1841.
Kop, £7

198

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7 UOBDEN,

ona:

whom it was his business to persuade, He was wholly freo
from the unmeasured anger sgainst human stupidity, which
is itself one of the most provoking forms of that stupid
Cobden was not without the faculty of intellectual contemp®
and he had the gift of irony ; but in the contempt was 2°
presumption, and it was irony without traculence. Ther?
same a time when he found that he could do nothing with
men; when he could hardly even hope to find an audien®
that would suffer him to speak. But during the work of
the League, at any rate, he had none of that bias agains’
his own countrymen to which the reformer in every
nation is so liable, because upon the reformer their der
fects press very closely and obstructively, while he has 2°
reason to observe the same or worse defects in othe
1ations.
It has often been said that Cobden was a good Englist”
man, and he was so, in spite of finer qualities which 0%
neighbours are not willing to allow to us. London society
and smart journalists who mistook a little book-knowleds®
for culture, were in the habit of disparaging Cobden 88 2
common manufacturer, without an idea in his head peyond
buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest. ThE
was not the way in which he struck the most fastidious, crit”
cal, and refined man of letters in Europe, accustomed to mi
with the most important personages of literature and affair
then alive. Prosper Mérimée saw a great deal of Cobden
1860, when they both spent part of the winter at Canné®
“ Cobden,” he wrote to his intimate correspondent, “is 2 ®#*
of an extremely interesting mind; quite the opposite of 8
Englishman in this respect, that you never hear him talk co?”
monplaces,and that he has few prejudices.” 1t was just beers?
he was not a man of prejudice, that he had none against hie
pwn countrymen. We saw how when he was travelling »
America, he found kis British blood np, as he said, sud