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 :OBDEN'S WORK 
 
 AND 
 
 OPINIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 LORD WELBY 
 
 AND 
 
 SIR LOUIS MALLET 
 
 -^T^ 
 
 ^!W 
 
 28, VICTORIA STREET 
 LONDON, S.W. 
 
 MAY, 1904 
 
COBDEN CLUB LEAFLETS. 
 
 (2 pp. Leaflets, 3s.; 4 pp., 5s.; 8 pp., los. per 1,000.) 
 
 168 Cobden on Retaliation. 4 pp. 
 
 167 Cobden on International Peace. 8 pp. 
 
 166 Cobden on Armaments and Expenditure. 8 pp. 
 
 165 The Candlemakers' Petition. After Bastiat. 4 pp. 
 
 164 Engineering and Free Trade. By G. N. Barnes. 4 pp. 
 
 163 Imports and Exports. By Russell Rea, M.P. 4 pp. 
 
 162 ''Ruined" Industries. IV. —The Silk Trade. By 
 
 Matthew Blair. 4 pp. 
 
 161 The Canadian Premier and Free Trade. 2 pp. 
 
 160 Commercial Travellers and Free Trade. 4 pp. 
 
 159 Retaliation, Is it Feasible ? By Sydney Buxton, M.P. 8 pp. 
 
 158 My Sentiments on the Fiscal Question. By Alfred 
 
 Morris. 4 pp. 
 
 157 Co-operation and Free Trade. 2 pp. 
 
 156 "Ruined" Industries. III.— The Brass Trades. By 
 
 J. CUTHBERTSON. 4 pp. 
 
 155 Those Foreign Doors. By Henry Vivian. 4 pp. 
 
 154 "Ruined" Industries. II.— The Tinplate Trade. By 
 
 Sir J. J. JENKIN. 8 pp. 
 153 The Swedish Workman. By James Calvert. 4 pp. 
 152 " Ruined " Industries. I. — The Iron and Steel Trade. 
 
 By James Cox. 4 pp. 
 151 The German Workman. By the Rev. T. Capel Hanbury. 
 
 4 pp. 
 150 Mr. Chamberlain and the Cobden Club. 4 pp. 
 149 The Cotton Trade and Protection. By C. W. Macara. 
 
 4PP- 
 
 148 The Humours of Protection. By Lord Welby. 4 pp. 
 
 147 How Long Will He Stay ? 2 pp. 
 
 146 A Protectionist Paradise. 2 pp. 
 
 145 German Exports and German Wages. 2 pp. 
 
 144 Appeal from Labour Representatives. 4 pp. 
 
 143 The Zollverein Scheme. By Sir Swire Smith. 8 pp. 
 
 142 The Burden of Empire. 4 pp. 
 
 141 Mr. Chamberlain on the Canadian Tariff. 4 pp. 
 
 140 Mr. Balfour on Protection. 2 pp. 
 
 139 Food and Folly. By Harold Cox. 12 pp. 
 
 138 A Shipowner on Shipping Subsidies. 4 pp. 
 
 135 Shipping Subsidies. By Sir Spencer Walpole, K.C.B. 8 pp. 
 
 134 The Benefits of Free Trade. By Albert Spicer. 8 pp. 
 
 128 A Century of British Exports. With Diagram. 4 pp. 
 
 127 Why I am a Free Trader. By Sir J. H. Simon, K.C.M.G. 
 
 2 pp. 
 
 123 The Canadian Preferential Tariff. By Harold Cox. 8 pp. 
 
 122 Free Trade and Prosperity. 4 pp. 
 
 118 Taxation of Commodities. 4 pp. 
 
 117 The Forgotten Factor. By Lord Farrer. 4 pp. 
 
 97 Wages and Protection. By Geor(;e W. Medley. 2 pp. 
 
 53 Sir Robert Peel on "One-Sided Free Trade." 2pp. 
 
 42 The Good Old Times. 2 pp. 
 
 28 Free Trade or Fair Trade } By James E. Thorold 
 Rogers. 2 pp. 
 
 22 Less Free Trade or More ? By J. Hampden Jackson. 2 pp. 
 
 14 Taxing Foreign Wheat. By George W. Medley. 4 pp. 
 
COBDEN'S WORK 
 
 AND 
 
 OPINIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 LORD IWELBY ^^yy^^Jcl Ea 
 
 AND \ ' 
 
 SIR LOUIS MALLET 
 
 •SsM 
 
 28, VICTORIA STREET 
 LONDON, S.W. 
 
 MAY, 1904 
 

 I 
 
 COBDEN'S WORK AND WRITINGS 
 
 By Lord Welby.^ 
 
 The State is a severe mother. She demands from her 
 noblest sons their intellects, their energies, and, if need 
 be, their lives ; but she is not ungrateful. The men 
 who have guided her destinies live in grateful memory 
 and in memory the more honoured if to great service 
 and lofty aims they have added disregard of self, direct- 
 ness of purpose, and simplicity of character. Such men 
 become household words of the nation. They create 
 the standard by which the nation measures itself, and 
 by which it is measured. They strike the keynote of 
 national character. Such a man was Richard Cobden, 
 a type of a great Englishman to EngHshmen of all times, 
 a type in his truthfulness, in his simplicity, and in his 
 devotion to the welfare of his countrymen. 
 
 It is nearly forty years since he passed away, and in 
 the interval much has happened. During his youth and 
 the prime of his manhood, the people were suffering 
 under the results of the Great War. Excessive taxation 
 weighed upon all classes, but more especially upon the 
 wage-earning and poorer classes. The progress of the 
 nation was hampered by bad laws and unwise restric- 
 tions. The condition of the poor was miserable, for 
 employment w\as scarce, wages were low, and food was 
 
 * Being the preface to "The PoHtical Writings of Richard 
 Cobden" (Fisher Unwin, 1903), with the omission of a few 
 phrases. 
 
 3 
 
 M323567 
 
4 CoBDEifs Work and Writings 
 
 clear. Education was neglected, and little had been 
 done to make the mass of the people fit for the citizen- 
 ship of a great and free country. This was the condition 
 of the nation as Cobden knew it. He saw that improve- 
 ment was impossible as long as the labouring classes 
 were ill-fed and often unemployed, and he threw him- 
 self with all his soul into the fight for free trade and 
 cheap food. The tale of the fight is admirably told in 
 Morley's Life of him. As one reads it, one is struck by 
 the tact, the resource, the vigour and statesmanship of 
 the man. Protection ruled in trade and agriculture, 
 and the protected interests were to a man against him. 
 But his chief foe was the agricultural interest. The 
 great landowners were arrayed against him. The fight 
 was long and severe, but Free Trade triumphed in the 
 end and Cobden was the leader of the victorious party. 
 There is no passage in the records of Parliamentary 
 debate more striking than the oft-quoted tribute which 
 in the hour of his triumph Sir Robert Peel paid to 
 him. 
 
 " The name which ought to be associated with the 
 success of our measures of commercial policy is not the 
 name of the noble lord, the organ of the party of which 
 he is the leader, nor is it mine. The name which ought 
 to be, and will be, associated with the success of those 
 measures is the name of one who, acting, I believe, 
 from pure and disinterested motives, has, with untiring 
 energy, made appeals to our reason, and has enforced 
 those appeals with an eloquence the more to be admired 
 because it was unaffected and unadorned : the name 
 which ought to be chiefly associated with the success 
 of those measures is the name of Richard Cobden.'' 
 
 The verdict of posterity has confirmed the judgment 
 of Sir Robert Peel. It has associated inseparably and 
 for ever the name of Cobden with the great Act of 1846. 
 Many men and many interests then contested and now 
 contest the policy of that Act, but generous opponents 
 have never questioned the power, the energy, and the 
 singlemindedness with which he fought the fight. Six 
 years after the repeal of the Corn Laws an event took 
 place which fittingly crowned his labours. In Decem- 
 fcier, 1852, the Tory party, after depriving Peel of office, 
 after opposing for six long years his policy as ruinous to 
 
CoBDEN^s Work and Writings 5 
 
 the nation, and after appealing to the country to reverse 
 that policy, hauled down their colours, and the Tory 
 Ministers of the Crown, and the bulk of their party, 
 followed the Liberals into the lobby in order to aflirm a 
 resolution that the policy of Cobden, which they had 
 condemned, was sound and successful, and ought to be 
 maintained. On that occasion a follower of Peel, 
 pointing to the Treasury Bench, exclaimed, " If you 
 w^ant humiliation, look there." Cobden cared httle 
 for humiliation. It was enough for him that, an insig- 
 nificant minority of some fifty excepted, both parties 
 in the House of Commons combined to affirm the 
 great principle of which he was the champion. 
 
 It has been said that Cobden and Bright were de- 
 magogues. They were certainly leaders of the people ; 
 but a demagogue is generally supposed to secure and 
 maintain his power with the people by flattering and 
 cajoling them. A simple test will show whether Cob- 
 den and Bright were demagogues in this sense. In 
 1854 the Russian war broke out. The nation has always 
 a warlike tendency, and when its leaders tell it that war 
 is necessary, it accepts their judgment but too readily, 
 throwing itself into the struggle with vigorous and 
 earnest resolution. In that mood neither the upper 
 classes nor the working class-es are tolerant of opposi- 
 tion, and statesmen, however honest and capable, if 
 they question the passion of the hour, are heard with 
 impatience, their warnings and remonstrances are 
 brushed aside, and, when opportunities offer, the con- 
 stituencies are not slow to punish them ; for the 
 masses are unable to appreciate motives which appear 
 to them unpatriotic. The result is intelligible, though 
 not always creditable to the common sense of the nation. 
 No demagogue, anxious to secure popularity and power, 
 would oppose in such circumstances the dominant mood. 
 Cobden and Bright thought that the Government and I 
 the people were in error, and that the war was unneces- 1 
 sary. Careless of popularity when conscience was con- / 
 cerned, they boldly expressed their views in and out of I 
 Parliament, and as a consequence they lost their popu- I 
 larity, and when, a year or two later, they denounced ( 
 the war with China arising out of the miserable affair of ( 
 the lorcha Arrow, they lost their seats. Who will say J 
 
6 Cobden's Work and Writings 
 
 now that it was not good for the nation that the 
 warning voice should have been raised, and that honour 
 is not due to the men who dared to raise it? Who 
 will say in the light of experience that they were 
 wrong in either case? There are few of us who 
 lived in those days, and shared the prevaihng opinion, 
 but have more than a doubt whether in the Crimean 
 war our money was not wasted, and, what is worse, 
 gallant lives lost in a bad cause. We know at least 
 one great Tory leader, lately, alas ! taken from us, 
 held that we put our money on the wrong horse. But 
 be that as it may, happy is the country which has such 
 demagogues as Cobden and Bright. Demagogues in 
 the ordinary sense they were not. The title would fit 
 better those who in war time use their passing popu- 
 larity to inflame the national passion, and to crush 
 opponents who do not share their views. 
 
 The cloud of distress which so long hung over the 
 nation had begun to lift some years before Cobden died. 
 He lived indeed to see the commencement of that 
 national prosperity which marked the last third of the 
 nineteenth century. When he commenced his cam- 
 paign against Protection the value of British produce 
 exported was rather more than ;^5o,ooo,ooo. In 1864 
 it had risen to ;^i6o,ooo,ooo. In the year 1902 it had risen 
 to ;^283,ooo,ooo. In 1841 one in every eleven persons of 
 the population was in receipt of poor reUef ; in 1864 one 
 in twenty ; in 1902 only one in forty. In 1841 the deposits 
 in Savings Banks were ;^24,50o,ooo. In 1864 they had 
 risen to 3^44,500,000 ; in 1900 to more than ;^207,ooo,ooo, 
 besides ;£59,ooo,ooo invested in Building and Provident 
 Societies. In 1843 the total annual value of the property 
 and profits assessed to income tax were, including an 
 estimate for Ireland, ;£"27o,ooo,ooo. In 1864 it had 
 risen to ^^370,000,000, and in 1900 to ;,r758,ooo,ooo. 
 Thus, in the quarter of a century from the formation of 
 the Anti-Corn Law League, Cobden saw the result of 
 that great movement in an increase of 200 per cent, in 
 the export of our goods, in the diminution of pauperism 
 by nearly a half, in the savings of the poor nearly 
 doubled, and in the increase by 37 per cent, of the 
 income of the well-to-do classes. Truly he might feel 
 that, thanks in the main to the labours of himself and 
 
Co BD en's Work and Writings 7 
 
 Bright, to the poHcy of which he had been the champion, 
 the country had entered on a period of progress and 
 prosperity. What would he have thought if his hfe 
 could have been spared to the beginning of the twentieth 
 century, and seen continued progress in our export 
 trade, pauperism again decreased by a half, the savings 
 of the poor increased by nearly 400 per cent., and the 
 incomes of the well-to-do more than doubled ? 
 
