hitherto done has been to shift the burden, and not to diminish it) until our external policy was changed, and hence his incessant efforts in this direction; but he also knew that the surest method of accomplishing the latter object was, to diminish the resources at the disposal of Government for military and naval purposes.

The first object in financial reform was, in Cobden's opinion, the gradual remission of indirect taxation.

In a letter to the Liverpool Association' he made use of the remarkable expression that he considered them to be the only body of men in the country who appeared to have any faith in the future of humanity.

His objections were threefold, and they are conclusive :—

'1. The dangerous facilities which they afford for extravagant and excessive expenditure, by reason of their imperceptibility in collection, and of the consequent readiness of the people to submit to them, and also of the impossibility of insuring a close and honest adaptation of the revenue to the expenditure.'

What would be thought of an attempt to provide for the administration of our PoorLaws by taxes on the consumption of the district, instead of by a rate?

'2. Their interference with the great law of free exchange, one of the rights of property, and (so far as customs duties are concerned) the violation of international equity, which they involve; for it is obvious that the conditions of international trade are essentially affected by taxes on imports and exports, and it is impossible to apportion them so as to insure that each country shall pay neither more nor less than its own due share.

3. The enhancement of the cost of the taxed article to the consumer, over and above the amount of the tax.'

If it be objected that indirect taxation is the only method by which the masses of the people can be made to contribute their share to the revenues of the State, we reply that, if the condition of the masses of the people in any country is such as to place them beyond the reach of direct taxation, it is the surest proof that the whole national economy is out of joint, and that, in some form or other, resort will be had to communism.' In England we have too clear and disastrous evidence of this in our PoorLaw system, and in our reckless and prodigal alms-giving. In withholding from our children the bread of justice, we have given them the stone of enforced and sapless charity.

We hail, therefore, with pleasure, the movement which is beginning in Germany

and Belgium, in favour of a gradual abolition of all customs duties; and are convinced that there is none, perhaps, among all the articles of the Liberal creed which, both in its direct and indirect effects, contains the promise of so much future good.

There are two other great questions which occupied a prominent place in Cobden's programme, but at which our space forbids us from doing more than glance. We allude to the laws affecting property in land, and to our maritime laws.

Cobden held that the growing accumulation in the hands of fewer and fewer proprietors of the soil of the country was a great political, social, and economical evil, and as this tendency is unquestionably stimulated by the system of our government, and some of our laws, which give it an artificial value, he foresaw that one of the principal tasks of the generation which succeeded him, must to be to liberate the land from all the unnecessary obstacles which impede its acquisition and natural distribution, and to place it under the undisturbed control of the economic law. We cannot here attempt to enter upon a due examination of the causes which in this country neutralize and subvert this law in the case of landed property, but the general principle involved may be very shortly suggested.

The more abundant the supply of land in a country, the cheaper will it be, the larger will be the return to the capital and labour expended on it, and the greater the profits to be divided between them.

It is obvious that laws which keep land out of the market,-laws of entail, laws of settlement, difficulties of transfer, as well as a system of government which gives to the possession of land an artificial value, for social or political purposes, over and above its natural commercial value,-must have the inevitable effect of restricting the quantity, of enhancing the price, and of dimin ishing the product to be obtained. Land thus acquires a monopoly price, small capitals are deterred from this form of investment, competition is restricted, production is diminished, and the condition of those who live by the land, as well as of those who exchange the product of their labour for the produce of the land, necessarily impaired.

To illustrate our meaning by an extreme case let us suppose that the State were to connect with property in land the highest titles and privileges, on the condition that it was entirely diverted from all productive uses, and kept solely for purposes of ornament and sport, and that the honours and

advantages so conferred were sufficiently tempting to induce many persons to accept these conditions. It must follow that the stock of available land in such a country would be diminished to whatever extent it was so appropriated, and its material resources proportionably reduced.

In a less degree, who can deny that these causes are operating among us, and are a source of incalculable loss and waste of the national wealth? The suggestion last year that our coal-beds would be exhausted in one hundred years almost startled Parliament from its propriety. Yet we acquiesce year after year without a murmur in a curtailment of our supply of land, and those who warn us of our danger are denounced as the agents of revolution.

In his speech at Rochdale, in November 1864, which was his last public utterance, Cobden especially left this task as a legacy to the younger men among us, and told them that they could do more for their country in liberating the land than had been achieved for it in the liberation of its trade.

On the question of 'Maritime Law,' it is needless to say that he advocated the largest extension of the rights of neutrals, and the greatest possible limitation of the rights of belligerents as a necessary and logical accompaniment of a free-trade policy.

