The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface.
• The Life of Richard Cobden
• Chapter I.: Early Life.
• Chapter II.: Commercial and Mental Progress.
• Chapter III.: Travels In West and East.
• Chapter IV.: The Two Pamphlets.
• Chapter V.: Life In Manchester, 1837–9.
• Chapter VI.: The Foundation of the League.
• Chapter VII.: The Corn Laws.
• Chapter VIII.: Cobden Enters Parliament—first Session.
• Chapter IX.: Cobden As an Agitator.
• Chapter X.: The New Corn Law.
• Chapter XI.: Sir Robert Peel’s New Policy.
• Chapter XII.: Renewed Activity of the League—cobden and Sir Robert Peel—rural Campaign.
• Chapter XIII.: The Session of 1844—factory Legislation—the Constituencies.
• Chapter XIV.: Bastiat—new Tactics—activity In Parliament—maynooth Grant—private Affairs.
• Chapter XV.: The Autumn of 1845.
• Chapter XVI.: Repeal of the Corn Laws and Fall of the Government.
• Chapter XVII.: Correspondence With Sir Robert Peel—cessation of the Work of the League.
• Chapter XVIII.: Tour Over Europe.
• Chapter XIX.: Election For the West Riding.—purchase of Dunford.—correspondence.
• Chapter XX.: Miscellaneous Correspondence On Social and Political Movements.
• Chapter XXI.: The Don Pacifico Debate—the Papal Aggression—correspondence With Mr. Bright On Reform—kossuth.
• Chapter XXII.: The Protectionists In Office.
• Chapter XXIII.: The Panic of 1853.
• Chapter XXIV.: The Crimean War.
• Chapter XXV.: Death of His Son.
• Chapter XXVI.: Chinese Affairs—cobden’s Motion—the Dissolution.
• Chapter XXVII.: The Indian Mutiny—private Affairs—second Journey to America.
• Chapter XXVIII.: Return From America.—the New Ministry.
• Chapter XXIX.: The French Treaty.
• Chapter XXX.: Holiday and Return to Paris.
• Chapter XXXI.: The Tariff—the Fortification Scheme.
• Chapter XXXII.: The Policy of the Commercial Treaty.
• Chapter XXXIII.: Miscellaneous Correspondence, 1859–60—paris—return to England.
• Chapter XXXIV.: The American War—fortification Schemes—international Law.
• Chapter XXXV.: Correspondence With Mr. Delane.
• Chapter XXXVI.: The Danish War—last Speeches In Parliament—correspondence.
• Chapter XXXVII.: Speech At Rochdale—the Land Question—correspondence—last Days and Death.
• Chapter XXXVIII.: Conclusion.
• Appendix
• Note A. (see P. 115).
• Cobden to W. C. Hunt On the Hours of Labour.
• Full Text of the Last Letter Written By Mr Cobden
• Bibliography of Richard Cobden, Based On the British Museum Catalogue
• Biography, Criticism Etc

CHAPTER XXIII.

the panic of 1853.

1852.
Æt. 48.Some have noticed it as an odd coincidence that the voting for the second Empire took place three days after the funeral of the Duke of Wellington. We might picture to ourselves, said Cobden, the third Napoleon rising from the yet open tomb of the vanquisher of the first. That event of sinister omen for France naturally roused considerable disquiet in England. But what had been a natural disquiet was exaggerated by the press and a certain influential class of politicians into a fit of angry and violent alarm. The massacre of unarmed citizens on the boulevards with which Louis Napoleon had cowed Paris and sealed his usurpation, had filled England with a just and righteous horror. But from reprobation of this deed of bloodshed to an invasion panic, there ought to have been a long step. Statesmen at least, whether journalists or actors in politics, might have been expected to obstain from flogging the public mind into a state of furious apprehension. Especially is this true of statesmen who, like Lord Palmerston, had been the first in the Days of December to applaud the President for tearing up the Constitution and throwing the national representatives into prison. Lord Palmerston, however, who notwithstanding his astuteness and his high spirits had a strong dash of honest stupidity in his composition, had got it into his head that steam-ships had thrown a bridge across the British Channel. It was now perfectly possible, he1852.
Æt. 48. said, that all England might waken up some morning to find that 50,000 Frenchmen had landed on her shores in the course of the previous night. It was in vain that military and naval authorities demonstrated the physical impossibility of this electric suddenness of invasion. It was in vain that statesmen like Sir Robert Peel had asked the House to figure to itself the surprise with which Lord Palmerston himself, sitting in Downing Street with all the threads of European diplomacy concentrated like so many telegraphic wires in his cabinet, would hear that on that day fortnight 150,000 men were to be landed on the shores of Great Britain. Lord Palmerston held to his fixed idea. During Peel’s. Ministry he had so incessantly asked alarmist question, that even Sir Robert himself began to think of Militia Bill. Lord John Russell was no sooner in office than the same influence was brought to bear, and in due time led to the Militia Bill which incidentally brought his Ministry to an end. Lord Derby’s first measure on taking his predecessor’s place was to bring in another Militia Bill, and the energetic support which was given to it by Lord Palmerston was one of the chief secrets of its success.

