332

LiF OF GOBDEN.

{opa?,

1850. in effect borrowed to repay the cost of the late oppressive
Hr. 46. wor. In October he delivered a powerful speech against
the Austrian loan of seven millions. In the following
January he convened a meeting at which he denounced
with still more unsparing invective the loan of five and
half millions which was asked for b y Russia, He insisted that
the investment was unsound; that the funding system is
injurious to mankind and unjust in principle; thab tho
exportation of capital to be destroyed and lost in the botbo™”
less abyss of foreign wars, is contrary to the principles of
political economy. What paradox could be more flagrant
he asked, than for a citizen to lond money to be the mea’
of military preparations on the part of a foreign Powe"
when he knew, or ought to have known, that these very
preparations for which he was providing would in hei?
burn impose upon himself and the other taxpayers of bi
own country the burden of counter-preparations to meet
them? What man with the most rudimentary sens® of
public duty could pretend that it was no affair of his ©
what use his money was put, so long as his interest W*
high and his security adequate? What was this money
wanted for? Austria, with her barbarous consort, had beer!
engaged in a cruel and remorseless war, and now she ca10®
stretching forth her bloodstained hand to honest Datchme?
and Englishmen, and asking them to furnish the force df
this hateful devastation. Not only was such a systo® >
waste of national wealth, an anticipation of income »
destruction of capital, the imposition of a heavy and profit”
less burden on future generations: besides all this, ib W8° ®
direct copnivance at acts and a policy which the very met!
who were thus asked to lend their money to support it
professed to dislike and condemn, and had gocd reason for
disliking and condemning. This system of foreign Joan
for warlike purposes, Cobden argued, by which Englsods