The Political Writings of Richard Cobden, Volume 1 E-Book

Richard Cobden

• Herausgeber: Jazzybee Verlag
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 644

Beschreibung

Richard Cobden was an English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman, associated with two major free trade campaigns, the Anti-Corn Law League and the Cobden–Chevalier Treaty. This is volume one out of two with his most essential political writings, this book containing his works 'ENGLAND, IRELAND, AND AMERICA', 'RUSSIA' and the first and second letter from '1793 AND 1853, IN THREE LETTERS.'

Leseprobe

The Political Writings of Richard Cobden

Volume 1

RICHARD COBDEN

The Political Writings of Richard Cobden 1

Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck

86450 Altenmünster, Loschberg 9

Deutschland

ISBN: 9783849651862

www.jazzybee-verlag.de

[email protected]

CONTENTS:

PREFACE.. 1

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION BY SIR LOUIS MALLET, C.B.9

THE POLITICAL OPINIONS OF RICHARD COBDEN. PREFACE.9

THE POLITICAL OPINIONS OF RICHARD COBDEN.10

INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.39

ENGLAND, IRELAND, AND AMERICA. 1835.42

NOTE TO “ENGLAND, IRELAND, AND AMERICA.”. 42

PART I.: ENGLAND.43

PART II.: IRELAND.61

PART III: AMERICA.80

RUSSIA. 1836.102

ADVERTISEMENT.102

NOTE.102

CHAPTER I: RUSSIA, TURKEY, AND ENGLAND.104

CHAPTER II: POLAND, RUSSIA, AND ENGLAND.125

CHAPTER III: THE BALANCE OF POWER.. 139

CHAPTER IV: PROTECTION OF COMMERCE.. 150

AUTHOR'S NOTE.. 170

APPENDIX.171

1793 AND 1853, IN THREE LETTERS.181

NOTE.181

PREFACE.181

LETTER I. MR. COBDEN TO THE REVEREND — —.182

LETTER II. MR. COBDEN TO THE REVEREND — —.187

FOOTNOTES:210

PREFACE

The State is 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, directness 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 Englishmen 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 restrictions. The condition of the poor was miserable, for employment was scarce, wages were low, and food was dear. Education was neglected, and little had been done to make the mass of the people fit for the citizenship of a great and free country. This was the condition of the nation as Cobden knew it. He saw that improvement was impossible as long as the labouring classes were ill-fed and often unemployed, and he threw himself 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 December, 1852, the Tory party, after depriving Peel of office, after opposing for six long years his policy as ruinous to 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 affirm 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 want humiliation, look there.” Cobden cared little for the humiliation. It was enough for him that, an insignificant 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 demagogues. 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 Cobden 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 classes are tolerant of opposition, 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 constituencies 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 the people were in error, and that the war was unnecessary. Careless of popularity when conscience was concerned, they boldly expressed their views in and out of Parliament, and as a consequence they lost their popularity, 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 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 if? 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 prevailing 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 that 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 popularity to inflame the national passion, and to crush opponents who do not share their views.

The could 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 campaign against Protection the value of British produce exported was rather more than £50,000,000. In 1864 it had risen to £160,000,000. In the year 1902 it had risen to £283,000,000. In 1841 one in every eleven persons of the population was in receipt of poor relief; in 1864 one in twenty; in 1902 only one in forty. In 1841 the deposits in Savings Banks were £24,500,000. In 1864 they had risen to £44,500,000; in 1900 to more than £207,000,000, besides £59,000,000 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, £270,000,000. In 1864 it had risen to £370,000,000, and in 1900 to £758,000,000. 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 Bright, to the policy 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 life 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 near 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 century which would have grieved Cobden to the heart—the growth of military and naval expenditure and the development of warlike spirit in the people. He thought in 1850 an expenditure on army and navy of £16,000,000 excessive, and in 1864 he thought an expenditure on those services of £26,000,000 still more excessive. On this point he and Bright were not singular. Many men not of the Manchester 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 military and naval expenditure of between £70,000,000 and £80,000,000 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 house-holder of £10 and upwards. He was earnestly in favour of a wide extension of the suffrage. Within a few years of his death house-hold 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 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 foreseen 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 disappointed 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 wantonly assailed, and it is well that at the present crisis a new edition of his chief writings should be issued in order that men may read for themselves, and at first hand, the opinions which he held, and may learn from himself 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 individual liberty is jealously cherished, than be without it in the enjoyment of all the principles of the French constituted assembly.” Thus spoke the true Englishman. 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 predictions 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, 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 £10,000,000? It lasted nearly three years and cost £250,000,000. These were grave miscalculations of the future. In three of them they were especially grave, because they concerned immediate policy, 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 policy. He advocated Free Trade, as essential to the welfare and progress of the nation, irrespective of foreign tariffs or the warlike 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 1 846 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 lies with the Government. The Prime Minister must show by facts that circumstances have changed to the detriment of the nation and to an extend 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 wealth and the diffused well-being of the country are greater than they ever have been. We are not only 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 applies 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. It 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 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,” published in 1835, and in “Russia,” published in 1836, he pleaded for non-intervention, not only as in accordance with moral law, but as a policy essential to the true interests of this 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 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 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 intelligent population 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 proposed that we should fetter and impede our manufacturing and consuming powers by preferential and retaliatory 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 economist who did not at once put his finger on the fact that great masses of landed property were held by the 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 limited 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. In this year of grace a Conservative Government is completing, with large aid from the British Exchequer, the revolution in the tenure of Irish land begun in1881, and Mr. Wyndham's measure, which aims at ending this “feudal system” of land tenure, confirms and justifies the foresight of Cobden and the policy 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 the fear of Russia, which has so long haunted the nation, which plunged us into the Crimean 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 (Aril 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 commercial ports of an enemy ought to be exempt from blockade. Cobden advocated these changes in international 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. They would do well to consider Cobden's able argument 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 manufacturers. 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 the exposes them, and of the skill and power with which he drives homes his conclusions.

