Volume 66 / Part 1 — PEACE AND WAR AGITATORS. (continued 2)

Mr Cobden's first speech at this meeting—for the lack of orators was such, that he was compelled to indulge his audience with two—was a very dull and dreary affair indeed. He began first with loans in general, and went on in his usual style of asseveration. "I say that, as I have gone through the length and breadth of this country with Adam Smith in my hand to advocate the principles of free trade, I can stand here with Adam Smith also in my hand, to denounce, not merely for its inherent waste of national wealth, not only because it anticipates income and consumes capital, but also on the ground of injustice to posterity, in saddling upon our heirs a debt we have no right to call upon them to pay—the loans we have this day met to consider." It is very hard that unfortunate Adam Smith should be made answerable for all the eccentricities of Mr Cobden. Little did the poor man think, whilst hammering his brains at Kirkcaldy, that their product was to be explained at a future time, according to the sweet will of so accomplished a commentator! Adam Smith had a great deal too much sense to expect that wars would cease to arise, and government loans to be contracted. His remark is not directed against loans, but against the funding or accumulation of them, which most of us, in the present generation, are quite ready to admit to be all evil. The remedy to which he pointed, was the establishment of a sinking-fund to prevent debt from accumulating; but so long as Mr Cobden's economical views are acted on, and the currency maintained on its present basis, the idea of a sinking-fund is altogether visionary. The evil which Adam Smith complains of is permanent funding, not loan. There is nothing imprudent in a man borrowing a thousand pounds from his banker, if he regularly sets apart an annual sum out of his income for its repayment: but it is a very different thing when he hands over the debt undiminished for his successor to discharge.

Having preluded with this little piece of hocus, Mr Cobden came to the point, and attempted to show that Austria was in such a state of insolvency that it was not safe for any one to lend money to her. We by no means object to this sort of exposition. If it be true that the finances of the borrowing party are in a dismal state, we are none the worse for the information; if the statement is false, it is sure to be speedily disproved. We have no objection to concede to Mr Cobden the possession of that almost preternatural amount of knowledge, which is his daily and perpetual boast. When he tells us that he knows all about the produce of the mines of Siberia, because "I have been there, and I know what is the value of those mines"—when he speaks positively as to the amount of specie in the vaults of the fortress of St Petersburg, and states that he knows it—"because I have been on the spot, and made it my business to understand these things"—and when, with regard to the general question of Russian finance, he observes that "few men, probably not six men in England, have had my opportunities of investigating and ascertaining upon the best and safest authority on the spot, where alone you can properly understand the matter, what actually is the state of the resources of Russia,"—we listen with a kind of awe to the words of this egotistical Exile of Siberia. But though not six men in England are qualified to compete with him in his knowledge of Russian affairs, we suspect that it would be no difficult matter to find six clerks in a single banking establishment a great deal better acquainted with the state of Austrian finance than Mr Cobden. His object, it would appear, is less to warn the great capitalists—who indeed may be supposed to be perfectly capable of taking care of themselves—against the danger of handing over their money to Austria, than to secure the poor labouring man with ten pounds to spare, against defraudment. We were not previously aware that people with ten pounds to spare were in the habit of investing them in the foreign funds. We hope to heaven such is not the case, for we happen to be acquainted with several very estimable porters and Celtic chairmen, who have saved a little money; and, should the mania for foreign investment have reached them, we should tremble to approach any corner of a street where those excellent creatures are wont to linger, lest we should be assailed with the question, "Hoo's the Peroovian four per cents?" or, "Div ye ken if they're gaun to pay the interest on the New Bonos Areas bonds?" We have hitherto been labouring under the delusion that the accumulations of the working classes were safe in the British Savings Banks, or Funds; but we are now sorry to learn from Mr Cobden that such is not the case. "I knew myself," said Mr Cobden, "many years ago, when resident in the city, a man who worked as a porter on weekly wages—his family and himself being reduced to that state that they had no other earthly dependence—and yet that man had Spanish bonds to the nominal amount of £2000 in his pocket. They were not worth more than waste paper, and came into the hands of poor men like this porter, who had no experience and knowledge in such matters; and it is to guard such poor men that I now utter the voice of warning." We have not read anything more affecting since we perused The Dairyman's Daughter. Mr Cobden does not tell us that he immediately organised a subscription for the behoof of the wronged individual; but we think it probable that he did so, and, if it be not too late, we shall be glad to contribute our mite—on one condition. The next time Mr Cobden tells this story, will he be good enough to specify the precise sum which the porter paid for those bonds? Our reason for requiring particular information as to this point, is founded on a fact which lately came to our knowledge, viz. that the name of a promising chimney-sweep stands recorded in the books of a certain railway company, which shall be nameless, as the proprietor of stock in new shares, to an amount of nearly double that possessed by Mr Cobden's acquaintance. The railway has not paid a single farthing of dividend, several calls are still due, and the market price of those shares is considerably below zero. The chimney-sweep is a steady young man, whose only failing is an inveterate attachment to whisky: he never was in possession of five pounds in his life, except on the day when he became the nominal proprietor of that stock. We make Mr Cobden a present of this anecdote, in case he should have occasion, in the course of some future crusade, to warn labouring people against indulging in railway speculation. It is quite as genuine and forcible an illustration as his own; and we suspect that for one person in the position of the porter, there are at this moment some hundreds in possession of transferred certificates, like the chimney-sweep.

