; having, during the same period, always (whether in exile or not)
sustained a shop of some size, in London; having, during the whole of
the same period, never employed less, on an average, than ten persons,
in some capacity or other, exclusive of printers, bookbinders, and
others, connected with papers and books; and having, during these
twenty-nine years of troubles, embarrassments, prisons, fines, and
banishments, bred up a family of seven children to man's and woman's
state.

5. If such a man be not, after he has survived and accomplished all
this, qualified to give Advice to Young Men, no man is qualified for
that task. There may have been natural _genius_: but genius _alone_, not
all the genius in the world, could, without _something more_, have
conducted me through these perils. During these twenty-nine years, I
have had for deadly and ever-watchful foes, a government that has the
collecting and distributing of sixty millions of pounds in a year, and
also every soul who shares in that distribution. Until very lately, I
have had, for the far greater part of the time, the whole of the press
as my deadly enemy. Yet, at this moment, it will not be pretended, that
there is another man in the kingdom, who has so many cordial friends.
For as to the _friends_ of _ministers_ and the _great_, the friendship
is towards the _power_, the _influence_; it is, in fact, towards _those
taxes_, of which so many thousands are gaping to get at a share. And, if
we could, through so thick a veil, come at the naked fact, we should
find the subscription, now going on in Dublin for the purpose of
erecting a monument in that city, to commemorate the good recently done,
or alleged to be done, to Ireland, by the DUKE of WELLINGTON; we should
find, that the subscribers have _the taxes_ in view; and that, if the
monument shall actually be raised, it ought to have _selfishness_, and
not _gratitude_, engraven on its base. Nearly the same may be said with
regard to all the praises that we hear bestowed on men in power. The
friendship which is felt towards me is pure and disinterested: it is not
founded in any hope that the parties can have, that they can ever
_profit_ from professing it: it is founded on the gratitude which they
entertain for the good that I _have done_ them; and, of this sort of
friendship, and friendship so cordial, no man ever possessed a larger
portion.

6. Now, mere _genius_ will not acquire this for a man. There must be
something more than _genius_: there must be industry: there must be
perseverance: there must be, before the eyes of the nation, proofs of
extraordinary exertion: people must say to themselves, 'What wise
conduct must there have been in the employing of the time of this man!
How sober, how sparing in diet, how early a riser, how little expensive
he must have been!' These are the things, and _not genius_, which have
caused my labours to be so incessant and so successful: and, though I do
not affect to believe, that _every young man_, who shall read this work,
will become able to perform labours of equal magnitude and importance, I
do pretend, that _every_ young man, who will attend to my advice, will
become able to perform a great deal more than men generally do perform,
whatever may be his situation in life; and, that he will, too, perform
it with greater ease and satisfaction than he would, without the advice,
be able to perform the smaller portion.

7. I have had, from thousands of young men, and men advanced in years
also, letters of thanks for the great benefit which they have derived
from my labours. Some have thanked me for my Grammars, some for my
Cottage Economy, others for the Woodlands and the Gardener; and, in
short, for every one of my works have I received letters of thanks from
numerous persons, of whom I had never heard before. In many cases I have
been told, that, if the parties had had my books to read some years
before, the gain to them, whether in time or in other things, would have
been very great. Many, and a great many, have told me, that, though long
at school, and though their parents had paid for their being taught
English Grammar, or French, they had, in a short time, learned more from
my books, on those subjects, than they had learned, in years, from their
teachers. How many gentlemen have thanked me, in the strongest terms,
for my Woodlands and Gardener, observing (just as Lord Bacon had
observed in his time) that they had before seen no books, on these
subjects, that they could _understand_! But, I know not of anything that
ever gave me more satisfaction than I derived from the visit of a
gentleman of fortune, whom I had never heard of before, and who, about
four years ago, came to thank me in person for a complete reformation,
which had been worked in his son by the reading of my two SERMONS on
_drinking_ and on _gaming_.

8. I have, therefore, done, already, a great deal in this way: but,
there is still wanting, in a compact form, a body of ADVICE such as that
which I now propose to give: and in the giving of which I shall divide
my matter as follows. 1. Advice addressed to a YOUTH; 2. Advice
addressed to a BACHELOR; 3. Advice addressed to a LOVER; 4. To a
HUSBAND; 5. To a FATHER; 6. To a CITIZEN or SUBJECT.

