"In Cobbett, indeed, the Reformers had found one splendid champion. With that forceful contrariness...he had swung round from the violent anti-Burdett invective of 1802 to the no less violent pro-Burdett declamation of 1807, and now made head against the popular current. For the pacific policy of the Whigs he had as great a contempt as for the obscurantism of the Tories. Attached to no party, guided only by his own tortuous common sense, he was often a voice crying in the wilderness; but his following was large and his influence important... [I]n February 1806 he broke with his old friend and patron Windham, and allied himself with the Burdettites. It was not long before they converted him to Parliamentary Reform, and by 1807 the Whigs were compelled to endure the taunts and gibes which poured out every week in the pages of his Political Register. In the years that followed he was by far the most important educative influence with the masses, on the side of Reform."