LDFRMAN tOBDEN OF Manchester SiR-E-W'VMTKIN,BarT'H-F m VI 33-^ THE GIFT OF £3^.3^^ .Mv^.X-L/^ h, 5'M G ""I'^/fJ Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028029993 flLDEI^MAN ©OBDGR OP fflANGHBSTEI^. i^Sition lie Hint. Four hundred copies printed for sale, of which this is NcMOi Signed... ■' - '^ RICHARD COBDEN at the age of 57. [_Photog^'aphed froTTi a Crayon Likeness.) «#^ of J12ar|clieski(. Letters and Reminiscences of Richard Cobden, Portraits, Illustrations^ Facsijiulcs^ ajid Index, ^^vvvvyyvy r yvw rT vwy^y y wyyvff ww T ^ v yy vyy T V ^ "T g'*r ^' y v y # yy w^'»^y y' » BY SIR E. W. pKlt(, Bart., M.P. WARD, LOCK, i;(;)WDI';n cV co., LONDON, XLW YORK, ANJ> MELBOURNE. [All rights reserved.'] €mxUnH. PREFATORY .. Mr. COBDEN and THE MANCHESTER CORPORATION Mr. COBDEN AND MY FATHER MISERY AND STEVENSON SQUARE . . Mr. COBDEN AND THE POTTINGER DINNER OF 1844 THE SOUVENIRS THE HELPLESS AND THE WOUNDED OF THE LEAGUE . . Mr. COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER ATHEN^UM . . Mr. COBDEN AND THE TAXES ON KNOWLEDGE .. Mr. COBDEN AND SOME PERSONAL KINDNESSES TO MYSELF Mr. COBDEN AND THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS THE COBDEN TREATY LAST WORDS INDEX . . PAGE I 7 58 67 104 114 140 163 173 178 194 205 PORTRAITS, ILLUSTRATIONS, AND FACSIMILES. Jorlritits, Richard Cobden at the age of 57 (Photographed from a Crayon Likeness.^ Richard Cobden about the age of 20 {Photographed from a Miniature Likeness.) Cobden's only Son (Richard Brooks) at the age of 5 Do. at the age of 1 5 . Died 1856.. Frontispiece • • page 9 103 103 103 Cobden's Mother, nee Millicent Amber. Died 1825 (From a Miniature Likeness taken shortly before her Marriage.) Cobden's Father, WilHam Cobden. Died 1833 .. .. 103 {From a Miniature Likeness taken shortly before his Marriage.) Do. {From a Portrait in later life.) .. .. 103 The late Sir Joseph Heron, Town Clerk of Manchester . . 49 {From a Bust in the Manchester Toivn Hall.) Absalom Watkin. Born 1787; Died 1861 .. .. 58 {From a Painting by William Bradley.) C. D. Collet, Esq. . . . . . . . , . . ,40 T. B. Potter, Esq., l\r. P. .. .. .. .. ,9, jnn&trnlions Mr. ConiJEN addressing the League Council ., page loi {From tin Painting by J. R. Herbert, R.A. Reproduced by permission of Messrs. T. Agnew &' Sons.) Key to ditto. Manchester Town Hall, 1823 — 77 ., .. .. 15 {Now the Free Reference Library.) Cobden's House in Quay Street . . . . . . . . 18 Stevenson Square, Manchester, in 189 1.. ., .. 67 The Manchester Athenaeum .. .. .. .. 122 {The Royal Institution adjacent.) The Free Trade Hall, Manchester, as rebuilt in 1855 .. 163 CoBDEN in his Garden .. .. .. .. ..177 l[jtt$nttHt$. Letter of Richard CoBDEN .. .. .. .. page 168 Letter of Thomas Carlyle .. .. .. .. 138 Letter of Charles Dickens ,. .. .. .. 138 Letters of Benjamin Disraeli .. .. .. .. 138 Ticket for the Athenaeum Soiree, 1 843 .. .. .. 127 The Gavel at Manchester Town Hall . . . . . . 202 Member's Ticket of the Anti-Corn Law League .. .. 102 Letter of the Rev. E. Trafforu Leigh, Rector of Cheadlc, Cheshire, April, 1840 .. .. ,. .. .. 69 PREFATORY. Shortly after the untimely removal from us, in 1865, of our great Economist, a member of the old Anti-Corn Law League, now deceased, desired me to entrust to him any letters written to me by Mr. Cobden, which, he stated, would be placed in the hands of Mr. Henry Richard, with much other correspondence, to be collated and published. I complied with the request, and heard no more about it. Some years elapsed, and after some difficulty and more delay, I regained the custody of documents that to me were invaluable. I never heard what became of the intended labours of the late Mr. Richard,* but all of us who admired and loved Mr. Cobden, as I — one of his old followers — did, were * Mr. Richard's own explanation is said to be given in the "Life and Correspondence of Peter Rylands, M.P.," published by his son, Mr. L. G. Rylands, but that is a book I have not seen. I observe also that the Manchester Guardian says of that explanation: "It is not the version which has been generally received." But what this other version may be I am equally unaware. B Prefatory. extremely rejoiced to welcome the admirable biography by the Right Honourable John Morley, M.P. Mr. Morley told me, in answer to my inquiry, that no letters written by Mr. Cobden to me, or to my late father, had been placed at his disposal. Believing that there might be something of public interest in these hitherto unused letters, I have caught hold of some leisure moments — scarce and irregular, indeed, with me — to string together, by short narrative, the bits of past history these documents illustrate. I, at the outset, acknowledge gratefully the assistance I have received from my old, kind, and able friend, Mr. W. P. Stokes. I may add, that an additional object has been to endea- vour to place before Manchester the great services of Mr. Cobden, well nigh forgotten, in the foundation of the Manchester Athenseum, and as the man above all men, dead or living, to whom is due the credit of the establishment of popular local self-government in our city. These were not the only local services of Mr. Cobden. For some years before his whole energies w^ere absorbed by the cause of cheap food and free interchange, the ques- tions of popular education, local voluntary schools, an university for the cotton districts, and so on, were amongst the many subjects of his advocacy. He was, in fact, the new light shining in our dark places, and his power of attracting minds of a similar cast towards his views, and of rousing the zeal of others, soon surrounded him with a circle which comprised the best men amongst us at that day. Cohden and Villiers. In conclusion, I trust that this little contribution of mine may help to induce some great writer — and we in Manchester have one of the most brilliant as our next- door neighbour — to write a history of the Anti-Corn Law League, as seen from the heights of more than half-a- century of time. I would plead with this distinguished man, that as " Free-trade, the Charter of the Nations," began the record of a triumphant agitation, he should hand down to posterity the brilliant experiences of the subsequent forty-five years. He is aware that in the collection of letters to the Presi- dent of the Anti-Corn Law League, the late Mr. George Wilson, there are hitherto buried treasures which would aid his labours, including the letter from Mr. Cobden to Mr. Wilson, written in the House of Commons on the celebrated night when Sir Robert Peel gave to "the un- adorned eloquence " of Richard Cobden the merit of the triumph. That letter illustrates the unselfish, modest, just, honourable — nay, beautiful — side of Cobden's character, when after all his labours, sacrifices, anxieties, he writes, that he "never was so ashamed in his life," because the credit was far more greatly due to Villiers. NoRTHENDEN, near Manchester, July, 1891. [It is interesting to compare the passages in which Peel gave the credit of his Free Trade measures of 1846 to B 2 Prefatory. Cobden, and of his Catholic Emancipation measure in 1829 to Grattan and others. It was on June 2gth, 1846, that Sir R. Peel ended his speech (announcing the resignation of his cabinet) in these terms : — "There is a name which ought to be associated with the success of these (the Anti-Corn Law) measures ; it is not the name of the noble lord the member for London (Lord J. Russell) ; neither is it my name. The name which ought to be, and which will be, associated with the success of these measures, is the name of a man who, acting, I believe, from pure and disinterested motives, has with untiring energy made appeals to our reason, and has enforced those appeals with an eloquence the more to be admired because it was unaffected and unadorned. The name which ought to be chiefly associated with the success of these measures is the name of Richard Cobden." To this I append a copy (from " Hansard ") of the con- cluding portion of the reply of "Mr. Secretary Peel " in the debate on the Second Reading of the Roman Catholic Relief Bill, 1 8th March, 1829:— " I entreat hon. gentlemen who differ from me in opinion, to consider the altered position of affairs in Ireland since the annunciation of these measures of grace and favour has been made. To be defeated now — to throw the question back upon us — when a greater calm has been produced in Ireland than I ever knew to exist there — when there is no spirit of vulgar triumph displayed on the part of the Roman Catholics—and, in justice to the Protestants I must say it. Peel, Cohden, Grattan, and Canning. 5 when their disappointment has been marked by the most patient submission — to lose the advantage which we have now gained, and to reject the solution which is within our grasp, would be attended with consequences so fatal to the repose of the Empire that I cannot even in fancy bear to contemplate them. " One parting word, and I have done. I have received, in the speech of my noble friend the member for Donegal, testimonies of approbation which are grateful to my soul ; and they have been liberally awarded to me by gentlemen on the other side of the House in a manner which does honour to the forbearance of party among us. They have, however, one and all awarded to me a credit which I do not deserve for settling this question. The credit belongs to others and not to me. It belongs to Mr. Fox, to Mr. Grattan, to Mr. Plunkett — to the gentlemen opposite — and to an illustrious and right hon. friend of mine, who is now no more. (Cheers.) By their efforts, and in spite of my opposition, it has proved victorious. I will not conceal from the House that, in the course of this debate, allusions have been made to the memory of my right hon. friend, now no more (Mr. Canning), which have been most painful to my feelings. An hon. baronet has spoken of the cruel manner in which my right hon. friend was hunted down. Whether the hon. baronet was one of those who hunted him down, I know not ; but this I do know, that whoever did join in the inhuman cry which was raised against him, I was not one. I was on terms of the most friendly intimacy with my right hon. friend, down even to the day Prefatory. of his death. And I say with as much sincerity of heart as man can speak, that I wish he was now aUve to reap the harvest which he sowed, and to enjoy the triumph which his exertions gained. I would say of him, as he said of the late Mr. Perceval, ' Would he were here to enjoy the fruits of his victory ! ' " ' Tuque tuis armis : nos te poteremur AcHUe.' " I am well aware that the fate of this measure cannot now be altered. If it succeed, the credit will belong to others ; if it fail, the responsibility will devolve upon me, and upon those with whom I have acted. These chances, with the loss of private friendship, and the alienation of public con- fidence, I must have foreseen and calculated upon before I ventured to recommend these measures. I assure the House that in conducting them I have met with the severest blow which it has ever been my lot to experience ; but I am convinced that the time will come — though I may not live to see it — when full justice will be done, by men of all parties, to the motives on which I have acted — when this question will be fully settled, and when others will see that I had no other alternative than to act as I have acted. They will then admit that the course which I have followed, and which I am still prepared to follow, whatever impu- tations it may expose me to, is the only course which is necessary for the diminution of the undue, illegitimate, and dangerous power of the Roman CathoHcs, and for the maintenance and permanent security of the Protestant interests."] Cohden at Thirty-three — Thirty-five. MR. COBDEN AND THE MANCHESTER CORPORATION. Biographies of statesmen cannot dwell much upon episodes, or localities. Mr. Morley has only a few para- graphs for Cobden as a local reformer, and it would have been out of scale to have given more. The wider interest of Cobden's work for the nation, and for mankind, forbade it. Nor would the personal portraiture have gained such fresh illustration as to excuse it. The more reason, perhaps, that this local chapter in a great career should have separate attention on its own account. Yet the reader, drawn by interest in the man himself, will hardly complain because, in these gleanings from recollection and association, Cobden figures not as the local reformer only, but in more than one other phase and epoch of his public and private life. In such a case, some discursiveness may be not unwel- come. A beginning is therefore made with a few points of strictly personal interest which it is well to have in mind. And none the less so because Cobden's biographers have dwelt on some of them before. At the time here mainly spoken of, Mr. Cobden had 8 Tlie Ulanchester Corporation. not lost in any degree the buoyancy and self-confidence which had served him so well in the early battles of life. Born in 1804, at thirty he had achieved a fortune through qualities of intellect and enterprise which all memoirs of him describe. With well-founded assurance of the stability of his mercantile income ; with no prevision of the extent to which his private concerns were one day to suifer by withdrawal of his attention from them, Cobden was eager, at thirty-three, to follow the promptings of his public spirit. Everything about the man, character and physiognomy alike, was indicative of the directness and sincerity that marked his public action, and through which, what was termed his " eloquence unadorned," was always as abso- lutely assured against a moment's dulness or prosing, as it was disdainful of the artifices of oratory. " You know," he said, at the end of one of his speeches, "I never perorate." And disregard of mere form was characteristic of him. No one could speak with less of gesture in his more animated moods, yet his manner and movements had none of the restraint or deliberation that belong, by nature or art, to men of different build or temper. Long after the League had triumphed, and his widest fame been won, Cobden, at forty-five to fifty, was still to be seen half skipping along a pavement, or a railway platform, with the lightness of a slim and almost dapper figure, and a mind full bent on its object. Yet with all the carelessness of "minor conventions," which Mr. Morley has noticed in him, it can only be a mistake to attribute to Cobden in RICHARD COBDEN about the age of 20. {Photographed from a Miniafure Likeness,^ Personal Traits. 