1846.
Pe

310

LIFE OF CUOBDEN. [cHar

persuade foreigners to adopt our trade principles, the
better; for we discovered so tauch suspicion of the motives
of England, that it was lending an argument to the probe’
bionists abroad to incite the popular feeling against the
Free Traders, by enabling them to say— See what these mel
are wanting to do: they are partisans of Englishmen, and
they are seeking to prostrate our industries at the feet of
that perfidious nation” . . . To take away this pretence ¥°
avowed our total indifference whether other nations beca®
free traders or nob: but we should abolish Protection fo
sur own sakes, and leave other countries to take whateve”
course they liked best”! When Bastiat came to the work
of agitation in his own country, he found all the diffic ulties
that his friends of the League had foreseen.
His book, Cobden et la Ligue, came gradually into greate”
vogue as the movement grew more important, and whe?
the hour of triumph came in England, Bastiat shared 18
glory in France, as one who had foreseen its importanc® ab
a time when no French newspaper had been courageous or
intelligent enough to give its readers any information OX 8
subject which was necessarily so unwelcome in a country of
monopolies. Bastiat felt that the title of his book had per”
haps wounded some of Cobden’s fellow-workers, and among
men less strenuous and single-minded he might have bee?
right. He defended himself by the reflection that in Franc
and perhaps we are not very different in England, it is neces”
sary that a doctrine should be personified in an ipdividuah
A great movement, he said, must be gummed up in a prop®’
name. Without the imposing figure of O'Connell the agit”
tion in Ireland would have passed without notice in the
French journals. The human mind,” he wrote to Cobde®
“has need of flags, banners, incarnations, proper name?’
and this is more true in France than anywhere else. Who
1 Oobden to Mr. Van der Masren., Oot. 5, 1858.