(1.): To Mr. Bright

The business of the Treaty did not prevent Cobden from keeping up his usual copious correspondence. Much of it, as might be expected, had to do with his work in Paris; but he kept a keen eye upon what was going on elsewhere, and no effort that pointed in the right direction escaped him. Some extracts from the correspondence of this period will still be found interesting, both because they illustrate the character of the writer, and because they contain ideas on questions which even now are far from having run their full course.

On December 1, 1859, Mr. Bright made a speech at Liverpool, upon the invitation of the Financial Reform Association of that city. In this speech he unfolded a plan, which, as has been truly said of it, involved a complete financial revolution. The main features of the proposals were, that the income tax, the assessed taxes (except the house-tax), the tax on marine and fire insurances, and the excise on paper, should be repealed; all duties in the tariff should be abolished, save those on wine, spirits, and tobacco; and, to replace the deficiency thus created, there should be a tax of eight shillings on every hundred pounds of fixed income.

Dec. 16, 1859.—“I have been much pleased with the perusal of your masterly statement at Liverpool every word of which I have read. After all, I hardly know that the Liverpool men could do a better service than in preaching the abstract doctrine of direct taxation. People are attracted by the advocacy of a principle, to which alone we can feel any strong and lasting devotion. The threat of direct taxes held over our aristocracy, may perhaps do a little to restrain their proneness to Government extravagance; and it will help an honest Chancellor of the Exchequer to move forward in the path of commercial reform. There is an apparent tendency in your speeches to advocate the interest of the working class as apart from the upper classes. Now, I am sorry to say that whenever the case is so posed, there is a tendency in the middle class to range themselves with those above them, to resist a common danger. Your witticism of the middle class being invited to be the squire of the class above has been realized. Therefore, I have always studiously abstained from using the words ‘working class,’ as apart from the middle class, in discussing the question of taxation. For you see how eagerly your opponents parade the poor widow of 100l. a year. I cannot separate the interest of the small shopkeeper and the labourer, or the manufacturer and his operatives, in the question of taxation. Indeed, ultimately, God has made all our interests in the matter one and indivisible. I do not believe there is a hairsbreadth of difference between us, but you seem to take the working class sometimes too exclusively under your protection. They are quite powerless as opposed to the middle and upper classes, which is a good reason why they should not be allowed to be made to appear to be in antagonism to both.

“There is another point on which we should not differ in our cool moments, but on which you are sometimes carried away in the excitement of a speech beyond me. I mean where you seem to assume that a wiser policy in taxation or other matters will necessarily follow from a democratic reform. I am always willing to take my chance of the consequences of such a change. If the majority in a democracy injure me and themselves at the same time by unsound legislation, I have at least the consolation of knowing that they are honest in their errors, and that a conviction of their mistake will for their own sakes lead to a change. It is far different where you are wronged by a self-interested minority. But I don not feel so confident as yourself that a great extension of the franchise would necessarily lead to a wiser system of taxation. On this subject I got a letter lately from Senator Mason, of Virginia, in which he says, speaking of direct taxation—‘Our people are not yet philosophical enough to know that it is safer to feel the tax when you pay it, than to pay it without feeling it.’ I am afraid that this rather pithy remark would apply to all other people at present. I have done with my dissentient remarks, which after all would not lead me into an opposite lobby to yourself, if we had five minutes’ discussion together.”