9 middle life anything of the sombre appearance in that popular likeness, the frontispiece of the shilling abridgment of Mr. Morley's work. And the portrait in the complete edition is, in other respects, most unhappy, doing him less justice still. Mr. Cobden, as he looked in his prime, is very well portrayed in Herbert's large picture of the League in Council, the engraving of which was once widely cir- culated.* The likeness chosen as frontispiece to these pages is also one of the best, though not wholly satis- factory. Allowing for some of the fashions of his day {e.g., the high cravat in the accompanying picture of him as a youth), Cobden's appearance was neat and trim, but it could never have been called sleek. Features and ex- pression seem to have more or less eluded every attempt to " take " them, until a carte-de-visite by Adolph Beau proved strikingly true to what time had made of them in the closing years of life. Again, a worthier representation, or more faithful likeness, can hardly be imagined than Matthew Noble's statue of Cobden in Peel Park, Salford. Another thing worth notice belongs to a different cate- gory. It is that Mr. Cobden's intervention in local affairs does not rate him one of those whose first school in state- craft was the business of their own parish. Before he occupied himself much with the municipal needs of Manchester, Cobden had published pamphlets * By the kind permission of Messrs. Thomas Agnew & Sons, the owners of the copyright, I am enabled (at page loi) to give a photographic reproduction of that interesting work. 10 The Manchester Corporation. upon international policy. He had travelled for self-in- struction in America, Europe, and Asia. His first attempt to enter Parliament had been made in 1837. True, as Mr. Morley relates, Cobden's earliest political work had been some anon}Tnous letters in a Manchester paper (1835) on the incorporation of the borough. His earliest speeches had been education speeches at Clitheroe. Probably, also, as Mr. Morley surmises, it was in 1835 or 1836, in the interval between Cobden's visits to the West and the East, that he made his first public speech in Man- chester, at "a small and unimportant meeting," again to advocate incorporation. It was in the same interval that he helped to found the Manchester Athenaeum. All this leaves Cobden still outside those ranks of local office-bearing, in which so many have trained themselves for the legislation or administration of their country. It is remarkable that, down to nearly the end of 1837, though English local self-government, as it now prevails, had been one of the early fruits of the Parliamentary Reform of 1832, Manchester, for some reason, took no decided step in that direction. All through England local reform had been asserting itself, local oligarchy overthrown, and local corruption rooted out. Comparative freedom from abuses of the more flagrant kind may have made Manchester more acquiescent in an antiquated system. In Wheeler's "History of Manchester" (1836), a chapter gravely opens with the statement that "the municipal government of the township is committed to the borough- reeve and two constables, who are elected at the court-leet Manchester in i?:T,i. ii of the lord of the manor, by a jury of the most influential inhabitants, summoned by the deputy-steward of the manor." The writer seems quite unconscious that ap- pointments proceeding from such a source were not in the spirit of municipal government at all. These officers, he explains, took " special cognizance " of the police of the township, numbering 30 men. The real working chief, however, was the deputy-constable, generally an officer of Bow Street training, or the like. But the nightly watch, numbering 125, with a reserve of supernumeraries ; likewise the fire brigade, lamplighters, nuisance and other inspec- tors, were under the charge of a body called "the police commissioners " of the township, 240 in number. This is described as "a representative body," elected in 14 police districts of the town by the ratepayers assessed at ^16 or upwards. The list of voters was prepared by the church- wardens of the township. The police commissioners ap- pointed the gas directors, the town improvement committee, &c. Similar arrangements obtained in the borough of Salford, and also in what were then called the " out-town- ships " — Hulme, Ardwick, Chorlton, &c. — which made up the borough of Manchester. It is not difficult to fancy the impatience and disgust of a mind like Cobden's at finding himself mixed up, by the accident of his mercantile success in Manchester, with the mediaeval antics of the manor court : liable himself to be some day attached for the office of "reeve" or "constable": and once at least an unwilling member of the " jury " that forced the yoke upon others. 1 2 The Manchester Corporation. It is one thing to be called, Cincinnatus-like, from your own fields to the public service by the people's vote ; it is quite another to be summoned by writ, under feudal rights of proprietorship. No further off than Stockport, the municipal franchise had been already introduced. When Cobden's parliament- tary candidature for Stockport, in the summer of 1837, had failed, and was done with, he was more at leisure to act upon observation there of the workings of the new system. " Incorporate your borough 1 " was now Cobden's urgent cry to his Manchester neighbours. Five thousand copies of a letter, or pamphlet, of his own writing, with that cry for its text, or title, were circulated by him (as he said in a letter to Tait, the publisher, quoted by Mr. Morley) " with a view of gaining the Radicals," by showing the popular provisions of the Municipal Reform Act. " Will you credit it (Mr. Cobden added) the low blackguard leaders of the Radicals joined with the Tories and opposed us." Nevertheless, the reforming spirit of Manchester shop- keepers was this time fairly kindled. At the first great public meeting held to petition for incorporation, "the shopocracy," said Cobden, in the above-quoted letter, car- ried the day over the "unholy alliance of Tory and Radical." Hostile interests had taken alarm, and the first month of 1838 saw the beginning of furious and prolonged resistance. Cobden's speech at that great meeting sets the inquirer on the track of the inner sources of the opposition. On the surface, the battle that now began between " cor- porators " and "anti-corporators" partook, indeed, of Cobden the " Corporator.'^ 13 the standing antagonism of political parties. Reformers and Whigs were on one side ; Tories, Chartists, and Radi- cals were on the other. On placards the corporators were abused (Cobbett's ghost, one may suppose, applauding) as " Base, Bloody, Brutal, Devilish Whigs 1 " But below this surface there was something else. It was certainly not as a Whig, or in sympathy with Whiggism, that Cobden took the field. In a letter of the same year, quoted by Mr. Morley, Cobden says of the Whig Government, in reference to this very question — " In the matter of municipal institutions, their hearts are against us." Truckling subserviency of the Whig Ministry to Tory menaces, or to " the party which bullies them most," was just in character with the conduct of the Whigs, he said, " on all questions, great or little." And at this same Man- chester meeting, now to be noticed, Cobden declared him- self a " Radical Reformer," though it was against Radical as well as Tory opposition that he assumed the lead. The fact of his leadership is authenticated on the testi- mony of friends and foes alike. For years the same lips that banned the Manchester Corporation as a thing "accursed" and "infernal," assailed Cobden as its author and father. But the feelings that prompted such expressions were more intense than even the political animosities of the time. What claims notice first in Mr. Cobden's speech at the Town Hall (February 3rd, 1838), is his conviction that a mass of popular ignorance had been enlisted by an enemy 1 4 The Manchester Corporation. that knew better, and sinned against the light. "We do not seek incorporation as a party measure," he said, "but as one that should carry out the great democratic principle that men should govern themselves." But why, then, had a pseudo-democratic mob come to hoot it down ? The greatest burst of cheering at this meeting was when Mr. Cobden commended the popular election of a town council as a mode of associating all classes of ratepayers on equal terms, educating the poorest or the lowest to a sense of independence, and (his own words) "taking these men out of the power of interested leaders." Cobden's speech was, as far as the excitement of the meeting would allow it, an exposition of the process and method of incorporation — the equal vote of every rate- payer of three years' residence, and the yearly retirement of one-third of the town council in rotation. " Every year there will be," he said, " that delightful agitation which I love to see, an election of one common councillor for every ward ; just enough to remind the other two that, if they don't behave themselves, their turn is coming." Cobden was a speaker never unmindful of the circum- stances in which he spoke, or the kind of audience he had before him. On this occasion he was argumentative and playful by turns ; but above all things he must keep the ear of both sides. And sometimes there was no way better than to relieve his mind with what frequent hearers learnt to welcome, on familiar terms, as "one of Cobden's rages." A favourite cry against incorporation was its increased expense. "But," said Mr. Cobden, "the Muni- A Tory-Radical Mob. 15 cipal Act was passed with a view to give economy to town government — to deprive the oligarchy of their power, and to put it into the hands of the people. Will the people then impose heavy taxation and ruin upon themselves ? Can anyone assert this but the vilest of the vile, those who are hired by ignorant, stupid Tories to clamour here ? " Then of course there was a row, and the orator had time to take breath. All through the speech there was the same note, of the mental helplessness of the opposing mass, played upon by a mere handful pulling the strings. Municipal election, Mr. Cobden said, must tend "to raise men from being under the bad advice of others — to place them above those who call themselves their leaders, and who would treacherously deceive them." After one of the interrup- tions he met with, he exclaimed, "There are many faces before me that I do not usually see here." Doubtless Mr. Cobden had often attended Town Hall meetings, though he had only lately become known as a speaker, and he could detect the foreign element that had been imported. "Do you think," he asked, "that the people brought here to uphold the cause of despotism can afford to pay for those placards of lies against incorporation, for which /'zoo has been paid within these twenty-four hours .? " Still flouting the bugbear of increased expense, Mr. Cobden had some things to say that were not entirely borne out by the course of events, because though cor- porators were economical, they could not control anti- 1 6 The Manchester Corporation. corporators who were prodigal. After showing, as already quoted, the mode and term of the elections, Mr. Cobden went on to say : — " The town council elect the mayor, who will have, as chief magistrate, locally precedence over the Queen herself, if she came here. The lord lieutenant of the county is second to him in the borough. Can there be anything more democratic or republican than that .? That is the system in New York. Well, immediately your town council have elected a ma3'or, they give the present body notice to give up the police office. I do not disguise from you that this will be preliminary to all the powers of the town — whether lighting, paving, or what not — passing into the hands of the council. For two bodies, one elected by household suffrage, the other by a £ ib qualification, could not co-exist. It has been tried in Stockport, and it failed ; all the powers had to be transferred. Then it is said, you will have the expense of new courts for magis- trates, quarter sessions and assizes. But you need not have anything of the kind unless you wish. The council will have the power to nominate justices of the borough, and the Queen in Council will confirm their nominations. It is not a part of the Corporation Act that there should be magistrates. But since this arrangement came into force the appointment of every Liberal magistrate nomi- nated has been confirmed by the Privy Council. And it does not follow because you have magistrates that it will entail expense. There are individuals who will be proud to be nominated, and to serve as mayor, &c. We had to Cheap al £2,000 a-ycar. 17 drag our present -worthy borough-reeve (Mr. John Brown) to the office he holds, as a victim to a sacrifice ; but in the corporate towns men go into the streets and lanes, with hats off, asking for votes From none of the 200 towns of the kingdom has there come one complaint of the Corporation Act, except from the Tories. There is but one appointment that will necessarily be a salaried office — that of town clerk. And I say give your town clerk a salary, and don't let him have fees to the amount of many thousands a-year. You will save from another lawyer's office, that I need not name, ^'3,000 a-year by the appointment of a town clerk. You will then have the surplus fees paid to your borough fund, as is done at Stockport." Recurring to this in another passage, Mr. Cobden said : " Give your town clerk £z,ooqi a-year, and you will save _^4,ooo out of an office that I won't name. Then we are told that if the town be incorporated we shall have the expense of quarter sessions. But we are not asking for any such thing. We only ask for incorporation. You