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 UN 1VER5ITY 
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 w
 
 THE 
 
 "MISSION " 
 
 OF 
 
 Richard Cobden. 
 
 By LORD HOBART. 
 
 Reprinted ^ by permission^ from " Macmillan^s Ma^azuu^" 
 for January^ 1^67. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE COBDEN CLUB, 
 
 BY CASSELL, PETTER, & GALPIN, 
 
 LUDGATE HILL» E.G.
 
 THE 
 
 a 
 
 MISSION ^^ OF RICHARD COBDEN, 
 
 BY LORD HOBART, 
 
 It is long since there left the world any one who 
 deserved so well of it as Richard Cobden. To say 
 this is indeed, in one sense, to say but little. For 
 the acts of those who have had it in their power to 
 influence the destinies of mankind, mankind has in 
 general small reason to be grateful. In account with 
 humanity, the public characters have been few indeed 
 who could point with satisfaction to the credit side. 
 But of Cobden's career there are results which none 
 can gainsay. Vast, signal, and comprehensive, they 
 disarm alike both competition and criticism. The 
 two great triumphs of his life were the Repeal of the 
 Corn Laws and the Commercial Treaty with France. 
 Of these, the first gave food to starving millions, 
 redressed a gigantic and intolerable abuse of political
 
 4 THE "MISSION" OF RICHARD COBDEN. 
 
 power^ saved an empire from revolutionary convul- 
 sion_, and imparted new and irresistible impulse to 
 material progress throughout the world; the second 
 carried still further the work which the first had 
 begun^ insured, sooner or later, its full consum- 
 mation, and fixed, amidst the waves of confhcting 
 passions and jarring interests, deep in the tenacious 
 ground of commercial sympathy, a rock for the foot 
 of Peace. 
 
 But, though Cobden^s public life is admired by 
 most Englishmen, its real scope and nature are un- 
 derstood by very few. The prophet was not without 
 honour, but he was almost entirely without com- 
 prehension, in his own country. Being asked on 
 one occasion to take part in some project of interest 
 or pleasure, he declined, on the ground that he had 
 a ^'mission.^^ What, then, was the ^*^ mission ^^ of 
 which he spoke ? What was his distinctive character 
 as a public man ? The prevalent notion entertained 
 respecting him among well-educated Englishmen is 
 that he was the apostle of Free Trade, with a 
 strong and rather dangerous tendency towards de- 
 mocracy and cheap government, and a disposition to 
 peace at any price, on account of the costliness of war. 
 It was reserved for foreigners to appreciate the 
 greatest Englishman of his time, and for a foreigner 
 to describe him justly. He repealed the Corn Laws ; 
 
 UlUC ,
 
 TEE "MISSION'' OF RICHARD COBDEX. I 
 
 he fought and triumphed for Free Trade ; he advocated 
 peace ; he deprecated national extravagance ; and 
 broke a lance, when occasion occurred, for political 
 liberty. But these acts of his were but means to an 
 end, illustrative of and subservient to the great object 
 and idea in the service of which his energies were 
 employed and his life sacrificed ; — for the true defini- 
 tion of Cobden is that which the foreigner supplied 
 — an international man. 
 
 It is strange, but it is true, that there had been no 
 international men of any note before his time. Foir 
 what is internationalism ? Suppose a community 
 which, from whatever cause, was without laws or 
 government of any kind. In such a community 
 every man would be the guardian of his own rights 
 and interests, and compelled to bear arms, offensive 
 and defensive, to maintain them. Bloodshed and 
 every kind of misery, the hideous brood of anarchy, 
 would abound. The state of affairs, even among 
 savages, would be intolerable, and it would not be 
 long before some one would propose the natural and 
 obvious remedy — political institutions. Suppose 
 further (the case is conceivable) that the proposal 
 was received with contempt on account of its alleged 
 impracticability. Suppose that it appeared, or was 
 asserted, that there was such an utter dissimilarity 
 of views and feelings, such an intense individuality,
 
 6 THE " MISSION" OF RICHARD COBDEX. 
 
 in tlie different members o£ the community, that the 
 attempt to unite them under any form of government 
 or any regular system of law was hopeless. Suppose, 
 nevertheless, the author of the proposal to persevere. 
 Suppose him to contend that the alleged objection to 
 it had no foundation in reality, but was the offspring, 
 rightly considered, of mere prejudice and error ; — that 
 if men were, as they affirmed, thus self-centred, 
 dissimilar, and antagonistic, they ought not to be so ; 
 and that, if the evil was real, the remedy rested with 
 themselves. Suppose him to represent that if they 
 were sensible men they would mitigate for the 
 common good the intensity of their individualism ; 
 that if they were Christians political intercourse with 
 each other should be a pleasure and not a pain. 
 Imagine him to' urge that for the sake of a mere senti- 
 ment, puerile) barbarous, and eminently pagan, they 
 were deliberately impoverishing themselves, and lead- 
 ing a life proper to wild beasts rather than to men ; 
 that for the sake of a prejudice against each other, 
 the result of deep-rooted habit, they were content to 
 live in a condition of constant anxiety and suffering, 
 diversified with occasional outbreaks of violencie and 
 bloodshed; and that, while they bitterly complained 
 of the cost, physical and mental, of such a state of 
 existence, they were ready to endure it rather than 
 abandon. th@ precious possession of individuality.
 
