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COBBETT, William (1762-1835). Autograph letter signed to Mr. Foster, Bolt Court, Fleet Street, 28 December 1832, discussing the politics of Yorkshire and in particular the recent election at Leeds, 'The whole county seems to be mad, or corrupt to the core, and Leeds seems to be worse than all the rest ... It is very curious that this, which is really a wonderful county ... should always have been the hotbed of one sort of fanaticism or another ... always have given to some imposter or another, the means of doing mischief to the whole kingdom: Wilberforce, Milton, Brougham, and now Macauley [sic], and next, probably, that half-mad man, and half something worse, Robert Owen. But, was it not enough, that Leeds itself should be reduced to a choice between Macauley and Sadler ... what man of sense would think of offering himself to people who could entertain a thought of either of these men for one single moment?', and continuing his invective with an attack on 'that contempti
COBBETT, William (1762-1835). Autograph letter signed to Mr. Foster, Bolt Court, Fleet Street, 28 December 1832, discussing the politics of Yorkshire and in particular the recent election at Leeds, 'The whole county seems to be mad, or corrupt to the core, and Leeds seems to be worse than all the rest ... It is very curious that this, which is really a wonderful county ... should always have been the hotbed of one sort of fanaticism or another ... always have given to some imposter or another, the means of doing mischief to the whole kingdom: Wilberforce, Milton, Brougham, and now Macauley [sic], and next, probably, that half-mad man, and half something worse, Robert Owen. But, was it not enough, that Leeds itself should be reduced to a choice between Macauley and Sadler ... what man of sense would think of offering himself to people who could entertain a thought of either of these men for one single moment?', and continuing his invective with an attack on 'that contemptible crew at Manchester', 2 pages, 4to.

细节
COBBETT, William (1762-1835). Autograph letter signed to Mr. Foster, Bolt Court, Fleet Street, 28 December 1832, discussing the politics of Yorkshire and in particular the recent election at Leeds, 'The whole county seems to be mad, or corrupt to the core, and Leeds seems to be worse than all the rest ... It is very curious that this, which is really a wonderful county ... should always have been the hotbed of one sort of fanaticism or another ... always have given to some imposter or another, the means of doing mischief to the whole kingdom: Wilberforce, Milton, Brougham, and now Macauley [sic], and next, probably, that half-mad man, and half something worse, Robert Owen. But, was it not enough, that Leeds itself should be reduced to a choice between Macauley and Sadler ... what man of sense would think of offering himself to people who could entertain a thought of either of these men for one single moment?', and continuing his invective with an attack on 'that contemptible crew at Manchester', 2 pages, 4to.

Cobbett refers in his letter to one of the most celebrated elections of the reform period - the first to be held in the newly enfranchised borough of Leeds in December 1832. The two successful Whig candidates were T.B. Macaulay, the historian, and John Marshall, a local flax-mill owner and one of the leading employers of labour in Leeds. One of the losing Tory candidates was the social reformer Michael Sadler, an Evangelical, and a prominent advocate in and out of Parliament for a limit to children's working hours.

Literature: John Clive, Thomas Babington Macaulay: the Shaping of the Historian, 1973, pp.221-9.