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 XXI.

the don pacifico debate—the papal aggression—correspondence with mr. bright on reform—kossuth.

The year 1850 has an important place in the history of1850.
Æt. 46. Cobden’s principles, because it is the date of a certain discussion in Parliament which marked the triumph for the rest of his life, though for no longer, of the school which was inveterately antagonistic to his whole scheme of national policy. The famous Don Pacifico debate was the turning-point in the career of Lord Palmerston, and it was the first clear signal of the repulse of Cobden’s cherished doctrine for twenty years to come.

Lord Palmerston had been at the Foreign Office for four years. During that time he had been incessantly active in the affairs of half the countries of Europe. That taquinerie of which Bastiat complained so bitterly to Cobden, was at its height. Nothing like it was ever seen in our politics before or since. He had brought England to the brink of war with France in connexion with the Spanish Marriages. He had sent the fleet to the Tagus to prevent the people of Portugal from settling their internal affairs in their own way. He had plunged into the thick of the dangerous European complications connected with the civil war among the Swiss Cantons. An English agent had been despatched on a roving commission to the states south of the Alps, to teach politics, as Mr. Disraeli said, to the country where Machiavelli was born. 1850.
Æt. 46.When war broke out between the King of Naples and his subjects in Sicily, Lord Palmerston’s emissary rode the whirlwind and tried to guid the storm. The bustling delirium came to a climax when the Foreign Secretary told his ambassador at Madrid to give a severe lecture to the Spanish Government for failing to respect the opinions and sentiments of their country. With a laudable sense of their own dignity, the Spanish Government sent Lord Palmerston’s dispatch back, and ordered the British Minister to leave the country in eight and forty hours. Lord Palmerston sincerely believed that he was carrying out those vague and much disputed objects, which go by the name of the Principles of Mr. Canning. Nor has any one ever denied that in all this untiring restlessness he was moved by an honest interest in good government, or by a vigorous resolution that his country should play a prominent and worthy part in settling the difficulties of Europe. The conception had about it a generous and taking air. It was magnificent, but unluckily there was no sense in it. For the unreflecting portion of mankind the spectacle of energy on a large scale has always irresistible attractions; vigour becomes an end in itself and an object of admiration for its own sake. Now that the contemporary mists have cleared away, everybody can see that Lord palmerston’s vigour at this epoch was futile in its ultimate results to others, and in its immediate circumstances full of the gravest danger to ourselves. It kept us constantly on the edge of war, it involved waste of our resources, and it diverted attention from the long list of improvements that were so sorely needed within our own gates.

With what feeling Cobden watched these doings, we may imagine. They roused him to renewed assaults upon the public opinion which tolerated or abetted them. Throughout the autumn of 1849 he and his friends pursued their operations with all their usual zeal and confidence. He made speeches at Leeds, Bradford, Manchester, and others of the1850.
Æt. 46. northern towns, saying over again with new illustrations what he had been saying during the previous session about retrenchment, readjusted taxation, the necessity of lessened armaments, the impolicy of our colonial relations. People listened, were keenly interested, and in the course of years the seed which Cobden was sowing germinated and bore good fruit. But there were for the moment certain transactions in Eastern Europe which stirred popular passion in England to the depths, and prepared the way for those unfortunate events which five years later seemed to dash the whole fabric of Cobden’s hopes down to the ground.

The Hungarian War of Independence was one of the most remarkable incidents in the revolutionary outburst of 1848, as its suppression was one of the most important episodes in the absolutist reaction which so speedily followed. The Czar of Russia came to the aid of the Emperor of Austria; after a brave resistance the Hungarian forces were forced to surrender to the Russian general; while Kossuth and others of the patriotic leaders crossed the frontier into the Turkish provinces, and placed themselves under the protection of the Ottoman Porte. The two northern powers demanded that the refugees should be handed over by the Turkish government, and for some time Europe looked with intense excitement upon the diplomatic struggle. Cobden shared to the full the vehement indignation with which his countrymen had watched these evil transactions. At the same time he did not fail to see the danger of this just sympathy with a good cause turning into an irresistible cry for armed intervention on behalf of Hungarian Independence and its champions. It must be owned that Cobden’s position was a very delicate one. It seems to the present writer to be impossible to state the principle of non-intervention in rational and statesmanlike terms, if it is under all circum 1850.
Æt. 46.stances, and without any qualification or limit, to preclude an armed protest against intervention by other foreign powers. There may happen to be good reasons why we should on a given occasion passively watch a foreign Government interfering by violence in the affairs of another country. Our own Government may have its hands full; or it may have no military means of intervening to good purpose; or its intervention might in the long-run do more harm than good to the objects of its solicitude. But there can be no general prohibitory rule. Where, as here, a military despot interfered to crush the men of another country while struggling for their national rights, no principle can make it wrong for a free nation to interfere by force against him. It can only be a question of expediency and prudence.

Of course so obvious a distinction was not unperceived by Cobden, and he had a sufficiently strong case without straining the general principle further than it can legitimately be made to go. At a meeting which was held at the London Tavern to protest against the Russian invasion of Hungary, he set forth in definite language his view of the nature and the duty of a right intervention. By a singular chance, Lord Palmerston forgot to meddle, even by a lecture, in the one case at this date where he might possibly have meddled to good effect. Russia, said Cobden, was allowed to march her armies across the territory of Turkey, through Wallachia and Moldavia, to strike a death-blow at the heart of Hungary, and yet no protest was recorded by our Government against that act. It was his deliberate conviction, as it was that of the most illustrious men who were engaged in the Hungarian struggle, that if Lord Palmerston had made a simple verbal protest in energetic terms, Russia would never have invaded Hungary. “It is well known,” he said, “that the Ministers of the Czar almost went down on their knees to beg and entreat him not to embark in a struggle between Austria and Hungary. Our protest would immediately have1850.
Æt. 46. been backed by the Ministry of the Czar if it had been made; and I believe it would have prevented that most atrocious outrage upon the rights and liberties of a constitutional country.” This protest he would have made, but he would have resisted any attempt to fight the battle of Hungary on the banks of the Danube or the Theiss.

In other words he would have relied upon opinion. He was too practical to dream that regard for purely moral opinion could be trusted to check the overbearing impulse of powerful selfish interests. Wars, however, constantly arise not from the irreconcilable clashing of great interests of this kind, but from mismanaged trifles. This was what he had maintained in his argument for arbitration. The grave and unavoidable occasions for war, he said, are few. In the ordinary dealings of nations with one another, where a difference arises, it is about something where external opinion might easily be made to carry decisive weight. In the undecided state of the Czar’s mind as to the invasion of Hungary, a vigorous expression of English opinion, might and probably would have made all the difference. However that might be, it is the duty of the more highly civilized powers to lose no opportunity of shaping and strengthening the common opinion of Europe against both intervention of nations in one another’s affairs, and against war for the first resort instead of the very last, as the means of settling international differences.

At this time Cobden warmly took up what seemed a most effective way of checking war and the preparations for war on the part of the two powers whose tyrannical action had inflamed the resentment of his countrymen. With singular fire he entered on a crusade against the practice of lending, first to Austria and then to Russia, the great sums of money which were under various disguises and pretexts 1850.
Æt. 46.in effect borrowed to repay the cost of the late oppressive war. In October he delivered a powerful speech against the Austrian loan of seven millions. In the following January he convened a meeting at which he denounced with still more unsparing invective the loan of five and a half millions which was asked for by Russia. He insisted that the investment was unsound; that the funding system is injurious to mankind and unjust in principle; that the exportation of capital to be destroyed and lost in the bottomless abyss of foreign wars, is contrary to the principles of political economy. What paradox could be more flagrant, he asked, than for a citizen to lend money to be the means of military preparations on the part of a foreign Power, when he knew, or ought to have known, that these very preparations for which he was providing would in their turn impose upon himself and the other taxpayers of his own country the burden of counter-preparations to meet them? What man with the most rudimentary sense of public duty could pretend that it was no affair of his to what use his money was put, so long as his interest was high and his security adequate? What was this money wanted for? Austria, with her barbarous consort, had been engaged in a cruel and remorseless war, and now she came, stretching forth her bloodstained hand to honest Dutchmen and Englishmen, and asking them to furnish the force of this hateful devastation. Not only was such a system a waste of national wealth, an anticipation of income, a destruction of capital, the imposition of a heavy and profitless burden on future generations: besides all this, it was a direct connivance at acts and a policy which the very men who were thus asked to lend their money to support it, professed to dislike and condemn, and had good reason for disliking and condemning. This system of foreign loans for warlike purpose, Cobden argued, by which England, Holland, Germany, and France are invited to pay for the1850.
Æt. 46. arms, clothing, and food of the belligerents, is a system calculated to perpetuate the horrors of war. Those, moreover, who lend money for such purposes, are destitute of any of those excuses by which men justify resort to the sword. They cannot plead patriotism, self-defence, or even anger, or the lust of military glory. They sit down coolly to calculate the chances to themselves of profit or loss in a game in which the lives of human beings are at stake. They have not even the savage and brutal gratification which the old pagans had, after they had paid for a seat in the amphitheatre, of witnessing the bloody combats of gladiators in the circus.1

