Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-08-20 00:00:00

from America, and has his banquet at Rochdale.
He had been travelling where all clever English-

men pretend to go for experience ; he had come

back, not only to find himself the elect of an

unsolicited constituency, but welcomeu

by an

equally unsolicited offer of a seat in the Cabinet

He had, moreover, refused to enter those charmed

but troublous waters, where he tells us none but

noble or gentle fry had ever been allowed to

swim before ; and, in obedience to the dictates of

his conscience, had rejected the supplication of a
lord to sit among lords. Having achieved this
pitch of republican virtue—to which we do not be-
grudge the credit it is worth.—and also the

sometimes doubtful prestige of a six months'
travel in the States, it is fit that Mr. COBDEN,
like other great potentates in the world of matter
or the world of mind, should have his ovation.
He has also obtained the favour of a great
many of his countrymen ; and after the interreg-
num of the last few years, there is a tinge of
novelty in his leadership. It is right, therefore,
he should tell his patrons, or his followers, what
he has learnt, what he has done, and what he

means to do ; on what terms he accepts their sup-
port, what they have to learn in sympathy with his
views, and what they also must do for the cause

which he represents

To do Mr. COBDEN justice, he does not seem
likely, from his first public appearance since his
return, to realise the character of " the travelled
fool," whose misused experience is nothing but

the food of vain pretension or of arrogant opinion.
We give him every credit for having taken ad-
vantage of the warnings that have been so
frequently advanced against the adverse recoil
upon English Institutions, of the intoxication of

flattery, of which strangers in America have been
too often the unfortunate victims. We had
grown tired of the cosmopolitan simplicity, which
having been stuffed full with the best side of

American politics and American manners, had
fatally shut its eyes to their most glaring evils,
and had even proposed to England- for imitation
what natives themselves too often recognised as
their worst defects. We applaud Mr. COBDEN'S
discernment, in that he tacitly acknowledged and
appreciated this ; and above all, his growing good
taste, in perceiving what after all is an obvious
truth, that a flattering reception among strangers
damages one's impartiality as an observer and
a critic. Indeed it is possible that a closer
acquaintance with American Institutions has
taught Mr. COBDEN a different lesson from that
Mr. BRIGHT has imbibed, not so much from
theoretical and distant observation, as from mor-

bid and unpatriotic instincts. It is probable
Mr. COBDEN has learnt that a Republic is not the
abode of all that is infallible in theory, much

less of all that is pure in administration. He

may have learnt that a 1114.11 mast go forth from
his study into the world, and modify impractica-
ble theories, before he ever becomes an adequate
judge of any human systems,—but of political
systems most of all. He may reflect that perfect
theories had been elaborated, and had become the
common heritage of mankind, long before the
Manchester school of politicians had found, like

HAMLET, that everything was out of joint, but
blessed, instead of cursed, themselves that they

were born to set it right. The enunciation of
perfect theories is of all things the easiest, just
as of all things it is generally the most useless.
Each of us, no matter how weak, how sin-stained,
how perverse
.he may be, can do it for himself a
thousand times a day, and a thousand times to
no purpose. What we want is a machine which
will work among men who possess a fatal ten-
dency to fall short of, to kick against, or even to
resist and revile, the perfection of theory.
Which will work the greatest amount of average
good among an average community. Which will
go down to the business and bosoms of men, and

not float above their heads as an object of contem-
plation, or even of praise. Which will adapt itself
to the greatest number of conflicting conditions,
and fit into the greatest variety of individual and

class peculiarities, and not into the " oughts " and
the " musts "of mere optimists and dreamers. To
form such a machine, time and circumstance are
the best artificers ; and it is the glory of the British
Constitution, that it is to these safe and silent
workmen it is indebted for its " homeliness " and
its beauty, its " shapelessness " and its compact-
ness, its " clumsiness " and its power. But of what
use is such a reflection as this, unless we learn that
these same builders of the Constitution will be its
most effectual and safest reformers,—that under
their sifting and gentle touch progress will not
be so much reform as its own innate growth, and

the inevitable developement of its own life-giving
principle ? It is not because they view with
alarm or disfavour this natural and wide-spreading
growth, that Conservatives resist the journeyman
precipitation of such peddlers as Mr. BRIGHT and
Mr. COBDEN—Or Mr. COBDEN as once he was,—
but because they feel that to antedate the work
of :time, and to anticipate the moulding power of
circumstance, is at best to tag on to the machine,
improvements which may look well to the eye,
but which can only clog its working power, and
destroy the harmony and equilibrium of its parts.
Let no foreign model, then, be laid aside the
British Constitution. It disdains the 'prentice-
hand of the servile imitator. Let those who have

models to lend out, or theories to practise on,
address themselves to those Constitutions which
have come ready-made out of the brains of their
inventors, and which, having been of a month or
two's growth, may to-morrow as quickly and as
easily give way to an improvement. The nation
whose instincts or whose habits lead them to