The organization of the militia was followed on the erection of the French Empire by an increase in each branch of the two services. Every condition was present which according to Cobden’s diagnosis favoured the growth of an invasion panic. The country was very prosperous. Under the influence of Free Trade and the gold discoveries, the exports had risen in five years from fifty to one hundred millions sterling per annum. The manufacturers were rolling in new opulence. The revenue was satisfactory. The country gentlemen found that they were not ruined after all but one the contrary were getting better 1852.
Æt. 48.rents than ever. There was, moreover, a not unnatural reaction against the outburst of pacific and fraternal exaggerations to which the Great Exhibition had given rise. The death of the Duke of Wellington and the recapitulation in a thousand funeral orations of his splendid exploits, had turned men’s minds to all the pomp and circumstance of war, to heroic campaigns, to glorious and crowning victories.

When the nation is in the humour to indulge itself in the luxury of a panic, the mood never declines for lack of nourishment. The oracles of the military and naval clubs hurried to the Times with agitating communications. Every half-pay officer in the country had his own peculiar alarm and his own favourite plan. The counters of the booksellers were strewn with pamphlets like snowflakes, containing a Few Observations on Invasion, Brief Suggestions for a Reserve Force, Short Notes on National Defence, Plain Proposals for a Maritime Militia, Thoughts on the Peril of Portsmouth. Every morning a fresh and more terrible paragraph sent a thrill round the breakfast-table. There was a French plot to secure a naval station in the West Indies. General Changarnier had divulged a secret plan for seizing the metropolis. The French troops were tired of Rome, and were jealous of their share in the sack of London. The great shipbuilders on the Clyde had received an order for steam frigates from the French Government. A French man-of-war had actually appeared at Dover. It was to no purpose that each paragraph was demolished the very day after its publication. The Frenchman had been driven to Dover by stress of weather; General Changarnier said that his alleged plan was absolutely without foundation; the shipbuilders solemnly declared that no order for steam frigates had come into the Clyde. All this made no difference, and the panic ran its course. As Cobden justly said, nothing could surpass the childlike simplicity with which every absurd and improbable1852.
Æt. 48. rumour was believed, unless it were the stolid scepticism with which all offers to demonstrate their falsehood was rejected.1

Cobden was proud to recall that he and his friends in face of this outcry took the part which had been taken by the great political leaders who addressed our forefathers half a century before, and who bore the most honoured names in the history of English Liberalism. Nothing pleased him better than to remind those who taunted him with his alliance with the Peace Society, that the Society of Friends co-operated with Mr. Fox in trying to prevent the war of 1793, and that Mr. Fox was not at all ashamed to write to Mr. Gurney, of Norwich, begging him to get up county meetings, and to send petitions whether from Quakers or others to the House of Commons. Cobden spent the autumn between the general election and the meeting of Parliament in turning over these things. His industrious meditations took shape in a pamphlet which he intended to do something to appease the perturbation of the popular spirit. Before he actually sat down to composition, he wrote an interesting letter to his friend, Mr. Thomasson, of Bolton:—

