ticks' CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE Cornell University Library DA 536.C65H68 Richard Cobden, the international man. 3 1924 028 029 688 The original of tliis bool< is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028029688 OL!N VZ"^ ^RY— f""''' " ATION JSl^E DUE ft|j^£^ f^^' ■ 1 CAVLORD rniNTEDlNU.S A. RICHARD COBDEN THE INTERNATIONAL MAN J. A. HQBSON AUTHOR OF "work AND WEALTH," "THE NEW PROTECTIONISM," ETC. WITH A PHOTOGRAVURE AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1919 (PMNTED IN GREAT BRITAIN) {All rights reservtd) CONTENTS FAOB LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS . . . . 7 POEM BY AN UNKNOWN AUTHOR IN HONOUR OF RICHARD COBDEN . . . . 8 PREFACE . . . . . ' . .9 CHAPTER I Cobden's Preparation for Politics . . .15 CHAPTER II CoBDEN AS Pamphleteer . . .26 CHAPTER III The Tour in Europe, 1846-7 . . .40 CHAPTER IV The Policy of Non-Intervention, 1850-2 . . 54 CHAPTER V Palmerstonian Foreign Policy . . -73 ^ CHAPTER VI The Crimean War . . . • .106 5 Contents CHAPTER VII PAGI Peace and Recovjkry . . . • • '35 CHAPTER VIII The China War and the Indian Mutiny . 192 CHAPTER IX An Interlude of Peace .... 233 CHAPTER X The French Treaty ..... 242 CHAPTER XI Correspondence, 1861-4 .... 278 CHAPTER XII The Civil War and the Sumner Letters . 331 CHAPTER XIII Cobden and Modern Internationalism . . 387 INDEX . . . . . . .411 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Bust of Cobden by Thomas Woolner, Sculptor and Poet ...... Frontispiece In the biography of Woolner written by his daughter, Amy Woolner, is the following letter to Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Tennyson, wife of the Poet-Laureate : "29 Welbeck St., W. "yii/y 27, 1865. "My Deak Mrs. Texnyson,— The Emperor has accepted my bust of Cobden and the correspondence on the subject is soon to be published in the papers. " RIost truly yours, "Thomas Woolnek." The Emperor was of course Napoleon III. The bust which he accepted was deposited in the Palace, Versailles. Duplicates of the bust were made by Woolner and are in Westminster Abbey and the National Portrait Gallery. FACING PAGH Arles Dufour . . . . . -44 FroMt a cayte-de-visiie. Henry Richard, 1812-88 . . . -58 From a cabinet photograph by Messrs. Elliott & Fry. John Bright, Richard Cobden, and Michel Chevalier 172 From a cartc-de-visite by Man jean of Paris. The Treaty of Commerce, i860 . . . 252 Group portrait of British and French politicians who were the immediate actors and agents in the framing of this treaty of commerce between France and England. It is the photographic work of Mr. Easthman of Manchester. The illuslration is from an engraving in the Illustrated London News for March i, 1862. Eugene Rouher, 1814-84 .... 258 From a carte-de-visite. Frederic Bastiat, 1801-50 .... 272 From an engraving. Charles Sumner, 1811-74 .... 332 From a photograph. "The Cobden Madonna" .... 388 A marble bas-relief, probai>ly by Pietro Lombardo, in the Ducal Palace at Venice, which bears that sobriquet because Cobden wrote his name on it in 1847. It commemorates the reduction of duties on corn during a severe famine in the reign of one of the Mocenighi towards the end of the fifteenth century. The End Papers are embellished by a reproduction of a portion of this bas-relief, showing Cobden's signature. Pure-hearted hero of a bloodless fight. Clean-handed captain in a painless ivar, Soary spirit, to the realms of truth and light. Where the just are ! If one poor cup cf ivater given shall have Due recognition in the Day of Dread, tAngels may welcome this one, for he gave iA nation bread. His bays are sullied by no crimson stain ; His battles cost no life, no land distressed ; The victory that closed the long campaign The vanquished blessed. No narroiu patriot bounded by the strand Of his ozvn isle, he led a nenv advance, And opened, ivith the olive-bj-anch in hand, The ports of France, Charming base hate of centuries to cease, And laying upon humble piles of Trade Foundation for that teeming reign of Peace For ivhich he prayed. This the sole blot on ivhich detraction darts, Willing to make his rounded fame decrease — That in his inmost soul and heart of hearts He ivorshipped Peace, But One blessed Peacemakers long years ago ,■ And since, in common clay, or stately vault. Seldom has Hero rested, stained by so Superb a fault. Author Unknown. PREFACE The close attachment of the name of Richard Cobden to the overthrow of the protective system and the establish- ment of Free Trade in our fiscal arrangements has tended to obscure the wider policy of international relations which this great achievement was designed to serve. Even if we add to the six strenuous years of his Anti Corn-Law agitation, crowned by the Act of repeal, the later negotia- tion of the French Commercial Treaty, we cover but a single section of his ever-widening activity for the realiza- tion of sound principles of foreign policy. Cobden was first and always what his French comrade, Emile de Girardin, called him, " an international man." His foreign, policy was couched in the single term " non-intervention." Protective tariffs and other trade impediments were condemned, not merely or mainly because they made food dear and otherwise impaired the production of national wealth, but because they interfered with the free and friendly intercourse of different nations, bred hostility of interests, stimulated hostile preparations, and swallowed up those energies and resources of each nation that were needed for the cultivation of the arts of peaceful progress. Non-intervention may appear to some a cold and negative and a wholly insufficient conception of interna- tionalism. To Cobden, however, it was the only safe and sure condition for the play of the positive forces of human sympathy and solidarity between the members of different political communities. Let Governments cease to inter- fere and then peoples will discover and maintain friendly 9 Preface intercourse, first in the mutual interchange of goods and services for the satisfaction of their common needs, then in growing co-operation for all the higher purposes of life. Foreign statecraft, as he saw it throughout history and in his own time and country, was little else than a mischievous interference with the natural harmony of peoples. The keystone of our foreign poUcy was a balance of Powers conceived as essentially hostile to one another ; the conduct of that policy was in the hands of an aristocratic caste governed by dynastic traditions and working by secret diplomatic methods wholly divorced from popular influence and interests. Cobden saw how easy it was for an ambitious or bellicose statesman to appeal to the fighting spirit of our people by the pursuit of a spirited poHcy directed, now against the aggressive inten- tions imputed to our traditional enemy France, now against the rising menace of Russia, and again for the punishment of some injury or insult imputed to some weaker State — Turkey, Greece, China or Japan. His parliamentary career virtually coincided with the Palmerstonian era, in which began to sprout the seeds of the modern imperialism, distinguished from the earlier processes of territorial aggrandizement by the plainer and more conscious action of commercial and financial interests handling the levers of State policy. More widely travelled than any other British statesman of his time, Cobden had concerned himself far more closely with the material and industrial conditions of the different countries which he rightly regarded as the chief con- siderations in the art of good government, and viewed with intense suspicion and contempt the dangerous super- ficialities of the Foreign Offices of Europe. His writings, speeches and letters, furnish the fullest and most enlightened commentary upon our foreign and imperial policy during the long period of Victorian 10 Preface history which comprised sucli critical events as the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny in our own afFairs, the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy, the American Civil War and the early stages in the development of the supremacy of Prussia in Germany. This volume does not pretend to give this commentary in its completeness. It was designed, in the first instance., to rescue the memory of Cobden from the narrow mis- interpretations to which it has of late been subjected, by giving stronger emphasis^o h.\s international work. For this purpose it is proposed to publish collections, from his correspondence which either had not been printed before, or which had not been made accessible to the general public. The most important of the new material consists in the close correspondence between Cobden and the Rev. Henry Richard, for many years Secretary of the Peace Society, an active editorial writer in the Morning Star, and, after Cobden's death. Member of Parliament for Merthyr for twenty years. Cobden's letters to Mr. Richard date from 1849 to 1865, and, with certain gaps, form a pretty continuous and searching commentary upon every aspect of our foreign and im- perial policy during that period, with a comprehensive survey of the damaging backstrokes which the Palmer- stonian policy dealt to British Liberalism and the cause of peace, retrenchment and reform with which it had been associated. His early labours for the reduction of competing armaments, the new cause of international arbitration and the abolition of the right of " capture at sea" of mercantile vessels and cargoes, and other *' pacific " causes to which his voice and pen were con- stantly addicted, are discussed in these letters with a freedom and enthusiasm which throw fresh light upon his public career as well as upon the inner history of these movements. Not less profitable are the numerous II Preface passing criticisms upon the new power of the popular Press and the abuses to which it was exposed, and the failure of Lancashire and Yorkshire Radicalism, after the Free Trade success, to respond to the new demands of democratic progress. The dangers which lay in the refusal of our people to realize that the enlargement of communica- tions and trade intercourse with the outside world meant that the key to every cause of internal reform lay in the control of Foreign PoHcy, were continually in the fore- front of Cobden's mind. No man of his time realized so clearly how a tacit conspiracy of the leaders of the two great parties operated to support militarism, the Balance of Power and a spirited foreign policy, so as to absorb the money, men and interest needed for home development. Though these letters, for the use of which I am indebted to the courtesy of Miss Evans, a niece of Mr. Richard, form the staple of many of these chapters, I have made large use of other material, partly speeches and published essays, partly letters, most of which have been published already either in the standard " Life " by Lord Morley or in less-known and less-accessible works, such as the " Reminiscences of Richard Cobden " by Mrs. Salis Schwabe, the Anti Corn-Law Circulars, and the Ameri- can Historical Review. From this last source are recovered several long and valuable letters written to the American statesman Charles Sumner, and which, with others lying in the collection in the Harvard Library and hitherto unpublished, furnish an important commentary upon the international aspects of the American Civil War, and in particular upon the opinions and sympathies of the various sections of the British people in that critical time. For the arrangements for transcribing these letters we are indebted to the courtesy of the late Professor Charles Eliot Norton. 12 Preface Though Cobden was no friend to formal political alliances, he may be said to be the first English statesman who fully realized the importance of our people cultivating the clpsest friendship with the peoples of the United States upon the one hand, and of France upon the other. More clearly and much earlier than others, he foresaw the rapid rise of the commercial and political status of the great Western Republic and the part she was destined to play in the spheres of world commerce and world politics, and he realized the importance of cultivating good relations with this powerful blood-relation and neighbour. But even more significant was the per- sistence of his efforts to bring our Government and people into friendly relations with those of France, and to dissipate those clouds of suspicion which ignorance, pugnacity and mistaken interests were constantly jgenerating. Cobden was perhaps the first English ■statesman who expressed a desire for an entente cordiale between our people and the French, and the Com- mercial Treaty which he negotiated was the first valid act in bringing about that permanent improvement of rela- tions which, with one or two brief relapses, has lasted for more than half a century. While Cobden's international doctrines and activities ire chiefly set forth in letters, speeches and extracts from his pamphlets, arranged with brief introductory notes, I have thought it worth while in an introductory and a con- duding chapter to attempt some appraisal and interpreta- don of his internationalism in the light of subsequent jvents and the changes of policy to which these events dnd reflection upon them have brought most of those who to-day regard themselves as internationalists. 13 RICHARD COBDEN THE INTERNATIONAL MAN CHAPTER I COBDEN'S PREPARATION FOR POLITICS The process of "settlement" to which the reputation of . great public man is subjected after he has passed away 3 almost inevitably attended by grave misrepresentations. The commonest form of that misrepresentation consists n dramatizing some single episode, or aspect, of his areer and in assigning it to him as his sole and exclusive Toperty. The career of Richard Cobden lent itself with eculiar facility to this popular falsification. For though is public life was one of numerous and varied activities, is direct contribution to positive and concrete statecraft y almost entirely within the special field of commercial berty with which his name is commonly associated. ew great public men in any age or country have by leir own personal effort contributed so largely to the tmplete achievement of any great national policy as obden contributed to Free Trade. For though he had )werful coadjutors, two at least of whom figured with ual prominence in the eye of contemporaries, John •ight on the platform and in the House of Commons, ;el as the executant minister of the reform, popular linion decided that Cobden was the determinant per- nal influence, and posterity has recorded this judgment 15 Richard Cobden : The International iviai by fastening upon the Free Trade movement the titl " Cobdenism." This has secured imperishable fame fo Cobden, but at a heavy expense to the true greatness o the man and of the wider statecraft which he sough to make prevail. The misrepresentation has been twofold and con- flicting. On the one hand, he has been charged witl a narrow and grovelling commercialism ; on the other, with a vague cosmopolitan idealism. The prolonged revival of fiscal controversy during the last fifteei years has familiarized our generation with these in consistent presentations of Cobden and the Free Trad doctrines and policy of which he was the most successfu exponent. The first view shows us Cobden and his Man Chester School reducing the whole of politics, including the honour and the vital interests of his country, to terms of trade and money-making, conducted under the singi principle of buying in the cheapest and selling in tli dearest market. Government was simply to stand asid and keep a ring within which this sordid struggle of tl material interests of individuals, classes and nations wi to take place, on the assumption that its outcome wouli be the maximum of wealth and material prosperity. No was it really, these critics commonly contended, an equj regard for the material interests of all classes of tl people that underlay the policy. It was the interes of the manufacturers as against the " landed interests, and the interests of Capital as against Labour in the mani factures. Even cheap food, the prime motive for t repeal of the Corn Laws, was chiefly valued as the nec( sary means of keeping money-wages and costs of pr duction in the new manufacturing districts so low as enable our cotton and other exported goods to hold ai to extend their world-markets. Even those who J aware that Cobden personally neglected a thriving bu i6 Cobden's Preparation for Politics ness of his own and incurred heavy pecuniary sacrifices in following a political career, have often stigmatized him as dominated by the commercial interests and aspirations of the new ambitious business class, the product of the industrial revolution, which sought to displace the aris- tocracy and to impose upon their country a definitely "business government." Others, or often the same men in a different mood, fastening upon his enthusiasm for free commerce as the great pacific and harmonizing influence in international relations, the intrinsic logic and morality of which was destined at no distant time to banish the fear of war and to liberate the forces of human brotherhood, derided him as a dangerous visionary who ignored the lessons of history, and believed in the rapid establishment of a millennium of peace and pros- perity for all the peoples of the world. Now each of these opposing views is a travesty of the truth, though taken together they tend towards a recog- nition of the truth. Cobden did strongly believe that the prosperous middle-class business men were the chief present instruments of political and social progress, and that the more power they had the better. Their pros- perity was certain, by the operation of laws as moral as they were economic, to redound to the advantage of their fellow-men, both their own employees, the nation of whom they were a part, and, through the operation of free commerce and communications, to humanity at large. Capital had no separate interest from Labour, the accumulation of savings for profitable employment increased the wage-fund and improved the condition of labour. If the political and economic power and privileges of landlordism could be curbed, ■by removing food taxes and making land more acces- 'sible to those who could use it, it all legal or other obstructions to the free movement, sale and employment 17 B Richard Cobden : The International Man of capital and labour could be removed, the enlightened self-interest, primarily of the manufacturers and com- mercial men, would tend to a production and a .dis- tribution of wealth among the various classes of the community which would, by giving a solid basis of industry and material prosperity, afford a new leverage to all the forces of civilization. In mind, as in the concrete conditions of his policy, Cobden was necessarily to a large extent the creature of his age. That age was pre-eminently and some- what hardly utilitarian and rationalistic in its thought and endeavours. The new power of machinery as the instrument of wealth and social changes, coin- ciding with the rapid extension of scientific conceptions to human character and history, brought in the early nineteenth century among the educated classes an im- mense and excessive confidence in the pace and thorough- ness with which great political and social transformations could be accomplished. The revolutionary rationalism, of Godwin, Shelley and the youthful Coleridge, still survived in the more austere and complex political philosophy of Bentham and his school of philosophic Radicals, while the widespread enthusiasm with which the amazingly audacious proposals of Robert Owen for a New Mora! World was greeted, not by ignorant mobs but by persons of responsibility and learning, testifies to an extraordinary fervour of rationalistic idealism. In this confidence in enlightened self-interest, operating first on the material plane, there was nothing really base, or selfish in the bad sense, or fundamentally materialistic, for below all immediate appeals to individual self-interest there lay a law of social harmony. It was to this general body of thought, contained in definite principles, that Richard Cobden from his youth steadily adhered, and the consistency and energy of his public work wen l8 Cobden's Preparation for Politics attributable mainly to the powerful and vivid appre- hension of these principles. Most politicians are primarily opportunists, and, even If they sincerely entertain general principles, discover that they are seldom able to apply them with any measure of severity. Cobden was not in this sense an oppor- tunist. He__insisted upon a degree of intellectual and moral jconsistency in^he application .of principles which, while precluding him from office and the^ direct e'xefcise of governmental power, made him ^powerfully in- vigorating and "educative influence in his age, and in one important sphere of policy enabled him to achieve remarkable results. An enthusiast for principles is almost of necessity an optimist, not only as regards the ultimate fate of humanity, but as regards the pace at which ideas can be realized. In a concluding chapter I shall discuss more fully the causes which have obstructed the suc- cessful advance of Cobden's principles. It is here sufficient to recognize how untrue is the suggestion that Cobden was an ordinary middle-class politician whose success consisted in the stubborn pursuit of a commercial policy accommodated Xo the ideas of his time and the interests of his class, or that he was a wild dreamer who led his country into dangerous dependence upon foreigners in pursuit of a vague vision of cosmopolitanism. It is true, as Lord Morley recognizes, that Cobden was an optimist tempera- mentally, as well as by intellectual conviction. " In his intrepid faith in the perfectibility of man and of Society, Cobden is the only eminent practical statesman that this country has ever possessed, who constantly breathes the fine spirit of that French School in which the name of Turgot Is the most illustrious." i I " Lite of Cobden," i. p. 94 (Jubilee Edition). 19 Richard Cobden : The International Man If man will only believe and apply the doctrine of mutual aid, his perfectability and that of Society are evidently attainable. And so the central principle of Cobden is that of the harmony of men, irrespective of political, racial, or linguistic barriers, by means of organized mutual aid. " 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 concord- ance 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 impossible to understand the character and political career of Cobden, or the part which his Free Trade activities play in his policy, without a firm grasp of this guiding and ruling principle. Cobden was not, as he is sometimes represented, a commercial gentleman who came to elevate to the dignity of an international principle a policy of free exchange which he valued in the first instance as good for his country, and then by implication and extension good for the world at large. It is quite true that early in his public career he came to the conviction that free importation was essential to the trade and human prosperity of his country, and that it was the chief key to a sound foreign policy. But this policy was always conceived as belonging to a wider philosophy of human relations which for our immediate purpose may be summarized as non-intervention. That term, however, though useful for some purposes as in- volving a fixed and consistent protest against governmental and other interference with human beings in the peaceful pursuit of their own material and moral interests, does ' " Cobden's Work and Opinions," by Lord Welby, p. i8. 20 Cobden's Preparation for Politics not convey the full meaning of the positive body of thought which Cobden had absorbed from such thinkers as Adam Smith and his own personal friend Combe. The conception of a reign of law, which, on the one hand, related the physical and moral structure of man to his history and environment, on the other, built up an ordered scheme of human society, operating by free social intercourse, and dependent upon the co-operation of diverse tastes and capacities in different material surroundings, came as a captivating revelation to thoughtful men of the early nineteenth century. This free human co-operation, transcending the limits of nationality and race, was the positive force, intellectual and emotional, of which non-intervention was the nega- tive condition. The reason why the latter term and the meaning it conveyed came to have so much importance was the impulsion which the new social thought gave to the political and economic campaign of liberation. Re- move the fetters and obstructions which governments, laws, and customs have placed upon the free play of the harmonious forces which bind man to man, let their real community of interest have full sway to express itself in economic, intellectual and moral intercourse, the false antagonisms which now divide nations, classes and indi- viduals, will disappear and a positive harmony of man- kind be established. So the removal of barriers upon human intercourse came to have the value of an actually constructive policy, liberating as it did the forces of social harmony to weave their own pattern of human co- operation. Wealth, security, happiness and every form of progress were to be won in this war of liberation. To modern men and women it may seem strange that this policy should be conceived so exclusively or primarily in terms of governmental non-intervention. There are so many other modes of human oppression and 21 Richard Cobden : The International Man inequality, especially within the national areas. It seems difficult to us to realize how acute and public-spirited statesmen like Cobden, Bright and Gladstone, should have lived a long public life without recognizing in the dis- tribution of the ownership of land and capital, the control and motivation of industry and the visible class cleavages thus created, social diseases even deeper seated than those which engaged their reforming energies. But we must remember that the intellectual atmosphere of early nine- teenth-century politics was filled with the spirit of revolt against what were considered artificial restrictions upon individual liberty imposed by class governments, and with a profound conviction that enlightened self- interest operating through free contract or free competi- tion was the true instrument of individual progress and of social harmony. It is true that there were various sorts of bondage to be broken, that which a State Church set upon the religious spirit of man, the bondage of ignorance and vice in a country where education was a monopoly of the well-to-do, the political and social tyranny exercised by the aristocracy as landowners, legislators and dis- pensers of justice. The Liberalism into which Cobden grew was by no means blind to these great needs, and all through his public life his sympathies responded power- fully to these reforming notes. But while, as Lord Morley says, " he never ceased to be the preacher of a philosophy of civilization," his personal experience, his demand for practical achievement, and his sense of order in progress, early determined his personal contribution to the great cause. That contribution was not Free Trade, but internationalism. Free Trade, though driven home to him by his early experiences of life as a great national need, soon took its proper place in his thought and heart as the instrument and vehicle of internation- 22 Cobden's Preparation for Politics alism. Sometimes this policy has been described as cosmopolitan. But if this signifies that Cobden was indifferent to the sentiment of national patriotism, or thought that one country was just as good as another, the appellation is singularly ill-applied. Widely travelled as he was, and appreciative of the qualities of many foreign nations, Cobden always remained in personal tastes and sympathies profoundly English. Moreover, his internationalism was intellectually, as well as emo- tionally, an application of the principles of national self- interest, and of the human obligation under which a nation more enlightened and more advanced in the arts of government and commerce lay to extend by pacific means to other peoples its own advantages. To stigmatize the doctrine of non-intervention, on the other hand, as a selfish nationalism, is equally mistaken. Cobden's early travels upon the Continent of Europe and in America, in which definitely business objects were combined with wider political and social studies, contributed to give substance to what otherwise might have remained merely general opinions and aspirations. Alike as a Free Trader and an International Man, he enjoyed great advantages over other statesmen by reason of the wider and closer knowledge of the condition of the people in his own and other countries which he gained in the formative period of his life. The cotton trade, which he entered as a clerk when fifteen years old, was doubly rooted in internationalism, drawing its mate- rials entirely from foreign soil, and dependent, as it soon became, for its prosperity and profits upon the expansion of its world markets. When with two friends he first entered business on his own account as a commission agent for calico-printers, soon afterwards to undertake the work of calico-printing itself, he was filled with the 23 Richard Cobden : The International Man enthusiasm which greeted everywhere the miraculous rise of Lancashire as the great exporting area. His early years, as commercial traveller, had given him an intimate knowledge of his own country, includ- ing Scotland and Ireland, and, as soon as circumstances permitted, he took to foreign travel, partly for business, partly for relaxation, but largely for social and political information. Though a certain amount of foreign travel for pleasure, perhaps a grand tour, formed part of the equipment of a good many active young members of the governing classes, it may be safely asserted that no man of his time entered the House of Commons with so sound a knowledge of the world at large as Cobden brought when he entered Parliament at the age of thirty-seven. He had not merely passed along the ordinary paths of continental travel in France, Germany and Switzerland, but had visited Spain, Turkey, Egypt and Greece, and had formed from close contact with many places and many men first-hand views of the determinant factors of that Eastern Question which was destined to obtrude itself so often and in such impressive ways upon the foreign policy of his time. The close interdependence of economic and political conditions was a persistent underlying object of study, and vitalized the conceptions of international politics which formed the matter of his earliest political essays. His early European travels were reinforced by a tour in the United States, then almost a terra incognita to our educated classes, save for the casual caricatures of a i^Yi literary tourists like Dickens and Mrs. Trollope. Mere extent of travel is, of course, in itself no index of an international mind. But Cob- den's diaries, selections from which are printed in some chapters of Lord Morley's "Life," show what care he took, not only to gather and record information, but to digest it into general judgments. He got on well with 24 Cobden's Preparation for Politics foreigners, because they found in him none of the ill- concealed contempt or censorious superiority which galled them in the ordinary British visitor. Americans par- ticularly of that period were properly resentful of what Lowell a generation later termed " a certain condescension in foreigners," and they were especially sensitive to such treatment from Englishmen. Cobden had sympathy and admiration for the spirit of hustle which he found in their country. " Great as was my previous esteem for the qualities of this people, I find myself in love with their intelligence, their sincerity, and the decorous .self- respect that actuates all classes. The very genius of activity seems to have found its fit abode in the souls of this restless and energetic race. They have not, 'tis true, the force of Englishmen in personal weight or strength, but they have compensated for that deficiency by quickening the momentum of their enterprise." ' This was his characteristic attitude of mind, to pay chief attention to the natural or human qualities, powers and opportunities, which distinguished the several nations and countries that he visited. For it was these differences of soil, situation, climate, and of the human nature and activities which they educated and evoked, that formed the true basis of that international co-operation which he sought to promote. It was this simple lesson Cobden never tired of teaching as the essence of sound international policy. ^ Morley's "Life,"i. p. 39. 25 CHAPTER II COBDEN AS PAMPHLETEER It is important to recognize that very early in his public life Cobden had grasped the full connection between the negative and the positive aspects of the policy of non- intervention ; how, on the one hand, by feeding inter- national intercourse it brought increase of wealth, security, knowledge and goodwill, while, on the other, it cut out the roots of class monopolies, political corruption, and imperialistic ambition with their attendant dangers and extravagances in home policy. His first literary produc- tion, the pamphlet entitled " England, Ireland, and America," pubHshed in 1835 by "A Manchester Manu- facturer," is valuable evidence that this broad current of political thought upon the connections between home and foreign policy possessed his mind long before he had devoted himself to the specific agitation for Free Trade. It was the imminent and constantly recurring peril of a policy of diplomatic and forcible interference with the conduct of other countries, partly in obedience to a false and dangerous doctrine of Balance of Power, partly in pursuit of territorial aggrandizement, that called forth this early draft of Cobdenism. The immediate object ot the pamphlet was to refute a pamphlet written by Mr, Urquhart, formerly Secretary of the English Embassy at Constantinople, containing an argued as well as an impas- sioned appeal to our Government to intervene for the 26 Cobden as Pamphleteer protection of Turkey against the alleged aggressive designs of Russia. This was part of a prolonged, and in the end successful, attempt to embroil this country and France with Russia as claimant to the heritage of the Turk and to the future hegemony of Asia. Cobden, after a scathing indictment of the misrule of the Sultan, driven home by careful illustrations of the waste and destruction to which many of the most productive coun- tries of the East were committed, asks what interest we can have to interfere for the protection of the Turk gainst a nation whose economic and commercial policy is at least far more enlightened than that of the Sultan, and whose trade and goodwill are of far greater value to us. He then grapples directly with the fallacy which assumes that territorial annexations are normal and natural additions of strength which would make Russia a more formidable neighbour. The argument he uses is as relevant to-day as then, and the illustrations as apt. " Supposing Russia or Austria to be in possession of the Turkish dominions, would she not find her attention and resources far too abundantly occupied in retaining the sovereignty over fifteen millions of fierce and turbu- lent subjects, animated with warlike hatred to their conqueror, and goaded into rebellion by the all-powerful impulse of a haughty and intolerant religion, to con- template adding still further to her embarrassments by declaring war on England and giving the word of march to Hindostan .' Who does not perceive that it could not, for ages at least, add to the external power of either of these States, if she were to get possession of Turkey by force of arms .? Is Russia stronger abroad by her recent perfidious incorporation of Poland .? Would Holland increase her power if she were to reconquer the Belgian provinces to-morrow? Or, to come to our own door, for example, was Great Britain more powerful whilst, for 27 Richard Cobden : The International Man centuries, she held Ireland in disaffected subjection to her rule, or was she not rather weakened by offering, in the sister island, a vulnerable point of attack to her continental enemies ? " i He then proceeds to open out the double- headed folly of pursuing this dangerous "spirited policy" in Europe to the neglect of the two great tasks which should rightly claim our immediate attention — the pacification and development of Ireland and the cultivation of sound com- mercial relations with the rising power of the United States. On both these matters he draws upon a rich fund of practical knowledge and a large imaginative statecraft. The crippling of Irish trade, the imposition of a cosdy alien Church, the servile land system, the degrading Poor Law, the lack of capital for railway and manufacturing development, all the vices of a neglected dependency, he lays bare with unsparing truth, ending with this searching question : " Does not the question of Ireland, in every point of view, offer the strongest possible argument against the national policy of this country, for the time during which we have wasted our energies and squandered our wealth upon all the nations of the Continent, whilst a part of our own Empire, which, more than all the rest of Europe, has needed our attention, remains to this hour an appalling monument of our neglect and misgovern- ment ?"^ The concluding section of the pamphlet is devoted to an exposition of the growing economic strength of the United States, and the importance of pursuing a more enlightened policy, alike in foreign and domestic affairs, if we are to cope successfully with her ascendancy. Here Cobden appeals to national pride as well as to the pocket. In his desire to prove that we had better occupy our minds with what is happening on the other side of the Atlantic, instead of meddling on the Continent, ' " Political Writings," i. p. 20. = Ibid. i. p. 74.. 28 Cobden as Pamphleteer he commits himself to a theory of trade rivalry which is not, it will be recognized, in accord with the fuller prin- ciple of commercial internationalism which he developed later on. Contrasting the rapid development of their national resources and their business policy in manufacture and in transport, their attention to education, the growth of their press, with the slow and reluctant steps taken in these directions by our Government and ruling classes, and dwelling on their lighter taxation and their immunity from militarism and the crushing burden of war debts, he appeals to the policy of non-intervention as the only one which will enable us to hold our own in the coming commercial struggle with this new power which sees its greatness not in terms of forcible conquest and territorial aggression, but in economic domination. " It is to the industry, the economy, and peaceful policy of America, and not to the growth of Russia, that our statesmen and politicians, of whatever creed, ought to direct their anxious study ; for it is by these, and not by the efforts of barbarian force, that the power and greatness of England are in danger of being superseded ; yes, by the successful rivalry of America, shall we, in all probability, be placed second in the rank of nations." ^ An even more striking testimony to the breadth, independence and maturity of Cobden's thought, before he quitted business for politics, is found in the extended argument of his pamphlet on " Russia," published in 1836. It was evoked by the alarm of a Russian in- vasion which prevailed that year, and was made the occasion of an increase in our navy of five thousand men and of a carefully fomented demand for military preparations. Its method of appeal is the best illus- tration of the working of Cobden's mind in politics, his insistence upon applying to the ideas and catchwords ' Op. cit. p. 78. 29 Richard Cobden : The International Man by which interested politicians sway the popular mind the test of facts and the interpretation of common sense. While he displays considerable subtlety and learning in unravelling and exposing the sophistry of the statecraft, the positive principles and policy he seeks to substitute are few, simple and obvious. Though suggested by a passing stroke of peril and primarily fitted to the occasion, it is intended to arouse deeper and more permanent reflections, and stands as his ablest and fullest formal exposition ot the foreign policy of non-intervention. The opening chapter directly challenges the Russophobe on the interest of England in the Eastern Question. By a comparison of the political and economic institu- tions of Russia and Turkey, Cobden confutes the arguments of those who pretend that our commerce, our colonies and our national existence, are imperilled by the encroachments of Russia upon the Turkish Empire in Europe or in Asia. After various citations from accepted authorities to show what Turkish govern- ment has actually meant for the countries which have fallen under its sway, and what are the present conditions and the prospects of Russia as a country rapidly emerging from barbarism and equipped with the physical and spiritual potentialities of Western civilization, he poses in a brilliant passage the salient question " Whether it is really a danger and a detriment to England that Russia should displace the Ottoman Powers ? " He refuses to decide whether Russia is herself justified in undertaking this career of aggrandizement, narrowing the issue to that of British policy in intervention. The consequences of Russian conquest would, he contends, be favourable to humanity and civilization. " Can any one doubt that, if the Government of St. Petersburg were transferred to the shores of the Bosphorus, a 30 Cobden as Pamphleteer splendid and substantial European city would, in less than twenty years, spring up in the place of those huts which now constitute the capital of Turkey ? that noble public buildings would arise, learned societies flourish and the arts prosper ? that, from its natural beauties and advantages, Constantinople would become an attractive resort for educated Europeans? that the Christian religion, operating instantly upon the laws and institutions of the country, would ameliorate the con- ditions of its people r that the slave market, which is now polluting the Ottoman capital centuries after the odious traffic has been banished from the soil of Christian Europe, would be abolished ? that the demoralizing and unnatural laws of polygamy, under which the fairest portion of the creation becomes an object of brutal lust and an article of daily traffic, would be discontinued ? and that the plague, no longer fostered by the filth and indolence of the people, would cease to ravage countries placed in the healthiest latitudes and blessed with the finest climate in the world ? " " Would such beneficent changes be detrimental to this country ? Although Russia is a relatively backward country in commercial policy, it is far more advanced than Turkey, and we might reasonably expect a sub-, stantial development both of the raw materials of Turkey and of her markets for foreign produce. The great gains of such material development Russia could not keep to herselr. Even supposing, however, that Russia, by apathy or misgovernment, failed to develop and civilize her growing territories, that failure would bring no menace to such a country as England, whose power, as compared with that of Russia, would be continually advancing by virtue of the fact that trade and wealth are the sinews of political and even military power." " If that people were to attempt to exclude all foreign 31 Richard Cob den : The International Man traffic, they would enter at once upon the high road to barbarism, for which career there is no danger threatened to rich and civilized nations ; if, on the other hand, that State continued to pursue a system favourable to foreign trade, then England will be found at Constantinople, as she has already been at St. Petersburg, reaping the greatest harvest of riches and power, from the augmen- tation of Russian imports." In the latter part of this chapter Cobden deals with the charge of aggrandizement brought by us against Russia, by bringing home the humorous effrontery of such a charge made by a nation which " during the last hundred years has, for every square league of territory annexed by Russia by force, violence, or fraud, appropriated to herself three." If we find our justification in the claim to have imposed order and material improvements with some measure of justice upon our enlarged empire, Russia may reasonably make a similar claim for the provinces in Europe and Asia which she has annexed. This contention Cobden presses home by a compre- hensive examination of the case of Poland, to which he devotes the second chapter of his treatise. Here he traverses the accepted stories of the wrongs and injuries inflicted upon that country by its dismemberment. The annals of republican Poland, for a century prior to its dismemberment, were, he contends, a history of anarchy, due to the intestine strife of the despotic gangs of nobles who owned and ruled the country, to the religious discords which rent the people, and to the recurrence of plague and famine, the natural train of incessant warfare. Poland, as a nation, never had its independ- ence, and so could not lose it. Its dismemberment " has been followed by an increase in the amount of peace, wealth, liberty, civilization and happiness, enjoyed by the great mass of the people. Slavery no longer exists 32 Cobden as Pamphleteer in Poland, the peasant is for the first time safe in life and limb, with liberty to plough his soil for his own advantage. Roads, bridges and other improvements have been introduced by Russia, and the Polish people, though far from prosperous, have enjoyed many benefits by their change of Government." The insurrection ot 1830, commonly adduced to prove the oppression of Russia, is assigned by Cobden as the result of the instigation of the Polish aristocracy who, for their own selfish benefit, plunged their nation into the horrors of civil war by playing upon the sentiments of patriotism and nationality, i Having thus disposed ot the perils from Russia by a candid appeal to facts, and being unable " to discover one single ground upon which to find a pretence, consistent with reason, common sense, or justice, for going to war with Russia," Cobden then embarks upon a broader examination of the foundations of our international policy, as couched under the vague and fallacious phrase " Balance of Power." He shows, first, that international jurists and statesmen have never agreed as tothe meaning of the term, applied to any Union or disposition of European Powers, and that no state of things corresponding to the meaning anywhere assigned to it has ever existed. He then shows that there is no agreed, or indeed possible, definition or measure of the "power" according to which the several state-claims shall be estimated, and finally that any such '* balance," were it established, would be inoperative, ' Here Cobden gives naive expression to his surprise that common people should prefer a bad government by members of their own race to a better government by foreigners. " Patriotism," as he remarks, " or nationality, is an instinctive virtue, that sometimes burns the brightest in the rudest and least reasoning minds ; and its manifestation bears no proportion to the value of possessions defended, and the object to be gained " (" Political Writings," i. p. 178). 33 c Richard Cobden : The International Man because no provision could be made against " the peaceful aggrandizements which spring from improvement and labour." Next, he exposes the inconsistency of invoking such a theory in the case of Russian encroachment upon Turkey, as if Turkey were a part of the balance, while the United States and Brazil, whose wealth, position and striking power are far greater, were excluded from the " balance." The utter irrationality of alarms based upon balance of power is thus exposed. " Russia, in possession of Constantinople, say the alarmists, would possess a port open at all seasons ; the materials for constructing ships ; vast tracts of fertile land, capable of producing cotton, silk, wool, etc. ; and she would be placed in a situation of easy access to our shores — all of which would tend to destroy the Balance of Power, and put in danger the interests of British commerce in particular. But New York, a port far more commodious than Constantinople, is open at all seasons ; the United States possess materials without end for shipbuilding ; their boundless territory of fertile land is adapted for the growth of cotton, silk, wool, etc., and New York is next door to Liverpool ; for — thanks to Providence ! — there is no land intervening between the American continent and the shores of this United Kingdom. Yet we have never heard that the North American Continent forms any part of the Balance of Power!"! To America he appeals as the great witness for his gospel of non-intervention, and for the true interna- tionalism which is its natural consequence, summarizing his lesson in the pregnant apothegm : "As little intercourse as possible between the Governments ; as much connection as possible between the nations of the world." The final chapter of his pamphlet sets forth the right conditions of such international connection by peaceful and free inter- ' P. 210. 34 Cobden as Pamphleteer change of goods and services. To what are we indebted for the recent growth of our commerce ? Is it to terri- torial aggrandizement and the protection of a powerful navy ? Not at all. The costs and risks of a colonial mercantilism sustained by force of arms have been suffi- ciently exposed by history. " Men-of-war to conquer colonies, to yield us a monopoly of their trade, must now be dismissed, like many other equally glittering but false adages of our forefathers, and in its place we must sub- stitute the more homely but enduring maxim Cheapness, which will command commerce ; and whatever else is needful will follow in its train." ' This reliance upon cheapness and quality ot goods, as the mainstay of sound relations between peoples, means that every increase of trade, instead of requiring an increase of warlike armaments in its defence, itself fur- nishes an improved safeguard against the dangers of war. So we come to recognize the positive pacific virtues of free commerce. " The standing armies and navies — whilst they cannot possibly protect our commerce, while they add by the increase of taxation to the cost of our manufactures, and thus augment the difficulty of achieving the victory of ' cheapness ' — tend to deter rather than attract customers. The feeling is natural ; it is under- stood in the individual concerns of life. Does the shop- keeper, when he invites buyers to his counter, place there as a guard to protect his stock or defend his salesmen from violence a gang of stout fellows armed with pistols and cutlasses ? " Liberate commerce, cheapen its pro- duction, extend its flow, you place international relations upon a safe, reasonable and advantageous footing, and relieve nations from the perils and wastes of those strifes which come from governmental conduct dictated by obsolete and false conceptions of the antagonism of States. ' Op, cit, p. 22 1. 35 Richard Cobden : The International Man Wanted a foreign policy in which the common sense of statesmen expresses the general interests of peoples. " And how long will it be before the policy of this manu- facturing and commercial nation shall be determined by at least as much calculation and regard for self-interest as are necessary to the prosperity of a private business? Not until such time as Englishmen apply the same rules of common sense to the affairs of the State as they do to their individual undertakings." Thus we perceive that, before the establishment of the Anti Corn-Law League in 1838, and several years before his entry into Parliament, Cobden had by travel and reflection acquired the principles and policy of that inter- nationalism which throughout his long public life directed and dominated his conduct. That internationalism had two aspects. The first was governmental non-interven- tion, applied alike to foreign and to colonial policy, " as little intercourse as possible between Governments." The second was the growth and encouragement of intimate and friendly intercourse between the members of different nations, international as distinguished from inter-govern- mental relations. Of this international intercourse free interchange of economic goods and services on terms of obvious mutual advantage was the most important channel and the best security. Although the concentration of his efforts during the period from 1838 to 1846 upon the repeal campaign necessarily involved some neglect of the wider propa- ganda, he never lost sight of the larger human meaning of a policy which, in order to become effectual, must first be founded on an appeal to national expediency. In particular, the organic connection between the Free Trade and the Peace Movements was firmly established in his mind in 1842, when he proposed to Mr. Ashworth the 36 Cobden as Pamphleteer offering of a Prize Essay on " Free Trade as the Best Human Means for securing Universal and Permanent Peace," adding that " It has often struck me that it would be well to try to engraft our Free Trade agitation upon the Peace movement. They are one and the same cause. It has often been to me a matter of surprise that the Friends have not taken up the question of Free Trade as the means — and I believe the only human means — of effecting universal and permanent peace. The efforts of the Peace Societies, however laudable, can never be suc- cessful so long as the nations maintain their present system of isolation." ' Though the main stress of the Anti Corn-Law argument both in Parliament and in the country was upon the urgency of repeal as a remedy for the poverty and insecurity of livelihood in which the general mass of the labouring population were living, while at the same time securing full employment and profitable trade for the capital and labour engaged in our manufactures, the orators of the League seldom failed to rally the intelligence and moral sense of their audience to the broader issues of peace, disarmament and amity of nations. Bright, Cobden and Fox never ignored the value of these larger and less dis- tinctively material considerations to the success of their immediate cause. It was not merely an appeal to the stomach of the workers and the bank account of the manufacturers. Beneath this material economic struggle lay a clear sense of " the international." As Bright said in his great oration at Covent Garden Theatre in Sep- tember 1843 : "They wanted to have the question settled for the world as well as for England. They were tired of what was called the natural divisions of empires. They wanted not that the Channel should separate this country from France — they hoped and wished that Frenchmen ^ Quoted in Morley's "Life," i. p. 230. 37 Richard Cobden : The International Man and Englishmen should no longer consider each other as naturally hostile nations." ' The peroration of Cobden's speech at the same gather- ing gives a definition of Free Trade which shows that in his mind the larger vision never suffered an eclipse. " Free Trade — what is it ? Why, breaking down the barriers that separate nations ; those barriers behind which nestle the feelings of pride, revenge, hatred and jealousy, which every now and then break their bonds and deluge whole countries with blood ; those feelings which nourish the poison of war and conquest, which assert that without conquest we can have no trade, which foster that lust for conquest and dominion which send forth your warrior chiefs to sanction devastation through other lands, and then calls them back that they may be enthroned securely in your passions, but only to harass and oppress you at home." 2 This large spirit breathed through all his utterances in this great and triumphant campaign, Cobden never confined it to the single expression, liberty of commerce. He saw in it the spirit of human solidarity asserting itself above and beyond the limits of national patriotism. The destruction of the protectionist system of this country was but the liberation of the spiritual forces of humanity pervading men of diverse lands, races, colours, creeds and languages, scattered over the earth. In the peroration of his speech at the final meeting of the League Council (July 2, 1846), when, its work done, the dissolution of the League was decided, Cobden spoke the following words : "It is in our moral nature necessary that when an organized body has fulfilled its functions it must pass into a new state of existence and become differently organized. We are dispersing our elements to be ready ' "Cobden and the League," p. 167. = " Speeches," p. 40. 38. Cobden as Pamphleteer for any other good work, and it is nothing but good works which will be attempted by good leaguers. Our body will, so to speak, perish, but our spirit is abroad and will pervade all the nations of the earth. It will pervade all the nations of the earth, because it is the spirit of truth and justice and because it is the spirit of peace and goodwill among men." 39 CHAPTER III THE TOUR IN EUROPE, 1846-7 But though the fuller gospel of economic and political internationalism underlay the Anti Corn-Law propa- ganda, tactical considerations hampered its free expression even in this country. The notion or feeling that the trading interests of other nations are opposed to our own cannot easily be rooted out of the political economy of the average sensual man, and, if the repeal movement had had to wait for this conversion, its success would have been slow and precarious. Free Trade must be hammered in as a plain national advantage long before the full policy of mutuality upon which it rests is consciously grasped by most minds. Therefore it was that Cobden plainly recognized that the triumph of the League in 1846, though sounding the death-knell of food taxation, was no final security for the wider policy. As it had been expedient to dwell mainly upon the national gain accompanying Free Trade for this country, so it became important to disabuse the mind of other nations of the view that Free Trade was an exclusively British interest. The League during their propaganda expressly refrained from appealing to any foreign senti- ment in favour of the cause. For they rightly judged that such appeals were certain to be misrepresented by the interests which stood behind protective tariffs and would play into the hands of their enemies. Cobden, some years later, reviewing the League policy puts this 40 The Tour in Europe, 1846-7 very clearly. '* We came to the conclusion that the less we attempted to persuade foreigners to adopt our trade principles, the better ; for we discovered so much sus- picion of the motives of England, that it was lending an argument to the protectionists abroad to incite the popular feeling against the free-traders, by enabling them to say, ' See what these men are wanting to do ; they are partisans of England and they are seeking to prostitute our industries at the feet of that perfidious nation. . . .' To take away this pretence, we avowed our total indiffer- ence whether other nations became free-traders or not ; but we should abolish Protection for our own selves, and leave other countries to take whatever course they liked best." I Even Bastiat's early approaches with a view to a popular agitation in France were felt at first to be somewhat embarrassing. It was not until the overthrow of the Corn Law was actually achieved that Cobden felt free to engage upon any direct attempt to fortify the Free Trade policy of this country by foreign support. He recognized that, though the downfall of protective tariffs had to be the work of national agitation and state- craft within each country, it was possible to make the example of Great Britain an example and encouragement to the national reformers in foreign countries. Cobden believed in the force of this example, holding that he could succeed " in making now a stronger case for the prohibition nations of Europe to compel them to adopt a freer system, than I had here to overturn our protective policy." 2 It was the growing urgency of this need which induced him to plan his comprehensive tour through Europe in 1846, " I will," he writes, " be an ambassador from the ' Cobden to Mr. Van der Maeren, 1856 (quoted, Morley, i. p. 310). ' Letter to Mr. Paulton, July 4, 1846 (quoted, Morley, i. p. 408). 41 Richard Cobden : The International Man free-traders of England to the Governments of the great nations of the Continent." ' No man was better qualified for such a role. The fame of his achievement preceded him. He had wrought a really revolutionary transforma- tion of the business policy of the greatest commercial country in the world. Though primarily addressed to the national needs and interests of his own people, the policy carried with it manifest advantages to the pro- ducers and commercial classes of other countries. The adoption by other Governments and peoples of the same policy of the open door would multiply these benefits. The enthusiasm for what was at once a great economic discovery and a moral ideal spread among the liberal thinkers and the enlightened business men in every Euro- pean country. For though most continental Governments were committed to Protection, partly by traditional mer- cantile doctrine, partly by fiscal needs, neither of these supports was unassailable. If it could be shown that the opening of ports to the free current of international com- merce would at once stimulate the national powers of production, raise up new profitable manufactures and furnish them with great and growing foreign markets, antiquated notions of colonization and of taxation might easily be swept away in a general era of prosperity. Manufacturers in one country had not begun seriously to realize the perils of invasion in their " home " markets by the manufacturers of another nation, and so the pros- pect of free markets abroad filled them with enthusiasm. Nor had the Free Trade propaganda upon the Continent to meet the uncompromising active opposition of the agricultural interests. For every large continental country was virtually self-sufficing in the supplies of essential foods. While this fact weakened the pressure of the popular appeal for the cheap loaf which had ' Letter to Mr. Schwabe, "Reminiscences," p. z, 42 The Tour in Europe, 1846-7 underlain the agitation in Great Britain, it averted the opposition of the landowners to the manufacturers and merchants who were favourably inclined to the new Free Trade doctrine, and to the internationalism which it carried. He was well aware of the risk of misunderstanding in France, should he, a foreigner, above all an English- man, appear as the instigator of a change of fiscal policy. The following letter, written in September 1 846, to his French friend M. Aries Dufour,' is a sufficient commentary upon the tactics of French agitation, " Pau, September 9, 1 846. " Before I left Bordeaux for this beautiful spot, I sent you a paper containing a report of our public dinner which I hope you received. Now let me offer a word or two for your own private ear. I must not be seen in ■public, in France, interfering with your politics, or stimu- lating Frenchmen to agitate for Free Trade, but I dare talk to you without reserve. Your commercial legislation is a disgrace to you. I had not the least idea, until I looked over your tariff with M, Anisson-Duperon in Paris, that you were so lamentably behind other coun- tries. Your tariff is far more illiberal now than ours in England was a quarter of a century ago, before Huskis- son began his reforms. You have upwards of sixty articles of importance actually prohibited ; many others on which the high duties are equal to a prohibition, and most of the raw materials required for your industry are absurdly taxed ! With the exception of Spain, I do not know another country (unless it be Austria) where the commercial legislation is so barbarous and benighted as in France. If I were a Frenchman, and a merchant or manufacturer, my face would redden with shame at the » A wealthy silk manufacturer of Lyons and an ardent Free Trader. 43 Richard Cobden : The International Man spectacle. You are far behind Germany, Italy and even Russia. Well, what must be done? Why, help your- selves and God will help you. You must agitate. The Government can do nothing unless aided by the Press and the public. The Press is busy about the marriage of a poor little girl in Spain, or Mr. Pritchard in Tahity, or anything else that is sufficiently foolish and contemptible to amuse the coteries of Paris. As for the public, its voice is never heard in France unless it be in the street for ' three days ' behind barricades, and this is after all a very clumsy way of settling questions of political economy. The Government is ready to march forward if supported by the people. You must aid it. There are three great staple interests in France that ought to unite against the Protectionists — I mean the wine-growers, the silk manufacturers, and the Parisian industry. It seems to me as if your legislation was framed for the purpose of depressing these great natural branches of your trade to prop up some others which have not strength to stand without crutches, and yet these latter have the impudence to call themselves par excellence the National industry ! " Lyons ought to take the lead in this crusade against monopoly and selfishness, and you ought to marshal its forces. Now, my dear friend, set about the good work with all your native vigour — you have no time to lose, If you leave England to get a few years' start of you in Free Trade, your children — the next generation of Lyons — will have reason to curse the apathy and want of public spirit of their fathers. France must go back in the scale of nations unless she advances in the path of reform and improvement. You can no more continue in the old system of restriction, while England throws open her ports to all the world, than you could go on with diligence and roads, and let England possess the exclusive advan- 44 ARLES DUFOUR. [To face p. 44. The Tour in Europe, 1846-7 tages of locomotives and railways. Do you agree with me in all this ? Then I throw my mantle of an agitator over your shoulders, and bid you to commence the good work. Do not mix up any other question with it. Urge boldly forward the principle of Free Trade — denounce the very idea of Protection. It is a fraud and a swindle, and you must not compromise with it a moment. Make arrangements for a public meeting and let your voices be heard protesting against the principle of levying a tax to provide a ' civil list ' for certain privileged classes. Tell them ' we are willing to be taxed for the public revenue — take all we possess if it is necessary for the good of the State — burn our houses over our heads if that be required for the interests of France. But not one sou will we pay for the benefit of particular men, or classes of men.' That is the tone to take to rouse public feeling and sympathy. Take no lower tone. Follow it up with energetic action, and you will succeed, as surely as we succeeded in England, against ten times the power which is arrayed against you in France, There ! I told you I dared to speak plainly to you, and have not I done it } Yes ; because I think I know you, and believe you know me, and that we shall not misunderstand each other. My wife and I are taking our ease amongst the lovely scenery of the Pyrenees. We shall remain in this neighbourhood for a short time, and then go to Italy for the winter. If you should find time to write me a few lines soon, after the receipt of this, it will find me paste restante at Pau, My wife joins me in remembrance to you, " Believe me, dear sir, " Faithfully yours, "RICHARD COBDEN." It is not surprising that Cobden in his tour through Spain, Italy, Germany and Russia, during the fourteen 45 Richard Cobden : The International Man months from August 1846 to October 1847, met with great attention wherever he went. The story of his triumphant progress is told by himself in his diary, in letters to his wife, and in the volume of " Reminis- cences " published in 1895 by Mrs. Salis Schwabe,' who, with her husband, had accompanied Cobden during the greater part of the tour and kept a careful account of his doings and of the public interest he aroused. The story is the more remarkable inasmuch as no plan of propaganda and no preconcerted arrangements were made by Cobden for his tour. Mr. and Mrs. Cobden did not spend much time in France but pushed on to the Pyrenees frontier, where they were joined by their travelling companions Mr, and Mrs. Schwabe. " Mr. Cobden," the latter notes, " is much courted here in France, strangers of the first rank call on him and Mrs. Cobden and invite them, To-day the local paper (Pau) contained a poetic pane- gyric on Mr. Cobden." 2 Declining formal gatherings at Pau and Bayonne, Cobden pushed on to Spain, where he spent some eleven weeks in sightseeing, in conversa- tions with political and business men and in rousing an intelligent appreciation of commercial internationalism in an inert and backward people. It is, however, note- worthy that Cobden's fame had so far preceded him that in Madrid, Seville, Cadiz and Malaga, Free Trade banquets were improvised in his honour. It could hardly be said that there was a Free Trade movement in Spain. But the repeal of British import duties on foods and raw materials had naturally appealed strongly to the interests of a nation largely exporting these supplies and possessing few powerful organized manufactures. Cobden, how- ever, never played upon the note of selfish interest alone. ' "Reminiscences of Richard Cobden" (Fisher Unwin), compiled by Mrs. Salis Schwabe. ^ " Reminiscences," p. 5. 