 THE "MISSION" OF RICHARD COBDEN. 
 
 self-concentration, and self-dependence, handed down 
 to them by their ancestors, with all its train of 
 selfishness, jealonsy, reciprocal animosity, and mutual 
 misunderstanding, and which, by some strange hallu- 
 cination, they were accustomed to look upon as a 
 good i-ather than as an evil. Suppose all this, and 
 you have supposed a case which actually exists. For 
 the community of nations is a community precisely 
 such as has been described; internationalism, in its 
 ultimate scope and full development, is the doctrine 
 supposed to be taught and rejected ; and the teacher 
 of that doctrine is the international man. Is it not 
 strange, then, that Cobden should have been the first 
 to teach it ? still more strange that he should have 
 been treated by the influential classes in his own 
 country as a man who — well-meaning, no doubt, and 
 eminently successful in his line — was yet hoverii^g" on 
 the verge of lunacy? 
 
 Time out of mind the individuals of which the 
 »?ommunity of nations is composed have been willing 
 to live as no other community could live — without a 
 polity and without laws.^ Of the terrible evils 
 which result, one, though possibly not the greatest, is 
 
 * It need hardly be said that "International Law," which 
 there are no established tribunals to administer and no 
 means which can be relied on to enforce, is not law in the 
 ordinary sense of the word.
 
 S TEE " AIISaiON " OF RICHARD COBDEX. 
 
 war. This evil is so vast and conspicuous that it 
 shocks and sickens humane men; and nothing is 
 more common than to hear discussions on the ques- 
 tion whether or no war is lawful. But if war is 
 unlawful, then, in the case just supj)osed of a 
 community consisting* of individual persons, it is 
 unlawful for each of them' to protect his own rights 
 in the absence of any government to protect themi ; 
 a doctrine which no one possessed of common sense 
 will be found to maintain. The natural and neces- 
 sary result of international anarchy is war, just as the 
 natural and necessary result of national anarchy i*? 
 personal violence. But war is not, because in- 
 ternational anarchy is not,"^, an inevitable condition 
 of human affairs. War is, because international 
 anarchy is, excusable enough as between barbarous 
 communities. But among civilised and enlightened 
 nations war is, because anarchy is, a scandal and a 
 shame. It is this evil — this anarchy of nations — 
 which has wrough"^ more misery and prevented more 
 happiness than perhaps any other of the self-inflicted 
 torments of humanity. It is an evil which is as 
 grave in its negative as in its positive aspect ; which 
 has cursed the world, not only by drenching it with 
 
 * To civil war, which is happily rare, and implies no main- 
 tenance of standing armies, this and the following statements 
 are, of course, inapplicable
 
 THE "MISSION" OF RICUARD COBDEN. 
 
 blood and letting loose upon it the foulest and fiercest 
 passions, but by placing" between the human mind 
 and the intelleetual and moral improvement resulting- 
 from the political and social intercourse of human 
 beings an impassable barrier. But instead of beings 
 treated as a calamity of this hideous complexion, it is 
 habitually looked upon with complacency and self- 
 gratulation. In the opinion of the generality of men, 
 this absence of political intercourse between nations is 
 a happy disposition of Providence, which it would be 
 impious in human creatures to disturb. The class of 
 persons in this country who sing ^' Rule, Britannia," 
 experience in doing so a thrill of conscious virtue and 
 a comforting sense of duty done which confirms them, 
 in the practice. The Frenchman with his gloire and 
 his grande nation feels elevated in the moral scale 
 when he sings their praise. That which the World 
 has wept in tears of blood, and but for which it would 
 have worn an aspect, compared with that which it 
 now wears, of perfect felicity, is treated as a subject 
 for honest rejoicing to good citizens — for British 
 jollification or French fanfaronade. If these men 
 were heathens, there would be more to be said for 
 them ; though one might have thought that improved 
 means of education and advancing intelligence would 
 have taught even to paganism that the self-isolation 
 of nations — the self-imposed and obstinately main-
 