9. Some persons will smile, and others laugh outright, at the idea of
'Cobbett's giving advice for conducting the affairs of _love_.' Yes, but
I was once young, and surely I may say with the poet, I forget which of
them,

'Though old I am, for ladies' love unfit,
The power of beauty I remember yet.'

I forget, indeed, the _names_ of the ladies as completely, pretty nigh,
as I do that of the poets; but I remember their influence, and of this
influence on the conduct and in the affairs and on the condition of men,
I have, and must have, been a witness all my life long. And, when we
consider in how great a degree the happiness of all the remainder of a
man's life depends, and always must depend, on his taste and judgment in
the character of a lover, this may well be considered as the most
important period of the whole term of his existence.

10. In my address to the HUSBAND, I shall, of course, introduce advice
relative to the important duties of _masters_ and _servants_; duties of
great importance, whether considered as affecting families or as
affecting the community. In my address to the CITIZEN or SUBJECT, I
shall consider all the reciprocal duties of the governors and the
governed, and also the duties which man owes to his neighbour. It would
be tedious to attempt to lay down rules for conduct exclusively
applicable to every distinct calling, profession, and condition of life;
but, under the above-described heads, will be conveyed every species of
advice of which I deem the utility to be unquestionable.

11. I have thus fully described the nature of my little work, and,
before I enter on the first Letter, I venture to express a hope, that
its good effects will be felt long after its author shall have ceased to
exist.

LETTER I

TO A YOUTH

12. You are now arrived at that age which the law thinks sufficient to
make an oath, taken by you, valid in a court of law. Let us suppose from
fourteen to nearly twenty; and, reserving, for a future occasion, my
remarks on your duty towards parents, let me here offer you my advice as
to the means likely to contribute largely towards making you a happy
man, useful to all about you, and an honour to those from whom you
sprang.

13. Start, I beseech you, with a conviction firmly fixed on your mind,
that you have no right to live in this world; that, being of hale body
and sound mind, you have _no right_ to any earthly existence, without
doing _work_ of some sort or other, unless you have ample fortune
whereon to live clear of debt; and, that even in that case, you have no
right to breed children, to be kept by others, or to be exposed to the
chance of being so kept. Start with this conviction thoroughly implanted
on your mind. To wish to live on the labour of others is, besides the
folly of it, to contemplate a _fraud_ at the least, and, under certain
circumstances, to meditate oppression and robbery.

14. I suppose you in the middle rank of life. Happiness ought to be your
great object, and it is to be found only in _independence_. Turn your
back on Whitehall and on Somerset-House; leave the Customs and Excise to
the feeble and low-minded; look not for success to favour, to
partiality, to friendship, or to what is called _interest_: write it on
your heart, that you will depend solely on your own merit and your own
exertions. Think not, neither, of any of those situations where gaudy
habiliments and sounding titles poorly disguise from the eyes of good
sense the mortifications and the heart-ache of slaves. Answer me not by
saying, that these situations '_must be_ filled by _somebody_;' for, if
I were to admit the truth of the proposition, which I do not, it would
remain for you to show that they are conducive to happiness, the
contrary of which has been proved to me by the observation of a now
pretty long life.

15. Indeed, reason tells us, that it must be thus: for that which a man
owes to favour or to partiality, that same favour or partiality is
constantly liable to take from him. He who lives upon anything except
his own labour, is incessantly surrounded by rivals: his grand resource
is that servility in which he is always liable to be surpassed. He is in
daily danger of being out-bidden; his very bread depends upon caprice;
and he lives in a state of uncertainty and never-ceasing fear. His is
not, indeed, the dog's life, '_hunger_ and idleness;' but it is worse;
for it is 'idleness with _slavery_,' the latter being the just price of
the former. Slaves frequently are well _fed_ and well _clad_; but slaves
dare not _speak_; they dare not be suspected to _think_ differently from
their masters: hate his acts as much as they may; be he tyrant, be he
drunkard, be he fool, or be he all three at once, they must be silent,
or, nine times out of ten, affect approbation: though possessing a
thousand times his knowledge, they must feign a conviction of his
superior understanding; though knowing that it is they who, in fact, do
all that he is paid for doing, it is destruction to them to _seem as if
they thought_ any portion of the service belonged to them! Far from me
be the thought, that any youth who shall read this page would not rather
perish than submit to live in a state like this! Such a state is fit
only for the refuse of nature; the halt, the half-blind, the unhappy
creatures whom nature has marked out for degradation.

