™.]  0OBDEN’S DENUNCIATION OF WAR LOANS. 533
Hollang, Germany, and France are invited to pay for the
Amy, clothing, and food of the belligerents, is a system
“aleulated to perpetuate the horrors of war. Those, moreover,
 who lend money for such purposes, are destitute of
"y of those excuses by which men justify resort to the
Sword, They cannot plead patriotism, self-defence, or even
“ger, or the lust of military glory. They sit down coolly
® calculate the chances to themselves of profit or loss in a
8%me in which the lives of human beings are at stake.
They havo pot even the savage and bratal gratification
Which the old pagans had, after they had paid for a seat
the amphitheatre, of witnessing the bloody combats of
Badiators in the cireus.!
It is impossible not to admire the courage, the sound
“036, and the elevation, with which Cobden thus strove to
liffugq the notion of moral responsibility in connexion with
the nge of capital. Such a doctrine was a novelty even in
the Pulpit, and much more of a novelty on the platform. The
Press, which never goes hefore public opinion in such
thing and usually lags a little way behind, attacked him
With its rudest weapons. The City resented the intrusion
the jrrelevancies of right and wrong into the region of
SCrip, premium, and speculative percentage. Even some of
bis own friends asked him why, on their common principles
of Freq Trade, he could not let them lend their money in
the dearest market and borrow in the cheapest; why there
¥a8 not to be Free Trade in monev as in evervthing else.?

1850,
ALT. 48.

! Speeches, ii. 189.
? “T wag told that a man bad a right to lend his mon without inquiring
"hat if, was wanted for. But if he knew it was wanted for a vile purpose
bag he a right of so lending it? I put this question to a City man :—
Somehogy agks you to lend money to build houses with, and yon kuow it
8 wanted for the purpose of building infamous houses: would you be justified
 in lending the money P’ He replied, ‘I would.” I rejoined, ‘Then I
"mm not going to argue with yon—you are a man for the police magistrate
bs Jooy eftar: for if von world lend wonev to bod infamous bousas, vo8