It is impossible not to admire the courage, the sound sense, and the elevation, with which Cobden thus strove to diffuse the notion of moral responsibility in connexion with the use of capital. Such a doctrine was a novelty even in the pulpit, and much more of a novelty on the platform. The press, which never goes before public opinion in such things and usually lags a little way behind, attacked him with its rudest weapons. The City resented the intrusion of the irrelevancies of right and wrong into the region of scrip, premium, and speculative percentage. Even some of his own friends asked him why, on their common principles of Free Trade, he could not let them lend their money in the dearest market and borrow in the cheapest; why there was not to be Free Trade in money as in everything else.21850.
Æt. 46.Few reformers find the path easy, but for none is it so hard as for him who introduces a new morality. Cobden could not flinch, because he was far-sighted enough to perceive that the destination of capital becomes more vitally important in proportion as society becomes more democratic. Germany is an instance before our eyes at this moment how, with modern populations, the destruction of capital in military enterprises breeds Socialism. As population increases, so does the necessity increase of wisely husbanding the resources on which it depends for subsistence. As political power now finds its way from the few to the masses, so much the more urgent is it that they should be taught to see how detrimental war is to them, not merely because it destroys human life, which after all is cheap, but because it plays havoc with the material instruments which raise or maintain that no less momentous object, the habit and standard of living.

Cobden’s urgent feeling about war was not in any degree sentimental; it arose from a truly philosophic view of the peculiar requirements which the changing forces and condition of modern society had brought with them. He opposed war, because war and the preparation for it consumed the resources which were required for the improvement of the temporal condition of the population. Sir Robert Peel had anticipated him in pressing upon Parliament the danger to European order arising from military expenditure. Heavy military expenditure, he said, meant heavy taxation, and heavy taxation meant discontent and revolution. That wise statesman had courageously repudiated the old maxim, Bellum para si pacem velis. A maxim that admits of more contradiction, he said, or one that should be received with greater reserve, never fell from the lips of man. What is always still more important, Peel1850.
Æt. 46. was not afraid to say that it is impossible to secure a country against all conceivable risks. If in time of peace you insist on having all the colonial garrisons up to the standard of complete efficiency, and if every fortification is to be kept in a state of perfect repair, then no amount of annual expenditure can never be sufficient. If you accept the opinions of military men, who tell a Minister that they would throw upon him the whole responsibility in the event of a war breaking out, and predict the loss of this or the other valuable possession, then the country must be overwhelmed by taxation. It is inevitable that risks should be run. Peel’s declaration was, and must at all times remain, the language of common sense, and it furnishes the key to Cobden’s characteristic attitude towards a whole class of political questions where his counsels have been most persistently disregarded.3

It was thus from the political, and not from the religious or humanitarian side, that Cobden sought to arouse men to the criminality of war. If an unnecessary war is a crime, then to supply the funds for it, even for the sake of an extra fraction per cent., is to be an accessory before or after the fact in that crime. And that is the wise and timely sermon for which Cobden took the events of those days for a text. In the case of land, the world was quite ready to recognize the truth, that property has its duties as well as its rights. Cobden’s views on the morality of war loans extends the same principle to the whole administration of property of every kind.

Speculative forecasts of this sort were uncongenial enough to the veteran practitioner at the Foreign Office, who manipulated events on other principles. Things were now moving strangely counter to Cobden’s hopes. When Russia and Austria pressed for the surrender of the Hun 1850.
Æt. 46.garian refugees, Lord Palmerston despatched the fleet to the Dardanelles by way of encouragement to the Porte to hold firm. According to Cobden, this was a superfluous display of force. As he contended, the demands of Russia and Austria had been already withdrawn in face of a vigorous display of the public opinion of western Europe. What is certain is that Lord Palmerston’s action at this time laid the train which not long afterwards exploded in the Crimean War. His next step was exactly calculated to embitter the chronic struggle between England, France, and Russia in the East, and by its peculiar lawlessness to set an example which was sure to be followed, of the worst possible way of settling international difficulties. There happened to be certain claims which the British Government had for a long time been pressing against the kingdom of Greece. A portion of these claims were made on behalf of a Portuguese Jew from Gibraltar, whom accident of domicile made a British subject, and after him the whole episode has been known as the affair of Don Pacifico. What Lord Palmerston did was to despatch the fleet on its way back from the Dardanelles to the Piræus. There it detained not only a man-of-war belonging to the Greek Government, but a number of merchant vessels owned by private individuals. They were detained as material guarantees. There has been very little difference of opinion since, that this was an intolerably high-handed proceeding. As is observed by Finlay, the sagacious historian of Greece, who chanced to be a claimant, though of a more reputable sort than Don Pacifico, no Government in a civilized state of society can be allowed to have a right to seize private property belonging to the subjects of another State, or to blockade the port of another State, without taking upon itself the responsibility of declaring war.4 Apart from this, it was a direct and certain provocation to two Powers, whom it was especially1850.
Æt. 46. our interest at this time to soothe and conciliate.5

France interposed with the proffer of good offices, and they were accepted. But Lord Palmerston so blundered and mismanaged the subsequent negotiations, that at one moment we were brought unpleasantly near to a rupture with the French Government, while we were at the same time exposed to remonstrances from Russia, of which the most mortifying feature was that they were absolutely and unanswerably well-founded both in policy and international morality. From beginning to end, alike in its inception and in every detail of it, equally in its purpose and its results, it was probably the most inept, futile, wrong-headed, and gravely mischievous transaction in which Lord Palmerston’s recklessness ever engaged him.

The discussion which took place upon these doings in the House of Commons really covered the whole of Lord Palmerston’s policy, and the spirit and the principles of it. Not Sir Robert Peel alone, but Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Disraeli, Sir James Graham, and Cobden, all bore with overpowering weight against the Minister, not only for his impolitic act in regard to Greece, but for his intervention in Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, and everywhere else. Lord Palmer 1850.
Æt. 46.ston defended himself from the dusk of one day until the dawn of another with an energy and skill which commanded the admiration even of those who thought worst of his case. He was supported by Mr. Cockburn, afterwards the brilliant Chief Justice of our time, in a speech which is undeniably one of the most glittering and successful pieces of advocacy ever heard either in forum or senate. It is only when we turn to the real facts and the sober reason of the case, that we perceive that the fine things and impassioned turns of this striking performance were in truth no better than heroics for the jury and superb claptrap.6 Half-a-dozen of Sir Robert Peel’s sober sentences in his reply—the last speech that he ever made—were enough to overthrow the whole gorgeous fabric.

The issues were broadly and unmistakably placed. Whether in defending the rights of British subjects abroad or in other dealings with foreign nations, the Minister of this country ought to seek his end by politic and conciliatory means, or go rudely to it by violence and armed force? Whether it is his business to interfere with lectures or with ships in the domestic affairs of other countries, even on the side of self-government? Whether he should seek and manufacture occasions for intervention, or should on the contrary be too slow rather than too quick in recognizing even such1850.
Æt. 46. occasions as arise of themselves? Whether interference should be frequent, peremptory, and at any cost, or should on the contrary be “rare, deliberate, decisive in character, and effectual for its end”?7 Whether England should make light of the restraints of the law of nations, pushing the claim of the Civis Romanus with a high and unflinching hand, or should on the contrary by her strictness of care and scruple fortify and enlarge that domain which justice and peace have already acquired for themselves among the brotherhood of nations? Such were the topics and the issues of the controversy. The victory was to the old idols of the tribe and the market-place. The foreign policy of Lord Palmerston was approved, and its author encouraged, by a majority of six and forty.