16. And how comes it, then, that we see hale and even clever youths
voluntarily bending their necks to this slavery; nay, pressing forward
in eager rivalship to assume the yoke that ought to be insupportable?
The cause, and the only cause, is, that the deleterious fashion of the
day has created so many artificial wants, and has raised the minds of
young men so much above their real rank and state of life, that they
look scornfully on the employment, the fare, and the dress, that would
become them; and, in order to avoid that state in which they might live
_free_ and _happy_, they become _showy slaves_.

17. The great source of independence, the French express in a precept of
three words, '_Vivre de peu_,' which I have always very much admired.
'_To live upon little_' is the great security against slavery; and this
precept extends to dress and other things besides food and drink. When
DOCTOR JOHNSON wrote his Dictionary, he put in the word pensioner thus:
'PENSIONER--_A slave of state_.' After this he himself became a
_pensioner_! And thus, agreeably to his own definition, he lived and
died '_a slave of state_!' What must this man of great genius, and of
great industry too, have felt at receiving this pension! Could he be so
callous as not to feel a pang upon seeing his own name placed before his
own degrading definition? And what could induce him to submit to this?
His wants, his artificial wants, his habit of indulging in the pleasures
of the table; his disregard of the precept '_Vivre de peu_.' This was
the cause; and, be it observed, that indulgences of this sort, while
they tend to make men poor and expose them to commit mean acts, tend
also to enfeeble the body, and more especially to cloud and to weaken
the mind.

18. When this celebrated author wrote his Dictionary, he had not been
debased by luxurious enjoyments; the rich and powerful had not caressed
him into a slave; his writings then bore the stamp of truth and
independence: but, having been debased by luxury, he who had, while
content with plain fare, been the strenuous advocate of the rights of
the people, became a strenuous advocate for _taxation without
representation_; and, in a work under the title of '_Taxation no
Tyranny_,' defended, and greatly assisted to produce, that unjust and
bloody war which finally severed from England that great country the
United states of America, now the most powerful and dangerous rival that
this kingdom ever had. The statue of Dr. JOHNSON was the first that was
put into St. PAUL'S CHURCH! A signal warning to us not to look upon
monuments in honour of the dead as a proof of their virtues; for here we
see St. PAUL'S CHURCH holding up to the veneration of posterity a man
whose own writings, together with the records of the pension list, prove
him to have been '_a slave of state_.'

19. Endless are the instances of men of bright parts and high spirit
having been, by degrees, rendered powerless and despicable, by their
imaginary wants. Seldom has there been a man with a fairer prospect of
accomplishing great things and of acquiring lasting renown, than CHARLES
FOX: he had great talents of the most popular sort; the times were
singularly favourable to an exertion of them with success; a large part
of the nation admired him and were his partisans; he had, as to the
great question between him and his rival (PITT), reason and justice
clearly on his side: but he had against him his squandering and
luxurious habits: these made him dependent on the rich part of his
partisans; made his wisdom subservient to opulent folly or selfishness;
deprived his country of all the benefit that it might have derived from
his talents; and, finally, sent him to the grave without a single sigh
from a people, a great part of whom would, in his earlier years, have
wept at his death as at a national calamity.

