MR. COBDEN'S LITTLE MISTAKE.
Mn. COBDEN in writing a letter to the Ballot Society says, that in watching the progress of Mr. Bright's measure on Parliamentary Reform, "I am struck with the similarity of the ordeal he has gone through to that which I underwent in the earliest stage of the League agitation " ; and he then enumerates alleged points of similarity, as to misrepresentation, &c. But there are points of dissimilarity in the two movements which it is some- what remarkable that so acute a man as Mr. Cobden does not notice. In the first place, as to the grosser material means : Mr. Cobden, had the support of an immense subscription raised from the middle, and some of the lower, as well as from the higher classes of the industrial population ; on the present occasion there is nothing of the sort. For all England, the subscriptions of the National Reform League when last stated, amounted to about five hundred pounds, and that chiefly the subscription of a few Radi- cal members ; whereas for the Administrative Reform agitation between five and six thousand pounds was subscribed in London only. Bodies of workmen subscribe as much for their Trades Union purposes, and now, for their enfranchisement and promised elevation, those to whom the boon is offered subscribe—nothing. The League agitation had for its support the expositions of economical principles by Turgot, Adam Smith, James Mill,
Ricardo, and minds of the highest order. It had of living political econo- mists—Thomas Tooke and Mr. Senior; and the great mercantile as well as manufacturing leaders, and the active support of living official statists and economists—Mr. T. Deacon Hume and Mr. Porter, Now, there is opposi- tion, not to reform, but to Mr. Bright's plan, from persons of that class, and generally the support of mind, as well of money is wanting to him.
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