46 The Tour in Europe, 1846-7 He always founded his appeal upon the broader base of international solidarity. Like every skilled preacher, he sought at once to touch the emotions of his audience and convince their understanding by presenting a clear image of an ideal. The following passage from his speech at the Free Trade banquet at Madrid well illus- trates this practice. " I know that there are individuals to be found in every country who say, 'We will produce everything we require within our own boundaries ; we will be inde- pendent of foreigners.' If Nature had intended that there should be such a national isolation, she would have formed the earth upon a very different plan, and given to each country every advantage of soil and climate. My country, for example, would have possessed the wines, oils, fruits and silks, which have been denied to it, and other countries would have been endowed with the abundance of coal and iron with which we are com- pensated for the want of a warmer soil. No, Providence has wisely given to each latitude its peculiar products, in order that different nations may supply each other with the conveniences and comforts of life, and that thus they may be united together in the bonds of peace and brotherhood. Gentlemen, I doubt not that ere long the public opinion of this great nation may emancipate its commerce from those restrictions which recently fettered the industry of my country. I remember that more than three centuries ago a great man sailed from your shores to discover a new hemisphere. Let me not be accused of underrating the glory of that great achievement if I say, that the statesman who gives to Spain the blessings of commercial freedom will, in my opinion, confer greater and more durable advantages upon his country than it derived from the discovery of America. The genius of Columbus gave to your ancestors an uncultivated 47 Richard Cobden : The International Man continent, thinly peopled by a barbarous race, but Free Trade will throw open a civilized world to your enter- prise, and every nation will hasten to bring you the varied products of their ingenuity and industry to be offered in exchange for the superabundant produce of your favoured and beautiful country." From Spain, Cobden passed to Italy, a country where the new industries were already more firmly rooted than in Spain, and where the principal Northern cities were already touched with the Free Trade spirit. In Genoa, Rome, Florence, Turin and Venice, public banquets with speeches were given, and were attended by influential men both of the nobility and the business classes. Nor less important were the many private inter- views with personages of political and official impor- tance. In Rome, Cobden was received by the Pope, who " avowed himself a partisan of my views, and said all that lay within his power, and adding modestly that it was but little, he would do to promote Free Trade prin- ciples." I It is characteristic of Cobden's courage that he should have seized the opportunity to represent to His Holiness the disgust he had experienced in Spain with the degrading spectacle of the bull-fights held " in honour of the Virgin and the Saints on their fete days," and that he should have urged the Pope to bring pressure on the clergy to discountenance such abominations. In his address at Florence Cobden naturally adopted a gratulatory tone. For Tuscany alone of all the countries in Southern Europe had put in practice the Free Trade faith. " To Tuscany is undoubtedly due the glory of having preceded by half a century the rest of the world in the application of the theories of com- mercial science to its legislation." Then after a eulogium I Letter to Mrs. Schwabe, " Reminiscences," p. 57. 48 The Tour in Europe, 1846-7 upon the founder of that policy, he proceeds to pass this striking commentary upon its results. *' During the last eight months I have been travelling in nearly all the countries of Southern Europe, and I am bound to state, without wishing to disparage other nations, that I find the conditions of the people of Tuscany superior to that of any people I have, visited. The surface of the country resembles that of a well-culti- vated garden ; the people are everywhere well dressed ; I have seen no beggars, except a few lame or blind ; and in this season of general scarcity there is less of suffering from want of food here, with a perfect freedom of export and import of corn, than in probably any other country in Europe." " At Naples he saw the King and "conversed for a short time with him on Free Trade, about which he did not appear to be altogether ignorant or without some favour- able sympathies. He questioned me about the future status of the Irish difficulty, a question which seemed to be uppermost in the minds of all statesmen and public men on the Continent" — this in 1847, the famine year. In May 1847 Cobden had an interview with King Charles Albert, " a very tall and dignified figure, with a sombre, but not unamiable expression of countenance ; received me frankly ; talked of railroads, machinery, agriculture and other practical questions. Said he hoped I was contented with what his Government had done in the application of my principles, and informed me that his Ministry had resolved upon a further reduction of duties upon iron, cotton, etc." " In the evening Count Revel, Minister of Finance, came in, with whom I had a long discussion upon Free Trade ; a sensible man. Speaking to Signor Cibrario upon the subject of the commerce of the Middle Ages in Italy, he said that the ' Schwabe, 64 . 49 D Richard Cobden : The International Man principle of Protection, or Colbertism, was unknown ; that, however, there were innumerable impediments to industry and internal commerce, owing to the corpora- tions of trades and the custom-houses, which surrounded every little State and almost every little city." ' As Cobden passed from Italy into Austrian territory the political atmosphere, of course, was chilHer, In Vienna no public demonstration of free-traders was held, and the most interesting occurrence was some personal intercourse with Prince Metternich, whose conversation was found to be " more subtle than profound." " He is probably the last of those State physicians who, looking only to the symptoms of a nation, content themselves with superficial remedies from day to day, and never attempt to probe beneath the surface to discover the source of the evils which afflict the social system. This order of statesmen will pass away with him, because too much light has been shed upon the laboratory of Govern- ments, to allow them to impose upon mankind with the old formulas." - In Milan, however, then under Austrian rule, and in Trieste, friends of Free Trade were permitted to give Cobden banquets which were numerously attended. In a rapid tour through Germany he had two inter- views with the King of Prussia, dining with him at Sans Souci, and met several of the high officials and other persons of eminence, among them Baron von Humboldt. Though the political atmosphere was cooler than in Italy or Spain — for the German manufacturers were beginning to press for higher protective tariffs — Cobden received a good deal of attention, not only in Berlin but in Hamburg, Stettin and Danzig, where dinners were improvised in his honour. The following is his account of the Berlin meeting : "In the evening attended a public dinner given to me by about 1 80 free-traders of Berlin, the mayor of ' Diary, quoted "Life," i. pp. 436-7. = Ibid. i. p. 448. 50 The Tour in Europe, 1846-7 the city in the chair ; he commenced the speaking at the second course, and it was kept up throughout the dinner, which was prolonged for nearly three hours. Two-thirds of the meeting appeared to understand my EngUsh speech, which was afterwards translated into German by Dr. Ashe. The speeches were rather long and the auditory phlegmatic when compared with an Italian dinner-party. Mr. Warren, the United States Consul at Trieste, made the best speech, in German. Alluding to my tour in France, Spain, Italy and Germany, he said that no English politician of former times, no Chatham, Burke or Fox, could have obtained those proofs of public sympathy in foreign countries which had been offered to me ; in their days the politics of one State were considered hostile to others ; not only each nation was opposed to its neighbour, but city against city, town against country, class was arrayed against class, and corporations were in hostility to individual rights : he adduced the fact of my favourable reception in foreign countries as a proof of the existence of a broader and more generous view of the interests of mankind." ' Not the least interesting part of Cobden's tour was the stretch of six weeks from mid- August to the close of September spent in Russia, chiefly in St. . Petersburg, Moscow and Nijni Novgorod. Here again he met the chief financial and commercial authorities, official and other, and discovered the beginnings of foreign business penetration in the shape of English mill managers and German officials. He collected much economic informa- tion and some valuable judgments upon Russian conditions which he put to good use in later years. Here is an interesting generalization which sheds much light upon the place of Russia in the economy of Europe. " Baron Alexander MeyendorfF called, chief of a kind of Board of Trade of Moscow, an active-minded and ' Diary, quoted " Life," i. p. 448. 51 Richard Cobden : The International Man intelligent German, possessing much statistical knowledge about Russian trade and manufactures. . . . He thinks the geographical and climatical features of Russia will always prevent it being anything but a great village, as he termed it, it being a vast, unbroken plain ; there are no varieties of climate or occupation, and, as the weather is intensely cold for half the year, every person wants double the quantity of land which would suffice to main- tain him in more genial climates ; as there is no coal, the pine forests are as necessary as his rye fields. Wherever the winter endures for upwards of half the year, the population must as a general rule be thin." ^ Cobden returned to England on October ii, 1847, having performed a work of a twofold educational value, expounding among influential men in many European countries the gospel of Free Trade and Internationalism, while at the same time filling and fortifying his own mind with a large stock of first-hand knowledge and impres- sions on which to draw for his great task of teaching a sane foreign policy to his own countrymen. Hardly any other English statesman has taken so much trouble to equip himself for the wider art of statecraft. Cobden knew ten times as much about Europe as did his great antagonist Lord Palraerston, and was fully justified in claiming the authority to which such industry entitled him. There is no note of arrogance in the claim he made in a letter addressed three years later 2 to his West Riding constituents : " Without egotism, I may perhaps say that few Englishmen have had better opportunities of learning the effect of our foreign policy upon other countries than myself. I travelled throughout Europe under the rare circumstances of having free access, at the same time, to the Courts and Ministers and to the popular leaders of the continental States. I came back convinced that the ' Diary, quoted "Life," i. p. 454. » j^]y j^^ jgjQ^ 52 The Tour in Europe, 1846-7 interference of our Foreign Office in the domestic affairs of other countries worked injuriously for the interests of those towards whom all my sympathies were attracted — I mean the people — by exciting exaggerated hopes, en- couraging premature efforts and teaching reliance upon extraneous aid, when they ought to be impressed with the necessity of self-dependence. I found, too, that the principle of intervention, which we sanctioned by our example, was carried by other Governments in opposition to ours without scruple, and with at least equal success to ourselves." ' ' Schwabe, p. 113, 53 CHAPTER IV THE POLICY OF NON-INTERVENTION, 1850-2 Cobden's return to England from his continental mission closely coincided with the advent of Lord Palmerston to the Foreign Office and the initiation of the active inter- vention of Great Britain in all parts of the world which marked the Palmerstonian era. A strenuous foreign policy, increased armaments, high expenditure and high taxation, such was the political chain every link of which was to Cobden a separate object of detestation. The long direction of our foreign policy by Lord Palmerston called forth all his powers of criticism and active oppo- sition. Lord Morley summarizes the position by observ- ing that " his political history, from this time down to the year when they both died, is one long antagonism to the ideas which were concentrated in Lord Palmer- ston.'-' i The early fruits of the policy were our mischievous intervention in the affair of the Spanish Marriage, the dispatch of a British fleet to the Tagus in pursuance of our claim to dictate a form of constitutional government to Portugal, an opposition to the Algerian policy of France, the dispatch of Lord Minto on a roving mission to Italy, and a series of pushful acts in Nicaragua which threatened serious trouble with the United States. The outbreak of revolutionary movements in France, Austria and Germany, the terrible famine and discontent in 1 " Life," ii. p. 6. 54 The Policy of Non-intervention, 1850-2 Ireland, and the Chartist demonstrations in this country under Fergus O'Connor, conspired to give an unusually menacing atmosphere to politics. Cobden's concern with Ireland was deep and intimate, and he early grasped the essential Importance of a radical land policy which should place the peasants in effective control of their land and in enjoyment of the fruits it bore. But his larger thought busied itself with the under- mining of the politics which kept the fear of war always alive in Europe and absorbed so large a share of the results of economic progress in armed preparations. In 1 8-49 this thought found political expression in a motion in the House of Commons in favour of international arbitra- tion, " My plan," he writes to George Combe, "does not embrace the scheme of a congress of nations, or imply the belief in the millennium, or demand your homage to the principles of non-resistance. I simply propose that England should offer to enter into an agreement with other countries — France, for instance — binding them to refer any dispute that may arise to arbitration. I do not mean to refer the matter to another sovereign's powers, but that each party should appoint plenipotentiaries in the form of commissioners, with a proviso for calling, in arbitrators in case they cannot agree." ' The House of Commons was not^yet educated up to grasping the importance or the practicability of such a proposal. Cobden was not, however, disheartened by a chill recep- tion, and wrote : " Next session I will repeat my pro- posals, and I will also bring the House to a division upon another and a kindred motion, for negotiating with foreign countries, for stopping any further increase of ' Quoted " Life," ii. p. 44. This is an anticipation of what is virtually the policy adopted by the United States Government in 1914 in the conclusion of a series of arbitration treaties with Great Britain, France and other countries. 55 Richard Cobden : The International Man armaments and, if possible, for agreeing to a gradual disarmament." ' "In fact, I merely wish to bind them to do that before a war which nations always virtually do after it. As for the argument that nations will not fulfil their treaties, that would apply to all international engage- ments. We have many precedents in favour of my plan. One advantage about it is that it could do no harm ; for the worst that could happen would be a resort to the means which has hitherto been the only mode of settling national quarrels. Will you think again upon the sub- ject, and tell me whether there is anything impracticable about it ? " In August 1 849 Cobden attended the Peace Congress at Paris over which Victor Hugo presided, a very success- ful gathering, which brought him once more into personal touch with his friend Bastiat. The following account of the gathering and its proceedings was given by Charles Sumner, the Chairman of the American delegation at the Congress : — " The month of August last witnessed at Paris a Congress or Convention of persons from various coun- tries, to consider what could be done to promote the sacred cause of Universal Peace. France, Germany, Belgium, England and the United States were repre- sented by large numbers of men eminent in business, politics, literature, religion and philanthropy. The Catholic Archbishop of Paris and the eloquent Protes'tant preacher, M. Athanase Coquerel ; Michel Chevalier, Horace Say and Frederic Bastiat, distinguished political economists ; Emile de Girardin, the most important political editor of France ; Victor Hugo, illustrious in literature ; Lamartine, whose glory it is to have turned the recent French Revolution, at its beginning, into the ' Quoted " Life," ii. p. 48. 56 The Policy of Non-intervention, 1850-2 path of peace ; and Richard Cobden, the world-renowned British statesman, the unapproachable model of an earnest, humane and practical reformer — all these gave to this august assembly the sanction of their presence or appro- bation. Victor Hugo, on taking the chair as President, in an address of -persuasive eloquence, shed upon the occasion the illumination of his genius ; while Mr. Cob- den, participating in all the proceedings, impressed upon them his characteristic common sense, " The Congress adopted, with entire unanimity, a series of resolutions, asserting the duty of Governments to submit all differences between them to arbitration, and to respect the decisions of arbitrators ; also asserting the necessity of a general and simultaneous disarming, not only as a means of reducing the expenditure absorbed by armies and navies, but also of removing a permanent cause of disquietude and irritation. The Congress con- demned all loans and taxes for wars of ambition or conquest. It earnestly recommended the friends of peace to prepare public opinion, in their respective countries, for the formation of a Congress of Nations, to revise the existing International Law and to constitute a High Tribunal for the decision of controversies among nations. In support of these objects, the Congress solemnly in- voked the representatives of the Press, so potent to diffuse truth, and also all ministers of religion, whose holy office it is to encourage goodwill among men." No little part of the success of the arrangements was due to the recently appointed secretary of the Peace Society, the Rev. Henry Richard, to whose name and person a considerable importance attaches. For during the remainder of his public life Mr. Richard was Cobden's most energetic colleague and the recipient of his closest confidence in matters of foreign pohcy and internationahsm. As editor of the Herald oj Peace, the organ of the 57 Richard Cobden : The International Man Society, and, later on, in 1855, one of the editorial writers in the Morning and Evening Star, he did immense service to the cause of an enlightened policy. In his later years, after Cobden's death, he sat in Parliament, entering it in 1868 as Member for the Merthyr Boroughs, and held his seat for nearly twenty years. His greatest parliamentary achievement consisted in carrying, in 1873, a motion in favour of international arbitration similar to that which Cobden brought forward in 1849, I" 1880 he also introduced into the House a motion in favour of gradual disarmament by mutual arrangement, which was accepted in a modified form by the Government. With Mr. Richard from 1 849 onwards until his death Cobden conducted a voluminous correspondence, the greater part of which has been preserved and forms an intimate revelation of the unceasing thought and energy which Cobden brought to bear upon all matters of an international bearing. I propose to draw largely upon this source, hitherto with certain rare exceptions un- published, taking the matter year by year, and incor- porating, by way of enlargement and explanation, other letters and material which have not been made public or which, if published, have not been made accessible to general use. There is no better illustration of the close outlook which Cobden kept upon the wide and various scope of our world relations than is afforded by hisi strictures upon the Borneo affair in 1 849, and his endeavours to drag into the light of public day a remote piece of wrongdoing which seemed likely to be hushed up. To Mr. Richard he writes (date November 26th) as follows : — *' Something should be done about that horrid and cowardly butchery on the coast of Borneo. See the 58 HENRY RICHARD (l8l2- [To face p. 38. The Policy of Non-intervention, 1850-2 Daily News of to-day for a letter of mine on the subject, signed ' A Watchful Looker-on.' You might insert it in the Herald of Peace or write an article. You will find in the Illustrated News a fortnight or three weeks back, a full account of the massacre with pictures of head-roasting by Rajah Brooke's allies. If such cruel and cowardly atrocities as these go unnoticed, we shall sink, as a nation, to the level of the Spaniards of the sixteenth century." An undated letter of this period adds the following piece of criticism : — " It seems little short of madness, with India in a blaze, to be embarking in fresh conquests of territory in Borneo. But to that it will come unless Lord Derby be encouraged to resist the cliques and jobbers who will now beset him. There are debts and mortgages and pecuniary interests of all sorts impelling certain parties to incessant activity to get the Government to take to Sarawak." " Those who are opposed to such a foolish policy, those who wish to avoid a repetition of the wars and crimes of the Cape and of India, all free-traders who really know what their principles mean, will sign the Memorial to Derby." He follows up (December loth) by urging Mr. Richard to summon a meeting of the Peace Society to take action. " I have a letter from Mr. Hume, who is in Norfolk, enclosing a communication for the Daily News, which will appear to-morrow upon the Bornean massacre. If he should be in town, I think he would take the chair at your public meeting. It is no longer a matter of choice whether the Peace Society should have a meeting. 59 Richard Cobden : The International Man You have been so often called upon that, unless you raise your public protest, your moral power will be injured in other directions." A duplicate of the longest and most interesting of these letters, addressed to John Bright,i appears in Morley's " Life." The agitation on the Borneo affair occupied a good deal of Cobden's attention in the early weeks of 1850, though, as the letter of January jth shows, other issues of wider import began to open out, There is no more convincing proof of Cobden's pene- trating grasp of the directing forces in foreign and imperial policy than his constant exposure of the loan- raongering and debt-collecting operations in which our Government engaged' either as principal or agent. The allusion to an attempted Russian loan in a following letter is the discovery of scent which grew very hot a little later on. His early correspondence with Mr. Richard was largely given to these questions of the pressure of finance in moulding foreign policy. " 'December (>th. " You must get Captain Mundy's edition of ' Brooke's Diary.' It was published originally by Captain Keppel, and some horrid passages were omitted by the discretion of his friends ; but a nQV/y9, 1856. " Apropos of Italian affairs, you ought to be prepared with a good article to follow the debate on Lord John's motion. The point to press in your argument is this : What does Lord John, and what do our aristocratic poli- ticians who have our foreign policy in their hands, propose to do ? Do they intend to set up the peoples of the Italian States to force their Governments to give them Constitutional freedom.? If so, are they prepared to help them? No, a thousand times no, must be the answer of all who know what our Government is. But the Italians may be deluded and incited by the vague reports of what will reach them of the proceedings of our Parliament, and, through our foolish Press, into pre- mature plot and insurrection, which will again lead, as they have before, into proscription, exile and death. Protest against such delusions, which betray ardent patriots to their doom and lead only to broken hearts, 160 Peace and Recovery ruined fortunes and every species of misfortune. But our aristocratic rulers will probably exert their moral influence with the Government of King Bomba and the Pope to ensure better government ! Does any rational being suppose that with the tone of their Press and of such tricky politicians as guide it our Government will have any influence whatever in the way of friendly advice ? The truth is, it must be again and again told the English public and the world that our aristocratic politicians make political capital out of the Italians, Poles, Circassians, etc., for purposes of their own, and not with any serious inten- tion of promoting liberty anywhere. And this game will go on so long as the English public allow them to parade their sympathies for the grievances of foreigners instead of doing the work of liberty at home." "7«/y lo, 1856. " When does the Reform Club banquet to Williams come off.'' Either on that or some other occasion you should read a lecture to our so-called Liberals and Reformers upon their warlike and military tendency. They ought to be rallied in good round terms. The Reform Club seems to have grown more martial than the United Service. One would have thought that their escapade with Charley Napier would have been enough in that line. But to what is all this to lead } What is the policy, what the principles of the Reform Party ? We know what the professed principles of the Whigs were down to the time of their advent to power in 1830. Peace, economy and non-intervention were the words inscribed on Lord Grey's banner. We know that the leaders of the Whig Party had for half a century de- nounced the military tendency of the Government ; and at the close of the French War they advocated a reduction of our army down to the old constitutional standard with 161 L kichard Cobden : The International Man a vehemence quite refreshing to those who study the pages of Hansard from 1816 to 1822. Not only did the leading Whigs — Grey, Tierney, Mackintosh, Brougham, Lord John Russell, etc., denounce the large standing army of the day (much less, by the way, than now), such states- men as the Marquis Wellesley and Lord Grenville joined in the same tone. It is true the Whigs have turned round upon their followers and are now worse than the Tories, but what are the principles of the so-called Inde- pendent Liberals } There were formerly eighty to one hundred men in the House who professed to be more economical, liberal and progressive than either the Whigs or Tories. Where are they now and what are their principles .'' Are they represented by this frenzied spirit of hero-worship and love of military glory exhibited at the Reform Club ^ If so, do they think they are in the track of peace, economy or non-intervention ? They are playing the game of aristocracy, privilege, high taxation and all their attendant evils to the millions whose interests they profess to serve," ''July 18, 1856. '* The Times, with its Cockney ignorance, in an article yesterday on Emigration winds up by expressing a hope that the emigrants in future will go to Canada and not swell the number of our enemies in the States, as if their feelings to us would be different wherever they might be. I should not write a long article on the Canadian view of the question, but still people might be told to pause and inquire before they assumed that the Canadians would fight for our diplomatic blunderers as if they had an interest in the matter. The point you mention of the Canadians having talked of sending a representative to Washington is significant, as showing which way they think their interests are gravitating. In fact, since a free 162 Peace and Recovery trade in native produce has been established between Canada and the States, there is far more intercourse between America and Canada than between us and Canada. We must show better reasons than the support of our diplomatists in their chicanery, in which Canada has no voice, before she will embark in a war with the best customer at her doors." ''July 28, 1856. " Put the enclosed into your own language. I have purposely written it on both sides to compel you to rewrite it — for I -can often give you rapid hints for an article without any trouble to myself if I know that my own language is not necessarily to be printed. When writing for the Press I am beset with a fastidiousness that almost paralyses my fingers. " What have you done about the Star editorship } Let me advise you always to try to make your articles apropos of some topic of the hour — otherwise they look like treasured-up essays, which to daily-paper readers always seem misplaced. For instance, a line or two connecting your article of last week on Turkey with Layard's speech at Aylesbury would have invested it with the prestige of ready writing. You must come to the democratic view of the Peace Question. Apropos of Spanish affairs, it might be stated once for all that the creed of the Morning Star is that where large standing armies exist rational liberty cannot live. Work out this view in a succession of short, sharp articles all apropos of something." "7»/)r 30, 1856. " I cannot too strongly express my regret at the lan- guage used in a letter in the Star of yesterday on Italian affairs. Gladstone's pamphlet is attacked and poor Poerio assailed. Surely ordinary generosity, if not policy, ought 163 Richard Cobden : The International Man to have held the hand of the writer when speaking of a man who is now in a dungeon and in irons. Depend on it, our principle of non-intervention will be suspected to mean an alliance with despotism all over the world if such indiscreet excuses for tyranny be allowed to have pro- minent place in the paper. Read this to Hamilton." ">/y 31, 1856- " I am not dogmatical on the Education Question. How could I be, when I find myself opposed, on economical grounds, to the opinions of Bastiat, and to yours in a theological or ecclesiastical point of view ? But here is my creed in the matter. My political sym- pathies are with the masses. They in this country are still under the hoof of feudalism. The middle class is to a large extent the accomplice of the privileged order, and eager to be admitted within its charmed circle. The only chance for the workers with their hands is in their greater intelligence. Compared with the United States, Switzer- land, or any Protestant State there is no population half so ignorant as our own. Among the other perversities of Baines is his attempt to show that we are ' not so very bad,' and when we adduce the large proportion of married couples that don't sign their names, he argues that many who can write yet prefer to make a mark, as if the argument in the eye of any unprejudiced person did not lean the other way, and warrant the infer- ence that if so large a number cannot sign their names, how much greater number cannot write anything else, for the pride of a man, especially when being married — an occasion which draws forth all his love of approbation — would impel him to write his name even if he could not pen another syllable. Well, the ignorance of the English masses being so great, how is it to be best removed i* I say, try the New England machinery — a local voluntary 164 Peace and Recovery organization which has borne the test of time and experience and has enabled its people to govern itself and prosper. By comparison, our so-called voluntaryism has undoubtedly failed, and in my opinion, instead of being in the way of making up our lost ground, we are being more and more distanced in the race every year. I have nothing to say for the present system in England. But I confess I can hardly see how the question can be ignored with a view to securing something better. However, it is not at present the question before the country. " I did not write because I was really not in a position to advise you, not knowing what terms were to be offered. I hope you will undertake the office of editor-in-chief, with an absolute veto over the leading articles. And I hope you will be put in a position to exert an unquestioned authority in all departments of the Star office. I agree with you as to Hamilton's eccentricities, and they will grow apace if he be left to himself But there is so much moral goodness, and such an originality of genius and power of intellect, about the man, that it would be deeply to be lamented if he were not utilized to the utmost. But it will require tact and gentleness to bring him back to his former post of second in command. You can do this better than anybody else, because he has faith in your sincerity of purpose. Let him know that if you are put at the head, it has not been from your own seeking ; on the contrary, that you have taken the step with reluct- ance, that it is the act of the Quakers, who wish not to be disturbed about details any more, but to be able to throw all responsibility on your shoulders as a person whom they know and who they think knows them, and what will satisfy them. Count on my co-operation in every possible way." 165 Richard Cobden : The International Man "■August I, 1856. " I observe the subject of trade unions treated in to-day's Star paper. The desire of the writer to speak in a conciliatory spirit to the workpeople, which is right, leads him, I think, to speak in a tone of concession and compromise which may be misinterpreted. So far as the wages view of the question goes, I think the only sound and honest course is to tell the people plainly that they are under a delusion as to their assumed power to regu- late or permanently influence in the slightest degree by coercion the rate of wages. They might as well attempt to regulate the tides by force, or change the course of the seasons, or subvert any of the other laws of nature — for the wages of labour depend upon laws as unerring and as much above our coercive power as any other operations of nature. There is a desperate spirit of monopoly and tyranny at the bottom of all these trade unions, for they begin with regulating the numbers to be brought up in their trades, refusing to allow unlimited apprenticeship, thus excluding the children of the unskilled labourer from sharing their advantages. Then how entirely they ignore our foreign trade, and forget that liberty of com- merce which puts it out of the power of the working class of one country to dictate the rate of wages which employers shall pay. To treat this question au fond you must have writers very strong on political economy, and yet do not let them write in the abstruse technical and unsympathizing style of some of these political econo- mists. It is not enough to show that the labourers are wrong in their particular efforts to improve their con- dition, but we must show that we are their friends and try to point out to them on what their welfare really rests ; and this opens^ up the whole field of social and political questions, including our own Peace Question. 166 Peace and Recovery For it might be shown that it is impossible to waste a hundred millions on a war without the working classes feeling it in increased pressure on them, and that if they are to still preserve the same share of comforts as before, it can "only be by increased labour, for it is out of their toil that the taxes are directly or indirectly in great part paid. Then it might be shown that, if the Americans remain at peace and their people are comparatively untaxed, it is impossible that we can compete with them unless we are content with less wages and less profit of capital than they. In fact, it is a world-wide question — but the great point is to start from sound ground. The people who write these topics must read up.'' "August 8, 1856. " I paid a visit on Wednesday to my neighbour, the Bishop of Oxford, and met Lord Aberdeen, Roundell Palmer and some others. The old Earl was even more emphatic than at the same place a year ago in lamenting to me that he had suffered himself to be drawn into the Russian war. He declared that he ought to have resigned. Speaking of the authors of his policy he said, * It was not the Parliament or the public, but the Press that forced the Government into the war. The public mind was not at first in an uncontrollable state, but it was made so by the Press.' He might have added that Lord Johnny had something to do with it. I really could not help pitying the old gentleman, for he was in an unenviable state of mind, and yet I doubt if there be a more reprehensible human act than to lead a nation into an unnecessary war, as Walpole, North, Pitt and Aberdeen have done against their own conviction and at the dictation of others. By the way, between our- selves, he told me that he had told the Queen he thought she was playing too much at soldiers, and that she 167 Richard Cobden : The International Man laughed and said, ' You know I am a soldier's daughter and must take care of the Army." "August 20, 1856. " The Americans must be backed up in their view of exempting private property at sea from spoliation. It is a most important principle — tends to rob the spoiler of his prey and make war a game of blood and bruising? without the attractions of plunder and prize money. Hurrah for anything that tends to make war a mere duel between professionals, for it will make the calling less profitable and therefore less popular. Don't forget to quote prominently a passage where the American Foreign Secretary condemns large armaments as being hostile to freedom and the interests of the people. That's the way a Government speaks which really represents the people." "■August 26, 1856. " Don't omit your foreign topics — but what I meant was to let the Star have a due mixture of home questions. It is too true that the public mind has been so blaseed with Sebastopol that it can't attend to its own affairs — but that is too unnatural a state of things to last — and besides, let us recollect that it is our mission to show the evil of such a tendency in the public mind. Tou can write on any home topic you choose to take in hand quite as well as on foreign questions. I liked your article upon the state of parties — follow it up — you are quite right in putting down Whigs and Tories in the same category. I should like to know what distinctive ground the most decided Whig would claim for his party as against the Tory. Certainly not for being the party of Peace, non-interven- tion and economy, for on these questions neither Fox nor Lord Grey would any longer own their party if they could again revisit this scene. But in dealing with these two 168 Peace and Recovery aristocratic factions, avoid on the other hand the tone of the Tory-Chartist — i.e. the active advocacy of the restora- tion of the Tories as a means to better government. All that I would say in this direction is that we need not be frightened at it — for the Radicals are a much more useful and honest party in the House when in opposition, and the Whigs never make any progress excepting in that invigorating atmosphere." "September 5, i8;6. " The Slavery Question is working to a crisis in the United States. I have a strong suspicion that these Southern bullies, who bluster so loudly, when they find the opinion in the North go against them, as I hope it will do by a decided vote in the Free States for Fremont, will draw in their horns. If not they will find themselves given over to perdition, for if once the North is fairly roused against the South it will be short work with the latter. Northern races are less impulsive and may there- fore sometimes seem to be at first run down by the South, but they always win against lower latitudes when fairly brought to bay. I wish you would tell them as much in a short quotable article in the Star. It helps the good cause in America. The way in which you can legitimately take up the subject is to refer to the threat sometimes thrown out by Southern newspapers that the Slave States will form a union of some kind with England. Tell them they can have no idea of the feeling in this country or they would not look in this direction for sympathy, that before they can be admitted to a union with England they must not merely give up the extension of slavery, which is all their fellow-citizens in the States wish them to do, but must first emancipate every slave they possess, for that if they were subjects of the Queen of England they would be every man of them felons, and liable to the punishment 169 Richard Cobden : The International Man of transportation for owning slaves. Tell them there is not a man in Europe, unless it be a kindred despot who likes to see republicanism brought into disrepute, who does not cry shame upon them. They must be given up to the madness which precedes a fall or they would not challenge the attention of the world to their odious institution so out of time and out of place in a Christian and democratic community." " October l, 1856. " It seems to me that the present is a most favourable opportunity for vindicating our principles in the iitar in reference to the Neapolitan business. I am writing con- stantly to Dunckley at Manchester, and to Hamilton, offering them hints and stimulating them to an energetic advocacy of non-intervention views. I wish you had been in London. It is at such a moment as this that the Star ought to put forth all its strength in the vindication of its views, and to endeavour, as it did in the American business, to make its influence felt. But this can only be done by a daily reiteration of its arguments. But to do this as The Times does, without boring its readers, requires the resources of several pens. AH parties should bring their minds to bear on the great topic of the day. It seems to me that we are more thoroughly wrong in join- ing Louis Napoleon to coerce the King of Naples into good government (bless the mark !) than ever we were before, and that is saying much. But the Cockney Press, as usual, is running full cry after this false scent. Not only the London papers, but the Whig provincials as usual, and our friend the Mercury taking the lead. I send you a paper with an atrocious article calling for the cannon, and at the same time avowing ignorance of what the demands of the Allies are ! Then there is the in- consistency of wanting only to make despotism safe and 170 Peace and Recovery preventing the spread of insurrection into Hungary and Poland. But I have underlined several of the absurdities and not the least the last. I wish you would give a gentle rebuke to our religious friend for his reckless advocacy of sanguinary measures on all occasions. He richly deserves it. Is not this a monomania .'' The only way I can account for this course invariably taken by a man who pretends to the highest regard for the interests of religious morality and education is that he is over-endowed with the pugnacious organs even to a point of deformity." " October 15, 1856. " There was an excellent and very suggestive article in the Star about the physical force tendencies of the Anglo- Saxon race. If it was Hamilton's tell him what I say, for he will not take it as a worse compliment coming through third hands. But tell him it would have been better without the first paragraph about the ' enlightened foreigners.' And pray call all your contributors together and forbid them ever putting an exordium^ Times fashion, to their articles. In medias res must be the motto for the beginning of your articles. It is old-fashioned and im- pertinent to dally with your readers over an exordium, and they resent it by not reading the articles. " It seems to me that we ought to take some opportunity of showing the political philosophy of our non-intervention policy. I mean that it must not be allowed to appear as a sterile principle. But we must show that the intervention principle is against the interests of our people in a variety of ways, as in distracting attention from home politics, adding loads of debts and taxation which keep down by their presence the working class and prevent them from rising in the social scale and therefore from rising politi- cally. This should be brought out — or otherwise we appear to be merely fighting for a sentiment." 171 Richard Cobden : The International Man " October 19, 1856. " I have seen Bright twice ; we have had long walks, played at billiards, and fished together, and have talked incessantly for hours, not always keeping clear of the forbidden field of politics. I could perceive little differ- ence except that he is twenty pounds thinner and his tone and aspect are much more gentle and subdued. He found himself none the worse for our interview. He says he can talk politics with me or any one who agrees with him without inconvenience, but if he is opposed it makes his head ache and gives the sense of fatigue to his brain. I am thus far relieved by what I have seen of him after an eight months' separation that I have no longer the horrid fear of his falling into a state of mental imbecility, a fate far more dreadful than death. If he follows the good advice of Sir J. Clark and others and goes abroad for another year, I feel sure that the risk of any active and permanent disease arising from the present attack may be averted. But whether he will be ever able to take again a position in public life when he is to bring to bear the same fervour of feeling and the same herculean energies as in times past is a question which I hardly dare ask myself. However, I am thankful that at all events the health and happiness which are consistent with a moderate exertion of his mental powers are within his reach. He has quite made up his mind to go abroad within a month. " Don't omit any chance of utilizing Faucher. I told him you were anxious to do what you could. Now pray be candid with him. Tell him he must not only give all his powers to the paper for the time engaged, but that he must have tact and conciliatory manners at the office to everybody. Tell him that it is natural that there should be a little awkwardness between him a foreigner and an 172 JOHN BRIGHT, RICHARD COBDEN AND MICHEL CHEVALIER. [To face page 172. Peace and Recovery English stafF. It would be so in any walk of life. But it must be his business to surmount this difficulty. I have not heard from him since I saw you. Of his know- ledge, at once comprehensive and exact, of continental politics, and of his unswerving devotion to sound economic and peace principles I am quite able to speak with con- fidence. I send you. in strict confidence of course, the enclosed note from Bright to show what is doing about the proprietary of the Star. I shall not take a pecuniary interest. I am too sensitive, whilst in the public arena, to be a proprietor of a London daily paper. I tell Bright, a partner in London to manage the business department is in my opinion a sine qua non of success. I see no objection but the reverse to the names he mentions." ''October 21, 1856. " It appears to me that the fact that the English public have to learn for the first time what their Foreign Office is doing and what use the Admiralty is about to make of their ships-of-war through an announcement in the ' Moniteur ' ought to be bitterly commented on. Then mark with what care the French Government announces that they don't intend to promote revolution. After this will the geese and donkeys in this country who profess to believe that Palmerston, the partner in this intervention, really means something serious against the rule of the Bourbons still continue to delude themselves ? But bear in mind that when the Moniteur tells the world that revolutionary movements will not be encouraged, it really means that they will not be permitted. The only serious menace in the article in the Moniteur is against the repub- licans and Mazzini. It is evident that the King of Naples has nothing to fear. " An occasion ought to be taken (but do not mix up too many branches of the argument in one article) to refer 173 Richard Cobden : The International Man to the maddening articles which appeared in the London Press (and don't forget the Leeds Mercury) when this intervention was first announced. Quote these articles. Look at the Daily News — it was one of the worst. How these papers invoked the indignation of the country against the King of Naples ! The Leeds Mercury, you will see, distinctly says he is an ' assassin ' and ' murderer.' It was with these phrases that these papers, relying on their former impunity and forgetting that there is now a real competition in the Press which will always tend to their swift exposure, only a few weeks ago endorsed this act of intervention and inflamed the minds of their readers, leading them at the same time to expect that proceedings commensurate with the alleged misdeeds of the wicked king would be carried into execution. Well, now, what has come of their thunder. A proclamation from the French Government that not a hair of this alleged ' tyrant,' ' murderer ' and ' assassin ' shall be touched ! These newspapers seem every {tff months to be hold- ing themselves up to the ridicule and contempt of the whole civilized world by their bombastic threats and abortive performances. Who will trust them for guides in future .? " Another topic. Some of these papers, wishing to be logical even at the expense of every sentiment of morality and humanity, when pushed home in argument and com- pelled to avow a theory in harmony with their warlike policy, boldly avow, like the Leader in the enclosed para- graph, that they look on wars and revolutions like lotteries in which though blank after blank may be drawn yet somehow and somewhere liberty is to emerge out of the bloody cauldron. If these parties are honest and not blinded by self-conceit, one would not despair of convinc- ing them that every step they take in this path of warfare or preparation for war between crowned heads and despots 174 Peace and Recovery leads directly back from the goal of freedom they profess to seek. Increased armaments, more young men put under the yoke of the drill sergeant and made a part of the machine of despotism, heavier taxation keeping down the masses, and last, not least, the attention of men diverted from the more important question of domestic policy to be scattered and wasted in the maze of diplomatic squabbles. And do such simple folks as their writers in the Leader expect that out of this liberty is to grow ? Do they suppose that some day the armed tyrants will forget their cunning, and that this military machine of theirs instead of despotism is to turn out by accident and against the will of its masters the friend of freedom .'' " '■^November z, 1856. " It appears to me that you have a good opening now for a home thrust at the Government Press, and those who have stunned us with their praises of Palmerston for having saved the country, rescued us from dishonourable terms, and secured a peace of twenty years at least by showing Russia how utterly powerless she was, etc. Well, now, what are these same journalists with The Times at their head telling us 1 That the terms of the peace are not being fulfilled, that Russia is not subdued, that she is at her old work again, precisely as before the war, that in fact Palmerston's peace is a failure. But then what becomes of all the merit claimed for Palmerston .? He went on with the war after the Vienna Conference, spent us another thirty or forty millions, sacrificed of French and English troops some one hundred thousand men and all for what ? Read the articles in the Government papers and they tell us the work must be done over again. But what is more serious we are to do it single-handed. The Times is now at its old work of bluster again, ' in 175 Richard Cobden : The International Man the name of the people of England,' telling Russia that we are as ready as ever for war. Stop a bit, Mr. Times. If the people go to war again it will not be for objects such as now seem to be the ground of quarrel — the Serpents Island or a i^w square miles of morass and lake in Bessarabia. Without pretending to speak for the country, it may safely be said that it will not again be led blindfolded by The Times or trust itself once more to the genius of blunder who is at the head of the Government. Every word these parties utter against the late peace is a condemnation of themselves, and a proof that the people ought not again to listen to them in any grave matter of foreign politics. The public feel that the power even for mischief of The Times is gone, destroyed by its own reckless immorality — for its bluster now ceases to affect the Funds which actually rise in the face of such leaders as that of Friday. You must really pile a little scorn and indignation on this topic." " November 4, 1856. " Do you suppose one person in ten that buys the Star reads through such an article (apropos of nothing) as that upon knighthood the other day .? These essays, wanting in aptness, give a poor idea always of the practical talent about a paper. Depend on it that the penny Press must not only go to New York for its printing-machine but also for its model of management. There must be the same vigorous aptness in all that is written, and as much news and correspondence eventually (when the paper duty comes off) as in the Herald or Tribune. Your writing may if you please be more classical and in milder taste, but it must be equally direct and apropos to the business of the hour, and you must not get into the way of one formal leading article, but give sparkling little leaders as they do. Bright agrees to all this." 176 Peace and Recovery " November 7, 1856. " So we are now to have an Austrian alliance ! Turkey and Austria are our only European friends. If I could afford it I would pay a person of sufficient industry to go constantly back for a h\Y years over The Times paper and reproduce the articles which it would wish to have forgotten just at the moment when it was perpetrat- ing a new act of tergiversation. Now pray do hunt up one of its diatribes against Austria and print it. Is there no way of stinging the public in the Liberal Press into self-respect on this subject of a foreign policy.'' Our newspapers are obtaining for us the scorn and contempt of the reading world by their total disregard of consist- ency and their kaleidoscopic suddenness of change to suit the views of the Foreign Office ; and the worst of it is that both the old political parties are so much in the same vein and expect some day to have their turn in the same convenient game that it is almost impossible to establish a sound principle which shall put an end to their doings. " There is one party that I should think might be brought to repudiate the old policy altogether, I mean the phil-Hungarians, the Italian-liberation Society, etc., in fact the party of the ' nationalities.' But unfortunately they have their scheme of foreign intervention, the wildest and most anarchical of all, for it sets aside the allegiance to treaties and international obligations and would set up a universal propaganda of insurrection and rebellion. But surely these parties who are honest, if they be logical, will be open to this conviction now, that any attempt to serve ' nationalities ' whilst the policy of the ' Balance of Power ' is all-powerful and overrides every other con- sideration, even to the extent of defending Austria against Russia, is an utter delusion. There is something most offensive to reason and common sense in seeing great 177 M Richard Cobden : The International Man popular demonstrations in favour of Kossuth and for the Italians in this country, whilst the people who move in these meetings are utterly powerless to prevent their own Government from giving its support to the oppressor of these nations. One would think their first business should be to get as much power over their own Govern- ment as would prevent it from helping the Austrians. I shall certainly have something to say about this when Parliament meets." "November (?), 1856. " No Power gives more advantage to the Government of Austria in this way than England, for it is needless to add that first and foremost in all continental intrigues and diplomatic imbroglios is the Foreign Oflice of this country. And none is more ready to hold up European treaties between the Governments as a discouragement or menace in the face of the struggling leaders for independ- ence than our present Prime Minister. Ask not merely M. Mazzini, whom it is the fashion to blame as imprac- ticable, but M. Manin, the temperate but heroic defender of Venice, or M. Kossuth himself, what answer they got from Lord Palmerston even after they had driven every Austrian from their territories. Why, they were coldly reminded of the Treaty of Vienna, and told bluntly enough that no other authority could be recognized in Vienna or Hungary than that of the Austrian Govern- ment. " Now we recommend a course, a principle of action, which will tend to leave their Government more at the mercy of the people they are oppressing. We would keep aloof from the blood-stained oppressors at Vienna. We would have no compliments passing, no secret diplomacy, no dependence in any way on that central authority ; we would cultivate friendly intercourse and 178 Peace and Recovery trading relations as far as possible with the people throughout all the Austrian Empire, and we would be on a courteous footing diplomatically with the Government. In a word, we would take as much as possible the same ground as that occupied by the people of the United States towards Austria. Now here is a programme of foreign policy ; will our Liberal politicians, our Radicals and democrats, as they profess themselves, join us in this policy .'' If it can be carried out, depend on it we shall do more than by any intermeddling to bring the Austrian Government upon a proper footing of depend- ence on its people. It will be far sounder and more successful than meddling in Italy or any other country through the same diplomatists who are binding us hand and foot to Austria. Will our Liberals embrace this policy .-' If not — why not .'' Are we to be told of the Balance of Power, that Austria is a part of the system of Europe, and if she were removed from the scale then we should not be safe from the encroachments of Russia, etc. ? Then we are in league with the murderers of ' Cicero- acchio,' and it is for our safety that the oppressors of Hungary and Italy are to be maintained in their sanguinary rule at Vienna." " November 20, 1856, " I observed what you said about the Greeks. They are very clever fellows. All my sympathies are with them. I like the race, for I never met a stupid Greek, But you must always have a certain watch and reserve on yourself in your political relations with them. They are very ardent patriots, and sometimes their zeal is apt to get the better of their discretion. The best way is to do them justice at all times but not to give the Star the aspect of their advocate. They ought to be able to give you early information sometimes. The resuscitation 179 Richard Cobden : The International Man of the Greek race and the wonderful development it has made In commercial enterprise and wealth during the last thirty years is one of the most remarkable signs of the times. That race will yet play a part in the destinies of the East. If we could see the Italians turning to industry and commerce it would give us better hopes of them. But whilst they leave the trade of their ports to foreigners and do nothing but whine to other nations for help I have little faith in their destiny. With their long seaboard and numerous ports they ought to have a com- merce which would put down Austria by sea," " November 30, 1856. " I have been moving about, but see the Star regularly. The writing is good, but the ' reading ' still execrable. The enclosed from the Manchester Guardian is very good. Do you think it would do for the Star} Robertson Gladstone suggests that London would be a better place than Manchester for a first meeting about ' Foreign Policy.' If any meeting be held I am inclined to that opinion. Manchester has never been more than the ghost of its former self in the agitations that have been attempted there since the League shut up shop. And we always suffer by a comparison with our former selves. It is perhaps contrary to human nature to expect that the same community which has won one great triumph should be the first to re-enter the political arena for other victories. People naturally feel a wish to enjoy what they have been for seven years fighting to obtain. Besides, the truth must be told that people in Lancashire are growing conservative and aristocratic with their prosper- ous trade. London in my opinion would be more likely to turn up nevf blood. What do you say to this ? I have written to Sturge. Let it be private." 