His views on this subject will be seen from a letter addressed to Mr. H. Ashworth in 1862, in which he recommends the following three reforms :

1. Exemption of private property from capture at sea during war by armed vessels of every kind.

2. Blockades to be restricted to naval arsenals, and to towns besieged at the same time by land, with the exception of articles contraband of war.

3. The merchant ships of neutrals on the high sea to be inviolable to the visitation of alien Government vessels in time of war as in time of peace.

In this letter he observes:

'Free trade, in the widest definition of the term, means only the division of labour by which the productive powers of the whole earth are brought into mutual co-operation. If this scheme of universal dependence is to be

liable to sudden dislocation whenever two Governments choose to go to war, it converts a manufacturing industry such as ours into a lottery, in which the lives and fortunes of multitudes of men are at stake. I do not comprehend how any British statesman who consults the interests of his country, and understands the revolution which Free-trade is effecting in the relations of the world, can advocate the maintenance of commercial blockades. If I shared their views I should shrink from pro

moting the indefinite growth of a population whose means of subsistence would be liable to be cut off at any moment by a belligerent power, against whom we should have no right of resistance, or even of complaint.

'It must be in mere irony that the advocates of such a policy as this ask-Of what use would our navy be in case of war if commercial blockades were abolished? Surely, for a na

tion that has no access to the rest of the world but by sea, and a large part of whose populathe chief use of a navy should be to keep open tion is dependent for food on foreign countries, its communications, not to close them!

'I will only add that I regard these changes as the necessary corollary of the repeal of the Navigation-Laws, the abolition of the CornLaws, and the abandonment of our colonial monopoly. We have thrown away the sceptre of force, to confide in the principles of freedom der the new régime our national fortunes have -uncovenanted, unconditional freedom. Unprospered beyond all precedent. During the last fourteen years the increase in our commerce has exceeded its entire growth during the previous thousand years of reliance on force, cunning, and monopoly. This should encourage us to go forward in the full faith that

every fresh impediment removed from the path whether in peace or war, will augment our of commerce, whether by sea or land, and prosperity, at the same time that it will promote the general interests of humanity.'

In most of the foregoing questions Cobden, as we have said, was contented to preach sound doctrine, and to prepare the way for the ultimate adoption of principles of policy and government, which in his time he could not hope to see prevail.

But he was destined before the close of his career once more to engage in a great practical work, and to identify his name with an accomplished success, scarcely inferior in its scope and results to the repeal of the English Corn-Law.

This was the Commercial Treaty with France.

As the Corn-Law was the great stronghold of monopoly in England, so was the prohibitive system in France the keystone of protection in Europe, and Cobden selected these accordingly, with the unerring instinct of real statesmanship, as the first points for attack, and fastened upon them with a tenacity and resolution which insured success.

Fifteen years had elapsed since England had renounced, in principle at least, the false system of commercial monopoly, and in Cobden's words quoted above, 'thrown away the sceptre of force, to confide in freedom, uncovenanted, unconditional freedom.'

She had trusted to the teaching of her example, and to the experience of her extraordinary success, in leading the countries of Europe to respond to her appeal for co-ope

ration in liberating trade, and vindicating the rights of labour,-but she had met with slight response.

Our conversion was perhaps too recent, our course still too inconsistent, and our motives too much open to suspicion, to make this surprising, and, so far as France was concerned, we had unfortunately contrived in all our reforms to retain in our tariff, restrictions upon the staple articles of French production, wine and silk.

The time had come when, unless some new impulse could be given to international intercourse, the forces of reaction might have again acquired the ascendency, and European progress have been thrown back for

years.

Our relations with France were those of chronic distrust and rivalry. The cry of 'Perfide Albion' in France too often resounded in our ears; and the bugbear of French invasion was successively invoked on this side of the Channel no less than three times in the period we are considering. This was a state of things fraught with danger. Monopoly had borne as usual its deadly fruits, in alienating two great nations destined by nature for the closest relations of friendship and mutual dependence, and in fostering in both the spirit of war.

It was under circumstances such as these that Cobden set his hand to the great work of co-operation which led to the Commercial Treaty.

Bastiat, who would have hailed with delight this tardy reparation of the defects in our reformed commercial system which he always deplored, was no longer alive to aid the cause, but to the most distinguished of modern French economists, Michel Chevalier, is due, in concert with Cobden, the merit of the scheme which the Governments of England and France were induced to adopt, which has opened to us a new era of progress, in gradually welding together the nations of Europe in a great commercial confederation, and in laying the foundations of a civilisation which may yet keep pace with that now dawning on our race, in the Anglo-Saxon republics of the Western World.

It was pleasant to see how his old friends rallied around him on this occasion, and how many, who had been often unable to comprehend or follow him in his political career, rejoiced to see him once again in the field against his old enemy Protection. But, on the other hand, he was assailed by an influential class among us with a bitter animosity, which all but made his task impossible, and which revealed too clearly the strength and vitality, of the reactionary forces still at work in our midst.