 10 THE "MISSION" OF RICHARD COBBEN. 
 
 tained severance of man from man, because they 
 happen to be of a different race, or to have a different 
 political history — was not an evil to be danced and 
 sung about, but a calamity to be deplored. Being 
 Christians, it is difficult to understand their error. 
 Christianity cut the knot which intellectual advance- 
 ment would sooner or later have untied, and if taught 
 anything, taught this, that simply because they be- 
 long „to a different race, or are geographically divided 
 from them, men have no right to treat other men 
 as socially and politically distinct from themselves; 
 that the mutual estrangement, social and political, of 
 members of the great human family is an evil of the 
 same nature as the mutual estrangement of children 
 born of the same parent; and that the exclusive regard 
 of men for those with whom they are classed by the 
 accidents of origin or of soil is a moral delinquency 
 of the gravest kind. Be it remembered by those who 
 meet, as they imagine triumphantly, considerations 
 such as these with the words "Utopian'^ and 
 " visionary ^^ (words by which it may be remarked 
 that every innovation in ai;y important degree con- 
 ducive to the general welfare has in its turn been 
 stigmatised), that what is here contended for is not 
 the possibility of immediate or proximate remedy, 
 but simply the proposition that the acquiescence in 
 an approval of a state of things so contrary to good
 
 THE "MISSION" OF RICHARD COBDEN. 11 
 
 sense, to right feeling", and to the most vital interests 
 •of the world, is unworthy of intelligent and well- 
 intentioned human beings. 
 
 The virtuous self-satisfaction which has just been 
 tnoticed as attending upon the assertion and display 
 •of nationalism, and which opposes so fatal a bar to 
 international concord and union, is based upon con- 
 fused notions of patriotism, which is of two kinds — 
 patriotism the virtue and patriotism the vice. 
 
 Patriotism the virtue is that feeling which, where 
 it exists in a high degree, inclines a man to prefer 
 to his own interests the interests of the country to 
 which he belongs, and which, in however small a 
 degree it exists, leads him to consider himself not as 
 ^n isolated being with no concern but his own welfare, 
 but as a member of a society whose welfare is his own. 
 Patriotism the virtue makes the general well-being, 
 :as distinct from that of the individual in whom it 
 resides, its study and its care. If either the existence 
 or the well-founded claims of his own country as a 
 member of the community of nations is threatened, 
 it devotes itself, at whatever sacrifice, to their defence, 
 just as it would devote itself to ward off any internal 
 ^calamity of equal magnitude. It admits that, so long 
 as nations remain politically isolated from each other, 
 so long as they are unable by common agreement to 
 :t«rminate the anarchy which afflicts them, force is
 
 12 THE " MISSION'' OF RICHARD COBDEN. 
 
 the sole and legitimate protector of the rights o£ each ; 
 and that to compel a people against its will to submit 
 to a foreign dominion is an injustice which must be 
 resisted to the last. But the very essence of patriot- 
 ism the virtue is self-sacrifice for the general good. 
 It implies no approval or toleration of the anarchy of 
 nations,, or any idea that the interests of the par- 
 ticular country in which the patriot happens to live 
 are paramount to those of the rest of the world. It 
 is ready to sacrifice itself for the community to which 
 it belongs^ but it claims no right to decide as to the- 
 limits of that community. The boast of nationality 
 is no part of the business of such patriotism. Indeed, 
 the mental disposition in which it is generated is^ 
 such as would rather incline a man, so far as im- 
 possible, to enlarge the bounds of his country, not by 
 military conquest, but by peaceful amalgamation; for 
 the temper and habit of mind which characterise the 
 true patriot as the citizen of a state would find a 
 fuller development and gratification when he became- 
 a citizen of the world. 
 
 Patriotism the vice is the moral opposite of the 
 former. It is that feeling among citizens which 
 imparts to the nation, considered as one of the- 
 component parts of a great community, that very 
 selfishness which is repudiated by patriotism the 
 virtue. It is that feeling which causes a nation.
 
 THE " MISSION" OF RICHARD COBDEN. 13 
 
 liabitually to prefer its own to the general in- 
 terest. The essence of virtuous patriotism is self- 
 sacrifice ; the essence of vicious patriotism is self- 
 regard. One is the desire felt by a citizen for his 
 country^s advantage, even at the cost of his own; 
 the other is the desire for his country's advantage 
 because that country is his, at the cost of other 
 nations. Patriotism the vice looks upon the life of 
 nations as one long struggle for success at the 
 expense of each other ; holds that a state should de- 
 precate, and if it has the power prevent, any increase 
 in the wealth and prosperity of other states; that 
 the ^^ balance of power''' should be disturbed; and 
 appears to consider the fact that the world was not 
 made exclusively for the benefit of one nation as a 
 disposition of affairs to which nothing short of abso- 
 lute compulsion should induce it to bow. • 
 
 It is, then, by confounding these two kinds of 
 patriotism that men are led to tolerate and approve 
 the anarchy of nations. With true patriotism that 
 anarchy has nothing in common, but, on the contrary, 
 is essentially at issue. If illustration be required of 
 this, it is to be found in the fact that the most 
 devoted and disinterested patriot of our time — the 
 Liberator of Italy — is also one of the very few dis- 
 tinguished men who have felt and avowed inter- 
 national aspirations. At the close of a campaign
 