can have quarter sessions afterwards if you wish for it, but there is no more need for it because you have your corporation than there is now. And if you cannot get rooms in this town for your magistrates to sit daily, let the town sue to me, in formd pauperis, and I will not only find them a couple of rooms in my house* (laughter), but a good dry * The accompanying representation of Cobden's house in Quay Street, in the midst of the town, is copied from Mr. Alderman Thompson's history of Owens College. The house became the college C The Manchester Corporation. cellar for a lock-up into the bargain, big enough to hold all the operative Conservatives in Manchester." (Much merriment.) Cobden was sceptical of the existence of "the Conserva- tive working-man." He had the difficulty that besets men of strong convictions, of imagining the possibility that others could never share them. Long after this, speaking from the Huddersfield hustings in 1857, to the electors about to reject him, he exclaimed — " I give the people of England three years to come round to my opinions." Tone and manner conveyed the impression that the term of grace thus generously allowed to the speaker's countrymen was habitual with him, and not limited to the occasion of Lord Palmerston's latest examples of foreign policy. So, in 1838, at Manchester, Mr. Cobden's own scorn of some of the older forms of pomp and symbolry made him treat them as a source of expense that was out of the question: — "Such corporation baubles," he said, "as maces, cloaks, and chains, would never be tolerated in Manchester : their day is gone by." Half-a-century later, the Manchester Corporation has not only cloaks and chain, but ^"6,300 worth of plate (the latter a gift, however), and is thinking about a civic coach for its mayor. The cost is as nothing on a large assessment. And on this score Cobden, doubtless, was itself in its infancy. It was a gift to the trustees of Mr. Owens by Mr. Faulkner, who bought it from Mr. Cobden many years after he had removed from it. The same house, slightly altered in appearance, (by a new doonvay, &c.,) is now the Manchester County Court. iSlililE il''"i i;||!' I-', till; Cohden and ^^ Baubles." 19 rather humouring than sharing the alarm of petty econo- mists. For his own part, Mr. Cobden would have disliked these things none the less had they yielded income instead of outlay. He could never have gone the length of the facetious pork-butcher in the town council, who, in the midst of a hot debate whether they should or should not provide themselves with gowns for the Queen's visit to Manchester in 1851, protested his readiness to "wear a pig-tail " if the etiquette of loyalty prescribed one. Need- less to say, this gentleman did not stick at blue silk for councillors, black for the town-clerk, scarlet for aldermen, or jewelled chain for the mayor. And such was the pre- vailing sentiment, as shown by the " state" costume then, and ever since, adopted. Mr. Cobden was similarly sanguine in his belief that the changes he had in view must be quickly accomplished. "We have nothing to say," he explained, "against the individuals who have been dragged to fill the offices of reeve and constables, I fervently hope and believe, for the last time." But it took eight years from that time to extinguish those offices through the gradual transference of all their functions. So desperate was the resistance of opponents, fighting, as it were, to their last ditch of obstruction. " We are not seeking," Cobden continued, "the over- turn of old institutions merely because "they are old, but because the old state of the government of Manchester is so decrepit and worn out that it has actually fallen to c 2 The Manchester Corporation. pieces and gone to the death, as it were. (Cries of ' No, and counter-cries.) I once sat at the Lord of the Manor's Court Leet, and there, in the company of gentlemen of all politics and shades of opinion, we came to the unanimous conclusion that, whether you adopt the Corporation Act, or an extension of your Police Acts, or whatever change you prefer, a change you must have, for the old state of things cannot exist any longer. Shall we go, then, for an extension of your Police Act, as has been proposed .'' Shall we choose, as proposed by Tory newspapers, that the Lord of the Manor, sitting in his parlour in Staffordshire, shall rule the town of Manchester : its people not only putting on his livery, but widening the extent of their feudal ser- vitude, and very probably allowing him to make vassals of the people of Chorlton-upon-Medlock, of Hulme, and the other townships adjoining yours ? (Cries of ' Never ! ') The proposition I have to submit to you is that we shall adopt the municipal state of government, which belongs already to every other great town in the kingdom except Birmingham, whose petition for it is now before the Privy Council." Referring again to the case of the out -townships, and to opposition from their rulers, Cobden pointed to difficulties and dangers arising from divided control of the local police, which an incorporation of the entire borough would at once remedy. " Can there be," he asked, " anything more pre- posterous than that the little great men in these townships should come here and say, ' For the sake of our being great men in a little wa}', we will have a barrier across the streets " Town" versus " Townships." 21 at the Medlock, so that the little rogues who have stolen peas and beans on the one side* may run across the bridge and say to the police- ofEcer or the watchman from the other, "You dare not follow us !" ' I am astonished that men who have wisdom enough to govern Chorlton-upon-Med- lock should ever hold such strange ideas. I should as soon have expected that the worthy shopkeepers of St. Ann's Square or Ancoats Street would wish to have their shops under one government by day, and their dwelling-houses upstairs, or at the back, under another government by night." Opposition speeches were made by leaders of the Tory- Radical alliance — speeches which, were this more of a local history, and less a chapter of biography, might have a claim to more than mention. Mr. Cobden, in a short reply to them, ridiculed the idea that the Radicals or the Chartists had anything to hope politically from the existing local bodies. " You might as well," he said, " ask the sun to come out and shine at midnight, as ask your commissioners of police to pass a resolution for universal suffrage." He waived aside the proposal that Manchester should wait till other towns had had more experience of incorporation. He thought the plea for delay was transparently insincere. He allowed that the Corporation Act was in some respects imperfect — that some of its provisions were illiberal and absurd. He did not agree, for instance, in the property qualifications * In those days "peas and beans" would be grown miles nearer the Medlock bridges than now. 2 2 The Manchester Corporation. prescribed for councillors and aldermen. He hoped to see working men — " the poorest mechanic " — qualified by their talents and integrity for seats on the bench of justice. But defects in the Corporation Act could not blind him to the greater faults of the system it was to supersede. " In this town," he said, " hitherto the most useful party have been excluded from all places of honour on account of their principles." He condemned as " monstrous " the fact that Catholics, Independents, Methodists, Baptists, and all Dissenters, had been invariably excluded from nomi- nation for office. " To this day," he said, " the Test Act virtually exists in all its force in Manchester." And, for the encouragement of Radicals, doubtful of the effect of incorporation, he went on to assure them that whereas in many other places it often happened that the rich were exclusively Tory, in Manchester the richer men were com- monly Liberals. When Mr. Cobden warned the meeting to wait patiently while the speakers of the opposition sought to weary them with " ravings about the Dorchester labourers, the new Poor Law, or anything but the subject in hand," an active, burly, strong-lunged man in front of him shouted, " Same as yow do 1 " "I know not the individual," Cobden re- torted, " who seems to take this to himself." The great unknown was the locally celebrated Elijah Dixon, of Newton Heath, a sturdy Radical all through life, who had gone to prison for his share in demonstrations of earlier date than Peterloo. He outlived Cobden, and died the head of a prosperous firm of match manufacturers — Manufactured Opposition. 23 Dixon, Son, and Evans. He was long a prominent figure in Manchester meetings, and in this instance was one of the most persistent interrupters of Cobden's eloquence. Not many years before his death he was at a meeting in his own township (" on my own midden," he preferred to phrase it), protesting loudly against the notion that a man who could only set a brick was not as well fitted by edu- cation for the elective franchise as a man who could only read, write, and cipher. But the meeting in 1838 acted on Cobden's advice: withstood the tactics of delay, and voted by a majority for incorporation. According to the Act of Parliament, a petition to the Queen in Council to grant a charter was the next step to be taken, and in a very short canvass nearly 16,000 signa- tures were obtained. But the anti-corporators lodged with the Privy Council a counter petition, with from 30,000 to 40,000 names attached.* Then the character of the signa- tures was impeached on both sides, and the presumption against the pretended majority was certainly overwhelming. The drift of opinion among the ratepayers was known beforehand. But to put matters to the test the Govern- ment sent commissioners down to Manchester to hold a court of inquiry. " I was engaged," wrote Cobden to Tait in July, "before the commissioners, employed in exposing the trickery of * Contemporary reports gave differing totals to each petition, but in this place the discrepancy is not material enough to be probed to the bottom. 24 The Manchester Corporation. the Tories in getting up their petition. For three weeks I was incessantly occupied in the Town Hall So important do I consider the step for the incorporation of the borough that I have been incessantly engaged at the task for the last six months." Had the proceedings been open to the Press they would have yielded matter as entertaining and instructive in their way as any scrutiny of the kind that ever was held before election committees or judges. The canvassing for the corporators had been for the most part the unpaid work of men of respectability, whose hearts were in the cause. The signatures to the hostile petition had been mostly furnished by hired agents, some of whom had no sooner pocketed their wages than they went and offered their service to the other side, by owning to the most shameless, wholesale forgeries. Not only had names been attached without their owners' leave orknowledgc, but sheets upon sheets were filled wholly from imagination. One of the experts gave the commis- sioners satisfactory proof of his dexterity by repeating the process under their eyes. He also bore touching witness to the cleverness of a lamented comrade, who could invent names and addresses, and write them in the requisite variety of hands, as fast as it could have been done, and without feigning, by a practised copyist from directories. And this accomplished person's death, only a week or two before, was chargeable mainly to the fuss that people were making over his performance. Other features of the in- quiry were the readiness of the corporators to assist the Experts in Fraud. 25 commissioners in every way desired, and the neglect or inability of their opponents to give any aid whatever. ■ The results were so remarkable that, in order to place them further beypnd doubt or cavil, the Government sent one of the commissioners to Manchester a second time to go through the personal labour of calling at hundreds of addresses, to prove the negative of signatures having been obtained there. A venturesome agent of the anti-corpo- rators undertook to pick a hole in the signatures for in- corporation, but he made precipitate retreat from the room on two occasions, being the only ones on which he could be brought face to face with a responsible witness for the party attacked. When eventually the Queen in Council had granted the charter of incorporation, and it was received in IManchester in November, INIr. Cobden and his coadjutors were elected as town councillors ; but they had still to face the most determined obstruction from the objectors. The latter were armed with the official influence of the old authorities — police commissioners, overseers, church- wardens, county magistrates, and others — who refused to recognize the new corporation, or to obey or acquiesce in its ordinances. A single firm of lawyers, with IMr. Oswald Milne at its head, had long conducted the legal business of the dif- ferent local bodies. To use his own phrase, he was town clerk in all but the name. This firm had the clerkships in their hands, and therefore the fees, and all the consequent power. From this focus the network of alliance against the 26 The Manchester Corporation. corporation drew much of its unity of action. So generally was this understood, that when, after " seven years' appren- ticeship," as it was temied, the corporation records were summed up by a retiring mayor (IMr. Alexander Kay), he did not trace the resistance which had been encountered to any political or public source ; he thought it sufficient to say that, immediately on the grant of the charter, " a meeting of Mr. Oswald Milne's friends was held," at which the resolutions for resistance were agreed upon. How strongly the !Milne interest was backed, however, by both party and professional sympathies, the activity of Tory lawyers, like Mr. Stephen Heelis (afterwards IMayor of Salford) and Mr. James Crossley (in Inter life a noted antiquary), sufficiently proved. And, to give Mr. Milne his due, he had amply deserved that it should be so. He had led the local Tories with unimpeachable constancv. Ordinarily he had shown him- self