The Sun.
London, England, 1847-02-26 00:00:00

CABINET COUNCIL.

Summonses were issued from the Foreign-office to
the Ministers to attend d Cabinet Council this day,
at the Foreign-office, Downing-street.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer is gradually
recovering, but the Right Hon. Baronet has been
much weakened by his recent severe attack of in-
disposition.

After receiving throughout his peregrinations ih
France and the Peninsula the expressions of that
spontaneous homage to which his benevolent and
philosophic labours in legislation have so eminently
entitled him, Mr. COBDEN has at length been wel-
comed with befitting enthusiasm in the spiritual
metropolis of Continental Europe. Passing through
the mercantile principality of Genoa, he has entered
the venerable precincts of Rome, and in that ruin of
the heroic past the liberality of his sentiments, both
commercial and political, has been responded to with
acclamations. Among all the striking incidents of
our generation this is by no means the least; among
all the signs of our progressive advancement this is
one of the most consolatory and propitious.
Forty-seven, thirty, nay fifteen years ago, we
should have regarded that man as either demented, or
as possessed of a marvellous imagination, why•
might have pictured to us the possibility
of an English merchant being received as
an honoured guest under the very shadow of the
Vatican, of an assemblage of Italian patricians in-
viting to a banquet one of the foremost apostles of
British reform, and of a panegyric being uttered on
that festive occasion by the lips of an earnest Pro-
testar t upon the political and ecclesiastical character
of the Sovereign Pontiff. Yet such were actually
the characteristics of the festivity of the 10th of
February, 1847, within the walls of the Eternal
City. On that day the leader of the late Anti-Corn-
law League was present at a superb entertainment
given in his honour, in the Chamber of Commerce at
Rome, by its most influential nobility and its most
enlightened and enterprising citizens. To com-
plete the apparent incongruity of the spec-
tacle, there was numbered among those Roman
patricians the Prince of CAISINO, the nephew of the
Emperor NAPOLEON. If ever there was an occur-
rence which more peculiarly indicated the extra•
ordinary progress of knowledge which constitutes
the distinctive characteristic of this country, it is
discoverable in this splendid tribute of respect
to the heart and intellect of RICHARD COBDEN. It

needed only a circumstance like this to assure us that
our most sanguine anticipations, as to the universal
acceptance of free trade as a principle in government,
are not destined to be futile or illusory, and that our
most dazzling hopes as to the future destinies of the
human family are neither chimerical nor exaggerated.
That the successful champion of the wise and
beneficent doctrines which require the complete
mancipation of commerce should be honourably re-
ceived in the antique city whose dominions once
embreced the furthermost limits of the known world,
was most appropriate and significant. It was appro-
priate and significant, because it formed a sublime
example of the truth of that immutable principb,
which maintains that men " can obtain the ♦arious
productions of the earth's surface on more advan-
tageous terms by free trade than by the exclusive
conquest of territory." Lord BYRON had exclaimed
of Rome—

" The 'Slob° of nations ! there she stands
Voiceless and tearless in her wordless woe

And through the %hole catalogue of her historians,
from TAciTus to GIBBON, one of the main cause,
of that woe and desolation had been avowedly
the total reliance placed by her Government
upon the compulsory contributions cf cereal
food from the agriculturists of her remote and
vanquished provinces. The consequence of that
fallacious system of political economy was first in-
dicated to Rome by the predatory incursions of a
barbarian race, and ultimately by her tremendous sub-
jugation ; it is perpetually manifested to posterity in
the ruined palaces and prostrate columns strewn over
the desolate Campania. From their insane reliance
upon the subsidiary granaries of Egypt and Sicily
had followed the decadence of the Peninsular agricul-
ture of the Romans, and by necessity their ultimate
enervation. And it was, therefore, sufficiently ap-
propriate and significant, we repeat it, that the victor
of free trade should travel from that remote island of
Britain, which had of yore tempted the banner of the
first CiESAR to receive the felicitations of his Italian
descendants in the vicinity of the ancient forum.
Often as we have had occasion to comment upon the
tact and delicacy with which Mr. COBDEN has enun-
ciated his aspirations for the continental diffusion of
the civilizing principles of free trade, they have never
yet been more conspicuously evidenced than in the
speech delivered on his reception at Rome. Without
presuming upon anything approximating to direct
advocacy, he contented himself with the utterance of
a single aspiration beautiful aspiration, in
which we cordially coincide " that the illus-
trious man who now fills the pontifical chair,
and who has filled the world with the fame
of his public virtues, may signalise his reign by carry-
ing out in his dominions the peaceful and philanthropic
principles of free trade!" And we sympathise the
more in the sentiments in which that aspiration
originated, because we can perceive in it nothing be-
yond the limits of a reasonr.ble probability; because
the liberalising efforts of Pio Nono have already ad-
vanced se far beyond the limits of a "protective"
policy ; because, in the readiness with which that re-
markable man has pronounced himself in favour of
railway communication through the States of the
Church, we recognise a bias kindred to that of the
advocates of free trade ; and because, above all, his
judgment appears to be mellowed in proportion to
the ripening of thought in the minds of the civilised
million.

In the pilgrimage of RICHARD COBDEN we behold
the symptom of a future development of civilisation
and of a more comprehensive extension of happiness.

Nothing can be more unwise than to retain in our
statute-book laws which have become obsolete. Laws
partake of this character from one of two causes ;
either the circumstances to which they were meant
to be applied are no longer in ease, nor expected to
be revived ; or their nature is so repugnant to the
spirit of the age, that no man in his right senses
would dream of attempting to put them in force.
Whenever laws have become useless or inefficacious
from one or both of those causes, they ought to be
repealed. isl renderedtothestate
whose possible.
lawsAargermeaat servicedeassimpe and as few as
It is not always easy to attain to these endssoc,
ipeatyr:
par-
ticularly in a highly artificial state of
Nevertheless laws, pure in point of principle,
and small in number, are blessings of such price
(being really nothing but what is, in common justice,
due from the ruling powers to the people, who are held
in the eye of the la w to be fully cognizant, and rendered
responsible for every violation of them), that all So-
vereigns who are wise and benevolent should be de-
sirous of conferring these blessings upon their sub-
jects to the utmost practicable extent. Great and
electrifying as were many of the deeds of the re-
nowned NAPOLEON, yet that from which he will ac-
quire, through after ages, the most durable fame i 5
his celebrated code. From a crude, multifarious, and
undigested mass of legislation, he extracted and em-
bodied a compendium of law which has proved
of signal service to his country, and is re-
garded with admiration as one of the most arduous,
philosophical and dignified efforts ever made by an
imperial legislator for promoting the happiness of a
nation. England has in vain long aspired after the
acquisition of a similar boon. No doubt our wishes
in this respect have been materially thwarted by rea-
son of the extensive and compli.:ated interests neces-
sarily incidental to, and interwoven with, the elabo •
rate system of the British empire and its vast
dependencies. Still we ought to feel grateful to any
one who devotes his mind towards the abrogation of
laws that have either fallen into desuetude, or are re-
proachful in their enactments. The existence of hid
laws exercises a prejudicial influence upon those that,
are unexceptionable. By weeding out the former, i