20. Extravagance in _dress_, in the haunting of _play-houses_, in
_horses_, in everything else, is to be avoided, and, in youths and young
men, extravagance in _dress_ particularly. This sort of extravagance,
this waste of money on the decoration of the body, arises solely from
vanity, and from vanity of the most contemptible sort. It arises from
the notion, that all the people in the street, for instance, will be
_looking at you_ as soon as you walk out; and that they will, in a
greater or less degree, think the better of you on account of your fine
dress. Never was notion more false. All the sensible people that happen
to see you, will think nothing at all about you: those who are filled
with the same vain notion as you are, will perceive your attempt to
impose on them, and will despise you accordingly: rich people will
wholly disregard you, and you will be envied and hated by those who have
the same vanity that you have without the means of gratifying it. Dress
should be suited to your rank and station; a surgeon or physician should
not dress like a carpenter! but there is no reason why a tradesman, a
merchant's clerk, or clerk of any kind, or why a shopkeeper or
manufacturer, or even a merchant; no reason at all why any of these
should dress in an _expensive_ manner. It is a great mistake to suppose,
that they derive any advantage from exterior decoration. Men are
estimated by other _men_ according to their capacity and willingness to
be in some way or other _useful_; and though, with the foolish and vain
part of _women_, fine clothes frequently do something, yet the greater
part of the sex are much too penetrating to draw their conclusions
solely from the outside show of a man: they look deeper, and find other
criterions whereby to judge. And, after all, if the fine clothes obtain
you a wife, will they bring you, in that wife, _frugality, good sense_,
and that sort of attachment that is likely to be lasting? Natural beauty
of person is quite another thing: this always has, it always will and
must have, some weight even with men, and great weight with women. But
this does not want to be set off by expensive clothes. Female eyes are,
in such cases, very sharp: they can discover beauty though half hidden
by beard and even by dirt and surrounded by rags: and, take this as a
secret worth half a fortune to you, that women, however personally vain
they may be themselves, _despise personal vanity in men_.

21. Let your dress be as cheap as may be without _shabbiness_; think
more about the colour of your shirt than about the gloss or texture of
your coat; be always as _clean_ as your occupation will, without
inconvenience, permit; but never, no, not for one moment, believe, that
any human being, with sense in his skull, will love or respect you on
account of your fine or costly clothes. A great misfortune of the
present day is, that every one is, in his own estimate, _raised above
his real state of life_: every one seems to think himself entitled, if
not to title and great estate, at least _to live without work_. This
mischievous, this most destructive, way of thinking has, indeed, been
produced, like almost all our other evils, by the Acts of our Septennial
and Unreformed Parliament. That body, by its Acts, has caused an
enormous Debt to be created, and, in consequence, a prodigious sum to be
raised annually in taxes. It has caused, by these means, a race of
loan-mongers and stock-jobbers to arise. These carry on a species of
_gaming_, by which some make fortunes in a day, and others, in a day,
become beggars. The unfortunate gamesters, like the purchasers of blanks
in a lottery, are never heard of; but the fortunate ones become
companions for lords, and some of them lords themselves. We have, within
these few years, seen many of these gamesters get fortunes of a quarter
of a million in a few days, and then we have heard them, though
notoriously amongst the lowest and basest of human creatures, called
'_honourable gentlemen_'! In such a state of things, who is to expect
patient industry, laborious study, frugality and care; who, in such a
state of things, is to expect these to be employed in pursuit of that
competence which it is the laudable wish of all men to secure? Not long
ago a man, who had served his time to a tradesman in London, became,
instead of pursuing his trade, a stock-jobber, or gambler; and, in about
_two years_, drove his _coach-and-four_, had his town house and country
house, and visited, and was visited by, _peers of the highest rank_! A
_fellow-apprentice_ of this lucky gambler, though a tradesman in
excellent business, seeing no earthly reason why _he_ should not have
his coach-and-four also, turned his stock in trade into a stake for the
'Change; but, alas! at the end of a few months, instead of being in a
coach-and-four, he was in the _Gazette_!

22. This is one instance out of hundreds of thousands; not, indeed,
exactly of the same description, but all arising from the same copious
source. The words _speculate_ and _speculation_ have been substituted
for _gamble_ and _gambling_. The hatefulness of the pursuit is thus
taken away; and, while taxes to the amount of more than double the whole
of the rental of the kingdom; while these cause such crowds of idlers,
every one of whom calls himself a _gentleman_, and avoids the appearance
of working for his bread; while this is the case, who is to wonder, that
a great part of the youth of the country, knowing themselves to be as
_good_, as _learned_, and as _well-bred_ as these _gentlemen_; who is to
wonder, that they think, that they also ought to be considered as
_gentlemen_? Then, the late _war_ (also the work of the Septennial
Parliament) has left us, amongst its many legacies, such swarms of
_titled_ men and women; such swarms of '_Sirs_' and their '_Ladies_';
men and women who, only the other day, were the fellow-apprentices,
fellow-tradesmen's or farmers' sons and daughters, or indeed, the
fellow-servants, of those who are now in these several states of life;
the late Septennial Parliament war has left us such swarms of these,
that it is no wonder that the heads of young people are turned, and that
they are ashamed of that state of life to act their part well in which
ought to be their delight.

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