786
1860. Cowley. The whole scene ended in Lord Cowley refusing
Er, 86. to sign the whole of the tariff on metals, and so we ap"
pended our signatures only to that portion which comes
into operation on October 1.” This, it should be said here;
was the only occasion when any difference arose between
Cobden and the English ambassador. “Do not gay 8 word,”
he had written to Mr. Bright a few weeks before, “ to dis:
parage Lord Cowley. He has acted a very manly parts
and has done his best to help me.”
The continued delay as to the text of the Convention
chafed Cobden almost beyond endurance. “When the post
of plenipotentiary was conferred on me, without my solicits:
bion,” he writes in his diary, “T little thought tha it would
subject me to feelings of humiliation, Yet this has beed
the case during the last week; for I find that T am paraded
at meetings of the plenipotentiaries with my hands tied,
without the power of solving the merest question of detail
When I filled the post of commercial traveller at the age of
twenty, I was entrusted with more discretionary power than
is now shared by Lord Cowley and myself while filling the
office of H.M.’s plenipotentiaries. The name might more
appropriately be changed to that of nullipotentiary, The
points on which this delay is created by the Foreign Office,
are 80 trivial and unimportant as almost to defy comprehension.
 It fairly raises the suspicion whether there be not a8
occult influence at work at home, unfavoursble to my success
and which would not grieve even if I were to fail in my
Treaty altogether, or to abandon the undertaking in weariness
 and disgust.”
The suspicion that his labours were not popular with
the Cabinet was undoubtedly well founded, but in this
particular instance Cobden was probably only suffering
from that jealous and surly spirit which the Foreign Office
thinks businesslike. Lord Cowley wrote to him good

LIFE OF QUBDEN. {uHeE