2x1] BOOT OF OORDEN'S FERLING AROUT WAR. 535

he lips of man, What is always still more important, Peel 1850.
738 not afraid to say that it is impossible to secure a country Zr. 46.
"8ainst al conceivable risks, If in time of peace you insist
°2 having all the colonial garrisons up to the standard of
Complete efficiency, and if every fortification is to be kept in
A State of perfect repair, then no amount of annual expendi-"wre
 con ever be sufficient, If you accept the opinions of
Wilitary men, who tell a Minister that they would throw upon
hin the whole responsibility in the event of a war break-0g
 out, and predict the loss of this or the other valuable
Possession, then the country must be overwhelmed by taxation,
 Tt is inevitable that risks should bern. Peels decla-"ation
 was, and must at all times remsin, the language of
®ommon sense, and it furnishes the key to Cobden’s charac-Yoristic
 attitude towards a whole class of political questions
Where his counsels have been most persistently disregarded.®
It wag thus from the political, and not from the religious
* humanitarian side, that Cobden sought to arouse men to
the criminality of war. If an unnecessary war is a crime,
then to supply the funds for it, even for the sake of an
®Xfra fraction per cent., is to be an accessory before or
for the fact in that crime. And that is the wise and
timely sermon for which Cobden took the events of those
Uys for a text. In the case of land, the world was quite
*eady to recognize the truth, that property has its duties
"well ag its rights. Cobden’s views on the morality of
War loans extends the same principle to the whole adminis.
bration of property of every kind.
Speculative forecasts of this sort were uncongenial enough
0 the veteran practitioner st the Foreign Office, who
Manipulated events on other principles. Things were now
Moving strangely counter to Cobden’s hopes ~~ When
Russia and Austria pressed for the surrender of the Hun-3

 Phe passass from Peel waa auoted by Cobden. Svesches, i. 414.