 Two facts characterise the national mood in the 
 latter part of the nineteenth century which would have 
 grieved Cobden to the heart — the growth of military 
 and naval expenditure and the de- 
 velopment of warlike spirit in the ^ ^J^^^"^^ °^ 
 
 1 TT iu t 4. • o- Jingoism, 
 
 people. He thought m 1050 an ex- 
 penditure on army and navy of ;^i6,ooo,ooo excessive, and 
 in 1864 he thought an expenditure on those services of 
 ;^26,ooo,ooo still more excessive. On this point he and 
 Bright were not singular. Many men not of the Man- 
 chester school shared their views, and in 1862 the 
 Liberal party in Parliament insisted on reduction of 
 expenditure, supporting Gladstone in the Cabinet 
 against Palmerston, and Palmerston had to yield. 
 But if Cobden thought the expenditure of 1850 and 
 1864 excessive, what would he have thought of a mili- 
 tary and naval expenditure of between ;^7o,ooo,ooo and 
 ;^8o,ooo,ooo in 1903 — a year of peace ? And how would 
 it have added to his sorrow to learn that this enormous 
 expenditure is tolerated, one might say approved, by 
 a democracy ! When Cobden died the country was 
 ruled by the middle classes, the householder of ;,f 10 
 and upwards. He was earnestly in favour of a wide 
 extension of the suffrage. Within a few years of his 
 death household suffrage was established, and the 
 franchise was extended to the agricultural labourers. 
 Thus a middle-class Government was converted into a 
 democracy. The middle-class constituencies had been 
 economical to a certain extent, though not nearly so 
 economical as Cobden would have wished. The 
 democracy has been, and is, lavishly extravagant. A 
 great Tory statesman, deploring the increase of public 
 expenditure, could only say plaintively, ''Who are we 
 that we should stem the tide ? " — an expression of 
 despair, perhaps, hardly worthy of the leader of a 
 
8 Cobden's Work and Writings 
 
 great party, but indicative of the reality, I might say 
 the popularity of the evil, and of the difficulty of coping 
 with it. Cobden acted consistently on principle, and 
 we may rest assured that he would have granted the 
 extension of the suffrage, even if he could have fore- 
 seen that the democracy would use it to their own 
 disadvantage. He would have held that the people 
 had a right to govern themselves, whether they used 
 their power well or ill, but it would have sorely dis- 
 appointed him to see the democracy, the working 
 classes, whose true interest lies in public economy and 
 low taxation, as eager as ever were the upper classes, 
 and much more eager than the middle classes, for 
 military glory, expansion of territory, and lavish 
 expenditure. 
 
 The great work of Free Trade which Cobden 
 accomplished is now w^antonly assailed, and it is well 
 that at the present crisis men should now reconsider 
 his conception of the true interests of the nation of 
 which he was so eminently a type. " I would rather 
 live in a country where the feeling in favour of indi- 
 vidual liberty is jealously cherished, than be without it 
 in the enjoyment of all the principles of the French 
 constituted assembly." Thus spoke the true English- 
 man. His speeches and writings are ransacked to 
 find prophecies and anticipations which have not 
 been fulfilled, in the hope of shaking faith in the 
 soundness of the practical policy which he did so much 
 to establish. Let him speak for himself. I care not 
 whether his generous belief in the virtue of mankind, 
 in their capacity for learning the lesson of enlightened 
 self-interest and national morality led him into hopes 
 which have not been justified by facts. Have the pre- 
 dictions of other great statesmen always been fulfilled ? 
 Shortly before the Peace of Amiens Pitt thought that 
 he could find the means for another year of war, and 
 that England would then be exhausted, yet England 
 found the means for carrying on the war until 1815, 
 though unhappily she suffered under this strain on her 
 resources for many a long year. Was Canning correct 
 in his bombastic prophecy that he had called into 
 existence a new world to correct the balance of the 
 old ? Has Palmerston's belief in the future of Turkey, 
 
CoBDEN^s Work and Writings 9 
 
 which led him into the Crimean War, been justified ? 
 Or, to take a more modern instance, what shall we say 
 of the foresight of our modern statesmen, who shut 
 their eyes to the warnings of their expert advisers, and 
 went totally unprepared into a great war, confident that 
 it would last a few months and cost ;^io,ooo,ooo ? It 
 lasted nearly three years, and cost ;f 250,000,000. These 
 were grave miscalculations of the future. In three of 
 them they were especially grave, because they con- 
 cerned immediate poHcy, but Cobden's hopes as to 
 the spread of Free Trade in foreign countries, and the 
 growth of desire for peace, did not affect his practical 
 pohcy. He advocated Free Trade, as essential to the 
 welfare and progress of the nation, irrespective of 
 foreign tariffs or the warhke tendencies of nations. 
 The higher foreigners built their tariff wall with a 
 view to exclude our goods, the more resolute would 
 he have been to demolish the wall which a long period 
 of Protectionist government had been erecting on this 
 side the Channel. He wanted to give our working 
 classes cheap food, and our manufacturers untaxed raw 
 materials, and the incitement to skill and industry which 
 competition affords, in order that we might continue to 
 hold our pre-eminence in trade. 
 
 But the new Protectionists argue that circumstances 
 have changed since 1846, and that the policy of 1846 
 is no longer suited to the needs of the nation. Mr. 
 Balfour, in his recent manifesto, lays it down that we 
 ought "to accept provisionally the view that the 
 character of our fiscal policy should vary with varying 
 circumstances," and he proposes to give effect to his 
 axiom by a total revolution in our fiscal policy, which 
 certainly cannot be described as provisional. In face, 
 however, of so radical a change, it is not sufficient to 
 say merely that circumstances have changed. The 
 burthen of proof Hes with the Government. The 
 Prime Minister must show by facts that circumstances 
 have changed to the detriment of the nation and to an 
 extent which justifies the revolution. Is the prosperity 
 of the nation declining ? Let us take Mr. Balfour's 
 evidence. " Judged by all available tests, both the total 
 W'ealth and the diffused well-being of the country are 
 greater than they ever have been. We are not only 
 
10 Co Eden's Work and Writings 
 
 rich and prosperous in appearance, but also, I believe, 
 in reality. I can find no evidence that we are living on 
 our capital." So far, therefore, and on the evidence of 
 the chief opponent of Free Trade, circumstances have 
 not changed to the detriment of the nation. Under 
 Free Trade the country, since 1846, has steadily 
 advanced in prosperity. What, then, is the Prime 
 Minister's reason for the revolution ? According to 
 him a " close " examination of our export returns show 
 signs of diminution, and he appends figures in support 
 of his view, but his test is faulty. His argument 
 apphes to the volume of our exports, and his figures to 
 their declared value. But the value is based on the 
 prices of the years, which vary from year to year, and 
 are therefore a faulty basis of comparison. Hence 
 upon a superficial examination he formed a vague 
 apprehension, and he offers this as a sufficient reason 
 for a return to a system of retaliation so long tried, and 
 so decidedly condemned by that most cautious and 
 prudent of statesmen. Sir Robert Peel. If Cobden's 
 policy is brought to trial upon this indictment only, his 
 followers need not fear the verdict. 
 
 But Cobden's forecasts were not confined to the 
 the spread of Free Trade, or the growth of desire for 
 peace. Let us note in his writings how sound were 
 his views, how just his prescience, on most of the 
 important questions of the day. In '^ England, Ireland, 
 and America," pubhshed in 1835, and in " Russia," 
 pubUshed in 1836, he pleaded for non-intervention, not 
 only as in accordance with moral law, but as a poHcy 
 essential to the true interests of the country. He saw 
 that the great change which had been silently taking 
 place in the development of manufactures and in the 
 growth of our town population made it necessary to 
 review the principles of our domestic policy in order 
 to adapt the Government to the changing condition of 
 the people, and to alter, " the maxim by which its 
 foreign relations have in past times been regulated." 
 He said that the policy of making food dear in order to 
 protect the interest of one class of producers was not 
 only unjust, but impossible. The larger part of the 
 working classes, ill-fed, and ill-paid, would not suffer 
 for long their food to be made artificially dear by class 
 
CoBDEN*s Work and Writings ii 
 
 legislation, that discontent and class war must be the 
 result. He saw also — saw justly and saw first — " that it 
 is from the silent and peaceful rivalry of American 
 commerce, the growth of its manufactures, its rapid 
 progress in internal improvement, 
 the superior education of the people °'^ ^°^'eSl^' ^"^ 
 and their economical and pacific 
 Government — that it is from these, and not from the 
 barbarous or the impoverishing armaments of Russia 
 that the grandeur of our commercial and national 
 prosperity is endangered." He added, indeed, that in 
 less than twenty years this would be the sentiment of 
 the people of England generally. His prophecy was 
 somewhat too sanguine, but sixty years at all events 
 have taught us the justice of his views as to the United 
 States. He showed us also how to face our great 
 antagonist, viz., by removing all obstacles to trade. 
 The United States have a thriving and intelhgent popu- 
 lation of 80,000,000, nearly double that of the United 
 Kingdom. They are lightly taxed, very little indebted, 
 and incur insignificant charge for military and naval 
 service. Yearly a large proportion of the people goes 
 into the towns and engages in manufacturing industries, 
 and it is at this moment, when their competition with 
 us becomes daily more intense, that it is gravely pro- 
 posed that we should fetter and impede our manufac- 
 turing and consuming powers by preferential and 
 retahatory duties, that we should tie up a man's leg in 
 order to help him in running a race. 
 
 Take, again, Cobden's views as to Ireland. How, 
 after a powerful picture of Ireland's condition, he traces 
 the evils which produced such results to the ignorance 
 of England on Irish questions. How he condemns the 
 statesmen " who have averted their faces from this 
 diseased member of the body politic." Listen to the 
 following words written in 1851 : "Hitherto in Ireland 
 the sole reliance has been on bayonets and patching. 
 The feudal system presses upon that country in a way 
 which, as a rule, only foreigners can understand, for 
 we have an ingrained feudal spirit in our English 
 character. I never spoke to a French or Italian econo- 
 mist who did not at once put his finger on the fact that 
 great masses of landed property were held by the 
 
12 CoBDEifs Work and Writings 
 
 descendants of a conquering race, who were living 
 abroad, and thus in a double manner perpetuating the 
 remembrance of conquest and oppression, while the 
 natives were at the same time precluded from possessing 
 themselves of landed property, and thus becoming 
 interested in the peace of the country. ... How are 
 we to get out of this dilemma with the present House 
 of Commons, and our representative system as it is, is 
 the problem.'^ The problem was not to be solved by 
 that House of Commons or the Hmited representative 
 system that then existed. The Home Rule Bill of Mr. 
 Gladstone may be open to criticism, but impartial 
 history will recognise that he, with all the earnestness 
 of his nature, forced the English nation much against 
 its will to face the Irish questions — the question of the 
 Irish Church, Irish self-government, and Irish land 
 tenure. A Conservative Government has lately com- 
 pleted, with large aid from the British Exchequer, 
 the revolution in the tenure of Irish land begun in 
 1 88 1, and Mr. Wyndham's measure, which aims at 
 ending this '' feudal system " of land tenure, confirms 
 and justifies the foresight of Cobden and the pohcy 
 of Gladstone. " In Russia," published in 1836, and 
 in " What Next and Next ? '^ published during the 
 Crimean War, Cobden reproved the spirit of Russo- 
 phobia then rampant, and rampant long afterwards ; 
 but there are signs that thinking minds are beginning 
 to share the views of Cobden on that fear of Russia 
 which has so long haunted the nation, which plunged us 
 into the Crimea War, the Afghanistan War, and which 
 more recently led the Government to take a course in 
 China which has not enhanced our reputation. 
 
