1835-6.
Aor. 31-2.

[IO

LIFE OF COBDEN. [ons

went abroad while destroying prosperity at home, down fe
Kant, who wrote an essay on perpetual peace; and to the
French Encyclopwdists, who were a standing peace pars
down to the outbreak of the Revolution, Apart from thes
utopias of a too hopeful philosophy, there is one practic?
statesman whom the historian of political opinion in Eng’
land may justly treat as a precursor of Cobden’s schoo
This is Lord Shelburne, the political instructor of th
younger Pitt. He was the first powerful actor in 0%
national affairs, in whom the great school of the Economist
found a sincere disciple. It was to Morellet, the writ®’
in the Encyclopaedia and the friend of Turgot, rather eve”
than to Adam Smith and Tucker, that Shelburne professed
to owe those views on peace and international relatio?®
which appeared in the negotiations of his government wit?
France after the war with the American colonies, and
which, alas, after a deplorable interval of half a centwT:
the next person to enforce as the foundation of our politiod
system, was the author of the two Manchester pamphlet?
In the speech which closed his career as a minister (1783)
Shelburne had denounced monopoly as always unwise, but
for no nation under heaven so unwise as for England. With
more industry, he cried, with more enterprise, with mor’
capital than any trading nation in the world, all that we ought
to covet upon earth is free trade and open markets. Hi
defence of the pacific policy as most proper for this country
was as energetic as his enthusiasm for free trade, and b¢
never displayed more vigour and conviction than when 1
attacked Pitt for allowing himself,—and this was before th
war with’ the French Republic,—to be drawn again int
the fatal policy of European intervention in defence of th
integrity of the Turkish empire.
The reason why Shelburne’s words were no more th?
» passing and an unheeded voice, while the teaching of