The Sun.
London, England, 1855-06-08 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY, JUNE 8, 1855.

Mr. COBDEN, no doubt, imagined that on Tues-
day evening he was rather hard upon Sir W.
MOLBSWORTII. Taunting the Right Hon. Baronet
with a speech delivered just fifteen years ago at
a public meeting in Yorkshire, the member for
the West Riding remarked—how wonderfully he
should like to compel the Minister for Public
Works to read n0t,.., (in contrast with his observa-
tions made on the 4th inst.) his harangue of 1840,
standing, as he did so, in locum, pcenitcntice, be-
fca HU-11703 Of titnnmonS All
this sounds very smart and very caustic, doubt-
less. But suppose for a moment we turn the
tables upon this honourable censor of " the dis-
ciple of BENTHAM and editor of HOBBES." Sup •
pose we retort upon Mr. COBDEN—how vastly
pleasant it would be to compel him to walk
across the floor of the House from his sung
bench below the gangway and there to
read over in his turn a speech delivered—not fif-
teen years, but scarcely seven years ago—not in
the wilds of Yorkshire, but under the roof of the
London Tavern, before a very crowded assemblage
collected together to protest against the infamous
course then being pursued by those Northern
despots, whom the Member for the West Riding
would now shelter under the wgis of. his flagrant
inconsistency ! Has Mr. COBDEN forgotten what
he then declared in the hearing of many hundreds
of Englishmen ? Has he quite lost the remem-
brance of his famous clap-trap of 1849—when in
the heat of his argument he exclaimed--" Call
Russia formidable ? Why you could crumple it
up as easily as I could crumple up this !"—turn-
ing as he spoke to the table near which he stood
at the moment, snatching from it a fragment
of paper, an old envelope, or something
of that sort, and, crushing it up in his hand, as
he hurled it down upon the platform in the energy
of declamation. Is the incident lost entirely to
Mr. COBDEN'S recollection ? Possibly it may be
remembered by Mr. Alderman SALOMON; the
Chairman of the 0303,31011. Possibly, too, the
present Secretary to the Admiralty, then one of
the most poignant thorns in the side of the Whig
Administration, may recall to mind turning round
while the little paper pellet was still dancing upon
the platform, and saying, with a shrug of the
shoulders—(was it not to the honourable member
for Pontefract ?)--" Are we to believe all this ?"
meaning the contemptuous assertions then being
uttered by the representative of the West Riding
as to the weakness of Russia and its general
liability to be crumpled up like an old envelope.
Yet Mr. COBDEN can now tell us from his place
in the House of Commons—he can coolly declare
in the hearing of Mr. MONCKTON MILNES and of
Mr. BaRNAL OsseßNE—that it is his belief that
we have entered upon a task the greatest, the
most arduous, and the most perilous that ever a
nation undettoik, that we shall have to double
our energies, that we shall have to double the
number of men en
. gaged that we shall have to
double the alnOunt of money annually expended,
before we can hope to succeed
effecting the ac-
complishment of our enterprise ! Very like
crumpling up Russia like a . handful of waste_
paper ! •Surely—surely when
. COBDEN talks
like this in
1855 and like that in 1849, he
is about the very last person who
ought to
rake up an old speech made fifteen years ago
somewhere in Yorkshire, and upon the strength
of that old' speech to tax the Right Hon. Baronet
the Minister for Public Works with inconsistency
Inconsistency, forsooth ! Beyond all manner of
doubt if any one can be charged with inconsistency
it is the very individual who thus from his own
transparent watch-tower hurls a stone in the direc-
tion of Sir WILLEA„ MOLESWORTH. Why never
man blew hot and cold more notoriously than
Mr. COBDEN himself has done in this matter of the
Ruzgala Autocracy ! 4eaking in the London