cool, cautious, and reticent, as well as able and full of resource. It may, indeed, have been the case that behind the leader there were others prompting him. For instance, he was doubtless supported by hints from head- quarters in London when, on his advice, the people were attacked at the Peterloo meeting, August 16, iSig. But he was the recognized driver of the Tory coach, and every conceivable trick was to be tried to sustain him against the newly-invented machine of "the opposition." In the first place, the registration of municipal voters was protested against and impeded. Then the Torv party ostentatiously held aloof from the elections. When a The Law-Clerk of Peter loo. 27 council full of Liberals had been returned, it was denied admittance to the Town Hall, in King Street. It was in the York Hotel, next door, that the first meeting was held, to choose aldermen (Cobden being one), and a mayor (Mr. Thos. Potter), on Alderman Cobden's nomination. For some months the civic body could do little beyond taking measures — and these were certainly enough to occupy it — to preserve its own existence from the assaults of its enemies. At first the talk on their part was of an immediate ap- peal to the law courts. Various flaws were alleged in the validity of the Royal grant. The point most commonly advanced was the absence of an ascertained majority of inhabitant householders in favour of the charter. In the subsequent discussions the corporation party showed some willingness to admit that the signatures to the adverse petition, making all deduction for some 20,000 that were spurious, did possibly outnumber somewhat those on their own side. But that the latter could have been greatly multiplied by a longer canvass they felt no doubt. It was further maintained that the Municipal Act gave the Queen in Council full discretion to act on such evidence as had been furnished of the dominant feeling of the inhabitants. An ascertained majority was not essential. More than two years afterwards this view was affirmed by most of the judges of the Exchequer Chamber. But matters had been kept in suspense in the meantime, and the process by which the judgment was obtained was curi- ously indirect. Possibly owing to the promptitude with The Manchester Corporation. which the leading supporters of the corporation (Alder- man Cobden among them) subscribed a guarantee fund of nearly /"3o,ooo, the threatened litigation on the main issue was not proceeded with. Instead of this the op- posing faction applied themselves to throwing every prac- ticable obstacle in the way of the town council doing its work. Thanks to the liberality of the guarantors, the duty of forming a new and more adequate police force for the entire borough was taken in hand, though the overseers refused to levy the rates which the council ordered. Tory magistrates at county sessions were relied upon to shield the overseers from penalties thus incurred, and also to keep hostile overseers in office. Contrar}', therefore, to Mr. Cobden's anticipations, the town council found it best to obtain a separate commission of quarter sessions for the borough as soon as possible, and, through the borough bench, a new body of over- seers. These gentlemen went in the customary way to tender their services at the office of the churchwardens. The latter declined to recognize them, or to administer the oath of office. A brief scene ended with the borough overseers swearing in each other, there and then. But a counter-list of overseers, nominated by the church- wardens, was accepted by some of the county bench at the New Bailey. It was an utterly irregular act, even- tually quashed, but for the time being it answered the purpose of vexation and delay. The old authorities and " Her Majesty's Coroner sP 29 the new went on levying rates in opposition, the inhabitants being warned by each party not to pay a farthing to the other. The new justiciary was not complete without a coroner, and Mr. James Chapman, being one of the candidates for the office, received the vote of the town council. Had the county coroner, Mr. Rutter, presented himself as a candi- date, it is not unlikely that he would have been welcomed, at any rate by Mr. Cobden and others, in whose eyes his intimate connection, both past and present, with the office of Mr. Oswald Milne, would have been no insuperable objection. But instead of applying for the borough coronership, and so recognizing the new establishments, Mr. Rutter brought an action against Mr. Chapman for presuming to hold an inquest. It was, therefore, as a mere issue in the action for trespass — Rutter v. Chapman — that the great question of the validity of the Manchester charter of incorporation came to be determined at law. Nearly two years had still to pass before the decision was reached, and till then the rival coroners held inquests in duplicate, fighting a legal battle over some hundreds of the dead, and, in one case, coming to blows, that pro- duced the counter-action of " Chapvian v. Rutter P It was not the only affair of the kind which these protracted troubles bred. The local air v/as highly charged with provocation. Duels were challenged, though not ac- cepted, and a brace of local editors were sentenced for setting upon a third in St. Ann's Square. But their 30 The Manchester Corporation. victim had the magnanimity to beg them off, so they escaped imprisonment. While the borough coroner was obstructed by official refusals to find him juries, the new borough police force, though recruited fast enough by the rank and file of the older ones which it was to displace, found itself barred out by their chiefs from the half-dozen station-houses and lock-ups which the town then possessed. Thereupon the corporation took out summonses against the officials concerned, which were returnable at the new borough police-court (opened June, 1839). When the case came on there, the Town Clerk (Mr. Heron — after- wards Sir Joseph) was forestalled in his opening statement by the rising of that clever but erratic barrister, Charles Wilkins (afterwards Serjeant), then, perhaps, better known as a Tory agent than in any other character. Seven years before this he had been roundly abused in Cohhett's Register as the " mountebank actor," " the player- man of the PRIGS, in regular pay of the THING up at London " ; or, to use words of less alarming type, an ally of the Potter family against Cobbett at the first Manchester election. Wilkins retained through life an air suggestive of his early connection with the stage. Rather above the middle stature, with a broad chest, pink face, dark brown hair, a cool eye, a fine tenor voice, his was a good presence taken all in all, and but for his fondness for com- pany and good living he might have become a great man. As it was, he was a remarkable one. On the occasion now in question, Mr. Wilkins intimated A Strong Magistrate. 31 that the object of his appearance was to protest against the proceedings and to signify contempt for the tribunal he was addressing. But Mr. Williins probably knew, or, if he did not, he was quickly taught, that the new court was in strong hands. Not long before this the stipendiary magistracy of Manchester at the New Bailey had been relinquished by Mr. J. F. Foster on his appointment to be chairman of the county sessions. The office he thus vacated had been con- ferred upon a Yorkshire barrister, Mr. Daniel Maude. This was while the petition for incorporation was still in its earlier stages. When the corporation had come into being, and while the appointment of a separate stipendiary for the new court was delayed for years by the continued struggle over the charter, no legal or other doubts deterred Mr. Maude from giving his services to the new bench as well as the old. And that which he had thus practically recognized as a reality he would not let others treat as a sham. Mr. Wilkins, he presently remarked, must be aware that " he could not go on in that way." Mr. Wilkins attempted to continue, but Mr. Maude would not have it. " Indeed, I shall," said Mr. Wilkins. " No, you will not," said Mr. Maude. And the last word, held good. Maude's attainments as a lawyer were eminent and unquestioned. And, though his manners and appearance were unassuming, or, perhaps, insignificant, when off the bench, yet, seated in the chair of justice, with a big head 32 The Manchester Corporation. thrown back, the scanty remnant of tawny locks brushed across its baldness, spectacles pushed high above large sleepy-looking eyes, and resting on a broad, capacious forehead, the figure grew sufficiently lion-like. With no pretence at roaring, the voice was penetrative and decided. The new court was not to be trifled with, and the Wilkins demonstration went no further than adding one to the multitude of proofs of anti-corporate pertinacity. In however faint a sketch of the many swirlings of such a storm, its hero-in-chief must sometimes be lost to view. Mr. Cobden had, indeed, simultaneously with his election to the town council, become definitely committed to the grand agitation against the Corn Laws. From the begin- ning of the year 1839, therefore, his merely local work, like his private business, must have had diminished regard. For a year or two, nevertheless, his aldermanic functions were conspicuous enough. IMr. Cobden was not a frequent speaker at council meetings, even while he could be regular in his attendance. Debates and details were much more commonly left to others whose share in the esta- blishment of the corporation, however considerable, was secondary to Cobden's, or to George Wilson's, or to William Neild's. Those were the three names to which Alderman Kay, in his above-mentioned retrospect, gave the leading place as founders. He named Mr. Potter (afterwards Sir Thomas) as their staunch and powerful ally. He might not immodestly have said something also for one whom he passed over altogether, viz., himself. But, the corpora- tion once started, its proceedings were ordinarily in the Serjeant ^Vilkins Silenced. 33 hands of men ^s-ho could give them time and energies that had not been a\-ailable or capable for the eiffort of bringing it into being. Alderman Cobden's speeches in the cotmcil were, as might have been expected, reser\-ed for the wider questions that came before it. The most strictly local matter in ■which he thus intervened was the site of the Post OflBce. It seems to have been very largely Cobden's doing that a removal was made from the Exchange, or closely adjacent, to a situation that was considered more central, and which has been ever since retained. On this point opposite opinions were strongly held, and the discussion was not free from imputations of self-interest to Exchange pro- prietors on one side, and to IMosley Street merchants on the other. Cobden joined also in giving the cotmcil's support to railway extension between ^Manchester and London, for the first of the direct routes was not yet opened. And of course Mr. Cobden spoke as well as voted for the Manchester Corporation pronotmcing, as did the Common Council of London, in behalf of Com Law Repeal. Mr. Cobden was called as a witness for the defence (undertaken bv the corporation) in the trial of RuHcr v. Chapmjn, at Liverpool, August 22nd, 1S3Q, but his evi- dence was little more than formal. Examined by the Whig Auomey-General, Sir John (afterwards Lord Chan- cellor) Campbell, Mr. Cobden said he had been a member of the committee appointed to prepare the Manchester 34 Tlie Alanchester Corporaiion. petition for incorporation ; tliat he was also on the execu- tive committee to receive the signatures obtained by can- vassers ; that he assisted in putting the sheets together in order ; and that he was one of those engaged in carrying the petition to London, and delivering it at the Privy Council Office. He had probably collected fifty to one hundred signatures himself. This trial for trespass upon the county coroner's juris- diction had resolved itself immediately into a question of the validity of the charter. It was therefore sought by the plaintiff's counsel, Mr. Cresswell (afterwards Sir Cresswell Cresswell, the Divorce Court judge), to reopen the scrutiny of some 40,000 signatures. But Mr. Baron Maule lost no time in stopping him. A ready calculation had enabled his lordship to perceive that the course just entered upon would occupy him and the special jury for three years on end, at eleven hours a-day, Sundays excepted. So the bench and the bar had a legal argument of an hour or so, the judge being clearly of opinion that the charter was valid, and directing the jury to return a verdict for the borough coroner, subject to a bill of exceptions to be pleaded by the county coroner in a higher court. Even when the higher court had given judgment (1841) on the same side, an appeal was talked of. But by that time events had taken a turn which led to these proceedings being dropped. Instead of resistance to incorporation, the policy of its opponents became one of compensation for three lawyers (viz., Mr. Harper, clerk of the peace for the county ; Mr. Rutter, county coroner ; and Mr. Oswald An ^'■Occult" Force. 