PARENT GR AND FAMILY MISFORTUNES ;

concerned. removed to a small farm on the outskirts of
Midhurst, owas a man of soft and affectionate disposition,
but wholly without the energy of affairs. He was the
gentlest and kindest of men. Honest and upright himself,
he was incapable of doubting the honesty and uprightness
of others. He was cheated without suspecting it, and he
aad not force of character enough te redeem a fortune which
gradually slipped away from him. Poverty oozed in with
gentle swiftness, and lay about him like a dull cloak for
the rest of his life. His wife, the mother of Richard Cobden,
had borne the gracious maiden-name of Millicent Amber,
Unlike her kindly helpless husband, she was endowed with
native sense, shrewdness, and force of mind, but the bravery
of women in such cases can seldom avail against the shiftlessness
 of men. The economic currents of the time might
seem to have been all in their favour. The war and the
scarcity which filled ll the rest of the country with distress,
rained gold upon farmers and landlords. In the five years
during which William Cobden was at Guillard’s Oak, (1809-13),
 the average price of wheat was just short of five
pounds a quarter, In spite of tithes, of war-taxes, and of
tremendous poor-rates, the landowners extracted royal rents,
and the farmers drove a roaring trade. To what use William
Cobden put these good times, we do not know. After the
harvest of 1813, the prospect of peace came, and with it a
collapse of tho artificial inflation of the grain markets. Insolvency
 and distraint became familiar words in the farmhouses
 that a few months before had hoon revelling in plenty.
William Cobden was not the man to contrive an escape
from financial disaster. In 1814 the farm was sold, and
they moved from home to home until at length they made a
settlement ab Westmeon, near Alton in Hampshire. His
neighbours were as unfortunate ss himself, for Cobden was
sble to pay in later venrs that when he returned to his native

1809.18.