Ii.—: Cobden’s Optimism.

In January, 1841, Cobden had committed the crime of saying at Manchester, “Europe has been corrupted by the detestable example of England. I believe that if you abolish the Corn Law and establish Free Trade, in five years’ time there will not be a Customs tariff which has not been changed after our example.”

Cobden was mistaken in the date, but not in the effect produced by English policy. If England had not adopted Free Trade the 1860 treaties would never have been signed: they abolished prohibitions which have never been re-established, and lowered duties which have never since been raised to their former height. Mr. Chamberlain blames Cobden and the Free Traders for the non-adoption of Free Trade by other nations, and for the economic reaction since 1879; and demands that England should give it up to punish Cobden and the Free Traders for the fact that all foreign nations have not seen its advantages. Since other nations are loaded with duties which increase the expenditure of effort necessary to everything they produce, Mr. Chamberlain endeavours to induce his countrymen to renounce economy of effort: since other nations have set their Customs system in opposition to that progress in science, industry, commerce, banking which has continuously operated to lower the price of goods and facilitate exchange, to keep down frontiers and Customs tariffs by lowering prices (for example, in the case of chemicals): therefore forsooth England is to give up a fiscal system suited to the processes of industrial evolution.