in whom they put their trust was obliged ultimately to surrender. On the 17th of February 1843 an extraordinary scene took place in the House of Commons. Cobden had spoken with great fervour of the deplorable suffering and distress which at that time prevailed in the country, for which, he added, he held Sir Robert Peel, as the head of the government, responsible. This remark, when it was spoken, passed unnoticed, being indeed nothing more than one of the commonplaces of party warfare. But a few weeks before, Mr Drummond, who was Sir Robert Peel’s private secretary, had been shot dead in the street by a lunatic. In consequence of this, and the manifold anxieties of the time with which he was harassed, the mind of the great statesman was no doubt in a moody and morbid condition, and when he arose to speak later in the evening, he referred in excited and agitated tones to the remark, as an incitement to violence against his person. Sir Robert Peel’s party, catching at this hint, threw themselves into a frantic state of excitement, and when Cobden attempted to explain that he meant official, not personal responsibility, they drowned his voice with clamorous and insulting shouts. But Peel lived to make ample and honourable amend for this unfortunate ebullition, for not only did he “fully and unequivocally withdraw the imputation which was thrown out in the heat of debate under an erroneous impression,” but when the great free-trade battle had been won, he took the wreath of victory from his own brow, and placed it on that of his old opponent, in the following graceful words:—“The name which ought to be, and will be associated with the success of these measures, is not mine, or that of the noble Lord (Russell), but the name of one who, acting I believe from pure and disinterested motives, has, with untiring energy, made appeals to our reason, and has enforced those appeals with an eloquence the more to be admired because it was unaffected and unadorned; the name which ought to be chiefly associated with the success of these measures is the name of Richard Cobden.” Cobden had, indeed, with unexampled devotion, sacrificed his business, his domestic comforts and for a time his health to the public interests. His friends therefore felt, at the close of that long campaign, that the nation owed him some substantial token of gratitude and admiration for those sacrifices. No sooner was the idea of such a tribute started than liberal contributions came from all quarters, which enabled his friends to present him with a sum of £80,000. Had he been inspired with personal ambition, he might have entered upon the race of political advancement with the prospect of attaining the highest official prizes. Lord John Russell, who, soon after the repeal of the corn laws, succeeded Sir Robert Peel as first minister, invited Cobden to join his government. But he preferred keeping himself at liberty to serve his countrymen unshackled by official ties, and declined the invitation. He withdrew for a time from England. His first intention was to seek complete seclusion in Egypt or Italy, to recover health and strength after his long and exhausting labours. But his fame had gone forth throughout Europe, and intimations reached him from many quarters that his voice would be listened to everywhere with favour, in advocacy of the doctrines to the triumph of which he had so much contributed at home. Writing to a friend in July 1846, he says—“I am going to tell you of a fresh project that has been brewing in my brain. I have given up all idea of burying myself in Egypt or Italy. I am going on an agitating tour through the continent of Europe.” Then, referring to messages he had received from influential persons in France, Prussia, Austria, Russia and Spain to the effect mentioned above, he adds:—“Well, I will, with God’s assistance during the next twelve months, visit all the large states of Europe, see their potentates or statesmen, and endeavour to enforce those truths which have been irresistible at home. Why should I rust in inactivity? If the public spirit of my countrymen affords me the means of travelling as their missionary, I will be the first ambassador from the people of this country to the nations of the continent. I am impelled to this by an instinctive emotion such as has never deceived me. I feel that I could succeed in making out a stronger case for the prohibitive nations of Europe to compel them to adopt a freer system than I had here to overturn our protection policy.” This programme he fulfilled. He visited in succession France, Spain, Italy, Germany and Russia. He was received everywhere with marks of distinction and honour. In many of the principal capitals he was invited to public banquets, which afforded him an opportunity of propagating those principles of which he was regarded as the apostle. But beside these public demonstrations he sought and found access in private to many of the leading statesmen, in the various countries he visited, with a view to indoctrinate them with the same principles. During his absence there was a general election, and he was returned (1847) for Stockport and for the West Riding of Yorkshire. He chose to sit for the latter.
When Cobden returned from the continent he addressed himself to what seemed to him the logical complement of free trade, namely, the promotion of peace and the reduction of naval and military armaments. His abhorrence of war amounted to a passion. Throughout his long labours in behalf of unrestricted commerce he never lost sight of this, as being the most precious result of the work in which he was engaged,—its tendency to diminish the hazards of war and to bring the nations of the world into closer and more lasting relations of peace and friendship with each other. He was not deterred by the fear of ridicule or the reproach of Utopianism from associating himself openly, and with all the ardour of his nature, with the peace party in England. In 1849 he brought forward a proposal in parliament in favour of international arbitration, and in 1851 a motion for mutual reduction of armaments. He was not successful in either case, nor did he expect to be. In pursuance of the same object, he identified himself with a series of remarkable peace congresses—international assemblies designed to unite the intelligence and philanthropy of the nations of Christendom in a league against war—which from 1848 to 1851 were held successively in Brussels, Paris, Frankfort, London, Manchester and Edinburgh.
On the establishment of the French empire in 1851–1852 a violent panic took possession of the public mind. The press promulgated the wildest alarms as to the intentions of Louis Napoleon, who was represented as contemplating a sudden and piratical descent upon the English coast without pretext or provocation. By a series of powerful speeches in and out of parliament, and by the publication of his masterly pamphlet, 1793 and 1853, Cobden sought to calm the passions of his countrymen. By this course he sacrificed the great popularity he had won as the champion of free trade, and became for a time the best-abused man in England. Immediately afterwards, owing to the quarrel about the Holy Places which arose in the east of Europe, public opinion suddenly veered round, and all the suspicion and hatred which had been directed against the emperor of the French were diverted from him to the emperor of Russia. Louis Napoleon was taken into favour as England’s faithful ally, and in a whirlwind of popular excitement the nation was swept into the Crimean War. Cobden, who had travelled in Turkey, and had studied the condition of that country with great care for many years, discredited the outcry about maintaining the independence and integrity of the Ottoman empire which was the battle-cry of the day. He denied that it was possible to maintain them, and no less strenuously denied that it was desirable even if it were possible. He believed that the jealousy of Russian aggrandizement and the dread of Russian power were absurd exaggerations. He maintained that the future of European Turkey was in the hands of the Christian population, and that it would have been wiser for England to ally herself with them rather than with the doomed and decaying Mahommedan power. “You must address yourselves,” he said in the House of Commons, “as men of sense and men of energy, to the question—what are you to do with the Christian population? for Mahommedanism cannot be maintained, and I should be sorry to see this country fighting for the maintenance of Mahommedanism.... You may keep Turkey on the map of Europe, you may call the country by the name of Turkey if you like, but do not think you can keep up the Mahommedan rule in the country.” The torrent of popular sentiment in favour of war