35 Milne, clerk to magistrates, &c., &c., &c., &c.), whose fees had sufTered by its establishment. Read in this later light, something of the hue of pro- phecy appears in the remarks of Alderman Cobden, at a council meeting in November, 1839. Moving a vote of thanks to the mayor, Mr. Cobden drew attention to the singular fact that throughout the struggle of the past two years the enemies of the corporation had been practically invisible. The opposition had never held a large meeting. "Sharpshooters there have been," he said, "riflemen firing at us from behind ambuscades ; but no great body of forces, marching with avowed objects, and recognized leaders, to oppose the charter. In these circumstances we must seek for the nature and character of the opposition ia some occult cause." Mr. Cobden went on to express a hope that the authors of vast trouble and expense would be some day exposed ; and he made it something of a reproach to the friends of incorporation that they had not taken such pains to inform their poorer and more ignorant fellow-townsmen of the true nature of the privi- leges it gave them, as would have rendered the Tory-Radical alliance impossible. He had entered into this movement for incorporation in furtherance of the principle of self-government. " No one has ever heard me say that the town had been badly managed. There have been men as able, and honest, and indefatigable, on the Tory side as on the Liberal side, to work for the town. But what I wanted to see was the people of Manchester exercising judgment and discretion 36 The Ma^ichester Corporation. themselves, and electing good men themselves, instead of men being elected under an old system which I should consider unjust to the ley payers at large." As long as the judgment in the coroners' case was with- held, Cobden and the corporation were still in the thick of the fight, and to a great extent the local reforms they had in view were paralyzed by the opposition. At the annual elections to the old body of police commissioners, in 1838, the anti-corporators, by a sudden manosuvre, ■managed to oust nearly all those friends of incorporation, such as Mr. John Edward Taylor, who had taken a leading part in the town's affairs. Their places were filled with staunch old Tories of the type of Mr. Thomas Sowler.* It was but a snatch victory, as the turning of the tables soon showed ; but if had the rather striking efi"ect of occurring almost at the moment when the incorporation party rejoiced in obtaining the charter. During its first year, therefore, the new corporation was confronted by a hostile majority in the police commission. But in the latter part of that year (1839), when the police commission elections came round again, the corporators were nearly everywhere successful. Alderman Cobden, then living in Quay Street, failed in his nominations of commissioners for his own district of St. John's. But elsewhere the clean sweep that was made of leading anti- corporators went so far as to excite regrets on the winning side, when it was seen that among the ostracized was a * Father of Ihe late Sir Thomas Sowler. A Plenipotentiary. 37 man so generally respected as Mr. Thomas Fleming, the promoter of the Market Street widening and many of the greatest local improvements for twenty years back. Another incident of the conflict at this time was the interposition of the Government to protect the town from dangers that were imminent. The anti-corporators had borne with much composure the taunt that self-styled " Conservatives " set themselves against the enlargement and consolidation of the borough police, and hampered the action of the magistracy at a time when turn-outs, sedition, and rioting were rife; when the "physical force Chartists " and other malcontents were meeting and drill- ing and " demonstrating " by torchlight ; when Feargus O'Connor, and Joseph Rayner Stephens, and a host of less-known firebrands, were inflaming the feelings of a famine-stricken people. But the Home Office could not view with unconcern the prospect of mob violence occurring while the local authorities were at war with each other. It was resolved, pending the determination of the validity of the charter, to take the police out of the hands of both the local parties, and appoint a chief-commissioner with full powers. An Act of Parliament created the office, and it remained in existence till the end of September, 1842. The corporators were, in principle, opposed to an interference of this kind by the central power, and they acquiesced in it only as making the best of a situation of things which their opponents had created. The latter were in no such compliant humour ; and no sooner was 38 The Manchester Corporation. the appointment of Sir Charles Shaw as chief-commis- sioner made known than he came in for a share of their ill-will. Sir Charles was a distinguished officer of the British Legion in Spain. After nine years' proof of bravery in the field, he had been content to take out a summons against some person who had assaulted him in England ; but it pleased his impromptu foes at Manchester to rake this matter up, and represent that here was a cowardly adventurer sent to rule them — a so-called colonel in a foreign service, who had never been more than a lieutenant in the British ; and whose coming home was signalized by a horse-whipping which he must doubtless have deserved ! Earlier in the year a somewhat similar outburst of spite had assailed that very high-minded, professionally eminent, amiable, and universally respected man, Mr. John Frederick Foster, the predecessor of Mr. Maude as stipendiary magistrate. When Mr. Foster took office as chairman of the county sessions, men of all parties vied with one another in pajing him compliments, and presenting him with a testimonial. When, in his new position, he had some of their obstructive doings brought before him, Mr. Foster had to give a judicial decision which did not meet the views of the anti-corporators. And when, soon after this, IMr. Foster accepted the offer of the corpora- tion that he should be Recorder of the new Borough Court of Quarter Sessions, calumny hastened to retract the recent eulogies, and discern in his conduct a sinister sequence of motive. Mr. Foster resigned the Rccordership at Water Cure for Riots. 39 once, and the office was given to Mr. Armstrong, after- wards M.P. for Lancaster. The public esteem that re- mained with Mr. Foster is still commemorated by his statue in the Manchester Assize Courts. But Sir Charles Shaw was not to be driven or frightened away. He filled his difficult and delicate position at Manchester with a degree of tact and discretion that put the aspersers to shame. The police under his charge had at times to undertake duties which anti-corporate nuisance controllers had left undone. His administration did not prove more acceptable in the circumstances than had been hoped for. It was expensive, and perhaps extravagant. Under the terms of his appointment. Sir Charles levied the police rates himself, he somewhat reduced the new police force in numbers, and was not thought very happy in his choice of lieutenants. The end of his rule vi'as hailed with pleasure by the local reformers. It had, however, the merit perhaps of meeting the exigency of a very troublous time, which included the distress, the turn-outs, and the plug-drawings of 1842. Sir Charles's generalship on the last of these occasions was much questioned. He him- self was rather proud of the successful application of the fire-hose as a recipe for mob dispersal. The force of cold water was irresistible, and while nobody was wounded by it, drenched clothes identified the runaways."* * Serjeant "WilMns (already mentioned) had a notion of his own for such emergencies, but it was of strictly local and defensive application. "You simply pay a halfpenny at the toll-bridge," was his gleeful explanation to an election meeting, how he stopped a Manchester mob in fuU cry after him at Bln.ckfnars. 40 The Manchester Corporation. The advent of Sir Charles Shaw had been coincident with the election of a "borough-reeve and constables" who were friends of incorporation. This, coupled with the corporate majority in the police commission, was a sore trial to the temper of the anti-corporators. Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that when, instead of the customary invitation from the churchwardens to the reeve and constables to share their pew at the Collegiate Church (now the Cathedral) during the year of office, the invitation expressly excluded the two constables, on the ground of room being required for Sir Charles Shaw : the departure from usage was interpreted as a slap in the face for the elected Liberals. The uninvited constables asserted their right of entry to the official pew, and it was, perhaps, by diplomatically absenting himself that Sir Charles Shaw avoided greater scandal. But Sunday after Sunday similar embarrassments were repeated. Alderman Cobden seems to have thought it would not be amiss if the churchwardens themselves had a taste of reform, and when Easter brought their turn for election he proposed a Liberal list. He had to make himself the centre of one of those tumultuous scenes by which the nave of the " Old Church" was so often disgraced. Two thousand people gathered there from all parts of a then undivided parish, which stretched as far as the Mersey at Stockport. When Cobden was hissed and howled at in his nominations, he turned upon the disturbers and said, " I may tell these noisy gentlemen that they are incon- veniencing themselves more than me, for here I will stay Nave '■'■Shindies" 41 till midnight, or I will be heard." He objected to the principle and practice of the retiring body naming their own successors. He had no objection to their nominees, on the score of personal character ; but he commended the men of his choice (Mr. D. Price, Mr. C. J. S. Walker, and Mr. G. Hall) as " infinitely more fit for the duties, and infinitel}' more in accord with the sentiments of the com- munity." Here occurred an interruption, through the activity of an individual notorious as "a lodging-house keeper in Blackley Street." Blackley Street ! Pronounced as " Blakeley Street," the place was so infamous in both hemispheres that thieves and rogues could cross the At- lantic -^-ith no other address in Europe to guide them to a place of refuge. One of the earlier works of the new cor- poration was to let daylight into that sink of wickedness, and disguise its name as Charter Street. But Blackley Street was part of the parish, and its voice was raised against Cobden's. So was Elijah Dixon's. So was Radical Wroe's. Mr. Cobden did not prolong the scene : he said his churchmanship was sufficiently strong to have more re- gard for the sacred character of the place. Tories and Radicals had a doubtful victory on show of hands ; and when a poll was taken afterwards their alliance prevailed ; partly, perhaps, because the Cobden party had not quite prepared the machinery of the contest (day after day many of their voters turned away, baffled by mere crowding at the poll-office) ; partly, also, through popular prejudice 42 The Manchester Corporation. against the application of the new Poor Law in the town, another of the questions on which Reformers and Whigs were not uncommonly ranged on one side ; while Tories and Radicals took the other. A month later, Alderman Cobden was moving the town council to oppose a Bill introduced by Mr. Fox Maule, Lord J. Russell, and Mr. E. J. Stanley, the effect of which would have been to carry the principle of centraliza- tion to the point of danger to local freedom. It was nominally a Bill to Amend the Act for the EstabHshment of County and District Constabulary. Mr. Cobden pointed out that some of its clauses would vest the management of the police of boroughs in the Home Office instead of in the town councils. A Committee of the House of Com- mons was taking evidence on the subject, and Mr. Cobden had been called before it to speak to the accuracy of some reports of the Manchester Statistical Society on the local government of towns. He had then perceived a disposi- tion to centralize, which, if left unchecked, would aim a deadly blow at the local corporations. He considered the Whig Government were doing their best, by such a Bill as this, "to enable some future Government to rule the country with a rod of iron." On Mr. Cobden's motion the town clerk was instructed to address the authorities of the smaller boroughs, with a view to com- bined opposition. In the result the obnoxious clauses were dropped. All through 1840 the local action of the corporation was fettered by the judges' delay in deciding the charter ques- The Fight for Fees. 43 tion. Sir C. Shaw held the pohce in hand, independent of party struggles, and nearly everything proper to the jurisdiction of a town council was still withheld from it. The hostile portion of the county magistrates disputed the power of the borough bench to make committals to the New Bailey prison. Prisoners were received only on the committal of such borough magistrates as were in the county commission of the peace, and the trials took place at county sessions only. For the time being Recorder Armstrong and his borough sessions were as good as stranded. The fees for prosecutions were kept flowing in the good old channels, and as long as this lasted the enemies of the corporation had cause of joy. But per- haps the conviviahty on Mr. Cobden's failure to change the churchwardens was more rapturous, not to say up- roarious. In Mr. Oswald Milne's speech on that occasion he seemed to adopt as his own an expression attributed to someone else, — that what some incorporators desired was to "dive into the public purse." The grace of this utter- ance from a man popularly supposed to be in receipt of £1,000 to ^8,000 a-year as official fees, was contrasted with the known readiness of men like Cobden, Neild, and Potter to pledge their private means in the cause of civic reform. But while the churchwardens and county magistracy remained hostile, the police commissioners were becoming more and more pro-corporate. Their elections in 1840 44 The Manchester Corporation. left the Reform majority of 1839 undiminished, and at those of 1841 the anti-corporators made no effort to shake it. The judicial verdict in the Rutter-Chapman case had by that time considerably cleared the ground. To upset the charter was now a thing practically recognized by the opposition as past praying for. Hostile overseers and others began more anxiously to count the costs for which they were rendering themselves personally liable by their obstruction. Distraint of goods and chattels was a weapon flourished with fine effect. Negotiations for referring matters to arbitration were set on foot by some few gentle- men on each side, who thought a compromise might now be possible. But the attempt broke down on the refusal of the corporation representatives to admit in principle that compensation was due from the borough funds to those who were losers by the recent changes. The utmost they would agree to was that the corporation should pay anything that the arbitrators or an umpire might award. From this time onward " compensation " was the word which, stripped of all disguise, took the place of "corpo- ration" as symbolic of the remaining controversy. In the preceding years of turmoil it had been not uncommon for friends as well as foes of incorporation to look back upon the old liginu as one in which local affairs had long been exempt from political party spirit. Any wrangles or quarrels of the police commission, the gas directors, or the town improvement committee, were Purse Politics. 