Object : The life of Richard Cobden

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COBDEN,

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1835.6. of pamphlets which any one may read through for himsel
Fr. 31.2. in a fow hours, and which well deserve to be read throug!
even by those who expect their conclusions to be most re
pugnant. The pamphlet on England, Ireland, and Americt
is a development of the following thought: —A nation ¥
growing up on the other side of the Atlantic which by
the operation of various causes, duly enumerated by the
writer, must inevitably at no distant date enter into seriou
competition with our own manufactures. Apart from the
natural advantages possessed by this new competitor, ther?
are two momentous disadvantages imposed upon the Eng
lish manufacturer, which tend to disable him in the struggl®
with his formidable rival. These two disadvantages ar
first, protection and the restriction of commerce; seconds
the policy of intervention in European feuds. The one
loads us with a heavy burden of taxation and debt; the
other aggravates the burden by limiting our use of our ow?
resources. The place of Ireland in the argument, after 2
vivid and too true picture of the deplorable condition of
that country, is to illustrate from the most striking exampl®
within the writer’s own knowledge, “the impolicy and ir”
justice of the statesmen who have averted their faces fro?
this diseased member of the body politic; and at the same
time have led us, thns maimed, into the midst of every
conflict that has occurred on the continent of Europe.”
In fine, the policy of intervention ought to be abandoned:
because it has created and continues to augment the debts
which shackles us in our industrial competition; becans?
it has in every case been either mischievous or futile, and
constantly so even in reference to its own professed ends;
and because it has absorbed energy and resource that wer
imperiously demanded by every consideration of nation®!
duty for the improvement of the backward and neglecte’
portions of our own realms.
            
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