CHAPTER XXVIL

THE INDIAN MUTINY—PRIVATE AFFAIRS—SECOND JOURNEY
TO AMERICA.

Tug elections had barely taken place before the country
Was thrilled from end to end as it had been on no occasion
before, by the appalling horrors of the Indian Mutiny.
Cobden hed always watched the affairs of this great dependency
 with jealous and unfriendly eye. As a military and
despotic government; as an acquisition of impolitic violence
8nd fraud ; as the seat of unsafe finance ; for these and other
reasons, he had always taken his place among those, and
they were much fewer then than they are now, who cannot sce
Buy advantage either to the natives or their foreign masters
I this vast possession. He had said as much in the House
of Commons so far back as 1853, when the renewal of the
Company’ s Charter was under discussion. When the Mutiny
tame, then like every one else, he sid, he could think of
Nothing else. Three or four of his letters will be enough to
show what he had to say upon the most hideous occurrence
It our history.
“ Midhurst, Oct. 16, 1857. (To Mr. Ashworth.)—1 thought
could have withdrawn myself for a time from public affairs,
but every Indian mail quite overturns my resolution, and
Weans me back from my farm and my household, and makes
me ag much a politician in thought and feeling as ever.
And yet I confess to you that this crisis in the East makes

1857.
Xr. BS.