ntttro to th Calor.

COBDEN, COTTON, AND WAR.

1 Adam 8treet, Adeiphi, 22d January 1855.

Sni—Mr. Cobden has in his speech in Yorkshire done his utmost to make out his case in repudiating the war. But his speech is that of an advocate, and not even a logical advocate, still less that of a philosopher anxious to show all sides of a question and place the truth before his audience. He stated his total disagreement with the Russian Czar as a man, and then went about to defend him, by the assertion that the East India Company has annexed more territory in Asia than the Czar has done in Europe and Asia together. Leaving the question of fact out of consideration, every simple- minded auditor must have come to the conclusion that Mr. Cobden was merely "cunning of fence," and sought to blink the real question at issue by the arithmetic of acreage, while ignoring the moral result, that English annexation in these latter scores of years has been enforced by the necessity of self-defence, and has been almost invariably followed by a better system of rule than that it displaced, inducing the elevation and not the degrada- tion of humanity, while the annexations of the Russian Czar have been prompted by the base ambition of multiplying serfs and lowering humantiy into the mere instruments of a brutal will, to be used like gladiators and slain in hecatombs like wild beasts. If Mr. Cobden was conscious of all this while he spoke, what must be the conclusion drawn as to his moral sense— can we rate him as more or less than a mere barrister defending a wrong cause for the sake of his reputation or his party ? If, on the other hand, he believed himself morally right, what must be the conclusion as to Mr. Cob- den's intellect ? He professes to believe that the Czar has shown a "tower- ing intellect." This is mere verbiage ; and if we trace back Mr. Cobden's own speeches and writings, we shall find that the Czar is merely a man raised to be chief priest of an idolatrous nation, and puffed up with irrespon- sible self-will. Had his intellect been "towering," his love of power would have been developed in raising the position of his subjects, elevating them in the scale of humanity, converting them from savages into civilized men, with 4rowinF wealth and intelligent loyalty. He would have endeavoured to do in reahty all those things of which Peter—brute Peter—his ancestor, made a theatrical display. He would have endeavoured to extinguish lying and thieving throughout his dominions, and to diminish poverty, so that the improved condition of his people would have induced neighbouring wild tribes voluntarily to aggregate themselves to him. Mr. Cobden said that the English nation was by the existing war placed

in the anomalous position of alliance with one despot, and seeking alliance with another despot, to help a third despot in resisting a fourth despot in his aggressions. This is a mere trick of rhetoric, not argument. The des- potism of France is not a Russian despotism : the ruler is elected by universal suffrage as Dictator or Impemtor to work upon the whole the general will of a people who have not finally made up their minds as to their form of government, but who assuredly would not long tolerate a brutal despotism; the Dictator being a man of shrewd sense enough to know that only by as- similating his rule to that of his powerful ally and neighbour can his posi- tion be made permanent. With regard to Turkey, Mr. Cobden must be amongst the shallowest of politicians if he cannot see that all the elements there are tending every day togreater freedom, while the elements of despotic power are in Russia as vigorous as a despotic power can be : and with regard to Austria, let her be as dishonest as she will, she at least shows that she dares not openly countenance Russian marauding despotism ; and the next process to fearing free nations is to join them, and amend her own institu- tions.

Mr. Cobden professes to think that our business is to stay at home and send out our goods, and leave the Russian Czar to eat up Turkey at his leisure ; consoling himself with the idea that it would occupy him a hundred years. How thoroughly would Mr. Cobden intone in chapel the liturgy-

" Give peace in our time, 0 Lord!"

and cry "Peace! peace!" where there is no peace save the vast solitudes which the Czar deems peaceful. Grateful are we all to Mr. Cobden for the earnestness wherewith he wrought

at Free-trade. So thoroughly did the nation appreciate it, that they were disposed to give him credit as a farsighted statesman, working with strong moral convictions, as a whole man ; and painful it is to waken up to the con- viction that after all he is only a part of a man—a political economist to a given extent, but not a moral .philoeopher, nor an intellectual logician. Deeply has he wounded the political power of the Manchester school of politics by placing it beneath that of Leeds; where a Marshall, heading six millions of private capital, proclaims that the men of flax and wool are more farsighted than the men of cotton—that they know their only permanent welfare to be in throwing down tyranny under their feet, and that if they do not this, the time may come when, in the words of Sewell, Manchester and Leeds and Birmingham may be no more, trodden under the heel of a Russian autocrat, who would award to all the old tradi- tions of English greatness no other future function than the conversion of the coal and iron of England into the weapons of despotism. Not for this have her sons fought the good fight so many hundred years, but for some other and better end.