“Midhurst, Sept. 27—The course pursued by Brougham and all the Whig party at the close of the war, in opposition to the large standing armaments proposed to be maintained by the Tories, was precisely that which the Peace party are now taking in opposition to both Whigs and Tories. The former have since that time been in power, and there is perfect truth in the sarcasm that the Whigs are Tories in office, and the Tories are Whigs when out of office. But the misfortune is that, after having been in power and committed 1852.
Æt. 48.to all the bad measures of a Whig Government, the Whigs are rendered quite useless as an Opposition; and we have now arrived at that point that whether on the right or left hand side of the Speaker’s chair, the Liberal party headed by the Whigs are incapable of doing any good for the country. But before you and I (men of peace as we are) find fault with the Whig chiefs, let us ask ourselves candidly whether the country at large is in favour of any other policy than that which has been pursued by the aristocracy, Whig and Tory, for the last century and a half? The man who impersonated that policy more than any other was the Duke of Wellington; and I had the daily opportunity of witnessing at the Great Exhibition last year that all other objects of interest sank to insignificance even in that collection of a world’s wonders when he made his entry in the Crystal Palace. The frenzy of admiration and enthusiasm which took possession of a hundred thousand people of all classes at the very announcement of his name, was one of the most impressive lessons I ever had of the real tendencies of the English character..... The recent demonstration at the death of the Duke was in keeping with what I have described. Now what does all this imply but a war-spirit in the population? As for the claims of the old warrior to popularity as a statesman, they amount to this, that he resisted two reforms, Catholic Emancipation and the Reform Bill, until we were on the verge of rebellion, and yielded at last avowedly only to avoid civil war; and in a third case (repeal of the Corn Law) he gave in his acquiescence to Peel after his old policy had plunged one-half the Kingdom into the horrors of plague, pestilence, and famine. No, depend upon it, the world never yet knew so warlike and aggressive a people as the British.

“I wish to see a map on Mercator’s projection published, with a red spot to mark the places on sea and land where bloody battles have been fought by Englishmen. It would be found that, unlike every other people, we have during1852.
Æt. 48. seven centuries been fighting with foreign enemies everywhere excepting on our own soil. Need another word be said to prove us the most aggressive race under the sun? The Duke’s career is no exception to this rule. His victories in India were a page in those bloody annals for which God will assuredly exact a retribution from us or our children; and his triumphs on the Continent can never be truly said to have been achieved in defence of our own independence or liberty. His descent upon the Peninsula was made after Nelson had at the battle of Trafalgar destroyed Napoleon’s power at see. From that moment we were as safe from molestation in our island home, as if we had inhabited another planet. Yet from that time till the close of the war we spent four or five hundred millions sterling upon continental quarrels. ‘Oh,’ but say the flatterers of our national vain-gloriousness, ‘we saved the liberties of Europe.’ Precious liberties truly! Look at them from Cadiz to Moscow! The moral of all this is that we have to pull against wind and tide in trying to put down the warlike spirit of our countrymen. It must be done by showing them that their energies have been perverted to a disastrous course, so far as their interests are concerned, by a ruling class which has reaped all the honours and emoluments, while the nation inherits the burdens and responsibilities. Our modern history must be re-written.”

The pamphlet in which he now engaged, “1792 and 1853, in Three Letters,” was, in fact, a modest attempt on Cobden’s own part to rewrite in his own way one very relevant episode of that modern history of which he speaks in his letter. He makes no pretence of an original historical inquiry into the sources of the war between England and France in 1793. What he does is to show, and he finds an easy task in showing from the speeches of leading members of the war 1853.
Æt. 49.Cabinet, as well as from the narratives of Tory historians like Scott and Alison, that the alleged grounds of the war were not the real motives either of the English Government or the English people. The French had opened the navigation of the Scheldt; they had invaded Holland; the Convention had passed the famous decree of fraternity, declaring in the name of the French nation that it would grant assistance to all peoples who should wish to recover their liberty, and charging the executive power to give the necessary orders to its generals. These were the three nominal grounds of quarrel. The real ground behind them all was the violent hatred which a conservative nation like the English, inevitably felt towards the revolutionary policy of France. For the actual motives we must look to Burke’s philippics, and not to Lord Grenville’s despatches. But deep-rooted hatred can be no evidence that a war prompted by it is necessary or just; and as a matter of fact there are very few persons now alive who, having examined the records of English policy in 1793, do not condemn the war of that year as both impolitic and unnecessary. Cobden would be justified by most modern students of the period in his contempt for the plea that the French were the first to declare war. It was manifest from the middle of December, 1792, that the English Government intended to join the continental powers, and for the very plain reason, apart from the captivity and imminent death of the king, that France had shown herself more than their match. For a time it was believed that the Revolution had broken up the army and dispersed the resources of the country. It was expected that Prussia and Austria would find the restoration of the old system in France easy to accomplish. For so long the English Ministry looked with a certain complacency on events which promised finally to lower their natural rival, and to punish France for the aid and comfort that she had bestowed on the rebellion of the American colonies against1853.
Æt. 49. Great Britain.