 14 THE " MISSION'' OF RICHARD COBDEN. 
 
 unusually arduous and triumphant, lie gave vent, ini 
 a letter wliich appeared in tlie public journals of tlie 
 day, and was sneered out of court in the usual! 
 manner, to the trouble of his grand and benignant 
 soul. Was war, he said, never to cease from the- 
 earth? Were nations to remain for ever disunited, 
 with no thought but their own aggrandisement, and 
 occupied in preparing themselves, at an enormous 
 cost, to spring on the shortest notice at each other's 
 throats? Was there no chance of a hearing for 
 common sense and humanity, so that men, whether 
 they were Italian, French, English, Austrian, Russian, 
 or Prussian, should at length, after centuries of 
 unwisdom, admit themselves to be members of a 
 common family, whose interests should be considered 
 as a whole, and there might be an end once for all. 
 to the long reign of anarchy and blood? " How fool- 
 ish ! how inconsistent ! '^ exclaimed the whole chorus- 
 of Philistines and "Rule, Britannia^' politicians. 
 The folly and inconsistency were their own. The 
 patriotism of Garibaldi is of that true kind which, as 
 we have seen, is altogether distinct from nationalism. 
 He fought to deliver his country, not from Austrians, 
 but from Austrian despotism, as he Would fight 
 against any evil, internal or external, which afflicted 
 her. But if (to suppose a case) Austrians and 
 Italians, availing themselves of increased means of
 
 THE " MISSION" OF RICHARD COBDEN. 15 
 
 intercourse with each other, and overcoming- the 
 prejudices of race and the difficulties of language, 
 should after a time have agreed upon some federal 
 alliance or some common form of government accept- 
 able to the people of both countries, Cobden himself 
 would not have been more overjoyed. Cxaribaldi 
 would have fought and bled for freedom in America 
 as freely as he fought and bled for her in Italy. For 
 real patriotism is that which is free from any taint 
 of egotism ; sees in loss or injury to the vcountry of 
 other men loss or injury to its own ; and would blush 
 to accept benefits for a nation at the cost of the 
 world at large. 
 
 It was the pecidiar merit and the privilege of 
 Cobden that he apprehended the truth here indicated, 
 and made it the lodestar of his political career. But 
 inasmuch as the time was not ripe far that* full 
 development of internationalism which consists in 
 some form of political union, he saw that the work 
 cut out for him in life was to prepare the way for it 
 by habituating so far as might be possible the public 
 mind to the idea, by removing obstacles to its pro- 
 gress, and by advocating and pushing forward every 
 measure of legislation or policy which could tend to 
 its realisation. Foremost among such measures was 
 the liberation of commerce ; and the first and most 
 formidable monster to be assailed by the champions
 
 16 THE "MISSION" OF RICHARD COBDEN. 
 
 of commercial liberty was the infamous English Com 
 Law. The attack upon a law which starved one 
 country and impoverished the rest for the benefit of a 
 few landlords was a task after Cobden^s own heart ; 
 and he was supported and encouraged during the 
 tremendous conflict by the feeling, little known to 
 most of his coadjutors,, that he was fighting, not for 
 his own comitry only, but for all others; and that 
 victory in the fight would be the first step towards 
 the attainment of the grandest object of which a 
 politician had ever dreamed — to break down the 
 barriers of a narrow nationalism, and blend into 
 one great community the nations of the world. For 
 he knew that free trade in corn was but the prelude 
 to the freedom, at no very distant time, of commerce 
 generally; he knew also that freedom of commerce 
 generally meant a community of interests which 
 would grapple nations to each other with hooks of 
 steel, and an increase of personal intercourse between 
 their citizens — the sovereign remedy for that seK- 
 <jomplacent nationalism which is the greatest obstacle 
 to political association. It is certain that, of all 
 expedients calculated to promote the objects in view, 
 there is none so efficacious as this last. A new rail- 
 way, or an improved steamboat service on a dividing 
 sea, or the abolition of adventitious official impedi- 
 ments to travellers, may be of more avail than all the
 
 THE "MISSION" OF RICHARD COBDEN. 17 
 
 speeches and writings of the most devoted philan- 
 thropist. For it must be obvious that there is a 
 conceivable degree of social intercourse between 
 nations of which some kind or degree of political 
 association is the natural and necessary result. If, 
 for instance, the communication between English- 
 men and Frenchmen, instead of being limited, as it 
 now is, to the yearly arrival of a hundred or two of 
 the latter, sea-sick and miserable, in a grim and 
 squalid locality, presided over by a hideously muti- 
 lated statue, and which they imagine to be London, 
 and to the yearly influx into Paris of a stream of 
 British tom*ists, contemptuous, ill-mannered, and 
 unintelligent, — that communication was in every 
 respect as constant and easy as the intercourse be- 
 tween adjacent counties of England, it is impossible 
 that the two countries could remain long disunited. 
 Manners, language, currency, laws, would gradually 
 assimilate ; and the result, sooner or later, would be 
 political union. Every step in this direction is a 
 step of which the importance cannot be overrated. 
 In proportion as the intercourse of the citizens of one 
 state with those of another became more familiar, 
 nationalism would decline; war, though it would at 
 times be inevitable so long as nations are under per- 
 fectly distinct governments, would be more and more 
 reluctantly entered upon ; until at length the work
 
 18 THE '< MISSION" &F RIG HARD GOBBEN. 
 
 would find its completion^ in political association, 
 and all^ war^ except civil war^ be thenceforth at an 
 end. 
 
