848

LIFE OF COBDEN,

[omaP.

1861.
mrs.“ Midhurst, August 21, 1861. (To M. Ohevalier.)—1 have
read with much pleasure your address to the Social Science
Meeting at Dublin. If you have a corrected copy in French,
let me have one. I was amused ab your diplomacy in comparing
 Brougham to Cicero. This must have delighted
him. He has, I suspect, always had the great Roman in his
eye, and has sought to imitate him in the universality of his
accomplishments. But it was one thing to be universal 1900
years ago, and is another thing now. A Bolton mechanic
who makes a steam engine, or one who drives a locomotive
on our railways, knows more in his special calling than
either Cicero or Brougham. It is this attempt at universality
which has been the great error and failing of Lord B.’s public
 life, He has touched everything and finished nothing:
Had he given his vast powers to one thing at a time, he
might have codified our laws, and endowed every village
with a good school, besides leaving nothing for me to do in
Free Trade. But he made a speech for five hours on Law
Reform forty years ago nearly, and another as long on
National Education, and then he left those questions for
something else. The result will be that in fifty years he
will be remembered only for his herculean mental powers,
and his unrivalled intellectual industry, but his name will
not be specially associated with any reforms for which
posterity will hold him in grateful remembrance.” *

On Lord Brougham.

® Brougham, as has been seen, had been very unfriendly to the League
(see vol. i. p. 262). For many years there was no communication between
him and Mr. Bright. With Cobden he kept up an occasional correupondenoce,
 and in 1856, when Mr. Bright was ill, Brougham, says Cobden
in a letter of that date, wrote to me speaking in the most affectionate
terms of Bright, and offering him the uss of hig house at Cannes, I sent
the letter to Bright, who of course met his advances with open arms, and
they have been exchanging great civilities, He seems anxious to heal all
bis ancient enmities. Could a better uge be made of his declining yesrs P”
~To G. Moffatt. June 4, 1856.