1042,
Be 58,

230

LIFE GF OORDEN. © [ous

ranks, Several of the young aristocrats are evidently more
liberal than their leaders, and they have talked rationally
about an ultimate Free Trade. I hear a good deal of thi®
talk in the tea and dining-rooms. In fact the Tory aris
bocracy are liberals in feeling, compared with your genuin®
political bigot, a cotton-spiuving Tory. I see no other
course for us but & renewed agitation of the agricultural
districts, where I expect there will be a good deal of discontent
 ere long. I mean in the small rural towns, Bad
trade in the manufacturing towns will, I suspect, very soon
conver the Tories, or break them, the next best thine.”

No new line of action was hit npon until the end of the
session. In the meantime, so far as the agitation out of
doors went, Cobder’s mind was incessantly turning over
plans for strengthening the connexions of the League. TO
Mr. Ashworth he wrote ;—
“Tt has struck me that it would be well to try to engraft
our Free Trade agitation upon the Peace movement. They
are one and the same cause. It has often been to me a matter
of the greatest surprise, that the Friends have nottaken np the
question of Free [rade as the megns—and I believe the only
human mesns—of effecting universal and permanent peace:
The efforts of the Peace Societies, however laudable, cat
never be successful so long as the nations maintain their
present system of isolation. The colonial gystem, with all it
lazzling appeals to the passions of the people, can never be
got rid of except by the indirect process of Free Trades
which will gradually snd imperceptibly loose the bands
which unite our Colonies to us by a mistaken notion of selfinterest.
 Yet the Colonial policy of Europe has been the
chief source of wars for the last hundred and fifty years:
Again, Free Trade, by perfecting the intercourse, snd
8 To ¥, Oobden, March 10, 1343.