 The blow which shattered the English Corn Law 
 shook to its foundation the whole ingenious system 
 by which^ under the pleasant name of ^^ protection to- 
 native industry/^ men had contrived to counteract a 
 singularly beneficent provision of nature, having for 
 its object their own material and social welfare ; and' 
 the advantage thus gained was promptly followed up 
 by the great soldier of peace and good- will. The war 
 of tariffs is responsible for the war of bullets and 
 cold steel. Men think twice before they cut the- 
 throats of those- who are perpetually engaged in* 
 filling their coffers. If the trade of this country 
 with Bussia had been as great as her trade with the- 
 United States, what chance would the ^^ war-at-any- 
 price party ^'' have had in the dispute about the- 
 Russian War? If her trade with the United States 
 had been as small as her trade- with Russia, what 
 would have been the probability that peace would 
 have been preserved during half a century between 
 the jealous and irascible parent and the undutiful 
 and now gigantic son ? But protection not only 
 generates war, by removing the inducement to peace- 
 which is afforded by identity of interest ; it fosters 
 and encourages that deeper and wider evil of whichi
 
 THE "MISSION" OF RICHARD COBDEN. 19- 
 
 (as we have- seen) war is one of the many calamitous^ 
 results — the sharp division of mankind into distinct 
 societies, resolutely set against any approach to 
 political communion. Protection, besides keeping- 
 nations poor, keeps them apart in sullen rivalry, and 
 hostility worse, because more widespread and en- 
 during, than that of the battle-field. The very fact 
 that nations are- habituated to consider it a duty to» 
 enrich themselves at the expense of other countries^, 
 tendis to exclude from their minds the idea of associa- 
 tion, and to encourage that of self-seclusion ; and the' 
 case is not altered by the circumstance that instead of 
 enriching they are- impoverishing themselves. Men 
 will never look upon each other as members of one- 
 family, or yearn after that political association for 
 want of which they suffer so bitterly, as long as they 
 are taught to consider the gain of other countries tO' 
 be the loss of their own, and are deprived of that 
 inducement to communication with each other which 
 commercial unity both directly and indirectly pro- 
 vides. The Commercial Treaty with France, forced! 
 as it were upon both coimtries by the strong will and 
 earnest faith of one extraordinary man, was therefore- 
 (and he knew it) a magnificent stroke of work in the 
 cause which he had at heart. It was, moreover, a 
 success, in its very nature prolific of further successes.. 
 Already an arrangement similar in principle — mainly
 
 ^ THE "MISSION" OF RICHARD COBDEN. 
 
 througli the unremitting exertions o£ one who, during 
 the arduous struggle o£ which the prize was the 
 Treaty with France, stood at Cohden^s right hand, 
 caught his spirit_, and realised the grandeur of his 
 aims — has been made between this country and 
 Austria; foreign nations among themselves have 
 begun to imitate the example ; and one of the most 
 obstinately defended strongholds of international 
 exclusiveness and discord is in a fair way of being 
 levelled with the ground. 
 
 Next to commercial monopoly, the most fatal 
 enemy to internationalism was the pseudo-patriotic 
 sentiment already noticed, and which Cobden ac- 
 cordingly attacked with uncompromising vigour and 
 pertinacity. That one Englishman was equal to 
 three Frenchmen, and that in addressing himself to 
 the task of proving it he was doing that which was 
 pleasing rather than otherwise to the supernal powers, 
 was the form which for a long time was taken by this 
 sentiment in the illiterate British mind. With the 
 secession of the French Revolutionary War into the 
 background, this impression has become less actively 
 prevalent; but there is still a Im'king conviction in 
 the minds of a large number of persons in this 
 -country that to fight Frenchmen, and probably also 
 Russians and Americans, is in itself a highly moral 
 iuid laudable act. War is generally felt to be a
 
 THE "MISSION" OF RICHARD COBDEN. 21' 
 
 calamity, but a calamity qualified by the consideration, 
 first, that there is a natural antagonism between 
 Britons and foreigners which is, as it were, part of 
 the scheme of creation ; and secondly, that it is more 
 in accordance with the eternal fitness of things that 
 British interests, British fleets and armies, and 
 British ideas should prevail, than those of any other 
 nation. Thus it is very commonly, though most 
 untruly, asserted by very well-meaning and in other 
 respects reasonable men, in defence of the war waged 
 for twenty years by this country without a shadow 
 of justification with France, that but for that war 
 the power and influence of Great Britain among 
 European states would have been very much less 
 than they now are ; from which argument.it is to be 
 inferred that, in the opinion of those who use it, any 
 amount of injustice, slaughter, and suffering iffould 
 kick the beam if the interests of their own country 
 were in the other scale. Until ideas such as these 
 are totally and irrevocably eradicated, there is little 
 hope for internationalism. 
 