 In his letter to Mr. Ashworth (April 10, 1862) Cobden 
 urged that all private property should in time of war be 
 exempt from capture at sea, that neutral ships ought to 
 be exempt from search or visitation, and that the com- 
 mercial ports of an enemy ought to be exempt from 
 blockade. Cobden advocated these changes in inter- 
 national law, after his wont, because they would be of 
 special advantage to this country. Many people are at 
 present exercised as to the ensuring a supply of food 
 for this country in time of war. They are discussing 
 clumsy and expensive remedies against this contingency. 
 
CoBDENS Work and Writings 13 
 
 They would do well to consider Cobden's able argu- 
 ment in support of his proposal. This country could 
 not under any circumstances provide the food required 
 for its immense population, and it must be dependent 
 on foreign countries for the raw material of its manu- 
 factures. No country, therefore, is more interested in 
 modifications of international law which would ensure 
 the supply of these necessaries. It is possible that those 
 modifications might not be respected by belligerent 
 nations under the stress of war, but their acceptance by 
 the Powers would impose an obligation on belligerents, 
 which could not be repudiated without risk and without 
 dishonour. The '' Three Panics" is a powerfully- written 
 pamphlet, both in style and matter. It is an excellent 
 example of the manner in which Cobden seizes the 
 weak points of a policy to which he is opposed, of the 
 clearness and conciseness with which he exposes them, 
 and of the skill and power with which he drives home 
 his conclusions. 
 
 In these writings Cobden may have overrated antici- 
 pated advantages and underrated difficulties. He may 
 have been too sanguine in some directions, he may have 
 relied too much on the wisdom of this and other nations, 
 and not have been sufficiently alive to the ambition of 
 statesmen and to international jealousies ; but no fair 
 person can fail to be struck by the general soundness of 
 his argument, the morality of his statesmanship, and 
 the correctness in the main of his foresight, as evidenced 
 by the manner in which national opinion has veered in 
 his direction. His opinion on national expenditure will 
 be chiefly criticised. Probably he, like other persons, 
 taught by the experience of the last forty years, would 
 admit the necessity of a navy, sufficiently powerful, 
 according to our present knowledge, for our defence. 
 It must, indeed, be remembered that he accepted the 
 principle of that policy, though he did not accept even 
 the standard of efficiency accepted by the statesmen of 
 that day. On the whole, however, how just was his 
 opinion of the national interest in public economy ! 
 True Free Traders must endorse his principles as 
 strongly now as then, nay, more strongly, for the 
 evil of extravagance becomes daily more evident. If 
 a nation is to be strong and contented, the mass of the 
 
14 Co Eden's Work and Writings 
 
 population must be sufficiently fed. The extravagance 
 of peace expenditure in the last few years has necessi- 
 tated a reversal of the wise policy which ruled from 
 1842 for forty years. The tea duty has been raised 
 until it is nearly 100 per cent, on the value of the 
 article. A duty has been placed upon sugar equivalent 
 to 50 per cent, upon its value, apart from our quixotic 
 anxiety to lose a bounty worth to us probably another 
 50 per cent. The supposed necessity for lavish expen- 
 diture has made it necessary to seek new sources of 
 revenue, and high financial authority has pleaded that 
 the basis of taxation must be widened. That is to say, 
 duties must be imposed on articles of consumption, and 
 the poorest classes must be taxed in order to meet the 
 ever-increasing demand for military expenditure — a 
 singular device for improving the physical strength and 
 consequently the power of the nation. Mr. Chamber- 
 lain goes a step further, and would "widen the basis of 
 taxation " in furtherance of a new line of policy. He 
 wishes to tax the bread of the poor as a tribute to our 
 prosperous fellow-subjects in the self-governing Colonies, 
 and in the hope that this contribution from the working- 
 classes at home may induce the Colonies to enter into 
 closer confederation with us. Thus, economy in public 
 expenditure, on which Cobden insisted with such 
 earnestness, is absolutely abandoned. Mihtary experts, 
 policy-mongers, interested trades have only to ask in 
 order to receive. The tub of the Danaids is a water- 
 tight vessel compared with the exchequer. The burthen 
 of this extravagance weighs upon all classes, but most 
 upon the poor. 
 
 The Free Trader, on his side, sees that extravagance 
 in public expenditure, by making new taxation neces- 
 sary, has given the Protectionists an opportunity of 
 which they are not slow to avail themselves, and it is 
 only too hkely that, if the nation does not speak out. 
 Protection in aggravated form will be a plank in the 
 Conservative platform. Thus the lesson which Cobden 
 taught is brought home, and the wisdom of his teaching 
 is made only too clear. 
 
 Students of English may learn much from Cobden's 
 writings. They are like his speech — clear, fearless, 
 vigorous, but persuasive. The style was the man, th^ 
 
Co Eden's Work and Writings 15 
 
 result of conviction based upon close observation and 
 careful thought. The purity of his style is the more 
 remarkable, since he had no advantage from education 
 in the formation of it ; but his keen sense of beauty, 
 his innate power of understanding excellence in art, 
 bestowed upon him a power of appreciation such as 
 men usually acquire by long study. How genuine, in 
 his Italian diary, is his admiration of the great works of 
 antiquity, and how well he expresses his admiration of 
 them ! 
 
 The two great twin brethren of Free Trade were 
 singularly fitted for co-operation in the conduct of a 
 crusade against vested interests and deep-rooted pre- 
 judices. Both were outspoken, both put clearly and 
 pointedly their argument to the public, and neither of 
 them was a respecter of persons. Bright, however, was 
 bold and somewhat aggressive, while Cobden was bold 
 and persuasive. Cobden, therefore, aroused less per- 
 sonal antagonism ; but the EngHsh mind is conservative, 
 and people in comfortable circumstances regard with 
 distrust the man who attacks established interests and 
 the existing order of things. Hence Cobden, though 
 perhaps in a less degree than Bright, was for years 
 misunderstood. 
 
 May Cobden's writings in this hour of crisis for Free 
 Trade find readers in every part of the kingdom ! His 
 pamphlets have lost nothing of their intrinsic value, 
 though they were written seventy, fifty, forty years ago, 
 and though the circumstances of the nation, and the 
 temper of the nation, have changed greatly in the 
 interval. The principles they inculcate, the lessons 
 they teach, are as good and as sound now as they were 
 then. Thoughtful readers will realise how Cobden's 
 policy has removed causes of discontent, has promoted 
 good understanding throughout the community, and 
 tended to weld rich and poor into one nation. They 
 will realise how just, and therefore how conservative, 
 were his views, and how sound in the main was his 
 judgment, even tried during half a century by the hard 
 test of experience. We who are Free Traders have 
 absolute confidence in our principle, and our belief in 
 the great leader of the Free Trade movement is 
 unabated. 
 
II 
 
 THE POLITICAL OPINIONS OF 
 RICHARD COBDEN 
 
 By Sir Louis Mallet, C3.^ 
 
 It is with a peculiar satisfaction that we hail the publi- 
 cation of " The Political Writings of Richard Cobden." 
 Presented originally to the public in the ephemeral form 
 of pamphlets, thrown out in sharp opposition to the 
 prevailing passions and prejudices of the hour, and 
 systematically depreciated as they were by the organs 
 of public opinion which guide the majority of our 
 upper classes, we suspect that they are well-nigh for- 
 gotten by the elder, and little known to the younger 
 men among us. Yet do these scattered records of 
 Mr. Cobden's thoughts contain a body of pohtical 
 doctrine more original, more profound, and more con- 
 sistent, than is to be found in the spoken or written 
 
 * Being portions of an essay written first in 1867, and reissued in 
 1869, as an Introduction to "The Political Writings of Richard 
 Cobden." 
 
 The late Sir Louis Mallet was Mr. Cobden's assistant in the 
 negotiations of the Treaty of Commerce with France in i860, and 
 was at the Board of Trade in succeeding years, charged with the 
 negotiations of similar treaties with other European powers, which 
 did so much for the extension of free trade ideas and brought about 
 a general reduction of tariffs which has not even yet lost its effect. 
 He was brought much into contact with Mr. Cobden in official and 
 private life. 
 
 Until the publication of Cobden's Life by Mr. John Morley, who 
 
 had the advantage of Sir L. Mallet's assistance and advice, this 
 
 essay was tlie only authoritative comment upon the great free trade 
 
 statesman's work. 
 
 16 
 
The Political Opinions of Richard CobdMn 17 
 
 utterances of any other English statesman of our time, 
 and we commend them to the earnest study and con- 
 sideration of all who aspire to exert an influence on the 
 future government of our country. 
 
 Whatever may be thought of his political character, 
 it will be admitted that no man has made a deeper 
 impression on the policy of this country during his 
 time than Richard Cobden. 
 
 The false judgment so commonly passed upon this 
 statesman is to be traced, we believe, in a great measure 
 to that which constitutes his great and his distinguished 
 merit, viz., his steady adherence to general principles, 
 and his consequent freedom from class and party views, 
 and his indifference to the popular clamour of the hour, 
 which in turn brought him into colHsion with all classes 
 and with all parties, and on some memorable occasions, 
 with the body of the people themselves. 
 
 Mr. Cobden's political character was the result of a 
 rare and fortunate combination of personal qualities and 
 of external circumstances. 
 
 Sprung from the agricultural class, and bred up (to 
 use his own expression) '' amidst the pastoral charms 
 of Southern England," imbued with so strong an 
 attachment to the pursuits of his forefathers, that, as 
 he says himself, in the volumes before us, ** had we the 
 casting of the role of all the actors on this world's stage, 
 we do not think that we should suffer a cotton-mill or 
 manufactory to have a place in it ; " trained in a large 
 conamercial house in London, and subsequently con- 
 ducting on his own account a print manufactory in 
 Lancashire, Mr. Cobden possessed the peculiar advan- 
 tage of a thorough acquaintance and sympathy with 
 the three great forms of industrial life in England. 
 Nor were the experiences of his public career less rich 
 and varied than those of his private life. 
 
 The first great political question in which he bore a 
 conspicuous part, the Anti-Corn-Law agitation, and his 
 consequent connection with the powerful producing 
 class, which, by the fortunate coincidence of interest 
 with that of the people at large, originated and led this 
 great and successful struggle, gave him a thorough 
 insight into this important element of our body-politic, 
 in all its strength and in all its weakness ; his know- 
 
 2 
 
iS The Political Opinions of Richard Cob den 
 
 ledge of other countries — the result of keen personal 
 observation, and much travel both in Europe and 
 America, his intimate relations with some of their best 
 and most enlightened men, as well as with their leading 
 politicians, and the moderating and restraining influences 
 of twenty years of P.'yliamentary life, during which he 
 conciliated the respect and esteem even of his strongest 
 opponents, combined with the entire absence in his 
 case of all sectarian influences and prejudices — gave 
 to his opinions a comprehensive and catholic character, 
 which is perhaps the rarest of all the attributes of 
 English statesmanship. 
 
 Mr. Cobden entered Parliament, not, as is the fate of 
 most of our public men, to support a 
 
 ^nar)oSt P'^^'^Yi ^^ P^'^y ^°^* office, or to educate 
 
 himself for professional statesman- 
 ship, still less to gratify personal vanity or to acquire 
 social importance, but as the representative of distinct 
 principles, and of a great cause. 
 
 Mr. Cobden belonged to the school of political 
 thinkers who believe in the perfect harmony of moral 
 and economical laws, and that in proportion as these 
 are recognised, understood, and obeyed by nations, 
 will be their advance in all that constitutes civilisation. 
 
