The Sun.
London, England, 1864-11-28 00:00:00

ee, t
social connections to the politician, but these etre ifeW°rfail
chiefly at the start, and Mr Cobden's ability and achieve'
meats have been of a kind to make his oeiginal rank a quer
tion of no importance, if only ho did net so constanti!
remind the world that he does not belong to thiet republ.
indieelitartn
of political letters where all are equal except in
gifts, by pouring forth private grudges against the calturet
Lif ages, and against the acts of aristrocratic statesmen,°
beeaue,e they have done amiss, but because they arbori.
erotic. Mr Gekden no doubt suspects it very little, tit
still true that eve); in this speech we can find for ag°°'_
many bettex reasons why he cannot be Premier than the
e_eer
he has found for himself. We venture to suggest that 11/.
Cobden's reason for thinking the geography of the gisr...
sippi more important to young men at the tinivereity
the geography of the ILssus—namely, that he once WA:
the latter stream dammo,4 up by a few Athenian 1511
00th
it tbro.ago;
while the Mississippi wit:i its tributaries flows
20,000 miles of navigable wavers
—is at least one ground, and p:obably a sufficient
Site,
declining declining to put him at the heat: of the Englislif_eo
ultivating
The man who could measure the e:
era into the Gulf of Mesta, r
its
of knowledge on the mind of se young 13/thyt
P
utility for practical affairs—who could :L-;d seeing
utility
America, with its rude though gigantic preps'ese'oecci
istence, its not merely unfinished but almost U 1 tig
civilisation, its tentative literature, its germinal socieh•
political log-huts of State constitutions, fie not a etudiLle
discipline undisciplined understandings and form the 'Pri,
tastes of youth—nay, that for such a task we must go bti
to the only era which, however imperfect in its eletaell
was at least complete and ,harmonious itself-01,y
have that finer judgment which, though it may not be 0
main instrument of the politician, is almost as eseetl66l f
political knowledge or sagacity itself for the regulatiell oci
our internal affairs, Mr Cobden evidently considers it
far more importance for young men to know the populadc*
e'eb
of Chicago—" a place of 150,000 inhabitants, from
one or two millions of people in our country are anlide
fed"—then to know what kind of a world was that la v
Attica some dozen of whose citizens have fed the D2f11,;0
Europe for the last 2,000 years. We know what reb'".
value Mr Cobden attaches to a single issue of the rent
m;
probably he would now prefer to substitute the 0071/"
Star to " all the works of Thucydides," and we c111,1:4.
think he has been more fortunate with the MisaissiPP`"ol
the Ilissus, even though Athenian washerwomen did
him a momentary exultation by damming up the latterwill be centuries at least before the exports from the ll*ol
sissippi, with all its 20,000 miles of navigable water* foe
equal in " real value" the intellectual exports from thildi
cient Piraeus. There are other confessions in Mr Co
speech which we cannot but think far more fetal tlcei
selection as Prime Minister than that virtuous 116 b.
his of refusing to flatter the English people; for 0110 P:
his very peculiar view that for England to have a'
reign policy at all is very much the same as for P 7,4,
dale to manage the municipal affairs of Leeds or 13Tir
burn, instead of attending to its own; and that °toe
virtue he inculcates, at the sacrifice of 0° emo°
"momentary popularity," on the English people, re:
in expressing expressing even their sympathy with other na7 if
we cannot avoid feeling sympathy with the people 4
countries, he says, we should at least do well to avoid.)het
expression of our feeling, a duty in the discharge °f,,,,litel
Mr Cobden sets us all so practical an example by
the last hour of his speech to an admirable expressi°P,,ialli
sympathy with the cause of the freemen of the VIO
against the rebel slaveholders of the Southern States' to
truth is that though Mr Cobden has never gile,„llulld,
party " what was meant for mankind," his strong 'lzotio'
has been unfortunately limited by the narrow VAT',
the world of ideas in which he was educatede--461"4- es,
not the sort of limitation which England can els"—, 110
Prime Minister. The benefits he has conferred 1117°1111011
nation are almost immeasurable in degree, but tired
lectually analogous to those eonferred upon it byArl;
fI
Mr Cobden has as it were enriched us, in goliligll
trade, with a moral spinning-jenny, which has 01e;0,
the resources and indirectly also the comfort,edast;:t"
moral strength of England beyond all calculation. " of,
almost all inventors of this class, he can think °f 11000
benefit to his country except some further extols°
same machinery.