45 said to have been entirely personal or parochial — the names of Whig and Tory having nothing to do with them. But Cobden's banner of incorporation, it was said, was as the red rag that fired the Tory bull. The Municipal Act of 183s had been the work of Whigs and Reformers, and everywhere they had led the way in the local changes it had wrought. Thus the battle of incorporation at Man- chester became at once a political battle on the surface, and the inference was drawn that if politics had been allowed to slumber in the town's administration previously, the repose had been conditional upon Tory ascendency being unchallenged. But in every political contest in the town, from 1832 onwards, the Whigs and Reformers (on the ^10 suffrage) had gained the day; and it was now shown that they were the stronger also in municipal con- tests, if those were made political. The later phases of the struggle, however, made it hard to say which looked the more ludicrous in retrospect — the affectation of Tory or Radical principles at stake, or the real party enthusiasm that had been enlisted in their name. Now that all was reduced to a question of compensation to individuals, the drop from "patriotism" to "pay" was too much like the change from artificial splendour in the skies to a drizzle of spent rockets. Not that there was any immediate retrenchment of spectacular effect. Talk of moving heaven and earth ! both Houses of Parliament were moved for Mr. Milne. But the great Duke of Wellington in the Lords, and 46 The Manchester Corporation. Mr. Wilson Patten* in the Commons, were alike unsuc- cessful in their advocacy. The ground of it was the diversion of fees and income which the establishment of the corporation and the borough sessions must inevitably have caused. The Municipal Reform Act had not only embraced the principle of compensation for such losses, but in the eyes of strict economists had carried it too far. The Act, however, did not go beyond providing for public officials who were dispossessed, and the usual answer to Mr. Milne's claims was that he was in no such position. He had been deprived of none of his posts, and though the fees attached to them had been largely diverted, those which remained were lucrative still. It was argued that any publican on an old coach-road whose receipts suffered through the railways must have had as good a claim on the public as Mr. Milne's. The ratepayers of Manchester thought they owed him nothing, and when compensation clauses were introduced into a " Criminal Justice Bill," the opposition was not confined to the town council, but was expressed by meetings all over the borough. Mr. Milne's own language against the corporation and its promoters had been disrespectful from the beginning, and now he became the subject of plain-speaking in his turn. It was by Mr. Milne's advice, it was said, that the old authorities had kept the police in their hands, levied rates for it, and wasted thousands of the public money'. " For twenty-nine * The Lord Winmarleigh of later years. ■ A Qutre of Aldermen. 47 years Mr. Milne had been receiving in fees three times the amount of the stipendiary magistrate's salary." Alderman Kay said the Bill under discussion, if passed, should be entitled "An Act for the Better Relief of the Fully Em- ployed Rich." Alderman Callender* recalled a saying of Mr. Cresswell at the Rutter trial, that "incorporation would prove a perpetual blister to the town ; " but " it now appeared that Mr. Milne might be christened Cantharides, or the Blister Fly." Alderman Hopkins remembered that when the Act appointing a stipendiary magistrate for Manchester was passed, early in the century, a proposal (in the Milne interest) to make the office of clerk to the magistrates an appointment for life was defeated. The magistrates had always remained free to appoint whom they pleased. But Mr. Milne held the clerkship of the police commis- sioners also. And now the pro-corporate majority in that body, looking forward to the nearer prospect of a trans- ference of its functions to the corporation, wished to guard against a life-appointment and its consequent claims being established in regard to that office as well. It was dis- covered that they did not want a law clerk at all; they wanted a clerk, and when they wanted law they could call in a la-wyer. By a majority of 99 to 65 they voted the clerkship vacant. Then the Radical leaders followed the Tories out of the room. It had been said that Mr. Milne would still be accepted as a candidate for the office in * Father of a subsequent M.P. for Manchester. 48 The Manchester Corporation. future. But Mr. Milne would do nothing to prejudice his claims to compensation. As long as he had a shilling in the world, he declared, he would maintain them. Alderman Cobden took no part in the debates on this head. Whatever his opinions about it, the public expression of them went no further than those allusions, which have been noticed in speeches of previous years. It was now the end of August, 1841 ; the General Election of that year had taken place, and Mr. Cobden had been elected IM.P. for Stockport. A change of Government, and of majorities, from 'Whig to Tory, made Parliament no more pliable to compensa- tion schemes. It did not prevent the passing of an Act, in 1842, confirming the incorporation of Manchester, nor of subsequent Acts by which the corporation became not only the paramount but the sole civic executive ; the powers of the police commission, the gas directors, and the town improvement committee passing into their possession, and the manorial rights becoming theirs by purchase. The altered circumstances brought dramatic changes in the attitude of the claimants for compensation. Mr. Oswald Milne and Mr. Rutter, in turn, made personal appearances before the town council, sitting in the town hall, of which they, in place of Mr. Milne's old clients, were now the unquestioned masters. Each was catechised on oath as to the particulars of his claims. Mr. Milne had computed the amount due to him to be £l\,-jz\. Mr. Harper claimed, as clerk of the peace for the county, above /'i 9,000. Mr. Rutter's claim was some The late SIR JOSEPH HERON, Town Clerk of Manchester. [From a Biisi in Ihe A/aiichesfer Toivn //all.) Putting a Price on it. 49 smaller number of thousands, or an annuity cii £-ii\. The total gross amount of these claims was /'So, 282 : 8^. \\d. The personal treatment of the claimants at these inter- views was studiously respectful and polite. Nothing could well have surpassed either the gentlemanly patience or the professional astuteness with which the Town Clerk (Mr. Heron) performed his exacting part of inquisitor- depute, confinning at the same time his reputation for saving immense sums to his employers. Mr. Milne's demeanour, as one sees it only in the printed reports of question and answer, appears that of a way-worn Gulliver, rather surprised to lind himself so civil towards the pretensions of the senate of Lilliput. , Mr. Milne was then an elderly, portly, rather burly man, about five feet ten ; what Burns calls " a buirdly chiel " in appearance, with a fine forehead and a determined mouth. Standing there (for he declined to sit) a picture of some- what rough and decaying force, he and the elegant-look- ing, accomplished cross-examiner, typified the old and new order of things sufficiently well in their own persons.* : Preliminaries over, the tall, slim, glossy and raven- locked town clerk — young, handsome, dandified, courteous, but perfect master of his business — at once probes his subject with the question — "At what date, Mr. Milne, were you appointed clerk to the magistrates of the Manchester Division.?" Mr. Milne, in reply, has quite a fund of autobiography to communicate. He tells how * Accompanying this page is a copy of a bust of Sir Joseph Heron (taken in later life) in the Manchester Town Hall. E 50 The Manchester Corporation. he and his father, in their business as lawyers and law clerks, arranged things between them in his early days, more than thirty years ago. There seems a shade of regret for some long lost opportunity, or long past mistake in life, as the old gentleman recollects how by choice or persuasion he got into the position he then took, " or else (he concludes) I should not have been here to- day." All this without a word or sign of interruption, and then the town clerk quietly repeats the question, precisely as before. Mr. Milne rambles off again, and the town clerk continues to pin him. But nothing more definite is obtainable than that every county magistrate appointed for a generation past had found it convenient to call and commit himself to the hands of Mr. Jlilne. Had the collective bench met specially to give him a public post, it could not have been, in his own eyes, better established. Three weeks later, on the loth May, 1843, the council resolved unanimouslj-, "That Mr. Oswald Milne is not entitled to compensation out of the borough fund." This view was eventually upheld in the law courts, but it was long in doing. Mr. Milne's action against the corpo- ration came on at Liverpool Assizes, August, 1844. The array of counsel was (again to quote Alderman Kay) pro- portionate to the magnitude of the issue. The claimant's leader was Thesiger (afterwards Lord Chancellor Chelms- ford) ; the corporation leader, Fitzroy Kelly (afterwards Lord Chief Baron). The judge was Cresswell, who, five years before, had held the leading brief against the corpo- Slender Salvage. 5 1 ration in the Rutter case. His lordship directed the jury to return a general verdict for the Crown, in Mr. Milne's favour. But the case went then to the higher courts, and there the litigation was still protracted. In successive pleadings before the judges, the claim was gradually whittled away, and by about the year 1 848, or ten years from the beginning of Mr. Cobden's exertions for local reform, the case of Milne v. The Corporation dis- appeared entirely. The first portions of the claim to be dismissed were those founded upon loss of fees and emolu- ments as clerk to the commissioners of police ; and as prosecuting attorney and clerk to the magistrates acting for the Manchester Division of the county, in as far as those fees and emoluments were derived from the business of "the townships comprised within the limits of the borough." (The business of other parts of the division would remain attached to Mr. Milne's office, at least till time brought further changes than that of the incorporation of Man- chester.) Thus about /"20,ooo of the claim was dis- posed of at a stroke. In the end, also, the judges decided that Mr. Milne had no claim upon the borough for the /'i4,ooo and upwards, which represented loss of fees and emoluments as clerk to the stipendiary magistrate acting within the townships of Manchester and Salford. The cases of Mr. Rutter and Mr. Harper were on another footing. It was all along admitted that Mr. Rutter had a substantial claim, though the amount of it was disputed. It was at length commuted into an annuity of £^1'^, or about ^100 more than the corporation had agreed to; the E 2 5 2 The Manchester Corporation. sum being finally arrived at by appeal to the Treasury. But, in respect of Mr. Harper's claim, as clerk of the peace, of a gross sum of /~i 9,000, or annuity in proportion, the Treasury confirmed the corporation's estimate of its liability to him as represented by a payment of only six pounds eight shillings per annum. Thus, then, those soaring, flaming " rockets " of the opposition, after somewhat slow decline, ultimately fizzled out. Cobden's oflace of alderman was nominally retained for its entire term of six years. But if the record of the late Mr. Simpson, of Mottram, in his " Annals of the Man- chester Council," may be trusted, Alderman Cobden's attendance was limited, in the concluding year, to one meeting onty, and in the two previous years he attended not at all. It was in 1842, while Cobden was an absentee, that the council was at length able to order repayment to him and Alderman Neild of the net sum they had them- selves spent in procuring the incorporation, /"i, 700 odd, without any interest added. Naturally, there was no thought of rencAving connexion with the IManchester Town Council. Like his fellow- incorporator, George Wilson, whose chairmanship of the League had obliged him to relinquish town-councillorship long before, Mr. Cobden was too much engaged in the Anti-Corn Law campaigns to have time for local business any more. He could never be quite indifferent to local concerns, because (again to quote Mr. Morley) larger matters "never Cobden and ^' CtiUasses." 