Part III: Wars and Armaments, Wars and Armaments

THIS part of the work has involved considerable difficulties. Cobden and Bright never concealed their opinion that war is very seldom either just or necessary. They regarded freedom of trade and freedom of government as powerful allies of peace. They were among the earliest and most effective champions of arbitration. They strenuously opposed the growth of military and naval expenditure, not only because overgrown establishments are incentives to needless wars, but also because they actually weaken the resources of the nation, just as over-insurance may easily cripple and ruin an individual trader. It is worthy of note that the views expressed with so much courage and moderation by Cobden and Bright upon the two great wars of their time have since been endorsed by public opinion, and by the judgment even of those statesmen who opposed them. With the Cobdenic policy of armaments, Mr. Gladstone, a true disciple of Sir Robert Peel, was always in active sympathy; but there were moments which demanded still larger outlook and a still sounder moral judgment when that great Liberal minister went sadly astray. Cobden understood better than Bright the sympathy which Gladstone and others felt for the States of the South; and indeed, for a moment at the outset, Cobden was himself a little doubtful about the merits of the struggle. The action of the Manchester School, and the strong moral support which it won for the North among the working-classes of Lancashire and Yorkshire, probably saved this country from a great war, which could hardly have ended otherwise than with the incorporation of Canada in the United States. Their foresight in 1853–4 was equally conspicuous, and a far larger measure of courage was required. Upon this point no better or more eloquent witness can be called than Mr. Gladstone. ‘I have not,’ said he, in paying a last tribute to Bright, ‘through my whole political life, fully embraced what I take to be the character of Mr. Bright, and the value of that character to the country. I mention this because it was at a peculiar epoch—the epoch of the Crimean War—that I came more fully to understand than I had done before, the position which was held by him and by his eminent, and I must go a step further and say, his illustrious friend, Mr. Cobden, in the country. These men had lived upon the confidence, the approval, and the applause of the people. The work of their lives had been to propel the tide of public sentiment. Suddenly there came a great occasion on which they differed from the vast majority of their fellow-countrymen. I myself was one of those who did not agree with them in the particular view which they took of the Crimean conflict. But I felt profoundly what must have been the moral elevation of the men who, having been nurtured through their lives in the atmosphere of popular approval and enthusiasm, could at a moment’S notice consent to part with the whole of that favour which they had hitherto enjoyed, and which their opponents thought to be the very breath of their nostrils. They accepted, undoubtedly, the unpopularity of opposing that war, which, although many may have since changed their opinion with regard to it, commanded, if not the unanimous, yet the enormously prevailing approval and concurrence of the country. At that time it was—although we had known much of Mr. Bright before—that we learnt something more. We had known the great mental gifts which distinguished him; we had known his courage and his consistency; we had known his splendid eloquence, which then was or afterwards came to be acknowledged as the loftiest that has sounded within these walls during his generation. But we had not till then known how high the moral tone of those popular leaders had been pitched, what bright examples they set to the whole of their contemporaries and to coming generations, and with what readiness they could part with popular sympathy and support for the sake of the right and of their conscientious convictions.’

In evidence given quite recently before a parliamentary committee on expenditure, Lord Welby has thrown a new light upon Cobden’S financial genius. It was known that he had a firm grasp of economic principles, a wide knowledge (based upon reason, experience, and travel), of economic facts, that his figures were never at fault, that he had unequalled gift for lucid exposition and apt illustration; but it was not known, I think, that Mr. Gladstone, when about to create the post of Comptroller and Auditor-General, offered the position to Cobden, as the man who, though he had not had a single month of official life, was best fitted to undertake the supreme official control and supervision of all the spending departments of Government.