This lamentable anti-climax of Mr. Cobden, this want of power to shape an end, this apparent impossibility of getting beyond mere means, this merging all things in trade, as though trade for itself alone were the primary and ultimate consideration, the be-all and end-all of human life—seems to pro- claim a man of one idea, and that idea an offidmot and not a main root. Could such an idea spread and absorb the whole conimunity, England would indeed be a loot nation, worse as an assemblage of manhood than if she had no trade at all. And this leads us to the consideration whether there is not something radically vicious in the Manchester system, marking it out as widely distinct from healthy spontaneous growth. Let us test it. Ere Watt and Arkwright lived, women and girls—primitive "spinning Jennies"—span, and men wove, wool and cotton at some sort of living wages, eked out with various cottage appliances, and a tolerable chance of health by much out-door work. Not altogether good this ; for the small amount fur- nished by each pair of hands left a large mass of the community badly pro- vided with clothing. Watt and Arkwright multiplied by machinery the labour of each pair of hands manyfold, and each owner of a pair of hands was enabled to obtain high and prosperous wages. Cotton could be brought from India, made into cloth, and sent back at a cheaper rate than thepenny-a-day rice- eating labourers of India could produce it at ; England's daughters were, as Cobbett caustically satirized it, "drawn off in the flimsy fabrics of Sir Robert Peel," and the Continent of Europe was clad with cotton webs pro- duced in almost the only country where capitalists could safely build mills and instruct workpeople. Manchester imported largely from Ireland and elsewhere "hands" to supply the demand for labour. Peace came, and corn-laws ; and America with cheaper food than England built mills on her Northern "water-privileges." France and other Continental countries with people willing to work at lower wages than English people, built mills also ; and customs-duties both in America and Europe gradually turned the balance against us. And so we prohibited the export of machinery : but that would Rot do. . We had bred up in our cotton hot-houses a large artificial popula- tion, which was on the increase. Machinery was cheaper than hands, and was improved to compete with foreign hands. Luddites rebelled ; yeomanry and millowners mowed them down at Peterlooand this mutual ignorance continued to be of perennial growtktill Mr. Cobden cum suis, studying with a will the Free-trade doctrines long urged by such men as Colonel Thompson, Ebenezer Elliott, and others, made out satisfactorily, that if a free market for food existed here, people might be nearly as cheaply fed as in America or on the Continent of Europe, and that thus hands would be called into agriculture in these countries from the mills; so that with cheaper labour and improved machinery the balance of profit on manufactures might again be in favour of England. And this went on for a time, and would go on still but for a fallacy which appears to have escaped the Manchester philosophers.

All human beings are born with special aptitudes. Celtic fingers are better adapted to textile fabrics than are Saxon fingers—they make better " piecers." In most countries such persons exist, and they prefer textile work to agriculture. Now it must be clear that, other things being equal, that country will be beat adapted for textile manufactures where this class of people is most numerous ; and that they would even prefer working at the employment that suited them for low wages, than at the employment which did not suit them for slightly higher wages. If in a country thus largely peopled food were plentiful, and water or steam power abundant, and cotton an abundant native production, it is clear that a cotton-mill in such a country would be natural or indigenous—that is, growing out of the aptitudes of nature.

In Manchester such a mill is an artificial or exotic production. The people are imported, and the cotton is imported, and can only be worked in arti- ficially-warmed mills. The only thing indigenous is the machinery, and the steam or water power. I lay no stress on the question of health, because cotton-mills can, if the owners will it, be made as healthy as or healthier than the external climate in which they are erected ; and probably, take it altogether, England is the healthiest workshop in the world. But where- ever population is plentiful, food abundant, and the climate mild and healthy, and cotton indigenous, and property secure, and government liberal, it is quite clear, that there, and not in England, will cotton fabrics be produced at the cheapest rate. Had the world been at peace and in free union when Manchester commenced cotton-milling, most countries with better aptitudes would have imitated her ; and not by cotton, but by some other very different material, would she have risen to her palmy state. Not by cotton, but by cotton and other machinery, made from her indigenous coal and iron, would the genius of her master minds have been developed, and we should at this time have beheld a stronger and hardier population in her streets ; and to this must she finally. come. The artificial trade in cotton, fostered at the outset by adventitious circumstances, constantly encroached on by foreigners, keeping the millowners in fear for their supply of im- ported material, must finally depart to those regions of the world best fitted for it, to which England will continue to supply machinery and en- gines till her coal and iron shall be burnt out, if ever that shall come to pass. Meanwhile, the exotic trade is kept up by hereditary serfs, who have not learned other employments, and are daily crushed more and more; paid occasionally nominally good wages, and cut down by tricks and fines and other surreptitious contrivances figuring in the balance-sheet as legiti- mate profits.

