TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. COBDEN'S NEW PAMPHLET.
TEE pamphlet is a lever with which an ingenious man may move the world, provided he catches the world in the disposition to be moved, and exerts his force in the direction of the rolling orb. The man who thinks counter to the world, and puts forth his pamphlet to arrest the march of a nation, much more of two or three nations, undertakes a labour as thankless as that of Mrs. Partington in brooming back the Atlantic, and, since he is deal- ing with harder substances more likely to get himself hurt in the- effort. If he were to confront a railway-train with his walking- stick he might have an equal chance of victory and safety. Few pamphleteers have been more skilful, or more successful in the main, than Mr. Cobden, when he worked with the grain of the world. When the practical intellect of the country was first drifting and then rushing into free trade, Cobden rowed with the stream, and seemed to lead the current on which he floated ; riding over Derby, Melbourne Disraeli, Chandos, the landed gentry, and the once dominaneinfluences of the country. But when he endeavours to arrest the war of the Western Powers—to. claim for Russia sufferance as a. country which has established a nuisance—his pamphlet breaks short in his hand, and he stands confessed as a man not of the age. The circumstances make all the difference. Mr. Cobden is not a man hire Disraeli to make a dra- matic situation for himself by an imaginative adaptation of exist- ing circumstances. He can select his facts, but the facts must be- made ready to his hand; and in this Peace pamphlet there is all the difference to his present available strength, whether he is using current facts, admitted everywhere and possessing an inhe- rent force in themselves, or bringing together remote facts not ao generally received and not involving their own proof. On this occasion, Mr. Cobden avoids his commonest fault, that of setting others against him by the aggressive style of polemics. There are no attacks in his pamphlet, no personalities, and he studiously professes to abstain from controversy on the original causes of the dispute ; inviting "the most strenuous supporter of the war, and the most urgent advocate of peace," to meet him "on the common ground of the probabilities of the future." Mr.
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Cobden, in fact, s uneasy at his own position. He resents the idea of being identified with a policy which ipso facto causes him to be shelved ; and he endeavours to conform to the condition of being listened to; by not raising a controversy upon points which the peo'ple have agreed to consider as settled. But the distinc- tion is only in manner; - in matter he is the same Cobden. There- is the same active discovery of facts in conspicuous places, the- same industry in putting them together after careful selectieei the same plain argument couched in the most convincing forin-cd- direct statement ; the same relentless adherence to a first fixed idea, with the settled purpose of collecting such evidence, and such evidence only, as will establish that starting proposition. Mr. Cobden has been in Russia ; he has real Tengoborski, Den- by Seymour, Haxthausen, Hue and the Sebastopol Committee's. report ; with the obvious literature of the century on Russia, he has figures at the tips of his fingers. He instructs us in the na- ture of the Russians at home—their unwarlilce, tractable, hum- ble, half-civilized state • their amazing power of applying the rudest vehicles, with their herds of hardy horses, to gallop over vast spaces in wonderfully short time, at wonderfully small cost.. He can describe, and deplore while describing, the Protectionist policy which has—let Derby chuckle over the admission !—ren- dered Russia independent of foreign trade while down the Volga,. across the Caspian, and through the ICiachta ass into Persia uie and Central Asia, China, and the newly-so t region of the Amoor, he pushes a landward trade. Mr. Co n has chapter and verie for everything • and, having actually visited Russia, he can say—" I have been there ; I have seen this ; a Russian peasant told me that,"—which gives life, distinctness, and au- thority to his pamphlet. It is a compilation, as it were, plated with a superficial personal glance over the face of accessible Rus- sia, and silver-edged with some information collected from com- mercial men on the spot, so that the -whole may pass for solid and precious metal, among those who do not apply the trials of de- liberate weight and solvent test to the body of the text. Y. because it is given with Mr. Cobden's manner, which is plain and "unadorned "—because it treats of commercial facts, which he- handles with the air of a master, and because some of his facts are uncontrovertible—it will have a considerable influence in some quarters ; the more since there is a growing sympathy prepared to receive the whispers of discontent. When he says that the Rus- sian people are the most unwarlike people in the world, he com- bines some personal observations with the authority of Denby Seymour ; and the combined effect is likely to make a good num- ber of people in this country regard the Russians as a truly patient and a pacific race—their boundless and ceaseless aggressions upon their neighbours notwithstanding. Mr. Cobden tells that the Russian " people " have no interest in "foreign af- fairs "; and he makes enough show of their ignorance, their " villa/se " life and their contentment, with the want of out- landish appliances, to command acceptance of his assertion ; until we remember that "Russia," under another interpretation of that arbitrary title, takes so much interest in foreign affairs that she has her agents in many courts, her spies in almost every important country under the sun. Read Mr. Colxlen's pamphlet, forgetting the other half of the story, and you will believe that nothing can rouse the Russians to attack