180 Peace and Recovery "December I, 1856. " I have often thought of referring to the subject but have not time by this post to do more than offer a word of caution. There is, I see, a man arrested at Bedin, and he seems to point to a Court enemy in England as the author of his arrest. As I never see the Cockney papers except The Times (which to do it justice never has lent itself to the party) I don't know what they are now saying upon the subject, but I have always observed that the Advertiser and other papers are ready to be let slip upon Prince Albert and the ' Germanism ' of the Court at every opportunity. Now I suspect all this to come from the inspiration of a high quarter. There are not two men perhaps of exalted political rank capable and dexterous enough for playing this game. It is to retaliate upon the Court, and especially Prince Albert, for checks which a certain ambitious politician has had at the palace that these attacks are made. They don't spring from a Radical or Chartist inspiration, but from the opposite end of the political scale. You will under- stand. All I wish now is to guard you against giving any countenance to this strategy. It Is not on our side but to favour the arch-enemy of our principles." " December 4, 1856. " Pray write a sharp indignant article upon the one in The Times yesterday about Wallachia and Moldavia. Read the last paragraph where we are distinctly told that our object Is to sustain the rights of the Sultan even against the people of those provinces, and as It Is known that the population are for union. The Times is now ordered by our Foreign Office, which has taken its line against it, to vilify beforehand the people as unfit to decide for themselves, and to denounce their decision as 181 Richard Cobden : The International Man being only the work of Russia. And so we are to put ourselves in opposition to the people and to be the ally only of that Turkish minority which, to use The limes' s own simile, lies like the lava of Vesuvius upon the Christian population. And yet we are indignant with Americans and Russians because they will not call our Eastern policy the defence of ' liberty ' ! But what can possibly result from this line but disastrous failure } The population of these countries — the Christian and pro- gressive element — will be more and more our enemies and more and more the friends of Russia. Who can doubt that it is in the end the intelligence, wealth and numbers of the Christian population that will rule the East, and the utmost that we can do to retard it is by tying ourselves for a few years to the corpse of the Ottoman despotism to be ultimately compelled for very shame and decency to turn upon it and aid in its over- throw. In the meantime where are those Liberals among our warlike politicians who have always advocated the union of these principalities, because they know that is the wish of the people ? " ^^ December 5, i8;6. " I think you would do well to put forth an article calling the attention of the public to the necessity of a Reform in oi{r Foreign Policy, and inviting your readers to set to work to accomplish it in the only way in which reforms of any kind can be effected in England, viz, by association and agitation. " The necessity of some change in our diplomatic procedure is now all but universally admitted. Outside of the Foreign Office scarcely a human being can be found to defend the mode in which its affairs are con- ducted. The practicability of some agreement on a new principle of foreign policy is the only question to be 182 Peace and Recovery discussed. That can be solved only by a conference and a discussion, perhaps more than one, between honest men of various shades of opinion who agree as to the necessity of some change. The Liberals all profess the principle of non-intervention. The Tories do not oppose them in this view. Mr. Roebuck says to Mr. Hadfield at Sheffield, * I am for non-intervention, but then I am for making other people conform to the same principle,' Well, there is little difference of opinion on this subject. We all wish to see the principle universally adopted. But there are some who think that the first step is to act up to our own professions, and thus try, at least in the first instance, what moral means can be adopted to carry out our views. Mr. Roebuck is all for force, for cannon and squadrons, and regiments and fleets — let us try in the first place the force of a good example and of an honestly expressed opinion. England will never speak in vain when she has moral power to back her, but Mr. Roebuck will allow that whilst our Foreign Office is ready to approve the French intervention in Rome, and excuse the Russian invasion of Hungary, and become a party to an occupation of Greece, to say nothing of the threatened intervention in Naples — we can have no moral standing ground for appealing to Austria to put an end to the occupation of the Papal Legation or the Danubian Principalities. Our policy seems studiously devised to give an excuse for all that Austria, Russia and France have done and are doing in the way of intervention." ^'■December 20, 1856. '* If I were going to put out an advertisement to reconcile the gentility of the land to penny newspapers, I should lay stress upon the advantages which steam and the electric telegraph, give, and which allow cheap papers now to place themselves on a par with the richest old 183 Richard Cobden : The International Man high-priced journals in the power of obtaining important facts. I would admit that those facts must be given in a compendious form — but then I would argue that to nineteen-twentieths of readers — to ail indeed who have something else to do than read newspapers — it is pre- ferable to have news in the briefest form. I should admit that twenty-five years ago, before steamboats and loco- motives and electric telegraphs had been brought generally into use, it would have been impossible to have had a good penny paper able to compete with the old capitalists. For instance, then The Times would bring, in a postchaise and four from Liverpool to London at an expense of fifty pounds, a copy of the American President's message to gain twenty-four hours' start on its rivals. Now the same message is brought in a parcel by railway in six hours for three shillings, and at such repeated times of starting every day as to prevent the possibility of any advantage to any paper from hiring an express. Besides, the electric telegraph anticipates the substance. This line of argument applied to the Continent — to the Indian mail from Marseilles, the dispatches from Paris, Vienna, etc., is what I should carefully and accurately elaborate to convince sceptical minds that the cheap- ness is a necessary result of the steam and electric telegraph." " Saturday. " I am scarcely to be trusted when writing about this too successful charlatan. I get out of temper more with my generation than the man. " Here is what I have written. Adopt it, or reject it, alter it as you please — but if it appears it must be on your own responsibility and therefore as your own. Don't mention me to Hamilton or anybody in con- nection with it. But something of the sort should be 184 Peace and Recovery done. It will attract attention in high quarters, and it is the honest thing to be done." " What is « Germanism ' ? Where shall we find the ' Coburg influence ' ? Will anybody be so good as to enlighten us about the ' German element in the councils of St. James ' ? We ask for this information that we may unravel the innuendoes which are going the period- ical round of a certain portion of the Press, insinuating that Prince Albert is conspiring with foreign despots to thwart the policy of a Liberal (!) Government. " Sometimes these mysterious revelations are made to originate at Paris, and sometimes at Berlin or Brussels, where 'our own correspondent ' discovers the secret springs of intrigues going on at Buckingham Palace, intrigues quite concealed from the vigilant eyes of the denizens of Westminster. The latest discovery of Coburg treason has been in connection with the Belgrad affair. Listen to the following alarming specimen from the Paris corre- spondent of a daily contemporary, , . . This startling piece of intelligence is much too good to be monopolized by the diurnal Press, and so the hebdomadal journals join in the cry ; and under the head of ' Postscript,' in large capitals, and with the exciting addition of ' Friday, 12 o'clock,' we find the following in a weekly con- temporary. . . . " These attacks against Prince Albert are always found in the same prints — not the first-class journals, be it remembered, for The Times and the most intellectual of the weekly papers refuse to notice them — and they are always in some way or another associated with the espousal of the cause of Lord Palmerston. Now, from what inspiration do these attacks emanate ? It is much easier to give a negative than a positive answer to the question. They certainly do not spring from any prejudices in the popular mind which crave for grati- 185 Richard Cobden : The International Man fication at the expense of the Court. A democratic orator who had no better programme for a Chartist meeting at St. Andrew's Hall than to charge the Prince with thwarting Lord Palmerston in his Liberal tendencies would be laughed off the platform. In the manufacturing districts the Prince is known only as the ready patron of education, science and art. There is not even a tradition among the Radicals of this metropolis which keeps alive any sense of grievance against a German influence at Court adverse to Liberal principles. The oldest frequenter of the most dingy bar parlour who muddles himself every evening with tobacco smoke, beer and the Advertiser's politics, never heard of anything of the kind. How should he, when for more than a hundred years there has been no German political element known at Court ? George the Third, whose reign commenced a century since, when he determined to rule in opposition to his advisers, was always more English than his Ministry, If he played off one part of the aristocracy against another with success, it was by knowing how to conciliate the prejudices and the virtues of the British people. Whoever heard of a German element in the political conflicts of the fourth George, or of William the Fourth, Besides, the rough-and-ready logic of the million naturally asks — what are the oppor- tunities and where is the power which Prince Albert possesses for swaying the policy of the Government ? He attends no Cabinet Councils ; he utters no argument and gives no votes in the Peers ; and we never heard of his being able to influence a single vote in the Commons. He owns no pocket boroughs ; nor does he possess large landed estates which give him the power of influencing the county elections. The Duke of Sutherland, or Bedford, or Lord Derby, could buy all the land possessed by the Prince and pay for it with less than a year's I86 Peace and Recovery income from either of their rentals. The masses know all this, and hence we never hear them alleging that he is responsible for wrongs which they sometimes lay at the doors of the aristocracy, the Church, the middle class, etc. Seeing, then, that they do not spring from popular prejudice or feeling, whence emanate these attacks ? " We will not imitate the conduct we are reprobating by making charges which cannot be substantiated. We do not therefore presume to say that a certain personage is the instigator or approver of these systematic accusations merely because they have always happened to be made in his interest and behalf. It is notorious enough that these attacks have always turned up just at the critical moments when a scapegoat was indispensable to atone for some conspicuous failure of the present Prime Minister, to cover his retreat from an untenable position, or to revenge his temporary fall. The unhappy fact is also notorious that mutual confidence and esteem must be wanting between the Sovereign and her present Prime Minister ; for there is on the records of Parliament that terrible letter which Lord John Russell read to the Commons of England, charging Lord Palmerston with want of candour to one who is the essence of womanly purity and truthfulness. But forced upon his Sovereign as he was by a bewildered Parliament and people, not a doubt has ever been whispered of the perfect loyalty and frankness with which his official services have been accepted. And we absolve him from the charge, the base charge of suborning or conniving at anonymous slanders of the Court to which he beyond all others owes a frank allegiance. But we give this absolution on one condition. These charges and insinuations, reiterated, specific and public, are of a character which can only be effectually silenced by Lord Palmerston himself. They speak in no 187 Richard Cobden : The International Man equivocal terms of unconstitutional influences exerted over him^ and they charge him (and it is no light charge) with succumbing to those influences. So tangible and specific have been these attacks that Lord Aberdeen and Lord John Russell have felt themselves called upon to defend the Prince in their places in Parliament. But not one word has Lord Palmerston ever uttered to contradict accusations with which his name as an aggrieved party has always been impudently associated. We trust when Parliament meets a member will be found to give his lordship an opportunity of silencing for ever these attacks, and if, as we trust, he hates foul play as cordially as we do, he will be grateful for the oppor- tunity which will be afforded him of covering with scorn and reprobation those truculent prints which have been making such free and unworthy uses of his name." December (?). " If what is now said ot the murder, by the Austrians, of ' Ciceroacchio ' and his two sons, one of them a child, be true, it ought to be denounced by the Star as heartily as any paper. When I was at Rome in the spring of 1847, ^"^ ^^ Pope had just begun to evince a spirit in favour of Reform, there was a great excitement in the Papal States, and a considerable latitude of speech and Press. The most remarkable man in Rome for his influence over the populace was a tradesman of decent character (I_ believe a coachmaker) whose powers of oratory got him the sobriquet of the second or little Cicero. I can speak to his character, for I had indirect communications with him. At that time the Marquis Massimo D'Azeglio, since Prime Minister of Piedmont, a man of every modern accomplishment, grained with the purest patriotism and an antique courage and disinterestedness, 188 Peace and Recovery was living a refugee at Rome. I was in constant inter- course with him, and he was in private communication with the Pope on the one side and the people on the other through ' Ciceroacchio.' It was thought best that I should not see the latter in an interview, but owing to my being fresh from an anti-aristocratic triumph in England, I found myself a very great authority in matters of tactics with the leaders in Rome, and my opinion when communicated through D'Azeglio had, as he told me, great weight with ' Ciceroacchio.' I was thus in the thick of the agitation and knew from day to day what was going on, and can vouch for it that the above-named orator was always on the side of order, morality and modera- tion. If that man and his sons were murdered in the way alleged by Garibaldi, the Government of Austria ought to be gibbeted and denounced till it is made to answer before the opinion of the world. It is, if possible, a worse outrage than hanging the Hungarian General officers in cold blood. The Government of Austria is and has been for generations remarkable for cruelty and cold-blooded treachery — the result of cowardice owing to its really precarious hold on the people. In my opinion that Government has been a nuisance to the cause of progress and freedom in Europe any day since the fall of Napoleon. And what is it that perpetuates and will continue to sustain such a despicable rule ? IVhy, the State system of Europe which goes under the name of the Balance of Power. This it is which alone preserves the integrity of the Austrian Empire, and deprives the nationalities of a chance of overthrowing the incubus. It is because the other Governments of Europe consider it necessary at whatever cost of internal misgovernment to keep in- tact a great member of the states system,^ rather than 189 Richard Cobden : The International Man allow it to suffer disruption and take a new form, that these tyrannies propped up from without seem to threaten to be eternal. And never perhaps was diplomacy more busy in weaving a web, the meshes of which tie together in almost indissoluble bonds under one pretence or another the different Govern- ments of Europe, than during the last two years. Every treaty to which Austria is invited to be a party — every time she is called in to mediate and arbitrate between such Powers as England, France and Russia— a new lease is given to the House of Hapsburg, and the Hungarians and Italians feel an augmented load of central despotism weighing them still deeper in the dust." "December, 1856. " I wrote to Hamilton advising him not to take sides in the Neuchatel quarrel, which nobody under- stands, but to urge on both parties the absolute duty of submitting the question to arbitration, and to denounce whichever side should first appeal to arms. But prima facie the case is against Prussia, for her adherents were the first to resort to armed insurrection. If called on to offer an opinion, I should say that your leaders in the Star (not meaning your own) are still wanting in the ad hominem and ad rem quality. They are generally essays, which might have been written two hundred miles from the office, and would have been as opportune a week before as- after the time of their appearance. Right or wrong see how The Times pounces on the topic of the hour, see their unfair but appropriate article yesterday on the Robert- son Gladstone manifesto. It is by thus hanging their articles on the peg which presents itself that they are more sure to be read than any others. Look at the 190 Peace and Recovery New York cheap Press, see how they sparkle with full or short leaders on the living and moving drama of public life. It is thus, too, that a paper can alone make itself felt as a power. Hit hard, but with a polished weapon all of sufficient mark who directly or indirectly assail our principles." 191 CHAPTER VIII THE CHINA WAR AND THE INDIAN MUTINY The year 1857 opened quietly. The country was settling down to a period of peace and prosperity. Cornewall Lewis at the beginning of the Session of Parliament took off the " war ninepence " from the income tax, reducing it from sixteenpence to seven- pence. But trouble soon arose in connection with the bombardment of Canton by British men-of-war. In the October of 1856 a merchant vessel, the Arrow, owned by a Chinese merchant and manned by Chinamen, but commanded by an Englishman, was boarded by a local mandarin, who carried off the crew on a charge of piracy. It had been a custom for the British representative at Hong-Kong to grant registers to Chinese vessels, giving them certain trading privileges and authorizing them to carry the British flag. The Arrow had held one of these registers, which had, however, expired some time before the seizure of its crew took place, so that in point of fact the Arrow was not in any sense under British protection, and did not in fact carry the British flag. Sir John Bowring, the British representative (a personal acquaintance of Cobden and actually a member of the Peace Society), resented the Chinese action, insisting that the Arrow was for the time being a British vessel and that the Chinese had insulted Britain by hauling down her flag. 192 The China War and the Indian Mutiny He demanded the release of the crew and an apology. On being refused he directed Sir Michael Seymour, in command of the British squadron, to enforce the de- mands. Seymour seized the ports guarding the entrance to Canton. The Chinese thereupon surrendered the crew of the Arrow. But Bowring then put forward further demands, including the opening of Canton itself to British subjects. The Chinese refused these further claims, and in November Seymour bombarded Canton, The Chinese made reprisals, setting fire to foreign factories and murdering a number of Europeans. Such was the beginning ot a long and costly war which had early reactions upon home politics. Cobden was unsparing in his denunciation of the conduct of Bowring, and when the papers were laid before the Houses of Parliament, Lord Derby moved a vote of censure in the Lords and Cobden in the Commons. Though the Government secured a majority in the Lords, Cobden carried his resolution in the Commons by a majority of sixteen and Palmerston appealed to the electorate. The elections were held in the latter days of March. Abandoning his seat for the West Riding, when he was convinced he had no chance, Cobden took up his candidature for Huddersfield. But the combination of Tories and Palmerstonian Whigs outvoted him. Palmerston's victory was complete, and the Manchester School was almost destroyed. The defeat of Bright at Manchester especially aroused Cobden's indignation, expressed in trenchant terms in a letter of March 25th. Fox also lost his seat at Oldham and Miall at Rochdale. Several letters of this period to Bright and others discuss the causes of the collapse of sound Liberalism on the one hand and upon the other the failure of the new democratic appeal in Lancashire. Of special 193 N Richard Cobden : The International Man interest is a passage from a letter to Mr. Palmer i (August 9th) comparing Birmingham, the home of the rising mid-Victorian Radicalism, with Manchester. " The honest and independent course taken by the people at Birmingham, their exemption from aristo- cratic snobbery, and their fair appreciation of a democratic aim of the people, confirms me in the opinion I have always had that the social and political state of that town is far more healthy than that of Manchester ; and it arises from the fact that the industry of the hardware district is carried on by small manufacturers, employing a few men and boys each, sometimes only an apprentice or two ; whilst the great capitalists of Manchester form an aristocracy, individual members of which wield an influence over sometimes two thousand persons. The former state of society is more natural and healthy in a moral and political sense. There is a freer intercourse between all classes than in the Lancashire town, where a great and impassable gulf separates the workman from his employer. The great capitalist class formed an excellent basis for the Anti Corn- Law movement, for they had inexhaustible purses, which they opened freely in a contest where not only their pecuniary interests but their pride as ' an order ' was at stake. But I very much doubt whether such a state of society is favourable to i democratic political movement." Cobden was not sorry to be absent from the servile Parliament now elected. His wife in her ill-health needed much of his attention, and his farm and garden life at Midhurst strongly appealed to him, especially at a time when his personal influence in politics was eclipsed. Many of his letters to Mr. Richard are con- cerned with the corruptness of the Press and its evil » "Life," ii. p. 199. 194 The China War and the Indian Mutiny control over public opinion. Even the Star sometimes he finds ' too soft and mealy-mouthed.' All through this year he is continually feeding the Star through Mr. Richard and others with material, chiefly on foreign and imperial affairs. On July 5th we get his first allusion to the outburst in India and the horrors of the Mutiny and its repression. Writing to Mr. Ashworth in October, he draws from the terrible episode the larger lesson of imperialism, "I am, and always have been of opinion, that we have attempted an impossibility in giving ourselves to the task of governing one hundred millions of Asiatics. God and his visible natural laws have opposed insuperable obstacles to the success of such a scheme. But if the plan were practicable at the great cost and risk which we now see to be in- separable from it, what advantage can it confer on ourselves } " ^ Almost the only important personal incident of his quiet life this year was a short visit from his American friend Charles Sumner, of whom he writes : " He is nearer to our beau ideal of a politician than we could pick up in any other man of his calibre." The following extracts from his correspondence with Mr. Richard furnish his commentary upon the foreign policy of the year : — " January 3, 1857. " You have taken the right view of the Canton business. It is not clear that we had any right to claim the protectorate of a vessel built, owned and manned by Chinese, but at all events it was the act of unreasoning violence to refuse to discuss that point. What other course was there left for the Chinese I " Life," ii. p. 206. Richard Cobden : The International Man Governor but to withdraw in despair and give up every- thing to ruin, or to affirm by his own act what he believed to be an injustice and invasion of his country's right and thus bring down on himself the vengeance of his own Government ? What right have we to register vessels, to which there is not one title according to the rules of civilized nations ? Now in all cases a certain title either in the origin, i.e. the building or ownership or manning of a ship, is necessary for register- ing a vessel and entitling it to carry a flag. But what other end could be aimed at but embroiling ourselves in war in thus taking Chinese vessels under our pro- tection ? I say this on the assumption that the vessel in question was built, manned and owned by Chinese. Is not ' lorcha ' a Portuguese word ? " But my object in writing is to suggest an inquiry, What was Sir John Bowring doing all this while ? He is commander-in-chief and representative of the English Government in China. He has an establishment in Hong-Kong costing a very large sum with Secretaries, Judges, and all the paraphernalia of state. Why did Mr. Parke, a young and inexperienced man whose only exploit that I have heard of was the bringing home the treaty with Siam, presume to call up the Admiral, and why did the latter undertake to act without the formal and regular and step-by-step intervention of Sir John Bowring, who is the accredited representative of England in China and who was at a few hours' steaming distance from Canton ? This is a point I think to bring into question — not in the way of blame to Bowring, for I expect he is treated as nobody." "January 1 8, 1857. " You have not sent me a Gazette containing the correspondence about Canton. I have reckoned on your doing so. 196 The China War and the Indian Mutiny " I should be very glad if you could get any evidence of the failure of the late war so far as the missionary efforts are affected. God help the Christians who think of making their religion acceptable in the rear of an opium war, for surely nothing but an interruption of the laws of human nature by especial divine interposition could ever have that result ! Pray give me the extract from Davies's correspondence with Palmerston in which he says he has more difficulty with the English at Canton than with the Chinese." " January 1857. " I send a copy of a letter (not for publication) which I have forwarded to Mr. Gregson, the Chairman of the East India and China Association. He is a good man, and I am sorry he has put his name to the memorial — which, by the way, is not honest so far as it puts down the enormous import of silk last year without noticing that it arose from the extraordinary demand owing to the failure of the crop in some parts of Europe. But I wish you to say something about our commercial gains from the last China War, when everybody in England was fully per- suaded we should have an enormous increase of our exports if we could only gain access to the northern ports. When the terms of the peace were known there was a general throwing up of caps. I remember that even such staid men as Porter caught the enthusiasm and his ' Progress of the Nation ' gives a great improvement in our trade. One of our Manchester manufacturers I remember got excited and delivered himself of a calcula- tion that if every Chinese man only bought a cotton nightcap a year from us it would add 20 per cent, to the demand for our staple manufacture. So far as our exports are concerned it has proved a complete disappoint- ment. I send you by this post a Parliamentary Paper in 197 Richard Cobden : The International Man which you will see 2 table of our exports to China for fifteen years, and I have added in the margin extracts still farther back from Porter. Observe that we have gained scarcely anything in the way of customers for our manu- factures. Indeed, some of the years since the war have been less favourable than before. We have obtained more tea and silk, it is true, but nobody pretended that there was ever any difficulty in procuring those products without a war. It is the opium, and not our manufactures, that serves as a means of payment for the additional supply of tea and silk ; and it is the opium trade, and not the exclusive policy of the Chinese, which, according to the best authorities, stands in the way of our increasing our exports to China. I advise you to give some of these figures of our exports as a table in your leader, apolo- gizing and saying, ' We are not in the habit,' etc. — but figures are sermons in this case, for they teach us not to rely on violence and bloodshed again for the extension of our trade. The Chinese have always set Europe an example of low duties on imports, and when our old sliding scale on corn was still the law of the land the Chinese not only admitted rice free of duty but exempted vessels filled with that staple of their food even from port charges. It is not therefore from protectionist or restrictive legislation that our trade is suffering. " At present it is obstructed by the revolution — that revolt according to the highest authorities having been occasioned by our last war, which destroyed the prestige of the present Government. Who can tell what may be the effects of another war ? Certain expense — we keep now a ship-of-war at every port, and they will be largely increased now. Before the last war we never had more than a vessel or two at Canton. Then there is a costly establishment at Hong-Kong. I am writing in haste, but here is verb. sap. 198 The China War and the Indian Mutiny " Suppose we force our way to Pekin and that France, England, and Russia each has its Stratford de RedclifFe intriguing and interfering with the affairs of China as we now do in Turkey — what shall we gain ? etc. " The increased cost of our establishments at the five ports — at Hong-Kong, and our increased number of ships-of-war must amount to at least 20 per cent, on our exports, and it has all failed to increase them." Subjoined is a copy of the enclosure, a letter addressed to Mr. Gregson {January 14th) : " I am sorry to see your respected name appended to the memorial from the India and China Association. Not that I am opposed to the object you have in view, in trying to open still further the Empire of China to the commerce of the world. (I wish, by the way, our trade with the continent of Europe were as free as with China, and that we had five ports or even one in France where the Chinese tariff was in force.) But what I much regret is that you should put forth your claims as a sequel to the late proceedings, of our authority in China, without offer- ing a word of censure or comment on those base and cruel transactions. It is very like attempting to enter a house in the rear of a burglar and offering to transact business whilst some of its inmates are weltering in their blood and others still struggling with their assailants. You are a free-trader, and I am proud to remember how friendly and warm have been your commendations of my efforts to emancipate our trade. All my best sympathies are with the mercantile class ; but this makes me the more jealous of their fair fame, and I do not think it will be raised in the estimation of thoughtful and good men by becoming in any way identified or associated with the outrageous acts to which I allude. If you have read the dispatches, as I have done, you will have seen that in Sir John Bowring's first letters to the Consul at Canton he 199 Richard Cobden : The International Man confirms the statement made by Yeh that the lorcha, about which, and which alone, as appears in the correspondence, the dispute arose, was not, when boarded by the Chinese, . entitled to hoist the English flag ; but he goes on to add that the Chinese authorities did not know that the register of the Arrow had expired, and he authorizes the resort to violence in support of the allegation of our Consul, which he knew to be false. A more nefarious paragraph than that penned by my old friend Bowring was never given to the public eye. And the attempt now to change the issue to a totally different question, in which we may be right, ought not to be tolerated. I repeat I am sorry to see your name appended to a document which has this object in view." ^^ January 27, 1857. . " I got a note from Parker on Saturdays saying he heard in high quarters that the Persian affair is to be settled — that the Persians will knock under. In a letter which I received yesterday from Bright, dated Genoa and written in his usual spirits, he says he passed a day or two at Nice amongst such folks as Ellice, the Ashburtons, etc., and he was told by them that the Persian difficulty would be settled before the meeting of Parliament. Be on your guard then in dealing with this question. Our privileged oligarchs can do as they like, and as Palmerston, their real tool, has for a couple of months distracted public attention from home matters by holding the Persian war in terrorem over us, it is not unlikely that in a week or two his flunkeys of the Press will be taking credit to their master for having saved us from a war ! Be prepared for this. The Chinese affair is a much, more uncertain matter, and I am told the Government intend to stick by their tool. " There are two symptoms in the Star which I observe, 200 The China War and the Indian Mutiny or perhaps only fancy I perceive, viz. a tendency to systematically quote from the Press^ and a proneness to praise and champion Gladstone. The first is Disraeli's organ, a sneerall of the Press, without a heart, plan, sympathy, or conviction. Nothing in our direction can be hoped from that quarter, and I would not care to be the vehicle for its factious attacks upon the Government with no other object than that those who are no better may fill their places. Of course I only say this against systematically quoting from that paper in a way to identify you with its objects. I approve of your plan of quoting from all sides. " As respects Gladstone, what right have we to reckon on his aid to carry out our views of foreign policy .? He was a party to the invasion of Russia, and to this day defends the policy of sending a British army to the Crimea. And I believe he was an obstacle to Lord Aberdeen washing his hands of the guilt of the war after the Turk refused the award of the first Congress of Vienna. In my opinion every member of the Cabinet who was a party to the Crimea expedition ought to be considered to be for ever separated by an impassable gulf from us unless he renounce the policy which dictated that step and profess another policy for the future. I don't see what right we have to hope better things from Gladstone. His retirement from the Ministry, you must remember, was not on the plea that he was opposed to the war, but on the ridiculous and unworthy ground of Roebuck having carried his motion for a parliamentary inquiry — thus in fact setting up for a claim to adminis- trative impunity. I have the highest opinion of Gladstone's powers. He is the most eloquent and im- pressive speaker we have, and, now that Bright is absent, exercises an influence with his speeches to which' no other member can pretend to even a comparison. aoz Richard Cobden : The International Man His sway is owing mainly to the stamp of earnest con- scientiousness which is impressed on the man at the moment he addresses you. But his conscience has not yet taken him in our direction, or if so he has failed to follow its dictates. And indeed I fear he sometimes entangles his conscience in his intellect. I have heard him defend ' protection ' with such sophistical arguments that I have doubted whether he was more than a reason- ing machine for the moment, with his moral sense put in abeyance. I am afraid he is not even yet . committed to any broad and intelligible principles, and if so he may be only invested with powers of mystification by the praise you lavish on him. Lord Grey is the only man of the Cabinet Minister stamp whose conduct can be honestly endorsed by us." " March 7, 1857. " Is it not time to open fire upon some of those papers which support Palmerston and call on them to explain the public grounds on which they do so ? There is not the least doubt that Palmerston has, as Disraeli said the first night of the session in reference to his use of the Press, made greater use of that means of creating an artificial public opinion than any Minister since the time of Boling- broke. It might be worth your while to refer to his speech and get the exact words. He meant a great deal more than was expressed. I have thought a good deal about it and have talked the matter over with several persons, and am convinced that we shall have to come to an overhauling of the London Press with a view to expose the system by which they preserve the anonymous to the public and drop the mask to the Government and the governing class. It is a totally different state of things to that in the provinces, where the nev(rspaper proprietors and conductors are all known to their neigh- 202 The China War and the Indian Mutiny hours. The way to break ground is to ask how it is that The Times, which for twenty years was the persistent assailant of the present Prime Minister, should, as soon as he comes into power, become his unscrupulous advo- cate and the truculent assailant of everybody opposed to him. There must be some reason for the change other than of a public character, for Palmerston is the same man as ever, and persevering in the policy which The Times formerly opposed. The question to ask is. What is the present connection between the writers in The Times and the Government.'' Then there is the Advertiser, which professes to be strongly for the ballot, extension of suffrage, and short parliaments, and is a stout opponent of Church rates. How does the Advertiser account, on public grounds, for its championship of the Prime Minister who is opposed to all its principles ? To make the matter more difficult of explanation in this case, the Advertiser is opposed to the Chinese War, and has put forth some of the best articles that have been written in condemnation of that war. How, then, on public ground can the editor of the Advertiser continue to advocate the cause of Palmerston and denounce all opposed to him } There is a virulence about its support of the Prime Minister quite inconsistent with an impar- tial attitude. What is the ground, the public ground, for this suspicious course ? Some explanation is due. Pro- mise to recur to the subject, and give notice that whilst public men are freely commented on, the public Press must not expect to be allowed an immunity from public censure. " If you would open out on the London Press in the way I have tried to indicate, and promise to return to the subject, and intimate that you will not hesitate to tear the maSk from a system which is nothing better than political deception, it will excite much interest and sym- 203 Richard Cobden : The International Man pathy, and we may by and by rip up the matter with a thorough exposure. I am quite sure there is a great case. "Mard 1 6, 1857. " An article is sadly required on the following point : The rank and file of the electors must be warned to look after their self-constituted leaders, who are everywhere very busy in disposing of and trafficking in seats. Wherever the choice of a candidate is left to a ' com- mittee,' as it is called (which is generally a few busy- bodies self-elected), it will be jobbed to please the Ministers or their creatures. Some strange doings come to one's ears. But the City of London is the most glaring case. Mr. Dillon, and a few other pompous gentlemen who are never heard of when any work is to be done less ostentatious than disposing of the repre- sentation of the City, summoned a meeting of two hun- dred or three hundred persons, who very coolly exclude the public, put a sentry at the door to prevent the intru- sion of inquisitive people, and then pass a resolution that Mr. Raikes Currie shall take the place of Lord John Russell as representative of London. Wait a bit, Mr. Dillon, and see whether the electors will endorse your arrogant fiat. These ' committees,' as they are called, sometimes dwindle down to a deputation of three, who come from a provincial borough to town and disport themselves as great men at the clubs, see Mr. Hayter and Mr. Coppock, cross-examine their member if he should happen to have shown the least signs of independ- ence, and probably end by making choice of a candidate from the list of names at the Reform Club. The first notice the great body of the electors have of their doings is probably in the resignation of their member. One would like to know the circumstances under which that 204 The China War and the Indian Mutiny most excellent and conscientious representative of the people, Mr. Lawrence Heyworth, was induced to send his resignation to the electors of Derby. I venture to say they know as little of the reason of his doing so as we do. I have heard of the case of a northern borough represented in Parliament by a right honourable gentle- man, an ex-Cabinet Minister, whose name was on the back of the Reform Bill of 1854, which Lord Palmerston resisted even to resignation, who was lately visited in London by a ' deputation,' and required to give a pledge that he would in a new Parliament agree to a vote of confidence in the present Premier. He refused, and his seat has been offered, under the advice of the deputation, to another. Will not the electors have something to say to this ? " The body of the electors must everywhere be on the alert, and must put good men of their own forward. Never mind the cry of ' you are dividing the party.' There is no Liberal Party so long as its only principle is confidence in a man without one Liberal principle. This - Palmerston fever ' does not infect the healthy mass of the electoral body. It is only the cliques, clubs and committees that are brought within the range of its influ- ence. They excite and chafe each other, and persuade themselves that all the world is in as great a fuss as them- selves when all the world is in a quandary what it is all about, and more than half inclined to believe that it is a hoax." "March 17, 1857. " I am launched for Huddersfield. All the help that can be given I shall be glad to have. Can you send down immediately a few thousand copies of the tract on the China War and have them immediately distributed by trusty hands in Huddersfield ? There is not a moment 205 Richard Cobden : The International Man to be lost. I am very much alarmed at the state of things in Manchester. There is terrible rottenness and apathy, and desertions almost by streets. The results can alone show, but I fear very much the chances arc all against us. We are to have a great meeting this evening. The cause of the mischief is, I think, less a change of opinion than of feeling towards those who are alleged here to be attempting too long to wield the defunct power . of the League. There ought to have been a reorganization on a new basis long ago. However, it is useless to talk about the causes of the mischief now. Our only business is to win if we can. Say nothing about this to anybody, for it oozes out. Pray see Morley and try to what extent he can help Lord John for the City. His defeat will be a triumph to Lord Palmerston, his success a rebuke to him. I hope he and Graham will get in. " I wish you would let the enclosed be rewritten and insert it in a prominent place in the Star," "March 25, 1857. "I made an engagement to return to-day to Man- chester to speak this evening at the great meeting at the Free Trade Hall. It is unfortunate, for I am not equal to the task. I have overdone it here,i and am brought to a standstill. Canvassing all day and speaking twice at public meetings yesterday, once in the open air, have upset me, I am suffering from giddiness, and have the fear of Bright's fate before my eyes. What to do, I know not ; but am very much tempted to cut the cable and separate myself absolutely from politics for a season. Do not be surprised if I should not go to the poll here. I have decided nothing yet. The contest is a very unpleasant, harassing affair, for although I have all the ' Huddersfield. 206 The China War and the Indian Mutiny Liberal leaders with me, and no open secession of any part of the constituency, yet it is too small for me to work on it by any public demonstrations. The ' people ' are all right, but the electoral body is to a certain extent under influences which may baffle all calculations. My friends are active and hopeful, but it is not possible to foresee the result. I wish I could stand aside for a year for many reasons. I fear you must be prepared for the worst at Manchester. I am going there this morning according to my promise, but shall not make my appear- ance at the Free Trade Hall." "March 26, 1857. " It will, I hope, draw down on Manchester a hiss of scorn if it rejects those men to return two nobodies. In Bright's case it is particularly disgusting, for they have no right to quarrel with him over the war, knowing _when they elected him he was a Quaker. Under the circumstances in which he is placed, with his health impaired whilst in their service, cutting the connection with less ceremony than we use in getting rid of an invalided horse, it is one of the most revolting cases of public ingratitude I ever met with." "^/r;7 5, 1857. "I am in a fair way to be as well as ever in a few days. My old medicine, sleep, comes to my aid. It seems as if I am never thoroughly awake. The only trouble I have is in the number of good people who think it necessary to write to me and whose letters it will be necessary to answer. They seem to have gene- rally a notion that I must be very dispirited and want consolation now. There is perhaps no one on earth who depends so little on external circumstances as I do for cheerfulness or contentment. I don't know that I am warranted in assuming that I have reached that enviable 207 Richard Cobden : The International Man point described by Pascal when he says : ' Whoever finds the secret of taking satisfaction in good, without uneasi- ness in disappointment, has made a great achievement. It is a kind of perpetual motion ! ' But at least I may say that, my object in public life being to advance objects which I believe to be true, and therefore certain to be triumphant, I never feel that kind of discouragement in temporary defeat which men must who have only personal ends in view." "^/nVi3, 1857. " I concur in what you say about the extension of the franchise. It does not follow that we should be nearer the realization of our pacific principles if we had universal suffrage to-morrow. In the present general election the most warlike returns have come from the most popular constituencies, the least warlike from the most aristocratic counties. I have said this to Sturge, not as an argument against the most liberal extension of the franchise, but to show that our work of conversion to a more humane foreign policy would have to be performed under any change of the electoral system. I have faith in great multitudes when appealed to perseveringly and honestly, and am willing to take my chance with the million, not shutting my eyes to their want of instruction which we should be all the more eager to impart to them, if, as in America, owing to a wider extension of the franchise, our destinies were in the hands of the democracy. But as respects your advocacy of another Reform Bill in the Star, I don't see the necessity of launching a shibboleth ' com- plete suffrage ' or even of ' household suffrage.' I would avow my belief that all restrictions upon the exercise of the vote ought as far and as fast as possible to be got rid of. And as a step I should advocate the ' rating suffrage ' — i.e. to give the vote to those who are rated for the 208 The China War and the Indian Mutiny relief of the poor. This is the principle already recog- nized with some modifications both in the election for Guardians and in that for municipal corporations. It is far more than Lord John will propose, who will, I expect, stick at his ^5 rating, which is equal to ^7 los. rental — being only £2 los. — under the present franchise. Don't be drawn into any dogmatic theory about ' complete suffrage ' — it is our friend Sturge's bantling, and he has an overwhelming love for it." '' April \i, 1857. "The enclosed from my old acquaintance Bowring, which I received last week, seems to have been written with a presentiment of what was coming. Let me have it again, for I suppose I must answer it. Apropos of this Chinese business, I presume from the preparations making that there will be a bloody reprisal made either at Canton or elsewhere for the imaginary wrongs done us by Yeh. Now the line to take in the Star clearly is to prepare the public for this, and to prevent its appetite for vengeance from being whetted by any speculations about the diffi- culties of the task, or the probable resistance to be encountered from the Chinese. Let it be again and again assumed, and shown by reference to the former war, that the Chinese with their bows and arrows and match- locks, and cannon which will not move, and their painted shields and petticoated officers, have no more chance against our Minie rifles, our 13-inch shells of two thousand yards' range, our steamboats and our pivot cannon, than the Peruvians had against Cortex and his men-at-arms. It is not war, it is a battue, a massacre, or slaughter, an execution — call it anything but war — which really means a manly encounter where each side has some chance of success or at least of escape from destruction. Warn the people against being irritated or deluded by 209 O Richard Cobden : The International Man fanciful proclamations put forth in the name of the Chinese authorities, threatening the English with exter- mination. We have lately seen how easily these things are fabricated for electioneering purposes. The question should be steadily asked — What do we propose to gain by the war ? We may compel the Chinese Government to pay all our expenses ; that they must do if we demand it. But our professed object was to gain a free access to the city and neighbourhood of Canton. Does any rational being think that we are any nearer the attainment of that object .'' Does anybody suppose that Englishmen will be safer in the interior of China after these slaughterings and burnings than before } Are we prepared to land forces and occupy a country eight times as large as France and ten times as populous } If so, look to the expense, look for jealousies and possible collisions with America and other Powers. Is the object to gain a freer commercial intercourse with China .'' There is no great empire where our trade is a quarter as free. The Liverpool China Association, in their notorious memorial, signed by their president, that arch-protectionist, Mr. Charles Turner, insists upon our having free access even for our ships-of- war to all the rivers and harbours of China. This would of course lead to endless collisions but not necessarily to increase of our exports — for always bear In mind that the former war with China, whilst it has added enormously to our expenditure for ships-of-war on the Chinese station, for consulates at the five ports, and for our Hong-Kong establishment, has disappointed those Manchester fire- eaters who expected a large increase of exports of cotton goods to China. " Can't you coax or bait the anti-opium trade agitation into activity ? Their movement would do more than anything to discredit the mercantile party with whom, and not the landed aristocracy, this Chinese War originates. 210 The China War and the Indian Mutiny *' Did you see the speech delivered by the Bishop of Victoria in Manchester at a meeting of the Society for Propagating the Gospel abroad, in which he spoke of the obstacle which the opium trade offered to the missionary efforts ? It was little more than a month ago. You will find it, I suppose, in the religious papers, and it should be copied into the Stary ^^ April 15, 1857. " The money power, created by the vast sums voted for the support of the standing armaments of Europe, is the great difficulty we have to encounter in trying to reduce those peace establishments. The Peace Party in England raise ^^5,000 a year to maintain a contest against a system which is subsidized every year by the State to the amount of 15 or 16 millions sterling ! There must be great pluck in the men who dare enter the lists in such an unequal contest. And yet we are gaining upon the enemy's position ; he is more and more on the defensive ; and we have cast off his supplies during the last three years to the extent of four millions — I will back time and the ^^ 5,000 of the Peace Party against the remaining fourteen and a half millions voted by Parliament for Army, Navy and Ordnance." "April 17, 1857. "I can undertake to lead no agitation requiring platform speaking. My throat or lungs fail me, and I am always beset with a hoarseness. I fact, I am nearly twenty years older than when I began my former labours, and no man can repeat himself — if he has done anything in his prime^in the decline of life. I have also had symptoms both at my head and heart which warn me that I cannot bear the same tension as of old. I must give way to younger men, and 211 Richard Cobden : The International Man it would be only misleading the public to give any sanction to the notion that I can lead a suffrage agi- tation. Between ourselves (and I do not write for other eyes), I think those friends who would sanction my rushing into the streets with a new Reform Bill, because I am not elected to Parliament, take a rather low estimate of what is due to oneself under such circumstances. Besides, even' as a matter of policy, I must say that I think the very worst step for the interest of reform which could be taken is that a few disappointed M.P.'s should inaugurate a movement of the kind. If it cannot be made to originate with more disinterested parties, it is a proof that there is no great desire for reform. But this applies perhaps more strongly to myself than to many other ex-M.P.'s, for I have never taken a strong and continuous line on questions of organic change, I repeat my advice — do not tie your paper to any shibboleth on the suffrage question. It is far better to show a generally liberal and confiding spirit towards the masses, and evince your friendly animus by making quotations from other papers of articles favourable to the democratic principle — if you can find them — for it seems to me that never before was there so little political life among the masses and so little of the democratic style in news- paper articles. The secret is that prosperity has made half-Tories of the whole people. And depend on it we shall see this state of feeling bear fruits of a retrograde kind. Let me suggest that whilst you hold your own pens upon the China Question, and abstain from systematic assaults on the Palmerston insanity, you should give extracts from other papers, which appear like echoes of yourself, and therefore give strength to your own opinions. I enclose one from a Kent paper. In fact the newspapers are doing their 212 The China War and the Indian Mutiny work well. In all parts of the country there are journals which repudiate the Palmerston imposture, and it strikes me that many of those who go along with the stream do so without much heartiness as if they were leaving open a retreat. In your articles on the Press, don't fail to lay the foundation of a just tribute to the independence of so many journals. This is necessary to shield you from the charge which will be attempted of your being an assailant of the entire newspaper Press." "Jprilli, 1857. " I have been thinking about the expose you contem- plate respecting the illicit and secret connection between the Government and the Press. The way to inaugurate the topic, in my opinion, is this : write a leader, taking for your text the correspondence which has appeared in the columns of the Star about anonymous newspaper writing, in which, after a compliment to the Press generally and an expression of confidence in the future of a Press now for the first time for a century and a half really free, and after declaring for perfect freedom to all the world to publish their opinions either anonymously or with their signatures as they please, refer to one point which comes out of the controversy, viz. the practice that has grown up in our day with the conductors and proprietors of certain papers almost exclusively confined to the metropolis of connecting themselves with the Government whilst preserving a strict incognito as towards the public. In other words, they wear the mask to all their readers excepting those who have the power to reward them for their subserviency. There is reason to believe that this system has been carried out to an extent little dreamed of, and if thoroughly exposed it might account 213 Richard Cobden : The International Man for some ot the great changes that have taken place in the tone and politics of some of our journals. Mr. Disraeli hinted in delicate phrase at the part played by the present Prime Minister in this system of gaining over the Press when he said in his opening speech of the last Session that he (Lord Palmerston) had known better how to create public opinion by artificial means than any Minister since the time of Bolingbroke (refer back to his speech for what he said : it was in reference to the Belgrad humbug). But Lord Palmerston is not the only Minister. He was exposed, and unanswerably proved to have hired one American or Polish adventurer, Wikoff, to write up his Peace policy. But we know by the records of a court of law and the debaites in Parliament that Lord Clarendon when in Ireland was not above suborning a newspaper writer. In all probability other Ministers and Governments have been as bad, though there are reasons for doubting whether Sir Robert Peel lent himself to such a policy. However, as a matter of principle, a system of secret connection between the Press and the Government cannot be defended. Open writing as by law in France, where each writer is compelled to sign his name, or, as in the United States, when the name of the proprietor and editor of the paper (who is a leader of his political party and rises to the highest ranks of office) is published on the frontispiece of the journal, or anonymous writing as we profess to have it in England, may be either of them good if honestly carried out. But a pretended anony- mous system which preserves secrecy to the public on the plea that it is necessary for the maintenance of purity and independence, and then discloses names to the Government and sells the influence thus obtained by false pretences over the public to the highest 214 The China War and the Indian Mutiny bidders — such a system cannot be defended, and ought to be exposed by every one who wishes to see the practice of anonymous writing preserved. " Now as a matter of public principle the Star, which seeks no concealment and asks no quarter for itself, will not hesitate to expose every instance of Government patronage being extended to the writers and proprietors of the periodical Press. We hold that they have no right to shrink from any publicity of the kind. If a public man takes office the fact is known. Why should not the same rule apply to a public writer .? We do not say this for the purpose of preventing public writers from taking office. They are generally the best informed and most competent men, and therefore the very men who ought to be held eligible to fill posts in the public service. All we stipulate for is that it shall be done openly and above- board, and for the promotion of this end we shall not scruple to use whatever facts come to our knowledge, and we have already some which may afford materials for another article." " April 26, 1857. " I would not advise you at present to give up any of the space in the Star to such a general appeal as you speak of to the working classes ' showing the bearing of the present war system on their condition.' It would be much better to let striking facts come out incidentally — apropos of something. A series of letters such as you speak of would give too decidedly the character of an advocate of abstract peace views to the Star to be advis- able at this moment. Besides, there is enough to do on special topics ; and this brings me to remark that you must not haul down the flag and give up opposition to the Chinese atrocity. If you abandon the field, it will be the signal for those papers in the country who look 215 Richard Cobden : The International Man to our leading them to follow the example. The late news from Washington should be alluded to, I stated in my speech and in my reply that I had reason to believe that the Government of the United States would have joined this country and France in a pacific representation to the Government of China in favour of greater com- mercial facilities or rather a freer intercourse with that Empire, but I expressed a strong conviction that the Government of Washington would be^no party to our violent proceedings founded on the Canton massacre, (I think I told you that Dallas read to me confidentially a letter from Marcy to this effect.) You will recollect that Palmerston, in his speech on my motion, also stated that before the Canton affair our Government had been in communication with that of France, and was contem- plating also applying to that of the United States and that he was in hopes he would have succeeded in in- ducing those Governments to join us in a representation to the Chinese Government. Well now, then, will the toadies of the Government tell us that their great nego- tiator at the head of the Government who has had all his own way for the last itw months has given us another diplomatic triumph at Washington ? By the late advices from America it oozes out that Lord Napier has been instructed to invite Mr. Buchanan to join us in our hostile proceedings, and the answer he has received confirms the statement made by Lord Palmerston as to the- probability that the Government of Washington would have joined us in a moral demonstration if we had applied before the Canton slaughter, but it leaves no doubt that that Government refuses to identify itself with the sanguinary operations perpetrated and con- templated against the Chinese people. Here then we are again presented to the world as unsuccessful suitors at Washington. The Minister whom we are called upon 2l6 The China War and the Indian Mutiny to fall down and worship for his infallible wisdom in foreign affairs — or if not for wisdom for his ' luck ' — has afforded General Cass an opportunity of snubbing us and sending us a lecture against filibustering before he has fairly got possession of his office of Secretary of State. And here is a reason sufficient, if any were wanting, for condemning Sir John Bowring's hasty and violent proceedings — always supposing he acted on his own impulse and not from private hints from home. Those proceedings have prevented our having the alliance of the United States. They leave us to perform the part of butchers and executioners of a mob of defenceless Chinese, and in the end America will step in for the full participation in any concessions we may extort from that people, retaining a friendly footing which we shall have for ever lost with them, and which their merchants and citizens will turn to account in their future intercourse in China. And all this might have been avoided if Sir John Bowring could have repressed for a few months his monomania for entering with cocked hat and feathers the gates of Canton." "May 15, 1857. " I quite agree with you as to the propriety of the Star keeping manfully to its colours. It is the only way, even in a mercantile point of view, to insure any success, I concur also in the view you take of the ferocious spirit in the country which requires repressing, and the mission of the Star was undoubtedly to repress that spirit. But even in this you must use so much tact as to prevent the paper sinking as a newspaper and becoming a daily Peace Herald. The first and only condition of any success is to establish the Star as a »£wjpaper. I am more and more convinced that this war spirit has been generated and kept alive by our career in the East. Our Asiatic 217 Richard Cobden : The International Man morality has come back to plague us. We are whipped with our own pleasant vices. Recollect we have never been free from the excitement of bloody campaigns for more than three or four years at a time, and those battles of the Punjab in particular were on a scale almost to equal in slaughter some of Napoleon's great engagements. " As respects the Examiner — as it is the worst and most barefaced offender, it ought to be attacked the first, and certainly nothing could be more glaring than its subservient wheel-round on the China question. Observe how manfully it keeps to its old Radical opinions upon the ballot, which is not a pinching question with the Ministry. If it were, it would bully its advocates for endangering the Ministry, The course they take is just that of a class of politicians in the House who enter it with ultra professions of Radicalism and vote accordingly when there is no chance of succeeding, but shrink away directly the Ministry is likely to be put in the minority." "■June 1 6, 1857. " Jemmy Wilson was a worker in connection with the League. He wrote dull pamphlets and made duller speeches, but still he showed some Scotch pertinacity in keeping alive the agitation in the metropolis. When we dissolved our organization and gave up the ' League ' weekly organ, a lithographed circular was sent to all its subscribers recommending them to support the Econo- mist, which he had previously started, and Bright and I, George Wilson and others, signed this circular. This was the foundation of Wilson's fortune, which was in a sickly state previously. The Economist became the stepping-stone to Office, When Wilson entered the Ministry, Mr. William Grey became a leading contri- butor and a sort of locum tenens for the proprietor, with whom he was on intimate terms. After a while Wilson, 218 The China War and the Indian Mutiny as Secretary of the Treasury, became a dispenser of Government patronage, and he presented Grey last year with the appointment of a Commissioner of Customs, a post involving so little occupation that it will not inter- fere with his literary labours, but for which he pockets j^i,200 a year. Thus the two principal contributors to the Economist having secured, the one ^^2,000 a year and the other ^^ 1,200 from the public purse, what so natural as that the paper should be the obsequious servant of the Government, or that the Economist's pages should be employed in assailing the two men who laid the founda- tion of all this success, if they happen no longer to be in favour with the dispensers of patronage ? You may bring out these facts in any way you like. But I think a lively, brief, touch-and-go style of showing up these people is the best. Put it in a short quotable form, and not as a solemn argument. And it might be said that there are some other papers which are now so zealously devoted to the Government and so busily assailing all who are not equally devoted to the powers that be for whose conduct equally substantial reasons may by and by be produced. There is far more corruption going on in connection with the public Press than in any other walk Oj political life.'' '■'■June 20, 1857. " Lord Goderich allows the accompanying to be published, he having made such suppressions as to re- move all trace of the writer. Be good enough to see that it be correctly printed, especially as regards the proper names. I think you should give prominence to it by leaded type and then draw attention to it in a leader printed in the same paper. Begin your leading article with ' We invite the attention of our readers to a letter, not penned with the view to publication, in 219 Richard Cobden : The International Man another column, written by one who, from his long residence in the country and his perfect knowledge of the language, ranks among the highest authorities on Chinese affairs.' Then comment in this fashion : There are two very important statements in his letter, one a matter of fact, and the other the expression of an opinion. The writer says we have been deahng in something very like falsehood in our official correspon- dence. ' From all sides,' says he, ' I learnt at Hong- Kong that the Arrow lorcha had no flag flying at all. Of course the Chinese know this still more certainly than the English, and will have little faith in our official averments in future.' Inasmuch, however, as our Government have determined that this falsehood shall be made the pretence for an attack upon China, the more practical question now is — what will be the result of the war } On this subject the writer of the letter assumes that a force will be sent to take possession of Canton. Nothing more easy. A few thousand troops occupying the high ground and approaches to the city, and it must open its gates to escape being blown up or starved. What will then happen ? According to this well-informed writer, it will be the signal for a general rising of the disaffected throughout the still tranquil portions of the south of China, and the whole country will be thrown into a state of anarchy worse than any merely internal troubles could have produced, and it can hardly fail to end in the Manchoo power being definitely destroyed in Kwangtung and Kwangsee (two provinces containing a population of perhaps forty millions). And if we go on with a sufficient force we are told by the same authority we shall ' clinch the fate of the Imperial Government ' and throw an empire of four hundred millions into a state of anarchy out oi which in the course of a generation or two a successful 220 The China War and the Indian Mutiny pretender may arise to fill the throne of the Tartar dynasty. But how is all this to promote our interests as a commercial people ? We see The Times gives prominence to the communication of a correspondent who recommends us to hold possession of Canton and — drain it ! We rather think the war will be accompanied by a drain of a more serious kind in the demand for specie which will arise in consequence of the insecurity and hoarding which always accompanies a state of civil war and confusion. Already the demand for silver to remit to China is seriously affecting the European money markets. Not only the maritime trade but the overland traffic through Siberia seems to be diverting large amounts of silver from its ordinary channels. We see it stated in the Russian accounts that the Chinese traders at Kiachta will accept nothing but specie in exchange for their teas and silks. As soon as it is known throughout that vast empire that we have landed an army and taken possession of Canton, followed as we are told it will be by fresh successes of the rebels, the effect will everywhere be to cause a disappearance of the precious metals. The people will be anxious to put aside, probably under ground, as much silver as will insure to themselves and their families the means of subsistence whatever may happen. The merchants and agriculturists who have been accustomed to deal with foreigners will be more eager than ever to sell off their stocks, but less disposed than ever to take anything in exchange but hard cash. The expenditure for the war will cause also an increased export of specie to China. At first the eagerness to sell on the part of the Chinese may keep down the prices of their produce, but ultimately, if the rebellion in the interior should, as is predicted by the writer of the letter, assume a state of prolonged anarchy, it may by 221 Richard Cobden : The International Man checking production lead to a scarcity and rise in the value of tea and silk. How dl this is to benefit our merchants trading with China, who we are told are clamorous for the war, we are at a loss to understand. We have a shrewd suspicion that some of the Canton houses who pocketed the millions of dollars which were extorted from the Chinese Government for ' compensa- tion ' at the close of the last war are looking to a like source of profit on the present occasion. But if the appearance of our fleets and armies on the coast of China should lead to the consequences indicated by the letter-writer, there may be no Government with which to treat — who knows but we may be step by step drawn into a participation in the civil broils of that vast empire ? And all this in support of our authorities whose first quarrel, according to the admission of all parties at Hong-Kong, was founded in no better plea than a falsehood ! " "J/z/j 5,1857. " No man on earth can tell what the result of the Indian events will be, for as they spring from ignorant panic, their direction or tendency cannot be foretold by any process of reasoning. There is, no doubt, a slumbering discontent everywhere in India among the poor Hindoos, but it has no political bearing — it ex- pends itself on the nearest policeman or tax-collector. The remote consequences of this outbreak are by far the more important. All Asia will prick up its ears when it hears that our ' extinguisher has taken fire.' Persia and Afghanistan will ' harden their faces ' towards us and Russia will think of old grudges. I am curious to see what the eflFect will be on the Burmese when they hear of the news and learn that our force in Pekin has been weakened. The Burmese have never acknowledged 223 The China War and the Indian Mutiny our right tcy that province in any treaty. Then there is Oude, of which we have heard but little, and nothing from Scinde." "7«/y 12, 1857. " You are a dreamer to talk of my being ever in an official situation of influence. My views separate me more and more from the practical statesmanship of the day and render it less probable that I shall ever be in office. I hardly think Sumner is in a way to be very differently situated in his country ! I admire him the more because he has not subordinated his conscientious convictions to the ordinary ambition of the politician." ''July 16,1857. " Beware of allowing a tone of exultation over the Indian troubles to appear in your articles. I thought I perceived such a spirit in the Star article yesterday. The public are not prepared for such a tone, and it will be put down to want of patriotism or even to a corrupt motive. You and I are sufficiently cosmopolitan to see that our doings in India deserve a retributive visitation. But the dear self-complacent people of England persuade themselves that we take all the trouble to conquer the Hindoos for their benefit, and to spread the light of Christianity among them, and that they are very un- grateful to rise against those who are their disinterested friends ! The only process by which we shall be dis- abused of this comfortable delusion is that which is now going on in India. There will be constantly re- curring troubles and difficulties in our path, and in the end people will begin to ask themselves — what benefit do we derive from the ' possession ' of India ? and it will then one day be looked upon as the worst ' bad debt' the nation has on its hands. Meantime unhappily 223 Richard Cobden : The International Man we are rooting out these elements of self-government in India and by the time we become disgusted and throw up the impossible task there will be nothing left in the way of a governing class or authority, and we shall abandon the nation, as Rome did our ancestors, to intestine anarchy and foreign conquest." "Jtilyt^, 1857. " By the way, there was an article against the discordant proceedings in the House on Friday, and calling for some restrictions on the right of members to moot questions on the motion of adjournment till Monday. That article was well written, but it struck me that it might have been the production of a new M.P., for the views were not such as from my longer experience I should have taken of the subject. It appears very irregular and disorderly to talk of Persian wars and Isthmus Canals, etc., on the motion that ' the House at its rising do adjourn till Monday next,' but the party chiefly inconvenienced is the Minister of the day, and the parties who profit by the practice are indepen- dent members, and the Opposition, and, through them, the public. Almost every other mode of bringing forward a subject on a given day to meet an emergency has been taken from individual members, whilst the Government has acquired a constantly increasing power over the proceedings of the House. Formerly a member could make a speech and raise a debate on presenting a petition, and Lord Brougham has declared that in this way he achieved some of the greatest triumphs for the people. Then still more lately it was possible to raise an amendment to reading the orders of the day. These opportunities are now no longer available. The old privilege of moving an amendment to going into Committee of Supply has been retained, but even this 224 The China War and the Indian Mutiny has undergone some restriction. Now all these restric- tions, though they seem to facilitate business, are cur- tailments of the popular influence in the House, and afford a convenient shield to the governing class. As respects the question more immediately at issue — the right of speaking on the question of adjournment on Fridays — I have known most damaging results to the Ministry of the day arise from those brief discussions, and I should be very sorry to see the opportunity for firing an occasional shot at the Government abolished. The Liberals are putting their heads into nooses laid by their ' betters ' in all directions, and nothing will surprise me in that way. But beware how you lend yourself in the Star unconsciously to such proceedings. " I was glad you fired that shot at Thackeray, and still more so to find that it helped to bring him down. Those sentimentalists are very unreliable poli- ticians. Look at the greatest of the class, Lamartine : after all his magnificent mouthings about national integrity, justice, and liberty, see how he was prepared to imitate Frederick or Napoleon in his treatment of Italy. There is nothing after all in a politician like the stern logic of a Jefferson or a Calhoun. They may sometimes start from wrong premises, but when once started you always know where they are going." "August 13, 1857. "It appears to me that, being on the spot where information can be had, you ought to be able to rip up with a trenchant blade such aflFairs as that of the Principalities. It is clear to me that the facts are these : The English ambassador, as usual, has leave for bullying down all opposition at Constantinople. He was encouraged up to a certain point to go with Austria and Turkey against the Union. Tricks > were 225 P Richard Cobden : The International Man resorted to to obtain a simulated expression of opinion at the elections in opposition to Union. These tricks were detected and exposed by the representatives of the four Powers. Still, as usual, Lord Stratford encouraged the Porte to persist in his views and to resist the representations of Russia, France, Prussia and Sardinia. Then comes Louis Nap, to Osborne knowing our Indian straits, and I am told the substance of what he said to Palmerston then amounted to this : ' I have sacrificed two French Ambassadors to the arrogance of your representative at Constantinople, but I'll see you d d before I offer up another victim to the same impracticable temper.' Then Palmerston, of course, draws in, but he dares not throw overboard Lord Stratford, who knows too much and has him in his power, and so then the only question is how he shall mystify the public, and by the aid of the truculent Times beat a retreat without exposing his defeat ; and so the Conference is to meet again at Paris. This is, I suppose, agreed to by Louis Nap., just as he did in the silly Belgrad business, because it plays the game of his British colleagues, with no loss of prestige but rather the contrary to himself, for it is another excuse for a Conference at Paris, and the more of them the better it pleases the Parisians. But now comes the transparent and childish character of the whole game. For if four of the parties to the Conference are already known to be on one side, and only three on the other, everybody can see what the decision will be without the seven men meeting again at the same table. If one could believe that anything will restore us again to a reign of common sense and ordinary morality in our Foreign Affairs, surely such displays of childlike folly as these might bring a better state of things. But I fear the big baby of a British public 226 The China War and the Indian Mutiny is only to be amused by such rattles and straws as Palmerston knows how to exhibit to him." "\Augtat 14, 1857. " The Times is adding to the difficulty of our forces by threatening wholesale slaughter in case we succeed. What is this but inviting the Sepoys to fight to the last with no risk of loss even if they are slain, for that will only save them from the scaffold ? But the most senseless part of this tomahawk style of writing is that it really means nothing but sound and fury — for even the editor of The Times himself does not propose that the eighty thousand Sepoys who are in revolt shall be hung or shot, as would undoubtedly be the case if the mutiny had been confined to half a dozen. Even the fire-eaters themselves would make some difference in deference to the numbers involved. They would act as a matter of policy upon the sound- ness of the late Sir Charles Napier's dictum in a similar case when he said, ' Punishing by wholesale makes hatred, not obedience.' These writers know right well that there is no difference of opinion as to the propriety of punishing unsparingly those wretches who tortured and slew women and children. That is not the question at issue. But when they call for the destruction of a town like Delhi or the indiscriminate massacre of Sepoy prisoners, they prove themselves just as unfit to guide the conduct of government even in matters of policy as they are to be the guardians of the country's character for religion or humanity." '^August 27, 1857. " There is one thought ever recurring to my mind. How is it possible that we, a Christian and a superior race, can have been for a century in close contact with 227 Richard Cobden ; The International Man this people and produced no better results than these? Has not our conduct been such as to imbue the minds of the native population not only with hatred but contempt for us ? I fear this is in part the solution for the otherwise unaccountable outrages and barbari- ties inflicted upon the British. We do not read of such vindictive and merciless traits in the mode of warfare in India generally. Take the case of all others most likely to present the natives under the influence of the most ferocious passions — that of the invasion of Afghanistan. We don't find Shah Soojah and Akbar Khan cutting our women and children who fell into their hands to pieces. Even among the Red Indians of North America, those tribes who have been for a generation or two in close intercourse with the whites (such as the Seminolis, Cherokees, etc.) are incapable of such ' horrors.' It is only the Comanches and others who have hardly been brought in contact with Christians who are sometimes accused of adhering to their old barbarities to their prisoners. How can we account for these unnatural cruelties among our fellow-subjects in India upon any theory which is not a mournful reproach to ourselves as the conquering and dominant race ? And having had this revelation of the state of the population in Hindostan, what a perspective of sacrifices, difficulties and dangers does the future government of such a people offer to a reflective mind ! " "November 23, 1857. "What does Miall mean by so ostentatiously pro- claiming that he would recover our dominion in India at ' any cost ' .? He is not the man generally to use phrases in a vague and parrot fashion. But surely he has never fairly considered his position in this matter. 