The effect of this remarkable debate was very great. It is true that it was not wholly a debate on the merits. Under government by parties, a debate wholly on the merits is very uncommon. The question nominally at issue was mixed up with suspicion of a French diplomatic conspiracy, and belief in a Protectionist intrigue. The public was indignant that a domestic faction should lend itself for purposes of its own to a cabal of foreigners against a Minister who had been too clever for them. It is true, also, that when we talk of the public during these years, the phrase does not designate the nation at large, even in the limited sense in which it does this now. In every epoch the political public really means the people who have votes, and at that time the people who had votes were an extremely small fraction of the nation at large. When that is said, however, there is very little doubt that the language which Lord Palmerston used on this occasion was the language which the majority of Englishmen were not sorry to hear, and would not be likely to repudiate when 1850.
Æt. 46.it had been boldly spoken. The day after the Don Pacifico debate, Lord Palmerston was justified n speaking of himself as having been rendered by it the most popular Minister that for a very long time had held his office.8

The confusion of parties made this sudden exaltation of Lord Palmerston a very important event, and we may believe that he was quite alive to the possibilities which it opened to his ambition. Public life, as was said, was divided at that particular moment between statesmen without a party and a party without statesmen. Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli had made a bold bid for power, but Lord Palmerston foresaw that they could not keep it if they got it. The reforming Whigs of the type of Lord John Russell had been steadily losing ground ever since their brilliant triumph twenty years before, and they were now lower in popular influence than they had ever been. The Manchester school were out of the question. There was one statesman only whose authority, and the clearness of whose convictions, might have baulked Lord Palmerston’s rise, and have saved the country from the demoralization of the Palmerstonian reign. This statesman, by a most disastrous destiny, met his death the very day after he had protested with all the cogent sagacity of his ripened experience against Lord Palmerston’s unsafe policy, and his mistaken impressions of the honour and dignity of the country.

The death of Sir Robert Peel may without exaggeration be described as one of the most untoward incidents in Cobden’s public life, as it was a dire and irreparable loss to the country. Cobden was instantly alive to the calamity. “Poor Peel,” he wrote three days after the event, “I have scarcely yet realized to my mind the conviction that he will never again occupy his accustomed seat opposite to my place in the House. I sat with him on Saturday till two o’clock in the Royal Commission9 —the last public business1850.
Æt. 46. in which he was engaged—and in four hours afterwards he received his mortal stroke. We do not yet know the full extent of our loss. It will be felt in the state of parties and in the progress of public business to its full extent hereafter. I had observed his tendencies most attentively during the last few years, and had felt convinced that on questions in which I take a great interest, such as the reduction of armaments, retrenchment of expenditure, the diffusion of peace principles, etc., he had strong sympathies—stronger than he had yet expressed—in favour of my views. Read his last speech again, and observe what he says about diplomacy, and in favour of settling international disputes by reference to mediation instead of by ships of war.”1

If the Don Pacifico debate in Parliament gave a check to the confidence of Cobden’s aspirations, a storm which burst out over the length and breadth of the land a few months later, still more effectually chilled his faith in the hold of good sense and the spirit of tolerance upon the minds of his countrymen. In the autumn of 1850, Great Britain was convulsed by the tempest of the Papal Aggression, which now looks none the less repulsive because we can see to what a degree it was ludicrous. Unfortunately Lord John Russell lent himself to the prejudices and alarms which are so instantly roused in the minds of Englishmen and Scotchmen by anything that reminds them of the existence of the Roman Catholic Church. He fanned the flame by a letter to the Bishop of Durham, which has as conspicuous a place among his acts and monuments as the letter from Edinburgh in 1845. In a damaging moment for his position at this time, as well as for his future political reputation, he 1849.
Æt. 45.brought in and passed a measure, as much to be blamed for the bigotry which inspired it, as for the futility of its provisions. The effect in the balanced state of parties was to give an irretrievable shake to his Administration, for his willing concessions to the bigotry of England and Scotland kindled the just resentment of Ireland. The Irish vote was indispensable to every Whig Ministry since the Reform Bill, and this was now alienated from the Government of Lord John Russell. Its fall could only be a matter of a few months, and was only delayed even for that short time by the difficulty of finding or devising a political combination that should take its place.

The following extracts from his correspondence will show what Cobden was doing and thinking about between the winter of 1849 and the winter of 1851:—

“Leeds, Dec. 18, 1849. (To Mrs. Cobden.)—I have received your despatches; don’t trouble yourself to send the proofs of the speeches. I am staying with Mrs. Carbutt, who has taken me from Mr. Schofield and Mr. Marshall. In fact, judging by the competition that there was for me, I am rather at a premium. The meeting this evening promises to be a very full and influential one. I wish it was over, for I am sorely perplexed at these demonstrations, for want of something fresh to say.”

“Leeds, Dec. 19. (To Mrs. Cobden.)—We had a most thoroughly successful meeting last evening, and I spoke with tolerably good effect, but I am not sure that I shall not appear in the reports to have been rather rough with the landlords. At all events, I expect the Protectionists will raise a fierce howl at me.”

“Bradford, Dec. 21.—We had a very successful meeting here last evening, and I made a speech upon the Colonies, which I hope will be freely reported, for it is my opinion that it went pretty fully into the arguments, and is calcu lated to diffuse sound information upon the subject. The1850.
Æt. 46. people here have resolved to republish it for cheap distribution.”

“April 18. (To James Mellor)—I observed in a paper the other day an account of the interference of our Admiral on the South American station for the purpose of demanding the settlement of certain claims made by creditors upon the Government of Venezuela. The account stated that the demand included the payment of money due for Loans. My object in writing is to ask whether you can ascertain for me through any house having relations there, whether the claim of the Stock Exchange creditors was included. I consider these debts to be totally different from those due to merchants for property in the form of merchandise sold to foreign states, or for goods seized unjustly in time of hostilities. Money lent through the Stock Exchange is generally advanced on such terms as to cover known risks of repudiation, &c Besides the money is advanced by foreigners even when the loan is nominally contracted in England, and the result of our Government becoming the collectors of such debts would be that we should be made the bumbailiffs of half a dozen nations besides our own. I am watching very jealously any step of the kind, because if the principle be once adopted, it is not easy to see where we can stop. If we are to blockade the coast of a South American State, how can we refuse the creditors of the repudiating State of Mississippi to blockade the port of New Orleans? There will be obvious disgrace as well as injustice in dealing differently with weak and with powerful States.”

“April 18. (To Mr. Bright.)—Look in the money article of the Times to-day. The creditors of the Spanish Government are talking of petitioning Parliament to collect their debts. We must watch with jealousy the first attempt of 1850.
Æt. 46.this kind, and be prepared to agitate against it. Did you see the report in the papers that the Admiral on the South American station had demanded the debts due to English Creditors of the Government of Venezuela? I am anxious to know whether the Stock Exchange loans are included in the claims. Do you know anybody in the City who would inform us?”

“April 23. (To Mr. Bright.)—It seems that there is—if we may judge of the article in to-day’s Times—a prospect of still further delay about the Greek affair. Would it not be well to draw up a memorial to the Prime Minister, or else a petition to Parliament upon the subject? The object, of course, should be to show the propriety of submitting the whole affair to the arbitration of disinterested parties. It is just the case for arbitration. And the memorial should speak in terms of strong condemnation of a system of International Policy, which leaves the possibility of two nations being brought to such a state of hostility upon questions of such insignificant importance. Here is a dispute about a few thousand pounds or of personal insult, matters which might be equitably adjusted by two or three impartial individuals of average intelligence and character, for the settlement of which a fleet of line-of-battle ships has been put in requisition, and the entire commerce of a friendly nation largely engaged in trade with our own people has been for months subjected to interruption. It should be stated that apart from the outrage which such proceedings are calculated to inflict upon the feelings of humanity and justice, they must tend to bring diplomacy into disrepute. Without offering any opinion on the merits of the question, you should pray that our Government should agree at once to submit the whole matter to the absolute decision of arbitrators mutually appointed, and it might be added that this case affords a strong argument for entering upon a general system of arbitration treaties, by1850.
Æt. 46. which such great inconveniences and dangers springing from such trivial causes may be averted for the future. It seems to me that this is an occasion on which you might frame a very practical memorial, and thus put the present system in the wrong in the eyes of even those men of business and politicians who do not go with you on principle.”

“July 2. (To Mrs. Cobden.)—I am getting famously abused for my vote on Roebuck’s Motion, but I never felt more satisfied than I do on the course I took. The accounts of poor Peel’s health are very unsatisfactory. I fear very much the worst. It would be a great national calamity to lose him, and with him we should lose the best safeguard, if not the only one amongst statesmen against a reaction at headquarters from Free-trade to Protection.”

“July 4. (To Mrs. Cobden.)—You will have seen the sad news of Sir R. Peel’s death. I have not been able to think of anything since. Poor soul, his health had been sacrificed by his sufferings in the cause of Free Trade, and he may be said to have died a victim to the best act of his political life. I should not like to be in the position of those who by their unsparing hostility inflicted martyrdom upon him.”

At the close of the Session, Cobden proceeded to the Peace Congress, which this year was held at Frankfort.