As Cobden saw in his beneficent work the hope of a new era of peace, and of liberal progress in Europe as its certain fruit, so did his opponents instinctively perceive that his success would carry with it the doom of the traditions of hatred and of fear, which the Governments of Europe had too often successfully invoked, to plunge the people into wars of which they are the invariable victims, and to keep alive the rumours of wars, which have deprived them of the solid fruits of peace.

We believe that it is scarcely too much to say, that the Commercial Treaty with France was a turning-point in the destiny of England. We look upon the contest of public opinion in this country and in France, which was roused and decided by this event, as the death-struggle between the conflicting principles which had for so many years been striving for the mastery in the direction of their affairs.

So long as the political condition of Europe is such as to render necessary or possible the huge armaments, which are a reproach to our age and boasted civilisation, while 4,000,000 men in the flower of their age, are taken from productive industry, and supported by the labour of the rest of the population, no real and permanent progress can be made in the emancipation of the people, and in the establishment of free institutions.

At the time of which we are speaking, even still more than at present, all direct attempts to mitigate this monster evil appeared hopeless; and although he never ceased to urge, both in England and France, the wisdom of a mutual understanding, with a view to reduced armaments, he knew that the only certain and available method of undermining this fatal system and preparing for its ultimate overthrow, was to assist in every way the counter-agencies of peace.

It was in the consciousness that by breaking down the barriers to commercial intercourse between England and France, a greater impulse would be given than by any other event to the forces of progress in Europe, that the men who in both countries undertook and completed this international work entered upon their arduous work. We have said that the time has not arrived when it is possible to speak freely of this episode in Cobden's life, but it is necessary to vindicate his policy from charges which, although forgotten and overwhelmed in its extraordinary success, were brought against it too commonly, and from quarters whence it ought least to have been expected, at the time.

In France he was reproached, by many of

his earlier friends, whose sympathies were bound up with the Orleanist or Republican régimes, and who viewed, with a natural aversion, the Second Empire, for contributing to a work which, if successful, might do more than anything else to consolidate the Imperial reign. He replied that what the immediate effect might be he neither knew nor cared, but that all the forces of freedom were 'Solidaires,' and that the ruler who gave Free-trade' to the nation, whether King, President, or Emperor, was doing that which, more than anything else, would assure the future liberties of France. The same causes operated in many quarters to make the Treaty unpopular in England; but he was also assailed in a more insidious form. He was accused of having forgotten or forsaken the sound doctrines of political economy, of which he had in his earlier life been the uncompromising advocate, and of having revived the discarded policy of reciprocity treaties.'

It would perhaps be unnecessary to revert to this charge, were it not that a sus picion of unsoundness still lurks in many minds as to the principles of the French and subsequent Treaties of Commerce. It may be well, therefore, to say that, so far as this charge was honest, and something more than a convenient method of discrediting a measure which it was desired to obstruct, it proceeded on a very imperfect knowledge of the policy of the Treaty, and on an erroneous and confused idea of the principles of Freetrade itself.

The system of reciprocity treaties and tariff-bargains, was one of the natural but most pernicious developments of the doctrine of protection. The most notorious of such treaties in our history is perhaps the famous 'Methuen ' Treaty, from the effects of which we are still suffering in England in the shape of adulterated wine. These arrangements aimed at the extension of the limits of monopoly by securing for our products protection in a foreign country against the competition of all other countries, and always proceeded on the supposed interest of the producer to the injury of the consumer. They were logical, when it was believed or professed that the reduction of a duty was a sacrifice on the part of the country making it, to the country in whose favour it was made. From this point of view, it was natural, in making such reductions, to demand what were thought to be equivalent concessions from the country with which we were treating, and the supreme art of negotiation was held to consist in framing what had the appearance of a 'nicely-adjusted balance of equivalents,' but in which each country se

cretly desired, and sought to obtain, the maximum of reductions from the other against the minimum of its own.

But from the Free-trade point of view, in which all reductions of duties, at least so far as protective duties are concerned, are an admitted and positive gain to the country making them, it becomes absurd and impossible to use them as the ground of a claim on a foreign country for compensating or equivalent remissions.

The French Treaty had no affinity, except in form, to treaties such as these.

Instead of a bargain in which each party sought to give as little and to get as much, as possible, it was a great work of co-operation, in which the Governments of England and of France were resolved, on both sides, to remove within the limits of their power, the artificial obstacles to their commercial intercourse presented by fiscal and protective laws.