228 The China War and the Indian Mutiny He acknowledges the criminal means by which we got possession of that Empire, and makes that the plea for holding it at any cost of life and treasure — for cost in war means men as well as money — for the purpose of benefiting the people of India. But what right has he to assume that we shall govern that country well ? Take the very test which he himself applied to that of the State Church principle. He declares that he would be against our holding India if it were to be followed by our enforcing the endowment principles there. But after sanctioning any amount of waste and slaughter in reconquering India, what guarantee has he that this principle will not be carried out ? Can he prevent it there any more than he can here? Does not he know that there is a religious body in this country, ten times as potent as he and his party, in favour of Government propagandism there ? Doesn't he know that the principle is in full operation, bishops and all, in Hindostan ? Does not he know that every chaplain for every regiment in India is paid his yearly salary out of the hard earnings of the Hindoos, and that crowds of retired Christian clergymen and their descendants are living in England on pensions annually remitted from the same source .'' And yet he would sanction the waste of any amount of blood and treasure in reconquering India on the flea of setting up the voluntary principle ! Was ever self- delusion so powerful in blinding a really acute and logical thinker .'' " But Miall knows surely when he speak of ' India ' as a whole that he uses a word which has a very indefinite sense as applied to our relations with the peninsula of Hindostan. With some of the territories of India he might fairly argue that it would be impossible to resign our authority into the hands of 229 Richard Cobden : The International Man more rightful rulers than ourselves, inasmuch as there are no descendants of some of those sovereigns who were deposed by our earlier conquerors in that region. But he knows that this does not apply to our latest acquisitions to Scinde, Burma, the Punjaub (whose rightful heir is a visitor occasionally at our Court), and above all to Oude — the latest and worst of all our violations of right and justice. What would he do with these if the whole of them should rise as Oude has done against us.? He was in the House when Lord Dalhousie returned red-handed from more extensive if not more flagitious acts of spoliation than had been perpetrated by any Governor-General who preceded him, yet he was rewarded by Government with the tacit assent of Parliament for his acts. And now, when by the admission of all, the whole population of Oude is up in arms fighting for their rights, fight- ing with as much title to the rank of patriots as was bestowed on Swiss or Dutch in their wars of indepen- dence, Mr. Miall, who has not a syllable to say in defence of our rights in the first place to depose the king of Oude and seize his territory, would now sanction the conquering of it at any cost. That which was not justifiable five years ago must now be perpe- trated because of that injustice! But then Mr. Miall will indemnify the people of Oude by preventing the Government of this country from establishing the en- dowment principle in Oude — if he can.?" " Wednesday. " Let the essay style be avoided in the Star. I can illustrate what I have to say by reference to the article yesterday upon foreign policy. The first paragraph would be good for a magazine article — it is an exordium preparing one for an argument and the reader is warned 230 The China War and the Indian Mutiny to compose himself for a course of instructive reasoning. Now this is precisely what the readers of a penny paper don't want — or rather they must not be told that they want it, or they skip away to something else. The article, good in itself, would have been far better if it had commenced with ' Nobody in England except the dozen noblemen and gentlemen,' etc. All that precedes gives a repulsive heaviness to the aspect of the article. I can never too strongly impress on you the necessity of making everything ad rem or ad hominem, and plunging at once in the outset into the midst of the subject. It is in newspaper writing as it was with our League agitation, I used always to lay it down as a rule that the audiences at our meetings must be taught without their knowing it, and that a course of amusement and excitement must predominate over the labour of learning, or the same parties would not come to a second meeting ; and as I knew we should want them year after year to listen, work and pay, I was obliged in all my popular harangues to throw in a spice of amusing ingredients which I used to call ' eating fire, pulling ribbons out of my mouth, or standing on my head ' for their amusement, like the clown at the fair. I remember how I was often ashamed at reading the reports of my lighter passages in the paper next day, but there was no alternative. If 1 had confined myself to a process of reasoning in which instruction was the obvious end in view, the audience would not have followed me through and would certainly never have come to hear me a second time. Here is a confession and a lecture for you. " Observe the accompanying figures showing the great increase in the circulation of the Leeds Mercury conse- quent on the war. The same rule will apply to all news- papers, and it shows the interest they have in keeping 231 Richard Cobden : The International Man it alive. It is amusing to see the Mercury taking to itself the merit of having always displayed the ' warmest attachment to Peace ' ! Why, it is notorious that there has never been a war, even including the Opium War, that it has not defended, and you know it was by a mere accident that I was in time to stop it from joining in the cry of the French invasion. " These newspaper statistics must be turned to account by and by, as a warning to the public how they follow guides who may have an interest in misleading them. " The Mercury, like all the other ' religious ' papers, is a good lover of peace in the abstract." 232 CHAPTER IX AN INTERLUDE OF PEACE A.FTER 1857 Cobden's epistolary intercourse with Mr, Richard grew less frequent and less full, though never long interrupted except during his visits to America and France. Out of the House and living in retire- ment at his country home, with only occasional visits to London, Cobden found comparatively little in 1858 to arouse him to activity. The settlement of India, the China War still lingering, and relics of the Borneo affair are chief topics in his letters to Mr. Richard, and his intercourse with Mr. Bright and other correspondents was slighter than usual. In addition to this lull in public aiFairs, much of Cobden's attention this year was necessarily absorbed by the critical con- dition of his private finance. A large proportion of his resources had been invested in shares of the Illinois Central Railway, which, though a sound concern and des- tined to a career of great prosperity, was yet an infant requiring constant supplies of fresh financial food, in the shape of ' calls' upon share capital. At the close of the year Cobden sailed for his second visit to the United States, going on behalf of English shareholders to examine on the spot the- railroad and its management. Needless to add he used his eyes, ears, and understanding to take in a large fresh stock of information and of opinions, and was greatly cheered by the signs of progress which he everywhere detected. "It is the 233 Richard Cobden : The International Man universal hope of rising in the social scale which is the key to much of the superiority that is visible in this country. It accounts for the orderly self-respect which is the great characteristic of the masses in the United States. . . . All this tends to the argument that the political condition of a people is very much dependent on its economical fate."' During his absence in America in the early months of 18^9 Disraeli's Reform Bill led to the defeat of the Government and the election of a new Parliament in May. Cobden was returned without a contest for Roch- dale, and on his return to England at the end of June was greeted by a letter from the Prime Minister (Lord Palmerston), offering him a seat in the new Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade, His refusal of this offer, strongly urged upon him by many of his closest friends, and the motives which actuated him, made this incident the crowning point in a career of principle which to the ordinary politician of his day, or ours, would appear quixotic. The negotiation with Palmerston is particularly interesting in showing that the centre of Coljden's policy was not Free Trade but foreign poHcy. The tempter put his lure with great astuteness. " You and your friends complain of secret diplomacy, and that wars are entered into without consulting the people. Now it is in the Cabinet alone that questions of foreign policy are settled. We never consult Parliament till after they are settled. If, therefore, you wish to have a voice in these questions, you can only do so in the Cabinet." Though, doubtless, Cobden's decision was affected largely by the dislike of sitting In the Government of a man whose whole character and career he had persist- ently distrusted and assailed, and of the misunderstaod- ' Letter to John Bright (" Life," ii. 224). An Interlude of Peace iiigs to which his entrance upon office under Palmerston would inevitably give rise, the final determining motive of his refusal lay deeper still. He did not wish to form part of a bad system of secret Cabinet diplomacy. He was " out " to break that system and to insist that Parlia^ ment and public opinion should be the governing forces in foreign as in domestic policy. But though thus determined not to undertake the proffered ministerial responsibility, Cobden did not refuse a public work of a supremely important task which presently presented itself, and which formed a principal episode in his public career. It will be convenient to give a separate chapter to this work, merely placing here on record the letters to Mr. Richard which fall within 1858 and the earlier part of 1859. '"January 8, 1858. " I wrote to Sturge yesterday, suggesting that O'Neil should bring the case of Oude before a public meeting and try to obtain a vote in favour of a restitution of that piece of stolen property. I am quite sure I could carry the majority of a body of working men in favour of justice to the people of Oade. I am by no means sure that I should be equally successful with a middle-class audience, or with an assembly of so-called Evangelical Christians. I want to ask the latter, point-blank, who told them that God gave us India in trust for religious purposes ? The presumption of that class is astounding. If I had all the Blue Books and pamphlets relating to Oude, I would put the case in a clear shape and rub John Bull's nose in it. The newspapers would of course call me a Sepoy. " By the way, is it so clear that we are going to recover our former position in India ? The hot weather will be again on us in a month or two and our young unseasoned 235 Richard Cobden : The International Man troops will die like flies in a frost. Our armies may occupy central places, and flying columns may sweep all before them, but all beyond the British cantonments will be in open or secret revolt, and how is the country to be reorganized without the aid of the native army ? All the hard work has been done by the Sepoys : midday and midnight sentry duty, the escorting of treasure, the police service — all, in fact, requiring hard labour and exposure as distinguished from actual fighting with the enemy has been put upon the natives. I doubt the possibility of Englishmen performing their duties, and therefore I can't see how we are to reorganize the country. By and by we shall see the impolicy of the indiscriminate vengeance which we have shown to the native troops. We have made every Sepoy a des- perado and furnished him with the strongest possible motive to become a hero — for the only chance of escap- ing the pollution of the halter is by selling his life dearly in the field. In the end, when too late, the policy of pardon and conciliation will be tried. The arrogance of this people may yet be subjected to a rebuke at the hands of these despised Asiatics." "January 14, 1858. " An admirable article in the Star from, I believe, your pen, on the Evangelical movement for converting the Hindoos, gave me infinite pleasure. This mustering of the black coats to step into the breach opened by the red coats is to me ten thousand times worse than old Charley Napier ' sharpening his sword ' or Kars Williams depre- cating the neglect of the art of war. It is a wonder these people who read the New Testament backward are not afraid of bringing the devil himself into their midst and thus realizing the old popular superstition. Their doings are enough to make atheists of us ail, 236 An Interlude of Peace i.e. if we are to take them as the accredited exponents of Christianity. " I want you to give another short article about China. Did you see the letter from The Times correspondent at Hong-Kong in yesterday's paper ? It is desperately immoral. Sneering at Christian morality ! Can we play the game of fraud, violence and injustice in Asia without finding our national conscience seared at home .'' May we or our children not see the bloody appetite which we are encouraging in Hindostan and China satiating itself on each other? In fact, is not our national character already changed.'' Observe with what callous indiffer- ence we read the Gazette returns of the killed and wounded in India, and compare it with what we felt when the first bulletins of our losses in the Crimea appeared. Like the Romans at the Amphitheatre, or the French populace in the first Revolution, we acquire a habit or enjoying scenes of carnage, the only difference being that we look at them through the columns of the news- paper. And hence ' our own correspondent ' is sent to the seat of war to deck out in pictorial phrase, for the amusement of the reader, the scenes of slaughter and wounds and agony which we peruse with precisely the same zest as if we were witnessing a mimic battlefield at Astley's. Observe the eager levity with which The Times correspondent at Hong-Kong is urging on the fray, calling for the 'opening of the ball,' and threatening Lord Elgin with a recall if he does not execute his behests. In due time we shall hear of our forces having at a safe distance with their superior artillery bombarded and burnt the crowded city or terrified the population into submis- sion. And all this in support of a quarrel into which our vain and foolish representative plunged us without a tittle of right or reason. And whose war is this .? Not the war of the House of Commons, for a majority of that 337 Richard Cobden : The International Man body stigmatized it as an unwarrantable aggression on our part, and every man of high intellect or commanding position who was unconnected with the Government gave solemn judgment against our own functionary, and the greatest legal authorities proclaimed that law and justice were on the side of our opponent. Yet in spite of all this it is now assumed by the Government that the middle class of England have by the last election endorsed the wicked acts perpetrated in our name in China, and now the representative of the newspaper which was the foremost abetter of the Government laughs at the idea of applying the maxims of Christian morality to the Chinese. The Greeks and Romans became viti- ated in character by their contact with Asiatics — are we to suffer the same fate ? The bishops are inviting us to more strenuous efforts for the conversion of the heathen — are we not in need of all their care to prevent our being ourselves converted to heathenism .'' Have not our acts in that largest and most populous quarter of the globe been characterized in a majority of cases by a pagan disregard of the precepts of Christianity i" " ''August 1 8, 1858. " Nobody has a greater horror, scorn and detestation than I have for the doctrine of an irresistible law 'or destiny impelling to brute violence and injustice. That may be the law for wild beasts, but it is because we are something better than wild beasts that it ought not to be our law. What I meant was this : that when a Government plants its power and authority among an inferior race (I don't like the word, but there are inferior climates for the development of man), the very superiority, whether intellectual, moral or physical, leads to an extension of its power and influence over surrounding barbarism. This may be a desirable state of things if the ascendancy be 238 An Interlude of Peace a moral one, providing the governing intruders be capable of taking root with the indigenous population and amalgamating with them. Thus it was a good thing for Penn to set up his moral-force sway over the North American Indians, because he and his colonists could live and multiply their species in the same latitudes as the red men, and there was no reason why they should not be fused into one community. But my doctrine is that it would not have been desirable for Penn to have colon- ized Borneo, and set up a form of government for white men who could not perpetuate their species there or follow the pursuit of agriculture. If he had gone there, and all the neighbouring tribes had come to volunteer to submit to his rule, or at least — which I maintain would have been the case — his moral power should have extended its influence to neighbouring tribes and they had in some degree acknowledged his authority — still it could not be a Pennsylvania, inasmuch as no white child can be reared on the Equator. The white race could only hold power by a constant succession of adult visitors which is the most unnatural and worst of all governing powers, and the more widely it is set up the greater will be its fall, to the confusion and injury of the governor and governed. If you want to benefit the races who properly belong to such regions as Borneo, India, or Africa, send your missionaries, both religious and secu- lar, teach them what you know, and try to inspire them with the ideas of a better social and political status, and the desire for a better government. But don't attempt to govern them or to exert your influence through the Government. Do, in fact, as St. Paul did ! " "August 21, 1858. " I doubt the policy of Mr. Wise interfering person- ally. It gives the occasion for such friends of Brooke 239 Richard Cobden : The International Man as old Drummond to raise the cry of persecution. Everybody knows that Wise and Brooke have had a deadly personal quarrel. His facts and arguments had better be used through others. Why, for instance, should not he send a letter to the Star v/ith an assumed signature exposing the blunders in the article from the Leeds Mercury ? I send you quite a tit-bit from one of Molesworth's speeches. Put it in the Star as a paragraph. This China news will be made the test for hallelujahs over our criminal policy in the East. The striking success of our arms flatters the self-love and gratifies the combativeness of our people, whilst the cupidity of our merchants is excited by the prospect of fresh ' openings ' for our trade. Our case can only be proved by a long course of experience which will show that trade does not gain, whilst our tax-payers lose, by this process of forcing markets open at the point of the bayonet." '■'■'November 28, 1859. " There is a leader in to-day's Daily News about Borneo, the writer of which is evidently well informed upon the subject, and I have no doubt others will follow. The case for the Peace Party and the Aborigines Pro- tection Society is strong enough upon the simple ground that here you have a slaughter unparalleled in its character since the massacre of the feeble Mexicans by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, committed upon a race of bar- barians upon no other pretence than that they were living in a state of uncivilized warfare with neighbouring bar- barous tribes. No attack was made or contemplated upon Englishmen or Europeans — no attack was possible ; for mark the features of the case : The Times says one thousand five hundred or two thousand were blown to atoms, and we do not find that there was as much opposition to the British force as to cause the loss of a 240 An Interlude of Peace single life to an Englishman. This fact constitutes it the most wanton, cruel and cowardly butchery of modern times. I believe that fewer lives were sacrificed at the Battle of Trafalgar. I have thought in vain upon the subject, to bring to mind any parallel atrocity perpetuated upon sea or land by a so-called civilized nation upon an uncivilized people in our day." 241 Q CHAPTER X THE FRENCH TREATY Cobden's mission to France in 1859-60 for the nego- tiation of a commercial treaty with Great Britain was not in its first intent a business mission. It was a peace mission. The alliance for the Russian War, like most war-alliances, was an ill guarantee of lasting amity. The atmosphere of mistrust, which the Russian enterprise interrupted, again closed round the Governments and nations soon after peace was restored. The outbreak in April of the Franco-Austrian War, arranged in the summer of 1858 between Napoleon and Cavour and concluded by the Treaty of Villafranca, in July 1859, in which Savoy and Nice were handed over to France, aroused great Indignation In this country. Though Palmerston was regarded both here and in France as friendly to Napoleon, the continental disturbances were used by the Government as grounds for increased ex- penditure on armaments, and on both sides of the Channel suspicions and antagonisms began once more to be inflamed. Such was the situation when Mr. Bright, speaking In Parliament, asked why the Government did not approach the French Emperor with a view to -establishing free commercial relations between the two nations as a pacific and a mutually profitable policy. The distinguished French statesman and publicist, M.' Michel Chevalier, struck by the opportuneness of this suggestion, wrote to 242 The French Treaty Cobden urging the experiment, and shortly afterwards, on a visit to this country, pressed him personally to undertake the conversion of the Emperor to a Free Trade treaty, so far as that policy was immediately practicable. The only member of the new Ministry likely to be in full sympathy with such a large proposal was Mr. Gladstone, now Chancellor of the Exchequer. Cobden visited him at Hawarden early in September and discussed both the political and the fiscal feasibility of a treaty for the mutual reduction of duties upon articles of com- mercial exchange between the two countries. Though both were alive to the dangers to which treaties of commerce are always exposed, as compromising the sound general principle which bade each nation adjust its own fiscal policy to its own interests, unhampered "by express arrangements with other countries, both were equally convinced that, as Lord Morley puts it, " An economic principle by itself can never be decisive of anything in the mixed and complex sphere of practice," and that diplomacy may be called in to assist the actual process of applying such an economic principle. Cobden's first proposal, that he should utilize the opportunity afforded by a visit to Paris which he had previously arranged, to make a private inquiry into the matter, was changed into something more definite. If anything was to be accomplished, it was felt that some position of at least informal authority must attach to such a mission. He therefore consulted Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell, the Foreign Minister. He did not find them strongly sympathetic, for their sense of the political proprieties had been gravely upset by the alleged intention of France to take a bit of territory from Morocco. But still he was accorded a permission and the friendly services of the Paris Embassy. The situation was felt at first to be one of extreme 243 Richard Cobden : The International Man delicacy, as indeed it was. It could hardly be expected that Lord Cowley, our ambassador at Paris, would view with entire favour an irregular envoy thrusting himself into important relations with French Ministers and professing to carry some great unmeasured authority. On the other hand, Cobden was equally insistent that he was not to be regarded merely as a pushful commercial traveller seeking the expansion of French markets for British wares. The following letter to M. Chevalier, written just after his return from visiting Mr. Gladstone, indicates his feelings : — "September 14, 1859. " It would, of course, be agreeable to me to see your Ministers of State. But I attach very little value to such interviews : for there is always a latent suspicion that I, as an Englishman, in recommending other Governments to adopt Free Trade principles, am merely pursuing a selfish British policy. Thus my advice is deprived of all weight, and even my facts are doubted. But, on totally different grounds, I should be glad to see a removal of the impediments which our foolish legislation interposes to the intercourse between the two countries. I see no other hope but in such a policy for any permanent improvements in the political relations of France and England. I utterly despair of finding peace and harmony in the efforts of Governments and diplomatists. The people of the two nations must be brought into mutual dependence by the supply of each other's wants. There is no other way of counteracting the antagonism of lan- guage and race. It is God's own method of producing an entente cor dial e,^ and no other plan is worth a farthing. ' " C'est la m^thode de Dieu lui-meme pour produire une entente cordiale, et tout autre syst^me ne vaut pas un Hard." This is perhaps the first recorded use of the expression entente corSale as applied to the desirable relations between the two nations. 244 The French Treaty It is with this view that I hope to see our Government greatly reduce the duties on wines and other French products, and it is only with this view that I feel any interest about your following our example. If I thought I could promote a similar spirit in the minds of any of your statesmen, I should be very glad to have an inter- view with them. But to have any chance of success it is necessary that they should previously understand that I am not a commis voyageur travelling abroad for the sale of British fabrics, " I don't like the tendency of affairs on the Continent. Every year witnesses a greater number of armed men, and a more active preparation in the improved means of human destruction. Depend on i(, this is not in harmony with the spirit of the age." On October i8th Cobden arrived at Paris, and, after an interview with Lord Cowley, was brought by M. Chevalier into close intercourse with M. Rouher, the Minister of Commerce, a man fortunately of strong Free , Trade professions. It was soon made clear that all depended upon convincing the Emperor, and a long interview was arranged, at which M. Rouher presented Cobden. There are several accounts given by Cobden of this interview, in a formal letter to Lord PaJmerston, a letter to Mr. Bright, and a very full account in the private journal, from which long extracts are given in Lord Morley's "Life." The first hour of the conversation turned entirely upon the sore subject of the suspicion and dislike which the Emperor found in the English Press and Parliament everywhere and always directed against him, though his own acts had been continually dictated by a desire to be on good terms with England. Writing on December 26, 1857, to his French Free- 245 Richard Cobden : The International Man Trade friend, M. Aries Dufour, Cobden uses the same language : " I have had the opportunity of talking a little to the Emperor on the great question of Commercial Reform, and have tried to persuade him that ours is the only reliable entente cordiale between two great nations. Free Trade is God's diplomacy, and there is no other certain way of uniting people in the bonds of peace. " I then turned to the question which I wished to talk upon, and urged the necessity of bringing the two countries into greater commercial dependence on each other. We talked for a full hour on the subject. My only fear is lest I talked too much, and may have sometimes forgotten that I was not speaking to the same gentleman with whom I had breakfasted at Mr. Milnes' three days after his escape from the chateau of Ham. But he is an excellent listener, and from every remark which fell from him he seemed to be favourable to Free Trade. (I have heard this even from his enemies.) But I came to the conclusion that he is very ill-informed on the subject, and that, as a consequence, he has a great fear of the Protectionists, whose numbers, power and influence he greatly exagger- ates. Of course, I did all I could to take this party down in his estimation. He told me that a large majority of the Legislative Body and the Senate were determined protectionists, and that the only way in which he could effect a change would be through a treaty with a foreign Power, the provisions of which would then become law by his simple ' decree,' and he asked me whether England would enter into a commercial treaty. I explained that we could give no exclusive advantages, but that I was sure your Govern- ment would be glad to make some simultaneous changes in our tariff and embody them in a treaty, if that would facilitate his action in the same direction ; and 246 The French Treaty I explained how it might be possible next year for Mr. Gladstone to co-operate with him in this re- ciprocal reduction of duties. I told him I thought we could abolish all the duties on the articles de Taris, and enable him to say to the Parisians that every- thing they made would go as fully into London as into Rome. He seemed pleased at this idea. He remarked that he was under a promise to the manu- facturers not to abolish the prohibitive system before 1 86 1. 1 told him that if the treaty was entered into next year it was not necessary that it should wholly take effect in one or even two years ; that, if spread over three years, it might be as well for all parties. All that I wanted was the moral effect of the fact that the new commercial policy was adopted. I took this opportunity of explaining, in very emphatic terms, that England did not want customers ; that we had already more markets than we could supply ; that in a large number of our mills and manufactories the machinery was standing partially idle owing to the want of hands, whilst there were large orders in hand beyond what could be executed. He asked me how I should go to work if I were in his place. I told him that I should act precisely as I did in England, by dealing first with one article, which was the key- stone to the system — in England that article was corn, in France it is iron ; that I should abolish totally, and at once, the duty on pig-iron, and leave only a very small revenue duty, if any, on bars, plates, etc., and that I would buy off the opposition of the iron-masters by appointing a commission to afford them an indemnity out of a loan to be raised for the purpose. This would render it much easier to deal with all the other industries, whose general complaint is that they cannot compete with England owing to the high price of 247 Richard Cobden : The International Man iron and coal. (I am told there is not much difficulty in making coal free.) He made me repeat to him these last remarks. He asked me to furnish him with a list of the articles imported into England from France upon which I thought we could reduce the duties. I promised to give him a general idea, which I have since done through M. Rouher. He asked whether the repeal of the Corn Laws had thrown any land out of cultivation, and when I told him it had had the very opposite effect — -that in nothing had Free Trade been so completely triumphant as in the improvement it had effected in agriculture — and when I described the great veneration in which Sir Robert Peel's memory is held by the people, he remarked, ' I am charmed and flattered at the idea of doing the same work for France, but the difficulties are very great. We do not make reforms in France ; we only make revolutions.' He alluded to the way in which he had been thwarted by the protectionists in some small measures of reform, such as the admission of iron for shipbuilding and the removing of the sliding scale. I was struck with his repeated allusions to the opposition he had to encounter and his evident fear of a mere handful of monopolists. I tried every argument to convince him that, instead of injuring the protected interests, he would render a greater service to them than any other class by subjecting them to a little wholesome competition. But he seems, like almost every Frenchman I know (excepting my friend M. Chevalier), to be very deficient in moral courage. The result of my interview was a conviction that, if left to himself, the Emperor would at once enter upon a Free Trade policy, but I am by no means certain that he will do so, and encounter the dangers which he imagines are in his way." 248 The French Treaty The urgency of the situation, if a fresh anti-French panic was to be averted, is well indicated in the following letter to M. Chevalier : — "Paris, October 13. " My interview with the Emperor was so far very satisfactory that he put pertinent questions and listened to me patiently. But, of course, he did not lead me to expect what his policy would be. I had no right to expect so much, I must return to London in a week to meet an American gentleman on private business, and shall not be back in Paris again for some days. I wish you could leave your vines and sheep at Lodene and come and see me before I go. What shall I say to Mr. Gladstone } I am not sure that the Ministers of the Emperor appreciate so fully as I could wish the importance of doing something to convince the world that he is going to do the work of Sir Robert Peel rather than that of the first Napoleon. M. Persigny feels this because, being on the spot, he knows what the state of opinion is in England. The alarmists and the incendiaries have got complete possession of the public ear. The feeling in England is now worse than ever. Not a voice is raised on the side of moderation. I met, at Messrs, Rothschild's counting-house, Meyer Rothschild, the M,P,, from England, and asked him what news he brought from the other side, and his answer was, ' There is one universal feeling of mistrust of Louis Napoleon,' It is useless to go into the cause of this, or to try to show its injustice. He has enemies, of course, interested in spreading a hatred and mistrust of him, and there are parties in England who, for their own ends, foster this feeling of panic. The part for a wise man like the Emperor to perform 349 Richard Cobden : The International Man is to do a striking act, which shall at once put his enemies in the wrong, and give those who, like myself, have taken the unpopular side in England an argument by which we can turn the tables on the panic-mongers. Nothing but a decided measure of Commercial Reform will suffice for this purpose." A long and troublesome series of discussions was required, first, to drive an intelligent apprehension of the proposals into the head of IVI. Fould, the French Premier, who, though not averse to a modifi- cation of the existing prohibitive tariff, still clung to high duties as necessary to appease the manufacturing interests. It was very difficult even to keep M. Fould up to this timid committal, or to get him to face definitely the proposal of a Commercial Treaty- " He saw great difficulties in the way. How, when, and where could a negotiation be carried on, and with whom ? He was afraid that, if a meeting between himself, the Minister of Commerce, M. Rouher, and myself were to take place, it could not be kept a secret ; that at present they had concealed even from M. Walenski, the Foreign Minister, the fact of any conversation having taken place between the Emperor and themselves and me." " The droll part of these interviews, besides the timidity of the people, is that here is a Government having so little faith or con- fidence in one another, that some of its members tie me down, a perfect stranger, to secrecy as against their most elevated colleagijes." ' On a short visit to London he saw Mr. Gladstone, who was whole-heartedly with him in the matter, and Lord Palmerston, whose mind was again obsessed by stories of French aggressive intentions. It is, indeed, doubtful whether his laborious pleadings ' "Life," ii. 253. 250 The French Treaty in Paris with French Ministers would have reached success had not the French Minister in London, M. de Persigny, taken up the matter with real zeal and understanding. For even after M. Rouher had pre- pared his plan of a Commercial Treaty, the mind of the Emperor still remained undecided. At last M. de Persigny seems to have turned the balance by playing upon the fears of Napoleon, and represent- ing war as possible unless some measures were taken to avert the profound distrust of the English public. But, even when the Emperor's assent was won, the battle had to be fought in detail over the con- crete proposals in the treaty. Here, again, it was a question of courage rather than of economic or political principle. The central contention turned upon the height of the proposed tariff, or, putting the same matter in another way, the extent of the French concession to possible English competition. " Referring to the details in his intended tariff, he said the duties would range from lo to 30 per cent. I pointed out the excessive rate of the latter figure, that the maximum ought not to exceed 20 per cent. ; that it would defeat his object in every way if he went as high as 30 per cent. ; that it would fail as an economical measure, whilst in a political point of view it would be unsuccessful, inasmuch as the people of England would regard it as prohibition in another form." ' Long after the Emperor was supposed to be con- verted and had given formal assent, his mind was liable to relapse before the protectionist attacks, now reinforced by M. Magne, the new Finance Minister who had replaced M. Rouher. Cobden had to wrestle anew with the influence of this man upon the ' "Life," ii. 258. 251 Richard Cobden : The International Man Emperor's mind, and he laboured under the dis- advantage that all the earlier negotiations were un- official. For not until the last days of the year was Lord John Russell induced to give Cobden the official position demanded for any effective action. Even then the project was far from safe. For the French protectionists and their ministerial friends had many devices for shelving it. One was to tack on to it as an integral part a political treaty of alliance. Another was the Emperor's demand for the sub- mission of the Commercial Treaty to the Legislature, though he himself had informed Cobden of the irreconcilable objections of that body. Then came the demand for an " Inquiry " into the desirabiUty of abolishing the prohibitive system, an inquiry actually held. At last the Emperor made an open committal of his intention to ratify the treaty in a letter to the Moniteur. This letter aroused intense anger among the ironmasters, cotton-spinners and other protec- tionists, and the danger was continuous, until the actual signature of the treaty on January 29, i860. The following passage from a letter written to his friend M. Aries Dufour gives a vivid picture «f the most precarious stage of this great affair. "Paris, January 27, i860. " I had fully expected to leave Paris without fail to-morrow for Lyons, but a telegraphic despatch from London has again detained me. There are some little verbal alterations to be made in the treaty which has been returned. And we are to meet Messrs. Baroche and Rouher this afternoon to agree to them, " There is nothing which will affect the conclusion of the affaire, which will be effected, and the ratifica- tions exchanged, before next Friday. The prohibition- 252 The French Treaty ists have made a great mistake in resorting to such violent language. They only prove their own impotence, for, as they cannot follow up their big words with big deeds, they only make themselves ridiculous. Nobody will pity them. They are gone back to their mills and factories, and as everything goes on much as before, they will learn for the first time that they are not all France and that the world can go on pleasantly even when they are not satisfied. They have been spoilt children so long, with every caprice grati- fied, at the expense of other people, and even sometimes of themselves, that I dare say it is very difficult for them to bear this contradiction, but it will do them good notwithstanding." But the signature of the treaty by the Emperor was very far from a completion of the transaction. For in the first place it had to run the gauntlet of criticism in the House of Commons, where strong suspicions were aroused against any treaty of French origin on the part of the Francophobe faction whose passions were being freshly fed by the intrigues of Napoleon in the affairs of Italy and the Zurich treaty between France and Austria for the rearrangement of Italy. Cobden himself took a private hand in an attempted adjustment of the situation by means of a long conver- sation (January 30th) with Prince Metternich, the Austrian Ambassador at Paris. The sympathies of Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell were strongly with Italy, and, as the months of i860 passed by, a powerful backing of public resentment gathered against the Franco-Austrian intrigues which went to endanger Cobden's treaty. Nor was that the only danger. Among free-traders there was a vociferous section that objected on grounds of principle to commercial treaties 253 Richard Cobden : The International Man as a violation of the pure gospel of economic freedom. The measure had to steer its course between these opposed tides of criticism. Fortunately this task was committed to the able hands of Mr. Gladstone, who, in his exposition of the treaty (February loth), paid the following well-merited tribute to its creator : — " Rare is the privilege of any man who, having four- teen years ago rendered to his country one signal and splendid service, now again within the same brief span of life, decorated neither by rank nor title, bearing no mark to distinguish him from the people whom he serves, has been permitted again to perform a great and memorable service to his country." The measure emerged triumphantly from its ordeal in the Commons. " Nothing was given to France which was of any value to us. On the other hand, nothing was received from France except a measure by which that country conferred a benefit upon itself. At a small loss of revenue we had gained a great extension of trade." ' Such was the compact and successful presentation of the case by Gladstone. But there still remained a vast amount of anxious toil for Cobden before the treaty was got into an operative shape. In fact, the treaty itself was little better than a sketch, the detailed provisions of which had yet to be filled in by a Supplementary Convention provided for in one of the Articles of the treaty. Over these details a fierce battle had to be fought in order to prevent the French protectionists maintaining the duties up to the 30 per cent, standard which the treaty made permissible, instead of reducing them towards the 10 per cent, for which Cobden had been arguing. Cobden himself took command of the English Com- mission, confident in the strength of the evidence he - "Life," ii. 289. 254 The French Treaty could produce and in the support of M. Rouher and the Emperor. The work, which began in April and lasted until November, was of a most arduous nature, taxing his industry, astuteness and temper to the utmost. The main matter of discussion was the com- parative costs of production of the British and French products liable to be brought into competition in the several trades. Cobden and his colleagues had first to prepare evidence and witnesses to prove in each particular that the French Commissioners ought to be content with a lower duty than that which was de- manded by the French manufacturing interests. "The strain of the conflict and its preparation, both in Cobden and his colleagues, was very great. The dis- cussions at the Foreign Ofiice usually lasted from two until six o'clock, when they went to dine. Later in the evening came laborious interviews with commercial experts from England, who brought tables, returns, extracts from ledgers. Commercial friends at home were apt to be impatient, and Cobden was obliged to write long letters of encouragement and exhortation. In the morning, after two or three hours devoted to correspondence and preparation for these interviews, soon after eleven Cobden proceeded to the offices of the English Commissioners in the Rue de I'Universite, where his colleagues had already arranged the matter acquired in the previous evening. This they examined and discussed and prepared for the meeting at two o'clock, when the encounter was once more opened." ^ During the whole of this delicate but tedious business Cobden was harassed by the growing strain of the political situation. The French and British Govern- ments accused one another of increasing their armed preparations, either upon grounds of unjust suspicion ' "Life,"ii. 295. Richard Cobden : The International Man or with aggressive intentions. The annexation of Savoy had seemed to us the first step in a larger career of imperialist aggression, which, according to the information given by M. de Girardin to Cobden, in- cluded an extension of the French frontier to the Rhine and a pacific annexation of Belgium. On the other hand. Prince Napoleon, the ablest survivor of his family, in conversation with Cobden in June, imputed the bad relations between the two countries mainly to our vacillating foreign policy and our constant increase of arms. It was during this con- versation that Prince Napoleon made the interesting suggestion which Cobden thus records in his Diary: — " He then said he was about to mention a delicate matter, and he suggested that I ought to be appointed Ambassador to France; that that would do more than anything besides to cement the good relations between the two countries. As this was said with a good deal of emphasis, and appeared to be the communication he had in view when he sent for me, I replied with equal emphasis, ' Impossible ! You really do not understand us in England ! ' ■ I then explained exactly my position towards Lord Cowley : that I had been from the first only an interloper in his domain ; that he had acted with great magnanimity in tolerating my intru- sion ; that a man of narrow mind would have resented it, and either have given up his part altogether to me or have resisted my encroachment on his functions. I remarked that Lord Cowley had frankly owned that I had superior knowledge to himself on questions of a commercial or economical character, and that, considering how much they had been my study, it was not dero- gatory to him to grant me precedence in my own speciality. I begged him to say no more upon the subject." 256 The French Treaty As the summer advanced Cobden's plans were more and more disturbed by the English proposals for fresh military expenditure, which, as he urged, " completely falsified my promises to the Emperor." Fanned by the fire-eaters of the Press, the panic spread through the nation and was shared by all the men who counted in the Government, excepting Gladstone, who, keeping in close personal touch with Cobden, was able to bring closely informed eloquence to bear in his pacific speeches. Even Palmerston, who until the winter of 1859 had been a supporter of the Emperor, succumbed to the prevailing passion and came to the conclusion that " at the bottom of his heart there rankles a deep and in- extinguishable desire to humble and punish England." On July loth Cobden addressed to Palmerston a long letter of remonstrance and argument of which the following are the most salient passages : — " The extraordinary military and warlike displays of the last few months in England have tended to diminish the hopes which were at first entertained in connection with the treaty. And this state of discourage- ment in the public mind has been increased by the rumour that it is the intention of the Government to propose a large increase to our permanent defences." " It is on this point that I am more immediately led to address you. It seems to me that the two questions are intimately connected ; and I venture to suggest that, in fairness to the public and to Parliament, as well as to the Government itself, the results of our negotiations here should be known, before the country is pledged to . a further large outlay for defensive armaments." " Should the treaty prove as unsatisfactory in its details as is predicted by those who are urging us to an increase of our warlike preparations, I shall have nothing to say in opposition to such a 257 R Richard Cobden : The International Man policy. But if, as I expect, the French Government should take but a single step from their prohibition system to a tariff more liberal than that of the ZoUverein or the United Stdtes, then I think the public mind in Europe will undergo a considerable change as to the prospects of peace with our great neighbour, and it is doubtful whether the country, on the very eve of such a change, will subject itself to increased burdens in anticipation of a rupture with its new customer. All I desire is that it should be allowed a choice when in possession of a full knowledge of these circumstances." " In the important discussions on the details of the French tariff (and it is wholly a question of details) I shall be placed in a very disadvantageous position, and shall find myself deprived of those arguments with which I most successfully urged the adoption of the Free Trade policy, if in the meantime the present Government commits itself, and wha,t is still more important in the sight of France, if it be allowed to commit the Free Trade and popular party in England, to a permanent attitude of hostility and mistrust." Palmerston remained unconvinced, and a fortnight later introduced his proposals for increased armaments in a speech directly offensive in its allusions to danger from France. It had a most injurious effect on French opinion. Cobden wrote in his Diary that " People speak of it as an indication that our Court and aristocracy are inclined to renew the attitude of 1792, by forming another coalition in opposition to France. They say that the inspiration of our policy in arming and fortify- ing comes from Berlin and Brussels through the British Court." This was the view of Prince Napoleon, and M. Rouher, Cobden's stoutest political aid in carrying through the Treaty, was not less outspoken in his con- demnation of Palmerston's speech, ?58 EUGENE ROUHER (1814-84). [To face page 258. The French Treaty "He characterized the policy of our Cabinet as a pitiful truckling to the popular passions of the moment, for the sole purpose of securing a majority in Parliament, in disregard of the interests of commerce and civilization and the higher duties of statesmanship." But while the political value of the treaty was thus grievously impaired, the instrument itself was brought to completion, though not without further impediments and delays. Cobden thus comments in his Diary upon the obstructive attitude : — " This Convention was ready for signature, so far as the negotiation here was concerned, on the i8th September, and the delay which had taken place is attributable to our Foreign Office, to their habitual procrastination, the desire to meddle, and I fear also to the willingness on the part of some of the officials in that department to find fault with my performance. My position is that of a poacher and their feeling towards me is akin to that of a gamekeeper towards a trespasser in quest of game. I am afraid, too, that the majority of the Cabinet is not very eager for my complete success here. The tone of our Court is very hostile to the French Emperor, and in the present nearly balanced state of political parties the Court has great influence. There is an instinctive feeling on the part of our aristocratic politicians that, if the Treaty should prove successful and result in a largely increased trade between France and England, it would produce a state of feeling which might lead to a mutual reduction of armaments, and thus cut down the expenditure for our warlike services in which our aristocratic system flourishes." At last the second Supplementary Convention, com- pleting the treaty, was signed on November i6th, and 259 Richard Cobden : The International Man Cobden was set free for a much-needed holiday. He left in December, with his wife and eldest daughter, for Algiers, where he remained until the following May. The proposal, raised in certain friendly poHtical quarters, to vote him a sum of money for his services at Paris, was peremptorily stopped by Cobden in its initial stage, and he was equally firm in refusing Palmerston's offer to make him a Baronet or a Privy Councillor. In his letter of refusal to Palmerston he says : — " With respect to the particular occasion for which it is proposed to confer on me this distinction, I may say that it would not be agreeable to me to accept a recompense in any form for my recent labours in Paris. The only reward I desire is to live to witness an im- provement in the relations of the two great neighbouring nations which have been brought into more intimate connection by the Treaty of Commerce." It is hardly necessary here to dwell upon the great importance of Cobden's treaty, not only for the commerce of this country and for the improved political relations with France, but for its contribution to the wider policy of free commercial intercourse throughout the world. The purists of Free Trade who objected to any commercial treaty, as binding our national fiscal policy and buying favours by favours, were mistaken in their objections. England did not, by the French treaty, give any special favour to French products entering this country. England maintained no differ- ential duties and the reduction or abandonment of our import duties upon agreed classes of goods extended automatically to every other nation besides France. France, on her part, took the treaty as the model for a number of similar trade treaties extended within the next five years to cover Belgium, the German ZoUverein, 260 The French Treaty- Italy, Scandinavia, Austria and Switzerland. Thus was erected and applied the principle of most-favoured nation's treatment, by which every arrangement to re- duce a tariff with one country has a liberating effect far wider than its immediate area of application and helps to strengthen the bonds of international commercial co-operation. Cobden's absorption upon this laborious task and his long absence from Parliament and from close contact with affairs at home naturally reduced the volume of his corre- spondence with Mr. Richards and other friends. But the letters written this year show that he was still following with zest the affairs of China and India, and that from Paris he kept a guiding hand upon the agitation against increased armaments which his friends in England were organizing. ''June 1 6, i860. " I observe what Lord John said about China matters. But I am not without hopes yet that Lord Elgin will reach his destination in time to prevent a renewal of the war. He has a common interest with the Government in putting an end to the expense which is the great rock ahead for Gladstone. Lord E. never ought to have returned before the ratifications were exchanged and left the matter in the hands of his brother, who is evidently a commonplace person with just those contentious attributes which led him to be constantly seizing the small ends of things, the only ends he was competent to handle. This conduct of Lord E., by the way, is an illustration of the aristocratic system under which we are ruled and which is practically an irresponsible regime. If he had been an employee of this or the United States Government, he could not have done so with impunity. But being a 261 Richard Cobden : The International Man lord he is Invulnerable. Apart from this he is not to be blamed for his proceedings in China, which were conducted with temper and moderation. " Apropos of this subject, I have been in correspon- dence with some persons at Manchester in the Chamber of Commerce, and urging them to take the question of China politics into their hands. I believe the Lancashire people, who are more interested than any one besides in the trade with China, are not in favour of a warlike policy. They are afraid that it may have the effect of throwing the whole empire into confusion. I wrote a letter to one of my friends, who put the substance of it into the Manchester Examiner with the signature of 'A London Merchant,' and it will be also in the Morning Star, I expect, to-day or Monday. I am following this up, and hope to identify the Manchester people with a peace policy from the point of view of their own interests. The last correspondence between the China Government and Mr. Bruce places us more in the wrong than ever. How our conduct must puzzle the Chinese ! They must regard us as a people without moral sense, common sense, or any logical faculties. Some great retribution must befall us in the East to vindicate the justice of God's government. My only astonishment is that we have been allowed to run riot so long. " Here I am immersed in the details of the French tariff", a tedious task and slow, but one which could not be avoided. I am more than ever satisfied that the result will be a great reality, and not the sham which your rifle- club heroes are predicting. The state of the public mind is so suspicious in England regarding everything French, and especially everything which the Emperor's Govern- ment meddles with, that not one person in a hundred believes that I am doing anything better than subjecting myself to the tricky devices of a gang of unscrupulous 263 The French Treaty swindlers, and that nothing satisfactory can result from my labours. It is almost incredible that so many people still allow themselves to be influenced by their belief in The Times, though that paper never believes in itself for three days together. By the way, what can be the motive of that journal in so systematically and with such trans- parent dishonesty attacking the treaty, and refusing to wait till the work in which we are engaged is completed, but passing judgment in anticipation ? It cannot be to please its readers of the mercantile and manufacturing classes, for they desire to be quiet and wait at all events to see if any good can be got from the treaty. It seems as if that journal had sworn to pull down the Emperor or to embroil the countries in the attempt. What is their motive ? Are they under sinister influences or are they Satanic enough to do their vile work for the mere love of mischief .? "Can it be possible that the Government is looking with favour to the plan of expending ^^ 14,000,000 for fortifications in addition to the thirty millions already voted for armaments .'' I cannot bring myself to believe it. Having now been nearly nine months in France, mixing with everybody, having access to all information and knowing what is doing by the Government, I declare to you that I am only the more lost in amazement at the cry of invasion which is still potent enough to draw millions of money at any moment from the pockets of the people. Most solemnly do I assure you that a delusion more gigantic, or a hoax more successful, was never practised on the public mind since the days of Titus Oates, and including the feats of that immortal impostor. There is not one fact to warrant the belief that the Emperor or the French people desire to draw on themselves the greatest of calamities, a war with England ; there are thousands of facts spread over ten years to prove 263 Richard Cobden : The International Man that he wishes to be at peace with us. If forced to a choice, he would prefer a war with the whole Continent to a war with England. In the one he might conquer, in the other he knows he could have nothing but suffering for his people without the power to strike a blow in return. It is a thing so monstrous from my present point of view that I hardly have patience to discuss it. " I trust our friends in Parliament will refuse to be identified with anything so monstrous. And indeed 1 will not believe that the Government really contemplates proposing such a waste of public money. " Give me a few years for the operation of my treaty, and I will make it very difficult for diplomatists or anonymous journalists to set the two nations at work cutting each other's throats. My only fear is that they who do not like this prospect will destroy my work before it can produce its good fruits." '^August 10, i860. " I send by this day's courier from the Embassy a copy of the pamphlet to which you refer. It is now published for sale avowedly under the auspices of the Government here. Could it be translated ? It strikes me that taking into account, on both sides, the forces by land and sea, at home and abroad, regular and voluntary, there are more British than French being drilled to arms at this moment. We are certainly spending from five to six millions more than the French on our Army and Navy. Yet we turn up the whites of our eyes and thank Heaven we are not a warlike or military nation as the other nations of the Continent ! There is, I fear, as you say, no direct and immediate cure for the madness that has come over the people of England. But what concerns me is the danger of this state of things leading to another great European war. I don't like the gathering of crowned heads, and 264 The French Treaty the tone of feeling towards France. In Germany and Switzerland the newspapers are as bad as our own. There are sometimes half a dozen of the German journals seized at the French frontiers in a day for outrageous articles against the Emperor. Unfortunately, too, there is among the Liberal Prussian party a growing idea that a war with France is the best solution of their internal German diffi- culty, which is at the bottom of much of their restlessness upon foreign questions. The Germans are yearning for a more perfect union, which is impeded by the pretensions of their small kings and dukes. The Prussian Liberals have an idea that a war with France would get rid of them all. If they feel sure that they can reckon on England in case of a rupture with France, they will not long be without an occasion for a quarrel. In fact, all this preparation and menace on the part of other countries will make it the more difficult for the French Emperor to put up with an affront from any quarter. It is easy to bear hard words from an unarmed man, but even a look may convey an intolerable insult from one who is threaten- ing you with a loaded pistol. It is the same with nations. The real difficulty and danger is that France and England and other countries are gradually assuming sucTi an attitude of armed defiance that they may some day be placed in such a pi-edicament that war or humiliation to one or the other may be inevitable. Hitherto the French Govern- ment have scarcely taken a step to increase their arma- ments. In respect of their Navy they have really done nothing. But if Germany and England continue their course France must of necessity follow. " The great evil we have to contend with in England is that the people are really misled and are under the impression that France is meditating an attack on them. The Government takes advantage of this to lay on heavy and unnecessary taxes for armaments which naturally 265 Richard Cobden : The International Man increase the irritation. How is this to be met ? The Government alone could speak with authority and dis- abuse the public mind, but that is not their cue. Unfor- tunately the people will not believe anybody else, and least of all you and me. I have sometimes thought that if I were free I would pay a visit to the editors of the leading newspapers in the provinces and show them quietly how they had been imposed upon. " But perhaps, after all, what I am now doing here, and which must in two months more be brought to a close, is, as you say, the best and only way of really reaching the roots of the evil. I hope when the new French tariff is published it will be so complete a revolu- tion in the French commercial system as to convince the English public they have been under a great delu- sion with respect to the policy of the Emperor. I am afraid that my friend Henry Ashworth was right when he said, ' Get the two nations into debt with each other, and the ledger will do more than the Bible to keep them at peace'! It is lamentable enough that there should be so much truth in this sentiment." '■'■November 13, i860. " Do not take a step about armaments until I have the opportunity of seeing you. I mean a direct step, such as a meeting of the friends of peace on the subject. I shall have something to say to you and our friends upon the subject when we meet. *' Observe the tone which The Times takes upon the treaty. I am glad of this, for it will infallibly sink it in the estimation of the commercial classes. " If I were on the spot, I should suggest an article or a letter in the Star putting the conduct of The Times, in thus, by its opposition to the treaty, braving 366 The French Treaty the proof of facts and the universal approbation of the manufacturing districts, on a choice of hypotheses. Either it must be a desperate game to prevent the paper duty from being abolished and thus being itself swallowed up by the cheap Press. To do which Gladstone and his financial policy, of which the treaty is the corner- stone, must be discredited. " Or it must be, as some people have long believed, itself in some way in the hands or under the influence of the Orleans party, and is doing its best to prevent that consolidation of peace between the two countries, arising out of the success of the treaty, which that party dread because they believe that it would strengthen the Buonaparte dynasty. There is, of course, a collateral aim in view. The Times knows that the only way of keeping up our present enormous expenditure is by maintaining the hostile attitude between France and England, and that the moment this expenditure slackens the paper duty goes. There is nothing but an over- powering motive, such as is to be found in one of these alternatives, which can account for this paper persisting in going, on a question of commercial interest, in the teeth of the unanimous feeling of the mercantile and manufacturing classes. Can you pen a letter to the Star in this sense .