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NEW SITUATION.

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Richard Cobden, meanwhile, had found a situation in
London, in the warehonse of Partridge and Price. Mr. Zr 22
Partridge had for seven years been ome of Cobden’s emoloyers
 in the house which had failed, and he now resumed
business with a new partner, He had learned, in his own
words, Cobden’s capacity of rendering himself pre-eminently
useful, and he re-engaged him after a certain effort to drive
» hard bargain as to salary. In September, 1826, Cobden
again set out on the road with his samples of muslin and
calico prints. He continued steadily at work for two years,
travelling on an average, while on his circuit, at what was
then thought, when the Manchester and Liverpool railway
was only in course of construction, the brisk rate of forty
miles a day.
Two years afterwards, in 1828, Cobden took an important
step. He and two friends who were in the same trade
determined to begin business on their own account. The
scheme of the three friends was to go to Manchester, and
there to make an arrangement with some large firn of calicoprinters
 for selling goods on commission. More than half
of the little capital was borrowed. When the scheme first
dccurred to Cobden, he is said to have gone to Mr. Lewis of
the well-known firm in Regent Street, to have laid the plan
before him, and asked for a loan. The borrower's sanguine
sloquence, advising a project that in itself was not irrational,
proved successful, and Mr. Lewis’s advance was supplemented
 by a further sum from a private friend.
Cobden wrote many years afterwards: “I began business
in partnership with two other young men, and we only
mustered a thousand pounds amongst us, and more than half
of it was borrowed. We all got on the Peveril of the Peak
coach, and went from London to Manchester in the, at that
day (September, 1828], marvellously short space of twenty
hours. We were literally so ignorant of Manchester houses

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