Of course if Cobden had professed to be writing a history of that momentous epoch, he would have had to take many circumstances into account which for his purpose at the moment might fairly be allowed to go for nothing. Chauvelin, for instance, was not so humble and innocent an emissary as Cobden’s language might leave us to suppose; he was a coxcomb without either judgment or address. The success of the French arms, again, coming after a period of intense apprehension, nursed in the Convention an arrogant and overbearing spirit which would probably have made the maintenance of peace with even a less proud Government than that of Great Britain extremely difficult. What is clear is that it would have been well for England, and probably for Europe too, if the British Government had done their best to remain at peace with the new Republic. And what is equally clear is, as Cobden showed, that the British Government when the crisis came, so far from doing their best to remain at peace, hurried violently into war. The many elastic possibilities of history did not concern a writer whose pressing object was to demolish the opinion, which the feeling of the moment when Cobden wrote made so mischievous, that it was the restless and aggressive spirit of France which first provoked the great war that opened upon Europe in 1792. This task, as I have said, was tolerably easy, and nobody who has fully considered the circumstances of the Declaration of Pilnitz will deny that though there were political parties in France to whom the foreign war that was forced upon them was for domestic reasons not unwelcome, yet Cobden was strictly right in his thesis that the French Government had, in 1792, given no ground of offence to foreign nations. “It is impossible,” Cobden breaks out, in the fulness and sincerity of his emotion, “to read the 1853.
Æt. 49.speeches of Fox at this time, without feeling one’s heart yearn with admiration and gratitude for the bold and resolute manner in which he opposed the war, never yielding and never repining under the most discouraging defeats; and, although deserted by many of his friends in the House, taunted with having only a score of followers left, and obliged to admit that he could not walk the streets without being insulted by hearing the charge made against him of carrying on an improper correspondence with the enemy bin France, yet bearing it all with uncomplaining manliness and dignity. The annals of Parliament do not record a nobler struggle in a nobler cause.”

No part of the pamphlet was more likely to be useful than that in which Cobden explained to his countrymen that the French nation, instead of being ashamed of the Revolution, and envious of the social advancement of England, as we in fatuousness of national vanity used to persist in believing, do in fact cling to the work of 1789 with appreciation thankfulness, and invincible tenacity; and that men of the most opposite opinions on every other subject, agree that to the Revolution in its normal phases France is indebted for a more rapid advance in civilization, wealth, and happiness, than was ever previously made by any community of a similar extent in the same period of time. No people, he went on, have ever clung with more unshaken staunchness to the essential principles and main objects of a Revolution than have the French. When you say that their new Emperor is absolute and his will omnipotent, remember that there are three things which even he dare not attempt to do. He dare not attempt to endow with land and tithes one sect as the exclusively paid religion of the State. He could not create a system of primogeniture and entail. And finally he could not impose a tax on succession to personal property, and leave real property free. In England we have all three. “I am penning these pages,” said Cobden, sitting in his1853.
Æt. 49. little study at Dunford, “in a maritime county. Stretching from the sea, right across to the verge of the next county, and embracing great part of the parish in which I sit, are the estates of three proprietors, which extend in almost unbroken masses for upwards of twenty miles. The residence of one of them is surrounded with a walled park ten miles in circumference. Well, if Louis Napoleon were to create three such estates in France, it would be fatal to him. Tell the eight millions of landed proprietors in France that they shall exchange lots with the English people, where the labourer who cultivates the farm has no more proprietary interest in the soil than the horses he drives, and he will be stricken with horror,”

All this was said, not to urge the land question, but to press upon his countrymen the habit of which of all others they stand most in need, of learning to tolerate the feelings and predilections of other nations. “Let us spare our pity,” he insisted, “where people are contented; and withhold our contempt from a nation who hold what they prize by the vigilant exercise of public opinion.” What the Frenchman cherishes is equality; what the Englishman cherishes is personal liberty. The poorest cottager on any of the three estates that encircle Heyshott “feels that his personal liberty is sacred, and he cares little for equality. And here I will repeat,” says Cobden, “that I would rather live in a country where this feeling in favour of individual freedom is jealously cherished, than be without it in the enjoyment of all the principles of the French Constituent Assembly.” It is passages like this that help us to understand the secret of Cobden’s position, and of his attraction. He was so much of an Englishman, while he strove to show how Englishmen might become more generous, more noble, and more just in their judgments on other nations.