In these writings Cobden may have overrated anticipated advantages and underrated difficulties. He may have been to 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 by 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 Liberals, true Free Traders, must endorse his principles as strongly now as then, nay, more strongly, for the evil of extravagance becomes daily more evident. Conservatives, such as Lord Salisbury and Sir M. Hicks-Beach, deplore it, but have been powerless to check it. We have lost their services, and their places are occupied by the advocates of extravagance and Protection. Liberals know that if a nation is to be strong and contented the mass of the population must be sufficiently fed. The extravagance of peace expenditure in the last few years has necessitated a reversal of the wise policy which ruled from 1842 for forty years. The tea duty has been raised until it is nearly 100 percent. 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 expenditure 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. Chamberlain goes a step further, and would “widen the basis of taxation” in furtherance of a new life 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 in which Cobden insisted with such earnestness is absolutely abandoned, and the Liberal learns the value of that article in his creed, when he sees the result. Military 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 necessary, has given the Protectionists an opportunity of which they are not slow to avail themselves, and it is only too likely 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 to Liberal and Free Trader alike, and the wisdom of the teaching is made only too clear.

Students of English may learn much form Cobden's writings. They are like his speech—clear, fearless, vigorous, but persuasive. The style was the man, the 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 prejudices. 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 personal antagonism; but the English 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 by the upper classes. A lady of conservative principles, but generous sympathies, who is gifted with a power, rare in women, of appreciating a political opponent, was an intimate friend of Cobden. She knew the pleasure which works of art gave him, and she proposed that they should visit together a well-known collection. She asked her friend, the owner of the pictures, for permission. The lady replied that they might come and lunch, but that she herself could not meet Mr. Cobden. To thinking minds such prejudice is astonishing, but there is little doubt that had his life been spared he would have lived it down as Bright lived it down, and possibly more easily than Bright.

May a new edition of 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 realize 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.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION By Sir Louis Mallet, C.B.

THE POLITICAL OPINIONS OF RICHARD COBDEN. PREFACE.

The following paper was written for the North British Review in 1867, and has been reprinted, with a few alterations, by permission of the editor, at the request of the Committee of the Cobden Club.

I originally wrote it with reluctance, because I was conscious of my inability to do justice to its subject, but I though that, as a contribution towards a better understanding of Cobden's, political character, it might serve a useful purpose; and in the same hope I have consented to reprint it now.

I have done so the more readily, because it is impossible not to feel that Cobden's principles are even now constantly misrepresented; and are, in some directions, losing their hold on the public mind of England.

Is it in ignorance, or in irony, that the charge of aiming at nothing more than mere material prosperity is so often brought against the one statesman who vindicated with a peculiar wisdom the morality of Economic Science; in other words, the veiled but eternal harmony between material progress and the highest civilisation of our race?

Is it in deeper ignorance, or in more subtle irony, that one whose whole life was an unceasing protest against a narrow and selfish patriotism, and who will take his place in history as the “International Man,” has been identified with the policy which, under the name of “non-intervention,” confounds in a coarse and common condemnation, political meddling and international co-operation?