-' " Mr. Hargreaves, in a letter which I recently got from him, said that the Telegraph accused The Times of wishing to keep up the expenditure in order to prevent the repeal of the paper duty. If this, which I believe is the true view of the case, could be made apparent to all the cheap Press, it would give you the best possible assistance in promoting the reduction of arma- ments. It is therefore desirable that this view should be well expounded in the Star." 267 Richard Cobden : The International Man " December 31, i860. "I will not dwell on the beautiful climate here (Algiers), where we sit all day with our windows open, and now as I write, at nine o'clock in the morning, my wife has just closed the Venetian blinds because the sun is too hot, and where we are eating green peas and ripe strawberries ; if I dwelt on this, it might make you dissatisfied with your snow and frost, and so T will go to business. " I wish you would write a paper or two on our commercial relations with China, to be printed in the first place in the Star and then published in a pamph- let form, and I should like it done before the meeting of Parliament. The point I wish to see developed is this, what has been the increase of our trade since we began ' opening up ' China by the Opium War in 1840, and what has been the increase of our expendi- ture, civil and military, in that country .? The statistics of the trade might be furnished for you through some house engaged in that quarter and who sympathizes with our views. Or I am sure my last colleague of the Paris Commission, Mr. Mallet, of the Board of Trade, or our intelligent Secretary, Mr. Lock, of that department, would help you to put your fingers on the official tables in the Blue books. As to the trade direct with the Chinese, it resolves itself into the quantity of tea and silk we take from them, and the quantity of manufacture we send direct, and the quantity of opium which is purchased by our manufacturers in India and sent to China as a remittance. There is also some specie. If you can contrive to interest some intelligent merchant, he would help you. White, M.P. for Brighton, is acquainted with the Shanghai trade. He lived there six years. 268 The French Treaty "As respects the expenditure in China. There is first the amount which our wars cost in excess of the indemnities extorted. This is not very easily arrived at. But the increase of the current annual expenditure, beyond what we spent before we began to bring armies and navies to aid our commerce in China, may be more easily ascertained. I think Sir W. Molesworth, in one of his great ' Colonies ' speeches alluded to the growth of this expenditure. Montgomery Martin also, I think, in his huge pamphlet, gives some facts. If there has been no Parliamentary return of the expenditure on ' works ' at Hong-Kong, the amount could with a little trouble be picked out of the annual estimates. Did not Lord Ellenborough move for a return in the House of Lords last year of the warlike expenditure in China .'' The fact is, as you have often observed, that, when once the amount of force on the coast of China has been raised by a war, it never comes back on the return of peace to what it was before. This will be most strikingly the case at present, for we have thrown that country into a state of anarchy by our violence and injustice. " If you can present a dry debtor and creditor account now of the profit and loss of our wicked outrages in that country, I think the public mind is in a state to listen, and your facts shall certainly be reproduced in Parliament. Let me hear if I can be of further use. The postage to this place is the same as to France." A few other passages from letters of this period, addressed to other friends, may be conveniently given here. To J. Schwann, Esq. ''July 6, i860. " I must say I have heard with sorrow (not unmixed, I will own, with indignant surprise) that there are men 269 Richard Cobden : The International Man in Yorkshire and Lancashire, who cheered me on at public meetings whilst advocating arbitration and non- intervention, who now profess to disapprove of the course I took, because, forsooth, I refused to surrender those principles to the exigencies of a political party. They know little of my character if they think me capable of pursuing a course which would sacrifice for any such consideration my long-cherished convictions. If they want a man who will put on and off his principles at the bidding of Treasury whippers-in, they must look out for another and more pleasant representative." This is a convenient place to insert a few extracts from Cobden's letters to his intimate friend, M. Aries Dufour, written during the years 1 86 1-2 and bearing mostly upon Anglo-French relations. To M. Aries Dufour. " Algiers, January 19, 1861. " I observe what you say about the abstinence from all allusion to the treaty in Palmerston's speech. It was certainly significant. I suspected from the first that the majority of our Cabinet were not much in love with my undertaking in Paris. Our aristocracy and Court have sharp instincts where their own interests are concerned, and they feel probably in some doubt whether they may not be obliged to abandon their tone of irritation and mistrust towards France when the trading and manufacturing classes have a good market there; and then what will become of the pretence for our enormous armaments which are maintained on the plea of being necessary to protect us against the hostile designs of your Emperor .'' 270 The French Treaty "You are quite right, it is lamentable to see our vigorous communities under the influence of these old men verging on fourscore years. As for Brougham, it is painful to see him, in his eagerness to be heard on every topic of the day, forgetting what he said in his better days. For instance, he has lately written a letter to an American in which he rebuked him for his violent anti-slavery doctrines and for his disregard of the rights of the slave-owners. Some clever critic has extracted a passage from one of his own speeches against slavery made thirty years since, in which he denies the right of property in man, and has published it in juxtaposition with an extract from his recent letter. It is a pity the friends of the old man cannot withdraw him from public life, and thus prevent him from tarnishing the lustre of his own past fame." To Mr. W. Hargreaves. " Paris, May 7, i860. "I am not very proud of the spectacle presented by our merchants, brokers and M.P.'s in their ovations to the pugilist Sayers. This comes from the brutal instincts having been so sedulously cultivated by our wars in the Crimea and especially in India and China. I have always dreaded that our national character would undergo deterioration (as did that of Greece and Rome) by our contact with Asia. With another war or two in India and China the English people would have an appetite for bull fights, if not for gladiators." " Paris, August 4, i860. "The English people in Parliament have undertaken to be responsible for governing one hundred and fifty millions of people, despotically, in India. They 271 Richard Cobden : The International Man have adopted the principle of a military despotism, and I have no faith in such an undertaking being anything but a calamity and a curse to the people of England. Ultimately, of course, Nature will assert the supremacy of her laws, and the white skins will withdraw to their own latitudes, leaving the Hindoos to the enjoyment of the climate to which their com- plexion is suited. In the meantime we shall suffer all kinds of trouble, loss, and disgrace. Every year will witness an increased drain of men and money to meet the loss entailed on us. In the meantime, too, an artificial expansion of our exports growing out of Government expenditure in India, will delude us as to the value of our ' possessions ' in the East, and the pride of territorial greatness will prevent our loosening our hold on them. Is it not just possible that we may become corrupted at home by the reaction of arbitrary political maxims in the East upon our domestic politics, just as Greece and Rome were demoralized by their contact with Asia ? But I am wandering into the regions of the remote future. It is, however, from an abiding conviction in my mind that we have entered on an impossible and hopeless career in India, that I can never bring my mind to take an interest in the details of its government." APPENDIX TO CHAPTER X Cobden's attachment to France and his French friends was an exceedingly important influence in his life. A typical Englishman in most respects, he was attracted by that quality of the intelligence which is peculiarly French, lucidity and the reasonableness with which it is associated. Cobden had thought out for himself a clear, consistent body of political and economic thought. Though no pedantic exponent of this 272 5W- - 'f-'Ss*** - FREDERIC BASTIAT (180I-50). [To face page 273, Appendix to Chapter X system among his countrymen, who have little liking for logic and less for its application to practical affairs, Cobden was sufficient of a rationalist to believe that social progress could and should be guided by clear, consistent principles. He was well aware that these principles were very imperfectly grasped by those who had worked with him most earnestly for the liberation of trade in this country, and that even those who clearly compre- hended them as economic principles had little realization of their wider application for breaking down the barriers of nationalism and establishing the solidarity of mankind. Now, among the group of distinguished Frenchmen who gathered round him as a champion of Free Trade in the late forties, he found just this quality of thought and this enthusiasm for peace and internationalism in which most of his Manchester friends were lacking. The most brilliant exponent of the sheer logic of Free Trade in this or any other country was Frederic Bastiat, a scholar and country gentleman, who, brooding long in seclusion over political theories, discovered in 1845 that a powerful body of Englishmen were engaged in trying to put his reasoning into practice. Coming over to this country, he spent some time studying the work of the League and formed a personal attachment to Cobden, whose presentation of the issue came nearest to his own. From that time on he remained a close friend and correspondent of Cobden. His book " Cobden et la Ligue " spread the gospel most effectively in France, and his "Sophismes Economiques" remains the sharpest and most humorous exposure of protectionist fallacies. A speculative mind, Bastiat saw all the implications of Free Trade in the development of a sound foreign policy based on peace, economy, colonial emancipation and anti-imperialism. His friendly rela- tions with Cobden were maintained until his death in 1850. But, as he himself recognized, he was not fitted for political agitation, and the active leadership of the group of men who from this time forth struggled to hold up the banner of inter- nationalism in an intensely nationalistic people fell to other hands. The most important or these was M. Michel Chevalier, a dis- tinguished member of the little band who in the thirties attached themselves to the principles of Saint-Simon, an early speculator upon socialism, and one who had applied himself with special zeal 273 S Richard Cobden : The International Man to the promotion of international union by improved communica- tions and commerce. It was he who was chiefly instrumental in inducing Cobden to undertake the onerous and delicate negotiations which led to the French Treaty. Lord Morley describes how a speech of John Bright's in the Session of 1857, proposing an approach to the French Emperor upon the question of Free Trade, fired the mind of Chevalier, who wrote to Cobden on the subject and, visiting this country in the summer of that year, urged him to undertake the conversion of the Emperor. Chevalier was one of the little knot of ardent re- formers with whom Cobden kept in closest personal touch during his residence in Paris. Other members of the group were M. Paillottet, one of Cobden's most active correspondents, though unfortunately the letters passing between them have been lost ; Fr6d6ric Passy, who survived well into this century, one of the most ardent advocates of peace and internationalism ; M. de Molinari, one of the founders of the "Journal des Economistes and a leading writer upon economic questions; and M. Emile de Girardin, at whose house Cobden met Prince Napoleon in January i860, and with whom he kept up a close friendship afterwards. To M. de Girardin we owe the famous eulogy in the Introduction of the volume published in August 1865 in Paris to the memory of Cobden by his French admirers. " Nommer Christophe Colomb, c'est nommer le nouveau monde ; nommer Richard Cobden, c'est nommer le monde ^conomique. Rien ne manque a la justesse de ce rapproche- ment, car Robert Peel doit a Richard Cobden sa c^l^brite, comme Americ Vespuce a du la sienne a Christophe Colomb. " Le monde 6conomique : c'est le monde transform^ ; c'est la paix succ6dant a la guerre ; c'est la science d6tr6nant la force j c'est I'esprit de reciprocity chassant I'esprit de rivalit^ ; c'est la liberte des ^changes abaissant de toutes parts la hauteur des barrieres ; c'est I'unit^ de lois et d'usages, de monnaies, de poids et de mesures, simplifiant tous les rapports de peuples entre eux ; c'est la neutralite universelle des mers ; c'est I'abolition de I'esclavage et du servage sur tous les points du globe ; c'est la rWemption definitive de I'homme par le travail, mais stimuli par I'dpargne et f6cond6 par le credit. " A rentier accomplissement de cette bienfaisante transforma- 274 Appendix to Chapter X tion, il ne manque plus que le Souverain qui mettra judicieuse- ment sa gloire a r6colter ce que Richard Cobden a mis laborieuse- ment toute sa vie a semer." The greater portion of the memorial volume consists of an eloquent account of Cobden's character and influence as a worker for international friendship, and in particular for the establishment of friendly relations between his own country and France. I quote one illuminating passage : " Richard Cobden 6tait anglais, fier et heureux d'etre, admirateur de sa patrie et de I'ensemble de ses institutions, mais non aveugl^ment et sans reserve. Adversaire, en g^n^ral, du monopole et du privilege, et ami chaud de I'egalit^,- il ne nourissait aucun sentiment amer centre I'aristocratie de son pays ; sa belle4me si bienveillante repoussait instinctivement le fiel. Mais tout en restant anglais sur ses habitudes et ses affec- tions, il croyait fermement qu'ici bas I'homme a deux patries, la communaut^ ou il a vu le jour, et la terre, patrimonie commun du genre humain. C'^tait entendre le patriotisme a la grande maniere du Cic^ron qui est si bien d'accord avec la philosophic moderne, je pourrais dire avec le g^nie du Christianisme. Le sentiment cosmopolite n'6tait pas chez lui a qu'il est chez d'autres si souvent, un signe d'indifference, une forme polic6e de I'^goisme. C'^tait une sympathie forte et agissante, I'amour de I'humanit^, une sorte de religion. A ses yeux les haines nationales 6taient un contre-sens et une duperie, un debris d'un temps passee ou le travail 6tait dddaigne et fl6tri, et oil I'exploitation du faible par le fort 6tait au dedans la base du gouvernement des Etats, au dehors le but et la regie da leur politique ; un d6bris que dans certains pays au moins, les classes dominantes s'effor^aient de conserver pour leur avantage propre et pour le maintien de leur ascendant. L'hostilite systematique entre I'Angleterre et la France lui semblait une aberration oil I'absurde allait jusqu'a I'odieux. II pensait que si, au lieu de se jalouser dans les quatre parties du monde, ces deux puissances vivaient en bonne harmonie et, tout en gardant leur ind^pendance et leur originality, con- certaient volontiers leurs d-marches dans I'intdret commun et pourle bien gdn^ral, elles arriveraient au plus haut degre d'autorit^, et rapandraient, ne fut-ce que par la contagion d'l'example, les bien- faits de toute espece sur la genre humain, dans I'ordre moral comme dans I'ordre material. II goutait fort I'esprit fran^ais, il en avail eu lui-meme des traits frappants. II appr^ciait nos Richard Cobden : The International Man institutions et nos usages beaucoup plus que ne le font la plus part de ses compatriotes auxquelles il semble que, livre de leur type, il n'y a point de salut, de grandeur, que, sais-je, d'^l^gance et de grace, et au gr6 duquels la tyrannie et rabaissement de la dignite humaine commencent la ou cesse leur maniere de comprendre et de pratiquer la liberty. L'6galit6 politique et sociale de la France excitait son admiration ; en un mot, il aimerait la France, II la connaissait bien, il I'avait etudide avec une sagacit^ et une penetration qui n'etaient pas les moindres de ses facult^s." But the appreciation of the greatness of Richard Cobden in France was not confined to the circle of his private friends or even to his fellow-workers in the cause of Free Trade and Peace. When the news of his death came there was evinced in every public quarter a desire to honour his memory. At the meeting of the Corps L^gislatif next day M. de Forcade la Roquette, its Vice-President, described the event not only as a calamity for England but as "a source of mourning for France and for humanity." The Emperor addressed the following letter to Mr. Charles Cobden : — "Monsieur, j'ai pris un grand part au malheur qui a frapp^ votre famille ; car M. R. Cobden avait toujours montr6 pour la France une grande sympathie, et son influence sur ses compatriotes ne pouvait que contribuer a resserrer les liens qui unissent I'Angle- terre et la France. Je vous prie d'etre aupres de sa veuve I'inter- prete de mes s6rieux regrets et de recevoir I'assurance de mes sentiments de haute estime." Jerome Napoleon, who had been closely associated with Cobden in the Commission for the Exhibition of 1861, wrote in terms of the keenest admiration and esteem to Mrs. Cobden, and the Foreign Minister made an eloquent eulogy in a dispatch to the French Minister at London. The French Press, both in Paris and the provinces, contained a number of striking testimonies to Cobden's international services. Important articles appeared in the Revue Contemporaine, from the pen of E. Lavasseur, in the Ecommhte Franfals by M. Jules Duval, and in many other maga- zines. The Political Economy Society, which in 1846 had given a banquet in honour of Cobden's work for Free Trade, con- secrated to his memory a special meeting on April 5th, at which the President, M. Hippolyte Passy, MM. Chevalier, Joseph Garnier, Foucher de Carel, and B^nard made orations in honour 276 Appendix to Chapter X of a great worker for humanity. I will quote the concluding woi-ds of the President's address : "La vie de Cobden a €t6 un grand et tut^laire enseignement ; elle a montr^ tout ce que peuvent r^nergie du caractere, la rectitude de I'esprit, la hauteur du sens moral dans les temps ou nous vivons. Cobden a fait pour I'apaise- ment des haines Internationales, pour I'extinction des rivalitds jalouses qui tout de fois ont arm6 les peuples contre les autres, pour les interets fondamentaux de I'humanite, plus que n'a fait aucun homme d'Etat auquel a appartenu jusqu'ici le gouverne- ment des nations. Cobden n'est plus, mais ses ceuvres subsistent et I'avenir les respectera : car de jour en jour en apparaissent plus distinctement la sagesse et I'utilit^." 277 CHAPTER XI CORRESPONDENCE, 1 861-4 After his arduous labours at Paris were brought to a successful end, Cobden spent the winter and the early spring of the next year (1861) in a much- needed holiday and rest at Algiers, returning to England in the middle of May. By that time the cloud of unpopularity in which his opposition to the Russian War had surrounded him was entirely dis- sipated, and business men and politicians recognized the important services which he had rendered in securing the Commercial Treaty with France. A large meeting at Rochdale on June 26th proclaimed the enthusiasm of commercial Lancashire, and on July 17th the Freedom of the City of London was presented to him at a great gathering in the Mansion House. In a speech vindicating the principles of the treaty and reciting its advantages, one passage deserves quotation as illustrating the view persistently maintained by Cobden that the palpable gains of free commerce must in the nature of things prevail. " You may ask me whether I think other nations will follow in the footsteps of France and England. I frankly avow to you I am not much concerned about that question. Whatever England and France unite to do, whether it be a policy of war or peace, they will assuredly draw the whole civilized world within the circle of their influence. Any other nation which 278 Correspondence, 1861-4 should attempt to hold aloof from the policy which England and France have now frankly embraced would find themselves so far behind in the race for civilization and wealth that their own self-love, if no other motive existed, would induce them to follow the example we have set." From Algiers he kept up a large correspondence with Mr. Richard and other friends. His early letters, to the former were chiefly concerned with the strain of the Anglo-French relations, which, though less tense than they had been, were still serious. The competition in armaments was at once cause and effect of the mutual ill-feeling and suspicions, each side representing its new preparations as a defensive reply to some aggressive movement of the other. As early as February 4, 1 861, we find him proposing a memorial in favour of a convention between the two Governments for the limitation of armaments, and urging Mr. Richard to look up the question of com- parative naval expenditure. No sooner had he got settled in England again than he began to make preparations for an argued statement of the whole armament and international issue, which took fuller shape in the last of his long pamphlets, published early in the following year under the title of " The Three Panics." This proved to be an exceedingly laborious task, requiring close research, not only into Hansard but into various official and other statistical documents extending over a long period of years. Much of this detailed work was done by Mr. Richard and other assistants whom he procured, and a great many of Cobden's letters during the period relate to their co-operation in this task. The armament question, however, important as it was, belonged to the wider issue of a constructive policy of international law for 279 Richard Cobden : The International Man the protection of commerce in time of war, the nature of which was well set forth by him in a letter to Mr. Ashworth in the April of the following year (1862). In 1856 the American Government, invited by the Paris Congress to abandon privateering, had made the important counter-proposal to Europe to exempt private property at sea from capture, both by privateering and armed Government ships. This offer was well received by France, Russia and other maritime Powers, but found no encouragement in Great Britain. The American Government for several years pressed various proposals for reform of maritime law, including one communicated to the House of Commons, on the very eve of the outbreak of the Civil War, in which they pressed for a revision of the right of blockade, urging that " the only case in which a blockade ought to be permitted was when a land army was besieging a fortified place and a fleet was em- ployed to blockade it on the other side ; but that any attempt to intercept trade by blockade, or to blockade places which were commercial ports, was an abuse of the right which ought not to be permitted."' Lord Russell, in reply, took the stand which has been consistently maintained by our Government and extended up to the present day, viz. " that the system of commercial blockades is essential to the maintenance of our naval supremacy." That argument Cobden set himself to destroy, by applying tests of reason and experience. He first dwelt upon the fact that, more than any other great nation, we are dependent not only for prosperity but for subsistence upon large over-seas supplies of foods and materials. He next pointed out how these considerations practically compelled us to rebut our own theory of ' "Political Writings," ii, 383. 280 Correspondence, 1861-4 commercial blockade, even so far as to permit by licences the entrance of foods of enemy origin into our own ports during war-time. This occurred during both the French and the Russian wars. He then proceeded to show how unjust and intolerable such a blockade policy was for neutrals, and how inconsistent with the Free Trade policy to which we were committed. " Free Trade, in the widest definition of the term, means only the division of labour, by which the pro- ductive powers of the whole earth are brought into mutual co-operation. If this scheme of universal dependence is to be liable to sudden dislocation whenever two Governments choose to go to war, it converts a manufacturing industry, such as ours, into a lottery, in which the lives and fortunes of multitudes of men are at stake." He summarizes the reforms that are required in three propositions : — "(i) The exemption of private property from capture at sea during war, by armed vessels of every kind. " (2) Blockades to be restricted to naval arsenals, and to towns besieged at the same time on land, with the exception of articles contraband of war. "(3) The merchant ships of neutrals on the high seas to be inviolable to the visitation of alien Government ships in time of war as in time of peace. These reforms we regard as the necessary corollary of the repeal of the navigation laws, the abolition of the corn laws, and the abandonment of our colonial monopoly." The outbreak of the war between the Northern and Southern States of the American Union in the early summer of 1861 gave renewed importance to these and other related questions. The blockade came 281 Richard Cobden : The International Man soon to have a particular importance in its bearing upon Lancashire trade, and several of Cobden's letters in the summer dwell upon that aspect of the case. As early as July we find him urging pressure on his friend Charles Sumner, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate, for a recon- sideration of the blockade policy. As the months passed by, the American War came to occupy an increasing part of his attention. At first he was disposed to sympathize with the Southern case, partly on the right of secession, partly also because the Southerners were the Free Traders of America. But, as the slavery issue emerged more clearly and the cause of the great democratic experiment for which the Republic stood became so plainly implicated in the struggle, partly also influenced by the precepts and example of his friend Bright, he soon definitely ranged himself upon the side of the North. We find him in December taking an active part in the formation of a Committee for the foundation of an Arbitration Society and for the application of the principle to the American War. Before discussing the fuller part he was drawn to take in these momentous matters, it may be well here to print some of the 1861 letters to Mr. Richard, indicative of his labours in this year and the depth of his thought and feelings as the American conflict began to open out. " February 4, 1861. "A week ago I wrote to Mr. S. Morley suggesting that an Address to the Queen should be signed in the City urging the desirableness of the Governments of France and England coming to some understanding to limit their naval armaments. I recommended a 282 Correspondence, 1861-4 very mildly worded memorial which scarcely any person could object to sign. The main object to be aimed at is to bring such a pressure of public opinion on the Governments as shall induce them to break ground on the disarmament question. When once they have accepted the responsibility of the task of trying to do something, they will be obliged to show grounds for failure. This would totally reverse the present attitude of the parties. Each would have to resort to facts and figures to prove the other in the wrong ; and to justify itself each would try to parade its own moderation. You will see at once how much the public would gain from such an exposure and controversy. I have written to Paris to sound a friend, a banker there, on the propriety of getting signatures to a similar memorial to the Emperor. But England is so immeasurably superior in her naval armaments (we have a personnel of eighty-four thousand in our service to thirty-one thousand in France) that we ought to make the first advance. "In my letter to Mr. Morley I said that it was of the utmost importance that the Address should emanate from the ' bankers, merchants and others of the City,' and not from the Peace Society or the * Manchester School.' But if he could induce a few such men as Baring, Rothschild, Huth, etc., to lead off, your friends in the City, who are so active and disinterested, could do much afterwards to fill up the list. "You will recollect that there was an Address to the Emperor signed by the City magnates some years ago. I think Mr. Hall, of Tower Hill, took an active part in that movement. There was also a Mr. Christy in it, a rather excitable person living in Kent. It requires energetic people to follow up successfully such a project. I rely on your friends, if necessary, giving their hearty co-operation. 283 Richard Cobden : The International Man " There were two quotations which we often used from the speeches of Lord Aberdeen and Sir Robert Peel. The one from the latter was to the effect that so great was the danger from the immense growth of these standing armaments that he hoped the Govern- ment would put some check to the evil, and if not, that the people would. Lord Aberdeen's remark was to the effect that he doubted the truth of the maxim that to prepare for war was the best way to preserve peace ; that, on the contrary, when nations had made great preparations for war they were apt to feel anxious to test their efficiency. How would it do to print these extracts and distribute them in the City ? Along with the quotation from Sir R. Peel might be given the expenditure for our armaments when it was spoken, and the amount spent now. " Whatever you do will, I am sure, be guided by your never-failing prudence and judgment. " It strikes me that there never was a time when there was such a chance of such an Address being signed by men of all parties in all parts of the kingdom as at present, when . the country is startled at the dilemma in which the backbone of our national industry may be placed at any moment by events over which we have not the slightest control in the Cotton Slave States of America." "March I, 1861. " I have had a letter from IVIr. W. S. Lindsay, M.P., who is, or was, at Paris assisting in arranging a treaty of navigation, informing me that the Minister of Marine, who has thrown open every detail to him, has convinced him that the English Government and people have been acting under a great delusion respecting the naval armaments of France. Chevalier writes to me 284 Correspondence, 1 861-4 by the same post giving me the same news. He acted as interpreter, and says the Minister proved to L. that all that had been said about the great preparations in France was 'humbug.' Lindsay tells me that he had written a long letter to Lord Clarence Paget, to be shown 'to Lord Palmerston, in which he urged the former to come to Paris for a couple of days to investigate the matter for himself, and offering on the part of the Minister of Marine the most complete explanation of every detail of their naval armaments. Lindsay told Lord C. P. that he ought not to take another step in moving the Navy Estimates until he had accepted this invitation, and he adds in his letter to me that if the British Government will not take a straightforward course on this question, he will obtain the consent of the French Government to make a full exposure in the House. " I am inclined to hope that good will come of this. It will be the first step towards an understanding on the subject of limiting the armaments of the two countries — when one of the Ministers invites another to a conference of this kind. It will not, however, be an easy task to retrace our steps. So many people have gone wrong that it will be a severe test of their self-love to admit themselves in error. I have never heard anything about the memorial which I sent to Mr. Morley." " April 1, 1 861. "Your kind letter has followed me to this place, where I have come in the course of a little excursion into the province of Algiers. The country is most beautiful and the climate at this season very delightful. There is a great future for the African shores of the Mediterranean which two thousand years ago were 285 Richard Cobden : The International Man covered with splendid cities. Yesterday I visited a little village standing in the midst of the ruins of an ancient seaport. It is not an exaggeration to say that for several square miles outside of the walls of the old city the ground was so thickly covered with empty ■ stone coffins which had been disinterred, and the frag- ments of tombs, that it was with great difficulty I could thread my way among them. But what struck me most in the remains of this old seat of commerce was the enormous extent of remains of private habitations, which presented themselves not only within the old walls but for miles outside over the country, in the form of large and well-dressed stones, proving that the population generally were living in substantial buildings. When walking over the ruins of Athens, Alexandria, Rome, , etc., I have often asked where the people lived, for whilst you everywhere see the gigantic remains of temples, circuses, and arches of triumph, you see nothing to lead you to suppose that the bulk of the people inhabited such large houses as those in this neighbour- hood. Perhaps the reason may be that this was a port and not the seat of government. The place to which I allude is called Tipasa. "I am very much obliged by your kindly think- ing of me. You must not suppose that I am afraid of being brought into contact with the Peace Society. I honour your efforts too much, and have too great a mistrust of the motives of all who decry them to be averse to exchange compliments with your body. But, as you have consulted me, I must candidly avow that the greatest trouble I have on my hands is the meeting and replying to friendly demonstrations from public bodies, and you will really oblige me by not at the present moment adding to the number. On my return home I shall have a battle to fight to escape 286 Correspondence, 1 86 1-4 from dinners and addresses. Every refusal I make to these invitations adds to my difficulty and indeed to the inconsistency of accepting your offer. Let it lay over for the present. " You would have seen a letter and enclosure I sent for your perusal through Mr. Morley. Really, this conduct on the part of Lord Palmerston, in stating so broadly and repeatedly facts which I knew to be groundless respecting the French armaments, was quite incomprehensible until I read his speech on the Afghan dispatches, which offers a key to the whole mystery. No doubt he will be able to say in a few years, if he should remain so long on the scene, that what he said about the French Navy was uttered merely to accomplish some other good object. And as this is a principle tolerated and indeed approved by the majority of Parliament, there is nothing more to be said about it — except that as such ethics are not yet recognized in Westminster Hall or the Old Bailey, we may hope that they will not for ever remain the standard of Par- liamentary morality. But in the meantime it must be confessed we are little better than a nation of political mountebanks fairly led by a pantaloon." "Jfri/ 17, 1 86 1. " I wish you would take up the question of the French and English navies as discussed in the House of late, with a view to urge on the public the desira- bility and the practicability of now coming to some understanding with the French Government to put some limit on their naval armaments. This is a most excellent time, JH parties agree that no more wooden line-of-battle ships are to be built. Those in existence will soon decay, and if not replaced there will be a gradual end of this description of ship, which was 287 Richard Cobden : The International Man formerly considered the main test of maritime power. As yet the iron-sided invention has not taken their place. England and France are just beginning the race of folly in these novelties, and there is no reason why it may not grow quite as large and costly as the old force. But America, Russia, and the other Powers have not yet taken the first step. Now then is the time for common sense to interfere. Let England and France only set a limit to their iron-cased ships, the rest of our gigantic waste will disappear with time. Urge this in a letter or two to the Star, in order to prepare public opinion for a movement, and if you can get up a public meeting afterwards, with Mr. S. Morley in the chair, and secure a few speakers not of the Peace Society to lead off, and you to come in at the end, and taking the precaution beforehand to secure such an attendance as will fill the room at the City of London Tavern, it could not fail to do good." "^a/j 12, i86i. "If the American Civil War goes on, and all the ports of the South remain blockaded after the new cotton crop is ready — a state of things one can hardly realize and yet from which it is difficult to see an escape — then ail parties will be very sick of block- ades. As a peace must come some day, it has struck me that perhaps it might be made the occasion for extending the provisions of the Treaty of Paris beyond the mere abolition of privateering, and including the terms stipulated for by Mr. Marcy and even going beyond and putting an end to blockades. There is no doubt that we, as the greatest manufacturers, merchants, - shipowners and carriers, have the largest interest at stake in this question, and if we were not governed by a feudal class which is always looking to the interests 288 Correspondence, 1 86 1-4. of the 'services,' and which does not like to part with the barbarous usages of war, we should have been the first to agree to put down the robbery of private individuals at sea by armed Government ships, as well as to abolish blockades. " How different would have been the state of feeling now in Lancashire if, instead of seeing the ports block- aded from which the cotton comes, there had been no interruption to the trade of the South. And this might have been the case if the English Government had favoured the views of the Democratic party in the States. This ought now to be made known to the English public. "If you are writing to Sumner, you might ask him to keep his eye on the question of blockades in the future terms of pacification. English opinion will be keenly alive to our national interest in this question, as apart from the interest of the Admiralty and Horse Guards, after we have seen the peril to our cotton trade arising from the blockade of the South." " August 17, 1861. " I had an idea of writing a pamphlet giving a running history of the Anglo-French armaments, with extracts from speeches since 1844 — when the game of beggar my neighbour began. But I don't know whether I shall have the courage to begin it. I get discouraged as to the effect of reason and argument and facts in deciding the policy of the country. We are a very illogical people, with brute combativeness which is always ready for a quarrel and which can be excited at the will of a governing class that has subsisted for centuries upon this failing in John Bull's character. "Is it not vain to expect any honest attempt to put a limit to our expenditure so long as Palmerston rules 289 T Richard Cobdeii : The International Man and Gladstone, whilst protesting against the waste, lends his eloquent genius to its perpetuation ? I am convinced that we should save three or four millions a year by the return of the Tories to office — which is an event that cannot be distant. Palmerston is fouling the Whig nest, and preparing to hand over the reins to the Tories. " As respects the Americans, we can do nothing but wait the effect of taxation and suffering on the com- batants. I am told the Washington Government have become more moderate in their temper to Foreign Powers since the unhappy affair of Bull's Run. It remains to be seen how the people will relish the new taxes. They have been reckoning on borrowing in Europe, in which I suspect they will be disap- pointed. '* I really don't see how you can operate directly on the French question. Perhaps the great development of trade that is going on between the two countries is the best peace-maker that could have been devised. I still think it would be a good thing if the British people could be enlightened as to the social and poli- tical state of France. However, that project will keep. Meantime enjoy yourself, and lay up a stock of health for another campaign." '■'■September ii, 1861, " I hope there is no truth in the rumour that our Government will acknowledge the Southern Confederacy. I have great faith in their stupidity and ignorance, and still more in their false and selfish predilections in all cases where liberty and the true interests of the millions are concerned, but can hardly believe them bad enough for this." 290 Correspondence, 1 86 1-4 " October 16, 1 86 1. " I am still busy reading back in Hansard and other repositories the sayings of our alarmists. It is a curious history. It shows what a monomaniac or an interested partisan endowed with obstinacy can do, to run over the career of Napier in this line ; how his laughable exaggerations and absurdity of this year got a somewhat willing hearing the year after, and became the policy of the Government the third year. In fact, our armaments have been really dictated by such people as old Attwood, who chooses to go mad with Urquhart about Russia, and as Napier or Horsman, whose judgments would have been utterly repudiated by sensible men on a matter of private business. These men have created a sort of senseless panic which has been taken advantage of by the governing class. I have just got from Paris an account of the yearly expenditure for the French Navy, and of the number of men borne in their navy each year, from 1835 to the present time. Nothing can be more clear than that the whole charge against the present Govern- ment of having surpassed their predecessors in their naval preparations is groundless. It is a fact that during the whole twenty-five years our Navy was never so dis- proportionately large, as compared with that of France, as in i860, when Palmerston raised the cry of alarm and brought forward his project for fortifications. I have written to Gladstone to this effect. He has nothing to say to contradict, and yet, sad to say, he continues to minister to such a state of affairs ! There ought, in the interest of conscientious men, to be another verse added to our Litany, and in addition to praying the good Lord to deliver us from ' battle and murder and sudden death ' we ought to pray to be preserved from the temptations of the post of a Cabinet Minister." 291 Richard Cobden : The International Man "October 19, 1861. "It is quite evident that I must publish my pamphlet with a retrospect of our panics and follies for the last twenty years. Looking to Collier's speech at Plymouth, and other similar performances, it is quite evident that there is to be another 'revival' of the invasion mania this autumn. We were told that the volunteers would set this topic to rest. But the ghost is not laid. How are we to account for this inveterate propensity to be deluded and excited about an imaginary foe ? Is it the inordinate pugnacity of our people ? It really amounts to a disease or a mania. I doubt sometimes whether a war is not the only sedative that can cure it." "October 26, 1861. "A few days ago I sent the accompanying 'Memo- randum ' to Lord Palmerston with a request that he will bring it under the notice of the members of his Cabinet. I have forwarded a translation to M. de Persigny, begging him to bring it under the notice of the Emperor. I send it confidentially for your perusal. It is only fair that it should in the first place be kept a secret. If nothing be done, I will publish it before Parliament meets. I have had no answer from P, He would like to put it in the fire or give it to the volunteers to light their pipes with it. But Disraeli's speech, the coming collapse of trade, and the resolution come to at the close of the Session to stop the line-of- battle ships, give a little practical weight to it at this moment. Still, I don't expect anything to come from it." "December 7, 1861. " I have written very strongly to Sumner urging the Government at Washington to take old General Scott's hint, and go further — to propose to raise the blockade 292 Correspondence, 1 861-4 on condition that the system of blockades and all the rest of the belligerent rights be abandoned by Europe. Whether this can be done I know not. But I am con- vinced that the indefinite maintenance of the blockade, with little or no progress in the Civil War on the side of the North, will lead to an intervention of some sort in the coming year. I have written to the same effect to General Scott." "■December 8, 1861. "It is enough to make one forswear one's kind, let his beard grow, and retire to a cave, to witness the sudden madness that can seize so many people ! I remember when I was at the Peace Congress meeting at Edinburgh, in the winter of 1863, saying In my speech that if a person had left England for a voyage round the globe in the spring of that year, he would have left the public just apparently worked up in a frenzy which rendered a war with France inevitable. And on his return to England, if he had not seen a newspaper in his absence, he would have been startled to find the French and English fleets broadside to each other in Besika Bay, but instead of the collision which he would expect to witness he would have been still more amazed to learn that the two countries were going to fight as allies against Russia. " So now, before I can put my extracts together to show up the frenzy again with France, here we are for rushing into war with America, totally forgetting all that we were saying a few months since of the danger from France. " ' A niad world, my masters ! ' " "December 11, i86i. " Don't let the conduct of this incorrigible old dodger annoy you. It is exactly what I expected. This American 293 Richard Cobden : The International Man affair might seem to be playing his cards for him beauti- fully. But I am not sure he will not over-play his game. There will be no war on this legal question. Make yourself quite easy on the point. The object of all this bustle is to justify the maintenance of the present expenditure. But we will try to spoil the game. What a case these men who now clamour . for war against America give us against their outcry against France ! " '■'■December 1 8, 1861. " By all means make any use you please of my name on the Committee for Arbitration. " Though the object should be at present to urge arbitration in the American difficulty, yet I think it would be well to form a permanent Society for the sole object of applying the resolution of the Paris Congress in favour of arbitration to all cases of misunderstanding as they- may arise. There should be an advertisement and an invitation to co-operate as soon as possible, to give people an opportunity of combining their movements. " I received the enclosed discouraging note from Baines, and have written to encourage him. It is de- plorable to see how the rich and influential people must always be led by the poor and illiterate. From the time of the Apostles it has always been so. I advise Baines to let a meeting of working men be called. " I am writing to Brighton to advise them there to form a permanent committee after the meeting. " The Unitarian leaders in Leeds never can be got into action. Directly there is anything to do they begin hair-splitting." "■December 18, 1861, " The accounts I get are very warlike, and yet I cannot believe in war. But would it not be well to turn all your efforts to an agitation in favour of arbitration ? 294 Correspondence, 1 86 1-4 " Bright says he is sure that there is no town where a public meeting would not vote for arbitration, and I dare say he is right. No time should be lost. The clubs and cliques about Pall Mall are very warlike. It is desirable that if there be more sense in the country it should display itself." • • • • « The shock of the American Civil War continued to be the great disturbing factor in European politics. Its economic influence was chiefly due to the blockade of the Southern ports, which cut off the cotton supplies of Lancashire and brought unemployment and poverty to its inhabitants. But two naval incidents caused intense political feeling and came near to causing a severance of pacific relations between the British and American Govern- ments. The first was the affair of the Trent. Two Commissioners, Mason and Slidell, despatched to Paris and London by the Southern Confederacy, were seized on November 8, 1861, by a federal warship when on board a British mail-boat sailing for Havana, and were taken away as prisoners. The British Government imme- diately demanded their release and an apology, and before an answer was possible ordered a brigade of Guards to Canada. This impetuous action brought us to the brink of war, only averted by the interposition of the Queen and the Prince Consort, who got Palmerston to accept as an adequate redress the release of the prisoners and a statement from the United States Minister in London to the efi^ect that the action of Captain Wilkes in seizing the Commissioners was without the authority of the United States Government. So the trouble blew over. In June another untoward Incident took place, the blame of which fell upon our Government — the sailing from Liverpool of the Alabama, a vessel built at Birken- head for the Confederate Government. The reply of our 295 Richard Cobden : The International Man Government, that due vigilance had been taken to pre- vent the escape of the Alabama as soon as her true character was known, was not accepted as satisfactory by the American Government, and was not in fact true, as later evidence showed. For the next two years the vessel, largely manned by British sailors, played havoc with Federal trade, and the tension caused by the refusal of the demand for compensation made towards the close of 1 86 1 by the American Government lasted for several years and threatened more than ever to lead us into war. In another part of the American Continent we were also for a time embroiled in serious trouble. The civil war which broke out in Mexico in 1861 had brought in the Governments of France, Spain and England, which despatched a joint expedition for the protection of their subjects and the enforcement of the payment of bonds held by their subjects. England and Spain withdrew from the expedition in May 1862, having obtained satisfaction from President Juarez, but France, having ulterior imperialistic objects, persisted, and em- barked upon the scheme of conquest which ended a few years later with the execution of the Emperor Maxi- milian, the French nominee to the throne. The United States, absorbed in their domestic trouble, refused all part in the Mexican imbroglio, but the intrusion of European forces upon their Continent, In violation of the Monroe Doctrine, served to exasperate their people against the European Governments. Cobden's view of this enterprise is conveyed in the following passage from a letter of October 1863 to M. Aries Dufour : — " Park Hill, Streatham, October 23, 1863. " The world's affairs s^em to be getting into a con- siderable confusion. Shakespeare somewhere says, 'The 296 Correspondence, 1 861-4 world is out of joint, oh cruel spite ! That ever I was born to put it right.' Now there seem to be many busy people who are eager, without being born to it, to engage in the task of putting the world to rights. There is our little Foreign Minister with his pen, and your ruler with his sword. And yet they do not seem to meet with very encouraging success. What could have possessed your Emperor when he engaged in the task of resuscitating Mexico ? ' The Latin Race ' ! Why, the majority of Mexicans are half-breeds — a mixture of negroes, red Indians, and Spaniards. I remember return- ing from New York to England, having for my com- panions in 1835 two very intelligent men, one a Swiss, the other a Scotchman, who had been living seven years in the interior of Mexico purchasing cochineal. Their description of the state of ignorance, of demoralization, and utter extinction of moral sense in that country was most appalling, and they wound up their narra- tive of the character of the people by the observation, ' We have been living seven years in a community where there is not one human virtue extant' Why should your Government, or any Government nol responsible for this state of the Mexican people, take on themselves the responsibility of redeeming them from their degradation .'' That is surely the work of the Almighty, and not of your Zouaves. When Prince Napoleon was in England last year I told him that people in England were comparing the expedition to Mexico to the invitation of Spain from Bayonne by his uncle. " Depend on it, we shall not take a part in a war against Russia for Poland. All classes are opposed to it. There is a very serious obstacle to our going to war which may not have occurred to many people yet, but which would have come home to us all if a war with Russia were imminent. We have to face the certainty of having 297 Richard Cobden : The International Man ships fitted out by the Americans to prey on our com- merce in retaHation for our Alabamas. The Americans are waiting to offer their services to any country with which we shall be at war." This diversion of political interest to Mexican affairs to some extent cut across Cobden's intention of mobiliz- ing his political and intellectual forces for a general assault upon Palmerston's European policy. His im- portant pamphlet " The Three Panics " was near comple- tion at the beginning of the year, but he hesitated to launch it upon the public in the critical situation which the Trent affair brought about. Eventually he decided in favour of publication, and it appeared towards the close of April. A detailed and closely documented narrative of the panics which had seized both Govern- ments and people in 1848, 1853 and 1862, it was his fullest formal indictment of the statesman whom he regarded as the most dangerous rogue of the age. Cobden was a good deal disappointed with its early reception. In truth, its very virtue of thoroughness repelled many minds which most needed its instructive revelation. Nevertheless it performed a serviceable work in preparing English Liberalism for the return to sanity which followed the disappearance of Lord Palmerston and ushered in the temperate epoch of Gladstone and Bright. But his immediate political energy was by no means exhausted by the production of " The Three Panics " and the perpetual controversy against the competition with France in armaments, which he waged with unusual vigour this year in the House of Commons. The im- provement of International Law in relation to sea commerce during war had taken strong root in his mind some years before, as one of the essential safe- 298 Correspondence, 1 861-4 guards of civilization. The events of the American War gave special urgency to this reform. In letters to the Press and to political friends he is tireless in pursuance of his educative work, blocked in the House by the obstinate fallacy that we, as the possessors of the most powerful navy, are gainers by maintaining the full belligerent rights stretched to the widest limits which precedent can yield. There are many references to the subject in his correspondence with IVIr. Richard. But as a prefatory note I will print portions of two other letters of this year, already published in the " Life." ' 7o M. Chevalier. '■^August 7, 1862. " Our Government, as you know, is constantly declaring that we have the greatest interest in maintaining the old system of belligerent rights. Lord Russell considers that we must possess the right of blockade as a most valuable privilege for ourselves on some future occasion, and you will see that almost the very last words uttered by Lord Palmerston at the close of the Session were to assert the great interest England had in maintaining these old belligerent rights. In fact, we are governed by men whose ideas have made no progress since 1808 — nay, they cling t« the ideas of the Middle Ages." " October z^, 1862. " England cannot take a step with decency or con- sistency, to put an end to the blockade, until our Government is prepared to give us their adhesion to the principle of the abolition of commercial blockades for the future. This our antiquated Palmerstons and Russells are not prepared to do. They have a sincere faith in the efficacy of commercial blockades as a ' Vol. ii. pp. 400-2. 299 Richard Cobden : The International Man belligerent weapon against our enemies. They are ignorant that it is a two-edged sword, which cuts the hand that wields it — when that hand is England's — more than the object which it strikes. Lords Palmerston and Russell feel bound to acquiesce in the blockade, and even to find excuses for it, because they wish to preserve the right for us of blockading some other Power. " I am against any act of violence to put an end to the war. We shall not thereby obtain cotton, nor should we coerce the North. We should only intensify the animosity between the two sections. But I should be glad to see an appeal made by all Europe to the North to put an end to the blockade of the South against legitimate commerce, on the ground of humanity, accom- panied with the offer of making the abolition of com- mercial blockades the principle of International Law for the future. But this, I repeat, our Government will not agree to at present. We have a battle to fight against our own ruling class in England to accomplish that reform. I am by no means so sure as Gladstone that the South will ever be a nation. It depends on the ' Great West.' If Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota sustain the President's anti- slavery proclamation, there will be no peace which will leave the mouth of the Mississippi in the hands of an independent Power." To Mr. Richard. '■^January 30, i86z. " We will talk over the subject of the ' Arbitration Committee' when we meet. I shall be in Town at the opening of the Session. " I have got nearly to the end of my pamphlet ; but now what is to be done with it.-' Before I had time to finish the story of the last invasion panic, here we 300 Correspondence, 1 861-4 are led on by The Times and Saturday Review for a war in the other hemisphere! It is just the same tale over again as in 1852-3, when we were caught with the Russian War in the midst of the second panic. I had better perhaps keep the MS. until we see what course the American question takes. If we get thick into that — which I suppose will be Palmerston's game to divert attention -from other matters — nobody would read anything about the French panics — what say you ? " '■'■February 2, 1862. " I think your Society wrong. With a French army ravaging Mexico, without a shadow of justification, and indeed in violation of the professed purpose for which, in conjunction with Spain and England, the expedition was undertaken, and with an army occupying Rome in violation of all principles of self- government, you are surely not justified in assuming the French Government to have any objects in common with your Society. Unless you go to condemn or protest against these acts, you are surely open to the charge of condoning them — in making a display of confidence in their author. I intreat you not, at all events, to send a deputation. " I still adhere to the opinion that our Government will not commit us to a war about Schleswig — I have reason to know that they are fully alive at headquarters to the danger of exposing our commerce to reprisals from Yankee * Lairds,' if we become belligerents with any other Power. After the fatal example we have afforded to the tremendous amount of injury which half a dozen swift steamers can inflict upon a whole mercantile marine, I do not see how we can ever go to war again unless in defence of our own shores. We must give up the ' Balance of Power ' for the future." 301 ' Richard Cobden : The International Man '■^February 2, 1S62. " I return the Bond with thanks. The explanation you give of the object of the intervention alters the view of the question as respects the rights and duty of the Government to interfere. If our bondholders have been robbed of money in transition by what is called a Government we certainly have a right to redress, if it can be had. " I agree with you in every word you say about the motives for publishing my pamphlet. It is just brought to an end. You never saw such an exposure, and old P. the radiant figure for tv/enty years ! But then I shall be just the same Ishmaelite I was after the Free Trade victory in 1847. Tken I might have set up for a genteel politician, and everybody was disposed to tolerate me. " Now I am in the same position after the treaty. Everybody again is tending to tolerance and favour. But when this pamphlet comes out — how I shall be baited in the House and the Press ! However, I have the rogues on the hip, and there is not one of the chief offenders — Pam, Pakington, Clarence Paget, Horsman, etc., that I cannot fire a reserve shot into if they open on me in the House. I only keep the MS. until I go to Town and see that at the opening of the Session there is no American event to stun the public ear. It is to be translated and brought out in Paris at the same time. How had I better manage for print- ing and publishing it in London .'' " " Wednesrlay, February, " I will certainly say something outside the programme of the factions, but whether it should be an attack on the old and ghastly phantom of the Balance of Power, 302 Correspondence, 1 8 6 1 -4 or an argument for pure and simple non-intervention remains to be seen. I should like a little conversation with you on this very point. It is an unpopular part to take, but I am inclined to show up that spirit of braggadocio in the Press and in higher places which threatens and blusters without measuring our powers to fulfil our menaces, or rather our impotency to do so, and which spirit is really accountable for what those same parties call our present humiliation." "April id, 1862. " The founders of your Society ought to have added a serpent to their device of a dove. The wisdom of the one is as necessary in this world, even in good works, as the innocence of the other. I think you have relied too much on your harmlessness. " I would say nothing about ' peace ' or ' war ' and I would put the International Law first. And I would in defining the objects keep as much as possible to a dry formula and not prejudge the matter with epithets. I don't say that mine may not be mended, but I would have it as dry and unlike a Peace Society programme as possible." " April 1%, 1862. " I did not mean to discourage you, and you mistake me if you suppose I meant to say you should do nothing. What I meant was that you should approach your work strategically. " Some of the best services you have rendered to the cause of Peace have been through the instrumentality of men who did not start from your point of view or even perhaps seek your objects. Such, for instance, was the case with Lord Clarendon, whom you and Sturge incited to move in the arbitration clause, and such 303 Richard Cobden : The International Man was the case when you disinterred the resolution of the Paris Congress during the French affair and got the religious bodies to take up that ground. I have sometimes regretted that the Americans did not hang fire a little and propose arbitration, that we might have had an agitation in favour of that mode of settling the Trent affair. " I shall be glad to talk the matter over when I return to Town. Such men as Chevalier will come at the opening of the Exhibition and remain some time ; others will come later. We had better discuss the subject with such men as he — in which direction alone we can hope to enlarge our circle." "A}rili6, i86z. "I am not surprised that the papers hang fire in noticing the pamphlet. The facts can't be refuted, and to acknowledge them is in general an act of self- condemnation with our writers and politicians. When you come to look back over the last twelve years, what a contemptible clique of eccentricities that party has been which did not give way at any time to these war maniacs ! How can you expect ninety-nine one- hundredths now to confess that the i per cent, alone have kept their senses .'' We Peace men must moderate our triumph ; it will only endure through a period of commercial depression, if there had been no Civil War in America, and the French treaty had come at the top on the great flood-tide of prosperity, we should have now been more bumptious than ever and the fortifications would have gone on." "Moj 26, 1862. " There is an apparent intention on the part of the Opposition to play the game of economy and retrench- 304 Correspondence, 1 86 1-4 ment. The one great indispensable and desirable preliminary step to any diminution of the armaments is to get rid of the present Prime Minister. But this is very difficult, for the Tories prefer him to their own leader — a precious illustration of the way in which the so-called Liberal Party allow themselves to be befooled ! "Have you been paying any attention to the pro- ceedings in China? There is a small Blue book lately presented containing, among other despatches, one from Lord Russell authorizing the naval commanders to defend the Treaty Ports, which I think opens the doors to a war in all parts of China. I have lately been in the way of conversing with Baron Gros and Mr. Ward, the American and French plenipotentiaries, and they seem to be of one opinion as to the impolicy of our proceedings, to say nothing of their injustice. Mr. Ward says we shall have to take the whole country on our hands, like India. It is just possible that we may bring on ourselves a retribution from the East by our persistent course of violence and injustice ; and God help us if it is to be commensurate with our deserts ! " "7«/y 15, 1862. " I really think the old sinner has got rather the worst of the last week's contest. But I hope for other occasions before the Session closes for putting a mark on him by which the Liberals may know him better. It is desirable that he should be labelled with his true character, so as to prevent him as much as possible from playing the successful demagogue during the recess. " By all means try to raise a protest against this China business. We are plunging into a sea of blood 305 U Richard Cobden : The International Man and guilt there for which we may bring down on ourselves a fatal retribution. It is, I fear, too late to arrest the mad career of our Government. But it is not too late to protest." " September 15, 1862. " I have been some weeks among the mountains of Scotland, and have derived great advantage to my health. Indeed, one must be very unreasonable not to improve under the influence of pure air, mountain scenery, and kind welcome from friends. I hope you have taken your usual tour to Wales. "I try to forget politics and Palmerston during my holiday, and rarely see the London Press. But the bloody telegrams from America meet my eye in the local penny papers, and haunt me everywhere. The future of that horrible contest seems to me more shrouded in gloom every day. It appears to be more than ever probable that it will end in the North halt ruining itself in the process of wholly ruining the South, rather than agree to allow another independent State to be established qn the American Continent." " October 15, 1862. " I made up my mind during the Crimean War that if ever I lived in the time of another great war of a similar kind, between England and another Power, I would not as a public man open my mouth on the subject, so convinced am I that appeals to reason, con- science or interest, have no force whatever on parties engaged in war, and that exhaustion on one or both sides can alone bring a contest of physical force to an end. Such being my view with regard to a war in which our own country is engaged, it is still more strongly applicable to the case of a foreign country 306 Correspondence, 1^61-4 Unless compelled incidentally to allude to it, I shall not say a syUable in public upon the subject of this horrible American War. I need hardly add that I would walk barefoot to the end of the earth if by so doing I could put an end to the sanguinary struggle. I am as much as ever in the dark as to the prospects of the contending parties. But it still seems to me that if the North choose to endure the burden of the war, it can ruin the South by only half ruining itself. It is a question of endurance and of time. "I am not likely to be in London before the close of the Exhibition, and therefore shall not be able to take a part in any demonstration in favour of peace. But if a declaration in favour of reduction of arma- ments could be made under the auspices of new men it would be a good step." " Decemier 5, 1862. " Be assured that if I can help to shelve this old dodger I shall do it as an act of piety to Heaven and of charity to man — for he is the evil genius of our generation. He has hitherto had such a run of luck that it has not been easy to try to bring him seriously to account. But the Lancashire trouble is very un- fortunate for him. He would have had two or three foreign clap-traps ready for the meeting of Parliament to divert public attention from home affairs if we had continued prosperous, but now the scent lies so close in the cotton districts that a red herring in Greece or Montenegro will not answer his purpose. Lord Derby's serious personal implication in the cotton trouble is not without its significance. It may lead his party into the path of retrenchment. If the Tories will outbid the Whigs in reduction of expenditure even in a small matter, the victory is theirs." 