accommodated. When I knocked at Mr. Newman's door, and asked for
Mr. Cobbett, I was received with attention by the servant, and
introduced immediately; in fact, the reception given by Mr. Newman's
servants to Mr. Cobbett's visitors, was much more respectful, and
more attentive and accommodating, than they ever experienced from the
servants of Mr. Cobbett at his own house; at least it always struck me
so, as my friend Cobbett's servants were not always the best mannered in
the world, I mean his domestic servants, those who were not under his
management altogether, but under the direction and management of the
female part of his family. In truth, I do not remember ever going to Mr.
Cobbett's house twice following, without seeing new faces, or rather new
maid servants. Mrs. Cobbett was, what was called amongst the gossips,
very _unfortunate_ in getting maid servants; they seldom suited long
together. But not so with Mr. Cobbett; it was quite the reverse with
him: his servants about his farms always lived as long with him as they
conducted themselves with propriety; he was, indeed, what is called
very lucky the choice of his servants. For years and years, and years
together, when I went to visit him, I found the same faces, the same
well-known names. The same tenant occupied the same cottage; the same
carter drove the same team; the same ploughman held the same plough; the
same thrasher occupied the same barn; and the same shepherd attended the
flock. The names of Dean, Jurd, Coward, and Hurcot, and many others,
were for a number of years, as familiar to me as the names of my own
servants. The editors of the venal hireling press, and the enemies of
Mr. Cobbett's political writings, have always represented him as a bad
master, and as being capricious, cruel, and tyrannical amongst his
servants and poorer neighbours; and by means of as foul a conspiracy
against him as ever disgraced the age in which we live, or as ever
disgraced the courts of justice in any country. The calumny about _Jesse
Burgess_ was propagated from one end of the land to the other, by the