BOOK S.

THE LIFE OF COBDEN.*

[FIRST NOTICE.7

'rills book makes a most valuable addition to our political literature. In the first volume especially, which contains the great story of the Free-trade movement, we have such a living picture of the simplest of successful agitators and the most artless of powerful politicians, as few living writers, except Mr.. John Morley, could have drawn. The materials at his disposal were oppressively rich, and the danger of too great amplitude extreme. But he has understood, as few writers in his place would have understood, the duty of high concentration, and yet has compressed so judiciously as to leave on the reader's mind the full sense of the length, the keenness, and the complexity of the great struggle, as well as of the extraordinary resources first created and then wielded by Mr. Cobden and his colleagues. He paints, too, with a most graphic pen, the curious lucidity and intensity of the mind of the leader, its combativeness without pugnacity, its firmness without obstinacy, and its vividness without redundancy. Few political histories of equal moment have been told with half the vivacity and terseness of this. And though Mr. Morley might, in our opinion, have con- densed much more unsparingly than he has done in dealing witix the comparatively languid interests of the last nineteen years of Cobden's life, it is possible that even here those who agree with Mr. Morley in accepting Cobden's views in relation to what we have always held the quite unintelligible principle of non-inter- vention, would have deprecated any further curtailment of the letters and speeches in which Cobden advocated that view, as much as we should deprecate any further curtailment of the narrative of his battle against Monopoly and Protection. Even in the second volume, the chapters which recount the political duel with Mr. Delane, and the one crushing domestic calamity of Cobden's life, are models of biographic force.

Admirable as the book is, it will hardly alter, though it will define and fix for ever, the impression which Cobden made on the mind of his contemporaries. It will heighten, so far as it is possible to heighten, the profound conviction of his purity, dis- interestedness, and benevolence of purpose, and engrave more effectively on the public mind the picture of his vivacity andy strength of intellect, and of his singular command of the best modes of flooding the popular imagination, not only with the kind of knowledge, but with the kind of influences generally, which were most necessary for carrying out his beneficent policy. But it will not tend in any degree to make the country regret that Cobden never became the bead of an Administration. Rather will it deepen the impression that his wonderful powers were adapted for a different purpose ; for converting the English people to the true appreciation of a particular class of principles essential to the well-being of the nation, and not for the more complicated, though it may be also the less difficult task, of measuring the relative claims of our various public obli- gations and opportunities, or for at once guiding and re- presenting the United Kingdom in so dealing with these obligations as both to satisfy and elevate the nation's sense of duty. There was something almost too simple and childlike about Cobden's mind, for any adequate grasp of the various elements- of so historic a position as that of a British Prime Minister ; and yet his mind was so powerful, that no one would willingly have seen him occupying any subordinate place in any work to which he had set his hand. It was far better that he should remain for ever the leader of the Free-trade movement in Eng-

• The Life of Richard Cobden. By John Morley. 2 vols. London: Chapman. and Hall.

'land, than that he should, have been known as the mere colleague of any Minister whatever. Indeed, it is evident that he him- telf, in what Mr. Morley happily calls "the antique and homely spirit of his patriotism," was profoundly averse to occupying a position which, as he well knew, would hardly fit his powers.

The simplicity of the man, both in its greatness and in its limita- tion, shines out curiously enough in that letter to Sir Robert 'Peel, written just before the latter's final resignation of office, in which Cobdeu urged upon the Minister not to resign, but to dissolve Parliament, and promised him that he should return to power as the head of a new party, in which there should be neither 'Tory nor Liberal, but a new creature, the Peelite Free-trader. To our minds, that letter shows at once the singleness of mind and enthusiasm of the writer for his own special ideas, and his complete inability to estimate the significance of purely political and historic, as distinguished from economical, aims. The same limitation comes out again and again in this biography, as, for instance, where Cobden writes, during a visit to Berlia in 1838 that the King of Prussia, "a good and just man, has, by pursuing .a systematic course of popular education, shattered the sceptre of despotism eveu in his own hand, and has for ever pre- vented his successors from gathering up the fragments." The notion that popular education, taken alone, is a final guarantee against the loss of liberty, and that it may not, indeed, be made almost a new auxiliary to a sagacious tyrant, is one which neither ancient nor modern history confirms. The Greeks were the most educated when they were least politically free, and the Germans for a century back, both in their former sub- divided, and in their latter federated life, have been almost as helpless in their political relations to their own rulers, as they have been potent in the exertion of literary and scientific and military influence over the life of their neighbours. Cobden was not a great statesman, for his mind did not adequately grasp all the various aspects of national life. But he was far the most powerful economist amongst great politicians ; indeed, he filled .economical questions with a life and practical significance such as no other economist, however powerful, was able to give them. It is curious that Mr. Morley—mazter as he is of modern poli- - tics—seems to sympathise most warmly with some of the most -defective aspects of Cobden's political character. For example, he apologises for the statement we have just quoted, by hint- ing that Prussia might have become what Cobden expected, if certain statesmen of a bad school "had not interrupted the working of ordinary forces by a policy of military violence," without suggesting, however, any explanation why, first, these statesmen of a bad school became powerful enough to carry 'out their designs ; and next, why, when they had carried out