“Cologns, Aug. 17. (To Mrs. Cobden.)—My companions and I reached the station just in time to catch the train, and we reached Dover without further adventure. There we found that the wind had been blowing hard for a couple of days, so much so that the mail of the previous night from Calais was several hours behind its time. This was not a very agreeable prospect. Our boat was fixed to start for Ostend at eleven at night, and so, after taking some long walks about the town and neighbourhood, we took a com 1850.
Æt. 46.fortable dinner at six. At nine o’clock the boat was obliged to leave the harbour, and cast anchor outside to save the tide. We went aboard with our luggage, and for upwards of two hours we were rocking at anchor in a heavy swell. I lay down on my back in the cabin (for there were no berths), which, as soon as the mail-train arrived at eleven with the passengers, was full of people, and I never had a more uncomfortable night. I lay in one posture till we had fairly cast anchor in the port of Ostend, with my bones and flesh aching as if I had been beaten. On opening my eyes and sitting up I found that my next neighbour was Count A——, who had passed a terrible night, and who looked anything but the Adonis he strives to appear in the drawing-room. We started from Ostend at seven o’clock in the morning, and got to Cologne at nine at night, where we found ourselves with all the discomfort of reaching a strange town without knowing the language, and the little contretemps at the baggage-office upset my temper. The trials of my temper were increased when, on driving with an omnibus-load of fellow-passengers to the best hotel, we found there not a bed to be had, and so we had to hunt about the town till nearly ten o’clock, when we took refuge in a not first-rate hotel; the dining-room, where we took a cup of tea, was filled with Germans, with beards on their chins and pipes in their mouths, playing cards and dominoes. However, a night’s rest has restored my equanimity again. The crowd of travellers, particularly English, exceeds all past experience. It is lucky for me that I have a comfortable reception awaiting me at Frankfort.”

“Frankfort, Aug. 23. (To Mrs. Cobden.)—We yesterday held our first sitting of the Congress, in the same place where the German Parliament assembled. It is a large church of a semicircular form, newly fitted up and decorated with flags, and capable of holding 3000 persons. It was well filled during the day. The number of delegates and visitors to the Con1850.
Æt. 46.gress is about 500 or 600; but by far the largest portion are English. However, we have some good names from France. Cormenin (Conseiller d’Etat) and Emile de Girardin are both here, and spoke yesterday. Cormenin read a speech full of point, as everything is which comes from his pen. Amongst other ’spiritual’ things, he said, ‘there is one thing which all will admit to be far more impossible than the putting an end to war, viz. to put an end to death, and why should we not use half as much exertion to escape war as to escape death?’

“Strange to say we had Haynau, the Austrian general, sitting in the meeting. He is staying at a hotel here. I took the opportunity, in my speech, of alluding to the fact of having met him and Klapka at the two last peace meetings I had attended. He is a tall man, with a pair of white moustaches, which come down to his shoulders. His aspect is not prepossessing. I suspect there is some truth in the remark of a lady of Pesth, who expressed an opinion that he was not always in his right senses. Upon the whole, I am very well satisfied with the meeting. We are gaining ground.”

“Nov. 9. (To G. Combe)—I am afraid you overrate the importance of our Manchester educational conference.2 The difficulties in the way of success are not much diminished 1850.
Æt. 46.since I wrote to you to excuse my apparent apathy. I want standing-ground for the House of Commons. At present the Liberal party, the soul of which is Dissent, are torn to pieces by the question, and it is not easy to heal a religious feud. The Tories, whatever they may say to the contrary, are at heart opposed to the enlightenment of the people. They are naturally so from an instinct of self-preservation. They will therefore seek every pretence for opposing us. If I could say I represented the Radical party or any other party upon the question, I should have some standing-ground in the House. But the greatest of all causes has no locus standi in Parliament. I thought I had given time to Mr. Baines and his dissenting friends to get cool upon the subject. But they appear to be as hot as ever. However, I shall now go straight at the mark, and shall neither give nor take quarter. I have made up my mind to go for the Massachusetts system as nearly as we can get it.3 You would be puzzled at my objecting to the word ’secular.’ If I had seen, before I spoke upon the subject, that the word occurred again in the body of the resolution. I should not have taken the objection; for, after all, the words of Shakspeare, ‘what’s in a name?’ apply very much to this case. We all mean the same thing, to teach the people something necessary for their well-being, which the ministers of religion do not teach them. I perceive a difficulty in arguing the case if we profess to exclude the Bible from all schools. I would rather take the Massachusetts ground, and say that no book shall be admitted into the schools which favours the doctrines of any particular religious sect; but this in a Protestant country could hardly be said to include the Bible. In the Lancashire public school plan, it was proposed to1850.
Æt. 46. have extracts from the scriptures only, and this was the best mode of meeting the difficulty in a county where there are so many Roman Catholics. But this is very different from the case of Rutland, where there is not probably a Catholic, and certainly more than half the parishes of England and Wales are in the same predicament. Still I do not shut my eyes to the fact that we shall be accused of teaching religion, just as certainly as we should be charged with irreligion if we excluded the Bible. However, there is the Massachusetts plan and its effects to fall back upon, and we must trust to time and discussion to put matters right in this country.”

“Manchester, Thursday, Nov. 22. (To Mr. Bright.)—I have come over here to attend a private meeting of the School Committee, and shall go to Birmingham to-morrow to pass a day or two with Sturge, and see Chance’s glass works, and Fox and Henderson’s establishment. I hope you will come to Birmingham and attend both the Freehold Land Society and the Peace Meeting, if for no other purpose, to let the fools and knaves who are raising this Guy Fawkes outcry, know that there are people in the country who are thinking of something more important than the Queen’s spiritual supremacy.

“I should like you to speak against the consecrating of the banners, and if you found your audience all right, it would be a glorious thing to be able to rebuke the Protestant bigots, and say a word for the religious rights of a fourth of the population of the Empire. What a disgusting display is this Cockney no-Popery cry, headed by Johnny Russell, who bids fair to close his political career in the character of a religious persecutor. The end of it will be a reaction in favour of the Roman Catholics, and increased strength to their priesthood, which I don’t wish to see. In 1851.
Æt. 47.the meantime the old sore is opened in Ireland, and there is a new lease for Guy Fawkes, and the ‘Immortal memory’— and my cynical brother will be confirmed in this doctrine that we are, after all, not progressive creatures, but only revolving in a circle of instincts. Verily we have not made great strides during the last two centuries in religious toleration.”

“Feb. 15. (To J. Sturge.)—Is there no way of bringing out a declaration from the friends of religious equality in Birmingham against the Whig Bill for inflicting pains and penalties upon the Roman Catholics? Birmingham was the first to give a check to the public meetings in the North. Could it not have the honour of taking the lead in promulgating a sound declaration of opinion against all interference by the legislature in the religious concerns of the people? I should like to see a declaration put forth repudiating the rights of the Parliament to encourage by temporal rewards, or to discourage by temporal penalties, the progress of any religious opinions. Surely the mass of the people of Birmingham are favourable to this principle; it is in fact the principle of religious liberty which all parties profess to advocate, but so few are prepared to practise. Suppose you were to call a few friends together and take their advice as to whether anything can be done. We are going back rapidly in the House, and unless helped from without, our case is hopeless.”

“London, Feb. 19. (To J. Sturge.)—I expect that this no-Popery cry will prove fatal to the Ministry. It is generally thought that the Government will be in a minority on some important question, probably the income-tax, in less than a fortnight. The Irish Catholic members are determined to do everything to turn out Lord John. Indeed Ireland is in such a state of exasperation with the Whigs, that no Irish member having a Catholic constituency will have a chance of being elected again unless he votes through thick and1851.
Æt. 47. thin to upset the Ministry. We may have a dissolution this spring, and if either party should be wicked enough to raise the No-Popery cry, Heaven only knows what the result may be. One thing is certain; the Irish Catholics will send none but Catholics, and they will hold the balance of power in the House, and if they were sixty Quakers instead of Irish Catholics, they would dictate terms to any Ministry. This unsettled state of parties makes it more important that we should raise the banner of religious equality.”

“Feb. 25. (To J. Parkes.)—The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill is the real cause of the upset of the Whig coach, or rather of the coachman leaping from the box to escape an upset.4 This measure cannot be persevered in by any Government so far as Ireland is concerned, for no Government can exist, if fifty Irish members are pledged to vote against them under all circumstances when they are in danger. A dissolution would give at least fifty members to do that work, and they would be all watched as they are now by their constituents. Probably a bishop or two would be sent up to town to keep them in the true fold, and see that they did not fall into the hands of the Treasury shepherd.

