The Sun.
London, England, 1861-02-01 00:00:00

MR. COB DEN.

Mr. Cobden has done, and we trust will still do,
a great deal more than "point a moral and adorn
a tale ;" but, whatever his other more substantial
achievements, he will do this also. He points the
great moral of the weakness of genius, the credu-
lity of enthusiasm, and the inexorable limits which
Nature imposes on the highest capacity, and circum-
stances on the widest observation. Mr. Cobden is one
of the very, very long series of men who, with im
mense powers and the most generous instincts, have
shown that they cannot do everything, and that this
is g world of compensations. The drawback in his
nature is that he carnet take care of himself. The
free traders who so cheerfully collected £70,000 to
set up their hero in affluence and dignity might
as well have presented that sum to a suscep-
tible young lady of twenty, to a poet, to a young
gentleman deep in mediaeval architecture, or
another "impulsive" and helpless person. It is now
an old story, but Mr. Cobden invested the better
part of this money in American railways, chiefly,
we believe, in the Illinois Central; and the result
shows that he had much better have dropped every
sovereign into the Atlantic. It would have cost
much less, and saved much anxiety. The investment
was one that entailed further sacrifices, andof course
further losses. Two or three years ago a more select
body of admirers gathered £40,000 to get Mr.
Cobden out of the scrape, but even that, it is said,
has proved insufficient, and now the hat once more
goes round to collect a testimonial ostensibly on
account of the French Treaty, but really because
the money is wanted. Since that is really the case
everybody who cares for the dignity of his nation
and the merits of a great cause will wish to see the
want supplied, and none so proper to supply it as
those merchants of Glasgow and other great ports or
seats of manufacture who have gained by the French
Treaty. Everybody with a heart must feel for the
embarrassments of Fox and of Pitt, for Sheridan's
sad wreck, for Walter Scott's long struggles, and
even for Daniel O'Connell's dependence on the
weekly dole. Mr. Cobden ought to be sustained in
his place as a man who deserves well of his country,
and wealth itself is satirized and disgraced when
such a man is poor. But the case does not stop here.
These undoubted claims go further still. Mr. Cob-
den ought not only to be subscribed for, but
taken care of. As he cannot be made a ward in
Chancery, he ought to be placed in the hands of a
responsible committee, not to regulate his expen-
diture, which no doubt is moderate enough, but to
secure him from " good" investments. He has yet
to learn that " good interest is only another name
for bad security ;" that every American is not a
model of honesty, and that every Freetrader is not
a wise and good man.
We say this with the utmost simplicity and se-
riousne and really thinking not one whit the worse
of Mr. Cobden, or his views, from the fact that he has
the almost universal failing of genius and generosity.
A man cannot do and be everything. If he can look
after the affairs of the nation, he may easily be in
the habit of overlooking his own. No man is a
better judge than Mr. Cobden of his own country's
resources. He knows the sterling qualities of the
race. He sees its initustry, its versatility, its
fortitude under reverses, its buoyancy under dis-
couragements, and, in a broad sense, its truthful
and reliable character. Any how, he sees and
measures the results. They are matters of positive
knowledge. He knows what he himself would
wish to do and be. There is no labour, no self-
denial, that Mr. Cobden would not undergo for
what he conceived to be the good of his country ;
there is no calamity he would endure more easily
than the failure of any such design ; there is
nothing he would hate more than a public dis-
honesty. So, in a general way, he thinks other
men equally patriotic, equally high-minded, un-
less—and here comes the real source of Mr. Cob-
den's mistakes. He has, unfortunately, been so
much in the habit of fighting with classes and
interests, that he has made a partial and narrow
induction of mercantile and political errors. He has
been so many years descanting on the selfishness of
landowners, the jobbing of officials, and all the
drones of old English society, that he has become
positively blind to other forms of selfishness, mean-
ness, and fraud. Sidney Smith fell into the same
mistake, and made a very loud retractation. Mr.
Cobden gave to a company of American strangers a
confidence which he would have refused to a dozen
English gentlemen with historic names. In his
eyes their roughness itself bespoke truth, and
their very twang bespoke patriotism and honour.
The railway ran through forests and swamps;
it cleared and opened up millions of acres;
it dealt with corn and cattle ; it created a race
of small farmers ; it was all that was good,
and Heaven itself could hardly fail to prosper
an undertaking which breathed the very spirit of
the old command to replenish the earth. Unfortu-
nately, the figures were as unsound as a fraudulent
budget ; the calculations were as untrustworthy as
those of a Russian war ; the men as likely to be
knaves or fools as so many members of the House
of Peers. But Mr. Cobden could not believe this.
Honesty and dishonesty had assumed in his eyes a
territorial character. All was wrong here; all
right there. So even the great chief of the Anti-
Corn Law League had to learn, at the cost of a
generous nation's bounty, a lesson which he might
have learnt for nothing in the office of any respec-
table London stockbroker.

But are not dignities and sinecures made for
such men ? What a pity that Mr. Cobden cannot
be made a canon, or the lay rector of one of the
best livings in the gift of the Crown ! There used
to be such things as lay Bishoprics. One is tempted
to ask who is Chancellor of the Duchy of Lan-
caster? We say it most emphatically, and as
speaking with much experience of men and affairs,
that Mr. Cobden ought to have a good allowance,
but no power of giving, or lending, or "investing"
his money. In money matters we believe him to be
what Johnson called Goldsmith,—an " inspired
idiot." Indeed, if a man is inspired, or thinks him-
self inspired, we may safely add the substantive to
the participle. There are, indeed, men who profess
inspiration, but are not the less worldly-wise. It
Mr. Cobden took to calculating the end of the
world, or told us to a day the commencement of the
millenium, we should expect to find him a
prudent and money making man. Unfortunately
his calculations and anticipations go in the direc-
tion of pecuniary investment and the prosperity of
Republican institutions. We hope that he will be
treated as a woman or a boy, and put under trust.
We should say the same, indeed, of two-thirds of
the London world, most of whom have spent, given,
" lent," or "invested" as much as Would now make
them independent and comfortable, with a round
sum to spare, for the regeneration of the world or
any other object. Our Free Trade friends, and Mr.
Cobden's admirers in particular, must excuse our
allusion to this subject. They must be aware of a
certain degree of scandal in this constant con-
fession of unthriftiness and imprudence they volun-
teer for their hero. Many a worldly-wise Protec-
tionist is deriving his full share of the results of
Free Trade, while the man who ought to reap its
chiefest fruits is again and again the object of a
consideration more affectionate than respectful.
We wish the present subscription every success,
but we hold it essential to that success that there
should not recur the least need for its repetition.—
Times.