Goldwin Smith writes to Thursday's Times a very hiking letter
on " Cobdenism." In spite of disparagement, see-trade, he declares, still makes way. It triumphed at last Canadian Election, and in the United States there are signs that the winter of monopoly is breaking op. As to "peace," he explains, and with perfect truth, that the Cobdenites never were for peace at any price, but only against unnecessary wars. It is only as regards "peace and goodwill among nations" that Mr. Goldwin Smith feels that the world is going against the Cobdenites. "After all the way apparently made by Liberalism, philanthropy, and humanity we seem to be coming again to an era of international hatred, bloated armaments, and wars of conquest. In the United States, deemed till yesterday the hope of industrial and social progress, the friends of the commonwealth are struggling, with faint hope of success, to save it from con- version, by a party flushed with triumph in a raid upon the Spanish possessions, into an old-world Power of aggrandise- ment and violence. It cannot be denied that to avert any such relapse as this, the circle of Bright and Cobden did its best." But is it a relapse P We believe that if the Americans lay the foundation of their new Empire well and truly, it will be for them the dawn of a better day. That Empire will, we believe, in the end relieve then from monopoly and Protection, and from that devotion to materialism which has hitherto demoralised their politics. The plant of honest administration may be raised in their new over-sea posses- sions, and thence transplanted to America.
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