To keep this trade going—this exotic trade—it is absolutely necessary to

keep up a large stock of competing serf-class, under-sized, and under-fed, and unfitted for other and more robust employments. Why else are children so much preferred ? And should war and emigration go on, other employments will carry off the mill population even when unfitted for them ; and it is suite upon the cards, that we may yet behold the importation of Asiatics or Afncans, to fill the void in the mills and keep going the fixed capital built on and into the earth of Lancashire ; till the healthier indige- nous iron trade may possibly cause the exotic to disappear. In these facts, diffi- cult to disprove, we may possibly find the true source of Mr. Cobden's dissa- tisfaction with the war ; a war which will probably determine the exodus of cotton-spinning, and removing it to the East, help to bring. on Asiatic civili- sation.

In proof of the probability of this, if we refer to the time of the Preston strike we shall find that the weekly wages offered to the men by the masters was lls. to 15s. per week, an average of 13s. 6d.-351. 2s. per annum, with- out board or lodging. In the report of Mr. Wallis, at the same period, on the Lowell cotton-mill of the "United States, it was stated that the wages of a woman were 241. 4:. per annum in cash, and in addition board and lodging. At the same time

the wages of a man were 54/. 48. per annum in cash, i and addition board and lodging. We know what board means in the -United States, in meat, bread, vegetables, tea, sugar, coffee, and other matters; and assuredly lodging is not worse than in England.

It is probable that lower wages in the United States would draw people to agriculture, and that the scale of duties is regulated to keep up this rate. Now, what chance has Manchester if war or emigration reduce the num- bers of the population, save by an immigration of weak people, to constitute a reservoir of serfs ready to furnish "hands" by pressure ?

In short, to carry on an exotic trade that will not bear competition, Man- chester needs a population of serfs ; just as the Czar needs a population of serfs to make into feeble soldiers, or as sugar-growers incomparable circum- stances need black slaves as field-labourers. War, then 18 mischief to cot- ton working Manchester; and if Mr. Cobden sees all this, he acts but in his vocation of a Manchester cotton advocate to decry it. But England could exist minus cotton Manchester, and could not exist plus a regnant Czar ; and so needs the growth of strong physical manhood, —which young Manchester with its rapidly increasing indigenous iron trade will give us, let what may befal the exotic. Mr. Cobden is shortsighted. Ile would not build his mill till he had pur- chased the freehold of his land, but he would be content to hold a ninety- nine years' lease from the Czar of this our noble England. With his mill built, he knows that he must maintain it, and expend money in repairs. And even such is this war which we wage, to maintain this noble land in repair, and deliver it undamaged to our posterity. It is an expenditure without which we could not "live, move, or have our being"—the quit-ient we pay for the only life worth living, the life of freemen.

While in the Preston strike the mill-owners were offering their men 138. 6d. per week, and apparently could not afford more, handicraft cutlers in Sheffield, at a few miles distant, were earning three to five pounds per week, and thinking it a condescension to their employers to work three weeks consecu- tively. The knife-trade has been indigenous from the days when Robin Hood first bought himself a "Sheffield whittle," and has not fallen off yet.

To grow on our land a high staple of humanity, and not to suffer it to de- grade, should be the primary object of a statesman. We should, therefore, watch with care all classes of employment, abandon the over-competed exotic, and transfer the unhealthy to automatic processes. As a general material of clothing, cotton is a far inferior material to wool ; the objection to the latter being its deficient quantity. The next leap in the arts may be the produc- tion of artificial wool. Gelatine, artificially produced by the chemists to any extent, may be manufactured into fibres of any length or thickness, and change the whole course of our textile processes. To have free trade is a good thing, however it may arise ; and cotton-ma- nufacturers, forcing on free trade, have been a useful incentive to action

but if those manufactures generate ideas such as those of Mr. Cobden, in- ducing submission to despotism, and fostering a factitious population ever on the verge of want, the nation would be in a healthier condition without them. The ;English nation is an aristocracy of the human race, and its noble blood must not be impoverished by debasing pursuits. Man must not be sacrificed to swell the mere amount of matter, to increase the number of mills, and furnish them with population by splitting one stalwart English- man into three Chinese.