898 LIFE OF OOEDEN. [omaP.

1868.
Zr. 59.

or repartition means simply a division, and not a bequest or inheritance,
and yet, with our dictionaries at hand, you now ask me to interpret the
“repartition of the land among the poor,” as only meaning that Mr. Bright
aud I wished to compel rich landowners at their death to leave their
sstates equally among all their children. And in your letter to me of
December 11 you “repeat” the assertion that * certain passages ” of our
speeches “ bear no other interpretation than that ascribed to them,” Now
up to that date you had put no other interpretation on those gpeechos
than that they advocated the “division of the land of the rich among
the poor.” The poor we are now told to interpret to mean only the
children of rich landowners | }
Then, I suppose, we are expected to forget that you coupled us with
Gracchus, and the agrarian system of Rome, }
No; in the teeth of all these proofs in plain, unmistakable English
bo the contrary, I should be sacrificing truth to courtesy were I to affect
to concur in this new version of your language, which does not admit of
two meanings,

This was sufficiently pungent; but it was not the most
decisive blow. On the evening of the day on which he
wrote the above letter, Cobden found in the Daily News
what it is odd that he should not have sought earlier, namely,
® passage from one of the previous articles in the Times tO
which Mr. Delane had referred. This language,” the Times
had said (Nov. 26), ““ so often repeated, and so calculated 0
excite discontent among the poor and half-informed, has
really only one intelligible meaning. ‘Reduce the electors!
franchise ; for when you have done so you will obtain an
assembly which will seize on the estates of the proprietors of
land, and divide them gratuitously among the poor.” . .. It
may be right to reduce the franchise, but certainly not as
step to spoliation.”
Now, said Cobden, “ you will at once perceive that unless
this language be unreservedly recalled, it makes the statement
 in your last letter simply a mockery and an untruth.”
Mr. Delane, declating that the passage taken without its
context does not convey the same meaning as when taken
with it, and enclosing a copy of the article in full, ther