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The truth is that the fall of Napoleon is the hardest blow that our taxing system ever felt. It is now impossible to make people believe that immense fleets and armies are necessary.

William Cobbett

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William Cobbett
Age: 72 †
Born: 1763
Born: March 9
Died: 1835
Died: June 18
Biographer
Farmer
Journalist
Pamphleteer
Political Writer
Politician
Farnham
Surrey
Dick Retort
Peter Porcupine
People
System
Napoleon
Impossible
Armies
Fall
Immense
Felt
Hardest
Truth
Blow
Ever
Army
Believe
Necessary
Fleets
Make
Military
Taxing

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Norwich is a very fine city, and the castle, which stands in the middle of it, on a hill, is truly majestic.
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Good government is known from bad government by this infallible test: that under the former the labouring people are well fed and well clothed, and under the latter, they are badly fed and badly clothed.
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Poverty is, except where there is an actual want of food and raiment, a thing much more imaginary than real. The shame of poverty--the shame of being thought poor--it is a great and fatal weakness, though arising in this country, from the fashion of the times themselves.
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To be poor and independent is very nearly an impossibility.
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I set out as a sort of self-dependent politician. My opinions were my own. I dashed at all prejudices. I scorned to follow anybodyin matter of opinion.... All were, therefore, offended at my presumption, as they deemed it.
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From a very early age I had imbibed the opinion that it was every man's duty to do all that lay in his power to leave his country as good as he had found it.
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To suppose such a thing possible as a society, in which men, who are able and willing to work, cannot support their families, and ought, with a great part of the women, to be compelled to lead a life of celibacy, for fear of having children to be starved to suppose such a thing possible is monstrous.
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Grammar, perfectly understood, enables us not only to express our meaning fully and clearly, but so to express it as to enable us to defy the ingenuity of man to give to our words any other meaning than that which we ourselves intend them to express.
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He who writes badly thinks badly
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Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honored by the name of speculation but which ought to be called Gambling.
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Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt.
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Men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talent.
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All Middlesex is ugly, notwithstanding the millions upon millionswhichit iscontinuallysucking up fromtherestof the kingdom.
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Be you in what line of life you may, it will be amongst your misfortunes if you have not time properly to attend to [money management] for. ... want of attention to pecuniary matters ... has impeded the progress of science and of genius itself.
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All my plans in private life all my pursuits all my designs, wishes, and thoughts, have this one great object in view: the overthrow of the ruffian Boroughmongers. If I write grammars if I write on agriculture if I sow, plant, or deal in seeds whatever I do has first in view the destruction of those infamous tyrants.
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Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada are the horns, the head, the neck, the shins, and the hoof of the ox, and the United States are the ribs, the sirloin, the kidneys, and the rest of the body.
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It is by attempting to reach the top at a single leap that so much misery is caused in the world.
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Dancing is at once rational & healthful: it gives animal spirits it is the natural amusement of young people, & such it has been from the days of Moses.
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DEAL is a most villainous place. It is full of filthy-looking people.Great desolationof abomination has beengoing on here.
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Happiness, or misery, is in the mind. It is the mind that lives.
William Cobbett