1859.
Ar, 65,
LIFE OF COBDEN, fo
ancient prejudice, remove hereditary animosities, and
firmly cement nation to nation in a lasting peace”* The
Suez Canal was another favourite idea with these far-se6ing
men ; for one of the most striking things about them W8¢
that they united to their mystic enthusiasm, as their Lives
afterwards proved, practical faculties of the highest and
most valuable kind. Free exchange exactly fitted in with
their notions of promoting international union by
creasing the pacific intercourse of nations.
In the session of 1859 Mr. Bright in a speech in the
House of Commons incidentally asked why, instead Of
lavishing the national substance in armaments, they did
not go to the French Emperor and attempt to persuade
him to allow his people to trade freely with ours® M-Chevalier,
after reading this speech, was inspired by the
idea of a Commercial Treaty between England and France;
and he wrote to Cobden in this sense. Coming to England
shortly afterwards, he found that Cobden had arranged, for
family reasons, to pass a portion of the winter in Paris:
He immediately saw an opening, and urged Cobden t0
seize the opportunity for converting the Emperor, as fifteen
years earlier he had so powerfully aided in converting the
English public, to the policy of Free Trade, and to as near
an execution of that policy as the circumstances of a country
still in the stage of prohibition could permit.
These ideas made so strong an impression on CobdeD
that he grew eager to discuss them with the only statesman
in the high official world with whom he felt conscious Of
deep moral and political sympathy, What made the ides
! Bee Mr. A. J. Booth’s Soint Simon and Swint Simowism (Longmar
1876), p. 168—an excellent account of an extraordinary movement.
* The idea was in the air. In a conversation with Lord John Russell
Oount Persigny expressed a wish, as an earnest of the sincerity of the
Emperor’s desire for peace, for a Commercial Treaty betwasn Great Brita?
and France, by which France might be enablsd to lower her protectiv®
intioa,— Martin's Life of tha Princes Oonsord, iy, 470.
702