307 Richard Cobden : The International Man '"December i8, 1862. " There is a point to discriminate upon in memorial- izing the Government. It is quite proper to raise a protest against the equipping of ships for belligerent purposes. Not only should the Government be called on to observe good faith in the matter by preventing such a violation of the law of nations, but you should denounce in very strong language any house of business calling itself respectable which built ships for such vile purposes as privateering knowing what they are in- tended for, and risking a war with a friendly Power for the sake of their own mercenary gains. " But you cant interfere with the trade in ordinary articles of commerce such as powder, shot, etc., in time of war any more than in time of peace ; it is, in fact, quite impracticable. I admit there is some difficulty in the discrimination in such matters to which I have referred above, but I will direct your attention to an American document in which that Government gives its ideas of the law of the case." " December 21, 1862. " You will find in the American President's Message, in the Annual Register for 1855, page 289 ('History'), the law laid down as the Americans interpret it re- specting the rights and duties of neutrals. Last spring Mr. Adams, the American Minister, was complaining to me very strongly that our Government did not interfere to prevent the shipments of arms and ammu- nition which were known to be intended for the Confederates, although they were ostensibly being sent to Nassau. He told me he had been to Lord Russell to complain of this at the request of Mr. Seward. I told him that his Government seemed to be unaware of the 308 Correspondence, 1 861-4 principle laid down by themselves, and I sent him an extract from the President's Message, to which I now refer you, and I begged him to forward it to Mr. Seward. The fact is, the Republican or Whig party now in power in the United States hardly know the principles of the Democratic party who have for the last fifty years generally ruled America. That party, with their one sole blemish of having ' held the candle to the devil ' in winking at slavery for the sake of the Southern Alliance, has been identified with the greatest and soundest , principles of the Union. " I also reminded Mr. Adams that the North had been purchasing arms and ammunition in England to a far greater extent than the South. If you intend to send a memorial to Government, it should, I think, be confined to the one point of urging them to enforce the law of nations, and to insist on the observance of the Queen's Proclamation by preventing ships-of-war from being built for the Confederates. By the way, I rather think that the Queen's Proclamation goes farther than to forbid the fitting out of vessels. I believe we profess to prevent the sale of arms and ammunition, which the Americans do not. "After all, it is impossible practically to prevent a foreign Government from obtaining ships suited for war purposes in this country. They may be bought off our lines of steamboat traffic. When I was in Scotland I heard, I know not how truly, that Mason, the Confederate envoy, had purchased swift steamers to the value of ,^70,000 in the Clyde. The true remedy is to keep out of war, or, if that be not practicable, to adopt such reforms in the rules of war as shall put an end to such wanton destruction of property as that which is going on by the Alabama." 309 Richard Cobden : The International Man Though Cobden had much to say on the American Civil War, his thoughts were chiefly communicated to Bright, Paulton and other friends in this country and to Sumner in Washington. The preserved corre- spondence with Mr. Richard contains only a few passing allusions to the American events of 1863. Nor are these letters occupied with the new trouble of Schleswig-Holstein, that most recondite of foreign issues of which Lord Palmerston was recorded to have said that three men in Europe had alone grasped its meaning, one of whom (the Prince Consort) was dead, another (a Dane) was mad, while he, the third, had forgotten it. It is sufficient here to remind readers that the disturbance in 1862 of the 1852 modus Vivendi by the Powers, first by Frederick VII of Denmark in the political incorporation of Schleswig, and next by Prussia in the forcible occupation of Holstein, brought this country in the summer of 1863 to the brink of war. Palmerston was once more the firebrand. On the last day of the Session he made the statement that " if any violent attempt were made to overthrow the right and interfere with the independence of Denmark, those who made the attempt would find in the result that it would not be Denmark alone with which they would have to contend." If he could have carried with him the French Emperor, this would have meant war. But Napoleon was not prepared to come in, save on a basis of French annexation and a general European war. Palmerston was apparently prepared to go on alone, and only the determined deletion by the Queen of certain language inscribed in the Queen's Speech at the opening of the 1864 Session averted the conflict. The resolution, moved by Roebuck on June 30th, in favour of a recognition of the Southern Confederacy, 310 Correspondence, 1 86 1-4 failed of support, and was withdrawn. But public opinion in high quarters still favoured the view that the South would establish its independence, although the tide of war was now turning in favour of the North. The lesson of the Alabama, however, had been learned, and no more vessels were permitted to go out from our ports for Confederate use, while the endeavours of the Confederate envoys in Europe to induce this country to support Napoleon in his proposed mediation between the belligerents entirely failed. Towards the end of the year Cobden's attention was once more drawn to a new outrage in the Far East. This time, not China but Japan was the victim. As a reprisal for the killing of a Mr. Richardson, our Admiral in the China Sea, exceeding, as usual, the instructions from home, proceeded to destroy the Japanese city of Kagosima, containing a hundred thousand inhabitants. The latest letters of that year are largely concerned with a fierce controversy with the Editor of The Times, which the latter had provoked by false accusations against Cobden of appealing to working-class revolu- tionary passion. These letters I do^not here reproduce, as the matter to which they refer is fully set forth in Lord Morley's "Life," and is not closely germane to the special purpose of this volume. "January 4, 1863, " It is perfectly true that the course Palmerston took in the House in his fortification speech on July 23, i860, was calculated to thwart my labours in Paris, as I have stated at p. 116 of 'The Three Panics.' But I have not stated the more weighty fact that he made this speech and took the course he did in spite of my urgent private appeal to him a fortnight before to let me finish my work before he moved in the matter. Richard Cobden : The International Man Baines of Leeds knew all this. And some of the other Yorkshire M.P.s know how I was thwarted by that old man. But they continued their allegiance to him, and the Mercury has since that time again and again defended him against my attack. Yet Yorkshire has been saved from the fate of Lancashire by the treaty ! What can one do for people who have so little self- respect .'' The negroes have shown themselves better able to discriminate between their friends and enemies ! A few baronetcies, a timely invitation or two to the Queen's ball, and our commercial and manufacturing M.P.s, with few exceptions, are prepared to enlist in the ranks of the governing class, and forget that they represent a new civilization which wants its own leaders, and to whom a far higher rank might be assigned in the world's estimation than that of a feudal effete aristocracy." "September 20, 1863. " I send by post a speech I made on the Foreign Enlistment Act. It was with great difficulty I could get a hearing for it, so overwhelming was the feeling of the House the other way. The other speech, made in a morning sitting to a score or two of members, went more into the argument — as I was not subject to interruptions. It was delivered a week before the close of the Session, and the report, copied from the 'Star,' appeared in The Times the Monday prior to the Prorogation. I have since corrected it for Hansard, but do not know whether it has yet been published. "There is something revoltingly base about the mode in which our organs of opinions and the Govern- ment of this country alter and adapt their conduct to foreign Powers according to their strength or weakness. Lord Robert Cecil said, rather smartly, 312 Correspondence, 1 861-4 that our Foreign Office had a tariff of manners for other countries, regulated according to their power. He might have added that we have a diff^erent manner for the same Power, according as it may for the moment be weak or strong. It is only because the Korth has had great successes since July that the British Lion is becoming so lamb-like towards it. " It is truly an awful reverse for our Peace principles to see the Federation principle no safeguard against war, in its most gigantic proportion, spreading over the fairest part of the New World ! It is useless to argue against the continuance of hostilities after they have once broken out. You might as well reason with mad dogs as with communities engaged in the work of slaughter. It is only the exhaustion of one or both parties that can bring war to an end. I still hope that negro slavery will receive its death-blow in North America, and though few men would have agreed beforehand to purchase emancipation at such a price, it will be a consolation to witness the triumph of right at the hands of belligerents, neither of whom two years ago would have voted for such a consummation. There is an obstinate tendency for the right to get its own, even in spite of the powers and authorities of the world." '' "November 2, 1863. '* I am much obliged by your kindness in sending me the papers upon Japan. Horrible as the idea may seem to you, I could not help a momentary feeling of satisfaction that the Japanese had shown so much courage, and so deadly an aim, in their resistance to our attack ! It is the only way in which our ' service ' in the East can be restrained from outrages and conquests, the consequence of which, if God rules this world on 313 Richard Cobden : The International Man principles of retributive justice, must be far heavier on us as a nation than the instant punishment of the aggressors. For, observe, that our commanders in the East, confident in their strength, always exceed their instructions. Observe, for instance. Lord John Russell, in his dispatch of instructions to Colonel Neale, merely suggests that the Admiral may ' shell the prince's (Satsuma's) residence ' and ' seize or detain ' his steam- vessels. Straightway Admiral Kuper proceeds to burn the prince's steamers, and to reduce to a heap of ruins Kagosima, an inoffensive city of a hundred thousand or more inhabitants. I cannot see by the dispatches that our fleet succeeded in destroying or silencing the Japanese forts. They were armed with 13-inch guns or mortars, and, judging by the number of killed and wounded on our side, 1 should say it was a drawn battle. And I venture to say, with shame, that this evidence of courage and resources will do more than any appeals to our justice in making us respect the rights of that people in future. I foresee a new element in the future relations of Europe with the Eastern world that may endanger our filibustering policy in that region. The most powerful weapons of war are becoming every day more and more articles of private manufacture and commercial dealings. There are companies for making Whitworth's guns — and of course the United States has become a great arms manufactory. All kinds of warlike stores are finding their way to China and Japan, and by and by those nations will have arms equal to our own. Then with their vast population and remote distance, it may not be in our power to indulge in bloodshed and rapine at so cheap a rate. If the maxim Si vis pacem para helium be a peace-preserver, accord- ing to the theory of our fire-eaters, why should it not apply to the East .-' 314 Correspondence, 1 8 6 1 -4. " I have been lately reading some articles In successive numbers of the Revue aes Deux Mondes on Japan, by a traveller in that country, and when I think of the peace, order, happiness, and civility to well-conducted foreigners which generally prevail in that country. It does make my blood boil to think of the outrages we are com- mitting and provoking in that country : for there is no doubt that even the murder of Mr. Richardson was almost invited by a violation of the established uses of the country. " If you will help to prepare me, I should really be disposed to bring on the whole question of our policy in the East and test It by an appeal to the principles of justice, as well as national self-interest." " November 7, 1863. " Whenever you can pay us a visit we shall be most happy to see you. " I sat down to write to Gladstone about the Japan outrage, but I preferred to send It to the public. He can find such good reasons for not acting up to the dictates of abstract justice that I find him a very unsatisfactory Judge of Appeal. "I suppose Sir Rutherford Alcock's book could be had cheap at second-hand from Mudle's. I have not read it through, but I had some talk with him, and he said the treaty with the Japanese was entered into by them •with the Americans^ under the alarm that if they waited till Lord Elgin came from his triumphant violence In China he would subject them to worse terms. When you come, I will trouble you to bring your copy of the correspondence. I know precisely the course which ought to be taken in Japan, and which should have been pursued In China. We should adopt the plan which the rude common sense of our ancestors reverted 315 Richard Cob den : The International Man to in the time of the Plantagenets. Then, the merchants of the Hanse Towns (the ' Esterlings,' and hence the word sterling), who came to London to trade in our raw products in exchange for their manufactures, lived under a distinct code of laws and were exempt from the jurisdiction of our Admiralty Courts, on condition that they lived apart and did not mingle with the natives. They were located in a walled-in place called the ' Steelyard ' near the river, and which still bears the name. This is the only way in which collisions can be avoided, and in which trade can be carried on with these Eastern people with profit to the English people, as distinct from the few filibustering British residents in the East to whom Wars and confusion are often profitable. If I bring on the question, this is the policy I shall try to enforce. " You are quite right in absolutely restricting your memoir of Sturge to one moderately sized volume. " By the way, I observed that that most vain and inaccurate old man, Brougham, took credit to himselt at Edinburgh for having abolished the negro apprentice- ship. Nqw, I remember a very graphic description which he gave me in a conversation at his house in Grafton Street of Sturge's conduct in the matter, and which he adduced as an illustration of our friend's indomitable energy. He told me of Sturge coming to him, whilst he was, I believe, still Lord Chancellor, to arraign the conduct of the masters in the West Indies for oppressing the apprentices ; how he (Brougham) laughed him to scorn, deriding him in this fashion for coming to him to propose that he should abolish the apprenticeship : ' Why, you old woman, Joseph Sturge, to dream that you can revive the anti-slavery feeling and raise an agitation to put an end to the apprentice- ship ' ; how the quiet Quaker met him with this reply : 316 Correspondence, 1 86 1-4 ' Lord Brougham, if thou hadst a ward in Chancery who was apprenticed, and his master was violating the terms of his indenture, what wouldst thou do ? ' Now he (Lord B.) felt this as a home-thrust, and he replied, ' Why, I should require good proof, Joseph Sturge, before I did anything ' ; how our friend rejoined, < Then I must supply thee with proof ' ; how he packed up his portmanteau and quietly embarked for the West Indies, made a tour of the Islands, collected the necessary evidence of the oppression that was being practised on the negro apprentices by their masters, the planters ; how he returned to England, and commenced an agitation throughout the country to abolish the apprenticeship, to accomplish which it was necessary to reorganize all the old anti-slavery societies which had been dissolved or had laid down their arms happy to be relieved from their long and arduous labours ; how he brought them again into the field and accomplished his objects. This was the narrative of Lord Brougham, and well do I remember the very words in which, in conclusion, he assigned the whole merit to our friend — 'Joseph Sturge,' said he, * won the game off his own bat.' " " November ii, 1863. " I do not see The Times here, and should like to have the copy containing Buxton's letter about Japan. From letters that reach me from men of the different parties, I suspect that the national conscience is a little moved. Looking back to the time of Clive and down to our day, cruel and remorseless as our policy in the East has been, I do not believe there is any one outrage to compare in magnitude with that of Kagosima. And this I hope you will say in your memorial to the Queen. " I very much doubt the policy of your stirring in the Congress question at present. You cannot feel 317 Richard Cobden : The International Man confidence in the object of the Emperor, whose Mexican expedition has paralysed him morally and materially to a serious extent. Besides, he alludes but obscurely to the reduction of armaments. My advice is to wait. If our Government agree to a Congress, which the Morning Post would seem to lead one to expect, then there would indeed be a grand occasion for the Peace Society to come out in all its strength on the armament question. Then you must be prepared with some well-founded statistics of the growing character of the peace establishments, and with citations from Peel and others to place you on practical ground. But if you stir previously to our Government agreeing, you put yourselves in the position of backing the Emperor, which / should not at present like to do. " Apropos of that anecdote of Brougham and Sturge, I could swear to the main incidents, and I remember well how Brougham brandished a poker as he said, 'Joseph Sturge won that game ofF his own bat.' But it is more than twenty years ago, and I should like to be sure that the details are correctly remembered, but this you can tell me. For instance, was Brougham Lord Chancellor when the apprenticeship was abolished } If not, the colloquy must have merely been different to this extent : Sturge must have asked him what he would have done in the case of an apprentice who was a ward in Chancery when he was Lord Chancellor ? " By the way, I have heard those who listened to Brougham's speech on that question say it surpassed any of his previous efforts." " 'November 19, 1863. " Many thanks for the Parliamentary Papers, and the extract from The Times of Buxton's letter. By the way, do you see that in the Star there is an announcement 318 Correspondence, 1 8 6 1 -4 of his intention to bring on the Kagosima affair on the meeting of Parliament ? He gives the terms of his notice, which is unusual and uncalled for. It absolves the Foreign Office, by alleging that the Admiral did not act according to instructions. I have suspected Buxton of sometimes playing the part of ' buffer ' to the Whig Ministry. This propensity to prefer aristocratic party convenience to principle runs in the blood of the Buxtons. I have no doubt the Government will try to shelter Kuper under the plea ot accident. No other defence will, I think, carry the House. I have had a very wide response to my letter from men of all parties in every part of the country. I hope it will be the turning-point in our Eastern policy. The bravery of the Japanese and their mechanical ingenuity and progressive character will be their best security against injustice. I am glad you are going to write a summary of our doings in Japan. " Do you happen to have access to the Lancet ? There was an account of a visit which the Queen paid to the Military Hospital of Netley about six months since in that paper, with a vivid picture of the Indian invalids. I should like to be able to lay my hand on it. There is a new field altogether untouched to explore and expose, in the cost of life, health, and morality of our Oriental occupations. It would be found that the cost In life and sickness is equal to a couple of Battles of Waterloo yearly. I remember the late George Combe relating to me a conversation he had had with M'Culloch (' Commercial Dictionary '), who was expatiating on the national loss, Vitally and financially, which our Indian possessions entailed on us ; and on his (Combe's) suggesting that he (M'C.) should give publicity to his views, the latter replied, ' That will never do, for if I did the public would not believe me, or read anything I said on any other subject.' " 319 Richard Cobden : The Intefnational Man " November 21, 1863. " What you say about the demand actually made for compensation for the murder of Mr. Richardson from the Japanese Government increases the enormity of our wickedness. It is so outrageous that it may perhaps serve the cause of j ustice by creating a revulsion in public feeling. One of the advantages to be gained by the fall of the present Government, and the return of the Tories to power, would be the opening it would offer to the latter for a complete change in our filibustering policy in the East, in which they have not been the guilty party. Nothing serious can be done in this or any other direc- tion, in the way of reform, whilst the present old joker is at the head of affairs." " December 30, 1863. " Can you get me Carlyle's address ? I don't find it in the Court Guide. His name is Thomas, is it not .'' " Be cautious how you endorse the Emperor. His views and purposes are not ours — at least not at present. Give him the Rhine boundary, and I believe he would go for a general disarmament. But there is something to do before that is effected. " Is it certain that these wild and visionary Teutons may not, after all, put Europe in flames ? They are mad about Schleswig, and it is just out of such a foolish fanatical outbreak that a man like L, N., who is always as cool as a cucumber, will make his winning game. If Germany precipitates itself on Denmark, there will be something come of it on the Rhine, Danube, and Mincio. And so completely will the sympathies of England and Europe be on the other side that it is not easy to say what may not come of it, " At the same time, apropos of the Congress, I have 320 Correspondence, 1 861-4 always been of opinion that England would be the last Power to wish to see a reduction of armaments." Cobden's general view of the situation at the close of 1863 is well conveyed in the following letter to his French friend, M. Aries Dufour : — " MiDHURST, 'December 6, 1863. " When I spoke to my constituents at Rochdale on the evening of the 24th, I knew that our Government had determined not to attend the Congress. Yet I took the opportunity of saying that, as the Emperor's pro- gramme contained an allusion to the Emperor's arma- ments, I could not agree in opposing him. At the same time, I said I had but little faith in a Congress for any other purpose. This is my real opinion. It is indeed consistent with my principle of non-intervention, for I have no faith in the power of other nations to put down the coils of a civil war in any particular State. The only plan is to leave them to settle their own quarrels. " Then as regards Mexico, you ought to be thankful that somebody even at Rochdale tells the Emperor the truth about his most unwise expedition to that country. If he remains there until the North has subdued the South, which is only a question of time, he will either have to go to war with that powerful nation with all his iron- clad batteries ready to move to Vera Cruz, or he will be subjected to great humiliation in being obliged to leave the country at the instance of the Government of Wash- ington. The expedition to Mexico is, under the circum- stances, an insult to the United States. How would Frenchmen like the Americans to come and set up a Republic in Belgium without consulting them} "As to M. Gueroult's threats of a general war, I attach little importance to them. Some people talk as if 321 X Richard Cobden : The International Man mankind naturally gravitated towards war. Now I see very good and sufficient obstacles in our days to the Powers of Europe entering on a general war. The imagination, particularly of a Frenchman, may easily make such a state of things, but the poetical flight of such writers as M. Gueroult will have to be brought to the test of M. Fould's prosaic figures of arithmetic. The nations of Europe, so far from being- able to com- mence a general campaign, will find themselves during the next year puzzled to sustain the burdens of their peace establishments. " We are only now beginning to feel the efFects of the cotton famine. You will remember that two years ago you and I used to speak of the terrible convulsion which would follow from the sudden cutting off of the supply of American cotton. People have been pooh-poohing the cotton industry ever since, and saying that its importance has been overrated. The truth is that the very strength of that industry, so far as England is concerned, has enabled it to bear up so well under the trial. " But the diversion of specie to pay fifty or sixty millions sterHng more than the ordinary price for cotton next year threatens all the money markets with panic and confusion, will bring Governments to look for their wicked waste of the floating capitals of the world, and give them other employment than in carrying out M. Gueroult's imaginary war." The last year of Cobden's political activity (1864) was remarkable not only for the pressure of foreign affairs upon the popular interest of our country, but as marking the close of the era of Palmerstonian Jingoism. Writing on May lOth to Mr. T. B. Potter, Cobden remarked that " nothing except foreign politics seems to occupy 322 Correspondence, 1861-4. the attention of the people, Press, or Parliament." He wrote in a regretful tone, for foreign politics had always carried the menace of intervention, with militarism in the background. The romantic figure of Garibaldi, who visited this country in the spring, had roused a wild enthusiasm among all classes, which the Govern- ment, who had here no definite axe to grind, found very inconvenient. A champion of national liberties, a first-rate fighting man, an enemy of the Papacy, as he was deemed, he presented just the combination of qualities for the role of hero. But when the populace began to recognize in him the exemplar of the modern democratic revolutionist, and had made arrangements for a series of receptions in the great Northern cities, the Government took alarm and whisked him off to Caprera in a ducal yacht. But the really critical event of the year was the failure of Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell to bring their country into conflict with Prussia over the Schleswig-Hdlstein question. Two passages from the last of Cobden's speeches addressed in November to his Rochdale constituents give the best summary of the episode as he saw it. "In 1852, by the mischievous activity of our Foreign Office, seven diplomatists were brought round a green table in London to settle the destinies of a million of people in the two provinces of Schleswig and Holstein, without the slightest reference to the wants and wishes or the tendencies and interests of that people. The preamble of the treaty, which was there and then agreed to, states that what these seven diplomatists were going to do was to maintain the integrity of the Danish monarchy and to sustain the Balance of Power in Europe. Kings, emperors, princes were represented at that meeting, but the people had not the slightest 323 Richard Cobden : The International Man voice or right in the matter. They settled the treaty, the object of which was to draw closer the bonds between these two provinces and Denmark. The tendency of the great majority of the people of those provinces — about a million of them altogether — was altogether in the direction of Germany. From that time to 'this year the treaty was followed by constant agitation and dis- cord ; two wars have sprung out of it, and It has ended in the treaty being torn to pieces by two of the Govern- ments who were prominent parties to the treaty." Then, turning to immediate issues of this year, the proposed intervention in behalf of Denmark, he pro- ceeds : " The newspapers that were in the interest of the Government were harping in favour of war to the last moment in large leading articles. Some announced the very number of the regiments, the names of the colonels, the names of the ships, and the commanders that would be sent to fight this battle for Denmark. In the House of Commons there was a general opinion that there was a great struggle going on in the Cabinet as to whether we should declare war against Germany. At the end of June the Prime Minister announced that he was going to produce the protocols and to state the decision of the Government upon the question. He gave a week's notice of this intention, and then I witnessed what has convinced me that we have achieved a revolution in our foreign policy. The whippers-in — you know what I mean — were taking soundings of the inclinations of members of the House of Commons. And then came up from the country such a manifesta- tion of opinion against war that day after day during that eventful week member after member from the largest constituencies went to those who acted for the Government in Parliament and told them distinctly that they would not allow war upon any such matters 324 Correspondence, 1 861-4 as Schleswig and Holstein. There came surging up from all the great seats and centres of manufacturing and commercial activity one unanimous veto against war for the matter of Schleswig and Holstein." Cobden was not aware of the powerful pressure from the Throne which co-operated with this public opinion, or he might have been less confident in imputing to this latter influence the sole or chief determination of our governmental action. But no doubt the experience of the American Civil War and the recent memories of the Crimean folly had a marked effect in a pacific direction, while the rising economic prosperity of the country disinclined the middle classes from participation in the proposed foreign enterprise. •' The manufacturing and commercial interests of this country were in a state of almost unparalleled expansion. They had entered into vast engagements, expecting that they would be realized and fulfilled in time of peace ; both capitalists and labourers felt that, if war had arisen just then, it would have produced enormous calamities, such as no nation ought ever to bring upon itself, unless in defence of its vital interest and honour." The pretext given by Palmerston for the abandonment of Denmark, whose resistance he had stimulated by definite promises of aid, was the unwillingness of France and Russia to support his action. But none the less the War party felt the humiliation of their failure, and Cobden was justified in holding that his policy of non-intervention had triumphed. In his speech on Disraeli's Vote of Censure moved on July 5th he pressed home once more the relation between peace and free commerce. The other important foreign issue which occupied his voice and pen in this year was the persistent brutality of our Far Eastern policy, the latest example of which 325 Richard Cobden : The International Man had been the wanton attack upon Kagosima. On May 31st Cobden moved a resolution urging that the policy of non-intervention which we now professed to observe in Europe and America should be observed in our relations with the yellow peoples. Experience of the last few years was bringing home to him with ever- growing clearness of perception that our Asiatic policy in particular was directed by the push for markets more than by any other motive. Such were the matters which chiefly occupied Cobden in the correspondence with Mr. Richard during 1864 which is given below. His important American cor- respondence is given in another chapter. "January 28, 1864. " I am sorry to say that I have not the slightest hope that the House will disapprove the Kagosima affair. Members have not forgotten the result of the vote in favour of my motion condemnatory of the Canton bombardment, when the constituencies repudiated the decision of Parliament, rejected at the polls the men who had supported me, and thus virtually gave Palmerston carfe blanche to do as he pleased for the rest of his life in the East, The Opposition will not give him another opportunity of appealing to the British Lion. The stream does not rise above the level of its source. Nor will the House be better than the middle class of this country which creates it, and which has virtually declared, ' On us and our children lie the responsibility for our unrighteous deeds In the East ! ' " It looks as though Palmerston was bent on involving us in the Danish quarrel. I have written to Gibson and Gladstone pointing out to them what the con- sequences will be if, by entering on a war with any maritime Power, we give the American 'Lairds' an 326 Correspondence, 1 86 1-4 opportunity of supplying a belligerent with Alabamas to prey on our commerce, which they will certainly do. I can hardly bring myself to believe in such infatuation. Bat sometimes, when observing the spirit which pervades so large a part of even our mercantile and manufacturing classes — a spirit of arrogant pride and self-sufficiency — I am almost inclined to resign myself with cynical complacency to some national disaster or check as the only possible cure for our national vices." ^^ February 7, 1864. " What a ridiculous mess our Foreign Office has got into ! And yet it was for the ' foreign policy ' of the Government that we were asked to condone all the shortcomings at home ! We are a most heavy-witted, dull people, but 1 should think we must wake up sooner or later to the ridiculously absurd position in which we are placed by all this tall talk and fruitless Blue-bookism. It may, and must, I should say, bring us to the honest ground of non-intervention, for nobody will believe that our Government ever means to do anything but talk. " I have no doubt it was the fear of American Alabamas that really kept us from committing our- selves to an act of hostility. We can no longer localize a war. It is an open question whether Laird has not been a great peace-maker by giving this fearful example of the injury that half a dozen swift steamers would inflict on our commerce. Depend on it, there is a complete revolution in our foreign policy to arise out of those Birkenhead doings." ^^ February 10, 1864. " I am not sorry that I have been absent from Buxton's motion. But I wish to have an hour in the House 327 Richard Cobden : The International Man upon the whole question of our relations with these Oriental peoples, and have no doubt there will be an opportunity in connection with the larger question of China. The expense of coercing China and Japan will, owing to the immense distance and to their gradual adoption of European arms and discipline, be constantly increasing. The unhealthiness of China is another terrible evil. Apropos of arms, I was told yesterday by a partner in the Whitworth house that the Chinese Government offered for the Whitworth rifled guns in Captain Sherrard Osborn's vessels, which are now re- turning, weight for weight in silver. " February 12, 1864. " What a wretched figure the mere Whigs and shabby Liberals cut on Buxton's motion ! If the Tories had been in power, not one of the men of the stamp of Bass and Beale of Derby would have voted as they did. It is a sad feature in our popular con- stituencies that they have for the last ten years been falling into the way of returning some rich capitalist or contractor — a man past the middle age, of no political antecedents, and whose only ambition in going to Parliament is social position. The whole scope of the motives on both sides is of the lowest kind. The con- stituents offer the seat as a complimentary tribute to a rich man of the neighbourhood, and he accepts it that his wife may go to the Queen's ball ! I wish you Dissenters would break in upon this state of things and supply some higher tests for party divisions. Has your letter been printed in a pamphlet form } " But, to return to China and Japan, I wish for an opportunity of bringing on the whole question of our commercial relations, showing the relation of cost of armaments to the extent of trade, and showing how 328 Correspondence, 1 861-4 greatly the one increases beyond the other, and to advocate the principle of restricting rather than in- creasing the number of points of contact. I think the present discussions are leading up to the questions which I wish to bring on." " February 17, 1864. " You must especially refer to Kinnaird in your Herald. It is the only way to bring such humbugs to book. He voted against my motion in 1857 on the Canton massacre. You will see that he tried to speak the very last in the debate, but could not be heard. Sidney Herbert, in his speech in favour of my motion referred to Kinnaird and claimed his vote, but as usual the little fellow went with the Government. You must really take him in hand. You heard of Bright's remark on him. He (Bright) was talking to a member in the lobby as Kinnaird passed, and Bright remarked, 'There's a little fellow that will vote for any amount of slaughter on Evangelical principles.'" ">/>' i+, 1864. "I am glad you approve what I said in the debate last week. The latter part of my speech, by the way, contained arguments of your own, quoted almost textually from the Herald. The week's wrangle will undoubtedly do good. Did you observe the speeches of Lord Stanley and Gathorne Hardy } You and I could endorse every word. The latter is a very rising man, and will be in the front rank of his party. There are parts of his speech, where he speaks of the power England may possess if she will assume a neutral ground, especially valuable. For myself, I never had so many private adhesions to my views as I did from men on both sides after speaking last Tues- 339 Richard Cobden : The International Man day. Bright could not trust himself to speak. He was afraid of attacking the Ministry so strongly as to make it impossible for us to vote for them. Our Foreign Office and its diplomacy have had a shake. Two or three old men removed from the arena will leave the old dispensation without a defender." "November lo, 1864. " At my coming meeting with my constituents I must say something to clench the revolution in our foreign policy which I shall assume was effected in the last Session of Parliament. Indeed, I should like much to have an hour on the question alone. There is much to be done before we bring the great political parties to an honest recognition of the principle of non-inter- vention. They will not like to bury the red-herring." " November 13, 1864. " You are quite right in your idea of bringing out a resume of past progress in the doctrines of the Peace Party. By showing how far you have been right in times gone by, you will exalt your authority in future controversy. " By the way, I look on Mr. Laird as the greatest contributor to the success of non-intervention principles. The doings of the Alabama have alarmed not only our shipowners, but every statesman who can look beyond the horizon of Foreign Office maxims. I defy us to go to war for any of the old European issues, the Balance of Power, the Eastern Question, or any dynastic or territorial question whatever, and I shall say so at Rochdale. Our national life is more involved in countries out of Europe than on the Continent. The ' Equilibrium of Europe ' was a phrase of some signifi- cance when the whole civilized world was in Europe. It has lost its meaning now." 330 CHAPTER XII THE CIVIL WAR AND THE SUMNER LETTERS Brief reference has been made in the foregoing chapters to incidents in the American Civil War which touched this country and to the attitude taken by Cobden both upon these matters and upon the wider issues of the conflict. But fortunately there survives a fuller and more continuous record of Cobden's opinions and sentiments regarding this great struggle, in the series of letters written during this period to his American friend, Charles Sumner, one of the most brilliant and influential men in the public life of America in the mid-century, who had formed a close attachment to Cobden as far back as the late forties. Though their personal acquaintance was confined to a few very brief visits, their political principles and enthusiasm had so much in common that they were able to communicate with one another across the Atlantic in a tone of close mutual confidence. Sumner was born and bred in Boston during a time when that city and the State of Massachusetts were enriched with a number of men of unusual eminence in intellectual life, some of whom devoted their energies to the new political causes which were coming up so rapidly in the forties and the fifties. Sumner was among the most Radical of these in his thought and sympathies, and his striking personal appearance, conjoined with unrivalled powers of oratory, made him a leader in every cause to which he attached 331 Richard Cobden : The International Man himself. The Peace and Anti-Slavery movements claimed his adhesion from the early forties, when, as a young law graduate from Harvard, he launched in 1 845 his first great oration to his fellow-citizens in Tremont Hall upon " The True Grandeur of Nations." Sumner "stood on the policy of war and peace in exactly the same position as Cobden. He was not a non-resister or a " peace at any price " man. When the war broke out in his own country, he gave stout and consistent support to the Northern cause, recognizing a case in which an appeal to force, for the defence of higher principles than life itself, was necessary. These higher principles were individual freedom, violated by the institution of slavery, and the Constitution of the Union, menaced by secession. When the slave issue first took sharp political shape in the demand of the slave-holding States for an extension of the institution to the new territories wrested from Mexico, Sumner joined the Free Soil Party, and was one of its most powerful leaders. Later on, when in 1851 the issue forced the main body of the " Democrats " (afterwards " Republicans ") to combine with the " Free Soilers," in order to keep Massachusetts from capture by the " Whigs," Sumner was elected a Senator, and from this time, right through the stormy period of the Civil War and reconstruction up to 1873, he stood out as one of the most powerful voices of American Liberalism. His earliest known correspondence with Cobden is in 1848 and 1849. Of two letters of Cobden dated in these years, the first deals with the question of reduction of armaments in time of war, the second opens a remarkable speculation regarding the probable future union of the United States and Canada. When the Civil War broke out Sumner held the important position of Chairman of the Senate Com- 332 CHARLES SUMNER (181I-74). [To face page 332, The Civil War and the Sumner Letters mittee on Foreign AfFairs. Cobden, recognizing the value of this position in its influence upon American policy, set himself from November 1851 onwards to maintain a regular interchange of views with Sumner upon the several critical issues in which this country and France were involved by the events of the American struggle. With especial earnestness did Cobden strive to inform Sumner of the real state of public opinion in this country and to correct the exceedingly erroneous notion that our nation as a whole was sympathetic with the slave-owners and secessionists. As for himself, he frankly admits he would not have gone to war even for emancipation ; and at the opening of the struggle his instinctive abhorrence of bloodshed made him, as we have seen, hesitate a little before casting his sympathy with the Northern appeal to force. But when clear as to the balance of the moral issues in favour of the North, he never swerved, and did more than any other Englishman, save Bright, to correct the mistakes of fact and judgment which confused the issue in this country at the outset, and to give sound counsel upon the sharp concrete cases which more than once brought us near to the breaking-point with the Federal Govern- ment. When war broke out the more vocable section of our nation not merely declared its sympathy with, but put its money on, the South. The aristocracy and gentry of England, in taking this view, felt that in some measure they were standing by " their order." The " certain conde- scension in foreigners" which Lowell detected in England carried some measure of active dislike against Yankees, who were regarded as upstarts and whose manners, carica- tured by Dickens and other satirists, were judged from their least worthy representatives. The deep human signi- ficance of the slave issue was skilfully obscured in influential 333 Richard Cobden : The International Man British circles by Southern appeals to sentiments of con- stitutional right, and even in higher commercial circles there was a disposition to look upon the troubles of pushful American traders with a spice of malicious satis- faction. Most of our influential newspapers, headed by The Times, were openly pro-Southerner, and the general opinion that spread throughout the North represented the British people as hostile to the Union, and even as likely to intervene in some way favourable to the South, should a convenient opportunity arise. This kept in existence a dangerously sensitive atmosphere towards England in the Northern States, and the knowledge that active intrigues were going forward both in Paris and in London for intervention when the war showed signs of turning against the South, seemed to give power- ful confirmation to the worst interpretation of British sentiments. The grave episode of the seizure of the two Southern Commissioners on the Trent, the despatch of the Southern raider, the Alabama, from an English port, the ill-fated expedition to Mexico, in which this country took part with France and Spain for the alleged protection of their subjects, and above all the havoc inflicted upon British trade by the blockade of New Orleans and other Southern ports, afforded plenty of inflammable material. These letters to Sumner form a triumphant vindica- tion of the charge sometimes brought against Cobden by those who know little of the real spirit of the man, viz. that he was a disparager of his own country. In arguing these points of international policy and law with Sumner, he never fails to protest against the high- handedness and disregard for precedent to which a Government fighting for its existence is always prone. His strictures upon the grave irregularity of the Trent affair, his exposition of the sufferings imposed upon the 334 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters people of Lancashire by the severities of the blockade, his pressure of the distinction to be drawn between the fitting out of privateers and the trade in munitions, will satisfy the severest tests of patriotism. Nowhere did Cobden fail at this grave juncture in supporting what history has recognized as the legitimate interests of his country. The whole correspondence may be cited as the supreme example of that moderation and fair-mindedness which throughout his career were his distinctive qualities. For English readers, his judicious analysis of the changes which public opinion in this country underwent regarding the merits of the struggle and the prospects of the Issue is even to-day of great value. On the other hand, his strong insistence on the service rendered by our people and our Government in rejecting the French proposals for intervention must have exercised an exceedingly valuable influence in allaying the mistrust of our policy sown early in the war by the foolish utterances of some of our prominent public men. The consistent support rendered by Cobden and Bright to the Northern cause, and the evidence they adduced to show that the demo- cracy of Britain was heart and soul with the Union, went far to help establish those better relations which from that time to this have existed between the two great English-speaking nations. ' The collection of letters from which the following selection is made is in the possession of the College Library of Harvard. Most of them have been reprinted in the American Historical Review, and many extracts have appeared in Rhodes's " History of the United States." A number of passages are given in Lord Morley's "Life." But the full body of this valuable material (excluding only certain letters and passages of a purely personal or transitory interest) is set forth here for the first time in a continuous form. 335 Richard Cobden : the International Man "■March 9, 184.8. " I beg you to accept my thanks for your kindness in forwarding me a copy of your eloquent appeal in behalf of peace. It will probably be in my power to profit by your facts in dealing with the subject of our armaments in my place in Parliament. If so, I shall make free use of your materials without scruple. Whilst travelling on the Continent, I found one universal feeling of discontent amongst intelligent men at the enormous expenditure everywhere incurred for standing armaments ; and, Uto- pian as the idea may appear to the men of routine, such as are our statesmen and diplomatists, I do not think it would be difficult for any one of the large Powers of Europe to persuade the rest to enter upon a career of gradual and partial disarmament. The difficulty has been to find a Government sincerely bent upon such a humane and enlightened policy. The truth is that hitherto the Governments of Europe have maintained their armies in times of peace almost as much for the purpose of defend- ing themselves against their people as their neighbours. But after the proofs which have been given lately in Italy and France that soldiers can no longer be relied upon in time of need by despotic sovereigns or arbitrary ministers, it is probable, I should hope, that we may soon see a change of system ; for surely Governments will begin to calculate the cost of these useless armed retainers, whose maintenance causes disaffection to the overtaxed people and tends, in fact, to produce the very rebeUion which they were intended to prevent, but which now, it is found, they will not suppress. This is at least a great lesson for kings and princes, and is perhaps the only sure gain from the last French Revolution : for with the highest admiration for the forbearance of the Parisian populace and the energy of the Provisional Government, 336 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters I must confess that I do not feel sanguine about the success of a Republic in France. Time will show." " NovemLer 7, 1849. " You will have seen that we have been trying to lead this wicked Old World into a new and hitherto unknown path. You have too much practical knowledge to require to be told by me that our Peace Congress and public meetings are but the faint glimmerings of a new light which is dawning upon the nations, and that we do not deceive ourselves with the belief that we are yet near to that perfect day when they shall learn war no more. And yet I think the last two years (for which I have been co-operating directly in the Peace agitation) have pro- duced visible results. The first fruits of a discussion upon great principles are to be found in the altered tone of your opponents. In the Peace controversy we have brought the sneerers into serious debate. They have been compelled to take up their position. In doing so they have ceded their old ground. They tell us that the vast armaments of Europe are not now maintained for purposes of external warfare, but to maintain order at home. This is a damaging admission, for it converts the army into a gendarmerie, and robs it of its chivalry. It moreover tends to identify it with tyranny and despot- ism, and the people, which sooner or later is stronger than the Government, will yearn for the opportunity to put down the tyrants and their tools, both together. There is henceforth no popularity for armies in Europe. For the present, the soldier is the executive, throughout the Continent. How long this will last, or how it is to be altered, no one can tell. But it is not a rash prophecy to say it cannot endure for ever. The financial crisis which hangs over the Governments warns them that they are in only a provisional state. Whether it will end in 337 Y Richard Cobden : The International Man the demoralization of the armies from irregular pay, or in Governments joining the people to get rid of a tyranny insupportable to both, or in a civil war between different parties in the army and rival generals, nobody can tell. In all probability Europe must suffer convulsions and revolutions, of which those of last year were but the feeble skirmishings, before the present system passes away. You may have observed that the Peace Party has resolved to do its best to ' stop the supplies ' of the Governments, by commencing a moral crusade against the system of foreign loans. In proportion as we succeed in this, we shall drive the bankrupt rulers back upon their own subjects for the pecuniary means necessary for their own subjection. This plan will do more than anything besides to hasten the financial crisis which must precede any essential change. I have said that our opponents admit that there is no disposition on the part of the European nations to enter upon wars of conquest or aggression. Conquest of territory offers no prospect of increased power to any Government. On the con- trary, half the Powers of Europe are at this moment suffering internal throes from the acquisition of fresh territory, with disaffected races, at the great ' settlement ' (!) of 1815. For one of the peculiar features of the day is the assumption, on the part of the peoples, of a right to a choice of their rulers and of their countrymen. Hence the struggle of nationalities ; hence the demand of Venice, Lombard y, Hungary, Poland, Germany, etc., to be left to rule themselves according to their several likings. Race, religion, language, traditions, etc., are becoming bonds of union, and not the parchment title- deeds of sovereigns. These instincts may be thwarted for the day, but they are too deeply rooted in nature and in usefulness not to prevail in the end. I look with less interest to these struggles of races to live apart, for 338 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters what they want to undo than for what they will prevent being done in future. They will warn rulers that hence- forth the acquisition of fresh territory, by force of arm?, will only bring embarrassments and civil war, instead of that increased strength which, in ancient times, when people were passed like flocks of sheep from one king to another, always accompanied the incorporation of new territorial conquests. This is the secret of the admitted doctrine that we shall have no more wars of conquest or ambition. In this respect you are differently situated, having vast tracts of unpeopled territory to temper that cupidity which, in respect of landed property, always disposes individuals and nations, however rich in acres, to desire more. *' This brings me to the subject of Canada, to which you refer in your letters. I agree with you that Nature has decided that Canada and the United States must become one, for all purposes of free intercom- munication. Whether they also shall be united in the same Federal Government must depend upon the two parties to the union. I can assure you that there will be no repetition of the policy of 1776 on our part, to prevent our North American Colonies from pursuing their interests in their own way. If the people of Canada are tolerably unanimous in wishing to sever the very slight thread which now binds them to this country, I see no reason why, if good faith and ordinary temper be observed, it should not be done amicably. I think it would be far more likely to be accomplished peaceably if the subject of annexation were left as a distinct question, I am quite sure that we should be gainers, to the amount of about a million sterling annually, if our North American colonists would set up in life for themselves and maintain their own establishments, and I see no reason to doubt that 339 Richard Cobden : The International Man they might be also gamers by being thrown upon their own resources. The less your countrymen mingle in the controversy the better. It will only be an ad- ditional obstacle in the path of those in this country who see the ultimate necessity of a separation, but who have still some ignorance and prejudice to contend against, which, if used as political capital by design- ing politicians, may complicate seriously a very difficult piece of statesmanship. It is for you, and such as you, who love peace, to guide your countrymen aright in this matter. You have made the most noble con- tributions of any modern writer to the cause of peace, and, as a public man, I hope you will exert all your influence to induce Americans to hold a dignified attitude, and observe a ' masterly inactivity,' in the controversy which is rapidly advancing to a solution between the Mother Country and her American Colonies." Two letters with a more personal bearing follow. Then opens the important series dealing with issues of the Civil War, "yune i6, 1856. " I am tempted to write to express to you the feelings of sympathy and indignation with which, in common with everybody on this side of the Atlantic, I have heard of the dastardly and brutal attack made upon you. I These feelings are not unmingled with dismay at perceiving that there are parties and com- munities in your country who seem to give a deliberate sanction through the Press to the use of the bludgeon as a mode of replying to the arguments of a political ' After a powerful speech in the Senate on the Kansas pro-slavery question, Mr. Sumner was violently assaulted in the Senate house by a South Carolina Congress man named Brooks, who struck a ■series of blows from behind with a cudgel, rendering him unconscious. The Civil War and the Sumner Letters opponent. Why, there is nothing so bad as this in Austria or Italy ! Freedom of debate is the very breath of representative government, and if you cannot preserve that right, not merely against the encroach- ments of the Executive, but the terrorism of a ruffianly party in your own ranks, your boasted liberty will become a very vulgar and degrading despotism in the eyes of other nations. But I do not for a moment doubt that the unmistakable expression of public opinion will put down at once and for ever this attempt at the worst of all usurpations, that of the cudgel and revolver. Let me entreat you not under any amount of provocation to so far forget your self-respect as to descend to the use of the weapons of your assailants. You have given far too many proofs of moral heroism to require that you should assert the possession of that very vulgar attribute of physical courage which we all share with the lower animals, though to an inferior degree than some of them. For the rest, your political opponents (they who identify themselves with your assailant) have by this act done more than you could have ever accomplished to con- vince the world of the hopelessness of their cause. Heaven has evidently given them over to that mad- ness which heralds the fall of parties more than of individuals." "May 1, i860. " I cannot help looking with some interest to your coming election, though I confess I cannot feel all the sympathy I could wish for your party — as I suppose I must call the Republicans. Your probable candidate, Mr. Seward, did not please me, when I was in America, with a speech in which he declared himself opposed to the policy of building railroads 341 Richard Cobden : The International Man with foreign iron over your own coal and iron beds. I suppose this was merely intended for Mr. Bunkum in Pennsylvania, but I don't like it any better for that. I must own that this gentleman did not make so great a mark on society in England as some of your other distinguished visitors have done. Remem- ber me to your colleague Mr. Wilson, and, if you can talk to Southern men, do the same to Mr. Mason, Mr. Benjamin, and Mr. Hunter." "February 28, 1 86 1. " The conduct of the South has disgusted everybody. I do not mean their desire to disunite — that they may have a right to do, and it may be for the interest of all parties. But they have shown a measure of pas- sionate haste and unreasoning arrogance which has astonished and alienated all lookers-on. They have gone about the work of dissolving the Union with less gravity or forethought than a firm of intelligent drapers or grocers would think necessary in case of a dissolution of partnership." "November 27, 1861. "I say not one word about your troubles. Cui bono? I made a vow during the Crimean War that if ever another war broke out between England and any other Power I would not utter a word with a view of shortening its duration, for reason and argument are lost in the clash of armed men, whose struggle can only be concluded by the exhaustion of one or both parties. Did it ever occur to you in reading our history how utterly unavailing was the eloquence of Chatham and Burke to stay our war with the American Colonies, and how completely the efforts of Fox and his friends were thrown away in attempting to put a 342 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters stop to the War of the French Revolution ? You need not, however, doubt how much 1 sympathize with the North. My respect and admiration for yoUr free States is so great that I have regretted you did not let the vile incubus of slavery slip off your back. And yet I confess the almost insuperable difficulty of making two nations of the United States. The geographical obstacles alone seem insurmountable. "My object in writing to you is with a view to the future rather than the present. The maritime law of nations requires alteration, and I hope the result of this war will be to lead to the abolition of blockades, as well as to make private property as safe against capture by armed vessels on sea as it is by armed regiments on land. "Upon this subject there has been some correspon- dence between your late Government and Mr. Mason, your representative at Paris, which I should like to see. If you will be good enough to refer to Hansard, February i8, 1861, p. 496, you will see that Lord John Russell refers to a despatch written by General Cass to Mr. Mason at Paris, and read to him (Lord John) by Mr. Dallas. I have tried both at the London and Paris Embassies to obtain a sight of this despatch, but it is against their instructions to allow it to be seen. I shall be obliged if you will let me have a copy, or at least know the purport of this despatch. " PS. Since writing the accompanying, we have the news of the capture of Mason and Slidell in our packet- vessel. You may be right in point of law, though perhaps, in technical strictness, the lawyers may pick a hole. But I am satisfied you are wrong in pint of policy. There is an impression, / know, in high quarters here that Mr. Seward wishes to quarrel with this country. This seems absurd enough. I 343 Richard Cobden : The International Man confess I have as little confidence in him as I have in Lord Palmerston. Both will consult Bunkum for the moment, w^ithout much regard, I fear, for the future. You must not lose sight of this view of the relations of the two countries. Formerly England feared a war with the United States as much from the dependence on your cotton as from a dread of your power. Now the popular opinion (however erroneous) is that a war would give us cotton. And we, of course, consider your power weakened by your Civil War. I speak as a friend of peace and not as a partisan of my own country in wishing you to bear this in mind. If Mr. Seward relies on the Irish element, he may be misled, as others have been. " Now with regard to our conduct towards your nation — I mean our conduct as a government and people — I do not think it has been such as to warrant any resentment on your side. Considering our vital stake, we have borne the blockade with more temper and moderation than I should have expected. As for the Press, let the London Times and the New York Herald pair off, and the account is balanced. We have nothing so bad as to be paired against your Petersburg Minister's speeches and letters since he came to Europe, of which there has been no official disavowal on your part." "November 29, 1861. " I am induced to write another letter from London, where I have come for a day or two, owing to the turn the question of the seizure of Mason and Slidell seems to be taking. I hear that the Law Officers of the Crown have decided that you are not within the law in what has been done. I leave your lawyers to answer ours. The question of legality, in matters of 344 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters international law, has never been very easily settled. However, the only danger to the peace of the two countries is in the temper which may grow out of this very trivial incident. The Press will as usual try to envenom the affair. It is for us, and all who care for the interests of humanity, to do our utmost to thwart these mischief-makers. You may reckon on Bright, myself and all our friends being alert and active in this good work, and we reckon on the co- operation of yourself and all who sympathize with you. Though I said in my other letter that I shall never care to utter a word about the merits of a war after it has begun, I do not less feel it ray duty to try to prevent hostilities occurring. " Let me here remark that I cannot understand how you should have thought it worth your while at Washington to have reopened this question of the right of search, by claiming to exercise it in a doubt- ful case and a doubtful