1846.
ar, 43,

358

LIFE OF OOBDEN, (

company with a conspicuous member of the League. with
thet amicable freedom of remark which parliaments™y
habits permit and nourish even between the stoutest adve™
saries, the Leaguer expressed his wonder that Lord Georg®
Bentinck should fear any evil from the removal of the duty’
“Well,” Lord George answered, “I keep horses in three
counties, and they tell me that I shall save fifteen hundred
& year by free trade, I don’t care for that. What I can!
bear is being sold.” This was not the language of mag”
nanimity or of statesmanship, but it aptly expressed the
dogged anger of the Manners, the Somersets, the Lowther®
and the Lennoxes, the Mileses and the Henleys, the Do
combes and the Liddells and the Yorkes,” and all the res of
that host of men of metal and large-acred squires whom the
strange rhapsodist of the band has enumerated in a list 3°
sonorous as Homer’s catalogue of the ships.” These honest
worthies did not know much about the Circle of the BX"
changes, but they believed that Free Trade would destroy
rent, and that the League was bent on overthrowing the
Church and the Throne; while they saw for themselves the?
their leader had become an apostate. But this county’
a8 Cobden said at the time, is governed by the ignoran®
of the country. Their want of intelligence did not Pr*
vent them from possessing a dangerous power for the
moment.
The majority on the first reading was a hollow and not 8°
honest majority, and the Protectionists were quite aware of ib
The remarkable peculiarity of the parliamentary contes?
was that not a hundred members of the House of Commo8®
were in favour of total repeal, and fewer still were in favo™®
of immediate repeal. Lord Palmerston, as Cobden wrote ©
n friend long after these events, showed unmistaksb!
signs that ho was not unwilling to head or join a part? i

Et Lord Georgs Bondineh, », 218. ak, ov.