I have said that Cobden's principles are in some directions losing their hold on the public mind. This is especially the case with respect to what we call “Free Trade;” which, between its so-called friends and its enemies, is drifting more and more into irretrievable confusion as a principle of imperial policy.

In its domestic aspect “Free Trade,” or rather “Free Exchange,” has been forgotten in the chorus of congratulation at the downfall of protection in its grossest form; and in our Foreign policy, while discarding reciprocity of restrictions, we have failed to appreciate the importance of the reciprocity of freedom.

We have obtained enough Free Trade to enable our upper and middle classes and acquire more wealth than, with their present education, they can either employ wisely or spend innocently, and to stimulate unproductive consumption in vulgar luxury and wasteful charity; but we have not obtained enough Free Trade to feed and clothe and house our people, or to inspire confidence in other countries, and to establish those international relations without which all hope of internal progress is a foolish and idle dream.

It is painful to perceive the inferiority of the political utterances of our day on social and economic questions, to those of the Anti-Corn-Law League, in grasp of principles, in command of facts, and, above all, in moral feeling.

The men who took part in the labours of the League dwell naturally more on that which they have done, than on that which we have to do; and a generation has succeeded to a large share in our political life, which consults for the solution of our social problems far other oracles than those which inspired Cobden.

The sinister reaction set in motion by the Crimean War, fostered by the wars in China, and culminating in the Parliament of 1857, has gone far to neutralise the impulse given to our productive forces by the partial liberation of our trade, and left us with increased wealth indeed, but with a distribution of it more unequal and more unnatural than before, and with a large population, whose chronic wretchedness and degradation is a standing reproach to our civilisation, and a sullen protest against our laws. And while the cry of suffering multitudes is the morning and the evening sacrifice of our proudest cities, our Government and our people alike are calling on each other helplessly in turn for a policy a deliverance.

Can we wonder, then, that those who have been taught to believe that they are living under a Free Trade dispensation, and who have never taken the pains to compare the doctrines of its apostles with the practice of our lawgivers, should accuse it of disastrous failure; and that while on one hand we are advised to desist from further action till, by the free play of consciousness, we have discovered an intelligible law of things; on the other, we are urged to tamper with the laws, and assail the rights of labour and of property, and to revive discarded systems which are only innocent so long as they are impossible?

But before accusing Economic Science and Free Exchange, I would ask whether, with our present laws as they affect our land, our currency, our fiscal and colonial systems, our foreign relations, and our military and naval administration, we may not rather trace our failure in civilisation to a systematic and deliberate violation of their most imperious precepts? Whether the success of what is called practical statesmanship is such as to justify its cynical contempt of principles? and whether it is wise to condemn and discredit as ineffectual a policy which has never yet been tried?

It is because I believe that the work of Governments lies in providing for the full and undistributed action of the forces of freedom, instead of interfering themselves with their operation; and that our social disorders can only be remedied by pressing along the lines of progress, laid for us by Cobden and the League; that I view with pain and fear the morbid craving of our time after other agencies, in most of which may be detected, disguise it as we may, the germ of Communism, a fatal poison, tainting at their common source two of the most sacred springs of social life, personal liberty and personal responsibility.

June, 1869

L. M.

THE POLITICAL OPINIONS OF RICHARD COBDEN.

The time has not yet arrived for writing Cobden's life.

The great political struggles in which he engaged are still too fresh in the memory of the present generation, to admit of a faithful record of his political career, without including much which affects too closely the characters of public men still on the scene, or but recently removed from it; and of the last great achievement of his life, and his solitary official act, the Commercial Treaty with France, it is impossible yet to speak freely.

But it is on this account only the more important—and especially at a time when upon the conduct and intelligence of the Liberal party in this country it depends, whether the years before us are to bring with them a repetition of the inconsistencies and hesitations which have too often deformed and paralysed our recent course, or are to be a fruitful and brilliant period of rational and consistent progress—that the policy of which Cobden was the foremost representative, should at least be thoroughly understood and widely known.

It is therefore with a peculiar satisfaction that we hail the work before us, and we trust it may be shortly followed by a republication of his principal speeches, both in and out of Parliament, so far as these can be collected, and if possible by a selection of his letters, on the great practical questions of the day.

In bringing together, in a connected form, these political essays written on various subjects, on different occasions, and at wide intervals of time, but unsurpassed in cogency of reasoning, and in their truthful and temperate spirit, Mrs. Cobden has rendered a great service both to her husband's memory and to the rising generation of Englishmen.

