X1xv.] CHARGE OF THE TIMES AGAINST MR. BRIGHT. 887

In November, 1863, it happened that in his annual address
to his constituents, Cobden made a passing reference to
the land question, and Mr. Bright followed with more on
the same subject. The Times promptly accused the two
Gracchi of Rochdale of exciting discontent among the poor,
and proposing a spoliation of the owners of land. The rest of
the story is worth telling, if for no other reason, because it
illustrates the kind of opinion which public writers could at
that time pretend seriously to hold about these two statesmen.
By accident Cobden saw the misrepresentation of which
his enemy had been guilty, and he at once wrote the following
letter to the editor of the Times :—
Ste,—The following is extracted from your yesterday's leading
article tm
“Then, though a small state may have something to lose by change, it
has usually more to gain; and so it comes to pass that it looks upon any
attempt to reconstruct the map, or reform the institutions of Europe, with
something of that satisfaction with which the poor might regard Mw.
Bright's proposition for a division among them of the lands of the rich,
or the Roman plebeians might hang on the lips of Gracchus when he rose
to expound to them bis last plan for a new colony, with large grants of
land to every citizen who should join it.”
Without communicating with Mr. Bright, I trouble you with a few
words on this gross literary outrage, which concerns not him alone, but
every public man. To utter a syllable to prove that the above assertion,
that Mr, Bright advocated a division of the lands of the rich among the
poor, is a groundless and gratuitous falsehood, would be to offer an insult
to one who has done more than probably any other public man, to popu.
larize those economical truths on which the rights of property are based.
To say that it is a foul libel for which the publisher is amenable to law
were beside the question, because the object of the calumny would scorn
any other court of appeal than that of public opinion. But a wider
question is forced on our attention by this specimen of your too habitual
mode of dealing, not merely with individuals, but with the interests of
society. A tone of pre-eminent unscrupulousness in the discussion of
political questions, a contempt for the rights and feelings of others, and
a shameless disregard of the claims of consistency and sincerity on the
part of its writers, have long been recognized as the distinguishing
characteristics of the Zimes, and placed it in marked contrast with the
rest of the periodical press, including the penny journals of the metrop lis

1863.
Br 59