1853.
Æt. 49.His words about Louis Napoleon contained an admirable illustration of the same ever wholesome lesson:—“It is hardly necessary to declare that, were Louis Napoleon an Englishman, or I a Frenchman, however small a minority of opponents he might have, I should be one of them:—that is all I have to say in the matter; for anything more would in my opinion be mere impertinence towards the French people, who for reasons best known to themselves acquiesce in his rule.” And as to the first and stronger Napoleon, the French feeling for his memory which had just been so strikingly manifested in the immense and spontaneous vote for the Empire of his nephew, became an intelligible sentiment in Cobden’s pages, instead of remaining the wicked mania that it appeared to the majority of his countrymen. We, he said, who have just paid almost pagan honours to the remains of a general who fought the battles of the Coalition,—” what should we have done in honour of those soldiers who beat back from our frontiers confederate armies of literally every nation in Christian Europe, except Sweden, Denmark, and Switzerland? Should we not, if we were Frenchmen, be greater worshippers of the name of Napoleon, if possible, than we are of Wellington and Nelson, and with greater reason? Should we not forgive him his ambition, his selfishness, his despotic rule? Would not every fault be forgotten in the recollection that he humble Prussia, who had without provocation assailed us in the throes of a domestic revolution, and that he dictated terms at Vienna to Austria, who had actually begun the dismemberment of our own territory?.... Should we not indulge a feeling of proud defiance in electing for the chief of the State the next heir to that great military hero, the child and champion of the Revolution, whose family had been especially proscribed by the coalesced powers before whom he finally fell. Yes, however wise men might moralize, and good men mourn, these would under the circumstances, I am sure, be1853.
Æt. 49. the feelings and passions of Englishmen, aye, and probably in even a stronger degree than they are now cherished in France.”

Cobden would certainly have been the last man in the world to deny that there was another and historically truer version of Napoleon’s career than the version of the Napoleonic Legend; but his sound principle that masses of men never accept either maxims or idols without something generous, rational, and worthy of our respect in the motives which sanctioned their acceptance, drew him naturally to this interpretation of Napoleon’s position in the memory of France. The interpretation, if it be not historically justifiable, is at least dramatically true. It represents what Frenchmen were thinking of; and civilization will have taken one of its most enormous strides, when the citizens of each nation do not shrink from the duty of doing justice to the better mind of every other.

The pamphlet winds up with Cobden’s invariable moral, that instead of lavishing interest or foreign nations who neither seek nor need it, Englishmen will do better to turn their attention to the defects of their own social condition. “I have traveled much,” he says, “and always with an eye to the state of the great majority, who everywhere constitute the toiling base of the social pyramid; and I confess I have arrived at the conclusion that there is no country where so much is required to be done before the mass of the people become what it is pretended they are, what they ought to be, and what I trust they will yet be, as in England.” The justice, the real patriotism, the hope, of these closing pages are all indeed admirable; and the illustration from the history of the Irish famine of the possibility of equalling the soldier’s bravery and devotion in other fields besides the field of battle, is one of the most striking passages 1853.
Æt. 49.in English prose, not only for the truth of its feeling, but for the energy, simplicity, and noble pathos of its expression.2

The pamphlet was published in the course of the ministerial crisis, during the formation of the new Coalition Ministry. Shortly afterwards, and almost immediately before the opening of the session under these changed auspices, Cobden attended for the fourth time the Peace Conference, which was on this occasion held at Manchester. He still nursed the honourable belief that the spread of sound information and reasonable arguments would suffice to stem the tide of national delusion, and he once more raised the old cry to which Manchester had in old days so briskly responded, for an army of lecturers and a deluge of tracts to counteract “the poison that was being infused into the minds of the people.” He met a friend in the1853.
Æt. 49. streets, who said to him, “You have come here at a very inopportune time for your Peace meeting, for everybody is in a panic, and thinks that you are wrong.” Cobden manfully replied, that this was the very reason why they were there, precisely because there never was a time yet when it was so necessary for the Peace party to redouble its efforts.

While he was at Manchester, Cobden found satisfaction in the reception which his pamphlet had at the hands both of his friends and of the public at large. If it did not work a great national conversion, at any rate it did not fall dead. Opinion decided against him for the hour, but that the question should have been regarded as an open one, was the first preliminary condition of the world coming round to his view.