manner, under circumstances which could be of so little advantage, and to have incurred the risk of greater disadvantages. The cap- ture of Mason and Slidell can have little effect in discouraging the South, compared with the indirect encouragement and hope it may hold out to them of embroiling your Government with England. I am speaking with reference to the policy and leaving out of sight the law of the case. But in the latter view, we are rather unprepared to find you exercising in a strained manner the right of search, inasmuch as you have been supposed to be always the opponents of the practice, I was under the impression that our Government was told pretty plainly at the outbreak of the Crimean War that it would be risking the peace of this country with yours if we claimed the right of search in the open sea. I am not in the position to know how far this 345 Richard Cobden : The International Man was the case. Can you tell me if there be any documents on the subject? If it were so, we should, of course, all unite in holding you to your own doctrine." '■'■December 3, 1861. " I wrote you two letters by the last mail. This steamer will take out a report of Bright's speech i and my letter of excuse for not being able to attend. You will see that we stand in the breach, as usual, to stem the tide of passion. But you know that we don't represent all England at such a moment. For myself, I may say that never were people so willing to listen and so desirous of agreeing with me. My Paris labours have opened such a trade with France as almost to compensate the manufacturing districts for the loss of your market. But still, on this Peace question, I am somewhat in your position in the matter of slavery : people tolerate my ' crotchet,' and then go their way. " If you take the trouble to read my letter to the Mayor of Rochdale you will observe that I try to turn the tide by showing that your country offered to relay these absurd maritime laws, and that we were the obstacle. Nothing is so calculated to cool the temper of the public as this diversion. And I again beg you to send me copies of any documents or despatches which have not been made public in this country. For instance, on what did Pi-esident Pierce found his statement, in his Message, that Russia and France were favourable to the plan put forth by Mr. Marcy for exempting private property from capture by all armed vessels ? Were there any despatches.'' But especially I wish for a copy of the despatch from General Cass to Mr. Mason referred to by Lord John Russell in the House on February i8th ■ Bright's great speech at Rochdale in July 1861, espousing the cause of the North and denouncing slavery. The Civil War and the Sumner Letters last. Was there any despatch from Mr. Mason in reply to this, stating the views of the French Government, and any from Mr. Dallas giving an account of what passed between him and Lord John when he read this despatch to him ? And will you ascertain for me from Mr. Dallas whether he left a copy of this despatch with Lord Russell? Now, pray hunt up every document of this kind for me. A friend writes to me to-day from London to remind me that there was an important correspondence between Mr. Webster and Lord Ashbur- ton, after the Boundary Treaty, in which the former proposes to abolish the right of search, which is declined by Lord A. in the name of our Government. I can, of course, obtain this last correspondence here. " We are in much suspense as to what your Govern- ment will do. Some of my friends predict one of two courses : either that you will offer to restore matters to the status quo, on the agreement that the question shall be decided in an Admiralty Court of the United States, or that you will offer to take the benefit of that declaration at the Congress of Paris in favour of Arbitration. " Now, having premised so much, I shall add a few words of unreserved remark on the ' situation.' I write to you, of course, in confidence ; and I write to you what I would not write to any other American — nay, what it would be perhaps improper for any other Englishman than myself to utter to any other American but your- self. But we are, I think, both more of Christians and Cosmopolitans than British or Yankee. " You will see a new feature in this disagreeable matter in the ardour with which the French Press takes up the cry against you. Some of the papers most eager to push us to extremities are those which are conducted by parties who are supposed to be in the confidence 347 Richard Cobden : The International Man of the Emperor. Spending as I did eighteen months in France, and always in close communication with the Emperor's ablest advisers, and frequently having very free audiences with himself, I came to the conclusion that the corner-stone of his policy was friendship with England. He has studied his uncle's life with the view of profiting by his errors as well as his example, and he knows that the first Napoleon always lamented in his exile that he could not have been at peace with England. To preserve this friendship, Louis Napoleon has borne with equanimity attacks from our Press and public men, armed defiance from our successive Govern- ments, and insults of every kind towards himself personally, such as have not in the worst of times been bandied between the Press and ' tribunes ' of England and the United States. To preserve this friendship, I believe he would submit to anything short of such a humiliation for France as would emperil his dynasty. It is to preserve this friendship that he has sought our alliance in the Crimea, in China, and in Mexico. And if I were asked what were the motives which led him to agree to the Treaty of Commerce with me, I should say that they were nine-tenths political, rather than politico-economical, with a view to cement the alliance with this country. / leave you to make an application of these facts to your present situation. It was because I knew the inner policy of the French Government that I could not see without mortification and disgust the shallow antics of some of your official representatives in Paris, at that most lamentable public meeting where individuals, accredited by your Government, invited the Emperor to join you against England to avenge Waterloo and St. Helena ! These proceedings, not having led to the recall or official rebuke of the parties, have done more harm in this country than all 348 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters the ravings of your Herald. There are three things which have given our Tory Press a great advantage in exciting animosity against you. First, Mr. Seward's speech in the Far West in allusion to the annexation of Canada. This, coming from the candidate for the Presidency and the future Prime Minister, had a significance for Englishmen which you can appreciate. Second, Mr. Seward's circular holding out a threat to those who recognized the rebels, and speaking with a somewhat bombastic confidence in the future of your country, which were in bad taste, and not compli- mentary, under your terrible circumstances, to the intellect of the writer or those whom he addressed. " I think I told you in my last that I felt satisfied with the tone of forbearance in this country respecting your blockade. Hardly a paper or public man has hinted at such a measure as breaking the blockade until this Trent affair. Last August, Mr. Sandford from Brussels called on me in London, and asked me my private opinion whether I thought the blockade would be borne, and I told him that though I should be found to the last on the side of legality, cost what it might, I hoped the endurance of Europe would not be put to the test. I must at the same time remark that there is a universal impression that a war with the North would give us the cotton — to which I have alluded in a contrary sense in my letter to Rochdale. From all that I hear from France, the trade of that country is dreadfully damaged, and / feel convinced the Emperor would be supported by his people if he were to enter into alliance with England to abolish the blockade and recognize the South. The French are inconvenienced in many ways by your blockade, and especially in their relations with New Orleans, which are more important to them in exports than to us. 349 Richard Cobden : The International Man *' For ourselves in England, in spite of the bluster of The Times, the majority are anxious for peace. Do not overrate the power of The Times. Seven years ago it had a monopoly of publicity. Now its circulation is not perhaps one-fenth of the daily Press. The Star and Manchester Examiner, two admirable papers, circulate far more than The Times. But it cannot be denied that the great motives of hope and fear which kept us at peace and inclined the English Government always to recede in pinching controversies with you are gone. The English people have no sympathy with you on either side. You know how ignorant we are on the details of your history, geography, constitution, etc. There are two subjects on which we are unanimous and fanatical — personal freedom and Free Trade. These convictions are the result of fifty years of agitation and discussion. In your case we observe a mighty quarrel : on one side protectionists, on the other slave-owners. The protectionists say they do not seek to put down slavery. The slave-owners say they want Free Trade. Need you wonder at the confusion in John Bull's poor head ? He gives it up ! Leaves it to the Government. Which Government, by the way, is the most friendly to your Government, that could be found in England, for, although Palmerston is fond of hot water, he boasts that he never got us into a serious war. As for his colleagues, they are all sedate, peaceable men. •' God bless us. ' A mad world, my masters ' ! " "December 6, 1 86 1. " Since writing my letter of yesterday's date I have read General Scott's admirable letter. It contains a passage to the following effect : ' I am sure that the President and people of the United States would be but too happy to let these men go free, unnatural 350 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters and unpardonable as their offences have been, if by it they could emancipate the commerce of the world. Greatly as it would be to our disadvantage at this present crisis to surrender any of those maritime privileges of belligerents which are sanctioned by the law of nations, 1 feel that I take no responsibility in saying that the United States will be faithful to her traditional policy upon this subject, and to the spirit of her political institutions.' " Upon this text I wish to say a few words, and I only regret that I could not present myself personally to talk the matter over with you. It appears to me that there is a great idea in his suggestion, worthy of the renowned sagacity of its author. If I were in the position of your Government, I would act upon it, and thus, by a great strategic movement, turn the flank of the European Powers, especially of the governing class of England. I would propose to let Mason and Slidell go free, and stipulate at the same time for a complete abandonment of the old code of maritime law as upheld by England and the European Powers. I would propose that private property at sea should be exempt from capture by armed Government ships. On this condition I would give in my adhesion to the abolition of privateering. I would propose that neutral merchant vessels in time of war, as in time of peace, should be exempt from search, visitation, or detention, by armed Government vessels, when on the ocean or high seas. I mean when beyond that distance from the shore which removes them from the jurisdiction of any maritime State. "I would propose to abolish blockades of purely commercial ports, excepting for articles contraband of war. "The first objection that might arise in your mind 351 Richard Cobden : The International Man to this programme is — it would relieve the South from the pressure of the blockade. But is not the pressure becoming greater on the North ? Have you not the consciousness at Washington that this unnatural interruption of commerce will in less than six months from this time bring all Europe to your door demanding entrance ? Recollect that the state of things will be wholly without a precedent for urgency and peril. It will be a question of the peace, and very existence, of many millions of people, and the supreme neces- sity of the case will sanctify in the opinion of the whole of Europe an intervention for which, you may be sure, an excuse will not be wanting. Ask your- selves deliberately what is the greatest danger that presents itself for the next six months, and you will be compelled to admit that it is the interference of Europe, driven by the necessities of a social and political crisis. Can you be sure that in one winter you can subdue the South .? If not, when summer approaches, you must withdraw your armies from that coast, which will be pronounced by Europe a retreat. The South knows this, and knows that the great Powers of Europe are standing ready for an excuse to declare its inde- pendence. This encourages resistance. " But assuming that you abolish the blockade, you retain the power of preventing the introduction of munitions of war. Such a blockade would require fewer ships, and it would relieve a part of your force for direct military operations. The South would get some gold. But it would not get cUnnon, or rifles, or powder, and the other munitions of war. It would be still in the same want of mechanical and industrial resources. It would, in fact, be in the same comparative barbarism as at present. " In a word, all that the North wants is time to 352 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters ensure its triumph over the South. With time. Slavery, if shut up within itself, will be its own destroyer. And the only way in which you can have time is by abolishing the blockade. " You must know our political organization too well here in England to suppose that these propositions would be acceptable to our Government. We are, in ordinary times, two nations : a busy toiling multitude, and a governing class. The latter would be most averse to this revolution in maritime law, by which the pretence for vast armaments would be annihilated. The favourite plea when we vote the Navy Estimates is that they are necessary for the protection of commerce. It would be useless, therefore, for you to propose these changes through the channels of secret diplomacy. It must be done publicly. I have said that in ordinary quiet times we are ruled by a governing class. But when a sufficient motive is presented to induce the busy millions to exert their power, they can always bring the aristocracy into subjection to their will. Now, if it were publicly announced that you had made the above proposals to our Government, I will engage that our mercantile and manufacturing community will compel this Ministry, or some other, to accept them. Our Parliament will, I suppose, meet at the end of January, or certainly the beginning of February. Before that time your decision ought to be known, in order that our Chambers of Commerce and great trading bodies may have time to make their wishes known to the Government. " Now, understand me, I have not considered myself speaking in the character of a foreigner, and therefore do not let my language seem to be a menace. I am a better American than many of the citizens you send to Europe to discredit their institutions. Recollect how immensely 353 z Richard Cobden : The International Man you would gain in moral power by leading old Europe in the path of civilization. You owe it to yourselves and us." " December 12, 1861. " I am afraid that we in England who are well-wishers to the North take a more accurate measure of the diffi- culties of your position than you who are in the heat of the turmoil can do — just as you took a more correct view of the Crimean War, and its utter uselessness, than the bulk of Englishmen did. We do not believe that the subjection of the South can be a sfeedy achievement. Nobody doubts the power of the North, ultimately, if it choose to make the sacrifice, to ruin the South, and even to occupy its chief places. But this will take a very long time, and the world will not look on, I believe, patient sufferers during the process. I am not justifying any interference on the part of Europe ; but it is a fearful thing to have the whole civilized world undergoing priva- tions and sufferings which they lay at the door of the North, thus making it the interest of their Governments to interfere with you. Recollect that your own Govern- ment has condemned blockades of purely commercial ports ; the world has in truth outgrown them. During the Crimean War, whilst we blockaded Cronstadt with our ships, we connived at the importation of Russian tallow, hemp, flax, etc., overland through Prussia, our own manufacturers openly declaring that they must have those raw materials. T do not believe there will ever be another blockade. The state of modern society, where you have millions of labourers in Europe depending for the means of employment on the regular supply of raw materials brought from another continent, to say nothing of hundreds of millions of capital invested on the same dependence, will necessitate a change in the law of blockade and other belligerent rules. Our recent doc- 354 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters trines, on which you have also acted, with reference to China and Japan, denying them the right of shutting up themselves from the rest of the world, are symptoms of the same tendency of men's minds. I do not, I repeat, say that the rest of the world has the right to force you to raise your blockade. But I do think you ought to consider these tendencies of the world's opinion, and how much you are acting in opposition to the spirit of the age ; and above all, in your present state, weigh well the danger of putting yourself in the dilemma of making all the world your enemies. The recognition of the independence of the South, and the forcing of the blockade^ will come to be viewed, about next March, as a matter of life and death by many millions of people in Europe, and as a question of high political urgency by the most powerful Governments of the world. There is another fact to be borne in mind. We, in England, have ready a fleet surpassing in destructive force any naval armament the world ever saw, exceeding greatly the British Navy in the great French War in 1810. This force has been got up under false pretences. There is always a desire on the part of Governments to use such arma- ments by way of proving that they were necessary. France was the pretence, and now we have plenty of people who would be content to see this fleet turned against you. Coming from me, who have resolutely opposed this armament, this will not be considered a menace. " Have you considered how easy it will be to find a flaw in your blockade } In the Declaration of Paris in 1856, Art. 4, it is said : 'Blockades, in order to be binding, must be effective ; that is to say, maintained by a force sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of the enemy.' How very easy it will be to prove that along your thousands of miles of coast access is possible. 355 Richard Cobden : The International Man "Now a word upon the military view of the matter. Do you believe that the privation of comforts and luxuries ever brought a people to subjection ? Where have you an instance ? Look at your own shoeless people during our blockade of your coasts in 1780 ; did they feel more inclined to submit because their garments were in rags ? On the contrary, it becomes the more a point of honour not to yield. Even in the blockade of a garrisoned town, it would be considered disgraceful to yield for anything short of starvation — unless the garrison were stormed, or reduced by artillery and regular siege operations. Now, I need not tell you how impossible it is to starve the South. They have food enough, and as they are dimin- ishing the production of cotton, they will next year have a superabundance of corn, ■ beef, pork, rice, sugar, whisky and tobacco. Did a people ever yield to a blockade that possessed these necessaries, because they were deprived of tea, wine and coffee ? Would it not be unmanly to think of it ? " Is there not another side to this blockade ? Does it not, in a certain sense, aid the other party ? So long as all foreign trade is cut off it gives an excuse to those who are in debt not to pay (and who in the South is not in debt ?). Nobody can press for payment even from those who are able to pay, so long as the blockade furnishes a patriotic excuse for suspending all payments. Every- body is therefore relieved from pressure. Meantime the blockade increases the bitterness against the North. But, above all, does it not encourage the South to hope for foreign interference ? Then, the negroes being with- drawn from the cultivation of cotton makes labour more available for defensive works. And the whites, having no profitable occupation, turn out to fight. These are points worth your consideration. " There appear to me only two ways in which you can 356 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters expect to subdue the South : either by great military operations in the field, or by a sort of armed truce by which you refuse to acknowledge the South, but take your own time to wear out your adversary, leaving it to slavery to do its work for you. But either of these courses must take a long time. As for your expeditions along the coast, you must withdraw the Northern troops next summer, or they will share the fate of our Wal- cheren Expedition. The South know this, and of course reckon on it. The great Napoleon, in his correspondence with his brother Joseph, seems to treat with contempt these coasting expeditions. If you are to rely on great operations in the field, it is, of course, desirable that you should not be hurried forward from the necessity of doing something to meet the impatience of foreign Powers. You are thus liable to be tempted to precipitate measures. " By raising the blockade, except for articles contra- band of war, you get rid of all pressure from abroad, and the tone of public feeling in Europe would naturally become favourable to the North. // is the suffering and misery that your blockade is bringing on the masses in Europe that turns men against you. How can you hope to have a blessing on your cause from those on whom you are inflicting such misery .? " As respects the question of smuggling goods through Southern ports into the North, your only remedy is to put on duties strictly for revenue in the North — duties, I mean, from lo to 20 per cent. If you cannot do this — if your Congress will have ' Protection ' for the North and war with the South, God help your people that have two such burdens to bear. Your finances will soon be on a par with those of Austria. And all this for a mere chimera ! For it is demonstrable that New England and Pennsylvania would be more prosperous with moderate revenue duties. 357 Richard Cobden : The International Man " The Times and its yelping imitators are still doing their worst, but there is a powerful moderate party. I hope you will offer promptly to arbitrate the question. There is one point on which you must absolutely define your platform. Tou must ackriowledge the South as belligerents to givi you a standing ground on the ' Trent ' affair. Some of your newspapers argue that you have a right to carry off a rebel from an English vessel— which means that Austria might have seized Kossuth under similar circumstances. Were you to take such ground there would be war." " December 19, 1861. " Everybody tells mc that war is inevitable, and yet I do not believe in war. But it must be admitted that there are things said and done on your side that make it very difficult for the advocates of peace on this side to keep the field. We can get over the sayings of your Herald that ' France will not and England dare not go to war.' Your newspapers will not drive us into war. " But when grave men (or men that should be grave), holding the highest post in your cultivated State of Massa- chusetts, compliment Captain Wilkes for having given an affront to the British Lion, it makes it very hard for Bright and me to contend against the British Lion Party in this country. All I can say is that I hope you have taken Bright's advice and offered unconditional arbitra- tion. With that offer publicly made, the friends of peace could prevent our fire-eaters from assaulting you, always providing that your public speakers do not put it out of our power to keep "the peace, " I was sorry to see a report of an anti-English speech by your colleague at New York. Honestly speaking, and with no blind patriotism to mislead me, I don't think the nation here behaved badly under the terrible evil of loss of trade and danger of starving under your 358 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters blockade. Of course, all privileged classes and aristo- cracies hate your institutions — that is natural enough. But the mass of the people never went with the South. *' I am not pleased at your projects for sinking stones to block up ports ! That is a barbarism. It is quite natural that, smarting as you do under an unprovoked aggression from the slave-owners, you should even be willing to smother them like hornets in their nest. But don't forget the outside world. And especially don't forget that the millions in Europe are more interested even than their princes in preserving tht future commerce with the vast region of the Confederate States. Be assured that the civilized world will not acquiesce in a policy which looks to a permanent extinction of that commerce. All blockades must in their nature be temporary, and they will only bear the test of reason when, as stated by General Cass in his despatch to IVIr. Mason to which I referred, they are in combination with great military operations. But if you are to remain yourselves besieged in Washington, whilst with your naval resources you are permanently destroying the navigation of the great arteries of commerce in the South, it will put you in the wrong with the whole world. By and by the European Governments, pushed on by the distress of their people, will begin to take a retrospect of the time you have been at war, and to estimate the progress you have made in reoccupying the country over which you claim authority — for that will be made the measure of your success. Then, if no progress can be shown, except in blockading and destroying ports, see what a temptation you are offering to the European Governments to acknowledge the independence of the South, by which they will neutralize the Mississippi, under that law of nations settled at Vienna which prohibits the interruption of the trade 359 Richard Cobden : The International Man of a navigable river flowing through two or more in- dependent States. Of course, all Europe would unite in enforcing this law if the South were acknowledged an independent State, *' I come back to the view I always hold, that your wisest course would be to raise the blockade yourselves, take high ground with Europe for a complete sweep of the old maritime code, and then take your own time to deal with the Slave States, either by fighting them at your leisure or by leaving the West to outgrow them or Slavery to undo them." "■January 23, 1862. " It is perhaps well that you settled the matter by sending away the men at once. Consistently with your own principles you could not have justified their deten- tion. But it is right you should know that there was a great reaction going on through this country against the diabolical tone of The Times and Post (I suspect stock- iobbing in these quarters). The cry of arbitration had been raised and responded to, and I was glad to see the religious people once more in the field in favour of peace. Be assured, if you had offered to refer the question to arbitration, there could not have been a meeting called in England that would not have endorsed it. The only question was whether we ought to be the first to offer arbitration. I mean this was the only doubt in the popular mind. As regards our Government, they were, of course, feeling the tendency of public opinion, A friend of mine in London, a little behind the scenes, wrote to me, ' They are busy at the Foreign Office hunting up precedents for arbitration very much against their will.' I write all this because I wish you to know that we are not so bad as appeared at first on the surface. There is now a new newspaper Press in the 360 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters provinces, a daily penny Press, which has grown up since the removal of the stamp, and it presented a marked contrast for moderation with the Metropolitan Times and Post. " Now I return to the old difficulty and danger of the blockade. Parliament will meet in a fortnight. I am very much afraid of the tone which will prevail there. There are strong symptoms that a powerful party will press on the Government the recognition of the inde- pendence of the South. There will be motives for this step which will not be avowed. Our aristocratic classes would in their hearts like to see your great Republic dismembered. You have been too prosperous to please them ; and then it must be admitted you have not always borne your prosperity with too much meekness ; and it is the latter fact that makes our official politicians rather happy at the prospect of your power being a little im- paired. Your diplomacy has sometimes, as our politicians think, been a little too brusque and exacting. However, none of these motives for helping to break you asunder will be avowed. Some of our politicians will talk of humanity, and profess a desire to put an end to the war. This, however, with those who could gulp the Crimea and Solferino, will be indeed straining at a gnat after swallowing a camel. " But I come back again to the one sole cause of all your danger — the blockade. This it is which alone will give any dangerous power to those who wish you ill. Whatever is done, it will give the vague impression to the public that something will arise out of it to assist in raising the blockade. And it is this common feeling of suffering and danger which will bring all Europe together (with perhaps the exception of Russia) on the question of the Southern blockade. If our Government were not pressed forward by this question of material 361 Richard Cobden : The International Man interest, there never was a time when the doctrine of non-intervention was so strongly in the ascendant in our maxims of foreign policy as at present. There- fore, whatever you see in our debates or whatever you encounter in diplomacy, no matter what pretences may be put forward, be assured it is the blockade which is at the bottom of every movement of European poli- ticians in the direction of your affairs. You must have expected this. It was not possible to cut off the sources of employment and subsistence from, many millions of people, and the profitable use of hundreds of millions of capital, suddenly and without warning, without producing a terrible revulsion of feeling against you. I regret that your Foreign Secretary did not give a word of sympathy in this direction instead of threats. However, he had his hands full at home, and I am bound to say there is much in his correspondence of which a copy has been sent to me to inspire both admiration and respect. " But the question recurs — what is to be done .? " If you really intend to prosecute the war to the end, about which I offer no opinion, and if it be likely to last years, then I say, a thousand times, devise some means of raising your blockade voluntarily, or it will bring all Europe on you — first to acknowledge the South, then to pick a quarrel with the blockade on the ground that It Is Ineffective, and to claim the Mississippi as a free river. There will be no chance for you to fight with England or France ; It will be all Europe upon you, of which you have had a specimen in the caSe of the Trent. " Were I in your situation, and bent on carrying on the war for years, I would throw open the Mississippi and some other ports at once for all commerce, exports and Imports, except articles contraband of war. If you can occupy the ports of New Orleans, Mobile, etc., and open commerce through a Federal Custom-house, so 363 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters much the better, but if not, open them to the Con- federates. Then afterwards, if by military operations you were to take those places, and the Southern planters refused to send their produce, you of the North would not be to blame. As respects the fear of losing revenue in the North by smuggling, you can prevent it by laying on moderate revenue duties. No other duties ought to be thought of. Tell Mr. Chase from me that if any man or party in the North at this moment of his financial exigency wishes him for sectional and selfish purposes to swerve a hair from such a scale of duties as will bring the greatest amount of revenue at the customs, irrespec- tive of protection, they are as great traitors as the Southerners, and not so open and courageous in their treason to the State. Now all experience proves that moderate duties, which neither impede commerce Inor promote smuggling, are the most productive to the revenue. All the reflection I have been able to give the subject confirms me in the views I expressed in my former letter. " Propose to Europe a clean sweep of the old maritime law of Vattell, PufFendorf & Co. Abolish blockades of commercial ports on the ground laid down in Cass's despatch which you sent. Get rid of the right of search in time of war as in time of peace. And make private property exempt from capture by armed vessels of every kind, whether Government vessels or privateers. And as an earnest of your policy offer to apply the doctrine in your present war. You would instantly gain France and all the continent of Europe to your side. You would enlist a party in England that can always control our governing class when there is a sufficient motive Yor action, and you would acquire such a moral position that no Power would dream of laying hands on you." 363 Richard Cobden : The International Man "February 21, 1862. " We have been in session for a fortnight, and I merely write you a few lines to give you my impression of the feeling among members. Nobody seems to have any faith in your being able to subdue the South into submission to the Federal Union, This is an honest view of almost every one I speak to. This is the view which Gladstone in his recent speech said people took who were still well-wishers to the North. There are two distinct questions in men's mind : " (i) Are the people of the North in the right ? *' (2) Can they succeed in restoring the integrity of the Union } " To the first question I should say the overwhelming popular majority would answer in the affirmative. To the second, I should say the numbers would be in the negative. " I hardly know anybody except our courageous friend Bright, who rather likes to fight a battle with the long odds against him, that thinks you can put down the ' rebellion.' It is important you should know this, for it enhances, I think, the merit of the strong desire on the part of those who are so sceptical to give you fair play. There is a universal opinion apparently everywhere here, both among the English and Americans, that your war will be brought to an end in two or three months. But how is this to be brought about } It certainly cannot be by conquest, and I see no door opening for compromise. If I meet Mason, he says the war can only end by the North leaving the South to itself If I speak to a Northern man, he says it can only end by the South submitting to the Union ! Where is then the issue ? We look, of course, to your military operations, which in the next 364 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters two months must decide matters, and it is useless to speculate about events so near at hand. " Opinion in England is favourable to the North, in spite of The Times and its imps," "July II, 1862. " It is a long time since I wrote to you. Indeed, to confess the truth, it is a painful task for me to keep up my correspondence with my American friends. But I have not been a less anxious observer of the events which have passed on your side. I shall now best serve the interests of humanity by telling you frankly the state and progress of opinion here. There is an all but unanimous belief that you cannot subject the South to the Union. Even they who are your partisans and advocates cannot see their way to any such issue. It is necessary that you should understand that this opinion is so widely and honestly entertained, because it is the key to the expression of views which might otherwise not be quite ' intelligible. Among some of the governing class in Europe the wish is father to this thought. But it is not so with the mass of the people. Nor is it so with our own Government entirely. I know that Gladstone would restore your Union to-morrow if he could, and yet he has steadily maintained from the first that, unless there is a strong Union sentiment, it is impossible that the South can be subdued. Now the belief is all but universal that there is no Union feeling in the South, and this is founded latterly upon the fact that no cotton comes from New Orleans. It is said that if the instinct of gain, with cotton at double its usual price, does not induce the people to sell, it is a proof beyond dispute that the political resentment is overwhelming and unconquerable. 365 Richard Cobden : The International Man " I have precisely the same views with regard to a European intervention that I had last winter when I wrote to you. The action of the Governments has been put off, by two or three considerations, to the present time. It has been thought proper to wait the result of your spring campaign. Then there was a large stock of cotton in the hands of rich spinners and merchants, and they were interested in keeping out cotton. Moreover, we had great merchants who had over-speculated in cotton goods which were shipped to India and China, and they were glad of a rise in the raw material which enabled them to get out of their stocks. But all these motives for forbearance are now at an end. The merchants, manufacturers, spinners and operatives are all on the same footing, and they are all anxious to obtain raw cotton, and they will be all equally pressing on our Government the necessity of ' doing something.' What that ' something ' is to be is more than I can pretend to say. I am, of course, as strongly convinced as ever that nothing but harm can possibly be done by interference of any kind. But where the welfare and the lives of millions of persons are at stake, you cannot present the alternative of a greater possible evil to deter a Government from attempting to remedy so vast a present danger. I feel quite convinced that, unless cotton comes in consider- able quantities before the end of the year, the Govern- ments of Europe will be knocking at your door. I do not pretend to say what form their representation will take. I expect it will be a joint action on the part of all the Governments interested — or rather a joint demonstration, for I do not believe that any violent action will be resorted to or contemplated. But you know what a moral demonstration means, with a vast material force behind it. And such a step would 366 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters beyond all others encourage the South, and tend to decide them against any concession or compromise. " Now, are you doing all you possibly can to allow the cotton to come out ? I am afraid not. Your Re-publican Party are mesquin and narrow in their com- mercial policy. You must instruct your military com- mander at New Orleans to allow the sale or purchase of cotton by foreigners in the interior without asking any questions. When Mr, Thurlow Weed, who won all hearts, was here, he led us to expect that after the spring campaign was at an end, and the ports should be in the power of the Federals, there would be a supply, and he went so far in conversation as to say that your Government had no right to expect the European Powers to wait indefinitely for cotton. Now, depend on it, the world will not wait quietly for six months longer. " Now, the course you should take, and the only one to avert trouble with Europe, is this : to place foreigners on precisely the same footing in the interior, as respects the trade of New Orleans, as that which they occupied before the war. I mean this : that if an Englishman comes to New Orleans with a cargo of goods, other than contraband of war, and pays duty on them at the custom-house, he should be allowed to exchange those goods for cotton in the interior without any inquiry as to whether he was dealing with rebels or loyalists. And the same rule should apply if he took sovereigns to make his purchases. Unless this rule is applied, the pretended opening of the ports is a delusion. If it be said that this will enable rebels to supply their wants, all I can urge in reply is that you will play the rebels' game far more effectually by keeping back the cotton than by allowing the South to sell it. " Let me hear your views on this subject. But 367 Richard Cobden : The International Man pray urge your Government to act as I advise. Parlia- ment will be prorogued in a few weeks, and it is during the recess that all the mischief is generally done in our foreign relations'' " February 13, 1863. " If I have not written to you before, it is not because I have been indifferent to what is passing in your midst. I may say sincerely that my thoughts have run almost as much on American as English politics. But I could do you no service, and shrunk from occupying your overtaxed attention even for a moment. My object in now writing is to speak of a matter which has a practical bearing on your affairs. " You know how much alarmed I was from the first lest our Government should interpose in your affairs. The disposition of our ruling class, and the necessities of our cotton trade, pointed to some act of intervention ; and the indifference of the great mass of our population to your struggle, the object of which they did not foresee and understand, would have made intervention easy, and indeed popular, if you had been a weaker' naval Power. This state of feeling existed up to the announce- ment of the President's emancipation policy. From that moment our old anti-slavery feeling began to arouse itself, and it has been gathering strength ever since. The great rush of the public to all the public meetings called on the subject shows how wide and deep the sympathy for personal freedom still is in the breasts of our people. I know nothing in my political experience so striking as a display of spontaneous public action as that of the vast gathering at Exeter Hall, when, without one attraction in the form of a popular orator, the vast building, its minor rooms and passages and the streets adjoining, were crowded with an enthusiastic audience. 368 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters That meeting has had a powerful effect on our news- papers and politicians. It has closed the mouths of those who have been advocating the side of the South. And I now write to assure you that any unfriendly act on the part of our Government, no matter which of our aristocratic parties is in power, towards your cause, is not to be apprehended. If an attempt were made by the Government in any way to commit us to the South, a spirit would be instantly aroused which would drive that Government from power. This I suppose will be known and felt by the Southern agents in Europe, and if communicated to their Government must, I should think, operate as a great discouragement to them. For I know that those agents have been in- cessantly urging in every quarter where they could hope to influence the French and English Governments the absolute necessity of recognition as a means of putting an end to the war. Recognition of the South by England, whilst it bases itself on negro slavery, is an impossibility, unless, indeed, after the Federal Govern- ment has recognized the Confederates as a nation. " So much for the influence which your emancipation policy has had on the public opinion of England. But judging from the tone of your Press in America it does not seem to have gained the support of your masses. About this, however, I do not feel competent to offer an opinion. Nor, to confess the truth, do I feel much satisfaction in treating of your politics at all. There appears to me great mismanagement, I had almost said incapacity, in the management of your affairs, and you seem to be hastening towards financial and economical evils in a manner which fills me with apprehension for the future. "When I met Fremont in Paris two years ago, just as you commenced this terrible war, I remarked to him 369 AA Richard Cobden : The International Man that the total abolition of slavery on your Northern Continent was the only issue which could justify the war to the civilized world. Every symptom seems to point to this result. But at what a price is the negro to be emancipated ! I confess that, if then I had been the arbiter of his fate, I should have refused him freedom at the cost of so much white men's blood and women's tears. I do not, however, blame the North. The South fired the first shot, and on them righteously falls the malediction that ' they who take the sword shall perish by the sword.' And it seems not unlikely that after all the much-despised ' nigger,' and not the potentates and statesmen of Europe, will be the final arbitrator in this great struggle." '■'Jpr'ti 2, 1863. " On receipt of your letter I communicated privately with Lord Russell, urging him to be more than passive in enforcing the law respecting the building of ships for the Confederate Government. I especially referred to the circumstance that it was suspected that some ships pretended to be for the Chinese Government were really designed for that of Richmond, and I urged him to furnish Mr. Adams with the names of all the ships building for China and full particulars of where they were being built. This Lord R. tells me he had already done, and he seems to promise fairly. Our Government are perfectly well informed of all that is being done for the Chinese. " Now, there are certain things which can be done and others which cannot be done by our Government. We are bound to do our best to prevent any ship-of- war being built for the Confederate Government, for a ship-of-war can only be used or owned legitimately by a Government. But with munitions of war the case 370 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters is different. They were bought and sold by private merchants for the whole world, and it is not in the power of Governments to prevent it. Besides, your own Govern- ment have laid down repeatedly the doctrine that it is no part of the duty of Governments to interfere with such transactions, for which they are not in any way respon- sible. I was, therefore, very sorry that Mr. Adams had persisted in raising an objection to these transactions, in which, by the way, the North has been quite as much involved as the South. If you have read the debate in the House on the occasion when Mr. Forster brought on the subject last week, you will see how Sir Roundell Palmer, the Solicitor-General, and Mr. Laird, the ship- builder, availed themselves of this opening to divert attention from the real question at issue — the building of warships — to the question of selling munitions of war, in which latter practice it was shown you in the North were the great participators. " You must really keep the public mind right in America on this subject. Do not let it be supposed that you have any grievance against us for selling munitions of war. Confine the question to the building of ships, in which I hope we shall bring up a strong feeling on the right side here." "■May 2, 1863. " Though I have no news beyond what you will get from the public channels, yet I think it well to write a k'N lines on the present aspect of affairs. "I am in no fear whatever of any rupture between the two countries arising out of the blockade or the incendiary language of the politicians or the Press on both sides of the Atlantic— though these may help to preci- pitate matters on another issue. But the fitting out of privateers to prey on your commerce and to render 371 Richard Cobden : The International Man valueless your mercantile tonnage is another and more serious matter. Great material interests are at stake, and unless this evil can be put down the most serious results may follow. Now, I have reason to know that our Government fully appreciates the gravity of this matter. Lord Russell, whatever may be the tone of his ill-mannered despatches, is sincerely alive to the necessity of putting an end to the equipping of ships- of-war in our harbours to be used against the Federal Government by the Confederates. He was bona fide in his desire to prevent the Jlahama from leaving, but he was tricked, and was angry at the escape of that vessel. It is necessary your Government should know all this, and 'I hope public opinion in England will be so alive to the necessity of enforcing the law that there will be no more difficulty in the matter. "If Lord Russell's despatches to Mr. Adams are not very civil, he may console himself with the knqwledge that the Confederates are still worse treated. You will be amused at one of the intercepted despatches from Mr. Benjamin to Mr. Mason, in which the former lectures Lord Russell on his bad manners. This despatch has been presented to Parliament. By the way, in Harriet Martineau's ' Thirty Years' Peace,' the con- tinuation of the ' Pictorial History of England,' she gives an anecdote of a conversation which an English traveller (known to be herself) had with Mr. Webster, when the latter complained of the want of manners on the part of the Whig diplomatists which gave an advan- tage to the Tories over their political rivals in their relations with foreign countries." " May 22, 1863. "I called on Lord Russell and read every word of your last long indictment against him and Lord Palmer- 372 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters ston, to him. He was a little impatient under the treatment, but I got through every word. I did my best to improve on the text in half an hour's con- versation. "Public opinion is recovering its senses. John Bull, you know, has never before been a neutral when great naval operations have been carried on, and he does not take kindly to the task. But he is becoming gradually reconciled. He also now begins to understand that he has acted illegally in applauding those who furnished ships-of-war to prey on your commerce. It will not be repeated. I cannot too often deplore the bungling mismanagement on your side, which allowed the two distinct questions of selling munitions of war and the equipping of privateers to be mixed up together. It has confused the thick wits of our people, and made it difficult for those who were right on this side on the Foreign Enlistment Act to make the public understand the difference between what was and what was not a legal transaction. In fact, your Foreign Office played into the hands ot our politicians by affording them the means of mystification. If a plain, simple, short and dignified reclamation had been at first made against the fitting out of ships-of-war, with a clear statement of the law, and a brief recital of what your Government had done under similar circumstances to us, it would have been impossible for our Government to have resisted it. But when you opened fire on us for not stopping the export of arms and munitions of war, you offered an easy victory to our lawyers, and gave them an opportunity of escaping in a cloud of dust from the real question at issue. " Mr. Evarts is ' the right man in the right place.' He is an able international lawyer. Quite a match for any one here in his own special walk. His manners are quiet and impressive. He is mixing very much 373 Richard Cobden : The International Man in our best society, and I hear him spoken of with great respect. He seems pleased with his reception." ''August 7, 1863. " Let me congratulate you on the improved state of your prospects. So far as fighting goes, I think you have now little to fear from the Confederates. The danger is from the politicians. There are so many in the North hankering after the ' fleshpots of Egypt ' that I shall not be surprised at an attempt to compromise with the South, and to take them back, ' institutions ' and ail ! Though I would not have begun the war for the emancipation of the negroes, and though I cannot urge its continuance for that object, yet I have always felt that the only result which could justify the war was the manumission of every slave on the Northern Continent of America. To restore the old Union, slavery and all, will be to cover with shame the partisans of the North throughout the world, and justify the opponents of the war everywhere. It would leave the question still to be settled by a similar process of blood by another generation. However, I do not see how this compromise can be accomplished. " You will have had reason to feel but little satisfied with us during the late Session. Had our Government and Parliament taken an enlightened view of the interest of the nation, they would have competed with each other in their eagerness to amend our Foreign Enlist- ment Act, in order to preserve intact, as far as depended on us, the neutrality code in which we above all nations are so deeply interested. I consider the whole system at an end. Nothing but the experience of a war in which we are belligerents and you are neutrals will open our eyes to a sense of the new situation in which we shall find ourselves. 374 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters " 1 hough we have given you such good ground of complaint on account of the cruisers v/hich have left our ports, yet you must not forget that we have been the only obstacle to what would have been almost a European recognition of the South. Had England joined France, they would have been followed by probably every other State of Europe, with the exception of Russia. This is what the Confederate agents have been seeking to accomplish. They have pressed recognition on England and France with persistent energy from the first. I confess that their eagerness for European intervention in some shape has always given me a strong suspicion of their conscious weakness. But considering how much more we have suffered than other people from the blockade, this abstinence on our part from all diplomatic interference is certainly something to our credit, and this I attribute entirely to the honourable attitude assumed by our working population." " October 8, 1863. " The admiration which I feel for the masterly ability of your speech at the Cooper Institute cannot suppress a certain amount of resistance to it on the score oi policy. I was, I confess, rather beset with the feeling of Cui bono? after reading your powerful indictments against England and France together. It should have been your policy to have kept them asunder. Besides, if all we hear be true, we are not so bad as our great neighbour. We have done very uncivil things, but never has our Execu- tive been prepared to take part with the French in recognizing the _^South or in planting a thorn in your side in Mexico. Again, was it politic to array us in hostile attitudes just at the moment when the hopes of the South were mainly founded on the prospect of a rupture between yourselves' and Europe? Instead of bringing an indictment jointly against France and 375 Richard Cobden : The International Man England for their past misdeeds, would it not have been better to have shown, in the most favourable colours consistent with truth, the strength of the alliance between the masses in England, led by so much of the intellect and the moral and religious worth of the kingdom, and the Federals, and to have demonstrated the im- possibility of the aristocracy, with all their hostility, drawing us into a war with each other ? You were, I suspect, speaking under the impression that the iron- clad rams would be allowed to leave. I was sure, as I told Evarts and Forbes again and again, that those vessels would not be allowed to sail. The fact that they were armoured, turreted, and beaked constituted them armed vessels even under the most lax interpretation of our Enlistment Act. " Your career seems to be again chequered with partial reverses. I suppose this will tend more than ever to draw the Federal authorities towards the employ- ment of the African race in the war. For my part, I have always thought that the negroes who are the main cause and object of the war will play an important part in its final operations. In India the Sepoys have always done the chief part in our territorial conquests, although they are a very inferior race physically to the negroes. Whoever heard of a Hindoo offering to fight a picked Englishman in the prize-ring.'' He would hardly have a better chance than a woman. But we have had black men doing this in England. Tom Cribb had to fight a severe battle for the champion belt with the negro Molyneux. If this horrible war for the freedom of the slaves is to go on, I think in the interest it is to be of the negroes themselves all over the world desired that the black man should be found fighting his own battle. To this you will be brought, probably against the wish of a majority of the Federals." 376 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters "January 7, 1864. "You may be assured that I have watched with anxiety your proceedings and have rejoiced with you at every step of your progress. After Gettysburg and Vicksburg I have ceased to fear the result, and it has seemed only a question of time. That the leaders of the ;rebellion will ' die hard ' I have no doubt. But cut off from all hopes from Europe, with the negro escaping and being drilled against them, and with the certainty that in another year or two the supply of their darling cotton will be made good for Lancashire from other parts of the world, there can surely be sufficient intelligence found among the rank and file of the white population m the South to see that Secession is a dream of their leaders which has been dispelled by the sad realities of experience, and that they will resign themselves to the inevitable result. But I suppose that the ignorance of the mass of the whites in the South is nearly on a par with that of their negroes. I hope to see a hundred thousand coloured men under arms before midsummer. Nothing will tend so much to raise the Africans in the social scale as to put muskets in their hands and drill them as soldiers. I travelled in Egypt in 1836. Mehemet Ali had destroyed the Mameluke Beys and dispersed their followers, and called in some French officers to drill his drab Fellahs, of whom there were sixty thousand under arms when I was there. I was told that previously the Arab had been treated like a dog by these few thousand Mamelukes, a white race from the Caucasus, who for hundreds of years, by constant importations, had ruled the country, and who alone were privileged to bear arms. But after the Arabs had been accustomed to mount guard and control the move- ments of even white men, their self-respect had so 377 Richard Cobden : The International Man increased with the consciousness of power, that they were no longer exposed to the outrages and injuries of former times. It will be so with the coloured race with you. Let a few regiments of them be seen in New York, and depend on it they and their countrymen will no longer be exposed to the insults of their rivals, the Irish. " You will soon begin to busy yourselves with the task of President-making. I hope you will re-elect Mr. Lincoln. He is rising in reputation in Europe, apart from the success of the North. He possesses great moral qualities, which in the long run tell more on the fortunes of the world in these days than mere intellect. I always thought his want of enlarged ex- perience was a disadvantage to him. But he knows his own countrymen, evidently, and that is the main point. And being a stranger to the rest of the world, he has the less temptation to embark in foreign con- troversies or quarrels. Nothing shows his solid sense more than the pertinacity with which he avoids all outside complications. His truthful elevation of char- acter, and his somewhat stolid placidity of nature, put it quite beyond the power of other Governments to fasten a quarrel oh him, and inspire the fullest con- fidence in those who are committing themselves to the side of the North. I say all this on the assumption that he has irrevocably committed himself to ' abolition ' as the result of the war. Any compromise on that question would cover your cause with eternal infamy, and render the sanguinary Civil War with which you have desolated the North and South useless butchery, and the greatest crime against humanity recorded in the world's annals. You know I would never have fired a shot for the freedom of the negro, because I believe that God in His own good time would have 378 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters found a way of emancipating the slave at a less cruel cost to his master. But I remember saying to Colonel Fremont at Paris in the spring of 1861, just as the news of the attack on Sumter reached Europe, that nothing but the emancipation of every slave in the United States would justify your Civil War in the eyes of Europe and posterity. This is, of course, more than ever my opinion after witnessing the gigantic dimensions which your struggle has assumed. " You will observe that European politics are assuming a somewhat, anxious tone. Is it not strange to see those dreamy Teutons pushing matters to such extremes on the Schleswig-Holstein question .'' It seems as if that people were only able to work themselves into a fever of excitement on some subject of such an un- intelligible character and such shadowy merits that nobody out of Germany can understand it ! Whilst they bear with the most stolid apathy the most insulting oppression from their own Governments, they are in a frenzy of sympathy for the sufferings of the Schleswig- Holsteiners, who are living under a far freer government than themselves. There is perhaps more than meets the eye at the back of this popular excitement in Germany. The Liberal Party are humiliated and irritated at the malorganization of the Confederacy. They would like to make a real Union of the forty millions of Germans, but they have tried in vain. Now the idea has possessed itself of the minds of a portion of the patriot party that a foreign war, especially with France, would unite the whole race and enable them to get rid of their little princes and even kings, and become a great Teutonic Empire. It is a terrible fact that this idea should have found favour with sedate and learned men of the professor class. Should a shot be fired on the Eider, it will have its echoes on the 379 Richard Cobden : The International Man Rhine, Danube, and the Mincio. It would be in the power of Napoleon to bring upon Germany the Hun- garians, Italians, Poles and Scandinavians. I should think that Austria and Prussia will thrust aside the agitators and smaller States, if they can, and occupy the frontier with their own troops and preserve the peace at all hazards. If not, it will be because the German people are resolved on war, in which case, like all wars of peoples^ it will be a bloody struggle." " August 1 8, 1864, " It is long since we exchanged a letter. I do not know whether I am your debtor in our epistolary ledger. But I, at all events, have to thank you for the printed papers you have from time to time forwarded me, and which I have read with much interest, and heartily con- gratulate you on every step you have gained in your struggle for human rights and freedom. Whatever may be the fate of the war, your triumph will be a permanent gain for humanity. " Along with your partisans generally in this country, I am looking with deep and constant solicitude to the progress of your terrible struggle. There is, however, a constant struggle in my breast against my paramount abhorrence of war as a means of settling disputes, whether between nations or citizens of one country. If it were not for the interest which I feel in the fate of the slaves, and the hardly inferior interest in the removal of that stigma of slavery from your character as a free Christian community, I should turn with horror from the details of your battles, and wish only for peace on any terms. As it is, I cannot help asking myself whether it can be within the designs of a merciful God that even a good work should be accomplished at the cost of so much evil to the world. 380 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters " I have been much disappointed with the result so far of the Virginia campaign. I suppose it has been inevitable. But we were told by those who ought to have been well informed that you were approaching Richmond with three armies, any one of which was able to cope with the rebels. Now, however, we see two of these armies disappear from the scene, and the third held in check by a portion of Lee's army, whilst he sends part of his forces to menace you within your own territory and even to threaten your capital. All this, of course, tends to confirm nine-tenths of our politicians here in their belief that the success of the North is impossible. For my own part, having never considered that the issue depended on fighting, but on the sapping and mining of the social evil of the South, I still look forward with unabated confidence to the triumph of the North. " But I begin to speculate on the effects which the failure of Grant's campaign may have on your politics. Sometimes I speculate on the possibility of your imitating the course which political parties often follow here, and that your Democrats, who appear to be for peace, may come into power and carry out even more successfully than your party could do the policy of war and abolition of slavery. Like Peel in his course of Free Trade and Catholic Emancipation, they would have the advantage of being sure of the support of the honest advocates of the policy they adopted, even although they were nominally in the ranks of their political opponents. What I most dread is your falling into political confusion in the North. That would be a severe blow to the principle of self-government everywhere. "I must not omit to mention that my friend Mr. Goldwin Smith, Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford, goes out by the Europa for a 381 Richard Cobden : The International Man visit to the States. He needs no personal introductions, and I have given him no letters. But I need not tell you that he deserves well of your country. He is one of the few men moving in his sphere who have given a hearty and most brilliant support to your cause." " JnTiiiary ii, i86;, " I agree with a remark in the concluding passage or your last letter — that you are fighting the battle of Liberalism in Europe as well as the battle of freedom in America. It is only necessary to observe who are your friends and who your opponents in the Old World to be satisfied that great principles are at stake in your terrible conflict. But it is not by victories in the field alone that you will help the cause of the masses in Europe. End when it may, the Civil War will, in the eyes of mankind, have conferred quite as much ' glory,' so far as mere fighting goes, on the South as on the North. It is in your superiority in other things that you can alone by your example elevate the Old World. I confess I am very jealous of your taking a course which seems to hold up our old doings as an excuse for your present shortcomings. Hence I was sorry to see your republication of the old indictment against us in your very able and learned pamphlet. My answer is that your only title to existence as a RepubHc is that you are supposed to be superior to what we were sixty years ago. Had you returned the Florida to Bahia without a moment's delay, cashiered the captain of the JVachiisettSy and offered to pay for the support of the survivors who were dependent on those who were killed or drowned in that wicked outrage, your friends would have felt some inches taller here. That would have been the true answer to the taunts of our Tory Press, and not the disinterment of the misdeeds of our Tory "382 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters Government to show that they did something almost as bad as the Federal commander. " You see I am taking the liberty of ancient friendship with you ; and whilst in the vein, let me ask, What is the meaning of the Bobadil strain in which the New York Times treats the Canadian question ? We are accustomed to disregard the Herald as an Ishmaelite organ which represented no political party, and whose proprietor was a renegade Scotchman. But The Times, with Mr. Raymond at its head, was supposed to be something different. I confess, however, I never saw anything from Mr. Gordon Bennett's paper more calcu- lated to weaken your good influence over this country than the article to which I refer. Are we henceforth to have two New Tork Heralds instead of one.? But enough of this vein. " I observe an attempt by The Times (London) correspondent at New York to make it appear that the American public are again beginning to apprehend European intervention in some form. I do not believe there is the remotest risk of anything of the kind. You will, I hope, have soon got possession of all the ports of entry in the South, and re-established your custom- houses ; when that is done, I do not see how a collision of misunderstanding with a neutral maritime Power can possibly arise. " I was much pleased with your speech on the Canadian difficulty in the Senate, where you spoke of avoiding all quarrels with other countries and devoting yourself to the one sole object of putting down the rebellion. I am not blind to the fact that very grave questions will stand over for adjustment between your country and ours. Some of them, such as the injury done to your whole shipping interest by the losses and destruction of a part, can hardly be settled by Governments. They 383 Richard Cobden : The International Man will, I fear, invite future retaliation on our shipping by citizens of your country, 4f we should ever go to war. But all these questions must be postponed till your war is ended, and then probably the whole world may be ready for a thorough revolution in international maritime law. It will be for you to show the way. "I wish I could see more intelligence in your midst on questions of finance and political economy. Your Congress seems to me just about on a level with the British Parliament in 1818, before Huskisson commenced his first reforms of our fiscal system, which were after- wards followed up by Peel and Gladstone, I have always considered it a great misfortune that the New Englanders, who have been the schoolmasters of the Union, should have thought themselves interested in the policy of ' Protection.' They have spread the heresy over the land. However, I have great faith in the intelligence of your people, after they shall have been in the school of adversity. " I observe that your Secretary of the Navy calls for Government yards. As a rule, all heads of depart- ments wish to become manufacturers. In this country they have contrived to inveigle us into all kinds of undertakings, and it has been found very unprofitable. We are now trying to make our Government resort ^ to private enterprise for the supply of their wants. But it is very difficult to retrace our steps. I send you a couple of copies of a speech I made on this subject last year. Pray put them into the hands of parties taking an interest in the subject." "March 5, 1865. " I feel it a pleasant duty to give you my best congratulations on the recent proceedings within and without your Halls of Congress. The vote on the 384 The Civil War and the Sumner Letters amendment of the Constitution was a memorable and glorious event in your history. Another incident — that of your introduction of a coloured man to the Supreme Court — was hardly less interesting. In all these proceedings at Washington you ought to be allowed to indulge the feelings of a triumphant general. You served as a volunteer in the forlorn hope when the battle of emancipation seemed a hopeless struggle. 