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Yostowed on the rebellion of the American colonies against _ 185%:
Great, Britain, Zr. 49.
Of course if Cobden had professed to be writing a history
of that momentous epoch, he wonld have had to take many
dircumstances into account which for his purpose at the
Moment; might fairly be allowed to go for nothing. Chauvelin,
 for instance, was not so humble and innocent an
“missary as Cobden’s langnage might leave ns to suppose;
he was a coxcomb without either judgment or address. The
Success of the French arms, again, coming after a period of
intenge apprehension, nursed in the Convention an arrogant
and overbearing spirit which would probably have made the
Maintenance of peace with even a less proud Government
than that of Great Britain extremely difficult. What is clear.
® that it would have been well for England, and probably
for Burope too, if the British Government had done their
Yest to remain at peace with the new Republic. And what
i equally clear is, as Cobden showed, that the British
Government when the crisis came, so far from doing their
best to remain at peace, hurried violently into war. The
Many elastic possibilities of history did not concern a writer
Whose pressing object was to demolish the opinion, which
the feeling of the moment when Cobden wrote made so
mischievous, that it was the restless snd aggressive spirit of
France which first provoked the great war that opened upon
Burope in 1792. This task, as I have said, was tolerably
%8sy, and nobody who has fully considered the circumstances
’f the Declaration of Pilnitz will deny that though there were
Political parties in France to whom the foreign war that was
forced upon them was for domestic reasons not unwelcome,
yet Cobden was strictly right in his thesis that the French
Government had, in 1792, given no ground of offence to
loreign nations. “It is impossible,” Cobden breaks out, in
the fulpess and sincerity of his emotion, “to read the