“Manchester, Jan. 27, 1853. (To Mrs. Cobden.)—I am writing this in the Corn Exchange. This morning’s meeting is only moderately attended, but I suppose we shall be better supported in the evening. Bright has been speaking very well. Brotherton is now speaking a very good sermon. By the way, Bright came up to me to-day when we met, and exclaimed, ‘What a glorious pamphlet you have written!’ Henry Richard, of the Peace Society, tells me that he sat up till two o’clock this morning reading it, and is delighted. Ireland, of the Examiner paper, tells me he sat up to read it, and gives also a good account of it. Bright says it must be printed for twopence, and got into every house in the kingdom. I see the Standard paper has commenced abusing it, and is contending that the war was begun by the French and not ourselves. But the Whigs will be obliged to stand up for Fox and their party, and show the contrary.”

“Manchester, Jan. 31, 1853. (To Mrs. Cobden.)—I can’t tell 1853.
Æt. 49.what the Times means by reprinting all my pamphlet. Hitherto I don’t see that their own comments have shaken it much, and I suppose therefore they are rather inclined to let it tell its own tale in a favourable way. But perhaps the abuse is all to come. However, it is an abundant recompense for the little night-work, and the occasional cold feet it cost me, to see it sent to all the corners of the earth upon the Times’ broad sheet. They may abuse it as they will, but after letting it be fairly read, I have no right to complain. If, as Doctor Johnson says, the best compliment to an author is to quote him, I must surely be satisfied when the whole of my pamphlet is quoted. I don’t know what the effect of the Times reprinting it will be upon Ridgway’s sale, but it will perhaps not be unfavourable. I have a long letter from Parkes, in which he is complimentary upon the pamphlet. The Liberal press is so taken aback by this slap in their face in the very midst of their anti-French howl, that they hardly know what to say to it. There is so much that they are bound to accept and support, that they hardly know how to oppose, and yet they don’t feel disposed to approve if they can help it.”

The great event of the session was the first of those powerfully conceived and magnificently expounded financial schemes by which the new Chancellor of the Exchequer astonished and delighted the country. The little handful of Protectionists declared that it was a Budget for Manchester, and asked for how many years more Manchester was to dictate laws for the nation. The country gentlemen did not even yet realize that the centre of political power was slowly passing away, not for a moment only but for ever, from the hereditary and territorial, to the commercial and industrial interests. They were not wrong in perceiving that this was the track along which Mr. Gladstone was now following Sir Robert Peel. In criticizing this great Budget, Cobden naturally pressed his constant point of the im1853.
Æt. 49.portance of reduced expenditure as the true key to financial readjustment; and he pointed out that extravagance in this direction would assuredly fall upon property rather than commerce, as successive remissions of indirect taxation were inevitable. But he was particularly pleased with the imposition of the legacy duty upon real property, and described Mr. Gladstone’s Budget as bold and honest.3 On another subject he found himself in direct opposition to the Government. Mr. Milner Gibson brought forward his resolutions upon the various duties that stood in the way of a cheap press. He was supported in this attempt against the taxes on knowledge by Mr. Disraeli and his friends, and in the end he defeated Mr. Gladstone on the advertisement duty. The battle was not won for three years to come; and after the victory was achieved, the cheap newspapers which it allowed to come into existence hardly fulfilled all at once the political hopes which Cobden and the Manchester school expected. But that fact made no difference in their conviction that good must ultimately come from the abundant diffusion of information, and the constant threshing and sifting of opinion by daily discussion.

One incident at this time was like a ray of hope to Cobden. A large number of bankers and traders in the City of London went on a deputation to the Emperor of the French, practically to repudiate the language of the panic-mongers, and to express their desire for the continuance of relations of cordiality and good-will between the two countries. Unfortunately a train was now being laid in Eastern Europe which, before many months, had put an end to the panic of a French invasion, but brought something more mischievous than the panic in its stead. Cobden at this instant no 1853.
Æt. 49.more foresaw the war which was as yet only a cloud as of a man’s hand on the horizon, than it was foreseen by the responsible statesmen in office. He passed the summer peaceably in Sussex, where he was superintending the building of his new house at Dunford. His wife and family were at Bognor, and he passed his time between the two houses. Mrs. Cobden used to bring him in a carriage as far as the Duke of Richmond’s Park, and then he trudged across Good wood Downs and over the unenclosed country to Heyshott. His thoughts meanwhile incessantly revolved round the concerns of public policy. He complied a lucid and forcible exposure of the origin of the Burmese War, in which besides laying bare its naked arrogance, injustice, and folly, he predicted the mischief that such exploits must inevitably one day inflict on Indian finance. An expedition to a Peace Conference at Edinburgh, and a visit to Oxford were the only two breaks in his solitude.

