CHAPTER XXXVIL

SPEECH AT ROCHDALE—THE LAND QUESTION— CORRESPONDENCE
—LAST DAYS AND DEATH,

Ix November Cobden went down to Rochdale to make his
annual speech to his constituents. He was not in very good
spirits when he started, and the exertion of travelling and
of speaking to an enormous audience lowered his powers
still further. It was the largest meeting on one floor that
he had ever attended. The speech itself is one of his
longest.* Mr. Bright, who was absent at Leamington, said
that when he read it, he marvelled how Cobden could have
made such a speech when times were so dull. Besides
being one of his longest, it is perhaps the one that gives
the best idea of his manner, and opens the easiest view
to his theory of the foreign policy which is proper for
Great Britain in her existing circumstances. We see in
it to perfection what Mr. Disraeli commended in him, that
careful art of avoiding to drive his arguments to an
extremity, which was one of the secrets of his singular
persuasiveness.
It was in this speech that he made the memorable declaration
 on the Land Question. We have already seen (above
p- 429) what he said the year before in the same place: that
the English peasantry had no parallel on the face of the
earth ; that there is no other country in the world where the
} Speeches, ii. 339. November 23, 1864.

1864.
ir 6G.