NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE new Financial Reform League had a grand muster at Man- chester on Wednesday, in the Free-trade Hall. In the erection of that edifice, the Manchester men made permanent provision for agitation; treating it, like the French Democratic " right of revolution," as one of the institutions of the country. It is not to be presumed that Great Britain generally will share the profes- sional zest for public commotion. This time, however, the agi- tators have well selected their subject, in a polite version of the ultra-popular demand for "no taxes " ; and it is clear that they are going to be very troublesome to our good easy Ministers. They begin their movement in the approved fashion, going to the country with a cry—" the expenditure of 1835" ; and the pro- fessional agitators of Manchester have been too well drilled by the practice of electioneering and the teaching of their Whig- Radical allies, not to have the power of forcing some kind of re- sponse. The officials will be called upon to justify the increase, if not to justify the whole taxation, by showing what renders it necessary, and what is returned to the country as the quid pro quo.
Mr. Cobden's speech was admirably framed for its im- mediate purpose. It was a repetition of his budget-letter, with amplifications and defensive additions. Mr. Cobden made an ingenious reply to the argument that the increase of population necessitates an increase of the national outlay, by showing that in his scheme he did allow an increased outlay for civil government exceeding the ratio of increase in the people. He observed, truly enough, that on each new necessity Ministers demand an increase, especially for mili- tary purposes, but that when the occasion has passed they do not make the corresponding reduction. He accepted the hints that reductions are to be effected by a correction of abuses in the Army and Navy,—by, curtailing the number of Admirals for instance, not one-tenth of whom are in actual service. But he ad- heres to the main position of his letter, that no sufficient re- duction can be made without diminishing the strength of the Army and Navy—diminishing the number of men. Peace, he argues, must be maintained at home by fostering the comfort of the people, lightening their burdens, and freeing trade. The Colonies must be held by affection, not arms. As to foreign countries, we must keep out of quarrels : the leading " passion " of Europe is the desire for peace ; what we witness now is revo- lution, not war; we must trust less to physical force, more to justice and to Providence. And in that summary fashion he gets at the feasibility of cutting down the expenditure by ten millions, to the standard of 1835.
In that attitude, indeed, lies his sole force : he has devised a convenient " cry," and he sticks to it, with an obstinacy, an iteration, a dogged simplicity, and heedlessness of all disturbing considerations, that mark him for the most specious and skilful of popular agitators in our day—an Anglo-Saxon O'Connell.
But the same specious and reckless address marks in stronger characters than ever how poor is the statesmanship to which he devotes himself—how mean in its view, how borne. He relies too manifestly on the success of the Anti-Corn-law League, of which he is reproducing a mechanical copy ; applying the same instrument with which he effected a definite purpose of a purely commercial kind to a very vague purpose in affairs not commer- cial. For the definiteness of object—" the expenditure of 1835 " —is only verbal. Substantially, the expenditure of 1835 cannot be an object of national demand : that year was not one of finan- cial perfection ; its economy was not a pure specimen of taxes skil- fully levied and honestly laid out : Mr. Cobden admits that in 1835 the causes of expenditure were going on and increasing ; so that the low income set against the date was delusive— we only took more Credit, and have since had to make it good. The repeal of the Corn-law was a question of trade, and the ini-
tiative and lead were fairly allowed to trading Manchester; but it is to be doubted whether the country will be so content to fol- low Manchester in a matter the reverse of being purely commer- cial. The agitation for the specific object consumed seven years, and was at last accomplished by a lucky combination of political circumstances: the complex objects embraced in the Manchester budget would take a proportionately longer time, and will never find a Peel to adopt them. No leading statesman will be found to weaken the military and naval strength of England. Mr. Cobden has made the mistake of assuming a position which he cannot command the political force to maintain.
He has committed other not less serious faults. His interpre- tation of passing history may be corrected by any schoolboy that reads the papers in play-time. He says that it is not war in Europe, but revolution; an antithesis that breaks down the mo- ment you look into the facts. For 1848, there has been war in Northern Italy—not civil war, but international war; war in Schleswig-Holstein, war in the Danubian provinces, nor is it true civil war in Hungary : as to 1849, Denmark stands ready for war ; Naples threatens an appeal to war ; France keeps up her " Army of the Alps "; and Russia has her immense armies ready for opportunity : for all the cry of " wolf " was so often false, it came at last. The denial that there is war, therefore, is simply incorrect. Mr. Cobden shows that he is not sagacious : among his reliances for peace are the professions of Louis Napoleon! He is not commonly discreet : he proposes that we should abridge our military strength, and trust for national safety more to our own just intentions and to Providence,—like the polite lion who allowed his claws to be pared. What defence have weak or un- armed nations from their own virtues ? what has justice availed Poland, or a peaceful Christianity Bulgaria ? what intentions could restore Italy ? Mr. Cobden's precept furnishes a ludi- crously Cockney counterpart to the sagacious and pious Crom- well's injunction—" Now, my lads, put your trust in God, and keep your powder dry." Let the armies of the nations be abroad in Europe, our arms laid by, and we shall hear some fine day that the idea has suddenly occurred to Spain of retrieving Gibraltar, to France of adopting Malta or appropriating Egypt and the transit. Mr. Cobden does not adhere to the common policy of being honest and ingenuous: to one party, the "no taxes" section of the populace, he intimates a hint that he will not stop even at the reduced expenditure of 1835 ; to more accomplished politicians he hints, that although he adopts "the expenditure of 1835" for the simplicity of the cry, he only does so hypothetically and argumentatively, in order to fetch out the justificatory replies of Government; so that the simplicity of his unadorned eloquence, like the bluffness of " honest Iago," is only apparent, and intended to cover a more cunning purpose. He is not even " practical" : he still rests his scheme on the pro- ject of inducing the House of Commons to make trenchant re- ductions in the materiel of Army and Navy—he might as well ask Parliament to give up India on a calculation of money value, or to substitute the tricolor for the national flag. In a trading sense, one piece of bunting is as good as another, and no particu- lar fashion would be worth much: let him ask what Parliament would take to part with the cross and saltire on a blue ground.
There is more behind this Manchester demonstration. Great as as he is, Mr. Cobden, like Talbot, is but the shadow of himself, and it is to his army that we must look for the materiel of his ultimate achievements. He is keeping something back. He is either weaker, or more dangerous, than he cares at present to seem. He professes to be the ally and coadjutor of the Li- verpool Association ; but the objects which he now professes are not the objects of that body. The financial reformers or- ganized at Liverpool are for abolishing the customhouse and instituting a system of purely direct taxation : Mr. Cobden suffers nothing of the kind to appear in his scheme. What is the meaning of this marked reserve? Is the alliance between him and the Liverpool men only the hollow semblance of a compact, and is he deceiving the public in affecting to possess that great contingent ; or is his present purpose only a blind, his secret purpose the same as theirs—a great tax revolution, as difficult and hazardous as any of the revolutions that have shaken Eu- rope? It is with regret that we see the promoters of financial reform persist in retaining for their movement shapes so unpractical, since it tends to weaken the probability of their effecting what is really practicable, by enforcing the true test of public economy. That, we repeat, is to ascertain what service is profitable to the country, and to raise the amount needful for the just payment of that service; but not to levy a shilling in taxes which is not jus- tified in its expenditure by a return of profit to the country.