“This mode of fighting by means of adverse votes in the House is far more difficult to deal with by our aristocratic rulers, than was the plan of O’Connell when he called his monster meetings. They could be stopped by a proclamation or put down by soldiers, but neither of these modes 1851.
Æt. 47.will avail in the House. What folly it was to give a real representation to the Irish counties, and to think of still maintaining the old persecuting ascendency.5

“I do not see how Lord John and the Whigs are to recover from the false position into which they have been flung by his letter and his speech. They have traded for the last fifteen years as a political party upon Irish questions; but now that capital is exhausted. Even if they withdrew their measure, which is hardly possible, it would not restore them to the confidence of the Irish. They are in a regular mess, and I do not see any way out of it for them. It is understood that Graham refuses to join the Whigs. He is against the Papal outcry, and walked out of the House on the first reading.

“Now all this is a good ground for your getting up a demonstration against the Bill. It must be withdrawn, whether you take a part or not. But it is very desirable that the English people should be known by the Irish to have taken a part in ridding them of this insulting measure.”

“March 13. (To Mr. W. R. Greg.)—.... I doubt the policy of interfering in the Caffre business until we have more authentic news; the proper cure for these recurring wars is to let the colonists bear the brunt of them. This must be done by first giving them the powers of self-government, and then throwing on them the responsibility of their own policy. They would then be very careful to treat the neighbouring savages with justice. At present it1851.
Æt. 47. is the interest of the colonists to provoke the natives into war, because it leads to a most profitable expenditure of British money.”

“March 15. (To Mr. E. Potter.)—...As for politics, nobody can foresee for a week what will happen. Parties were a good deal confused before, thanks to Corn; but now the Catholic element has made confusion worse confounded. Of this be assured, all the embarrassments in the House, at Court, and in the Cabinet, have sprung out of the Papal question. It may suit the Whigs to abuse the Radicals, or make the Manchester school their whipping boys; but it is Lord Johnny’s Durham letter and his Bill that are at the bottom of all the mischief. For the last fifteen years, ever since 1835, the Whigs, when in power, have depended for their political existence upon the votes of the Irish members. If that support had been at any time withdrawn in consequence of a Durham letter, they must have gone out of office. And they must go out now. The only thing that keeps them in, is the impossibility of finding anybody to take their places. In fact, it is difficult to see who is to govern. Any Government that perseveres in the anti-Papal policy will be opposed by the Irish members on every subject, and if an Administration were to come in to do nothing against the Pope, they would, I suppose, be turned out by the English. So that we are in a rather considerable fix.

“I will back the Irish to win, though they have long odds against them, because they have right and justice on their side. In fact, we are exhibiting ourselves in this year of the Exhibition as the most intolerant people on earth. Europe cries shame on us, and America laughs at us. Our course is that of the dog in the manger. We will not come to an agreement with the Pope, as the Emperor of 1851.
Æt. 47.Russia does, by which he has a voice in the appointment of the Roman Catholic bishops in his Polish provinces (his Ireland), nor will we allow the Irish to manage their own spiritual affairs without our aid or intervention, as is done in the United States. Was ever anything so absurdly unjust? Well may our statesmen, such as Graham, Aberdeen, and so on, decline to take office to carry out such a system. I will venture to say that there is not a leading statesman in any country of Europe or America, who would for a moment take upon himself the responsibility of treating seven millions of Catholics as we are doing.

“As respects the prospects of Free Trade they are safe enough if we can have an appeal to the country upon that question ‘pure and simple.’ But if the Protectionists can throw in the religious cry, heaven only knows what may be the consequence. All I can say is that if the people are determined to indulge their bigotry even at the cost of a tax on their bread, it is their affair and not mine. I shall as resolutely oppose Protestant monopoly as Protectionist monopoly.

“I am glad to hear such good accounts of you. I would not advise you to come to Parliament, although I should like to have you on the same bench with me. For my part I am so disgusted with these theological squabbles that I should be delighted if I could bold out of the political ring. But there is no such luck.”

“Dunford, April 22. (To Mrs. Cobden.)—I left Chischester with Elcome yesterday, in the midst of rain, and it has been raining ever since. I can hardly see the trees on the side of the hill leading up to Walker’s, and the Downs are quite lost in the thick mist. I am of course a prisoner, which is very disagreeable. Yesterday, Whilst at Chichester, I was very extravagant in the purchase of a great number of roses in pots, which I expect to arrive to-day, and I shall have them taken out of the pots and placed in the garden.1851.
Æt. 47. They are all of the autumn perpetual kinds. I intend to have a bed of them on the rising ground just at the end of the house, not coming forward too far to interfere with the view of the Downs. I shall also have a bed in the front of the house. We shall shine in roses. The hollies and evergreens are still looking rather sorry and downcast. But, probably, with dry warm weather we shall soon see an improvement. The temperature is mild, and the wheats are looking vigorous. The nightingale and cuckoo are already heard in the hanger, and the foliage of the woods is assuming a lively hue. I long for the time when we can be here with the children in the autumn. You will enjoy it beyond measure.”

“May 21. (To Mr. W. R. Greg.)—What the Whig Government intend to do I know not.6 But of this I am quite sure, that if they do not intend to bring forward a measure calculated to excite some enthusiasm in the country, they had better leave us as we are, to flight the battle upon the Free Trade question. In my opinion, no measure will rouse the middle class, or have the slightest chance of meeting any response from the county constituency, unless the ballot form a part of it; and I fear that Lord John will flinch from that. The present system is worn out. There must be a new departure taken, with a better crew on board the Government vessel, and an avowed and definite destination in view. Until this fresh start be taken, we shall be in a transition state, and even when we get a reformed Parliament and an enlarged constituency, it may take a long time to enable the people to make up their minds what they shall do with their power. I am not sanguine (since the 1851.
Æt. 47.papal outburst) of living to see the political millennium which some people expect from another Reform Bill. But I repeat, the present system is come to a dead-lock, and whether for good or evil, the people must be called in to give a preponderance to one or the other political scale.”

This year the first Great Exhibition was opened. I cannot find that Cobden was in any way responsible for the excessive importance which was so irrationally attributed to this once famous enterprise. He did not believe that it marked the arrival of a pacific transformation, but the thought that he might take people sufficiently at their word to propose to the House of Commons that the Foreign Minister should be recommended to open negotiations with France for a reduction of armaments He stipulated for nothing specific; he only urged than an effort in this direction should be made at a time which seemed in every respect so incomparably propitious. Lord Palmerston hastened with virtuous alacrity to give a cordial adhesion to the general tendency of his honourable friend’s views, but would prefer to be left with his hands free. Other members followed, showing in bright colours what a noble spectacle we should set to mankind, if a solemn resolution of Parliament should commission the Foreign Secretary to say openly to France, “We desire peace, and ask you to aid us in that great work.” All this was the fashionable mood of the hour, just as declamatory panic was the mood of the hour after. There was no hypocrisy in either case. The instability arose from the omission of influential statesmen to keep in their minds a systematic survey of the facts of our national position in relation to Foreign Powers. There was no real basis consistently present to the legislature or the public, to justify their occasional fits of pacific profession. Cobden had no illusion as to the real progress of his opinions, but the fewer his illusions the more strongly he felt bound to persevere.

It was not to be expected that Cobden would be able to1851.
Æt. 47. speak so freely as he was accustomed to do on military and naval matters, without touching that susceptibility which is common to all experts, and to experts in these two great services more even than in others. He often received insolent letters form officers who resented public discussions as private affronts. In 1850 a certain captain, whose operations in Borneo Cobden had spoken of as being of the nature of piracy, sent him a challenge to fight a duel. Cobden replied that if the writer repeated the offence, he would hand him over to the police. Vivacious journalists instantly taxed him with inconsistency. If he was for non-resistance, universal disarmament, and peace-at-any-price, with what decency could he talk of an appeal to the police? This folly was an excellent specimen of the criticism which Cobden was accustomed to receive at the hands of more responsible personages than the humorists of the press. In the same year an Admiral in high position entered into a hostile correspondence with him on the ground of something which Mr. Bright was wrongly reported to have said. Cobden replied that his correspondent must expect like all public men to have his conduct freely canvassed, and that if he had so little control over his temper that he must needs challenge one member of the legislature to mortal combat because another member was reported to have made a mistake of a single word in a speech of an hour’s length, or because a reporter’s pen may have slipped at a critical moment, then the Admiral had mistaken his vocation, and ought to retire from the public service. Cobden’s reply was too direct to be courteous, but the provocation was sharp.