7our position within the walls of Congress was very different from that of the agitators out of doors, meri- torious as were their labours. I have served in both capacities, and know the difference between addressing an audience of partisans at a public meeting and a hostile Parliamentary assembly. The rapid progress of events and the sudden transformations of opinion must impart a constant excitement to your life ; it must be^ something like the movements of the kaleidoscope ! I heartily congratulate you, and wish I could shake hands and have a chat with you on all that is passing. Looking on from this distance, I cannot doubt that your great military operations are drawing to a close. The war is being driven into a corner. A it'^ months must decide the fate of the armies in the field. If Lee is beaten, I see no other great army, and the Southern people are too intelligent to attempt to protract the struggle into a guerrilla warfare. But it is useless to offer speculations here on events which will be realized probably ere you receive this. " I observe an attempt to alarm you with the pro- spect of European intervention. I need not tell you that this is the purest fiction. Nothing of the kind is now possible. You know that at first I was very apprehensive. And you know also that from the first the French Government has been courting the alliance of England in a scheme of intervention. * Barkis is 385 BB Richard Cobden : The International Man willing ' has been the constant language of Napoleon to Madame Britannia. It is nothing but your great ■power that has kept the hands of Europe ofF you. When a deputation of free-traders applied to Minister Guizot in 1846 for authorization to hold meetings to agitate for Free Trade, they received permission, with the benediction ' Soyez fort, et nous vous protegerons.' This is about the amount of what your friends in Europe have been able to do for you. There is no denying the fact that your terrible struggle has demonstrated an amount of hostility on the part of the ruling class here, and the ruling powers of Europe generally, to- wards your democratic institutions, for which none of us were prepared. Still, it must not be forgotten that the common people of England were true to the cause of freedom. It has never been possible to call a public open meeting, with notice^ to pass a resolution in favour of the rebellion. It would have been voted down by the working men. I know you are greatly and justly angered at the conduct of our upper classes — but do not forget the attitude of the workers. " PS. I am more alarmed at the politico-economical delusions that prevail in your high places than at the arms of the rebels. Who is Mr. ' Maximum ' Stephens, who thinks he can control the price of gold if he can only induce a majority of Congress to agree with him.'' The serious part of it is that he has so large a following. " You have a most serious task before you, when the war ends, in clearing away the wreck and adjusting your pecuniary, political and social difficulties. The country is revelling in a Saturnalia of greenbacks 'and Government expenditure, and is under the delusion that it is a genuine prosperity. It is destined to a rude disenchantment, and this will test the statesmanship of the Republican Party." 386 CHAPTER XIII COBDEN AND MODERN INTERNATIONALISM In any attempt to appreciate Cobden's services to the cause of internationalism, and his position as an Inter- national Man, it is essential to clear away certain mis- understandings and misrepresentations which have gathered round his policy of non-intervention. Though primarily a peace policy, non-intervention is both less and more. It did not make Cobden a " peace at any price man" — an opponent of all war. Some war and some preparation for war he regarded as hateful neces- sities for a country living in a world where moral force had not everywhere and always got the upper hand. Nor does he advance the opinion that no war is ever justifiable except one undertaken for self-defence. He sometimes ' admitted that a case might arise where a powerful nation was rightly called upon to take up arms for the protection of another weaker nation, or to assist the liberation of a subject and oppressed people. But he would have insisted that such a case must be extremely rare. For the right and obHgation of such forcible interference must be justified first by considera- tions of our knowledge and our power. The Palmer- stonian interventions had little regard to either. They were urged irrespective of reliable information as to the full facts and merits of the case, or of our capacity to intervene effectively in the interests of justice. But ' But compare p. 400. Richard Cobden : The International Man not only ought we to be sure of the equity and effi- cacy of our intervention, and that we are not secretly misled by some inherent pugnacity or some interested motives of our own ; we ought also to consider whether our forcible intervention may not involve the neglect of more sacred and more imperative duties at home. A naturally pugnacious people is likely to yield too easily to the temptation to undertake a spirited foreign enterprise under the direction of a statesman with an arbitrary domineering temper. But non-intervention with Cobden meant more than abstinence from aggressive or other unnecessary wars. It meant a reduction of foreign policy, in its govern- mental, diplomatic sense, to the smallest possible dimensions. Sound internationalism could not be brought about by arrangements between governments. Such relations were governed by motives and conducted by methods positively detrimental to the free pacific intercourse of individuals. The classes of Government officials who conducted diplomacy, and the methods they employed, were poisoned by obsolete traditions of suspicion and hostility, the survivals of a world in which statecraft expressed the conflicting interests of rival dynasties and not the common benefits of peoples. The ignorance and the singular ineptitude for understanding the needs and interests of foreign nations which distinguish our governing classes made a very powerful impression upon Cobden, who took so much trouble to equip himself with the sort of know- ledge which they lacked. He knew how perilous a foreign policy conducted by such men must be. So he concluded the less of it the better. If the peoples are to get into sane, amicable and mutually profitable relations with one another, that intercourse is best promoted by leaving it to them, with as little inter- 388 'THE COBDEN MADONNA" (A BAS-RELIEF IN THE DUCAL PALACE AT VENICE, SO-CALLED BECAUSE IT BEARS THE AUTOGRAPH OF RICHARD COBDEN). [To lace page 338. Cobden and Modern Internationalism ference as possible either in the way of help or hindrance by their respective Governments. Cobden's conviction of the essential rightness of this non-intervention policy was confirmed by the whole tenor of his public life. Growing up to manhood amid the poverty and degradation which were the sequel of the French War, he witnessed in his lifetime a constant recurrence of the peril. Now with France, now with Russia, now with the United States, we were embroiled at short intervals, in pursuance of that " filthy idol " (as Bright called it) the Balance of Power, or for the supposed furtherance of our colonial or commercial interests. With a single exception, we escaped the actual disaster of war with a great European Power, But the lesst)n of that war, its initiatron, its conduct and its consequences, was such as to impress upon any sane-thinking man the enormity of the abuses to which a spirited foreign policy was prone. Cobden did not, indeed, live to hear a British Prime Minister confess that in the Crimean War "We had put all our money upon the wrong horse." But that war was to him the crucial experiment which proved the validity of his principle of non-intervention. It was reinforced by a whole array of lesser instances, the threats, the diplomatic bullying, the naval demon- strations, the punitive expeditions and minor wars with which the Victorian age, and especially the Palmerstonian section of it, was richly strewn. Nor was it foreign policy alone that suffered from this vice. Our rule in India and in our colonies was rife with the same spirit of aggression and aggrandizement, in which trading interests commonly conspired with bureaucratic pride and rapacity. The terrible political and moral reactions of imperialism upon the subject peoples and upon the government and social life of our own nation were enforced by many instances. More 389 Richard Cobden : The International Man clearly than any man in his time, Cobden detected the blighting influence of that unconscious hypocrisy which distinguishes the modern from the older imperialism — the parade of moral, religious and other laudable motives in which the secret lust of political and economic sway conceals itself. For he alone had acquired, from long persistent study, the actual knowledge enabling him to detect the intricate interplay of interests and motives which gives inner meaning to the processes of imperialism. The colonial policy of his time exhibited, indeed, one episode of supreme folly, not in the way of intervention but of non-intervention. It was the exception that proved the rule. Colonial self-government, extended in Cob- den's time to our white colonies, was in itself a distinct movement towards non-intervention. But might it not have been accompanied by a stipulation that would have secured complete and lasting freedom of commerce among the peoples of the self-governing States ? Cobden felt that here a great opportunity had been lost for the pro- motion of actual internationalism (for our Dominions are nations) upon a sound footing. The same line of reason- ing by which his negotiation of the French Treaty was defended is also applicable here. Such a provision, attached to the charters of self-government, though formally a limitation and restraint, would have operated to secure freedom of trade throughout our vast Empire, and to abate the jealousy with which other commercial nations have been disposed to regard our territorial possessions. Non-intervention, thus interpreted in the light of the experience of Cobden's times, appeared to claim assent on grounds of reason, justice and utility. The idea of a constructive foreign policy as an instru- ment of internationalism could not, he felt, seriously be entertained. For, wherever concerted action of a govern- 390 Cobden and Modern Internationalism ment was undertaken, it was always for the further coercion of some other government. Non-intervention was therefore, ipso facto, a double gain for amicable rela- tions between nations, for by removing the active obstacles of diplomacy, war, and protective tariffs it enabled the mutual interests and good feelings of the peoples to operate freely. It must not be forgotten, however, that the non- intervention policy of Cobden and his school was not merely a policy of external relations. It was the applica- tion of the same principle which led them to oppose all or most extensions of governmental powers for the regulation of the internal relations of citizens. Govern- ment was conceived as a bad thing in itself, always op- pressive to individuals, frequently unjust, nearly always expensive and inefficient. A country had to bear govern- ment for its sins, as a provision against enemies outside and enemies within. Armaments and police were the essence of government. The more rigorous logic of this laissez-faire thought and policy dictated an opposition to the entire body of the factory laws and other State regula- tions of industry, and to all public provision or enforce- ment of sanitation and education. Their economic theory taught these thinkers to believe that unrestricted freedom of contract and of exchange would secure the greatest, surest, and most rapid growth of industrial prosperity, and that the natural play of competition under the pressure of self-interest would win for all classes their proper share. Their political Liberalism was thus directed almost wholly to the removal of the various impediments which law and custom oiFered to the free play of this enlightened self-interest. To Free Trade must be added removal of restrictions upon the transfer or the use of land, upon freedom of movement and settlement of labour, the repeal of " taxes upon knowledge," and the establishment of full Richard Cobden : The International Man religious liberty and equality, by the abolition of religious tests for Universities and public offices, by abolition of Church rates and the disestablishment of the State Church. This Liberalism on its constitutional side usually comprehended an extension of the franchise towards full self-government of the nation, and the absorption of all real governmental power in the hands of the representative House. Cobden, like other thinkers, brought his personal variations into this creed. He did not, for instance, carry his opposition to all factory legislation so far as to oppose legislative restraints upon the hours of employ- ment for children. Indeed, he was throughout his life a vigorous advocate of popular schools for working-class children, and supported in the House of Commons the education clauses in Sir James Graham's Factory Act of 1 844. " In the case of children, Cobden fully perceived that freedom of contract is only another name for freedom of coercion, and he admitted the necessity of legislative protection."! As regards adult workers he recognized no such necessity. Familiar as he was with the terribly bad conditions of labouring life both in agriculture and in town industry, he persistently adhered to the conviction that governments could do nothing useful to remedy them, but that all effective remedies must come from individual energy and intelligence. He even accepted the ordinary position of the employing class, that trade unions were " founded upon principles of brutal tyranny and monopoly," 2 and could do nothing effective to im- prove the general status of the labouring classes. Nor did he appear to recognize the inequality of permitting employers to combine for the regulation both of prices and of wages, while workmen were legally restricted. This view, how- ' Morley's " Life," i. 298. ^ Letter to F. W. Cobden, August 16, 1842. 392 Cobden and Modern Internationalism ever, was by no means due to any lack of enthusiasm for the improvement in the condition of labour, but to an unshakable conviction that individual bargaining was the only adequate method of obtaining it. In 1836 he sum- marized his view in the following language i : " I know it has been found easier to please the people by holding out flattering and delusive prospects of cheap benefits to be derived from Parliament rather than by urging them to a course of self-reliance ; but while I will not be the sycophant of the great, I cannot become the parasite of the poor ; and I have sufficient confidence in the growing intelligence of the working classes to be induced to believe that they will now be found to contain a great proportion of minds sufficiently enlightened by experience to concur with me in this opinion, that it is to themselves alone individually that they, as well as every other great section of the community, must trust for working out their own regeneration and happiness. Again I say to them, ' Look not to Parliament ; look only to yourselves.' " It was partly this general disbelief in the virtue of government, and partly the conviction that effective reform in his time could best be achieved by the activi- ties of the propertied middle class, that made Cobden somewhat tepid in his support of franchise extensions, and averse to placing any high value upon changes in political machinery. This sentiment was expressed in 1849 when, writing to Mr. Sturge in relation to Parliamentary Reform, he said : " I do not oppose the principle of giving men a control over their own affairs. I must confess, however, that I am less sanguine than I used to be about the effects of a wide extension of the franchise." 2 Elsewhere he gives this interesting commentary upon his change of view : " The citadel ' Letter to W. C. Hunt, October 21, 1836 (quoted, Morley). ' "Life,"i. 37. 393 Richard Cobden : The International Man of privilege in this country is so terribly strong, owing to the concentrated masses of property in the hands of the comparatively hw, that we cannot hope to assail it with success unless with the help of the propertied classes in the middle ranks of society, and by raising up a portion of the working class to become members of a propertied order." i His mind upon the matter is made even clearer by an interesting passage in a letter to Mr. Bright, written in 1859, when the latter was urging a comprehensive policy of financial reform and seeking to rally behind it a democratic sentiment. " You seem," he writes, "to take the working classes too exclusively under your protection. They are quite powerless as opposed to the middle and upper classes, which is a good reason why they should not be allowed to be made to appear to be in antagonism to both." 2 In other words, Cobden, throughout the greater part of his career, believed that real political reforms, whether in legislation, foreign policy or finance, could only be accomplished in his time by the organized action of the intelligent middle classes, and that to bring in the uninstructed masses would alarm the substantial bour- geoisie and so strengthen the defences of the landed aristocracy, who were the real upholders of economic and political privilege. This conviction of the desirable supremacy of the middle class, however, became sensibly modified in his later years, partly by disappointment with the warhke and imperialistic sentiments displayed by so many of his Free Trade adherents, partly by a growing recog- nition of the rightness and efficacy of the wider franchise to which his friend Bright devoted so much of his energy. It may, indeed, be fairly claimed that in his ' "Life," i. 53. ' Ibid.,i. 347. 394 Cobden and Modern Internationalism last years Cobden stood strongly for political democracy. Here are two passages from letters written in i86i: — To Samuel Lucas. "Algiers, February 23, i86r. "There is more healthy Radicalism to be found scattered about our small towns and villages than in the larger boroughs. I mean that iiJs_a^iore sturdy kind of democratic sentiment, for it goes directly against the feudal domination under which we really live, whereas in the great towns Radicalism often misses its mark and is assailing some insignificant grievance." To William Hargreaves. " Algiers, Marci i, 1861. " I wonder the working people are so quiet under the taunts and insults offered them. Have they no Spartacus among them to lead a revolt of the slave class against their political tormentors ? I suppose it is the reaction from the follies of Chartism which keeps the present generation so quiet. However, it is certain that so long as five millions of men are silent under their disabilities it is quite impossible for a few middle-class members of Parliament to give them liberty, and this is the language I shall use when called on to speak to them. It is bad enough that we have a political machine that will not move till the people put their shoulders to the wheel. But we must face things as they are, and not live in a dreamland of our own making. The middle class have never gained a step in the political scale without long labour and agitation out of doors, and the working people may depend on it they can only rise by similar efforts, and the more plainly they are told so the better." 395 Richard Cobden : The International Man From these letters, however, appear also the limitations of Cobden's democracy. He had little use for anything that could be called economic democracy, nor did he adequately recognize that an effective political democracy was impossible so long as the existing economic bondage survived. In some measure he was alive to this truth as it was illustrated in the rural feudalism. But he never saw its significance as a condemnation of the factory system and its town proletarianism. As we look back upon that period, it is difficult for us to understand how a rrtan of Cobden's keen intelligence and profound sympathy with injustice could fail to recognize the wrongs, the cruelty and oppression which underlay the normal methods by which the new middle- class prosperity was built up. On the one hand, the amazing growth of rich new families in Lancashire is for us quite discernibly due to causes in which the skill, intelligence and industry of the individuals who were said to have " made " this v/ealth played but a minor part. They contributed very little to the immense value of the new industrialism which machinery and steam- power brought into being. On the other hand, this growth of wealth was demonstrably conditioned by the use of masses of ill-paid, ill-clad, ill-housed, short-lived and degraded workers, whose overdriven toil was coined into these swollen profits. If Cobden was blind to these truths, it was due to no lack of natural humanity, to no calculated selfishness. It was in the main a fault of intellectual and moral perspective, shared by most of the best men of his day, and aggravated by the too facile acceptance of a philo- sophy which, by the very stress it laid upon human liberty and equality, deceived its votaries into an exces- sive valuation of the powers of individual intelligence and will to achieve success and happiness. 396 Cobden and Modern Internationalism Putting the matter on a more concrete basis, Cobden and his friends saw the power of landlords to impose oppressive and unjust conditions in substantially unfair bargains. They did not see that the entire system of industry and commerce was honeycombed with similar inequalities of bargaining power which stamp injustice and oppression in a hundred different ways upon society. Capitalism was to them the liberator of the people from the shackles of feudal landlordism. If its blessings were spread somewhat unevenly or were disguised, if some classes seemed to gain more than others, that was due partly to necessary friction in the play of the new eco- nomic forces, partly to the superior intelligence, industry, thought and other economic virtues which led some persons to avail themselves of opportunities which lay open to all alike, but which so many others neglected. It was hardly to be expected that the beneficiaries of the new order should be keenly alive to the defects of that order. Engaged as were Cobden and his friends in fighting older evils that were real and deep-rooted, they were inevitably blinded to most of the evils in the new business world whose claims they championed. Though there existed even in the early decades of the nineteenth century powerful exponents of the claims of labour and of the co-operative as distinguished from the competitive system of society, the prosperous middle classes were incapable of recognizing the moral frailty of the fabric of their prosperity. ^ Schools of economists and social pTiilosophers arose to furnish them with intellectual spiritual defences and to comfort them with the convic- tion that prosperity was the natural reward of virtue. Though not often openly avowed, the blunt verdict of Tennyson's Northern Farmer, that " the poor in the " For valuable testimony to this truth see Mr, and Mrs. Ham- mond's " The Town Labourer," chaps, x. and xi. 397 Richard Cobden : The International Man loomp is bad," was the self-flattering assumption of most of the respectable middle classes in mid- Victorian days. This moral and intellectual atmosphere prevented Cobden from realizing adequately the fact that a middle- class Government was incapable of doing justice to the claims and needs of the masses. It also prevented him from recognizing that only if, as he would have admitted, liberty meant not only the absence of interference but the presence of opportunities, there was a great deal more work for governments to undertake than the mere task of keeping order in the competitive ring. It was evident to him that children without access to education were not really free, and he was prepared for State interference to secure for them this liberty. We now recognize that, unless every human being has full opportunity of realizing all his healthy human needs and faculties, he is not really free, and that for the attainment of this freedom the operation of the collective as well as the individual will is necessary. This idea is everywhere transforming the conception of government, assigning to it a growing wealth of positive constructive functions in the furtherance of individual liberty. To take a single example : it is admitted that physical health is a prime condition of personal freedom. But individuals cannot secure this condition for themselves. There must also be public health, with restraints and aids which can only be applied by government. If these powers are wisely exercised, they cease to be resented as interference and come to be recognized as public benefits. I have dwelt at some length upon the supersession of the principle of non-intervention or laissez-faire in internal affairs, because it has an important bearing upon international relations. If it seemed unreasonable to expect that government could make any positive con- 398 Cobden and Modern Internationalism tribution to the liberty and happiness of individuals within a country, still less reasonable did it seem to expect that the governments of different countries could pursue any fruitful process of co-operation for the common benefit of the society of nations. Foreign policy was so deeply rooted in mischievous theories, so " en- slaved by the black magic of dead words " ' so poisoned with suspicion, jealousy, selfishness and all the separatist and antagonizing motives, that it should be kept at a minimum. In order to get the peoples to co- operate peacefully and effectively, keep their goverrp- ments as much as possible apart. For the contacts of governments are normally hostile ; even when governments get together in Alliances or Concerts, the underlying motives are the exercise of diplomatic or military force against other countries for the realiza- tion of their own separate or jointly selfish aims. This conception of foreign relations was not wholly justified. The Balance of Power, perilous as was the mechanical arrangement of force which underlay it, had some real regard to the peace of Europe, and the action of the Concert was in part directed to this object. But when foreign affairs were in the hands of such a man as Palmerston, it was difficult to realize safety and humanity in any other terms than those of non-intervention. Thus Cobden's early conviction was confirmed in every period of his political career by conspicuous examples of the perils and wrongs attending " a spirited foreign policy." If governments would keep their hands off and allow the mutual interests of free commercial intercourse to weave bonds of union between peoples, peace on earth and good-will among nations would be secured, the waste and provocation of armaments would disappear, and the material and moral resources of every nation would be I Delisle Burns, "The Morality of Nations," p. 236. 399 Richard Cobden : The International Man available for the improvement of the national life and for the enrichment of humanity. The uncompromising attitude maintained by Cobden throughout his life upon the duty of non-intervention is perhaps best illustrated by the following passage from a private letter written in 1858 : i "You rightly interpret my views when you say I am opposed to any armed intervention in the affairs of other countries. ' I am against any interference by the government of one country in the affairs of another nation, even if it be confined to moral suasion. Nay, I go further, and disapprove of the formation of a society or organization of any kind in England for the purpose of interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. I have always decHned to sanction anti-slavery organizations formed for the purpose of agitating the slavery question in the United States." To most men of our time this doctrine of non-inter- vention seems no longer tenable, while, on the other hand, the economic intercourse between nations sometimes appears as a fomenter of conflicts in the business world which embroil governments and imperil pacific relations. Many men of Liberal upbringing and traditions have been tempted to belittle Cobden as a statesman because he relied overmuch upon the logic of Free Trade as destined to convince the intelligence and reform the fiscal and commercial policy of other States, and so to furnish a reliable cement of pacific internationalism. Things, they say, have tiarned out very differently. The governments of other nations have not seen their national interests in the light of Cobden's teaching, but quite otherwise. Overseas trade has become more and more not a mutually profitable interchange of goods, but a field of struggle between rival groups of traders supported by their governments. The foreign policy of every ' To Mrs. Schwabe, " Reminiscences," p. 299 400 Cobden and Modern Internationalism Power has engaged itself continually more with pushing by diplomatic or forcible methods the commercial claims of its business classes. So far from foreign commerce bringing peace, it is maintained that "most modern wars are for markets," in the sense that the underlying motives and pressure, as distinguished from the immediate political precipitation, are of commercial origin. Most governments, instead of abolishing or lowering their tariffs, have raised them, and have put more restrictions upon free importation from foreign countries. Imperial and colonial aggrandizement has been largely inspired by a survival or a recrudescence of the very mercantilist superstitions which Cobden thought were disappearing from statecraft, the craving for exclusive or preferential markets and for territorial possessions to be developed for the peculiar benefit of the imperial or colonizing Power. Now the element of truth in this criticism is for the most part attributable to economic developments, the character or the pace of which neither Cobden nor any other statesman of his time could have foreseen. Great Britain in his lifetime was in a very real sense " the workshop of the world." Though it was evident that other countries would copy the great factory system which she first erected, and would participate in the new world trade which railways and steamships were develop- ing, neither economists,"nor business men, nor statesmen foresaw the new conflicts to which this pressure for foreign markets was destined to give rise. If, as seemed only reasonable, it was as important to buy as to sell, the possibility of providing so many goods that they could not all find quick and profitable markets was an absurd supposition. Cobden, like most enlightened men of his time, looked forward to the time when France, Germany, Italy and other countries would be equipped 401 CC Richard Cobden : The International Man with their own manufacturing plant and when the immense productive powers of the United States, in particular, would be organized for manufacture and commerce. But he saw no reason for alarm, quite the contrary, in this enlargement by each nation of its productive powers. Wealth could not be produced too fast, for the wants of man were illimitable. Each nation, by improving its own arts of industry and commerce, was also by a natural necessity adding to the wealth of every other nation with which, directly or indirectly, it was in contact. Why should Cobden be blamed for not perceiving, what nobody of his time perceived, that, for some mysterious reasons which economists do not even now explain, the aggregate productive power of the industrial world, suddenly enhanced by the adoption of the new mechanical arts by a number of nations, would so largely outstrip the effective demand for the goods which they produced as to convert friendly competition into cut- throat hostility.'' When after 1870 all the Great Powers were advancing rapidly on the new industrial road, and most of them began to safeguard their home markets against importers in favour of their native goods, the backward countries of the world became areas of increas- ing solicitude to competing groups of traders and to the governments of their respective countries. The hustle for foreign markets, to take off the continually increasing surplus product which could not be marketed at home at profitable prices, then set in, and powerfully organized trades, especially in the textile and metal industries, began to strengthen their hold upon their governments, so as to secure tariffs for the protection of the home market and diplomatic aid for winning foreign markets. Far more important and less predictable, however, was the later economic and political situation brought 403 Cob den and Modern Internationalism about by the rapid growth of foreign investments and t"he direct exploitation of the natural resources and the labour of foreign countries by members of the more developed Western nations. The stake which a trader has in the material prosperity and the good government of a foreign country to v/hich he sells cotton, cloth, guns, gin, cooking stoves or furs, while he imports rubber, coffee, cotton, ivory or oil, is no doubt considerable, and if he can get his Chambers of Commerce to bring pressure on his government to support or to extend this trade by diplomatic or any other means, he will be disposed to do so. But, after all, his stake in the trade with a particular country is limited and fluctuating. If he finds his market falling off in one country, he can push for a market in another, and there are various countries willing and eager to supply the foodstuffs and materials he wants to buy. But when trade in the narrow sense has developed into " peaceful penetration " of an area in Africa or a South Sea island, trade begins to be supplemented by factories and collecting stations. You have now the more substantial stake of a trading settlement where white men live and sometimes keep their families, and from which they stretch out economic tentacles into the surrounding country, organizing the natives for production and transport of the natural produce, and setting up stores in the interior for the disposal of the manufactured goods which they^'import. But this is only the initial stage in the more elaborate processes of development to which backward countries with rich natural resources, large submissive populations and weak or corrupt governments, are everywhere subjected. When money is lent to Eastern potentates for personal extravagance or to purchase warships ; when canals, railways, docks and other solid foundations of civilization are supplied ; when concessions to prospect 403 Richard Cobden : The International Man for and work mines and to acquire land for plantations are obtained ; when brand-new cities are built by Western enterprise and capital, the stake established in this foreign country is far bigger, more solid and more permanent. Moreover, the business methods by which these schemes are financed and carried into operation involve the formation of powerful companies controlled by men of great influence, not only in the world of business but in that of politics. Foreign policy was thus destined more and more to come under the secret or open control of powerful financial groups, with great funds for invest- ment at their disposal, whose success in making money depended to a large extent, directly or indirectly, upon governmental assistance. Obstructive governments must be bullied, competitors from other leading countries must be kept out, the rights of concessionaires must be enforced, foreign lives and property must be protected against mob violence or official injustice. The acquisition, protection and enlargement of these solid permanent stakes in backward countries have furnished the greater part of the inflammatory material in modern foreign policy, keeping alive all the time various issues between the Western Powers which at any moment might develop into dangerous conflicts. Some of this finance of foreign exploitation is sufficiently cosmopolitan in structure and methods to keep the Powers acting for a time in pre- carious Concert, as in the case of the six-, five-, or four- Power groups for Chinese loans. But for the most part competition runs along national lines, and each national group claims that its foreign and colonial policy shall be at its beck and call. The roots of this economic expansion of England run, of course, far back in our adventurous history, and have always played a prominent part in our colonial and foreign policy. But modern 404 Cobden and Modern Internationalism conditions have made this political pressure of finance dominant as a directing agency. " Cobden, as we have seen, encountered several notable examples of its activity, and the famous Don Pacifico case evoked a formal endorsement of the claim of private profiteers upon their government which inspired new confidence in adventurous business circles. But though the earlier loans to Turkey and Egypt came within Cobden's. time, and he was quick to discern the new perils they brought into foreign policy, it was. afterwards that the full flood of overseas investment with backward countries began to surge. The development of our own railway system, followed by that of the United States and our own Dominions, took off the great bulk of our surplus national savings during the middle of the nineteenth century. Not until the late seventies and the eighties, when machine industry and steam transport were developed by all the advanced nations of the West, did the immense expansion of overseas investment with backward countries transform the economics and the politics of the world. In every country there were strong financial and trading companies competing for over- seas markets and financial properties. Foreign invest- ments in this initial stage do not, of course, differ from ordinary export trade. For the money loaned to foreign governments or princes, or invested in their railways, harbours, plantations, mines and cities, means so much effective demand on the part of foreigners for British engines, machines, stores, or for goods obtained from other foreign countries, involving by roundabout trade a payment in terms of British exports. The difference comes later on, when the British capital is absorbed and fixed in irremovable concrete forms on a foreign soil, with its profitable use dependent upon the good government and social order of that country. The size, precarious- Richard Cobden : The International Man ness and influential manipulation of these large permanent stakes constitute the dominant factor in modern foreign policy. Cobden could not forecast the full significance of this factor, and this disability more than anything else ex- plains his too sanguine view of the spread of Free Trade and the healing and pacific influence of all economic intercourse between nations. He could not foresee how with the ever-growing sur- plus of saving in the older countries over and above the demands for profitable home uses, and with the rapid expansion of credit institutions, the rush for lucra- tive investments overseas was destined to stimulate fierce conflicts between strong business groups, capable of being transferred, first into diplomatic, and afterwards, in extreme cases, into military and naval struggles. Modern internationalists are no longer mere non- interventionalists, for the same reason that modern Radicals are no longer philosophic individualists. Ex- perience has forced upon them the truth that govern- ments are not essentially and of necessity the enemies of personal or national liberty, but that upon certain conditions they may become its creators, either by removing fetters or by furnishing the instruments of active co-operation by which both individuals and nations better realize themselves. These conditions for the liberative and creative service of the State are summed up in the term " democracy." They did not exist in this or any other European country in Cobden's time. He did not believe in the early practicability of popular self-government in any broad sense of the word. Governments, as he saw them, were necessarily con- trolled either by the aristocracy or by the new com- mercial middle classes, who were everywhere destined to displace the former rule. So far, therefore, as the 406 Cobden and Modern Internationalism lives of the general population were concerned, all government must rank not as self-government but as interference. In the external policy of States it was still more obvious. For diplomacy and high politics were everywhere retained as the functions of a small privileged caste, working upon antiquated models which were neither understood nor influenced by represen- tative bodies. Under such conditions it was entirely reasonable to look with jealous eyes upon every extension of governmental progress, whether at home or in foreign relations. Democracy alone can make the modern growth of the State compatible with individual liberty. What Cobden dreaded was " the servile State " which is actually upon us, and which can only be destroyed, not by cancelling the powers it has acquired, but by removing the servility. Extension of govern- ment has not been brought about, in this country at any rate, as the result of any accepted theory of State Socialism. Each new function has been taken on, either as a remedy for some concrete grievance which private enterprise seemed powerless to redress, or as an alternative to the oppressive power of some business monopoly, or, finally, as a means of securing such improvements in health, education and recreation as were in general demand and could not be profitably undertaken by private venture. But only in proportion as national and local govern- ment become democratized do these new functions become really safe and salutary. In an oligarchy, or a sham-democratic State like ours, they continue to harbour interferences with liberty only less oppressive than the private tyrannies or the perilous neglects which they profess to remove. In the domain of foreign policy the case for non- intervention, though, as we have seen, not absolutely 407 Richard Cobden : The International Man practicable even in Cobden's lifetime, was substantially sound. For neither had the conditions ripened for a world intercourse which now makes constructive inter- nationalism necessary, nor was it plausible to expect so radical a change in the heart and conduct of foreign policy as to make the organized, friendly co-operation of a Society of Nations seem a possibility. Non-inter- vention, in other words, was defensible and sound because genuine internationalism was impossible. It becomes possible so far and so fast as democracy gains ground within the several countries whose co-operation constitutes positive internationalism. For so long as the conduct and determination of foreign policy remain in the hands either of an aristocratic caste or a con- spiracy of business interests, or a union of the two, the mediaeval spirit of jealous statecraft will coalesce . with modern business greed to keep alive and stimulate the combative separatist spirit in international relations. But, so far as the needs and interests of the peoples can find expression in foreign relations, the deep constant underlying identity of human interests will constantly react in efforts to mould international institutions that are favourable to co-operation. Much, perhaps most, of this co-operation will proceed, as it has begun, along other than political channels. The international govern- ment of the business world, its transport, trade, finance, may, after the political controls of war-time have passed, largely return to private management. The great inter- nationalisms of religion, science, labour, hygiene and philanthropy, which have spread their elaborate network of associations and congresses, may remain for the most part outside politics. But in every one of these fields of free internationalism important occasions arise when inter-governmental aids and arrangements are neces- sary. In the business world it is exceedingly unlikely 408 Cobden and Modern Internationalism that the inter-governmental control over trade, transport and finance which the war emergency has evoked will disappear for a considerable number of years. It may even extend its scope, taking in enemy and neutral countries which have lain outside, and establishing some sort of permanent inter-governmental control over the whole range of economic internationalism. The tem- porary necessity of rationing the world by means of inter-governmental agreement may furnish the first and most substantial basis for the constructive activity of that League of Nations in which, it is generally held, the sole hope for civilization resides. Such swift transformations of half a century it was impossible for Cobden or for any other mid- Victorian statesman to forecast. Men born a generation later, in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, found themselves already hurried on in the eddying tide of the economic and political forces which, In their over- haste to remould the national States in terms of political and economic dominion, have plunged the whole world into disaster. As we look back, informed by the actual process of events, we can learn much from Cobden, both as the clearest-eyed and firmest principled inter- preter of the visible tendencies of his time and as the statesman actuated more fully than any other by that practical enthusiasm of humanity which, recognizing as it does the rights and uses of nationality, finds expression in the ideas and the forms of inter- nationalism. 409 INDEX Aberdeen, Lord, 78, 121, 125, 128, 154, 167, 201, 284 Abolition and President Lincoln, 378-9 ; see Emancipation Aborigines' Protection Society, 61, 240 Adams, Mr., American Minister, 309, 370-1 Ad'vertiser^ the, supports Palmerston, 203 Alabama, the, 295, 298, 309, 311, 327, 330> 372 Alcock, Sir R,, 315 Algerian policy of France, 54 Algiers, holidays in, 260, 268, 278-9, 285 Alma, Battle of, 113 American Civil War, the, 281-2, 288-9, 331. 386 arbitration, talk of, 360 blockade during, 335, 352-3 ; see Blockade Cobden's sympathies concerning, 282 Confederacy, Governmental attitude toward, 290 cotton-spinners affected by, 366-8 false prosperity during, 386 international aspects of, 12, 13, 295 intervention, Cobden opposed to, 300, 306-7 ; rumours of, 385-6 Lancashire, effects of, in, 335 Northern States, increasing sympathy vi'ith, 369 smuggling during, 363 American Constitution, amendment of the, 384 American journalism, 176, 191, 214 Cobden on, 310 American sympathizers hanged in Cuba, 77 Anglo-Saxon race, the, 171 Annexation of territory by Great Britain and Russia, 32 fruits of, 338-9 Anonymity of the Press, 213-15 Anti-Corn Law agitation, 194 League, 36 ; Cobden's speech at disso- lution of, 38-9 propaganda, 40-1 repeal. Act of, 9 Arbitration, Bunsen on, 99 Cobden's plan of, 55-6 Committee for, 294 Paris Peace Conference, at the, 56-7 United States, and, 360 Arles-Dufour, 7 ; letters to, 43-5, 246, 270-1, 296-8, 321 Armaments, limitation of, 76, 85, 91, i68 Convention proposed by Cobden, 279 cost of, 211, 263 ; general desire for, 336. domestic order, to maintain, 337 French and British memorial relating to, 282-4 j possibilities of an under- standing concerning, 287-8 j dis- couragement concerning, 289, 291 Army, difficulty of recruiting the, 139-40 .(^rrtwu, seizure of the, 192-3, 195-6,200 Athenaum^ the, 79 Austria, alliance with, 177-8 Cobden in, 50 France, war with, 242 German Confederation, heads the, 69 Governmental murders in, 188-90 revolution in, 54, 69 Balance of Power, the, 10, 26, 33, 177, 179, 301-2, 323, 330, 389, 399 Baronetcy, Cobden refuses a, 260 Barracks, Cobden on demoralizing influ- ence of, 63, jd-y Bastiat, 7, 41, 46, 273 ; his work on " Cobden and the League," 273 Baxter, Member for Dundee, 157-8 Belgium, fears for, 92 Berlin, Free Trade banquet at, 30-1 Blockade, effects of, 295, 299-300, 33S, 349, 351-2, 354-5, 360 enemy, a help to the, 356 European politics, its effect upon, 362 rights of, 280-2 towns, of, 356 War of Secession, in the, 282, 288 j Cobden urges its abandonment, 292- 3, 357 ; ineffective, 355 Bomba, King, see Naples Borneo, massacre in, 58-62, 239-40 Bowring, Sir John, 192-3, 196, 199-200, 209, 217 410 Index Bright, John, 7, 15, 22, 73, 115, 125, 207, 242, Z95, 329, 330 Anti-Slavery speech by, 346 defeated at Manchester, 193 faith in the Northern States, 364 letters from, 200 letters to, 60, 106, 108-9, 3<)4 speech at Coventry, 37-8 talks with, 172—3 Brooke, Rajah, 59, 103 ; his diary, 60-1 Brougham, Lord, 271, 316 Brute force, the law of, 238 Bull's Run, 290 Bullfights, Cobden protests to the Pope concerning, 218 Bunsen, Chevalier, 99, 115 Burmese War, the, 86-9, 91-2, 95, 100- 2, 144, 222 Business men, Cobden's belief in, 17 California, annexation of, 148 Cambridge, Duke of, 116 Canada, 162-3, 339-4°. 3^3 Canton, trouble in, 209, 220—1 Capital and Labour, 16-17 Capitalism, Cobden's view of, 397 Capture at sea, right of, 11; see Private Property Cecil, Lord Robert, 312 Central America, Great Britain i^, 148— 60 ; see Crampton, Panama, Nicar- agua, Walker Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, Cobden interviews, 49 Chartism, 55, 395 Cheap food, 16 Cheapness and increase of trade, 35 Chevalier, M., 7, 242-5, 249, 250, 273, 274. 299-30° China, Free Trade m, 198-9 revolution in, 198 specie sent to, 221 trade with, 197-8, 210, 221-2, 268, 328 China War, the (192-232) — Cobden moves vote of censure on, 193 cost of, 209 criticisms of, 210 elections during, 238 protest against, 305 Church, the, and the American Civil War, 133 Ciceroacchio, murder of, 188-9 Clarendon, Lord, 100, 152 Class cleavage, 22 Cobden, Richard — Austria, travels in, 50 business sacrifices made by, 16 calico printer, as, 23 China War, his views on the, 193 ; see China, China War Cobden, Richard {continued) — Correspondence, 11, 278-330; see Arles-Dufour, Richard, etc. Crimean War, his opinions of the, 108-39 Eastern Question, his knowledge of the, 24 ' . erroneous ideas concerning, 15—17 European tour in promotion of Free Trade, 40-53 Exposition, the Great, Cobden and the, 66 financial troubles, 233 Foreign policy, 6, 234, 327 ; see Foreign Office France, work for Free Trade in, 13, 43—6, 242-77 ; his love of, 272 ; appreciation of his work in, 274-7 Free Trade, his belief in, 5, 15, 223 French Commercial Treaty, his nego- tiation of, 242-77 Germany, in, 50-1 Huddersfield, candidate for, 205 internationalism of, 13, 22, 23, 387-409 Italy, m, 48-50 Liberalism of, 22 *'Life of," by Lord Morley, 12 Morning Star, chief adviser to, 141-2 non-intervention, his belief in, g, 20, 21, 26, 36 ; see Non-intervention Paimerston, his antagonism to, 54 pamphleteer, as a, 26-39 Peace Congress, at the, 56 ; on the, 80-1 " Reminiscences of," by Mrs. Schwabe, 12, 46 Rochdale, Member for, 234 Rome, visit to, 48 Russia, attitude towards, 29—36 ; travels in, 51-2 son, death of his, 137 Spain, tour in, 46-8 travels abroad, 23-4, 36, 40-53 United States, tour in the, 24—5 "Cob ienism," 16 Co-operation, free, 21 5 international, 25 Colonial self-government, 390 Combe, Mr., 21 ; letter to, 55 ; 115 Commerce not furthered by force, 34-5 Competition, evils of, 402 Confederacy, see Southern Confederacy, the Congress of Nations, proposed, 57 Constantinople, affairs in, 225—6 anxiety concerning, 92 preferably in Russian hands, 31, 34 Corn Laws, Repeal of the, 16, 36, 61, 248 Corruption in politics, 204 Cotton, 16, 365-8 famine, 322 411 Index Cowley, Lord, 244—5 Crampton, Mr., dismissal of, 151-60 Crimean War, the, 106-134, 3°^' 3^9 Cobden speaks on, at Leeds, 1 17-19 fruits of, 124 general feeling as to, 114 Leeds meeting on, opposed, 12 1-2 peace proposals, 135, 143 Press, the, responsible for, 167 radical misconception of, 108 Czar of Russia, the, 109-10 Daily Nezus, the, Cobden's criticism of, 70, 78 ; 120 Daily paper, need of an honest, 72 Dalhousie, Lord, loi, 230 Dallas, Mr., 153 Danish quarrel, the, 326-7 intervention proposed, 324-5 D'Azeglio, Marchese, 188-9 Democracy, the limits of Cobden's, 396, 406-7 sham, 407 Derby, Lord, 58, 135, 193, 307 Disarmament and Free Trade, 37 Disraeli, 201-2, 234, 325 Don Pacifico incident; the, 63-4 Duelling, Cobden on, 72 Economic expansion, 405-6 Economist, The, 218— ig Education, 164 ; Cobden's views on, 398 Egyptian fellahs as soldiers, 377 Election over the China War, 193-4, 238 Elgin, Lord, 261-2 Emancipation, the only justification of the American Civil War, 370, 374, 378-80 Cobden on, 333 Employers' combinations, Cobden's attitude towards, 392 Enlistment affair, the, 155 "England, Ireland, and America," 26-8 England, suspicions of, abroad, 41 European policy, Cobden on, 140 tour, Cobden's, 40-53 Evangelical missions in India, 236 Evarts, Mr., 373-4, 37^ Examiner, The, 78 Factory system, Cobden's attitude towards the, 391-2, 401 Far Eastern policy, British, brutality of, 325-6, 328 Federation of the States of Europe,' 140 Ferocity of public opinion, 217 Florence, Cobden at, 48-9 Food taxes, 17 Foreign Enlistments Act, 155, 311, 373- 4, 376 Foreign Office, the, manners of, 313 mischief done by, 53 mismanagement of affairs by, T82-3 Palmerston at the, 54 Turkish tyranny, supports, i8i-2 Foreign policy, the basis of Cobden's, 234, 327 Foreign trade, 403 ; as affecting policy and finance, 404-5 Fould, M., French Premier, opposes the Commercial Treaty, 250 France, Algerian policy of, 54 alarms of war with, 358 armaments, delusions regarding, 284 Cobden's Free Trade tour in, 43-6 Napoleonic wars with, 98 Navy, her expenditure on the, 291 war with Austria, 242 Franchise, extension of the, 208 Cobden tepid concerning, 393-4 Free Soil Party, the, 332 Free Trade, 9, 16 Austria, in, 50 Germany, in, 50-1 internationalism, an instrument of, 23, 26, 244 Italy, in, 48-50 Napoleon III converted to, ill, 243 pacific influence of, 17, 36-7, 43 propaganda in France undertaken by Cobden, 41-3 proposed Prize Essay on, 37 some results of, 400-1, 406 Spain, in, 46-8 Freedom and Free Trade, Cobden's con- ception of, 350 Freedom of the seas, 135, 168, 280-1, 351 French Commercial Treaty, 9, 13 Commission on, work of, 234-5 Cobden's negotiation of, 242-77 disarmament, hopes of, as a result, 259, 264 Foreign Office delays signature of, 259 importance of, 260 opposition in House of Commons, 253 signature of, 259 vicissitudes of, 242-52 French invasion scare, 83-5, 93, 230, 263-4 fostered by the Government and The Times, 205-6, 292-3 French Militia Law, the, 83 Friendly intercourse, international, 36 Friends, Society of, 37, 80 Garibaldi, 189, 323 General European War, talk of, 322 German Professors and Imperialism, 379 Germanic Confederation, the, 69 desires a great war in order to become an Empire, 379-80 412 Index " Germanism" of the Court, i8i Germany, in 1850, 69, 72 British people veto war against, 324-5 Cobden's reception in, 50-1 France, idea of war with, 265 war fever in, 320 Girardin, E. de, 9, 56, 76, 79 his eulogy of Cobden, 274-5 Gladstone, 22, 126, 129, 163, 243, 244 Cobden's opinion of, 201-2 French Commercial Treaty, his high opinion of, 254, 267 incredulous of power of Federal States to enforce the Union, 365 Neapolitan prisons, his exposure of, 136 Godrich, Lord, 220 Guizot, 386 Governmental intervention, Cobden's dis- belief in, 393 Grant, General, 381 Great Exposition, the, Cobden as Com- missioner, 65-6, 73 Greece, trojble with, 64-7 Greeks, Cobden's opinion of the, 179-80 Gregson, letter to, 199 Grey, Lord, 126 Gurney, S., 61—2, 116 Haly, and the Morning Star, 141 Hamilton, succeeds Haly, 141, 163, 165, 190 Hansa Towns, 316 blockades and the, 349 Hapsburgs, the, 190 Hardinge, Lord, 98 Hardy, G., 329 Hargreaves, W., letters to, 271-2 Herald of Peace, the, 57, 130, 144 Herald, the New York, 383 Hong-Kong, cost of, 196, 198-9, 269 Houston, General, 71 " How wars are got up in India,'' 144 Hugo, Victor, 56-7 Humboldt, 50 Hungary, revolution of 1848 in, 69, 80 ; further insurrection, 178-9 Illinois Central Railroad, Cobden's interest in, 233-4 Imperialism, birth of modern, 10 Cobden on, 195 hypocrisy of, 390 Imports, free, 20 India, abandonment of, foretold by Cobden, 224, 272 aggression in, 389 Cobden against British occupation of, 195 defeat, Cobden's fe:.r of, in, 235-6 hatred of British in, 228 India (continued) — occupation, British, cost of, 319 poor results of British government in, 228 trouble in, 222—3 Indian Mutiny, the, 195-232 Cobden's criticism of British policy, 236 Indian Reform Association, 102 Individual bargaining, Cobden's faith in, 393 Industrial system, evil results of, 402 Internationalism, Cobden and modern, 387, 409 Cobden's, 13, 22, 23,25 Ireland, Cobden on British treatment of, 27-8 Irish famine, the, 49, 54 Church, the, 28 question, interest in, abroad, 49 Iron, duty on, 247 Isturitz, Senor, on the executions in Havana, 77 Italy, Cobden's Free Trade tour in 48-50 Cobden's opinion of, 180 danger of empty encouragement of, 1 60- 1 Franco-Austrian intrigues against, 253 Japan, trouble with, 313-15, 319 Japanese, Cobden on the, 315, 319 Jingoism, Parliamentary, 323 Kaffir War of 1848-50, 73, 75, 86 Kagosima, destruction of, by Admiral Kuper, 311, 314, 317, 319, 321 Kincaid, Mr., 95, lOO, loi Kinnaird, Mr., 329 Kossuth's extradition from Turkey demanded, 74 relations with Palmerston, 178 visit to England, 73, 79, 81 Kuper, Admiral, 314, 319 Laird, Mr., and the Alabama, 326-7, 330 Laissez-faire Liberals, 391, 398-9 Lamartine, 56—7 Asia Minor, his domain in, 69 visits London, 67-8 Lancashire, effect of the Federal blockade upon, 335 enthusiasm in, for French Commercial Treaty, 278 feeling in, concerning the War of Secession, 289 Radicalism in, 12, 193-4 Land, access to the, 17 Landlordism, 17 Landwehr, the Prussian, 72, 225 Law of Nations, the, 74-5 Leader, the, 174-5 League, the, and peace, 93-4, 105 413 Index League of Brotherhood, Bazaar for, 71 of Nations, 409 Leeds Mercury, the, 142, 174, 231-2 Liberalism, Cobden's, 22 "Life of Cobden," by Morley, 12 Lincoln, President, 378 London, concentration of troops around, 75-7 Lucas, S., letter to, 395 Lyons and Free Trade, 44-5 Machinery, the power of, 18 Madrid, Cobden attends Free Trade banquet in, 47—8 Magne, M., 251-2 Manchester, Cobden speaks at, 206-7 decay of Liberalism in, 80, 194 political influence of, 180, 193-4 School, the, 16 Manin, 178 Maritime Law, reform of, 360, 363 Markets, wars for, 401 Mason and Slidell, 295, 309, 334, 343-4, ,351. 359. 364 . Maximilian of Mexico, 296 Mazzini, 173, 178 Mehemet AH, 377 Memorial volume on Cobden published in France, 274-6 Metternich, Cobden's interview with, 50, 253 Meyendorff, Baron, 51-2 Mexican Civil War, 296 Mexico, Cobden on, 297 French, the, in, 301, 318, 321 Miall, Edward, on the Indian Mutiny, 22S-30 Middle class, Cobden's faith in the, 17 views of social evils, 397-8 Milan, Cobden at Free Trade banquet at, 5° Militarism fatal to liberty, 163 German, 265 increase of, 243, 264-5 makes for war, 85 Militia, debate on the, i% Minto, Lord, 54 Missionaries, Cobden's opinion of, 93, loo-i Moniteur, Le, 173-4, 252 Monroe, D., 296 Morley, Lord, his " Life cf Cobden," I2, 19, 22, 54, 245, 311 Morley, S., letter to, 282-3 Morning Star, the, Cobden's hopes of, 20 commences publication, 141, 144-5 policy controlled and criticized by Cobden, 63-8, 141-2, 146, 163, 171, 180, 195, Z09, 214-17, 230-1, 288 Mosquito Coast, the, 147-9 Munitions of war, trade in, 371, 373 Mutual aid, Cobden on the principle of, 20 Napier, Sir Charles, 227, 291 Naples, the fleet sent to, 137 cry for intervention in, 145 King of, the, 145, i6i, 170, 173-4 Cobden interviews, 49 Napoleon III, 83-4, 95, 128-9, '341 H^- 3, 170, 226, 320-1 Cobden endeavours to convert him to Free Trade, 242, 246-8 Cobden's opinion of, 248 commercial treaty ratified by, 282 couft d'etat ef^&cted by, 83 friendship for England, his, 348 general distrust of, 249-50 German ambitions, a check to, 380 hostility of British Government to- ward, 259 letter to Mr. C. Cobden from, 276 revolutions in France, on, 248 vacillations of, 251-2 Napoleon, Prince, 256 Napoleon, Jerome, 276 National vices, the British, 327 Nationalities, awakening spirit of, 338 liberation of oppressed, 177-8 Navy, built under false pretences, 355 large, useless if blockade abolished, 353 Negro apprenticeship, reform of, 316-17 Negroes in the Civil War, 376-7 Neuchatel, insurrection in, 190 Neutrals, rights and duties of, 308 New Orleans and the cotton trade, 365-7 Newspapers, need of honest, 127 ; pro- posals for same, 129-30 Nicaraguan afl^air, the, 54, 136, 147-0 Non-intervention, Cobden's policy of, 9, 20-1, 26,34, 54-72. 78-9. "3. 145. 171. 183, 387, 390-1, 398-9, 400 benefits of, 338-9 superseded, 406 Norton, Professor C. E., 12 O'Connor, Fergus, 55 Opium trade, the, 198,211 War, the, 197 Oude, the case of, 230, 235 Owen, Robert, 18 Palmerston, 10, 52, 73-5, 77 Cobden sends letter of remonstrance lo, 257-8 ; sends memorial to, 292 Cobden's criticisms of, 54, 123, 153-4. 157, IS9, 175. 178. 186-8,214,226, 238, 287 Cobden's labours in Paris thwarted by, 311-12 414 Index Palmerston (cmtiiwed) — Don Pacifico affair, the, 64 Greek coast, orders blockade of, 64 intervention, his policy of, 387-8 Schleswig, fails to involve England in war over, 310, 323-4, 326-7 Turkish reforms, on, 104 "Palmerston fever," 205, 212 Panama, 148 Paris Conference, the, 137-8 Congress, 304 Declaration of, 135, 355 Treaty of, 135, 288 Parke, Mr., action of, in Canton, 196 Parker, Admiral, ordered to blockade Greek coast, 64 Parliamentary procedure, modifications of, 224-5 Reform, 73 Peace Conferences, 94-5, 102, 105 Peace Congress, in Paris, 56, 304 ; Brussels, 81, 97 ; Edinboro', 293 Peace Congress Committee, the, 81-2 Peace Movement, the, 11, 79, 166-7, 337 Peace Party, the, 66-7, 70, 80 Peace Society, the, 37, 80-2, 129, 2H, 240. 3°3, 33°, 338 Borneo, and,- 60-1 Crimean W^, and, 81 the Liverpool, 77, 79 *' Peaceful penetration," 403 Peel, 15,248-9, 284 Penn, William, and government by moral force, 239 Persia, trouble in, 200 war with, 137 Persigny, M. de, 250-1, 292 Polish insurrection of 1830, 33 problem, Cobden on the, 32-3, 297 Pope, the, Cobden interviews, 48 j 188 Portugal, fleet sent to, 54 ; 85 Press, the, 201 coriTipted by .Government, 213-14 gain to, in respect of railroads, tele- graphs, etc., 184 Prince Consort, the, 66, 181, 295, 310 attacks on, 185-7 Private property at sea, 280-2, 363 Privateering, abolition of, 135, 288, 308 Privy Councillorship refused by Cobden, 260 Prosperity, results of, 212 the new, Cobden blind to unjust basis of, 396-7 , ^ Protectionism, 38 ; m France, 246, 254 ; in the United States, 384 Prussia, claims hegemony in 1850, 69 internal troubles, danger of, 72 King of, Cobden interviews, 50 loan to, suggested, 71 Quakers in the Peace Society and Move- ment, 73, 80-1, 105 Radicalism, Cobden on, 395 Rationalism, Cobden's, 273 Rawson, Henry, 144, 146 Red Indians compared with Hindoos, 228 Reform Bill, proposed second, a, 208 Reform Club, the, 161-2 *' Reminiscences of Richard Cobden," 46 Reprisals in India, cry for, 227 Revolution of 1848, 68-9 Richard, the Rev. Henry, 7, 11, 37-8, 59, 60—1 Cobden's letters to, 58-65, 67-9, 75-93, 95-106, 109-17, 120-34, 141-91, 195-232, 261-9, 282-95, 3°o-9. 326-30, 383 Morning Star, his position on the, 165 Richardson's murder in Japan, compen- sation demanded for, 310-11 terrible reprisals for, 314, 317, 319 Rochdale, meeting at, 278 speech at, on the Schleswig-Holstcin question and war, 325 Roebuck, Mr., 183, 201, 310 Rome, Cobden in, 48, 188 Rothschild, Baron, 63 Meyer, 249 Rouher, M., 7, 245, 250, 252 *' Russia," 29-36 Russia, British relations with, 29-36 Cobden's opinion of, 119-20 j tour in, 51-2 England defends Turkey against, 27 peace with, unsatisfactory, 175 protectionist policy of, and its results, 138-9 war with, folly of, 33 wood fuel a necessity to, 52 Russian invasion scare, 29 Russell, Lord John, 72, 155, 167, 187-S, 2or, 314, 370 Sumner's Indictment of, 372-3 Russophobes, Cobden on, 30-4 Sarawak, bloodshed in, 59 Sayers, Tom, 271 Schleswig, 301,310, 320, 339 danger of war over, 310 Schwabe, Mrs., author of "Reminis- cences of Richard Cobden," 12, 46 Schwann, J., letter to, 269-70 Scott, General, 71, 292-3, 350-1 Search, right of, 345-7, 351, 363 Sebastopol, 116 Self-interest as the basis of social har- mony, 1 8 Servile State, the, 407 Seward, Mr., 341-4 speaks on the annexation of Canada 349, 415 Index Seymour, Admiral, seizes ports of Canton, Sicilies, the Two, 36 Slave trade in Turkey, 31 Slavery problem in U.S.A., 169-70, 313, 343, 353 ; see Abolition, Emancipa- tion Smith, Adam, 21 Goldwin, 381 Social evils, Cobden's peculiar attitude towards, 396-8 Southern Confederacy, the, British sympathy with, 333 disbelief in the North's power of conquest over, 364-5, 381 hasty action of, 342 means of subduing, 357 recognition of, urged, 310-11, 355, 369-70, 375 ships built for, 370-6 starvation of, impossible, 356 union with England suggested, 169 ; see American Civil War, Blockade, Cotton, etc. Spain, Cobden's Free Trade tour in, 46-8 Spanish Bonds, 63 Spanish Marriage, the, 54 Stamp duty, repeal of, 123 State Church, oppression of a, 72 Stratford de Redcliffe, Lord, 225-6 Sturge, J., Lord Brougham, and the negro apprentices, 316-17 Suffrage, suggested forms of, 208-9, 212 Sultan of Turkey gives domain to Lamartine, 6g Sumner, Charles, 7, 195, 282, 289, 292 his career, 371-2 indictment of Palmerston and Russell, his, 372-3 ; of France and England, 375-6 letters to, 7, 12, 336-86 Peace Conference, at the, 36-7 physical assault upon, 159, 340 Tagus, the fleet sent to the, 54 Tariff's, French, 262 Thackeray, 225 "Three Letters, in 1792 and 1853," 93,97 "Three Panics, The," 83,279,298, 311 Throat weakness, 211 Times, The, Cobden's criticisms of, 78-9, 126-7, 13 1-4, 142-3, 156, 162, 175- 7, 181-2, 190, 227, 237,240 Cobden attacked by, 311 Commercial Treaty, the, attacked by, ^63, 265-7, 350 Times, The {cont'mued) — inconsistencies of, 263 Kossuth attacked by, 74 pro-Southern sympathies of, 339 reaction against, 360 Trade Unions, 166 " brutal tyranny of," 392 Trafalgar, Battle of, 89 Treaty of Commerce ; see French Com- mercial Treaty Treaty Ports, the, 305 Trent, affair of the, 295, 334, 349 Trieste, Free Trade banquet at, 50 Tropical countries, defects of colonies in, ^39 Turkey, Cobden on the folly of protecting, i/ Cobden on the rotten condition of, 102-4 Great Britain the protector of, 27 slave trade in, the, 3 1 Tuscany, Free "Trade in, 48-9 United States, the, Cobden's travels in, crisis in, Cobden on the, 169 Democratic Party in, 309 Great Britain's relations with, 28-9 Ministers of, in England, 151-2 place of, in the world, 34 purchase of arms in England by, 309 strained relations with, 54, 293 ; see American Civil War, Blockade, Emancipation, etc. Universal Suffrage, 208 Urquhart, Mr., 26 Venezuela, debts of, 63 Victoria, gueen, 124, 167 edits the "Queen's Speech " to avert war, 310 Palmerston, her relations with, 187-8 Walker affair, the, 148-9 War fever, the futility of opposing, 342-3 Warren, Mr., at Berlin, 51 Wellington, Duke of, 75-6, 85 his wars not defensive, but anti- democratic, 89, 96 "What next? And next?" 138 WickofF, Mr., 214 Wilkes, Captain, 358 Wilks, Washington, 132-4 Williams, Mr., 16 1-2 Wilson, J., 218-19 Woolner, Thos., 7 Working classes, apathy of the, 395 Ptinted in Great Britain by UNWIN BKOTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LOiNDON