 He believed that the interests of the individual, the 
 interests of the nation, and the interests of all nations 
 y are identical ; and that these several interests are all in 
 entire and necessary concordance with the highest 
 interests of morality. With this belief, an economic 
 truth acquired with him the dignity and vitality of a 
 moral law, and, instead of remaining a barren doctrine 
 of the intellect, became a living force, to move the 
 hearts and consciences of men. It is to a want of a 
 clear conception of this great harmony between the 
 moral and economic law, or to a disbelief in its existence, 
 that are to be traced some of the most pernicious errors 
 of modern times, and the lamentable condition of Europe 
 at the present moment. 
 
 " II n'y a que deux moyens," says Bastiat, " de se 
 procurer les choses necessaires a Fembellissement, et 
 au perfectionnement de la vie — la production et la 
 spoliation." And again, " Propriete et spoliation, 
 soeurs nees du meme pere, Genie du Bien, et Genie du 
 
The Political Ormioi^s of Richard Cob den 19 
 
 Mai, Salut et Fleaii de la Societe, Puissances qui se 
 disputent depuis le commencement I'empire et les 
 destinees du monde." 
 
 These truths are of comparatively recent acceptance 
 even in theory among us, and in practice still are far 
 indeed from being applied. Such, moreover, is the 
 confusion of thought, engendered by historical associa- 
 tion, political prejudice, and class interest, that many of 
 the forms of spoliation are hardly recognised when 
 disguised in the garb of a British institution, a party prin- 
 ciple, or a vested right ; in which artificial costume they 
 still impose on the credulity of many of our countrymen. 
 
 It is true that war is generally admitted to be an evil, 
 and slavery to be a wrong ; that the Reformation has 
 dealt a heavy blow at theocracy, and Free Trade at 
 monopoly. 
 
 But the spirit of war is still fostered and stimulated, 
 by false ideas of national honour, patriotism, and policy, 
 and to the art of war we still devote our mightiest efforts, 
 and consecrate our costliest sacrifices. The grosser 
 forms of slavery have indeed disappeared, but its taint 
 is still to be traced in some of our institutions, and in 
 our feeling towards subject races ; while our Reformed 
 Church, with its temporalities, and its exclusive preten- 
 sions and privileges, is still too often the enemy of the 
 foundation of all freedom, liberty of thought. 
 
 The last, and perhaps the most insidious, of the 
 leading forms of '' spoliation," commercial monopoly, 
 though driven from its strongholds, and expelled from 
 our national creed, is still regarded by many among us 
 with secret favour, and by most of us rather as a political 
 error than as a moral wrong. 
 
 It was to a struggle with this last great evil that 
 Cobden devoted his life, and it is with the most decisive 
 victory ever achieved in this field of conflict that his 
 name and fame will be always identified ; but it is 
 significant and interesting to know that, in selecting his 
 work in life, it was to " Education," and not to " Free 
 Trade," that his thoughts were first directed. 
 
 Two reasons decided him to prefer the latter 
 as the object of his efforts: — Firstly, his conviction 
 that the material prosperity of nations is the only 
 foundation of all progress, and that if this were 
 
20 The Political Opinions of Richard Cob den 
 
 once secured the rest would follow. Secondly, his 
 consciousness that no direct attempt to obtain a system 
 of national education which deserved the name, could 
 lead to any clear result in the life of his own generation, 
 and that, measured with those at his command, imposing 
 as were the forces of resistance arrayed against him on 
 the question of Free Trade, they were less formidable 
 than those which would be brought to bear against a 
 measure which united in a common hostility the Estab- 
 lished and the Dissenting Churches. 
 
 It was Cobden's fate or fortune to find himself, in 
 taking up the cause of Free Trade, in the presence of 
 one of the worst laws which the selfishness or folly of 
 Governments has ever imposed on the weakness or 
 ignorance of a people. 
 
 When the soil of a country is appropriated, the only 
 means whereby an increasing population can limit the 
 encroachments of the proprietors, is by working for 
 foreign markets. Such a population has only its labour 
 to give in exchange for its requirements, and, if this 
 labour is constantly increasing, while the produce of 
 the soil is stationary, more of the first will steadily and 
 progressively be demanded, for less of the last. 
 
 This will be manifested by a fall of wages, which is, 
 as has been well observed, the greatest of misfortunes 
 when it is due to natural causes — the greatest of crimes 
 when it is caused by the law. 
 
 The Corn Law was the fitting sequel to the French 
 war. The ruling classes in England had seized on the 
 reaction of feeling created by the excesses of the French 
 Revolution, to conceal the meaning of that event, and 
 to discredit the principles of popular sovereignty which 
 it asserted. They had before them a people impo- 
 verished and degraded by the waste of blood and 
 treasure in which years of war had involved their 
 country ; and seeing the prospect before them, which 
 the peace had opened, of a fall in the prices of agri- 
 cultural produce, under the beneficent operation of the 
 great laws of exchange, they resorted to the device of 
 prolonging by Act of Parliament the artificial scarcity 
 created by the war, and of thus preserving to the landed 
 interest the profits which had been gained at the 
 expense of the nation. 
 
The Political Opinions of Richard Cob den 21 
 
 It is thus that, as the forces of progress are invariably 
 found to act and react on each other, the forces of 
 resistance and of evil will ever be side by side, and that 
 as protection, which means the isolation of nations, 
 tends both by its direct and indirect effects to war, so 
 war again engenders and perpetuates the spirit of pro- 
 tection. Free Trade, or as Cobden called it, the Inter-V 
 national Law of the Almighty, which means the) 
 interdependence of nations, must bring with it theS 
 surest guarantee of peace, and peace inevitably leads I 
 to freer and freer commercial intercourse ; and there- ) 
 fore, while there is no sadder page in the modern 
 history of England than that which records the adoption 
 of the Corn Law by the British Parliament, there is, to 
 our minds, none more bright with the promise of future 
 good than that on which was written, after thirty years 
 of unjust and unnecessary suffering, its unconditional 
 repeal. 
 
 But as the intellect and conscience of the country 
 had failed so long to recognise the widespread evils 
 of this pernicious law, and the fatal principles which 
 lay at its roots, so did they now most dimly and imper- 
 fectly apprehend the scope and consequences of its 
 abolition. 
 
 It was called the repeal of a law ; admitted to be the 
 removal of an intolerable wrong ; but we doubt whether 
 in this country, except by a few gifted and far-seeing 
 leaders of this great campaign, it was foreseen that it 
 was an act which involved, in its certain results, a 
 reversal of the whole policy of England. 
 
 This was, however, clear enough to enlightened 
 observers in other countries. By one of those rare 
 coincidences which sometimes exercise so powerful an 
 influence on human affairs, it happened, that while 
 Cobden in England was bringing to bear on the great / 
 practical questions of his time and country the principles / 
 of high morality and sound economy which had been 
 hitherto too little considered in connection with each 
 other, Frederic Bastiat was conceiving and maturing in 
 France the system of political philosophy which has 
 since been given to the world, and which still remains 
 the best and most complete exposition of the views of 
 which Cobden was the great representative, 
 
2 2 The Political Opinions of Richard Cobden 
 
 It appears to us that these two men were necessary to 
 each other. Without Cobden, Bastiat would have lost 
 the powerful stimulant of practical example, and the 
 wide range of facts which the movement in England 
 supplied, and from which he drew much of his inspira- 
 tion. Without Bastiat, Cobden's policy would not have 
 been elaborated into a system, and, beyond his own 
 immediate coadjutors and disciples, would probably 
 have been most imperfectly understood on the Con- 
 tinent of Europe. 
 
 More than this, who can say what may not have been 
 the effect on the minds of both these men, of the inter- 
 change of thoughts and opinions which freely passed 
 between them ? 
 
 In his brilliant history of the Anti-Corn- Law League, 
 '' Cobden et la Ligue," Bastiat thus describes the move- 
 ment of which England was the theatre during that 
 memorable struggle : — 
 
 " I have endeavoured to state with all exactness the 
 
 question which is being agitated in England. I have 
 
 described the field of battle, the 
 
 A Revolutionary areatness of the interests which are 
 Principle 
 
 there being discussed, the opposnig 
 
 forces, and the consequences of victory. I have shown, 
 I believe, that though the heat of contest may seem to 
 be concentrated on questions of taxation, of custom- 
 houses, of cereals, of sugar, it is, in point of fact, a ques- 
 tion between monopoly and liberty, aristocracy and 
 democracy — a question of equality or inequality in the 
 distribution of the general well-being. The question at 
 issue is to know whether legislative power and political 
 influence shall remain in the hands of the men of rapine, 
 or in those of the men of toil ; that is, whether they 
 shall continue to embroil the world in troubles and 
 deeds of violence, or sow the seeds of concord, of union, 
 of justice, and of peace. 
 
 "Wliat would be the thought of the historian who 
 could believe that armed Europe, at the beginning of 
 this century, performed, under the leadership of the 
 most able generals, so many feats of strategy for the 
 sole purpose of determining who should possess the 
 narrow fields that were the scenes of the battles of 
 Austerlitz or of Wagram ? The fate of dynasties and 
 
The Political Opinions of Richard Cobden 23 
 
 empires depended on those struggles. But the triumphs 
 of force may be ephemeral ; it is not so with the 
 triumphs of opinion. And when we see the whole of a 
 great people, whose influence on the world is undoubted, 
 impregnate itself with the doctrines of justice and truth ; 
 when we see it repel the false ideas of supremacy which 
 have so long rendered it dangerous to nations ; when 
 we see it ready to seize the pohtical ascendant from the 
 hands of a greedy and turbulent oligarchy — let us 
 beware of believing, even when its first efforts seem to 
 bear upon economic questions, that greater and nobler 
 interests are not engaged in the struggle. For if, in 
 the midst of many lessons of iniquity, many instances of 
 national perversity, England, this imperceptible point 
 of our globe, has seen so many great and useful ideas 
 take root upon her soil — if she was the cradle of the 
 press, of trial by jury, of a representative system, of the 
 abolition of slavery, in spite of the opposition of a 
 powerful and pitiless oligarchy — what may not the 
 world expect from this same England when all her 
 moral, social, and political power shall have passed, by 
 a slow and difficult revolution, into the hands of 
 democracy — a revolution peacefully accomplished in 
 the minds of men under the leadership of an association 
 which embraces in its bosom so many men whose high 
 intellectual power and unblemished character shed so 
 much glory on their country, and on the century in 
 which they live ? Such a revolution is no simple event, 
 no accident, no catastrophe due to an irresistible but 
 evanescent enthusiasm. It is, if I may use the expres- 
 sion, a slow social cataclysm, changing all the condi- 
 tions of life and of society, the sphere in which it fives 
 and breathes. It is justice possessing herself of power ; 
 good sense of authority. It is the general weal, the 
 weal of the people, of the masses, of the smafi and of the 
 great, of the strong and of the weak, becoming the law 
 of political action. It is the disappearance behind the 
 scene of privilege, abuse, and caste-feeling, not by a 
 palace-revolution or a street-rising, but by the progres- 
 sive and general appreciation of the rights and duties of 
 man. In a word, it is the triumph of human liberty ; it 
 is the death of monopoly, that Proteus of a thousand 
 forms, now conqueror, now slave-owner \ at one time 
 
24 The Political Opinions of Richard Cobden 
 
 lover of theocracy and feudalism, at another time 
 assuming an industrial, a commercial, a financial, and 
 even a philanthropic shape. Whatever disguise it might 
 borrow, it could no longer bear the eye of public 
 opinion, which has learned to detect it under the scarlet 
 uniform or under the black gown, under the planter's 
 jacket and the noble peer's embroidered robe. Liberty 
 for all ! for every man a just and natural remuneration 
 for his labour ! for every man a just and natural avenue 
 to equahty in proportion to his energy, his intelligence, 
 his prudence, and his morality ! Free Trade with all 
 the world ! Peace with all the world ! No more sub- 
 jugation of new colonies, no more army, no more navy 
 than is necessary for the maintenance of national in- 
 dependence ! A radical distinction between that which 
 is and that which is not the mission of government and 
 law ; political association reduced to guarantee each 
 man his liberty and safety against all unjust aggressions, 
 whether from without or from within ; equal taxation, 
 for the purpose of properly paying the men charged 
 with this mission, and not to serve as a mask under the 
 name of outlets for trade, for outward usurpation, and, 
 under the name of protection^ for the mutual robbery of 
 classes. Such is the real issue in England, though the 
 field of battle may be confined to a custom-house ques- 
 tion. But this question involves slavery in its modern 
 form ; for as Mr. Gibson, a member of the League, has 
 said in ParHament, ' To get possession of men that we 
 may make them work for our own profit, or to take 
 possession of the fruits of their labour, is equally and 
 always slavery ; there is no difference but in the 
 degree.' " 
 
 The system of which the Corn Laws were the corner- 
 stone, traced to its source, rested on the principle of 
 spohation, and on the foundation of force. That which 
 J was inaugurated by the overthrow of that law, rested on 
 the principle of freedom, and on the foundation of 
 justice. 
 
