908

LIFE OF OOBDEN. [omaP.

i864. during the last twenty-five years to such a degree, that you
Ar.60. are now actually exporting three times as much as you did
twenty-five years ago—that is, your foreign commerce, and
the manufactures on which it depends, have grown in 8
quarter of a century twice as much ag they grew in &
thousand years before.”— (July 5.)
Lord Robert Cecil, who followed him in the debate, observed
 caustically that though Cobden was about to supporb
the Government against the vote of censure, his enthusiasm
for them was not very warm. The Member for Rochdale, he
said, wag about as good a friend of Her Majesty’s Govern
ment, as Her Majesty’s Government had been of the kingdom
 of Denmark; there was, however, the remarkable
difference between the two cases, that whereas the Government
 gave to Denmark abundance of good words but no
material aid, the honourable member was about to give the
Government all his material aid, while he accompanied it
with a full dose of what certainly could not be called fair
words. When the division was taken, the Government won
by a majority of eighteen, but Lord Palmerston must have
felt that the policy of Free Trade had, among many other
changes which it had wrought, finally taken the supreme
control of peace and war out of the hands of the old territorial
oligarchy.
Cobden made two other elaborate speeches in the course
of the session. One waa introductory of a series of resolutions
 on a subject on which he had long entertained
strong views, the great extension of Government manufacturing
 establishments. In this, as in his views on the
greater subject of Free Trade, Cobden was able to quote
the illustrious authority of Burke in favour of the principle
which he was now advocating, that the Government should
not be allowed to manufacture for itself any article which
could be obtained from private producers in a competitive