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

CABINET COUNCIL.

Summonses were issued from the Foreign-office to
the Ministers to attend a 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 in
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, who
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-
testant 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 CANINO, the nephew of the
Emperor NAPOLEON. If ever there was an occur-
rence which more peculiarly indicated the extra-
ordinary progress or 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 succes..ful champion of the wise and
beneficent doctrines which require the complete
emancipation Gf commerce should be honourably re-
ceived in the antique city whose dominions once
embraced 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 principle,
which maintains that men " can obtain the various
productions of the earth's surface on more advan-
tageous terms by free trade than by the exclusive
conquest of territory." Lord BYRON had exclaiaaed
of Rome—

"The Siobe of nations ! there she stands
Voiceless and tearless in her wordless woe r

And through the s hole catalogue of her historians,
from TACITES to Ginnors, one of the main ca..-uses
of that woe and desolation had been avowedly
the total reliance placed by her Government
upon the compulsory contributions of ce real
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 Tells nce
upon the subsidiary granaries of Egypt and Sicily
bad followed the decadence of the Peninsular agAcul.
tore of the Romans, and by necessity their ultimate
enervation. And it was, therefore, sufficiently ap-
propriate and significant, we repeat it, that the ♦ictor
of free trade should travel from that remote ishuld of
Britain, which had of yore tempted the banner cu the
first C/ESAR to receive the felicitations of his Ilvdian
descendants in the vicinity of the ancient forum..
Often as we have had occasion to comment up ors the
tact and delicacy with which Mr. COBDEN has eaaun-
ciated his aspirations for the continental diffusiosn of
the civilizing principles of free trade, they have 'lever
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 ntterans ce of
a single aspiration beautiful aspiration,., ih
which we cordially coincide " that the illus-
trious man who now fills the pontifical chair,
and who has filled the world with Me fame
of his public virtues, may signalise his reign by Ca rry-
ing out in his dominions the peaceful and philantik ropic
principles of free trade !" And we sympathiut 1 the
more in the sentiments in which that aspix ation
originated, because we can perceive in it nothing be-
yond the limits of a reasonable probability; :ause
the liberalising efforts of Pio lcono have already ad-
vanced so far beyond the limits of a " prott a tive"
policy ; because, in the readiness with which Cal t re-
markable man has pronounced himself in fas.o ur of
railway communication through the States o f the
Church, we recognise a bias .kindred to that o f the
advocates of free trade ; and because, above rill, his
judgment appears to be mellowed in proportiifon to
the ripening of thought in the minds of the civi Used
million.

In the pilgrimage of RICUARD COBDEN we be hold
the symptom of a future development of civilian .tion
and of a more comprehensive extension of happitnress.

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 c teases ;
either the circumstances to which they were meant
to.be applied are no longer in ease, nor expects el to
be revived ; or their nature is so repugnant to the
spirit of
ofdretahma age,ofattempting
that n o
to man
pinuthtishemin right sr ?rases
Whenever laws have become useless or inefficacious
from one or both of those causes, they ought t 3 be
repealed. A great service is rendered to the state
whose laws are made as simple and as few as ix iss ible.
It Li not always easy to attain to these ends„ par-
ticularly in a highly artificial state of SI iety.
Nevertheless laws, pure in point of pfir ciple,
and small in number, are blessings of such price
(being really nothing but what is, in common jut .tiee,
due from the ruling powers to the people, who are held
in the eye of the law to be fully cognizant, and remtered
responsible for every violation of them), that all So-
vereigns who are wise and benevolent should l se, 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 thti re-
nowned NAPOLEON, yet that from which he wilL ac-
quire, through after ages, the most durable faro e is
his celebrated code. From a crude, multifarious, and
undigested mass of legislation, he extracted and..-em-
bodied a compendium of law which has peT*ved
of signal service to his country, and is re-
garded with admiration as one of the most arduttous,
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 wia.hes
in this respect have been materially thwarted by r ea-
son of the extensive and complicated interests re sr es.
sarily incidental to, and interwoven with, the elabo-
rate system of the British empire and its west
dependencies. Still we ought to feel grateful to :any
one who devotes his mind towards the abrogati en of
laws that have either fallen into desuetude, or are, -re-
proachful in their enactments. The existence of 'bad
laws exercises a prejudicial influence upon those-• that
are unexceptionable. eiy weeding out the fo finer,