 Monopoly of trade, involving, as it must, the violation 
 of rights of property and of labour, both in the internal 
 and external relations of a State, and implying, when 
 carried to its logical consequences, national isolation, 
 contains within itself the germs of inevitable stagnation 
 
The Political Opinions of Richard Cobden 25 
 
 and decay. To avoid these results, it is necessary that 
 a Government which maintains it should resort to all 
 the expedients of force and fraud — to conquest, colonial 
 aggrandisement, maritime supremacy, foreign alliances, 
 reciprocity treaties, and communism in the shape of 
 poor-laws — and should perpetually appeal to the worst 
 and most contemptible passions of its people, its 
 national pride, to false patriotism, to jealousy, to fear, 
 and to selfishness, in order to keep alive its prestige and 
 to conceal its rottenness. 
 
 We are far from imputing the marvellous skill which 
 the ruling classes in England displayed in the use of 
 these expedients to a conscious and deliberate policy. 
 We know that good and able men, and an honest 
 though misguided patriotism, have been too often the 
 blind instruments of the retributive justice w^iich always 
 avenges the violation of moral principles ; but there was 
 a point beyond which even these expedients would not 
 sufiice to arrest the national decay, and with a debt of 
 _^8oo, 000,000, an impoverished starving people, the 
 universal distrust, and the avowed or concealed hostility 
 of foreign nations, who had imitated our policy too 
 closely, while growing communities of our own blood, 
 with boundless material resources and free institutions, 
 were outstripping us in the race of progress, and making 
 the future competition of force impossible, a state of 
 things had been engendered which called for prompt 
 and vigorous remedy. 
 
 To Cobden, and his colleagues of the League, belongs 
 the merit of having traced the disease to its source, of 
 having stayed the progress of the poison which was 
 slowly, but surely, undermining our national greatness, 
 and of changing the current of English policy. 
 
 By the repeal of the Corn Laws, the false idea of 
 isolated progress was for ever dispelled, our foreign 
 trade became a condition of our existence, and the 
 great law of international co-operation assumed its 
 rightful place as the animating principle of our future 
 course. 
 
 But though the edifice of protection was shaken at the 
 base, and the fabric irrevocably doomed to destruction, 
 the work was only begun : the ideas which the system 
 had created had taken too deep root in the rriinds of 
 
26 The Political Opinions of Richard Cob den 
 
 the governing classes, and the forces of reaction 
 were still too powerful to allow of speedy or logical 
 progress. 
 
 The gradual breaking-up of the protective system 
 after the repeal of the Corn Laws was a work which 
 must in any case have proceeded, under the pressure of 
 the irresistible force of circumstances ; but we think 
 that justice has never been done to the Government of 
 Lord John Russell, and his colleagues Lord Grey and 
 Mr. Labouchere, in this respect. The equalisation of 
 the Sugar Duties, the repeal of the Navigation Laws, the 
 reform of our'' Colonial System," were all accomplished 
 by this administration, and few indeed have been the 
 Governments of England which can point to such 
 substantial services as these in the cause of progress. 
 This course of useful domestic reform was, however, 
 rudely interrupted by one of those events which ought 
 to teach us the hopelessness of all permanent progress 
 by isolated action, and the absolute necessity of always 
 considering our position as a member of the comity of 
 nations. The Crimean War brought once more into life 
 and activity all the elements of the national character 
 the most opposed to the silent and beneficent forces of 
 moral and material progress, fatally arrested the 
 agencies of peace which the Anti-Corn- Law League had 
 set in motion, and has gone far to deprive us of the fruits 
 of the great reforms which those agencies had effected. 
 
 The Royal Commission which, under Prince Albert's 
 auspices, organised the first great Exhibition, had 
 brought together at last, in a common and international 
 work, the three men who seem to us to have been 
 eminently designed to co-operate for the public good, 
 and we cannot doubt that, if the lives of Prince and 
 Minister had been spared a few years longer, and Peel 
 had returned to office in 1852, he would have received 
 the cordial support of Cobden, either in or out of office. 
 But this was not to be ; in 1846, on the occasion of the 
 repeal, to make Cobden Minister would have been an 
 act of political justice and wisdom for which the times 
 were not ripe, while to accept the subordinate office 
 which was offered him, from men who had so recently, 
 and so reluctantly, espoused his views on Free Trade, 
 and who §0 imperfectly apprehended or accepted its 
 
The Political Opinions of Richard Cob den 27 
 
 ulterior consequences, would have fatally compromised 
 his future usefulness. 
 
 He knew that there were several necessary measures 
 which the general intelligence of the Liberal party 
 would immediately force upon the ^^^^ .international 
 Parliament, and his work at this j^^^,, 
 
 moment lay in another direction. He 
 had been the chief instrument in giving the death-blow to 
 a mighty monopoly, in redressing a grievous wrong, and 
 in giving food to suffering millions at home. His 
 services as an Englishman being thus far accomplished, 
 he entered upon his mission as an "international man." 
 
 He knew, and had measured accurately, the obstacles 
 presented by the laws of other countries, often the too 
 faithful reflection of our own, to the fulfilment of the 
 grand aim of his life, the binding together of the 
 nations of the earth by the material bonds which are 
 the necessary and only preparation for their moral 
 union. These laws had raised around us innumerable 
 barriers to intercourse, and as many stumbling-blocks in 
 the way of peace. In a tour through Europe, which 
 often resembled a triumphal progress, he was every- 
 where received with interest and attention ; but the 
 sudden recantation of a policy bound up with all the 
 traditions of England was open to too much suspi- 
 cion to inspire confidence, and he was obliged to be 
 content with sowing the seeds of much which has 
 since borne fruit, and with inspiring new zeal and hope 
 in the minds of the good and enlightened men who, in 
 each centre which he visited, were labouring in the 
 cause. 
 
 No stronger proof can be afforded of the fundamental 
 misconception of Cobden's political character which had 
 prevailed in England than the judgments and criticisms 
 which it was the custom to pass upon him with reference 
 to the class of questions to which he addressed himself 
 on his return to public Hfe at home. It seems to have 
 been expected that he would have exclusively devoted 
 himself to commercial questions, and when it was found 
 that he proceeded to attack systematically our foreign 
 policy, our system of government in India, our national 
 expenditure, our military and naval administration, and 
 pur maritime laws, he was accused of going beyond his 
 
2 8 The Political Opinions of Richard Cobden 
 
 province, and discredited as an enthusiast incapable of 
 dealing with the great mysteries of statecraft. Those 
 who used this language either knew too well, or not at 
 all, that Cobden aimed at something very different and 
 very much deeper than mere commercial reforms. In 
 each and all of these he took, as was natural, a sincere and 
 consistent interest, but he knew, unless aided and con- 
 solidated by collateral measures, that incalculable as 
 would be the results to the wealth and prosperity of the 
 country, they would not suffice to raise the lower classes 
 of this country from their condition of moral and 
 material degradation, and thus to rescue England from 
 the reproach of failure in the highest ends of civilisation, 
 and to assure for her a permanent place in the front 
 rank of nations. 
 
 It was, therefore, that, instead of entangling himself 
 in the snares of office, and devoting his time to the 
 details of practical legislation, he undertook the harder 
 and more ungrateful, but far nobler office, of endeavour- 
 ing to open the eyes of his countrymen to the necessity 
 under which they lay of preparing for fundamental 
 changes in many of the essential principles upon which 
 our national policy had previously been conducted, in 
 its three great divisions — Foreign, Colonial, and 
 Domestic. Cobden saw clearly that, unless our 
 system of government, in all its branches, were 
 adapted to the altered conditions of our national 
 existence, not only would our commercial reforms be 
 shorn of their most valuable and complete results in the 
 elevation of the masses of the people, but that we 
 should also incur the risk of very serious dangers. 
 Nothing is so fatal to success in the life of individuals 
 or of nations as a confusion of principles in action. 
 
 Under the system of monopoly it was logical enough 
 to keep alive the chimera of the balance of power, to 
 seek, in foreign alliances and artificial combinations of 
 force, the security which we could not hope to derive 
 from legitimate and natural causes. In the government 
 of our foreign possessions it was logical to annex pro- 
 vinces and extend our empire, and by the display of 
 force and the arts of diplomacy to coerce and despoil ; 
 and for both these purposes, it was necessary to main- 
 tain costly and imposing forces by sea and land, and to 
 
The Political Opinions of Richard Cob den 29 
 
 cast on the people the burden of a proportionate taxa- 
 tion. By means such as these we might have prolonged, 
 for two' or three generations, a false and hollow supre- 
 macy, and warded off for a while the inevitable doom 
 which awaits all false principles. But with a policy of 
 free exchange these things are not only inconsistent, 
 they are dangerous. They are inconsistent, because a 
 policy of Free Trade rests on the principle that the 
 interests of all nations lie in union, and not in oppo- 
 sition ; that co-operation and not competition, 
 international inter-dependence and not national inde- 
 pendence are the highest end and object of civilisa- 
 tion, and that, therefore, peace, and not war, is the 
 natural and normal condition of civilised communities 
 in their relation to each other. They are dangerous, 
 because a country which is unable to feed its own 
 population without its foreign trade, and of whose 
 prosperity, and even existence, peace is thus a neces- 
 sary condition, cannot afford, without tremendous risks, 
 to encounter the hazards of war with powerful enemies. 
 If such a country trusts to the law of force, by that law 
 will it be judged, and the result must be crushing 
 failure, disaster, and ultimate defeat. There were those 
 who clearly foresaw and apprehended this, and depre- 
 cated the repeal of the Corn Law accordingly, but who 
 did not perceive that the alternative was an inadequate 
 supply of food for a third of our population. 
 
 From this point of view, the " balance of power " can 
 only be sought in the free development of the natural 
 forces, whether of morality, intelligence, or material 
 wealth, residing in the different countries of the earth, 
 and the balance will always be held (to use the expres- 
 sion of Wilham III., in his address to Parliament, 
 quoted by Mr. Cobden in his paper on " Russia "), so 
 far as any one State can pretend to do so, by the 
 country which, in proportion to its powers, has econo- 
 mised its material resources to the highest point, and 
 acquired the highest degree of moral ascendency by an 
 honest and consistent allegiance to the laws of morality 
 in its domestic policy and in its foreign relations. The 
 acquisition of colonies and territories, formerly required 
 to afford new fields for monopoly, and defended on the 
 plea that outlets were necessary for our trade, while our 
 
30 The Political Opinions of Richard Cobden 
 
 ports were closed to our nearest and richest neighbours, 
 appeared in its true hght as a waste of national influ- 
 ence, and a costly and useless perversion of national 
 wealth, when all the countries of the earth became our 
 customers, and England the metropolitan entrepot oi the 
 world. Large standing armies and navies, with their 
 necessary accompaniments of heavy, and, because 
 heavy, unequal and indirect taxation, are only rational 
 in countries which are constantly liable to war, and 
 cannot therefore be equally required under a system 
 which relies on moral influence and on international 
 justice, as under one which depends on force and 
 monopoly. 
 