We may now proceed to correspondence of a graver kind, principally with Mr. Bright:—

“Sept. 29. (To Mr. Bright.)—I have been looking out for sings and omens of the political future, but cannot say I see 1851.
Æt. 47.any indications of a breeze in the direction of Reform. People are too well-to-do in the world to agitate for anything. Did you ever know or read of any movement for organic change when wheat was under 40s., to say nothing of cotton at 4d.? I am willing to do my share in the House or out of it, as an individual; but when you suggest a Conference under the auspices of Wilson and ourselves in Manchester, it is well to consider whether we may not be under the risk of deceiving ourselves or misleading others as to the meaning of such a step.

“If we move together at the head of an organization, it will be assumed that we are going to bring the League following with us. This will be a delusion practised upon people at a distance, and probably upon ourselves; for depend on it, we shall not carry with us those who co-operated with us in that struggle. Since I have been down here [Midhurst], I have been amusing myself under an old yew-tree by looking over several bushels of old letters which I received during the League agitation. The names of all those who did the work of that seven years’ struggle are fresh in my memory. Do not deceive yourself; the same men will not fight the battle of Parliamentary Reform. If we go into the conflict, we must seek for recruits from amongst another class. Let this be understood beforehand by ourselves and the public; otherwise we do harm to all parties, by misleading the country and ourselves.

“But is it not a proof that the country is not ripe for a really great measure of Reform, that there is no spontaneous movement for it? In all great movements, new men spring up. They are the vouchers for the reality of the public interest in the Reform in question. When the Catholics were ready to free themselves, it was so. When the days of the Corn Law were numbered, it was so. But where are the men who now ask you and me and Wilson to put our selves at their head, to effect another Reform of Parliament?1851.
Æt. 47.....Where are the influential local men who are guarantees for the earnestness of any considerable body of reliable partisans throughout the kingdom? We are bound to look about us for some security of the kind. Nay, as practical men of this world, we should be guilty of a wanton waste of the little moral influence we possess, if we did not take a calm survey of the prospects of support before plunging into a fresh agitation. Lopez may be pitied, or blamed, according as people believe him to have had the opportunity of knowing beforehand the opinion of the Cuban population; but nobody will ever excuse you or me for miscalculating the force of public opinion upon any question.

“We can learn what the people want, if we take the trouble and the time to inquire. I confess that before I embark in any formal proceeding, I should like to have better evidence than I have hitherto had of the determination of the public to carry a thorough measure of Reform. To judge by appearance, nobody cares about it. There may be a change. When the breeze stirs, I think I shall perceive the ripple on the water as soon as anybody.

“I am not, as you suppose, desponding about political progress. I have faith in the onward tendency of our species. Not even the red cloaks of the Manchester aldermen can bring me to my cynical brother’s doctrine, that we move in a circle of instincts, and return after a given cycle to the old starting-place (I admit, however, that the cloaks are a great triumph for his theory). If we are not now moving onward with great velocity, it is because we made a great rush for the goal of Free Trade, and the country has hardly yet recovered its breath sufficiently for a fresh start. But there is no danger of our standing still or becoming stagnant. The repeal of the Corn Law was a severe dose of alternative 1851.
Æt. 47.medicine, which is working by a self-acting process a gradual change in the body politic. It may take time, but the effects are sure. I am living in a part of the country where I can witness its operations.”

“Midhurst, Oct. 1. (To Mr. Bright.)—Your letter of the 25th has only to-day come to hand, without any explanation of the cause of the delay.

“I observe that you are hopeful of aid from Baines and Co. Have you seen the Mercury of Saturday? It is lukewarm, or less tepid even than that! Gives the go-bye to the ballot, opposes our honest redistribution because it would give an 11th of the representation to London, and objects to household suffrage with the old and perverse plea that it would give a preponderance to the agricultural districts.

“By the way, with reference to what you heard from —about the register. I may here say that my mind is made up not to stand again for the West Riding. I shall take an early opportunity of announcing my intention. Apart from the Free Trade question, I don’t see what principle I could represent in the West Riding. If Baines be a representative of the opinions of the influential Liberals of the Riding, we are as wide as the poles asunder upon the vital questions of the day. I will sit for no place where the constituency will not back me in an active opposition to all invasions of the principle of religious equality. That question stands in my judgment before that of commercial freedom. And seeing how the majority of dissenting politicians have violated the rights of conscience by supporting the Ecclesiastical Titles, Bill, I feel by no means certain that I shall find any constituency which will return me on my own terms, about which, however, I feel no nervous anxiety. I see nothing but party animosity and political tergiversation in prospect in the House for some years to come.

“I agree with you to the letter in all you say about1851.
Æt. 47. Ireland. There is no doubt that the land question (coupled with the Church Establishment) is at the root of the evil. And here let me say that I go heartily with you in the determination to attack the land monopoly root and branch both here and in Ireland and Scotland. There is an article in this day’s Freeholder (“Large and small Farms”) which will show you that our minds are running in the same direction. Wherever the deductions of political economy lead I am prepared to follow. By the way, have you had time to read Bastiat’s partly posthumous volume, ‘Les Harmonies Economiques’? If not, do so; it will require a studious perusal, but will repay it. He has breathed a soul into the dry bones of political economy, and has vindicated his favourite science from the charge of inhumanity with all the fervour of a religious devotee.

“But to return to the Land customs of this country. We have made no progress upon the subject of primogeniture during the last twenty years. Public opinion is either indifferent or favourable to the system of large properties kept together by entail. If you want a proof, see how every successful trader buys an estate, and tries to perpetuate his name in connexion with ‘that ilk’ by creating an eldest son. It is probably the only question on which, if an attempt were made to abolish the present system, France could be again roused to revolution; and yet we are in England actually hugging our feudal fetters! But we are a Chinese people. What a lucky thing it is that our grandmothers did not deform their feet à la Chinoise! if so, we should have had a terrible battle to emancipate women’s toes. But, however unprepared the public may be for our views on the land question, I am ready to incur any obloquy in the cause of economical truth. And it is, I confess, on this class of questions, rather than on plans of 1851.
Æt. 47.organic reform, that I feel disposed to act the part of a pioneer.

“The extension of the suffrage must and will come, but it chills my enthusiasm upon the subject when I see so much popular error and prejudice prevailing upon such questions as the Colonies, religious freedom, and the land customs of this country. I do not mean to say that these thoughts make me for an instant falter in my advocacy of the extension of the franchise, but they make me doubt whether I may not be better employed in trying to diffuse sound practical views, than in fighting for forms or theories of government which do not necessarily involve the fate of practical legislation at all. The greatest obstacle to any improvement or change in John Bull’s sentiments just now is the egregious vanity of the beast. He has been so plastered with flattery, for which he seems to have an insatiable appetite, that he has become an impervious mass of self-esteem. Nothing is so difficult as to alter the policy of individuals or nations who allow themselves to be persuaded that they are the ‘envy of surrounding nations and the admiration of the world.’ Time and adversity can alone operate in such cases.”

“October 29. (To Mr. Bright.)—I thought I had so repeatedly explained myself upon the Reform movement, that it must prevent any misunderstanding between us as to my meaning. I do not advocate our doing nothing. I am prepared to do something. We must all do our best. But the question, and the only question which I was discussing, is whether we shall call a conference in Manchester. That means in the eyes of the public that the men who call the Conference, and who put themselves at its head, are prepared to organize an agitation. Have we duly reckoned the chances of making Manchester the headquarters of a successful Reform movement? I doubt its success. A Conference would be only justifiable in my opinion, after we had been requested to call1851.
Æt. 47. one by the reformers of the several localities from which we should invite delegates. I have seen no symptoms of any such movement anywhere. I wish you to draw the distinction in your mind between our individual efforts in support of some such broad plan as Hume’s, which I am prepared to make, and our calling a Conference in Manchester, Supposing the latter to be decided on, what will you do with Walmsley’s great-little go? Will you join it and merge in it, or will you set up a distinct organization? If the former, you will avoid all responsibility; but you will perhaps give an apparent force to a society which has little real strength, and thus tend to foster the delusion that more is doing than is really being done by it. If the latter, you incur a great responsibility; you can only be justified in super-sending his society, by the certainty of establishing something better. In any case, we shall for a time have two suns in the firmament trying to outshine each other. Unless we make a very grand flare-up indeed, we shall be charged with impotent jealousy in trying to injure Walmsley’s concern, without being able to set up anything better. Now, none of these difficulties arise if we act individually, instead of calling a Manchester Conference.

“I have thus again explained my views. We may differ, but cannot misunderstand each other. Having had my say, I by no means wish it to be supposed that I would refuse to join you and Wilson in any such demonstration, if you decide to hold one. I shall be in the north before the middle of next month, and will come and pass a night at your house. I am, however, under an engagement to be present at a Freehold Land Society’s Conference in London, on the 25th of November (Monday).