their designs, they became the idols of the people whom they had passed under the yoke. Again, Mr. Morley speaks of oar own representative institutions with depreciation, denouncing "the hypocrisy and shiftlessness of a system that, behind the artfully-painted mask of popular representation, concealed the clumsy machinery of a rather dull plutocracy." In another place, again, he speaks of "the pretended reform of Parliament in 1832," as if any reform that the world has ever known were less of a pretence and more of a reality,—however incomplete it may have been,—than that great measure. In- deed, in the whole of his story of the Whig Administration between 1832 and 1841, Mr. Morley shows that he not only sym- pathises with, but even exaggerates, the prejudices entertained by Cobden, Miss Martineau, and the Cosmopolitan party generally, against the Whigs and their achievements. We have not the least sympathy with the curious deficiencies of the Whigs, but we believe that it was one of the notes of Cobden's limitations as a statesman, that he so naturally, but so emphatically, preferred the general statesmanship of Peel to the general statesmanship

of Russell. The Whigs hardly ever get a good word from either Cobden or his biographer. Thus, on one occasion, in relation to the Ten Hours' question, Cobden finds the Whigs "basely turning round upon their former opinions to spite the Tories ;" but when arty conversion of that kind happens to the Tories, he sees no base change of purpose in it.

Let us turn, however, from criticism of Cobden's limitations and Mr. Morley's sympathy with them, to the great character here painted for us by Mr. Morley with a masterly hand. Take, first, this admirable description of Cobden's style :— "What is striking in Cobden is, that after a lost and wasted child- hood, a youth of drudgery in a warehouse, and an early manhood passed amid the rather vulgar associations of the commercial tra- veller, he should at the age of one-and-thirty have stepped forth the master of a written style which in boldness, freedom, correctness,

and persuasive moderation was not surpassed by any man then living. He had taken pains with his mind, and had been a diligent and extensive render, but he had never studied language for its own sake. It was fortunate for him that, instead of blunting the spon- taneous faculty of expression by minute study of the verbal peculi- arities of a Lysias or an Isocrates, he should have gone to the same school of active public interests and real things in which those flue orators had in their different degrees acquired so happy a union of homeliness with purity, and of amplitude with measure. These are the very qualities that we notice in Cobden's earliest pages; they evidently sprang from the writer's singular directness of eye, and eager and disinterested sincerity of social feeling, undisturbed as both these gifts fortunately were by the vices of literary self-consciousness."

It would be difficult to find a happier description of Cobden's style than is contained in the phase, "a happy union of home- liness with purity, and of amplitude with measure ;" and equally difficult, we believe, to give a better account of the origin of the qualities of mind which found expression in this style. Here is another fine touch of the same kind :— "He [Cobden] always seemed to have made exactly the right de- gree of allowance for the difficulty with which men follow a speech, as compared with the ease of following the same argument on a printed page, which they may con and ponder until their apprehension is complete. Then men were attracted by his mental alacrity, by the instant readiness with which he turned round to grapple with a new objection. Prompt and confident, he was never at a loss, and he never hesitated. This is what Mr. Disraeli meant when he spoke of Cobden's sauciness.' It had an excellent effect, because everybody knew that it sprang, not from levity or presumption, but from a free mastery of his subject."

And here, again, is another most happy description of the secret of Cobden's oratorical charm :—

"After all, it is not tropes and perorations that make the popular speaker; it is the whole impression of his personality. We who only read them, can discern certain admirable qualities in Cubden's speeches ; aptness in choosing topics, lucidity in presenting them, buoyant confidence in pressing them home. But those who listened to them felt much more than all this. They were delighted by mingled vivacity and ease, by directness, by spontaneousness and reality, by the charm, so effective and so uncommon between a speaker and his audience, of personal friendliness and undisguised cordiality. Let me give an illustration of this. Cobden once had an interview with Rowland Hill, some time in 1838, and gave evidence in favour of the proposed reform in the postage. Rowland Hill, in writing to him afterwards, excuses himself for troubling Cobden with his private affairs : Your conversation, evidence, and letters, have created a feeling in my mind so like that which one entertains towards an old friend, that I am apt to forget that I have met you but once.' It was jest the same with bodies of men as it was with individuals. No public speaker was ever so rapid and so successful in establishing genial relations of respect without formality, and intimacy without familiarity. One great source of this, in Mr. Bright's words, was the absolute truth that shone in his eye and in his countenance.'"

And to bring before our readers, before concluding this notice, one concrete illustration of Cobden's skill as an orator, let us take a passage from one of his very earliest Free-trade speeches in the House of Commons, during the great commercial collapse of 1841 :— "Suppose nowt" Cobden went on, "that it were but the Thames instead of the Atlantic which separated the two countries—suppose that the people on one side were mechanics and artisans, capable by their industry of producing a vast supply of manufactures; and that the people on the other side were agriculturists, producing infinitely more than they could themselves consume of corn, pork, and beef— fancy these two separate peoples anxious and willing to exchange with each other the produce of their common industries, and fancy a demon rising from the middle of the river—fcr I cannot imagine any- thing human in such a position and performing such an office—fancy a demon rising from the river, and holding in his hand an Act of Parliament, and saying, You shall not supply each other's wants ;' and then in addition to that, let it be supposed that this demon said to his victim, with an affected smile, This is for your benefit; I do it entirely for your protection !' Where was the difference between the Thames and the Atlantic ?"

It would be hard, we think, to conceive a more vivid delineation of the blended arbitrariness and insolence of Protection, than is given in this passage, or of the extreme grotesqueness of the pretension that a cruel veto of this sort was intended exclu- sively for the benefit of one of the parties who were thus pro- hibited from exchanging what they did not need, for that which might even have saved them from a miserable death.