 To summon into existence a principle, which in all 
 human relations shall assert the right of property, in 
 mind and in matter, in thought and in labour, and to 
 secure this right on its only true foundation — the 
 universal rule of justice and freedom — is to evoke a 
 force which is destined to root up and destroy the 
 seeds of discord and division among men ; to bind up 
 the nations of the earth in a vast federation of interests, 
 and to bring the disorders and conflicting passions of 
 society under the domain of law. To promote all the 
 agencies through which this force can act, and to 
 repress all those which oppose its progress and neu- 
 tralise its operation, and for this purpose to analyse and 
 expose to view these several agencies, both in their 
 causes and in their effects, eternally acting and reacting 
 on each other, was the task which Cobden set himself 
 to accomplish. 
 
 It was inevitable, with these objects in view, that 
 Cobden was often obliged to raise discussion upon 
 questions which, to ordinary minds, appeared some- 
 what chimerical, and to propose measures which were 
 in the nature of things premature ; that he should give 
 to many the impression of wasting his strength on 
 matters which could not be brought to an immediate 
 practical issue, and in the agitation of which he could 
 not hope for direct success. It will be found, however, 
 that although there often existed no possibility of 
 realising or applying his projects at the time of their 
 enunciation, these were always themselves of an essen- 
 tially practical character, and inseparably connected 
 
The Political Opinions of RiciiAkD Cob den 31 
 
 with each other ; and that, although presented as occa- 
 sion served, from time to time, and as the nature of his 
 mission required, in a fragmentary and separate form, 
 they each and all formed the component parts of a 
 policy coherent and complete, and destined, we trust, 
 to a gradual but ultimate fulfilment. 
 
 The programme which Cobden appears to have 
 set before him in the construction , 
 
 of a policy embraced the following Programme, 
 
 objects : — 
 
 1. Complete freedom of trade throughout the British 
 Empire with all the world, exclusive for the present 
 (as a practical necessity) of restrictions indispensably 
 requisite for fiscal purposes. 
 
 2. The final and unquahfied abandonment of a policy 
 of conquest and territorial aggrandisement in every 
 quarter of the world. 
 
 3. The adoption of the general principles of non- 
 inierveniion and arbitration in our foreign policy, pub- 
 licity in all the transactions of diplomacy, and the 
 renunciation of all ideas of national preponderance and 
 supremacy. 
 
 4. The reduction of military and naval forces by 
 international co- operation. 
 
 5. A large reduction of taxation. 
 
 6. A reform in the laws affecting land. 
 
 7. Freedom of the press from all taxes, happily 
 stigmatised by Mr. Milner Gibson as taxes on know- 
 ledge. 
 
 8. A reform of maritime law. 
 
 We do not include in this programme the two great 
 measures of National Education and Parliamentary 
 Reform because, although essential to the progress 
 and security of government, and as such of course en- 
 listing Cobden's sympathy, they are, after all, the means 
 and not the end of good government ; and we are 
 disposed to think that he felt that his peculiar powers 
 could be more usefully devoted to the assertion of the 
 principles on which governments should be conducted 
 than to the construction of the machinery out of which 
 they should be elaborated. We will endeavour to give 
 briefly an outline of what appear to have been Cobden's 
 views on the leading divisions of national policy which 
 
32 The Political Opinions of Richard Cob den 
 
 the foregoing programme was designed to affect. 
 We have said that the central idea of the national 
 policy represented by Cobden was " Free Exchange " 
 in the most comprehensive meaning of that term as the 
 necessary complement of personal freedom, and the 
 full assertion of the rights of property and labour. 
 The reahsation of this idea logically involves all the 
 consequences which Cobden aimed at promoting by 
 direct or indirect efforts. 
 
 Foreign Policy. — In the field of foreign policy these 
 consequences were immediate and obvious. The prin- 
 ciple of foreign policy under a system of monopoly is 
 national independence — in other words, " isolation ; " 
 under that of free exchange it is international inter- 
 dependence. We have already observed upon the 
 bearing of this latter principle on the doctrine of the 
 balance of power, and pointed out the fundamental 
 difference between a policy which proceeds on princi- 
 ples of international morahty, and appeals to the 
 common interests of all nations of the earth, and one 
 which rests on ideas of national supremacy and 
 rivalry. But in the practical application of the Free 
 Trade foreign policy, there has been so much mis- 
 understanding of Cobden's views, and, as we think, 
 so much confusion of thought even among advanced 
 Liberals that a few further remarks may be useful. 
 This policy is ordinarily characterised by the name of 
 non-inteivention. In some respects this designation has 
 been an unfortunate one. It has given colour to the 
 idea that what was desired was a blind and sellish 
 indifference to the affairs of other countries, and a 
 sort of moral isolation, as foreign to the principle of 
 international interdependence as it is impossible in 
 connection with increased material intercourse. 
 
 Cobden never, as far as we are aware, advanced or 
 held the opinion that wars other than those undertaken 
 for self-defence were in all cases wrong or inexpedient. 
 The question, as we apprehend it, was with him one 
 of relative duties. It is clear that the duty and wisdom 
 of entering upon a war, even in defence of the most 
 righteous cause, must be measured by our knowledge 
 and by our power ; but, even where our knowledge is 
 complete and our power sufficient, it is necessary that, 
 
The Political Opinions of Richard Cod den 33 
 
 in undertaking such a war, we should be satisfied that, 
 in doing so, we are not neglecting and putting it out of 
 our reach, to fulfil more sacred and more imperative 
 duties. The cases are rare in the quarrels of other 
 nations, still rarer in their internal dissensions, in which 
 our knowledge of their causes and conditions, and our 
 power of enforcing the right, and assuring its success, 
 in any degree justifies us in armed interference — the 
 last resort in the failure of human justice. 
 
 But even if these difficult conditions of our justifica- 
 tion in such a war were satisfied, the cases must be rare- 
 indeed in which, with a population of which so large a 
 part is barely receiving the means of decent existence, 
 and another part is supported by pubhc charity at 
 the expense of the rest, and at a charge of nearly 
 ;^io,ooo,ooo per annum, this country would be justified 
 in imposing on our labouring classes (on whom, be it 
 remembered, the burden must chiefly fall) the cost of 
 obtaining for another people a degree of freedom or a 
 measure of justice which they have so imperfectly 
 secured for themselves. Such a course is certainly not 
 defensible unless the people have a far larger share in 
 the government of their country than they possessed 
 during Cobden's life in England. 
 
 When we add to these considerations the singular 
 inaptitude of the governing classes of this country to 
 comprehend foreign affairs, the extraordinary errors 
 which are usually to be observed in their judgments 
 and opinions on foreign questions, and the dangerous 
 liabiUty to abuse in the hands of any government, of 
 the doctrine of " Blood and Iron," even if it be some- 
 times invoked in a just cause, we shall, we think 
 (without asserting that it must be inflexibly enforced), 
 acknowledge the sober wisdom of Cobden's opinions, 
 that, for all practical purposes, at least for this genera- 
 tion, the principle of non-intervention should be made, 
 as far as general principles can be applied to such 
 questions, the rule of our foreign poHcy. 
 
 Let those who sneer at what they consider a sordid 
 and ungenerous view, reflect on the history of the past, 
 and ask themselves what is to be the hope of humanity 
 if the motives which have hitherto regulated the policy 
 of our country are in future to determine the intercourse 
 
34 The Political Opinions of Richard Cobden 
 
 of nations. Let them look back upon the great French 
 war, not as it is interpreted by Cobden in his most 
 instructive paper in the work before us, but read by the 
 Hght of those teachers of history who see in it a proud 
 record of England's glory and power in vindicating the 
 liberties of mankind, and satisfy their conscience, it 
 they can, of the righteousness of a cause which 
 required the aid of Holy Alliances, the legions of 
 despots, and a campaign which terminated in the 
 Congress of Vienna, and which ended in the suffoca- 
 tion of popular rights for half a century, the enactment 
 of the English Corn Law and all that it represents, and a 
 condition of Europe which even now almost precludes 
 the hope of real civilisation. 
 
 Colonial Policy. — There is no branch of the national 
 economy in which the neglect of Cobden's principles 
 has led to more glaring and lamentable results than in 
 that between the mother country and its possessions. 
 The inability even of the Government which was borne 
 to power on the shoulders of the Anti-Corn-Law 
 League to apprehend the scope and importance of 
 Free Trade is in no direction more strikingly manifested 
 than in the colonial policy. 
 
 Would it not have been possible, when the right of 
 self-government was conferred upon our colonial pos- 
 sessions, to have stipulated, as a necessary condition, 
 and as a great and fundamental rule of imperial policy, 
 the complete absence of Protection throughout the 
 dominions of the Crown ? Instead of this, the most 
 confused idea prevailed, and still prevails, as to the limits 
 of colonial self-government in adopting a commercial 
 policy opposed to the principles and interests of the 
 mother country. 
 
 The colonies have been allowed to impose protective 
 duties on British manufactures, and on those of foreign, 
 countries. They are allowed to protect : would they 
 be allowed to prohibit ? for it must be remembered 
 that protection, so far as it restricts a trade, is nothing 
 more nor less than prohibition to that extent ; and if not 
 to prohibit, where is the line to be drawn, at duties of 
 20, or 30, or 50, or 100 per cent ? 
 
 It is clear that the right of absolute self-government 
 involves the corresponding duty of self-support and 
 
The Political Opinions of Richard Cobden 35 
 
 self-defence ; but the colonies are far from having 
 undertaken the latter. If such sacrifices as these are 
 imposed on the British taxpayer, has he not a right to 
 be allowed to trade on equal terms with his colonial 
 fellow-subjects ? Cobden never lost an opportunity of 
 protesting against this last misappropriation of the 
 money of the old country, and of exposing the secret 
 connection of this feature in our policy with the 
 perpetuation of pretexts for increased armaments. 
 
 It is painful to think of the contrast between our 
 present position and prospects as a nation, and that 
 which it might have presented, had the foundations 
 of our colonial empire been laid broad and deep 
 in commercial freedom. Is it yet too late ? Is no 
 effort yet possible towards such a consummation ? 
 
 Eastern Policy. — The British rule in India was to 
 Cobden a subject of the deepest anxiety and appre- 
 hension. His paper entitled " How Wars are got up 
 in India " is an honest and indignant criticism upon an 
 episode in our Indian history which has only too many 
 parallels, and gives expression to one of his strongest 
 convictions, viz., the retribution which one day awaits 
 the lust of power and of territorial aggrandisement, 
 and the utter disregard of morality so often exhibited 
 in our dealings with the races of this great dependency. 
 But in our Eastern policy much progress has been made 
 since Cobden's time, and we have seen, w^e trust, the 
 dawn of a better day. 
 
 Reduction of Militaty and Naval Expenditure. — The 
 changes advocated by Cobden in our foreign and 
 colonial policy necessarily involved « «• + 
 
 a large reduction m our military Militarism, 
 
 and naval establishments, and to 
 this object his most strenuous efforts were constantly 
 directed ; but here the difticulties w^hich he had to 
 encounter were enormous, and the Crimean war and 
 its results throughout Europe have rendered all 
 attempts at reform in this branch of our national 
 economy hitherto unavailing. 
 
 In attacking our ''Services" he not only had to 
 contend against powerful interests connected with 
 almost all the families of the upper and middle classes 
 of the country, but also against many honest, though 
 
36 The Political Opinions op Richard Cobden 
 
 mistaken, opinions as to the causes of national greatness 
 and the sources of our power. It was the widespread 
 prevalence of such opinions, combined with the selfish 
 influence of the worst element in British commerce, 
 which led, on the occasion of the Chinese war in 1857, 
 to the rejection of Cobden by the West Riding, and of 
 Bright and Gibson by Manchester. The class of ideas 
 symbolised by the " British Lion," the *' Sceptre of 
 Britannia," and the " Civis Romanus," irrational and 
 vulgar as they are, have nevertheless a side which is 
 not altogether ignoble, and are of a nature which it 
 requires more than one generation to eradicate. 
 