“I don’t know how soon I may be with you. The Leeds people have invited Kossuth to attend a meet 1851.
Æt. 47.ing.7 I don’t know whether he will go. I have advised him from the first to be very chary in accepting invitations; but, if he should go there, I shall certainly be present. By the way, you will be curious to hear what sort of impression he made on me. Amiability, earnestness, and disinterestedness were the most speaking characteristics of the man. Speaking phrenologically, I should say he wants firmness; and the head is very small in the animal organs behind the ear. Altogether he did not impress me with a sense of his power to the extent which I had looked for. And yet he must possess it, for otherwise he could not have acquired an ascendency over the aristocratic party in his country, where judging the specimens I have seen amongst the refugees, he was brought into competition with men of no ordinary stamp. The secret of his influence lies, I suspect, in his eloquence. His speech at Winchester, delivered within forty-eight hours of his arrival in England, in a language with which he could have had but little practical acquaintance, was the most extraordinary exploit I ever witnessed. I have no doubt that with forty-eight hours’ preparation, and a supply of the necessary materials, he would make as good a financial statement in the House as any public man amongst us. The speech he delivered was suggested by myself, and was spoken without preparation.

“I have not seen a report of the proceedings at the Southampton banquet, but am anxious to see how Lawrence, the American Minister, will get through his part of sympathizing with the Austrian rebel, who deposed the house of Hapsburg in Hungary, and was a few weeks ago hung in effigy by command of the Austrian Government. How will these diplomatists, with their starched etiquette, ever survive such a violation of their conventional rules? Then how can the Austrian Minister remain at Washington after the President has invited Kossuth to be his guest,1851.
Æt. 47. and given orders for his reception with military honours? Assuredly, these Democrats are destined to turn the diplomatic world upside down.

“You are quite right in saying that Palmerston wants to make political capital out of Kossuth. His tools have succeeded in getting a vote of thanks for him in Southampton, where the good folks have been in far too great a bustle to think of what they are doing. But you will have observed that Kossuth himself avoids saying anything in praise of Palmerston.”

“Nov. 4. (To F. W. Cobden.)—It seems Kossuth will not go to Yorkshire, and I do not see the necessity of my attending the Manchester banquet. The Times has had slap in the face which it will not soon forget or forgive. It has been fairly cowed by the universal execration it has brought upon itself. Yet what an absurd position we are in. So completely dictated to and domineered over by one newspaper, that it requires a periodical revolt of the whole people to keep the despot in tolerable order! If we had, as we might have, a dozen daily morning papers, of all prices, representing all opinions, and holding each other in check, there would be no necessity for these public meetings to protest against the misrepresentation of the press; which, so far as I take a part in them, are not the most safe or convenient, for one is always in danger of being identified with those who give vent in the excitement of the moment to very unsound and bellicose sentiments.”

“November 7. (To Mr. Bright.)—As respects Sturge’s plan of universal suffrage, although I am convinced we shall come to it some day, I do not think it would have so much support from the electoral body as household suffrage. And we are too apt to forget that the mass of the people, however enthusiastic in favour of universal suffrage, have not the 1851.
Æt. 47.power of carrying that or any other measure, excepting with the aid of the middle class.

“Again, Sturge loses sight of the inequality of representation, which (even if we would risk the ballot) renders it quite impossible that we should make the Reform Bill a simple question of household or manhood suffrage. After all (you will say I am upon my hobby again) I took to the forty shilling freehold movement as the surest guarantee of our being able to break down the power of the aristocracy without an appeal to violence. A county or two quietly rescued from the landlords by this process will, when announced, do more to strike dismay into the camp of feudalism and inspire the people with the assurance of victory, than anything we could do. As respects the Whig programme, if the ballot be left out, I will not be a party to the scheme, and I feel quite sure that it will be left out.”

“Midhurst, Nov. 6. (To Mr. Bright.)—I guarded myself as carefully as ever I did in my life from being seduced into an unsound position at Winchester, and it is only a proof of the terrible powers of perversion possessed by the Times that you have been influenced by its comments on my speech. The word ’stop’ as applied to Russia was used first by Kossuth in his speech. He said he wished us only to say, Stop. In my remarks I alluded to the unsound state of public opinion here, and our own violations of the principle of non-intervention in our foreign policy. I also referred to the fact that when the Russians invaded Hungary, so much were we under the influence of those unsound opinions, that the tone of some of our leading papers was adverse to the Hungarian cause. I said, then let public opinion in England be set right by such speeches as we had just heard, and let us come into court with clean hands, by acting upon the principle of non-intervention ourselves, and let America join us in the same course (though she has rather given1851.
Æt. 47. symptoms of following our bad example), and then the word ’stop’ addressed to Russia would have the force of a thousand cannons.

“I had, of course, a good deal of private talk with him all in the same strain, and distinctly told him that I had no other hope for him but in the general adoption of the principle of non-intervention as a public opinion of the civilized world. And certainly he has done his part nobly in putting forward that principle in its fairest aspect. He tells us he does not want help, but he wishes us to secure him fair play. We say we wish fair play to him and all others struggling for what they hold to be their rights. Is not such a man, then, to have our sympathies? Are we to let him be slaughtered here by the Times, and stand silently by whilst worse than Turks are assassinating him morally? No; you are not the man to say so. But then you are afraid that others will push our doctrines to the point of physical force. Even if they do, that is no reason why we should cease to give moral power its only chance, by boldly proclaiming the right and justice of the Hungarians to settle their own domestic affairs. Now I am satisfied that if public opinion in England can be shown to be unmistakably against Russian invasion of Hungary, the Russian Government would no more think of risking a collision with the two most powerful maritime states, than Tuscany or Sardinia would; for she is, if possible, more at the mercy of those powers. Therefore, to avoid the possibility of war, let us give the fullest development and expression to sound public opinion.

“My own opinion is that we are on the eve of a revolution in the diplomatic world; that the old régime of mystification and innuendo and intrigue cannot survive the growth of the democratic principle; that diplomacy must be a 1851.
Æt. 47.public and responsible organization; and nobly again has Kossuth assailed this stronghold of the hierarchical spirit. What could be better than when he said, ‘Diplomacy tells us that the dinner is prepared and eaten, and we (the people) have nothing to do but to digest the consequences’? Then, again, his attacks upon the loaning system are quite in our spirit. In fact he comes here preaching the main principles enunciated at our Peace Congress, but preaching them better even in a foreign tongue than I could do in my own language; and surely such a man ought not to be slighted, although some of his admirers talk a little gunpowder.

“But the fact is that upon the whole the public addresses and speeches are singularly judicious, with the exception of the London Working Men’s address, with which, of course, the working men had nothing to do. I join you heartily in wishing to guard us against being for a moment thought to be the advocates of war or armed intervention, and am equally convinced with yourself that we have nothing to hope from. Palmerston and Co. One of my reasons for hoping much from Kossuth’s agitation here and in America is that it will tend to unveil Foreign Ministers and put Foreign Offices in order.

“By the way, with reference to your difficulties about speaking, I should expect that Kossuth will prefer that nobody speaks but himself. After having such a rule adopted by the London Working Men’s Committee, it would be invidious to depart from it in Manchester. I know it is his wish that nobody speaks in his presence unless he is the guest of the chairman, as at Southampton. So if you like to suggest to the Committee that Kossuth should receive addresses and make a reply, and that nobody else should speak, I know that would be most agreeable to him.”

“Dunford, Nov. 13. (To Mr. Bright.)—I have only time for a few words to save the post after reading your speech, to say how greatly I admire your sentiments and approve the line of1851.
Æt. 47. argument you took at the great Kossuth meeting. I can fully appreciate the difficulties of a peace man standing before such a meeting, full of the most generous indignation at the oppressors of a people so nobly represented by the great Magyar. If you could have moved there and then a declaration of war against Russia and Austria, it would have perhaps been the resolution which would have most perfectly embodied the feelings of three-fourths of those present. But your remarks will bear the test of time and reflection, which I should think would hardly be the case with the rev. gentlemen who fell foul of your peace principles. By the way, if I rightly understand what Dr. Vaughan said, he took credit for Palmerston for having prevented the Sultan from surrendering Kossuth by promising him material help. Now, you will find on referring to Palmerston’s speech on Roebuck’s Greek Debate, that in speaking of the entry of our fleet into the Dardanelles, he himself informed us that the Emperor of Russia withdrew his demand for the extradition of the Refugees on the arrival of the Sultan’s envoy remonstrating against the demand, and before any intelligence had reached Petersburgh of the views of the English Government. But I remember at the time making the calculation, and finding that the newspapers of London and Paris, giving one unanimous expression from all parties and every shade of opinion, of indignation at the attempt of the northern powers to violate the law of nations in the persons of Kossuth and his companions, reached Petersburgh at the same time with the Turkish envoy, and I felt convinced, and I said as much in the House afterwards, that it was that expression of OPINION from western Europe scared the despots instantly from their prey. And you are quite right; it is opinion and opinion only that is wanting to establish the principle of non-intervention as a law of 1851.
Æt. 47.nations, as absolutely as the political refugee in a third and neutral country is protected now by the law of nations. But these people who bawl for soldiers and sailors to settle these matters, forget that web have a great deal to do to settle opinion amongst ourselves before we go to war to make others conform to a principle which we have not yet agreed upon. Was public opinion in England unanimously expressed against Russian intervention in 1849? Turn back to the columns of the Times and Manchester Guardian for an answer.....