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 forgotten 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 political doctrine more original, more profound, and more consistent, than is to be found in the spoken or written utterances of any other English statesman of our time, and we commend them to the earnest study and consideration 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 the last thirty years than Richard Cobden.

This will, we believe, be acknowledged by many of his countrymen, who would be slow to allow that the impression thus made had been for good, and who still regard him with open aversion or concealed suspicion, as one of the foremost and most powerful advocates of changes in our system of government, designed, as they believe and fear, to affect the security of vested interests, which they have been in the habit of identifying with the greatness and welfare of the State. But it cannot, we think, be denied even now that, in spite of the resistance of class interests, and of the avowed or tacit opposition of the great political parties, our national policy has been gravitating more and more in the direction of his views, and that, so far at least, whatever progress has been made in the national prosperity has been principally due to the steps which have been taken in fulfillment of his principles.

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 collision with all classes and with all parties, and, on some memorable occasions, with the body of the people themselves.

It is thus that he has been constantly charged with narrowness, and with hostility to the institutions of his country, too often confounded with its conservative forces, and cherished as such by many who are entitled to our respect, as well as by the ignorant and selfish; but it will be found that the charge is usually brought on the part of some class whose special interests he denounced or thwarted, or on the part of the nation at large, when the assumed national interest has been opposed to the larger interest of humanity. He has been accused of want of patriotism and indifference to the national honour and greatness, when, on the contrary, a deeper examination of his views will show, we think, that he was one of the few leading statesmen of our time who have exhibited a real practical faith in the future of England.

The public estimate, however, of this political leader has undergone, and is undergoing, a very remarkable change; and it is in the hope of aiding in a better understanding of principles which, from their soundness and close logical coherence, appear to us to afford the only consistent and intelligible ground for the policy of the Liberal party, that the following pages are written.

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 rôle 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 commercial house in London, and subsequently conducting on his own account a print manufactory in Lancashire, Mr. Cobden possessed the peculiar advantage 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 knowledge 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 Parliamentary 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 party, to play, for office, or to educate himself for professional statesmanship, 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 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.

We believe that the main cause of the hopeless failure of the great French Revolution, in the creation and consolidation of free institutions in Europe, was the absence, on the part of its leading spirits, of all sound knowledge of the order of facts upon which economic science rests, and the prevalence of false ideas of government, derived from classical antiquity.

Rousseau, who exercised a greater influence in bringing about the Revolution than any other man, and after him Mirabeau and Robespierre, the two great figures which represent and personify that mighty upheaval of society, were all fundamentally wrong in their conception of the right of property. This, instead of regarding as a right preceding all law, and lying at the root of all social existence, they considered simply as a creation of the law, which itself again derived its rights from a social compact, opposed in many respects to the natural rights of man. Society was thus made to rest upon the quicksand of human invention, instead of being fixed on the rock of God's providence; and law was made the source, instead of the guardian, of personal liberty and of private property.

Hence the disastrous shipwreck of a great cause, the follies and the crimes, the wild theories, the barren experiments, and the inevitable reaction. The principle invoked, the State, was stronger than those who appealed to it, and swallowed them up in a military despotism.

This false direction of ideas survived the Restoration, and when, after 1830, the intellect of France again addressed itself to social questions, it was with the same result. Saint Simon, Fourrier, Louis Blanc, and Proudhon are there to attest the deep-rooted perversion of thought which has hitherto made all free government impossible in France, and brought upon her again, for the second time, the stern hand of a military ruler, who, wiser than his uncle, while setting aside for a time other forms of liberty in France, has had the sagacity to perceive that, by entering upon even a partial and tentative course of material reform, he could evoke forces which have hitherto been strong enough to maintain him on his vantage-ground, against all the political parties opposed to him, dynastic and socialist, whose common hatred to him has been rendered impotent by the only other common bond between them, viz., their still deeper hatred of some of the most sacred rights of the human race—the rights of labour and of property. And even to this day what do we see? In spite of the terrible experience of nearly a hundred years of failure, French so-called Liberal leaders still ranged on the side of industrial monopoly and commercial privilege, and while clamouring for constitutional freedom, proving in the same breath their incapacity for using it, by denouncing that in which, at all events, the Emperor is entitled to the sympathy of the friends of progress—his commercial policy. Until the bourgeois class in Europe has learnt that no country can be free until the rights of its people are secured by free exchange, they will have to choose between the rival alternations of autocratic and socialistic misrule.