53 at any time in his life dulled his interest in the need that lay close to his hand." But, after truly heroic labour for a couple of years in giving Manchester its local self-govern- ment, and in seeing it through the early trials of a new existence, it was to those higher and wider flights of politics with which he had begun, that "Alderman Cobden" immediately returned. Almost his last appearance in the town council would be as far back as April, 1841, when he exerted himself — but this time in vain, for many seemed to absent them- selves from the vote — to qualify the terms of welcome to be given by the corporation to " Commodore Napier" — the gallant Sir Charles — on his return to England from the operations at Acre. Cobden was willing enough, ap- parently, to applaud a hero, but he questioned the foreign policy on which the heroism had been expended, and would have had Manchester seize the occasion to say a word for " non-intervention." But it was not to be. And the work that became such a man as Cobden in a town council may be said to have already ended. One cannot leave the consideration of it without thinking of the contrast which, traceable to his impulse, the Man- chester of to-day presents with that in which he laboured. It is not merely that the departments, as well as the pro- vince, of municipal work have extended. Manchester, in almost every material, moral, and metropolitan sense which the name can assume, owes much to the line Mr. Cobden took in national affairs. How much the town is Cobden's debtor for its local 54 The Manchester Corporation. institutions few who pass his statue in St. Ann's Square are likely to have in mind. Without Cobden, doubtless,' Manchester could not have been without its municipal freedom much longer. Imagination refuses to picture the absurdity of the giant continuing always in the leading-strings of infancy. As a matter of fact, the in- corporation of Manchester had been mooted even before the Municipal Reform Act, and before Cobden's "letters" and unreported " first speech " on the subject. Lord Brougham's name is connected with the proposal of some special enactment for the purpose. But, after all this, it was only by Cobden's determined effort that the thing was actually done. The slightest review of the opposition at that time attending the measure must show, further, how unlikely it is that the general body of its promoters, numerous and zealous though they were, if they had lacked the driving force of such a man as Cobden, could have got the thing done when it was. But the contrast of past and present in\'ites notice from another point of view. Some one lately published in the Manchester City Nexus a notice of the celebrated De Tocqueville's impressions of Manchester during a visit in 1835. As translated, a part of them reads as follows : — " On this watery plain, which nature and art have con- tributed to irrigate, are thrown, as if at hazard, palaces and cottages. Ever}i:hing in the outer appearance of the city attests the individual power of man, nothing the regulating De Tocquemlle's Manchester (1835). 55 power of society. Human liberty reveals at each step its capricious creative force : nowhere is apparent the slow and continuous effort of government. ... At the top of the hillocks which I am attempting to describe, thirty or forty manufactories lift their heads : their six storeys rise in the air, and their immense circumference announces from afar the centralization of industry. Around them have been scattered at will the wretched habitations of the poor. They are reached by a multitude of little tortuous paths. Between them extends uncultivated ground which has lost the charm of country life, but is yet without the advantages of the town. The land there is already disturbed and torn up in a thousand places, but is not yet covered by the dwellings of man. And the streets which connect these badly-joined portions of the great city present, as everything does, the example of a hasty and incomplete work — the effort of a great population to press on to gain — to amass gold — to have everything at a single stroke, and meanwhile to scorn the pleasures and the comforts of life." The local memory that can reach from fifty to sixty years back must recognize enough of truth in this and other passages of a very vivid picture, to account for some of the troubles that have baffled sanitary and social re- formers since. It also shows how different was the abnor- mal growth of Manchester from the more regular and gradual growth of towns under different industrial con- ditions. Such as Manchester then was, from the cause assigned, her debt was great, as Mr. Cobden owned, to 56 TJic jlhmcliester Corporation. local leaders who made the best of things under a rule which the man of more modern ideas could only treat as obsolete. The longest memory will soon be too short to revive the picture of the town and times as Cobden knew them when he began his public work. Central, or mercantile, Manchester had but half shaken off the reign of gloom and darkness, in narrow lanes or blind alleys, to which the elders of the local commerce had clung with a prejudice akin to that of Cobden's uncle, and first employer, against his nephew's love of " book-knowledge." Near the Ex- change, Market Street was almost the sole thoroughfare wider than a dozen steps from wall to wall. Others that now give light and space in that vicinity were hardly dreamed of: they had certainly no existence. For readers of to-day, the topography of the local post-office debates, before mentioned, must be a hopeless puzzle. Where is Ducie Place ? Or Barnes Street 1 Or Crow Alley } All lay within the area which the Exchange now covers. They are gone, therefore, like the more modern Exchange Arcade, and historic Newall's Buildings, the home of the League. The growth of the Exchange has obliterated all. Local memory, in a dreamy mood, might indulge the fancy that above the daily crowd at High 'Change, yet within the lofty room and beneath its roof, somewhere near the north-east angle, some chamber of the upper air is haunted by the shades of nearly all the figures in Herbert's picture, a ghostly congregation above the living multitude of the market.* * See page loi. Mise-en-Scene. 57 But this is not a place to dwell on phantasies. Enough to add, that the birth of the Manchester municipality was brought about in a time without telegraphs or cheap post- age, almost without railways; when commerce and industry were in shackles, the people starved or stormed ; and half the conveniences of life, of education, and of recreation, familiar now, were still unknown. And it is only when the clock is thus turned back on the mental stage, and the lights thus lowered, that we are able (in stage phrase) to " discover" the conditions in which Cobden's or any kin- dred spirit of the past yearned and strove for better times. 58 Mr. Cobdeit and my Father. MR. COBDEN AND MY FATHER. Mr. Cobden had not been long a resident in Man- chester before he and my father — Absalom Watkin — ■ became closely acquainted ; and that acquaintance con- tinued, with more or less agreement on political affairs, till my father's death in December, 1861. They had literary tastes in common. They were both self-edu- cated men, in the sense that neither had had the advantages of a high school or an university. Each had habitually " burnt his midnight oil," after long hours of daily labour. They both loved books and loved their libraries, and to a great extent they shared the same merciful and sympathising human instincts. They loved the poor and the oppressed. They claimed no credit for that ; they knew they could not even help it, and their sense of human duty — the better words are, of Christian duty — forced them to devote themselves in all ways, and always, to the great cause of world-mending. They were both truly Christians — men who read, who believed in, and who practised the principles of the Sermon on the ABSALOM WATKIN, Born 1787; Died 1861, {From a Paiittiu^^ by iVilliatii Bradley.') Young Mrs. Colden. 59 Mount. It might be — I think it was — that my father believed with less inquiry, and Mr. Cobden with more. But if Heaven is a matter of stages, no two Christians will be found in higher places in the Heavenly rest. My father was a frequent guest at the big old house in Quay Street,* whereat literary, political, and fine-art subjects were discussed at Mr. Cobden's table ; and I fancy a great deal of good to the intellectual, as well as the business, life arose from these social meetings. Mr. Cobden was, as my father had been, almost from youth upward, a member of the Literary Society which met, and I think meets still, for purposes of debate, at the back of the famous " Cross Street Chapel" — an edifice famous for services to the emancipa- tion of our people from old Tory tyrannies and ignorance. As I write, I can see Mr. Cobden's figure and hear his voice in the debates of the society, of which I was then a member; and I can recall a "Ladies' Night" on which Mrs. Cobden, a Welsh lady, then beaming with the beauty of youth, was introduced and welcomed to the assembly. Some years earlier, after a great meeting in the old Manchester Theatre, in October, 1837, ^o hear Mr. Wyse, M.P., and others, to further national education — a meeting connected with a movement originated by Mr. Cobdenf — my father received the following letter, which I print * Afterwards the first home of the Owens College. t The Manchester " Society for Promoting National Education," was the name of the association which thus endeavoured to create an interest m the subject ten 5'ears before the "Lancasliire Public Schools Association" began its memorable efforts in the same cause. 6o Mr. Cohden and my Father. rather to show the minute and thorough labour bestowed by Mr. Cobden on everything he undertook : — " Manchester, " 3irf October, 1837. " My dear Sir, " We are preparing, in a pamphlet form, a report of the speeches of Thursday last. As yours was so imper- fectly heard owing to the noise (and the noise was, humanely speaking, unavoidable, after the physical exertion of sitting for two hours without moving whilst Mr. Wyse was preceding you), I think you would prefer to correct it by writing it out again for the printer, and if you will do so, the Com- mittee will be much obliged. Mr. Wyse will also correct his speech. " Yours very truly, "RICH'' COBDEN. "A. Watkin, Esq." Another letter to my father is connected with the begin- nings of the League. The precursor society — the Anti- Corn Law Association — was originated after a reception given to Dr. Bowring at the York Hotel, Manchester, on the loth September, 1838 ; and my father, who was placed on the committee, was associated with Mr. Cobden and others in preparing the first address issued to the public. Hence the following letter : — "MosLEY Street, ' ' y^d December, 1 838 . "My dear Sir, " I presume the honorary secretary has informed you that you have been appointed one of a sub-committee The League t'/i Enibrxo. 6t to draw up an address upon the nature and objects of the Anti-Corn Law Association ; :\Ir. Smith* and :\Ir. Prentice, together with your humble sen-ant, being your colleagues. Ever since I received the notice I have been like a certain personage spoken of in Job, going to and fro, and have not had leisure to call on you or others upon the subject. But I find that an adjourned meeting of the Council \^ill be held on Wednesday evening to receive the report, and just as yesterday I got the notice of this, I was visited with an adjourned attack from inflammation of the eves, which pre- cludes my writing more than this explanation. I hope to have an opponunity of speaking to you upon the subject to-morrow; meantime " I remain, yours very truly, "RICH° COBDEN. " Absai.011 ■Watkin', Esq. " P. S. — I heard a hint that you were going to oppose the opening of the Zoological Gardens on Sundavs.f Before you bring your judgment to a verdict upon this subject (one of the most important that can be discussed}, I should like to give you a few facts connected with the observance of the Sunday abroad. I don't mean to refer to Catholic States, but to Prussia, Saxony, Switzerland, (S:c. IMay we * The late John Benjamin Smith, II. P. + The gardens here in question were on the site of the present Greek Church in Higher Broughton. Opened at the end of Jlay, 1S3S, they were closed some four years afterwards, a good example of the failure of joint stock enterprise in a field where the more effective private management of the proprietors of " Belle Vue, "in later days, achieved success. 62 Air . Cohden and my Father . not be possibly wrong, and they right ? At least let us Judge by the fruits." My father was associated with the League from its birth to its triumph, and spoke, wrote, and worked admirably in the cause. He was, however, a man who, prompted by his convictions, did his work and never cared for credit or applause. His work was his reward. The "address" above mentioned was an able and elo- quent exposition of the principles of the new agitation against the Corn Laws. There are parts of it in which it is not difficult to trace the several hands of its four authors. The whole is too long to be here reproduced, but a brief summary may be permitted. The manifesto set out with a disclaimer of any appeal to exclusive political parties. It drew attention to the fact that a tax of fifteen millions sterling a year was levied on the people's food for the sole benefit of landowners, though our most powerful minister — Pitt — had never ventured to tax it for the purposes of the State. The community of interest of the agricultural and manufacturing population was argued upon economical grounds, and likewise the dependence of national and imperial interests on the welfare of our foreign trade. The eflfects of foreign com- mercial rivalry with it were shown in many different quarters, and Corn Law repeal was advocated in order to place our industrious artizans on a level with foreign competitors. At the same time (the address went on) : — studied Moderation. 