160

LIF? ¢™

COBDEN. feHAY:

1847. accent, and sald he was a freeman of Tavistock, and would
Xr. 43. give me a plumper if I came there as a candidate. DY
another man from Stockport who is in a cotton-mill here;
he says it works from six a.m. to eight p.m., stopping for
an hour; that the engine runs thirteen hours a day’
says double the number of hands, as compared with the
English mills, are employed to produce a given result; the
English labourer is the cheapest in Europe.”
“St. Petersburgh, Sept. 13th—Mr. Edwards, attaché ©
the English ministry, mentioned an anecdote illustrative of
the inordinate self-complacency of my countrymen, They
complained to him that at the Commercial Association, #
kind of club consisting of natives and English, the air of
‘Rule Britannia’ had been hissed by the Russians; they
were discomposed at the idea of foreigners being averse ©
the naval domination of England!”
“St. Petersburgh, Sept. 15¢th.—Paid a visit to the Minister
of Finance; he invited me to speak to him frankly as ©
my opinions on the manufactures of Russia, and I profited
 by the opportunity of making a Free Trade speech
to him of half an hour's length. He was reported to 11°
38 an incompetent, ignorant man, but he has at least the
merit of being willing to learn; he listened like a man of
good common sense, and his observations were very much
to the point. M. de Boutowsky called, who has writteD
a work upon political economy and in favour of Free
Trade, in the Russian language. In the course of the
conversation he remarked that Peter the Great com”
menced the system of regulating and interfering with trade
and manufactures in Russia. Another instance added t©
those of Cromwell, Frederick the Great, Louis XIV+
Napoleon, and Mehemet Ali, showing that warrior
and despots are generally bad economists. and that the¥