foreigners, except an in- vasion of" their soil" and an outrage of their religious feelings, —forgetting that this same superstitions dogmatism draws Russia into the foreign country of Turkey to intrigue with orthodox Greek Christians, and that the very patience of the people makes them lend themselves to a Government which has always been able to lead them against any army, whether on "their own soil" or on land taken from other powers as the soil of Hungary, Sweden, Germany, and Italy. It is trim that the Russian peasant dreads war, because to be sent to the wars is equivalent to our transportation, with this difference, that the Russian landowner, who supplies recruits to the Government, can use the power of selection for the gratification of his own local tyrannies and re- venges. But a serf at home, the Russian is a serf stall on the field, believing that the Czar can verily direct his destiny; and this substitutes for a choice the savage ardour of a blind • "on. Mr. Cobden discusses the finances of Russia with asnfaeert4 of figures that imparts vivacity to the dry subject ; and, sunk in his pages, you might believe, that poor as the country is, and inca- pable of foreign aggression, it has all the power of a poor country and a vast space, with all its means concentrated in the hands of Government. "Do not gamble with beggars," is a good rule at Newmarket; and Mr. Cobden applies it to contests with a Power, poor, big, and inert, who can as little !mirth upon Europe as the Carpathians could march, and can as little be occupied and con- quered as the great Sahara could be subdued or the Pampas in- vested. He has not lost his conning with figures and facts ; and, arrayed as he arrays them, they must have a certain influence with those who read the pamphlet—and the pamphlet only. It is when Mr. Cobden applies these facts, or endeavours to put them together with facts which other persons know somewhat better than himself; that the impolicy of following his lead ap- pears from the very internal evidence of his -writing. He paints the effects which a prolonged warfare may have upon the floating capital of this country : the traders' and through them the work- ing classes, those who feel the want of money, see their own trade dwindling before their eyes, and know that a day is coming when a stinted domestic commerce will cause stoppage for manu- facturing industry ; and as they listen, such people respond, as great meetings of the working classes answer speakers that talk home to their hearts, with acclamations of assent. But when be- cause of these fearful sacrifices he proposes simply to abandon the war and all that it has even now attained,, any class of the people will stop, and, will let him go on by himself. It is in the conclu- sion of his pamph/tt, in his statesmanship, that he separates him- self from the whole of the public, and distinctly marks himself out to be not a statesman for.bis country at the present day. Mr.-Cobden formally announces his policy as including these fivepoints,-1, to withdraw every- British soldier from Russian territory; 2, to abandon the policy of endeavouring to extort from Russia ; 3, to recur to the policy of constituting Car=eesyand Austria the living barricades against the encroach- ments of Russia ; 4, to abandon the attempt at constituting a balance of power and international law by means of war, when peace alone would effect any such construction ; to attempt the formation of a league of European states for such a purpose ; or if they decline to form part of a league against Russian encroach- ments, to accept the refusal as a proof that his own alarms had been exaggerated ; 5, to deal with a question of naval force as an European question, and to procure a reduction of navies- to the limited scale of the Ainerican navy before she began to increase it recently as a precaution against the increased navies of France and England. These are Mr. Cobden's five propositions—the elements of what would be his poliey were he in power and able to carry it out. The greater portion of them, it will be observed, is negative. The one practical proposal is to abandon every other precafftion against Russia except that which we must ac- cept from Germany and Austria.
This is his main proposal. Russia, he says, shows no tendency to encroach except upon Mahomedan countries,—a large excep- tion, and even so the assertion must be qualified, by considering how far Russia has encroached upon other Christian countries be- sides Poland. If she were to advance, he says, upon Europe, Germany and Austria would be the first to feel the effects ; they must resist ; and to them, therefore, he looks. This might be a sound reliance if Germany, or even_ Austria, were free : and we could imagine one mode of carrying it out, at some distant day. But we mud remember that Germany is not free ; that she is bound by compacts, by special and elaborate court alliances, by combinations of governments and armies, arranged under the general settlement of 1815. We remember what a large, active, and almost overwhelming share, Alexander the First took in planning that settlement. Germany, therefore, is already bound, according to the hereditary will and pleasure of the Czar ; and haw can we trust the defence of Europe to her ? Mr. CAybden's licy might have been perfectly sound if the settlement of 1815 not been accomplished by this country at the suggestion of
our present enemy. Before then, we can carry out his policy— and a high policy it may be—we must undo what was done iii 1815. "'What next," he asks by the title of his pamphlet, "and next?" The panlo-post-futurum appears to us to lie in that un- doing. We may drift into that pohey yet ; but would Mr. Cob- den, earnest and enthusiastic in his desire for immediate peace, adopt a policy which by the constituted governments of Europe would be called alarming and subversive and which certainly cannot be initiated save in a baptism of blood?
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