“Bognor, Sept. 19, 1853. (To Mr. McLaren.)—You are going to do a very good but courageous act in giving your countenance to the Peace Conference. Nowhere has the movement fewer partisans than in Scotland, and the reason is obvious—first because your heads are more combative than even the English, which is almost a phrenological miracle; and secondly, the system of our military rule in India has been widely profitable to the middle and upper classes in Scotland, who have had more than their numerical proportion of its patronage. Therefore the military party is very strong in your part of the kingdom. In this Peace Conference movement, we have not the same clear and definable principle on which to take our stand, that we had in our League agitation. There are in our ranks those who oppose all war, even in selfdefence; those who do not go quite so far, and yet oppose war on religious grounds in all cases but in self-defence; and there are those who from politico-economical and financial considerations are not only the advocates of peace,1853.
Æt. 49. but also of a diminution of our costly peace establishments. Amongst the latter class I confess I rank myself..... We cannot disguise from ourselves that the military spirit pervades the higher and more influential classes of this country; and that the Court, aristocracy, and all that is aping the tone of the latter, believe that their interests, privileges, and even their very security are bound up in the maintenance of the ‘Horse Guards.’ Hence the very unfashionable character of our movement, and hence the difficulty of inducing influential persons to attend our meetings..... If we add to all this that the character of the English people is arrogant, dictatorial, and encroaching towards foreigners; that we are always disposed to believe that other nations are preparing to attack England; it must be apparent that in seeking to diminish our warlike establishments, we have to encounter as tough an opposition as we had in our attack on the corn monopoly, whilst we look in vain for that powerful nucleus of support which gave us hopes in the latter struggle of an eventual triumph. The tactics of the enemy have been hitherto cunning enough. The soul of the peace movement is the Quaker sentiment against all war. Without the stubborn zeal of the Friends, there would be no Peace Society and no Peace Conference. But the enemy takes good care to turn us all into Quakers, because the Non-Resistance principle puts us out of court as practical politicians of the present day. Our opponents insist on it that we wish to totally disarm, and leave ourselves at the mercy of Louis Napoleon and the French; nay, they say we actually invite them to come and invade us.”

“Nov.9. (To Mr. Bright.)—I can give you no information or suggestion about Reform. It seems as if the Turkish question this year, like the French Invasion of the last, will 1853.
Æt. 49.serve to divert the public mind from home questions. And this, in my view, is one of the great evils of our system of foreign intervention. But I must say we cannot charge it upon the aristocracy, or the executive, as a bait thrown to the whale. The so-called Radicals of the old school are more to blame. And this brings me to remark that in calling for Reform of Parliament, the Radical party (so-called) have no policy to offer as the promised fruits of another Reform Bill. When the Whigs headed the former cry in 1830, they promised retrenchment, peace, non-intervention, and all kinds of practical benefits. They have, no doubt, proved themselves to have been to a large extent impostors, but now the Radicals (I speak of those who are anything better than Whigs, and yet not of the Manchester School) have contrived to identify themselves with an absurd policy, which actually precludes the possibility of any appreciable reduction of expenditure, and puts them out of court as complainants against the aristocracy for their former system of foreign intervention, and the debts and misgovernment which have grown out of it. In fact, those Radicals who abuse us for resisting the invasion humbug and the Eastern question humbug, do not seem to perceive how they have been whitewashing all the doings of our aristocracy from 1688 to the present time; and not only so, but like the red-republican writers and orators on the Continent, they have contrived to give quiet people of property the notion that extreme liberalism means more wars, increased armaments, and greater burdens of taxation. Add to this, that Mr. Baines and a large party of Dissenters, the very salt of liberalism, have managed to snatch away from us more than half of our old cry of ‘National Education,’ and you see what a mess we are in for want of a Radical policy to inspire the great supine public with some hopes of advantage from a further reform of parliament.