 Another and most mischievous institution of the- 
 same class was the Civis Romanus. This personage, 
 and the intolerable national aiTOgance on which he 
 depends for existence, was the object of Cobden^s 
 most determined hostility. In China he took the 
 form of an adventurous skipper mistaken, apparently
 
 22 THE "MISSION'' OF RICHARD COBDEN. 
 
 not without some reason^ by Chinese officials for a 
 pirate; in Greece, that of a Spanish Jew, whose 
 miserable squabble with the Government was settled 
 by the conclusive if not logical argument of a British 
 fleet ; in Brazil he was alternately a drunken midship- 
 man incarcerated for inebriety, and the owner or 
 insurer of a British ship which the winds and waves, 
 regardless of Roman citizenship, had cast upon an 
 outlandish coast, and which was pounced upon by the 
 nomad and semi-savage wreckers of the place, for 
 whose misdeeds the Brazilian Government, finding 
 itself powerless to punish them, was magnanimously 
 chastised, and threatened with further chastisement 
 for not having done so, by the Government of a^country 
 twenty times as powerful as its own. Against this 
 calamitous individual the great Internationalist 
 waged incessant war; nor were his efforts entirely 
 unattended with success, if we are to judge by the 
 fact that this particular enemy has of late considerably 
 moderated his pretensions. The monstrous doctrine 
 i;hat a state has the right to require for any of its 
 ■own subjects, who choose to visit or reside in a 
 foreign country, treatment which is not in accordance 
 ifvith the laws or customs of that country, or an 
 : amount of legal protection which no native of that 
 • country ever dreams of obtaining, has recently shown 
 somewhat less readinees to parade itself before the
 
 THE " MISSION" OF RICHARD COBDEN. 28 
 
 public view. The mental condition, however, in 
 which it was generated unhappily survives, and 
 should be resolutely opposed by all right-minded 
 men. 
 
 Closely allied to [nationalism and Roman civism, 
 ifighting by their side the battle of selfishness and 
 barbarism against civilisation and humanity, and as 
 such assailed by Cobden with singular power though 
 with but too little success, was the policy o£ " bloated 
 armaments/^ That policy has been the fashion in 
 this country ever since the war with Russia, which, 
 finding its support in hobgoblin arguments and panic 
 the most anile, appears to have bequeathed them as 
 a lasting legacy to the nation. Scarcely had that 
 useless and disastrous conflict ended, and the pocket 
 of the British taxpayer begun to feel the better for 
 the change, when the bugbear of French invasion ft)r 
 about the hundredth time cast its shadow over the 
 land. It was promptly turned to account by that 
 large class of persons who, actuated some by national 
 vanity, called by themselves pati*iotic pride, others by 
 less excusable motives, are the steady advocates of 
 plethoric budgets; and the consequence is that the 
 national expenditure is at the present moment greater 
 than it was before the Russian War by some fifteen 
 millions, almost the whole of which goes to the account 
 of the army, navy, and coast defences. The triumph
 
 24 THE "MISSION" OF RICHARD COBDEN. 
 
 of the old women has been complete. The prepara- 
 tion for war has been in the inverse ratio to the proba- 
 bility of it ; for if there is one feature more indelibly 
 stamped on contemporary history than another, it 
 is the deep anxiety shown by the present ruler of 
 France, throughout his long and prosperous reign, ta 
 be on amicable terms with this country. In response 
 to his advances, its taxation was at once placed and 
 has ever since continued on a war footing, and a 
 volunteer army was created, respecting which kind of 
 force, however, there is this to be said, that so far as 
 it is a defence at all, it is (like chivalry) a cheap de- 
 fence of nations. But for the enormous and steadily 
 maintained annual expenditure on the regular forces 
 there is literally no excuse whatever. From the point 
 of view of the narrowest expediency, it is a blunder 
 of the grossest kind. For, unquestionably, to a 
 country whose position, moral and physical, is that 
 of Great Britain, the road to success in war lies in 
 the maintenance during peace of an inexpensive 
 nucleus of force, to be developed, when the necessity 
 occurs, as only a free and energetic people, whose 
 progress to commercial wealth has sustained little 
 hindrance from the tax-gatherer, can develop it. But 
 it was not on the ground of expediency that Cobden 
 fought the battle of retrenchment. He fought it, 
 while deeply feeling its importance in a national,,
 