England had already spontaneously advanced much further than France in this direction, and hence alone, if for no other reason, all idea of 'equivalent' concessions was out of the question. She contributed her share to the work, by sweeping from her tariff, with some trifling exceptions, all trace and remnant of protection, and by reducing within moderate limits her fiscal duties upon wine and brandy.

France, unable at one stroke to destroy the whole fabric of monopoly, nevertheless made a deadly breach in the edifice, by substituting moderate duties, for prohibition, in the case of the chief British exports.

If these reforms had been made exclusively in each other's favour, they might have been justly open to the charge of unsoundness, but they were made, equally for the commerce of all the world, on the side of England immediately, on the side of France prospectively, and thus, instead of reverting to a system of monopoly, the prohibitive and differential policy of France was annihilated, and the equal system of England maintained and consolidated.

There were, however, two objections made to the treaty, of a more plausible kind, and which we will, therefore, briefly notice:

First, That a work of this description need not assume the form of a treaty, which tends to disguise its real character, but should be left to the independent legislation of each country.

Secondly, That, although it might be well to abolish protective duties by this method, it was impolitic to fetter ourselves by treaty, with respect to fiscal taxes.

As regards the first objection, it is suf ficient to reply, that at the time we are con

sidering, for political reasons, a treaty was the only form in which such a measure could be carried in France; but a more permanent justification is to be found in the fact, that a treaty is nothing more than an international statute-law, and that, in a matter of international concern, it is necessary that there should exist an international guarantee of permanence. Without such a security, what would be the condition of trade?

The second objection is more subtle, but has no better foundation. A tax which, from whatever cause, dries up an important source of national wealth, and thus takes from the fund available for taxation more than the amount gained by the revenue, is a bad tax, and ought never, if possible, to be imposed or maintained.

The tax on French wine and spirits had the effect of restricting most injuriously one of the most important branches of our foreign trade, and would, if maintained, have deprived us, by preventing the conclusion of the Treaty, of an addition of at least £20,000,000 sterling per annum, to the value of our general exchanges with France. No wise legislation could retain such a tax in the face of such consequences. There is probably no other form of tax to which it would not have been preferable to resort, rather than to maintain these obstacles to our trade with France.

But the consequences of the Treaty with France were not confined to that country and to England. It was an act which, both by its moral effect and its direct and necessary influence on the legislation of the other Continental countries, has set on foot a movement which grows from year to year, and will not cease till all protective duties have been erased from the commercial codes of Europe.

It was thus the rare privilege of the man, who had been foremost in giving the deathblow to monopoly in England, to be also among the first to storm the citadel of protection on the Continent, and to give to the work which he commenced at home a decisive international impulse, destined to afford new securities for the most sacred of human rights--the right of labour, and to new realms to the empire of free

add "

dom.'

Cobden had yet another success awaiting him, to our mind the most signal triumph of his life. He lived to see the great moral and economic laws, which he had enforced through years of opposition and obloquy, asserting their control over the forces of reaction, and moulding our foreign policy.

It must have been with a superb and heartfelt satisfaction (and it was so) that

Cobden watched the conflict of public opinion at the time of the Danish War.

The diplomatic intervention of the Government had brought us to the verge of war, and made it more than usually difficult to retreat.

The old instincts of the ruling classes of the nation were thoroughly aroused, and, unless they had been neutralized and overpowered by stronger and deeper forces, we should, under a fancied idea of chivalry and honour (if anything can deserve these names which is opposed to reason and duty), have squandered once more the hard-earned heritage of English labour in a war of which the causes and the merits were for the most part unknown among us, and could never have been made intelligible to the nation, and in which our success, if possible, might have thrown back all liberal progress for years, both in England, and on the Continent.

But it soon became manifest that a nobler and larger morality had been gaining ground in the heart of the nation, had at last found its expression in the Councils of the State, and had enforced its control over those who still believed in the vain and idle dream, that the mission of England is to hold by force the balance of power in Europe.

The memorable debate which decided the course of our policy in this critical moment, decided far greater issues; and the principle of non-intervention,' the only hope for the moral union of nations and the progress of freedom, became the predominating rule of our foreign policy, and with different limitations and qualifications, a point in the liberal creed.

We must here close a hasty and imperfect sketch of Cobden's political life and principles, in the hope that the outline which we have traced may be filled up by abler hands. Our object will have been attained, if we have succeeded in leading some of our readers to suspect the erroneous and superficial nature of the prevalent opinion of Cobden in the upper ranks of English society, to believe that the verdict of history will rather confirm the judgment of his humbler countrymen, with whom his name has become a household word, and that his life and words and deeds deserve their deepest study and most impartial examination.

In reviewing the political programme given in the preceding pages, we shall see that while much has been done, far more remains to do; and that although there is great cause for hope, there is also much ground for fear.

Of all the dreams in which easy-going and half-hearted politicians indulge, the