1862.
Hr. 48.

574

LIFE OF COEDEN. [omer

Trade, Cobden made a vigorous speech against the Pr
posal for organizing the militia, contending that we should
be amply protected by our navy, if our ships were nob £y%°
bematically sent abroad. He denied the reasonable probability
of invasion, appealing to Lord John Russell's emphatic declaration
 on the first night of the session, that the relations
of peace existed between this country and foreign nations
in the fullest degree. Why should we suddenly act as if &
remote and highly improbable contingency were an assured
certainty ? This point of view was not agreeable to the
majority, and all that Cobden took by his protest was the
assurance from s member on his own side that he a5
labouring under a monomenia which deprived the country
of the services of a very clever man. Cobden knew very well
what price he and his friends might expect to pay for standing
 aloof from either of the two great factions, and refusitg
to echo the conventional cries of the political market-place:
In the course of the previous year he hsd bold = great
meeting of Liberals at Manchester how he stood. Spitefu!
newspapers had begun to talk of him as a disappointed
demagogue. “This disappointed demagogue,” he said,
“ wants no public employment ; if I did, I might have had it
before now. I wantmno favourand no title. I want nothing
that any Government or any party can give me; and if I ar
in the House of Commons at all, it is to give my feeble aid ©
the advancement of certain questions on which I have strong
convictions.” If they deprived him of this power, if they
bold him not to do this becanse it was likely to destroy
a Government with which he could have little sympathy:
then the sooner he betook himself to something OTe
profitable than sitting up in the House of Commons night
after night, the better both for himself and his friends.’
If Cobden found little support from either the House of
2 Manchester, Foh. 23, 1851.