“I know that Kossuth was most indignant on reading the blue-books (at Kutayah) giving the correspondence about the Hungarian struggle, for Pulsky told me at the time that K. had discovered to his surprise that the whole moral force of our diplomacy at Vienna was employed against him, and the Palmerston at the close of the struggle wrote to congratulate the Austrian government upon the termination of the war.....”

“Nov. 16. (To Mr. Ashworth.)—Kossuth is most certainly a phenomenon; not only is he the first orator of the age, but he combines the rare attributes of a first-rate administrator, high moral qualities, and unswerving courage. This is more than can be said of Demosthenes or Cicero. I am glad to see by your letter that you have participated in the pleasure of listening to him. I confess I felt intensely interested in the success of his visit, after the base and brutal attempt of the Times to destroy his character, before even he had alighted on our shores. The generous welcome given to him is I believe not altogether undue to the dastardly attacks made on him by that paper, which has received a lesson not easily to be forgotten or forgiven. The tone of the addresses and speeches delivered at the meetings has been very discreet and moderate. There has been some gunpowder vomited forth, particularly by a reverend gentle man in Manchester, which might have been better spared1851.
Æt. 47. for a fitter occasion. What we want is a sounder public opinion upon the question of national rights and the sovereignty of peoples. If we could make up our own minds, as a community, that the Russian intervention in Hungary was a violation of the independence of a nation, we should not require to threaten war to make our opinion influential. But what were the facts, and what are now the facts? At the time when the Czar moved his army across the Carpathians, not only were we not agreed as a people in condemning the act, but the Times, Guardian, and all the Tory papers, took a view of the intervention favourable to Russia. Even Lord Palmerston, in the House, spoke apologetically of it. And even now the Times leans to the same side. The whole of the Tory party and the aristocracy are holding aloof from the Kossuth demonstration. It is clear that we want an enlightened and reformed opinion upon the subject of non-intervention. Kossuth has done much to change the tone, and I think if 1849 had now to be gone through again, there would be such a demonstration of opinion as would scare Nicholas from his prey. But there is still every much to be done, and I can imagine nothing more calculated to retard the progress of sound public opinion than to invite the people to embark in a fresh war in favour of Hungarian liberty.”

[1]Speeches, ii. 189.

[2]“I was told that a man had a right to lend his money without inquiring what it was wanted for. But if he knew it was wanted for a vile purpose had he a right of so lending it? I put this question to a City man:— ’somebody asks you to lend money to build houses with, and you know it is wanted for the purpose of building infamous houses: would you be justified in lending the money?’ He replied, ‘I would.’ I rejoined, ‘Then I am not going to argue with you—you are a man for the police magistrate to took after; for if you would lend money to build infamous houses, you would very likely keep one yourself, if you could get ten per cent. by it.’” —Speeches, ii. 418.

[3]The passage from Peel was quoted by Cobden, Speeches, ii. 414.

[4]See Mr. Finlay’s story of the whole transaction in his most valuable Hist. of Greece, vii. 211, &c. Mr. Finlay’s verdict is that “the whole affair reflects very little credit on any of the Governments that took part in it.”

[5]“I conceive,” said Sir Robert Peel, “that there was an obvious mode of settling the claims without offending France, and without provoking a rebuke from Russia. My belief is that without any compromise of your own dignity, you might have got the whole money you demanded, and avoided the difficulties in which you have involved yourselves with these Powers. With regard to Russia, you had just asserted the authority of England by remonstrating with her for attempting to expel ten refugees from Turkey. She acquiesced in your demands; and with regard to France you had all but the certainty of obtaining her cordial sympathy and good feeling. There never was a period in which it was more the interest of this country to conciliate the good feeling of Russia and France.”—Speech in the Don Pacifico Debate, June 28. Hansard, cxii. 683.

[6]As Cobden left the House after Mr. Cockburn’s speech, he was joined by Mr. Disraeli. “I call yours,” he said to Cobden, “the Manchester School of Oratory; and I call his the Crown and Anchor School.”* Cobden was never a great admirer of the eloquent lawyer. The first occasion on which they met was at a dinner-party during the height of the League agitation. “He took the Protectionists’ side,” said Cobden, “and we had a long wrangle before the whole company. As I was top-sawyer on that plank, I had no difficulty in flinging him pretty often.” They met again at dinner the very day after the Pacifioo division. Sir Alexander Cockburn permitted himself to use some of those asperities—Cobden called them by a more stinging name—which the sworn party-man is apt to use against a conscientious dissident. He told Cobden that he ought to be turned out of the Reform Club. But Cobden was always able to hold his own against impertinence, and the advocate took little by his motion.

[7]Mr. Gladstone’s description.

[8]Mr. Ashley’s Life, ii. 161.

[9]The Commission for the Great Exhibition of 1851.

[1]To G. Hadfield, July 5, 1850.

[2]Cobden had no sooner returned from the Peace Congress than he threw himself once more into the long and intricate struggle for National Education. He went to the most important centres of population, where he sought private interviews with bodies of men who were interested in the question, procuring a full and free discussion of vexed topics which were usually conducted with the heat and bitterness peculiar to sectarian quarrels. The Churchmen had moved a step forward; they no longer claimed a monopoly of grants from the State: they now proposed that all the denominations should receive public money for their religious teaching. It was a proposal, as Cobden said, by which everybody should be called upon to pay for the religious teaching of everybody else. This led to the conference at Manchester, January 22, 1851.

[3]That is to say education provided from local rates, free, compulsory, and secular in the sense of excluding books that teach the doctrine of any particular sect. The plan which Cobden favoured was after twenty years of lost time practically accepted, with the important exception that elementary instruction is not yet gratuitous.

[4]Ministers were defeated on a private member’s Bill to lower the country franchise to 10l., which they opposed. On Feb. 22 it was announced that Lord John Russell had resigned. Lord Stanley was sent for, but gave up the task. The Peelites were the difficulty. Without them there could be no strong Government. They declined to join Lord Stanley from differences as commercial policy, and their vigorous disapproval of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill prevented them from joining Lord John Russell. After a short interregnum Lord John and his colleagues returned to office.

[5]Cobden is here at the very heart of the deplorable tale of English mismanagement of Ireland since Catholic Emancipation. We invited the Irish to send representatives of their wishes and views to Parliament, but, until to a small extent in our own day, their views and wishes counted for nothing in the House of Commons. Of course the spirit of the Titles Bill was in miniature the same as the spirit of the Penal Code. Nothing could have been more nicely calculated to deepen Irish dislike for English supremacy, and Irish contempt for English professions of equality and tolerance.

[6]This refers to the Ministerial proposals, which were in various shapes before the public from this time until the Crimean War, for parliamentary reform.

[7]Kossuth landed at Southampton, from Turkey, on October 98.

[6]As Cobden left the House after Mr. Cockburn’s speech, he was joined by Mr. Disraeli. “I call yours,” he said to Cobden, “the Manchester School of Oratory; and I call his the Crown and Anchor School.”* Cobden was never a great admirer of the eloquent lawyer. The first occasion on which they met was at a dinner-party during the height of the League agitation. “He took the Protectionists’ side,” said Cobden, “and we had a long wrangle before the whole company. As I was top-sawyer on that plank, I had no difficulty in flinging him pretty often.” They met again at dinner the very day after the Pacifioo division. Sir Alexander Cockburn permitted himself to use some of those asperities—Cobden called them by a more stinging name—which the sworn party-man is apt to use against a conscientious dissident. He told Cobden that he ought to be turned out of the Reform Club. But Cobden was always able to hold his own against impertinence, and the advocate took little by his motion.

[*]Cobden to J. Parkes, Nov. 23, 1856.