“Nov.22. (To Mr. Bright.)—Yesterday I got a few lines from Molesworth, asking me what I thought ought to be done in the new1853.
Æt. 49. Reform Bill. I have replied that the Ballot must be had, but that he cannot carry it in the Cabinet at present; that the suppression of the little boroughs is a sine quâ non of any approximation to any fair system of representation; but that whatever Lord John may consent to do, I trust he will never agree to the principle of finality on the Franchise question, by which more than five millions of adult males are to be stigmatized as unworthy of any share in the government of the country. Is this a time for such a retrograde policy, when America and the Colonies are beckoning away our population to a higher economical and political fate? It is true the masses in this country are badly led and poorly informed, and I fear possess less power to influence the Legislature than at any previous time; and probably they have not even the same interest as of old in the theory of a representative system. But if this all be true, so much the worse for us all, for the lot of the millions will be the fate of the country. Without the cordial sympathy and co-operation of the masses, our electoral system will become as soulless a thing as that which lately existed in France.”

“London, Dec. 14, 1853. (To F. W. Cobden.)—I got back here yesterday from Oxford, where I spent a most agreeable time. Instead of a monastery, the University is rather a great nest of clubs, where everybody knows everybody, and all are anxious to have a stranger of any note to break the monotony of their lives. I might have lived at free quarters for weeks amongst them. The best of fare, plenty of old port and sherry, and huge fires, seem the chief characteristics of all the colleges. No bad recommendation you will say in December. As for the education, it is, according to Doctor Heldenmaier, ‘the largest investment for the smallest return of all the academies of the world!’ But after seeing some of the examinations I am 1853.
Æt. 49.inclined to think there is a greater effort required to face the ordeal than we generally suppose.”

By the end of the year an extraordinary change had at last taken place in the political sky, which Cobden described in his characteristic style years afterwards. “Let us suppose an invalid,” he said,4 “to have been ordered, for the benefit of his health, to make the voyage to Australia and back. He left England in the month of February or March. The militia was preparing for duty; the coasts and dockyards were being fortified; the navy, army, and artillery were all in course of augmentation; inspectors of artillery and cavalry were reported to be busy on the southern coast; deputations from railway companies, it was said, had been waiting on the Admiralty and Ordnance, to explain how rapidly the commissariat and military stores could be transported from the Tower to Dover or Portsmouth; and the latest paragraph of news from the Continent was that our neighbours on the other side of the Channel were practising the embarkation and disembarkation of troops by night. He left home amidst all these alarms and preparations for a French invasion. After an absence of four or five months, during which time he had no opportunity of hearing more recent news from Europe, he steps on shore at Liverpool, and the first newspaper he sees informs him that the English and French fleets are lying side by side in Besika Bay. An impending naval engagement between the two Powers is naturally the idea that first occurs to him; but glancing at the leading article of the journal, he learns that England and France have entered into an alliance, and that they are on the eve of commencing a sanguinary war against Russia.”

[1]See Cobden’s account in his pamphlet, written in 1862, The Three Panics. Political Writings, ii. 235–270.

[2]“A famine fell upon nearly one half of a great nation. The whole world hastened to contribute money and food But a few courageous men left their homes in Middlesex and surrey, and penetrated to the remotest glens and bogs of the west coast of the stricken island, to administer relief with their own hands. To say that they found themselves in the valley of the shadow of death would be but an imperfect image; they were in the charnel-house of a nation. Never since the fourteenth century did pestilence, the gaunt handmaid of famine, glean so rich a harvest. In the midst of a scene, which no field of battle ever equalled in danger, in the number of its slain or the sufferings of the surviving, these brave men moved as calm and undismayed as though they had been in their own homes. The population sank so fast that the living could not bury the dead; half-interred bodies protruded from the gaping graves; often the wife died in the midst of her starving children, whilst the husband lay a festering corpse by her side. Into the midst of these horrors did our heroes penetrate, dragging the dead from the living with their own hands, raising the head of famishing infancy, and pouring nourishment into parched lips, from which shot fever-flames more deadly than a volley of musketry. Here was courage. No music strung the nerves; no smoke obscured the imminent danger; no thunder of artillery deadened the senses. It was cool self-possession and resolute will; calculating risk and heroic resignation. And who were these brave men? To what gallant corps did they belong? Were they of the horse, foot, or artillery force? They were Quakers from Clapham and Kingston! If you would know what heroic actions they performed, you must inquire from those who witnessed them. You will not find them recorded in the volume of reports published by themselves—for Quakers write no bulletins of their viotories.”—Cobden’s Collected Writings, i. 494–5.

[3]April 28.

[4]In The Three Panics: An Historical Episode (1862): Collected Writings ii. 269.