v.]

THE GREAT USAGH.

105

policy on anything else than selfishness. # Our desire,”
Cobden said, is to see Poland happy, Turkey civilized, and
Russia conscientious and free: it is still more our wish that
these ameliorations should be bestowed by the hands of
Britain upon her less instructed neighbours: so far the great
majority of our oppouents and ourselves are agreed. How
% accomplish this beneficent purpose, is the question whereon
we differ.” They would resort, as Washington Irving said
in a pleasant satire on us, to the cudgel, to promote the
good of their neighbours and the peace and happiness of
the world. There ig One unanswerable objection to this,
Cobden answereq experience is against it; it has been
ried for hundreds of years, ang has failed. He proposed to
Brive at the same end by meang of our national example,
by remaining at Peace, vigorously pursuing reforms and
improvements, and so Presenting that spectacle of wealth,
prosperity, power, and invineible stability, which reward an
ora of peace wisely and diligently used. Your method, he
said, cannot he right, because it assumes that yon are ab
all times able to judge what will be good for others and
the world—which you are not. And even if your judgment
were infallible, the method wonld be equally wrong, for you
1ave no jurisdiction over other states which authorizes you to
do them good by force of arms.
The source of thege arguments lay in three convictions.
First, the government of England muss always have its hands
full, in attending to its domestic business, Second, it can
seldom be sure which party is in the right in a foreign quarrel,
and very seldom indeed be sure that the constituencies, ignorant
 and excitable ag they are, will discern the true answer to
that perplexing question. Finally, the government which
keeps most close to morality in its political dealings, will find
itself in the long-run to have kept most close to the nature of
things, and to that success which rewards conformity to the

1835-6.
Lr, 31.2