 Cobden approached this question of reduction by 
 two different roads. He endeavoured to bring to bear 
 upon it international action, by arrangements for a 
 general limitation of armaments, in which, as regards 
 France, there appeared more than once some possi- 
 bility of success, and in which he was cordially 
 supported by Bastiat in the years succeeding the 
 repeal of the Corn Laws ; he also sought, by every 
 means in his power, to urge it on his countrymen, by 
 appeals to their good sense and self-respect. He 
 exposed, firstly, our poHcy ; and secondly, our adminis- 
 tration ; and showed, with irresistible arguments, that 
 while the one was unsound, the other was extravagant ; 
 and that thus the British people were condemned, not 
 only to provide for what was useless and even 
 dangerous, but at the same time to pay an excessive 
 price for it. 
 
 He tells us in his article on Russia, vol. i. p. 309 — 
 
 *' If that which constitutes cowardice in individuals, 
 viz., the taking excessive precautions against danger, 
 merits the same designation when practised by com- 
 munities, then England certainly must rank as the 
 greatest poltroon among nations." 
 
 It is incontestable that the extent of our precautions 
 against danger should be proportioned to the degree of 
 that danger, and it cannot, we think, be denied, even 
 by those who are the most disposed to connect the 
 greatness and security of England with the constant 
 display of physical force, that as our liability to war 
 has diminished, our preparations for it should also 
 diminish ; and that it is as irrational to devote to our 
 
The Political Opinions of Richard Cobden 37 
 
 "Services" in a period of " Free Trade," colonial self- 
 government, and non-intervention, the sums which were 
 wrung from our industry in an epoch of monopoly, of 
 colonial servitude, and of a ''spirited foreign policy," 
 as it would be to pay the same insurance on a healthy 
 as on a diseased life. 
 
 For what are the causes (under her own control) 
 which render a country liable to war? 
 
 They may, for present purposes, be classed under the 
 following heads : — 
 
 1. The disposition to engage in wars of conquest or 
 aggression. 
 
 2. The necessity of maintaining, for the purpose of 
 repressing liberty at home, large standing armies, which 
 a Government may be compelled to employ in foreign 
 wars, either to gratify the military spirit engendered by 
 the existence of a powerful service, or to divert public 
 attention from domestic reforms. 
 
 3. The habitual violation of the rights of labour and 
 property in international relations, by prohibitive and 
 protective laws of trade. 
 
 4. The policy of providing outlets for trade, and of 
 introducing what are called the agencies of civiHsation, 
 by means of consuls and missionaries, supported by 
 gunboats and breech-loaders. 
 
 5. The pretension of holding the balance of power, 
 and of interfering, with this object, in the affairs of 
 other nations, with its result, the theory of armed 
 diplomacy, which aims, by a display of force, at 
 securing for a country what is assumed to be its due 
 influence in foreign affairs. 
 
 All these motives would be absolutely removed under 
 a system of government such as that which Cobden 
 advocated, and even now they are, we believe, very 
 generally discredited, with the exception perhaps of 
 the last, which must, however, be so cut down and 
 modified in order to be a pretext for military 
 armaments as to lose its general character. 
 
 With the rejection of the doctrine of the "balance 
 of power," a fruitful source of dangerous meddling in 
 the affairs of foreign countries has been cut away. 
 There only remains, therefore, the Hmited form of 
 armed interference in foreign affairs to which we have 
 
38 The Political Opinions of Richard Cob den 
 
 already adverted, and which it is still thought by many 
 among us, and even by a large section of the Liberal 
 party we should be prepared to exert in certain events, 
 and for which, if the principle be admitted, some 
 allowance must be made in estimating the extent of 
 our military and naval requirements. 
 
 We refer to the supposed duty of England to resort 
 to war in possible cases for the purpose of defending 
 the principles of free government or international law, 
 or of protecting a foreign country from wanton or 
 unjust aggression. On this subject we have already 
 stated what we believe to have been Cobden's view ; 
 but, whatever margin may be left for this consideration, 
 it must be admitted by candid reasoners that the 
 liability of the country to war under a policy such as 
 that of which the general outhnes have been traced 
 would be reduced within narrow proportions. 
 
 Cobden was often blamed for not devoting more time 
 and labour to the task of minute resistance to the 
 "Estimates" in the House of Commons. This was 
 the result of his perfect conviction, after years of 
 experience and observation, that such a course was 
 absolutely useless, and that no private member, how- 
 ever able or courageous, could cope in detail with the 
 resources at the disposal of Government in evading 
 exposure and resisting reductions. He therefore 
 always insisted that the only course was to strike at 
 the root of the evil, by diminishing the revenue and 
 the expenditure in the gross. 
 
 Taxation. — This brings us to our next topic, which is 
 inextricably bound up with the last, viz., the reduction 
 of the national expenditure, and the consequent diminu- 
 tion of taxation, objects the importance of which is 
 becoming yearly more vital. Cobden knew that no 
 material reform in our financial system could be 
 effected (for all that has been hitherto done has been 
 to shift the burden, and not to diminish it) until our 
 external policy was changed, and hence his incessant 
 efforts in this direction ; but he also knew that the 
 surest method of accomplishing the latter object was 
 to diminish the resources at the disposal of Govern- 
 ment for military and naval purposes. 
 
 The first object in financial reform waSj therefore^ 
 
The Political Opinions of Richard Cobden 39 
 
 in Cobden's opinion, the gradual remission of indirect 
 taxation. 
 
 In a letter to the '' Liverpool Association " he made 
 use of the remarkable expression that he considered 
 them to be the only body of men in the country who 
 appeared to have any faith in the future of humanity. 
 
 His objects were threefold, and they are to our mind 
 conclusive : — 
 
 " I. The dangerous facilities indirect taxes afford for 
 extravagant and excessive expenditure, by reason of 
 their imperceptibility in collection, and of the con- 
 sequent readiness of the people to submit to them, and 
 also of the impossibiUty of insuring a close and honest 
 adaptation of the revenue to the expenditure. 
 
 '' 2. Their interference with the great law of free ex- 
 change, one of the rights of property, and (so far as 
 customs duties are concerned) the violation of inter- 
 national equity which they involve ; for it is obvious 
 that the conditions of international trade are essentially 
 affected by taxes on imports and exports, and it is 
 impossible to apportion them so as to insure that each 
 country shall pay neither more nor less than its own due 
 share. 
 
 " 3. The enhancement of the cost of the taxed article 
 to the consumer, over and above the amount of the 
 tax." 
 
 The root of the evil may again be traced to the in- 
 fringement, in the case of indirect taxes, of the great 
 law of '' free exchange of services, freely debated." A 
 tax is nothing more than a service contributed to the 
 State by the people, in return for a corresponding 
 service rendered to the people by the State. The great 
 object, therefore, in imposing a tax should be to con- 
 nect it as closely as possible with the service for which 
 it is required, and to facihtate as far as possible a close 
 comparison between the two. The superiority of a 
 direct tax, hke the income-tax and the poor-rate, over 
 taxes on consumption and on trade, from this point of 
 view, is apparent ; but such is the distorted view of 
 large classes in the country on this subject, that they 
 consider what we have characterised as the great vice 
 of indirect taxation as its chief and distinguishing 
 merit, and that the supreme art of government consists 
 
40 The Political Opinions of Richard Cobden 
 
 in extracting from the pockets of the people, by a sort 
 of "hocus pocus," the largest possible amount of money 
 without their knowing it. 
 
 Do those who with so much naivete repeat this argu- 
 ment whenever this question is discussed, ever reflect, 
 that to drug the taxpayer before he pays his money will 
 in no degree diminish the evil to a country of excessive 
 taxation, and that ignorance and irresponsibiUty are not 
 the best securities for an efficient and conscientious 
 administration of our public affairs ? 
 
 If it be objected that indirect taxation is the only 
 method by which the masses of the people can be 
 made to contribute their share to the revenues of the 
 State, we reply that if the condition of the masses of 
 the people in any country is such as to place them 
 beyond the reach of direct taxation, it is the surest 
 proof that the whole national economy is out of joint. 
 
 The fulfilment of this policy should, we think, be 
 rigorously exacted from every Liberal Government, till 
 no taxes of customs or excise remain upon the statute- 
 book, save those on tobacco and spirits, which our 
 heritage of debt has placed it beyond the pale of 
 hope to remove by any scheme of practical and proxi- 
 mate reform. 
 
 l^and. — Cobden held that the growing accumulation 
 in the hands of fewer and fewer proprietors of the soil 
 of the country was a great political, 
 ^ R? nn °^ social, and economical evil ; and 
 as this tendency is unquestionably 
 stimulated by the system of our government, and some 
 of our laws, which give it an artifical value, he foresaw 
 that one of the principal tasks of the generation which 
 succeeded him must be to liberate the land from all the 
 unnecessary obstacles which impede its acquisition and 
 natural distribution, and to place it under the undis- 
 turbed control of the economic law. It is obvious that 
 laws which keep land out of the market — laws of entail, 
 laws of settlement, difficulties of transfer, as well as a 
 system of government which gives to the possession of 
 land an artificial value, for social or political purposes, 
 over and above its natural commercial value — must 
 have the inevitable effect of restricting the quantity, 
 of enhancing the price, and of diminishing the product 
 
The Political Opinions of Richard Cob den 41 
 
 to be obtained. Land thus acquires a monopoly price, 
 small capitals are deterred from this form of invest- 
 ment, competition is restricted, production is dimi- 
 nished, and the condition of those who live by the 
 land, as well as of those who exchange the produce 
 of their labour for the produce of the land, is neces- 
 sarily impaired. 
 
 In his speech at Rochdale, in November, 1864, which 
 was his last public utterance, Cobden especially left 
 this task as a legacy to the younger men among us, and 
 told them that they could do more for their country in 
 liberating the land than had been achieved for it in the 
 liberation of its trade. 
 
 Maritime Laws. — On the question of '' Maritime law," 
 it is well known that he advocated the largest extension 
 of the rights of neutrals, and the greatest possible 
 limitation of the rights of belhgerents, as a necessary 
 and logical accompaniment of a Free Trade policy. His 
 views on this subject will be seen from a letter 
 addressed to Mr. H. Ashworth, in 1862, in which he 
 recommends the following three reforms : — i. Exemp- 
 tion of private property from capture at sea during war 
 by armed vessels of every kind. 2. Blockades to be 
 restricted to naval arsenals, and to towns besieged at 
 the same time by land, except as regards contraband of 
 war. 3. The merchant ships of neutrals on the high 
 seas to be inviolable to the visitation of alien Govern- 
 ment vessels in time of war as in time of peace. 
 
 In this letter he observes — " Free Trade, in the 
 widest definition of the term, means only the division 
 of labour by which the productive powers of the whole 
 earth are brought into mutual co-operation. If this 
 scheme of universal independence is to be liable to 
 sudden dislocation whenever two Governments choose 
 to go to war, it converts a manufacturing industry such 
 as ours into a lottery, in which the lives and fortunes of 
 multitudes of men are at stake. I do not comprehend 
 how any British statesman who consults the interests of 
 his country and understands the revolution which Free 
 Trade is effecting in the relations of the world can 
 advocate the maintenance of commercial blockades. 
 If I shared their views I should shrink from promoting 
 the indefinite growth of a population whose means of 
 
42 The Political Opinions of Richard Cob den 
 
 subsistence would be liable to be cut off at any moment 
 by a belligerent power, against whom we should have 
 no right of resistance, or even of complaint. 
 
 " It must be in mere irony that the advocates of such 
 a policy as this ask — Of what use would our navy be in 
 case of war if commercial blockades were abolished ? 
 Surely, for a nation that has no access to the rest of the 
 world but by sea, and a large part of whose population 
 is dependent for food on foreign countries, the chief 
 use of a navy should be to keep open its communica- 
 tions, not to close them ! I will only add that I regard 
 these changes as the necessary corollary of the repeal 
 of the Navigation Laws, the abolition of the Corn Laws, 
 and the abandonment of our colonial monopoly." 
 
 In most of the foregoing questions, Cobden, as we 
 have said, was contented to preach sound doctrine, and 
 to prepare the way for the ultimate adoption of 
 principles of policy and government, which in his time 
 he could not hope to see prevail. But he was destined, 
 before the close of his career, once more to engage in a 
 great practical work, and to identify his name with an 
 accomplished success, scarcely inferior in its scope and 
 results to the repeal of the English Corn Law. 
 