 THE "MISSION" OF RICHARD COBDEN. 25 
 
 chiefly from an international point of view. The 
 curse of great standing" armies is laid^ not upon this 
 or that nation only, but upon the whole civilised 
 world ; and it is the interest of humanity in general 
 that demands its removal. ^^ Si vis pacem, para 
 helium ^^ is the comfort which the authors of this 
 calamity' — presuming on the general incapacity to 
 perceive that "si vis bellunij para bellum^^ is much less 
 questionably true — are in the habit of offering, with 
 considerable success, to their deluded victims. The 
 argument, however, which is most directly responsible 
 for the vast preparations for war which nations in 
 their ardent attachment to peace have thought fit to 
 make, is the argument that other nations are doing 
 the same thing. Nation A arms itself to the teeth, 
 and groans under a crushing burden of taxation, 
 solely because nation B has done the same. Nation 
 B, whose large armaments have very probably been 
 raised for the repression of liberty among its own 
 subjects, perceiving this step on the part of A, accuses 
 it of lu)stile designs, and increases its own armaments 
 accordingly, which leads to' a further increase in the 
 same direction on the pai-t of A. This arrangement, 
 considered as an elaborate contrivance for maintaining 
 peace, and the political dialectics of which it is the 
 result, is extremely curious. If any one suggests,^ 
 as Cobden suggested, that there is something inex-
 
 26 THE "MISSION'' OF RICHARD COBDEN. : 
 
 pressibly foolisli and puerile in all this ; that, if 
 reason has not deserted the world, some agreement 
 ought to be come to for reciprocal disarmament; or 
 that, in the event of this being found impracticable, 
 then if there be a nation free, and therefore requiring 
 no standing armies to prevent its being so, — insular, 
 and therefore having, on the one hand, little direct 
 interest in Continental quarrels, and, on the other, 
 provided by Nature herself with a peculiar and still 
 formidable defence against hostile aggression — if 
 there be a nation superior to all others in com- 
 mercial wealth, and therefore able, in case of emer- 
 gency, to develop a strength which would far more 
 than counterbalance any insufficiency of prepara- 
 tion j that nation ought to be the first (for one 
 of them must be the first) to quit the path of 
 folly, and set the example of a return to conduct in 
 some degree rational and dignified : — if any one 
 ventures to make this, suggestion, he is forthwith 
 consigned to the limbo of political enthusiasts, and 
 iiio longer looked upon as a saiie man in this country. 
 Nor, indeed, if the recent foreign policy of this 
 country be considered, is it wonderful that such 
 suggestions should appear to be madness by its side. 
 To reject with a sneer every proposal for the prevention 
 of war by mitigating, in however imperfect a degree, 
 the anarchy of nations — ^to meet with a curt and
 
 THE "MISSION" OF RICHARD COBDEN. 27 
 
 insolent negative any suggestion for the adjustment_, 
 Ly general agreement^ o£ difficulties which, threaten 
 universal war; to refuse to refer to arbitration an 
 important question^ admitted on all hands to be one 
 of difficulty, in dispute with a great and kindred 
 people, on the turgid and irrelevant plea that ^'^ Britain 
 is the guardian of her own honour/'' is a course of 
 conduct of which those who approve are consistent 
 enough in treating common sense and right feeling* 
 as insane. To decline all interference in the affairs 
 •of foreign states, not for the sake of humanity, but 
 of self-interest, and maintain at the same time an 
 attitude of hostile expectation against the world ; to 
 incur a vast expenditm-e, on the ground that it is re- 
 quired for the protection of the national existence and 
 interests, which nobody threatens, and with the result 
 
 of providing an excuse for the adoption by foreign 
 
 • 
 
 powers of a similar course, and so to endanger the 
 general peace and add to the general ' misery, is a 
 policy to whose advocates internationalism may well 
 appear to be the product of a disordered mind. But 
 an insanity whose result is the direct opposite of such 
 a policy, is an insanity to be coveted by all reasonable 
 men. 
 
 Representative reform was another subject which 
 lay near to Cobden^s heart ; but this, too, he valued 
 '^not only for itself, but for its connection with inter-
 
 28 THE "MISSION" OF RICHARD COBDEN. 
 
 nationalism. Nationalistic egotism is a malady 
 proper to despotic and oligarcliic institutions. The- 
 moral code which makes selfishness and jealousy, if 
 not dislike, of foreigners a part of the whole duty of 
 nations, is peculiar to the class which in most states- 
 monopolises political power; the great majority of 
 citizens are guiltless of its existence. John Bullism 
 is not a democratic vice. The British Lion has a 
 roar which is terrible chiefly among the upper classes-, 
 and aggravates his voice when he mixes in society 
 less refined. The wars of civilisation have been for 
 the most part wars, not of nations, but of govern- 
 ments ; for war is not only a game which kings would 
 not play at if their subjects were wise, but a game at 
 which they would very seldom play if their subjects- 
 were free. Into the causes of this phenomenon it is- 
 not necessary to inquire. It is probably due partly 
 to the fact that large standing armies are a necessity 
 of life to despotic institutions, and that large stand- 
 ing armies must be employed, partly to the natural 
 and jealous exclusivism of governing classes, and 
 partly to the affinity and sympathy of all liberal 
 ideas. What is certain is, that for the complete- 
 realisation of internationalism in its ultimate result, 
 political association, it is requisite that nations in 
 general should possess a very large measure of rea) 
 political liberty ; and that, according to the degree m
 
