KXXVIIL] THE NEW POSSESSORS OF POWER. 047

paration. He conceived a certain measure of material
prosperity, generally diffused, to be an indispensable instrument
 of social well-being. For England, as with admirable
foresight he laid down in his first pamphlet in 1835, the
cardinal fact is the existence of the United States——ios
industrial competition and its democratic example. This
has transformed the conditions of policy. This is what
warns English statesmen to set their house in order.
For a country in our position, to keep the standard of
living at its right level, free access to the means of subsistence
 and the material of industry was the first essential.
Thrift in government and wise administration of private
capital have become equally momentous in presence of the
rising world around us. To abstain from intervention in
the affairs of other nations is not only recommended by
economic prudence, but is the only condition on which
proper attention can be paid to the moral and social necessities
 at home. Let us not, then, tax Cobden with failing to
do the work of the social moralist. It is his policy which
gives to the social reformer a foothold. He accepted the
task which, from the special requirements of the time, it
fell to him to do, and it is both unjust and ungrateful to
call him narrow for mot performing the tasks of others as
well as his own.
It was his view of policy as a whole, connected with
the movement of wealth and industry all over the world,
that distinguished Cobden and his allies from the
Philosophic Radicals, who had been expected to form so
great and powerful a school in the reformed Parliament?
Hume had anticipated him in attacking expenditure, and
Mr. Roebuck in preaching self-government in the colonies.
{t was not until Retrenchment and Colonial Policy were

} See Ar. Mill’s Autobiography, 194196.