The controversy begun last week between the member for Roch-
dale and the Editor of the Times has assumed this week the form of apersonal, and, on one side unfortunately, an angry, correspond- ence between Mr. J. T. Delane and Mr. Cobden. For once, temper and skill have been all on one side, and justice all on the other, for Mr. Delane has, in fact, yielded his case in the endeavour to make out that the Times only impute. to Messrs. Cobden and Bright a wish for that legal amorcellement of the land which obtains in France. But the Times charge was entirely incapable of such an interpretation, having been three times repeated, and in very explicit terms. On Monday, November 26th, the Times wrote :— "This language, so often repeated, and so calculated to excite dis- content among the poor and half-informed, has really only one intelligible meaning, Reduce the electoral franchise, for when you have done so you will obtain an Assembly which will seize on the estates of the proprietors of lend, and divide them gratuitously among the poor.'" On the following day, November 27th, it returned to the charge :--" Is it not,'' it said, "in effect to tell the labourer and the working man to look over the fence of the neighbouring proprietor and learn to think they have a natural right to a slice of the soil ? . . . . This is the topic of an incendiary, and it is all the less excusable in this instance because it is treason to the principles of political economy which Mr. Cobden cannot but have accepted." And, finally, on the 3rd December, it gave utterance to the words which caught Mr. Cobden's eye :—" A small State looks upon any attempt to reconstruct the map or reform the institutions of Europe with much the same satisfaction with which the poor might regard Mr. Bright's proposition for a division among them of the lands of the rich." If this be not to impute to Messrs. Cobden and Bright an intent to excite a violent confiscation, or, if it prefers the phrase," seizure for the purpose of gratuitous division," we do not know how that charge could be made. From that position, at all events, Mr. Delane now silently withdraws ; but he owes an apology for ever having sanctioned it.
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