63 "We do not join in opinion with those who predict that such a measure would reduce the price of our corn to its present cost abroad. All that we contend for as indis- pensable to the preservation of our foreign commerce is that the prices be equalized. And whether that be effected through a fall in the cost of food here, or, as we main- tain, owing to a rise in the prices abroad, similar to that which took place in foreign wools, linseed, fruits, and other articles, consequent upon the reduction of import duties in this country, our object will be equally attained. "But besides the advantage of relief to our artizans in their competition with foreign manufacturers for the pos- session of neutral markets, the repeal of our Corn Law would simultaneously open up markets in those very countries where the most severe competition is at present to be found." Still guarding against over-estimates of the benefits of Free Trade, and repudiating all idea of privilege for the manufacturing class at the expense of others, these emphatic words were added : — "Far from holding out the delusive prospect of advan- tages not purchased by the toil and industry of the people, we boldly tell our industrious countrymen that labour is the price at which every earthly boon must be purchased ; and all that we seek in their behalf is that freedom which shall secure to them a recompense, great or small, in proportion to the extent of their exertions." A passage anticipating some reversal of the factory 64 Mr. Cohden and my Father. system is one which experience has shown to be a little too idyllic : — " With a free, untaxed trade in corn, the muslin, gingham, and calico weaver may again ply his industry at home, amidst his own happy and contented family." The address wound up with appeals for aid against the Bread Tax from all philanthropists, advocates of educa- tion, and friends of peace. In one sentence was the reminder that "the cravings of hunger must be satisfied before even religion itself can exercise its holy influence ; " and in another, that "the Author of our faith has com- manded us, before praying for spiritual gifts, before asking the forgiveness of our trespasses, to supplicate for a supply of ' our daily bread.'" These words are all but identical with part of Cobden's letter in 1841 (see Mr. Morley's ninth chapter), declining a clergyman's invitation to subscribe for "ten new churches " in Manchester until the expense of overthrow- ing legal obstacles to the feeding of the hungry should have ceased. I have just found two notes of Mr. Cobden's to myself, a portion of one and the whole of the other, which I think I must here transcribe. Both were written after his passing from Manchester to London from his visit to the United States, on the business of the Illinois Central Railway, the affairs of which had given him anxiety. The first note refers to the wholly unexpected invitation from Lord Palmerston to join the Cabinet, which was E'ventfui Interviews. 65 handed to Cobden on his landing at Liverpool from America : — " London, "1st July, 1859. " My dear Watkin, " Let me thank j'ou heartily for your kind welcome, and for the substantial compliment 3'OU were so good as to offer me. I am afraid my decision respecting the offer of Office has offended some of my friends, but I could not take any other course. It will be seen by-and-by that I was right. I saw P. to-day, and in the same amicable spirit in which he made the proposal I declined his offer ; but as Gibson is in, I shall, I hope, be able to give quite as good support to the Government as though I were one of them. I hope you are coming in.* ' ' Ever yours truly, "R. COBDEN." The second recalls to my mind a long interview, three months before, at the office of Mr. Sale, the solicitor, in Princess Street, in Manchester, when we met to talk over the troubles of a good friend, who had made great sacrifices for the good cause— difficulties soon afterwards put right — and finished our conversation with France and * This refers to my (unsuccessful) candidature for Yarmouth, after I had declined an invitation to stand for Salford. 66 Mr. Cohden and my Father. trade. Everyone knows what followed in the great work of the French treaty (of which more hereafter) : — "London, yd October, 1859. " My dear Watkin, * * * * * "When I landed from America I went to London by yom- line, and was in raptures with the Green Valley, with its busy prosperous villages which met my eye from the Dinting Viaduct, and I felt proud of my country as I passed through the corn fields on the borders of Notts and Lincolnshire, where the crops were nearly double the average growth of the farms in the United States. " I shall be glad if an opportunity should offer for us to meet and talk again on the personal matter,* which has given me many thoughtful and desponding reflections. I hope you did not omit to remember me most kindly to your excellent father ; and believe me, " Yours veiy tnily, "R. COBDEN." My dear father had at that time been seized by an attack of paralysis, which gradually increased until his death two years later. * Rercmng to the "good friend" alluded to on the previous page. A Fight for Free Speech. 67 MISERY AND STEVENSON SQUARE. The period from 1838 to 1843, and from 1845 to 1848, was a period of misery in the manufacturing districts. A large portion of the hard hand-worldng people existed, but did not live. I could never forget it. Thus, I followed my father in the agitation for the Repeal of the Food Laws and for Free Trade. I was devoted to the cause, and zealous, if not always discreet. My heart was with the suffering people. And when the Corn-Law repealers found themselves opposed by the Chartists, their purposes libelled, their meetings disturbed, I became at last indig- nant, and, when patience was exhausted, did my best to bring about the means of protecting free discussion at open public assemblages of our citizens. We who were in a peaceable way advocating the unrestricted importation of food to starving people — that importation leading to more exports, more work, and more wages also — were for a long time described as " Moral Force Whigs," a term in contrast with " Physical Force Chartists." When we found out that the Duke of Buckingham's " Protection " — or, in other words, " Unjust Rent " — Association* was devoting its funds to ruffling, our indigna- * Central Society for the Protection of Agriculture was its formal title. F 2 68 Misery and Stevenson Square. tion grew, and so far as I was concerned, and a good many zealous young men — and others agreed with me and them — we said to ourselves, "What is this physical force which we are, meeting after meeting, submitting to ? Why should we not test what it is ? " Thus organization began, resistance was made, and after a small body of resolute people had bundled a few hundreds down stairs, or out of doors, without much difficult}-, the conclusion was come to that this Chartist ph_vsical force was mainly " brag." And at last those with whom I was associated in my capacity of chairman of a working man's association determined to hold, for the first time of daring, an open- air demonstration in Stevenson Square, and to ask the Iilayor of IManchester to preside. A requisition, signed by about 6,000 working men, was obtained, and I had the honour, with four others, to present it to the Mayor, jNIr. Neild. His worsliip hesitated, and at last promised an answer nest day, when the answer was in the negative. Some asked Mr. Cobden to preside. This was in the spring of 1S41, before the fall of the Melbourne ministr}', and before the general election at which Mr. Cobden first became JI.P. I will now refer to my diary for details of a remarkable event in the historj- of free discussion in Manchester. Here are extracts : — "J/aj' 9, 1841. "We — the Operative Anti-Corn Law-ites of Manchester — have managed to unite the repealers of the Union against the Chartists. Last Wednesday evening the latter called a c Vied trie I Va, ^ Letter of the Rev. E. Trafford I.Eicir, Rector oj Clicadle, Cheshire, A fir. 1840. [p. 6<)] O'Counclltfes Y. O'Coiuwn'ks. 69 meeting to pass a vote of censure upon O'Connell. We sent all our men, and also the repealers, and entirely upset them. The malcontents left in an unusual hurry." '^ May 16th, 1841. " Last Monday night we had a lecture against the Corn Laws, delivered on the Green in the open air, at Cheadle, by Finigan. We had an excellent meeting." I am reminded here of a letter from Mr. Cobden, a year before, relating to the same locality : — "Manchester, " llth May, 1840. " Dear Sir, " Nothing but unavoidable absence upon the Con- tinent could have prevented my accepting the invitation which you have done me the honour to transmit to me for the 20th. I have long watched the exertions of the mem- bers of the North Cheshire Anti-Corn Law Association with feelings of sincere gratification.*" The field of their labours did not tempt them with the prospect of a speedy triumph ; for in few places could they have found a less favourable scene of operations. Their success has, how- ever, again demonstrated how true it is, that no impedi- ments, however great, can long resist the energy and * I had sent an m\'itation to the Rector of Cheadle, the Rev. E. Traflford Leigh, to joui our North Cheshire Anti-Com Law Asso- ciation. I append 3.fac simile of his reply— curiously illustrative of the honest prejudices of his time. 70 Misery and Stevenson Square. perseverance of Englishmen, when enhsted in a just cause. May 3'our little band go on increasing in numbers and in strength ; in zeal and activity it needs no increase ! I shall only add, that, wherever I may happen to find myself on the 2 0th, I shall drink a bumper to the good health of the meeting at the George at Cheadle, and another to the health of that unwearied advocate of repeal, my friend Mr. Prentice ; and believe me to be, with sincere respect for the members of your body, ever truly, ' ' Yours, "RICH" COBDEN. "E. W. Watkin, Esq." I return to my diary of May i6th, 1841 : — "On Thursday evening I went to the committee meeting of the O. A. C. L. A.,* and then adjourned to the ' Queen Anne,' in Long Millgate, where we formed an association for No. 3 District. f " On Tuesday next we have a meeting in the town hall for the purpose of backing ministers. J We have to summon our forces to the battle — a stormy one, no doubt, it will be." * Operative Anti-Corn Law Association. t This did not mean No. 3 of the fourteen districts of the old Police Commissioners, but of the districts into which we had mapped the towm for our own agitation. \ The Melbourne Cabinet was then favouring a fixed duty on com as a measure of amelioration though not abolition. Rufflers Drubbed. 7 1 "May 22,. "On Monday evening last the Chartists held a meet- ing in Carpenters' Hall for the purpose of continuing McDowall as a member of the Convention* a fortnight longer, and also — but this did not appear in the bills — for that of passing an address to the Chartists of Newr}-. " Our associates and the Irish and other repealers of the Union and the Com Laws mustered in full strength, and we had as pretty a row as I ever witnessed. The Chartists were driven out of the hall four times. We regularly thrashed them and passed our own resolutions. " On Tuesday we mustered all up for the meeting in the town hall, where we gained another complete victorj-. " On Friday a public meeting took place in the town hall, Salford, which we attended, and were victorious also. " On Thursday night there was a tea party in the Corn Exchange, which went off admirably. I was there, but had to leave for near an hour to attend a committee meet- ing of the O. A. C. L. A. We resolved upon a committee to make arrangements for the public meeting to be held in the race week. " On Saturday morning we waited upon the League and got all our requests as to the public meeting granted. We are to have plenty of flags, &c., &c." * The Chartist Convention, that is. Dr. McDowall was a noted man among them, and a verj- good speaker. He practised as a surgeon in the neighbourhood of Accrington, and his poHtical s^Tupathies seem to hare been determined by what he saw of the excesses of the factory system of labour. In the cause of Chartism he suffered imprisonment. 1^ ]\f/siiy (iiidSlninison Si///i!n\ "May 30, i84r. " Last Monday evening I went into No. i District, where wc formed an association. " On Tuesday evening I went into No. 3, where wc had a spirited meeting. " On Wednesday evening down into Salford, and then up to Kennedy's, in Cable Street (Mancliester). " On Friday evening at the Carpenters' Hall — a meeting of Requisitionists — near 2,000 tliere. I spoke, and we agreed tliat we should liold a meeting in the open air next Wednesday morning at 1 1. " During the weeli I liave liecn uncommonly busy as a member of the meeting and proci ssion committee. Tlic procession wc hope to be a great affair. "Our requisition of the working classes to the mayor was signed by 5,690 — it was completed on Wednesday afternoon, 27th May, and five of us went over with it. The mayor opened hi.s eyes when he saw it, but, after humming and hawing, he declined to give an answer until I'Viday. On Friday morning we received his reply — jjolitely declining to call the meeting. "The Chartists threaten to give O'Connell, who is coming to Manchester on Tuesday morning, a ' welcome.' I hope they will not attemfjt it, as, if they do, blood will be shed. Nous verrons. They also talk of oj)posing us on Wednesday next." J17/y Carpenters Hall? 73 " Satui-day, June 5. " On Monday evening last I went into Salford, and spoke to the Salford repealers on the necessity of backing our movement on the following Wednesday. I afterwards went to Kennedy's, in Cable Street (Manchester), on the same errand. "On Tuesday morning I went to the Moslcy Arms to see O'Connell, and aftersvards went to a meeting which he addressed in the fields*' behind Carpenters' Hall. In the evening I went to a dinner, in the hall, in honour of the ' Liberator.' " On Wednesday morning I was up before six, and went immediately to Newall's Buildings. I found Howie sending off the flags to the various districts. I went thence to Stevenson Square, where the hustings for the meeting • Fields since buUt over with the factories and cottages near the Medlock bank. Readers who know the locahty maj' ask -n-hj' it -n-as that Manchester poHticians were so used to debates and riots in Car- penters' Hall, then a suburban situation, and where the tide of poUtics no longer flows. The answer is, tliat Carpenters' Hall, close to the Medlock, was then a new erection, popular as the property of a trade- union, containing one of the largest rooms then to be had — one of the cheapest also (the charge was but a guinea per night) — and, what is more noteworthy still, the best JIanchester meeting-room for hea?-mg, till the Free Trade Hall came into beuig. Both the present Free Trade Hall and its diief predecessor of the League days have been remarkable in that respect. The curious in the matter may now -sisit the main room of the JIanchester Free Reference Libr.tr}-, bear in mind that its central portion was the pubhc meeting-room of the Town Hall of former days, and be assured that the voices of most speakers got lost in the glazed dome of the roof But in this, as in so many other things, ilr. Cobdeu took advantage : he was always careful to sj>eak d(m