In an age when many have gained the double distinction of
eminence in statesmanship and in letters, the name of Lord
Morley stands out as that of a man so illustrious in both
provinces that it is hard to decide in which he has earned the
greater fame. We are here concerned with him as a brilliant
English man of letters. The "Life of Cobden" was published in
1881, when John Morley was in the height of his literary
activity. Born at Blackburn on December 24, 1838, and educated
at Cheltenham and Oxford, he had entered journalism, had
edited the "Pall Mall Gazette" and the "Fortnightly Review,"
and had followed up his first book--a monograph on Burke--by a
remarkable study of Voltaire, and by his work entitled "On
Compromise." Political preoccupations drew him somewhat away
from literature after 1881; but in 1901 he published his book
on Cromwell, which was followed two years later by the
monumental "Life of Gladstone."
_I.--On the Road_
Heyshott is a hamlet in a sequestered corner of West Sussex, not many
miles from the Hampshire border. Here, in an old farmhouse, known as
Dunford, Richard Cobden was born on June 3, 1804. His ancestors were
yeomen of the soil, and, it is said, with every appearance of truth,
that the name can be traced in the annals of the district as far back as
the fourteenth century.
Cobden's father, a man of soft and affectionate disposition, but wholly
without the energy of affairs, met with financial disaster in 1814, and
relatives charged themselves with the maintenance of his dozen children.
Richard was sent by his mother's brother-in-law, a merchant in London,
to a school in Yorkshire. Here he remained for five years, a grim and
desolate time, of which he could never afterwards endure to speak. In
1819 he was received as a clerk in his uncle's warehouse in Old Change;
and at the age of twenty-one he was advanced from the drudgery of the
warehouse to the glories of the road. What made the life of a traveller
specially welcome to Cobden was the gratification that it offered to the
master-passion of his life, an insatiable desire to know the affairs of
the world.
In 1826, his employer failed, and for some months Cobden had to take
unwelcome holiday. In September he found a situation, and again set out
on the road with his samples of muslin and calico prints. Two years
afterwards, in 1828, he and two friends determined to begin business on
their own account. They arranged with a firm of Manchester
calico-printers to sell goods on commission; and so profitable was the
enterprise that in 1831 the partners determined to print their own
goods, and took an old factory at Sabden in Lancashire.
Cobden's imagination was struck by the busy life of the county with
which his name was destined to be so closely bound up. "Manchester," he
writes with enthusiasm, "is the place for all men of bargain and
business." His pen acquires a curiously exulting animation as he
describes the bustle of its streets, the quaintness of its dialect, the
abundance of its capital, and the sturdy veterans with a hundred
thousand pounds in each pocket, who might be seen in the evening smoking
clay pipes and calling for brandy-and-water in the bar-parlours of
homely taverns. He prospered rapidly in this congenial atmosphere; but
it is at Sabden, not at Manchester, that we see the first monument of
his public spirit--a little stone school-house, built as the result of
an agitation led by him with as much eager enthusiasm as he ever threw
afterwards into great affairs of state.
Between 1833 and 1836 Cobden's character widened and ripened with
surprising quickness. We pass at a single step from the natural and
wholesome egotism of the young man who has his bread to win to the wide
interests and generous public spirit of the good citizen. His first
motion was towards his own intellectual improvement, and early in life
he perceived that for his purposes no preparation could be so effective
as that of travel. In 1833 and 1834 he visited the Continent; in 1835,
the United States; and in 1836 and 1837 he travelled to Egypt, the
Levant, and Turkey.
In the interval between the two latter journeys he made what was
probably his first public speech, at a meeting to further the demand of
a corporation for Manchester. The speech is described as a signal
failure. "He was nervous," says the chronicler, "confused, and in fact
practically broke down, and the chairman had to apologise for him."
He was much more successful in two pamphlets he published at this time,
"England, Ireland, and America," and "Russia," in which he opened the
long struggle he was to wage against the restriction of commerce, and
the policy of intervention in European feuds. It is no strained
pretension to say that already Richard Cobden, the Manchester
manufacturer, was fully possessed of the philosophic gift of feeling
about society as a whole, and thinking about the problems of society in
an ordered connection.
_II.--The Corn Laws_
In 1837, Cobden was invited to become candidate for the borough of
Stockport. Although he threw himself into the struggle with all his
energy, on the day of election he was found to be at the bottom of the
poll. Four years later he was returned for Stockport by a triumphant
majority. But in 1841 he was no longer a rising young politician; he had
become the leading spirit of a national agitation.
In October, 1838, a band of seven men met at an hotel in Manchester, and
formed a new Anti-Corn-Law Association. They were speedily joined by
others, including Cobden, who from this moment began to take a prominent
part in all counsel and action. The abolition of the duties on corn was
the single object of Cobden's political energy during the seven years
that followed, and their destruction was the one finished triumph with
which his name is associated.
After the rejection in the following year by a large majority of Mr.
