338 LIFE OF COBDEN. [omaP.

1862.
Ain EC,

unneeded schemes of national defence. The first and more
important of these subjects had been brought into a conspicuous
 place for public discussion by the Declaration of
Paris in 1856. Free ships were then declared to make free
goods. The merchants of a nation in a state of war were
to be free to carry on their trade as usual, provided that
they should send their goods in the ships of neutral Powers.
Cobden carried this favour to neutrals a great deal further,
and he explained his position in a carefully reasoned letter
to Mr. Ashworth, then the Chairman of the Manchester
Chamber of Commerce (April 10, 1862). Not only, be
contended, ought all private property, that of .nemies no
less than that of neutrals, to be exempt from capture ab
sea, but neutral ships ought to be exempt from right of
visitation and search, and, most important of all, the commercial
 ports of an enemy ought to be exempt from
blockade. Cobden’s defence of this transformation of
what he called the old barbarous code of international
maritime law, rested not merely on the claims of natural
justice, but on the special requirements of our own
country. A. population circumstanced as ours is in respect
both of its food and of the raw materials of its industry, is
interested beyond all others in removing every regulation
which interferes with the free circulation of the necessaries
of life, whether in time of peace or war. Why should we
persist, he asked, in upholding a belligerent right which we
have always shrunk from enforcing, and shall never rigorously
 apply, by which we place in the hands of other
belligerents the power at any moment of depriving a large
part of our population of the supply of the raw materials of
their industry and of the necessaries of life ? The Cotton

3 Published in hig Collected Writings, fi. pp. 5—22. The threo changes
which he there proposes are those enumerated in the letter to Mr, Paulton,
below, p. 885,