 THE "MISSION" OF RICHARD COBDEN. 29 
 
 •which they possess it, they will be capable o£ appre- 
 •ciating the advantages of such association, and o£ 
 comprehending and avoiding the evils incidental to 
 its absence. Complete political liberty once esta- 
 blished in the world, some form of international fede- 
 ration would be the natural result. Nationalism, the 
 offspring of class interests and monopolised power, 
 would gradually disappear; armaments maintained 
 for the repression of freedom would no longer afford 
 incessant provocation and occasion for war ; and men 
 would begin to ask themselves, in wonder, on what 
 possible ground of reason or self-interest they had 
 been for centuries the enemies and rivals of their 
 fellow-men. 
 
 It is the duty of those to whom the memory of 
 R-ichard Cobden is the memory of a greatness, not 
 only beyond question and almost beyond rivalry, but 
 of a wholly original kind — a greatness which, while 
 it filled a vast chasm in political philosophy, was rich 
 in a new promise and possibilities hitherto un- 
 imagined for the happiness of mankind, and which, 
 at the same time, neither was nor is generally appre- 
 ■ciated or understood — to see that his name appears 
 in history, not under the light of a fictitious and 
 ■commonplace distinction, but in its own peculiar 
 and enduring lustre, and takes its appropriate place 
 in the hearts and in the minds of men. It is well
 
 so THE ''MISSION" OF RICHARD COBDEN. 
 
 that political societies should be founded in his name; 
 it is better that they should accurately represent his 
 character^ and carry forward with faithfulness and 
 discrimination the work which he began. There is 
 fear lest the most precious political truth that has 
 been taught in the world should be lost to it for 
 ever — buried once for all in the grave at Midhurst. 
 It is not the advocacy of liberal principles more or 
 less '^ advanced ^'' which entitles a man to be con- 
 sidered a disciple of Cobden. " PeacC;, retrenchment, 
 and reform " is^ it is true (or rather was) , the motto 
 of the Liberal party, and commercial freedom is in- 
 scribed on its banners ; but those who claim to follow 
 such a leader must not be content to rest in these 
 things as final — must see beyond, and in part result- 
 ing from these things, a new policy and a happier 
 age — must believe as he believed, that it is no idle 
 dream, no vain chimera of the poet or the enthusiast, 
 but a rational and a practical proposition, that men 
 may be brought no Tonger to look upon difference of 
 race, creed, and climate as a necessary obstacle to 
 political unity. Whoever among them can write ii 
 line of telling English, or speak one sentence wortli 
 listening to upon a platform, should take this for his- 
 theme. On the one hand, to familiarise the idea in 
 the minds of men ; on the other, by every expedient 
 of scientific enterprise, legislative improvement, or
 
 THE "MISSIOX" OF RICHARD COBDEX, 31 
 
 private effort, to promote identity o£ interest and 
 facilitate personal intercourse between the citizens of 
 different states, are the two great objects to be kept 
 in view. Above all, let the lovers of freedom remem- 
 ber that there is a tyranny more fatal than any 
 which they oppose — the despotism of words. Calling" 
 names is the weapon of ig-norance and folly, wielded 
 with deadly effect, in the battle against truth. Assail! 
 a really humane and sensible project, however start- 
 ling to prejudice, with the most subtle argument, 
 enforced by tTie most consummate eloquence, and it 
 will resist ; call it " humanitarian,^^ and it will' 
 succumb. Reason ever so long against a scheme 
 fraught with advantage to the world, and you may 
 reason in vain ; call it " visionary," and (if only it 
 has novelty sufficient to give colour to the charge) 
 the most thoughtful men will desert its cause. • In 
 the present case there is the same danger. It may 
 be " visionary " to imagine that a change which is 
 opposed to inveterate prejudice and time-encrusted 
 tradition will be other than gradual and remote. It 
 is not visionary to suppose that, in spite of prejudice 
 and tradition, the way may be prepared for the advent 
 of reason and humanity; it is not visionary to believe 
 that separation into distinct and isolated communities, 
 with no objects but those of self-interest, and no 
 relations but those of rivalry and hostilitns--, is not the-
 
 S2 THE ''MIS;SION" OF RICHARD COBDEN, 
 
 normal condition of the civilised world ; and that in 
 the crusade which Cobden preached^ not to rescue 
 .holy sepulchres from sceptical custody, but the hearts 
 of men from the dominion of selfishness, envy, hatred, 
 ;.?^nd cruelty, there is real hope for the human race.
 
 
 
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