948

LIFE OF COBDEN. [ers

placed in their true relation to the new and vast expansion
of commerce and the growth of population, that any cob
siderable number of people accepted them. The Radical
party only became effective when it had connected its principles
 with economic facts. The different points of view of
the Manchester School and of the Philosophic Radicals was
illustrated in Mr. Mills opposition to the alterations which
Cobden had advocated in international maritime law. Mr.
Mill argued that the best way of stopping wars is to make
them as onerous as possible to the citizens of the county
concerned, and therefore that to protect the goods of the
merchants of a belligerent country is to give them one
motive the less for hindering their Government from
making war. With all reverence for the ever admirable
author of this argument, it must be pronounced be
abstract and unreal, when compared with Cobden’s. You
are not likely to prevent the practice of war, he contended;
but what you can do is to make it less destructive to the
interests and the security of great populations. An arg"
ment of this kind rests on a more solid basis, and suggests
a wider comprehension of actual facts. In the same way
he translated the revolutionary watchword of the Fraternity
 of Peoples into the language of common sense and
practice, and the international sentiment as interpreted
by him became an instrument for preserving as well 89
improving European order. He was justified in regarding
 his principles as the true Conservatism of moder?
roeleties.

Great economic and social forces flow with a tidal sWeeP
over communities thatare only half-conscious of that which
is befalling them. Wise statesmen are those who fore:
gee what time is thus bringing, and endeavour to shape
hstitutions and to mould men’s thought and purpose