The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-15 00:00:00

MR, COBDEN AND THE " TIMES."

The following correspondence is a sequel to that
which has for several days occupied a most un-
merited share of public attention :
To JOHN T. DELANE, ESQ.

Sir,—You and I have beer long personally acquainted;
your handwriting is known to me, and I know you to be
the chief Editor of the 2intes. Under such circumstances
I cannot allow you to suppress your individuality, and
shield yourself under the third person of the editorial nomi-
native, in a correspondence affecting your personal respon-
sibility for a scandalous aspersion on myself (as I now learn
from you) as well as on Mr. Might.

Your refusal to publish my former letter is a matter so
entirely within your own province that I have nothing to
say upon it, except to congratulate myself on the recent
revolution in the newspaper world which renders your de-
sision comparatively harmless. A few years ago the limes
possessed almost a monopoly of publicity. Your-fifths of
the daily newspaper circulation issued from its press. Now
it constitutes, probably, one-tenth (if our diurnal journalism,
and my letter will be only the more generally read from
having been excluded from your columns.
But your letter proceeds to offer some most singular argu-
ments in justification of your attack on Mr. Bright. You
state that your journal had previously contained two lead•
ing articles casting the same imputation on both him and
myself, that you had challenged us to disavow your interpre-
tation of our speeches, and as we had failed to do so you•
accepted our silence as an acknowledgment of the truth of
our interpretation ; in other words, as a proof of our guilt
Here we have, in a compendious form, an exhibition of those
qualities of mind which characterise the editorial manage-
ment of the Times-of that arrog*self-complacency, that
logical incoherence, and that moral bewilderment which a
too long career of impunity and irresponsibility could alone
engender. I will not stop to remark on your demolition of
your own pretence for rejecting my championship of Mr.
Bright by the admission that you had included us both in
a joint indictment.
Now, that which forms the basis of this reasoning, if
such it may be termed, is an inordinate display of what I
will call Times egotism. Notwithstanding that your journal
has now but a fractional part of the daily newspaper cir-
culation, you complacently assume that all the world are
your constant readers. The Times never enters my house,
except by rare accident. This I know to be also the case
with Mr, Bright, who will, in all probability, never have
seen your attack until he reads it in my letter. It is only
during the session, at the Club, that I am in the habit of
seeing your paper. The chance visit of a friend last Friday
placed in my hand the Times of the previous day, when that
scandalous paragraph caught my eye which formed the text
of my letter to you. I was entirely ignorant of the two
former attacks, which by a droll process of reasoning you
now ask me to accept as a justification of the third. Now,
let me ask you to descend for a minute from your editorial
chair while I illustrate this logic by a hypothetical case put
to Mr. Delano, the barrister. Suppose that the constituents
of Mr. Bright were to indict your publisher for defaming
their member, and that it was proposed in a consultation
of lawyers, at which you were present, to set up as a plea
of justification at the trial that the same libel had been
twice previously published against both Mr. Bright and
Mr. Cobden,--would it fail to occur to you that, in the eyes
of an honest judge and jury, this defence would be con-
sidered an aggravation of the offence ?
But we will assume, for the sake of argument, that Mr.
Bright and I are regular subscribers to and diligent readers
of your newspaper. Is it seriously contended that as often
as you choose to pervert the sense of our speeches, and
charge us with schemes of public robbery, the onus lies
with us to disprove the imputation, and that, neglecting to
do so, we have no right to complain if we are thenceforth
treated as thieves Would it not occur to any one but an
editor of the limes that, before we violate the ninth com-
mandment, the obligation lies with us to know that we are
not bringing a false accusation against our neighbour ?
Now, a word upon the subject which has given rise to
this correspondence. Nobody knows better than yourself,
except the writer who actually penned the scandalous pas-
sage in question, that this charge of wishing to divide the
land of the rich among the poor, when levelled at Mr Bright,
is nothing but the resort to a stale rhetorical trick (though
the character of the libel is not on that account altered) to
draw away public attention from the real issue, and thus
escape from the discussion of a serious, but for the moment
an inconvenient public topic. In order to trail a red herring
across the true scent the cry of spoliation was raised. You
and ysur writers cannot be ignorant that the laws and poli-
tical institutions of this country tend to promote the agglo-
meration of agricultural land in a constantly lessening
numbez of hands—you and I know, by a joint experience
which neither of us is likely to have forgotten, how great
are the obstacles which the law interposes to the free trans-
fer of landed property in this country. Now, the policy
which sustains this state of things is a public question,
which is not only fairly open to discussion, but invites the
earnest attention and study of public men. In this, as in
every other human concern, we must bring the matter to
the test of experience, and in no way can this be more
effectually done than by a comparison between the condition
of the great majority of the agricultural population in this
and other countries. The subject of our land laws has en-
gaged the attention of eminent statesmen and our highest
legal authorities; but I will venture to add—and it is all I
shall condescend to say in refutation of your aspersions—
that if there are two persons who, beyond all others, have
given pledges throughout an ardent discussion of kindred
topics during a quarter of a century, that in debating the
question of the tenure and transfer of land they would ob-
serve the restraints of law, justice, and political economy,
they are the men whom your journal has dared to charge
with the advocacy of a scheme for robbing the landowners
of their property for the bsnefit of the poor.
Judging from past experience, this intrusion of a gross
personality will tend only to attract public notice to a matter
which it was meant to put out of sight. It has been the
fate of the Times to help forward every cause it has opposed.
By its truculent, I had almost said ruffianly, attacks of every
movement while in the weakness of infancy, it has roused to
increased efforts the energies of those it has assailed; while,
at the same time, it has awakened the attention of a languid
public and attracted the sympathy of fair and manly minds,
It is thus that such public measures as the abolition of the
corn laws, the repeal of the taxes on knowledge, and
the negotiation of the treaty of commerce with France
triumphed in spite of its virulent, pertinacious, and unscru-
pulous opposition—until at last I am tending to the con-
viction that there are three conditions only requisite for the
success of any great project of reform—namely, a good
cause, persevering advocates, and the hostility of the Times.
I shall forward this correspondence for publication in the
_Rochdale Observer, that it may at least be perused by the
community which has the greatest interest in a controversy
which concerns the reputation of Mr. Bright and myself.
am, Sir, your obedient servant,
Midhurst, Dec. 9. R. COBDEN.

