The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-03-28 00:00:00

COBDEN AND THE NAVY.

(From the London Guardian.)
Our readers will probably remember Mr. Cobden's
palaver at Manchester some time ago—how he showed
that calico-making, or rather calico-printing, was the
road to a knowledge of all things in general, and naval
and military matters in particular. The honourable
member had only just returned from his continental ex-
cursions, and he proceeded to furnish the meeting, at
least so everybody thought, with a little of his foreign
experience.

The navy was a humbug; he had seen it himself, and
his friend, the American Consul, quite agreed with him.
Nothing to do at Malta! fiddling and feasting filled up
the time of the squadron : such a picture of the dolce far
niente as might make many a hard-working lawyer most
naturally wish he had volunteered for the fleet. Alac-a-
day, they must stay with us as they are. Cobden's pic-
tures, on his own admission, are but visions of the past.
From what came out in the Honse on Monday, it seems,
the Admiralty were rather startled at Mr. Cobden's
highly-coloured descriptions of the doings in the Mediter-
ranean station, and they forthwith sent off to Sir Wil-
liam Parker to inquire about it. The Admiral followed
Mr. Cobden's example, and communicated with the
American Consul, who informed him that he had not seen
Mr. Cobden at Malta for the last ten years. On this, up
gets Cobden and exclaims that when, in January, he spoke
of having been at Malta in November, he meant Novem-
ber, 1836. Now we ask whether, out of the large assem-
bly who cheered Mr. Cobden and his universal fraternity
at Manchester in January last, any one person, with the
exception, perhaps, of Mr. Cobden's immediate friends,
imagined for a moment that the speaker alluded to what
had taken place twelve years ago. It would be absurd to
suppose it. If Mr. Cobden be acquitted of a deliberate
intention to mislead, he must, at any rate, have been
guilty of gross carelessness, almost as fatal to the charac-
ter of a public man' as actual knavery. People have, for
some time past, begun to suspect that Mr. Cobden had so
imbued himself with free trade and corn law repeal as to
be unable fully to take in any other subject, and what
came out on Monday night last will not tend to re-estab-
lish his reputation, either in the House or the country at
large.
Can Mr. Cobden be trusted for a correct statement of
facts, will hereafter be asked. A man who has, to say the
least, been so loose in what he has said on one occasion,
may mislead his hearers on another. Mr. Cobden has
lost ground. We fancied we had got a statesman; but,
since corn-law repeal, there have been but few symptoms
of it. If he goes on in this way, he may have to bid fare-
well to the West Riding.
As to the debate which occasioned this little expose it
hardly deserves notice. Mr. Hume has a way of talking
penny-wise nonsense, but he sometimes hits out some-
thing good ; people, therefore, bear with him, remember-
ing that he is occasionally useful. But when a man like
Cobden gets up to back him, it is rather too much. At a
time when France is increasing her army to an unheard of
extent, and all Europe is in revolution—when, to say
nothing of the chances of a war, there is hardly a Conti-
nental port where the presence of a British naval force
may not at any moment be required—these gentlemen
wish to cut down the number of our seamen. That is to
say, to render us weaker at sea than we are at present.
On any other point of the naval estimates, save this, a
possible case might, perhaps, have been made out. But
the seamen's wages is a limiter where there can be no
cheating. So many men, at so much per day, come to so
much. The worst of the case is that these reckless sort of
objections have a tendency to abstract the proper course
of the inquiry as to savings in naval expenditure which is
now going on. " Oh," men will say, " there is nothing
in all this talk of extravagance, who can trust a word these
fellows say ?" And so an useful investigation may be
stopped. But a proposal to diminish the number of sea-
men is a very different thing from an inquiry, whether the
sums voted for dockyards and stores, for instance, are
properly expended ? There is too much reason to believe
that such is not the case, and that a searching investiga-
tion would bring to light abuses which the world at
large have no idea of. It is to be hoped that Messrs.
Hume and Cobden, by their antics, may not succeed in
procuring the peculators a long day.

FEMALE HEROISM.—The Earl of Dundonald, in his
biographical sketch of the family of the late Mr. Coutts,
Speaking of this gentleman's wrandmother, (a daughter of
Sir John Cochrane,) relates the following anecdote :
" Sir John Cochrane being engaged in Argyle's rebellion
against James the Second, was taken prisoner, after a des-
perate resistance, and condemned to be hanged. His
daughter having notice, that the death-warrant was ex-
pected from London, attired herself in men's clothing,
and twice attacked and robbed the mails (between Bed-
ford and Bedwick) which conveyed the death-warrant,
thus giving time for the friends of her husband to make
intercession with the king, who granted a full pardon."
This beautiful heroine was the great-grandmother of Lord
Dudley Stuart.

INTEMPERANCE A PREDISPOSING CAUSE OF ASIATIC
CHOLERA.—Whatever obscurity may overhang the excit-
ing cause of the epidemic cholera, we are quite sure that
certain circumstances exercise a strong predisposing in-
fluence upon the human body to render it more than usu-
ally susceptible of the disease. The predisposing causes,
as ur.ight well be imagined, were such as tended to debili-
tate the system ; and therefore poverty, which implies
scanty nourishment, and frequently also the confinement
of several persons to a narrow space, and want of fresh
air ; poverty, which includes these and other evils, was
found to predispose the body to a ready reception of the
malady. But to intemperance, more than to any other
single cause, may the proclivity to become affected by this
species of cholera be ascribed; and especially to the in-
temperate and habitual use of distilled spirits. This fact
was peculiarly manifested in the selection, by the disease,
of its victims in this country ; and it has been remarked
almost everywhere else.—Doctor Watson.
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.—In the course of the pacifica-
tion conference of Sir Harry Smith wit'a the Kaffirs at
King William's Town, a voltaic battery was fired on the
opposite slope about a quarter of a mile distant. Here a
waggon had been placed at 300 yards distance from the
battery, communicating in the usual manner by means of
wires. The object of his Excellency was to convey to the
Kaffir mind an idea of sudden and irresistible power. Ac-
cordingly, on a given signal from him—the waving of a
small flag—the discharge instantly took place, the explo-
sion shattering the carriage of the waggon, and canting up
the body of the vehicle, so that it remained fixed one end
on the ground, at an angle of 45 degrees. The action was
so sudden as scarcely to afford time to his Excellency to
direct the attention of the Kaffirs to the experiment—but
in those who were looking towards the spot and saw the
power exercised on a distant object, the surprise mani-
fested was amusing. " There," exclaimed his Excel-
" is a lesson to. you not to meddle with waggons, as
y'ou, sea the power 1 possess, sh.r.ad ao so, to pur,l,ll-.
you..7—Squa 4*ml Advertiser. t-.