Villiers' motion that the House of Commons should consider the act
regulating the importation of corn, the association developed into a
League of Federated Anti-Corn-Law Associations in different towns and
districts. The repealers began the work of propagandism by sending out a
band of economic missionaries, who were not long in discovering how
hardly an old class interest dies. In many districts neither law nor
equity gave them protection. The members of the league were described in
the London Press as unprincipled schemers, as commercial and political
swindlers, and as revolutionary emissaries, whom all well-disposed
persons ought to assist the authorities in putting down.
Before he entered Parliament, Cobden re-settled his business by entering
into partnership with his brother Frederick, and married (May, 1840) a
young Welsh lady, Miss Catherine Ann Williams. In Parliament Cobden was
instantly successful. His early speeches produced that singular and
profound effect which is perceived in English deliberative assemblies
when a speaker leaves party recriminations, abstract argument, and
commonplaces of sentiment, in order to inform his hearers of telling
facts in the condition of the nation.
But Cobden's parliamentary work was at this time less important than his
work as an agitator. If in one sense the Corn Laws did not seem a
promising theme for a popular agitation, they were excellently fitted to
bring out Cobden's peculiar strength. It was not passion, but
persuasiveness, to which we must look for the secret of his oratorical
success. Cobden made his way to men's hearts by the union which they saw
in him of simplicity, earnestness, and conviction, with a singular
facility of exposition. Then men were attracted by his mental alacrity,
by the instant readiness with which he turned round to grapple with a
new objection.
His patience in acquiring and shaping matter for argument was surpassed
by his inexhaustible patience in dealing with the mental infirmities of
those whom it was his business to persuade. He was wholly free from the
unmeasured anger against human stupidity which is itself one of the most
provoking forms of that stupidity.
_III.--Cobden and Bright_
In the autumn of 1841, Cobden and Bright made that solemn compact which
was the beginning of an affectionate and noble friendship that lasted
without a cloud or a jar until Cobden's death.
"On the day when Mr. Cobden called upon me," said Bright, "I was in the
depths of grief, I might almost say of despair; for the light and
sunshine of my house had been extinguished. All that was left on earth
of my young wife, except the memory of a sainted life and of a too brief
happiness, was lying still and cold in the chamber above us. Mr. Cobden
called upon me as a friend, and addressed me, as you might suppose, with
words of condolence. After a time he looked up, and said, 'There are
thousands of houses in England at this moment where wives, mothers, and
children are dying of hunger. Now,' he said, 'when the first paroxysm of
your grief is past, I would advise you to come with me, and we will
never rest till the Corn Law is repealed.' I accepted his invitation."
Although the agitation for repeal was in Cobden's mind only a part of
the broad aims of peace and social and moral progress for which he
strove, he was too practical to put forth his thoughts on too many
subjects at once. He confined his enthusiasm to repeal until repeal was
accomplished. But his efforts left him no time to attend to his own
business, which was falling to pieces under the management of his
brother Frederick. In the autumn of 1845 he felt compelled to give up
his work as an agitator on account of his private affairs, but Bright
and one or two friends procured the money that sufficed to tide over the
emergency.
The cause was now on the eve of victory. The autumn of 1845 was the
wettest in the memory of man. For long the downpour never ceased by
night or by day; it was the rain that rained away the Corn Laws. The bad
harvest and the Irish potato famine brought the long hesitation of Sir
Robert Peel to an end. Soon after the opening of the session of 1846, he
announced his proposals.
The repeal of the Corn Laws was to be total, but not immediate. For
three years there was to be a lowered duty on a sliding scale, and then
the ports were to be opened entirely. "Hurrah! Hurrah!" wrote Cobden to
his wife on June 26, "the Corn Bill is law, and now my work is done!"
_IV.--In the Cause of Peace_
Cobden was now absent from England for fourteen months, travelling on
the Continent. His reception was everywhere that of a great discoverer
in a science which interests the bulk of mankind much more keenly than
any other, the science of wealth. People looked on him as a man who had
found out a momentous secret. He had interviews with the Pope, with
three or four kings, with ambassadors, and with all the prominent
statesmen. He never lost an opportunity of speaking a word in season.
They were not all converted, but they all listened to him; and they all
taught him something, whether they chose to learn anything from him in
return or not.
On his return he joined with Bright in an agitation for financial and
parliamentary reform. While he believed in an extension of the franchise
as a means of attaining the objects he had in view, he was essentially
an economical, a moral, and a social reformer. He was never an
enthusiast for mere reform in the machinery. He made it his special
mission to advocate financial reform, and left the advocacy for
franchise extension very largely to his colleague.
Retrenchment was the keynote of the financial reform urged by Cobden;
and retrenchment involved the furtherance of international peace and the
reduction of British armaments by means of the abandonment of the policy
of intervention in European disputes and the policy of "clinging to
colonies," with the consequent expenditure upon colonial defence. From
1846 to 1851 Lord Palmerston was at the Foreign Office, and was
incessantly active in the affairs of half the countries of Europe. To
this policy of interference Cobden offered resolute opposition. He was
especially energetic in protesting against the lending to Austria and
Russia of money that was in effect borrowed to repay the cost of the
oppressive war against Hungary. It is impossible not to admire the
courage, the sound sense, and the elevation with which Cobden thus
strove to diffuse the doctrine of moral responsibility in connection
with the use of capital.
