CHAPTER XXVI.

CHINESE AFFATRS—COBDEN’S MOTION—=THE DISSOLUTION.

Tax first week of the new year (1857) found Cobden back
88ain at Dunford ; but at the end of January he went with
US wife to a hydropathic establishment at Richmond. “I
have Lisle sympathy myself,” he said, “with the hydrofathic
 superstition; but the simple diet ard regular hours
® always in favour of health.” As it happened he had,
besides simple diet and quiet hours, something which to
Uatures guch as his is the most favourable of all conditions
"0 Sound health, I mean the excitement of vigorous interest
0 a great public cause.
Certain transactions in China had for some time attracted
Us vigilant attention, and they mow occupied him to the
*Xelusion of everything else. In his pamphlet on the Second
Burmese War Cobden had shown the danger and injustice
°f our accepted policy towards the weak nations of the Hast.
A war had now broken out in China which illustrated the
“me principles in a still more striking way. Sir John
Bowring, the Governor of Hong Kong, was an old friend of
Cobden’s, a member of the Peace Society, and one of the
rliest agitators against the Corn Law. But he was a
Wan without practical judgment, and he became responsible
for one of the worst of the Chinese wars. The Chinese
boarded the « Arrow,” and rescued twelve of their country-Wen
 from it on a charge of piracy. The British Consul

1857.
ZB. BS.