The great founder of the English school of political economy, who had witnessed himself in France the disorders which preceded the Revolution, and speculated on their causes, viewed them from another side. He instinctively perceived that, as all human society must rest upon a material foundation, it was to the laws of material progress that inquiry must be first directed, and that, before and beneath all systems of government and all schemes of public morality, there must lie the science of the “wealth of nations.” To the investigation of this science Adam smith devoted those years of patient and conscientious thought, to which we owe the treatise which has made his name immortal, and which, in spite of much that has been added and much that has been taken from it since, remains as a great storehouse of knowledge to the students of economic laws.

It is easy, however, to trace the habitual connection in the mind of smith, between the dry facts of science and the great social laws which alone give them life and meaning, and a belief in the steady natural gravitation of all the interests of our race towards order and moral progress.

The school of English economists who succeeded him appear to us to have too much lost sight of this necessary connection, and to have dwelt too exclusively on the phenomena of economic facts, as distinct and separate from their correlative moral consequences. To this cause, as well as to their partial and often inaccurate observation of those phenomena, we attribute the absence of adequate political results which has attended their teaching, the repugnance which their doctrines have too often excited in generous and ardent natures, and the consequent discredit of a science indispensable to the progress and prosperity of nations, and destined, perhaps more than any other branch of human knowledge, to reconcile the ways of God to man.

The mission of man in this world is to possess the earth and subdue it, and for this purpose to summon to his aid, and bring under his control, the external forces of nature. This task, hard and ungrateful at first, become lighter as it proceeds. Every natural force successively subdued to man's uses adds to the stock of gratuitous services which are the common possession of the race, and when the rights of property and labour are thoroughly established by universal freedom, and the services of man have thus secured their just remuneration, the inequalities which prevail in the conditions of human life, so far as they are the result of artificial, and not of natural, causes, will diminish and disappear more an more, till even the lowest classes in the social scale will be raised to a level of well-being hitherto unknown and unimagined.

The first great law of humanity is labour. “By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread.” From this there is no escape. The burden will be lightened, and reduced to a minimum, inconceivable to us at present, as the forces of nature are brought by science and industry more under the control of man; and it may be shifted, as it is, from the whole to a part of society, but the law remains.

It is this law, then, the law of labour, which lies at the root of all human life. Upon this foundation rests the whole fabric of society, religion, morals, science, art, literature — all that adorns or exalts existence. But if the law of labour is thus paramount and sovereign, it follows that its rights are sacred, and that there can be no permanent security for any society in which these are not protected. The rights of labour involve and comprehend the right of personal liberty, and the right of property. The first implies the free use of each man's powers and faculties; the second, an inalienable title to the products of his labour, in use or in exchange.

It is to the violation of the rights of labour and of property, thus identified, in all the various forms of human oppression and injustice, by force or by fraud, in defiance of law or in the name of law, that is to be traced the greatest part of the disorders and sufferings which have desolated humanity, and the unnecessary and unnatural inequalities in the condition of men.

It is to the assertion of these rights, and to the gradual ascendency of the opposing and equalising principles of justice and freedom, that the coming generations alone can look for a future which shall be better than the past.

“Il n'y a que deux moyens,” says Bastiat, “de se procurer less choses nécessaires à l'embellissement, et au perfectionnement de la vie—la production et la spoliation.” And again, “Propriété et spoliation, sœurs nées du même pére, Génie du Bien, et Génie du Mal, Salut et Fléau de la Société, Puissances qui se disputent depuis le commencement, l'empire et les destinées 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 association, political prejudice, and class interest, that many of the forms of spoliation are hardly recognized when disguised in the garb of a British institution, a party principle, 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 mightest 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 pretensions 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 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 (referred to above) that the material prosperity of nations is the only foundation of all progress, and that if this were 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 Established 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 have 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 impoverished 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 agricultural 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.

It is thus that, as the forces of progress are invariably found to act and reach 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 protection. Free Trade, or as Cobden called it, the International Law of the Almighty, which means the interdependence of nations, must bring with it the surest guarantee of peace, and peace inevitably leads to freer and freer commercial intercourse; and therefore, while there is no sadder page in the modern history of England than that which records the adoption of this 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 recognize the widespread evils of this pernicious law, and the fatal principles which lay at its roots, so did they now most dimly and imperfectly 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 coincidents which sometimes exercise so powerful an influence of 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.

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 inspiration. 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 Continent of Europe.

More than this, who can say what may not have been the effect on the minds of both these men, of the interchange of thoughts and opinions which freely passed between them?

In his brilliant history of the Anti-Corn-Law Leaugue, “Cobden et la Ligue,” Bastiat thus describes the movement 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 greatness of the interests which are there being discussed, the opposing 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 question 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.