In 1852, a Protectionist Ministry under Lord Derby came into power, and
the Anti-Corn Law League was revived. The danger, however, soon passed
away; the Derby Ministry made no attempt to interfere with freedom of
trade, and ere the year ended gave place to the Aberdeen Ministry.
Cobden's policy of peace and retrenchment, however, became more and more
unpopular. Cobden's urgent feeling about war was not in any degree
sentimental. He opposed war because war and the preparation for it
consumed the resources which were required for the improvement of the
temporal condition of the population. But in the inflamed condition of
public opinion his arguments were powerless.
The invasion panic of 1853 was followed in 1854 by the Crimean War, and
in opposing that war Cobden and Bright found themselves absolutely
alone.
"The British nation," said Lord Palmerston, "is unanimous in this
matter. I say unanimous, for I cannot reckon Cobden, Bright, and Co. for
anything." His estimate was perfectly correct; Cobden and Bright had the
whole world against them. The moral fortitude, like the political
wisdom, of these two strong men, stands out with a splendour that
already recalls the great historic types of statesmanship and
patriotism.
_V.--Cobden as Treaty-Maker_
In 1857, Cobden was compelled to retire for a time from politics. He
vigorously opposed the Chinese War, and succeeded in defeating Lord
Palmerston's Government in the House of Commons. Lord Palmerston, with
his usual acuteness and courage, at once dissolved parliament, and in
the General Election his victory was complete. The Manchester School was
routed. Cobden, who contested Huddersfield, was heavily beaten; and at
Manchester itself Bright was at the bottom of the poll. Cobden went to
his home at Dunford, in Sussex, and remained there nearly two years.
Once more he was afflicted with financial trouble. An unfortunate land
speculation at Manchester, and certain investments in American
railroads, had again brought him into difficulties, from which he was
ultimately rescued by a munificent gift of £40,000 from subscribers
whose names he never knew.
The General Election of 1859 was held while Cobden was absent in the
United States, and on his return he found that he had been chosen member
for Rochdale. To his surprise, he also received from his old enemy,
Palmerston, an offer of the Presidency of the Board of Trade. Cobden,
who had consistently refrained from accepting any office, courteously
declined.
But he was none the less able to render a great service to the new
Government. Mr. Bright, in a parliamentary speech, incidentally asked
why, instead of lavishing the national substance in armaments, they did
not go to the French Emperor and attempt to persuade him to allow his
people to trade freely with ours. The idea of a commercial treaty
occurred to M. Chevalier on reading the speech, and he wrote in this
sense to Cobden, who was strongly impressed by the notion. He opened his
mind to Gladstone, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer; and, as the
outcome, Cobden went to Paris in the autumn of 1859 as unofficial
negotiator of a treaty.
The negotiation was long and tedious. Cobden had to convert the emperor
to his views, and to await the reconciliation of the various French
interests that were opposed to freedom of trade. It was not until
November, 1860, that Cobden's labours were concluded. England cleared
her tariff of protection, and reduced the duties which were retained for
revenue on the two French staples of wine and brandy. France, on her
part, replaced prohibition by a series of moderate duties.
Palmerston offered Cobden a choice between a baronetcy and a Privy
Councillorship as a reward for his services. He replied begging
permission most respectfully to deny himself the honour. "An
indisposition to accept a title," he wrote, "being in my case rather an
affair of feeling than of reason, I will not dwell further on the
subject."
_VI.--The Last Days of Cobden_
When Cobden returned to England his public position had more than
recovered the authority and renown which had been seriously impaired by
his unpopular attitude on the Russian war. But he and Bright were soon
involved in an almost angrier conflict than before with the upper and
middle classes, on account of their championship of the North in the
American Civil War.
The remaining years of his life were largely spent in systematic
onslaughts upon the policy of Lord Palmerston, and in opposition to
military expenditure. It was with the purpose of resisting a Canadian
fortification scheme that he made his last journey to London in March,
1865. On his arrival he was seized by a sharp attack of asthma;
bronchitis supervened, and it became evident that he would not recover.
On the morning of Sunday, April 2, Bright took his place by the side of
the dying man. As the bells were ringing for the morning service the
mists of death began to settle heavily on his brow, and his ardent,
courageous, and brotherly spirit soon passed tranquilly away.
He was buried by the side of his son in the little churchyard at
Lavington, on the slope of the hill among the pine-woods. "Before we
left the house," Bright has told us, "standing by me, and leaning on the
coffin, was his sorrowing daughter, one whose attachment to her father
seems to have been a passion scarcely equalled among daughters. She
said, 'My father used to like me very much to read to him the Sermon on
the Mount. His own life was, to a large, extent, a sermon based upon
that best, that greatest of all sermons. His was a life of perpetual
self-sacrifice.'"
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