The Cobden Club held its annual dinner at Greenwich on
Saturday, the Marquis of Hartington in the chair. The speeches were of little interest, but we are sorry to note a remark by Mr. Forster, which explains a good deal of the indifference we have so often complained of in Radicals towards foreign politics. He said, "We bad questions brought before us at the present moment affecting the countries of Europe, but after all, of what importance were they, compared with the enormous portion of the earth's surface of which we had in some degree the management ? Why, the interests of our Colonies and of our Indian Empire were, in truth, the interests of a great part of the world." Is not size there made too much the standard of importance ? China was a very big and populous place 2,000 years ago, but the foreign policy of Attica, which involved the freedom or slavery of the Athenian people, was of more importance to mankind than any conceivable " interest " of the enormous empire. That Judea, a country as big as Wales, was conquered by Rome, is a fact which has influenced the human race more than the whole career of the Japanese,—even if it has, as they say, been unbroken for ten thousand years. We rule, as Mr. Forster says, territories far greater than Europe, and populations far more numerous than that of the Continent, but have they all added as much to human thought as Paris or London every year? The neglect of Indian affairs for Parisian affairs is not all the result of stupidity, but of a just belief that Paris teaches, and India does not.
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