 This was the Commercial Treaty with France. 
 
 As the Corn Law was the great stronghold of mono- 
 poly in England, so was the prohibitive system in 
 France the key-stone of protection in Europe, and 
 Cobden selected these accordingly, with the unerring 
 instinct of real statesmanship, as the first points for 
 attack, and fastened upon them with a tenacity and 
 resolution which insured success. 
 
 Fifteen years had elapsed since England had re- 
 nounced, in principle at least, the false system of 
 commercial monopoly, and, in Cobden's words quoted 
 above, '' thrown away the sceptre of force, to confide in 
 freedom." She had trusted to the teaching of her 
 example, and to the experience of her extraordinary 
 success, in leading the countries of Europe to answer to 
 her appeal for co-operation in liberating trade, and 
 vindicating the rights of labour ; but she had met with 
 shght response. Our conversion was perhaps too 
 recent, our course still too inconsistent, ancl our motives 
 too much open to suspicion, to make this surprising, 
 
The Political Opinions of Richard Cobden 43 
 
 and, so far as Fiance was concerned, we had unfor- 
 tunately contrived in all our reforms to retain in our 
 tariff restrictions upon the staple articles of French 
 production, wine and silk. The time had come >yhen, 
 unless some new impulse could be given to inter- 
 national intercourse, the forces of reaction might have 
 again acquired the ascendency, and European progress 
 have been thrown back for years. 
 
 Our relations with France were those of chronic 
 distrust and rivalry. The cry of Fcrfide Albion in 
 France too often resounded in our ears ; and the bug- 
 bear of French invasion was successively invoked on 
 this side of the Channel no less than three times in the 
 period we are considering. This was a state of things 
 fraught with danger. Monopoly had borne as usual its 
 deadly fruits, in alienating two great nations destined 
 by nature for the closest relations of friendship and 
 mutual dependence, and in fostering in both the spirit 
 of war. It was under circumstances such as these that 
 Cobden set his hand to the great work of co-operation 
 which led to the Commercial Treaty. 
 
 Bastiat, who would have hailed with dehght this 
 tardy reparation of the defects in our reformed com- 
 mercial system which he always deplored, was no 
 longer ahve to aid the cause ; but to one of the most 
 distinguished of modern French economists, Michel 
 Chevalier, is due, in concert with Cobden, the merit of 
 the scheme with the Governments of England and 
 France were induced to adopt, which has opened to us 
 the prospect of a new era of progress, in the gradual 
 union of the nations of Europe in a great commercial 
 federation, and in laying the foundations of a civilisa- 
 tion which may yet keep pace with that now dawning 
 on our race in the Anglo-Saxon republics of the 
 Western world. 
 
 As Cobden saw in his beneficent work the hope of a 
 new era of peace, and of liberal progress in Europe, as 
 its certain fruit, so did his opponents instinctively per- 
 ceive that his success would carry with it the doom of 
 the traditions of hatred and of fear, which the Govern- 
 ments of Europe had too often successfully invoked, to 
 plunge the people into wars of which they are the 
 invariable victims, and to keep alive the rumours of 
 
44 The Political Opinions of Richard Cob den 
 
 war, which have deprived them of the sohd fruits of 
 peace. So long as the pohtical condition of Europe is 
 such as to render necessary or possible the large arma- 
 ments which are a reproach to our age and boasted 
 civilisation, while millions of men, in the flower of their 
 age, are taken from productive industry, and supported 
 by the labour of the rest of the population, no real and 
 permanent progress can be made in the emancipation 
 of the people, and in the estabHshment of free institu- 
 tions. It was in the consciousness that by breaking 
 down the barriers to commercial 
 The Frencii intercourse between England and 
 France, a greater impulse would be 
 given than by any other event to the forces of progress 
 in Europe, that the men who in both countries undertook 
 and completed this international work entered upon 
 their task. We speak freely of this episode in Cobden's 
 Hfe, but it is necessary to vindicate his policy from 
 charges which, although forgotten and overwhelmed in 
 its extraordinary success, were brought against it too 
 commonly, and from quarters whence it ought least to 
 have been expected. 
 
 In France Cobden was reproached by many of his 
 earlier friends, whose sympathies were bound up with 
 the Orleanist or Republican regimes, and who viewed 
 with a natural aversion the Second Empire, for contri- 
 buting to a work which, if successful, might do more 
 than anything else to consoHdate the Imperial reign. 
 He repHed, that what the immediate effect might be he 
 neither knew nor cared, but that all the forces of free- 
 dom were "solidaires," and that the ruler who gave 
 '' Free Trade " to the nation, whether King, President, 
 or Emperor, was doing that which, more than anything 
 else, would assure the future liberties of France. The 
 same causes operated in many quarters to make the 
 Treaty unpopular in England ; but he was also assailed 
 in a more insidious form. He was accused of having 
 forgotten or forsaken the sound doctrines of political 
 economy, of which he had in his earlier hfe been the 
 uncompromising advocate, and of having revived the 
 discarded policy of ''reciprocity treaties." The system 
 of reciprocity treaties and tariff bargains was one of the 
 natural but most pernicious developments of the doc- 
 
The Political Opinions of Richard Cobden 45 
 
 trines of protection. These arrangements aimed at the 
 extension of the Hmits of monopoly, by securing for our 
 products protection in a foreign country against the 
 competition of all other countries, and always pro- 
 ceeded on the supposed interest of the producer, to the 
 injury of the consumer. They were logical, when it 
 was believed or professed that the reduction of a duty 
 was a sacrifice on the part of the country making it to 
 the country in whose favour it was made. From this 
 point of view it was natural, in making such reductions, 
 to demand what were thought to be equivalent con- 
 cessions from the country with which we were treating, 
 and the supreme art of negotiating was held to consist 
 in framing what had the appearance of a ^' nicely 
 adjusted balance of equivalents," but in which each 
 country secretly desired, and sought to obtain, the 
 maximum of reductions from the other, against the 
 minimum of its own. But from the Free Trade point 
 of view, in which all reductions of duties, at least so far 
 as productive duties are concerned, are an admitted 
 and positive gain to the counti*y making them, it be- 
 comes absurd and impossible to use them as the ground 
 of a claim on a foreign country for compensating, or 
 equivalent, remissions. 
 
 The French Treaty had no affinity, except in form, to 
 treaties such as these. Instead of a bargain in which 
 each party sought to give as little and to get as much as 
 possible, it was a great work of co-operation, in which 
 the Governments of England and of France were re- 
 solved, on both sides, to remove, within the limits of 
 their power, the artificial obstacles to their commercial 
 intercourse presented by fiscal and protective laws. 
 England had already spontaneously advanced much 
 further than France in this direction, and hence alone, 
 if for no other reason, all idea of " equivalent " conces- 
 sions was out of the question. She contributed her 
 share to the work by sweeping from her tariff, with 
 some trifling exceptions, all trace and remnant of pro- 
 tection, and by reducing her fiscal duties upon wine 
 and brandy. France, unable at one stroke to destroy 
 the whole fabric of monopoly, nevertheless made a 
 deadly breach in the edifice by substituting moderate 
 duties for prohibition in the case of the chief British 
 
46 The Political Opinions of Richard Cobden 
 
 exports. If these reforms had been made exclusively 
 in each other's favom- they might have been justly open 
 to the charge of unsoundness, but they were made 
 equally for the commerce of all the world, on the 
 side of England immediately, on the side of France 
 prospectively ; and thus, instead of reverting to a 
 system of monopoly, the prohibitive and differential 
 policy of France was annihilated, and the equal 
 system of England maintained and consolidated. 
 
 But the consequences of the Treaty with France were 
 not confined to that country and to England. It was 
 an act which, both by its moral effect and its direct 
 and necessary influence on the legislation of the other 
 Continental countries, has set on foot a movement 
 which grows from year to year, and will not cease till 
 all protective duties have been erased from the com- 
 mercial codes of Europe. 
 
 It was thus the rare privilege of the man who had 
 been the foremost in giving the death-blow to monopoly 
 in England to be also among the first to storm the 
 citadel of protection on the Continent and to give to 
 the work which he commenced at home a decisive 
 international impulse, destined to afford new securities 
 for the most sacred of human rights — the right of 
 labour, and to add *'new realms to the empire of 
 freedom." 
 
 Cobden had yet another success awaiting him, to our 
 mind the most signal triumph of his life. He lived to 
 see the great moral and economic laws, which he had 
 enforced through years of opposition and obloquy, 
 asserting their control over the forces of reaction and 
 moulding our foreign poHcy. It must have been with 
 a superb and heartfelt satisfaction that Cobden watched 
 the conflict of public opinion at the time of the Danish 
 War. The diplomatic intervention of the Government 
 had brought us to the verge of war and made it more 
 than usually difiicult to retreat. The old instincts of 
 the ruling classes of the nation were thoroughly aroused, 
 and unless they had been neutralised and overpowered 
 by stronger and deeper forces, we should, under a 
 fancied idea of chivalry and honour (if anything can 
 deserve these names which is opposed to reason and 
 duty), have squandered once more the hard-earned 
 
The Political Opinions of Richard Cobden 47 
 
 heritage of English labour in a war of which the 
 causes and the merits were for the most part unknown 
 among us, and could never have been made intelHgible 
 to the nation, and in which our success, if possible, 
 might have thrown back all liberal progress for years, 
 both in England and on the Continent. But it soon 
 became manifest that a nobler and larger morality had 
 been gaining ground in the heart of the nation, had at 
 last found its expression in the Councils of the State, 
 and had enforced its control over those who still 
 believed that the mission of England is to hold by 
 force the balance of power in Europe. 
 
 The memorable debate which decided the course of 
 our policy in this critical moment decided far greater 
 issues ; and the principle of " non-intervention," as it 
 has been explained above, the only hope for the moral 
 union of nations and the progress of freedom, became 
 the predominating rule of our foreign policy. 
 
 In reviewing the political programme given in the 
 preceding pages, we shall see that while much has 
 been done far more remains to do ; and that, although 
 there is great cause for hope, there is also much ground 
 for fear. 
 
 Of all the dreams in which easy-going and half- 
 hearted politicians indulge, the idlest appears to be that 
 in which it is fondly imagined that the days of party 
 strife are over and that no questions lie before us, on 
 which the majority of moderate and honest men are 
 not agreed. It is useless to shut our eyes to the fact 
 that before the future greatness and prosperity of our 
 country can be assured, great issues must be raised and 
 fierce political struggles traversed. We have a firm 
 and confident belief that the forces on the side of 
 progress are sufficient to achieve what is required for 
 this consummation by peaceful and constitutional 
 reform ; but the cause will not be won without 
 strenuous efforts. 
 
 It will not be won without the aid of men who, in 
 the measure of their gifts, will bring to bear upon the 
 task the qualities of which in Cobden's life we have 
 such enduring proofs : pure morality, keen intelligence, 
 perfect disinterestedness, undaunted courage, indomit- 
 
48 The Political Opinions of Richard Cobden 
 
 able tenacity of purpose, high patriotism, and an 
 immovable faith in the predestined triumph of good 
 over evil. 
 
 That the principles of public morality which Cobden 
 devoted his life to enforce will ultimately prevail in the 
 government of the world we think that no one who 
 beheves in God or man can doubt. Whether it be in 
 store for our country first to achieve by their adoption 
 the last triumphs of civihsation and to hold her place 
 in the van of human progress, or whether to other 
 races and to other communities will be confided this 
 great mission, it is not for us to determine. 
 
 But those who trust that this may yet be England's 
 destiny, who, in spite of much which they deplore, 
 delight to look upon her past with pride and her future 
 with hope, will ever revere the memory of Cobden as 
 of one whose lifelong aim it was to lay the foundations 
 of her empire in her moral greatness, in the supremacy 
 of reason, and in the majesty of law — and will feel with 
 us that the " international man " was also, and still 
 more, an Englishman. 
 
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