e...1,.....1...11

To RICHARD COBDEN, EsCl.9 M.P.
Sir,—l have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of
the 9th inst.

It is quite true, as you say, that we have been long per-
sonally acquainted. Yon had no need to identify my hand.
writing. I have no desire to " suppress my individuality,"
or to deny my personal responsibility for what you are
pleased to call " scandalous aspersions" upon yourself and
Mr. Bright. You have thus all that individuality which
in your letter to the editor of the limes you professed to de-
siderate, and from which you anticipated such momentous
consequences. You will therefore have no difficulty in
rendering me responsible to the verdict either of a court of
law or of the general body of our countrymen, and I shag
cheerfully accept their decision,
You proceed to attribute to " 7imes egotism" my sup-
position that you had read the articles upon the report of
your speech. Is it, I ask, egotistic or unreasonable to sup-
pose that you, who had pounced so promptly upon a single
phrase in an article of much inferior interest to yourself,
should have read the articles which discussed your own
speech? Or could I be expected to know that you, who
once preferred a single copy of the Times to all the works of
Thucydides, did not admit the Times into your house?
You say that yon seldom read the Times, and it is proba-
bly because
to it such terms as arrogant
and truculent, and only hesitate over ruffianly. I appeal
s rivals you
that take
you youra apply
from it y opinions of it at second-hand
from your professed ignorance to the better informed judg-
ment of that large majority who do read the Times, and who
have discovered in it no such qualities.
You attribute to the Times a deliberate misrepresentation
of your meaning and that of Mr. Bright as to the means of
amending the unequal distribution of land between the rich
and the poor, I repeat that certain passages in your
' bear no other interpretation
tshpeaeuchtheas
ur
twmaieleelas,riibnedmes fortyootphi fenauclioi If you merely intended to ro-
commend niitilting the conveyance of land,
instalmentangel of law reform,
exaggerated that
as your reference to our transaction at Ascot would suggest,
languagewyoauareveruaed to
h
w
If you had read the Times, instead of condemning it unread,
you would know that it has always advocated the simplifi-
cationfausr t thee r
a moathum belter
of means for the transfer of land, and that its advo •
racy has not been altogether unsuccessful, But just as no
simplification of conveyance will compel the rich to sell
land or enable the poor to buy it, so no legislative measure
will render the purchase of land a profitable investment for
the poor.
The possession, the transfer, and the tenure of land
are, however, public questions, which are best discussed,
not between Mr. Cobden and Mr. Delane, but as it has
always been the practice of the English press to discuss
them—anonymously. That practice was not invented by
me; it will not be destroyed by yourself. It has approved
itrelf to the judgment of all, whether statesmen or public-,