In sober sadness, it is pitiable to see a man reduced, for sheer lack of argument, to such wretched clap-trap as this. The wildest kind of rant about freedom and tyranny would have been more to the purpose, and infinitely more grateful to the popular ear. Mr Cobden's estimate of his own position and European importance is delicious. "I have no hesitation in saying that there is not a government in Europe that is not frowning upon this meeting!" What a mercy it is that Nicholas had no suspicion of the tremendous influence of the man who was once rash enough to trust himself in his dominions! We positively tremble at the thought of what might have ensued had Mr Cobden been detected on his visit to the Siberian mines! The governments of Europe frowning on Mr Cobden's meeting—what a subject for the classical painter!

We need hardly trouble our readers with any remarks upon the speech of Lord Dudley Stuart. His monomania on Continental subjects is well known, and he carries it so far as to hazard the most extravagant statements. For example, he set out with insinuating that this Austrian loan was neither more nor less than a deliberate attempt at swindling, seeing that it had not received the sanction of the Diet; "and, consequently," said Lord Dudley, "nothing could be easier than for the Austrian government, whenever they found it inconvenient to pay the interest of the loan, to turn round and call those who had advanced the money very simple people, and tell them that they ought to have made due inquiry before parting with it. It might be said that this would be a most extraordinary and outrageous course for any government to adopt; but they lived in times when monarchs performed acts of the most unusual and the most outrageous description; and it seemed almost as if the dark ages had returned, such scenes of barbarity and cruelty were being enacted throughout Europe, by order, and in the name of established governments." Lord Dudley Stuart is one of those who think that no crowned head can sit down comfortably to supper, unless he has previously immolated a victim. His idea of the dark ages is derived from the popular legend of Raw-head and Bloody-bones. Confiding, and it would appear with justice, in the singular ignorance of his audience, he went on to say:—"Certain writers and speakers were never tired of uttering warnings against the danger of an infuriated mob. But had any of those popular outbreaks, as they were called, ever been attended with an amount of cruelty, rapine, and spoliation, to be named in comparison with the deeds of the despots of Europe? At Paris, Vienna, and Rome, for a time, power was in the hands of the people—the wild democracy, as it was called. Where were their deeds of blood and spoliation?" Lord Dudley Stuart might just as well have asked, where were the victims of the guillotine during the supremacy of Robespierre. We have known metaphysicians who could not be brought to an acknowledgment that the continent of America has an actual existence, or that the battle of Waterloo was ever fought, owing to what they were pleased to style a want of sufficient evidence. Lord Dudley Stuart is precisely in the same situation. He has patronised foreign patriots to such an extent, that he believes every one of them to be a saint; and if he saw with his own eyes a democrat piking a proprietor, he would probably consider it a mere deceptio visus. Not that he is in the slightest degree short-sighted, or incredulous, whenever he can get hold of a story reflecting on the other side. On the contrary, he favoured his audience with a minute description of several floggings and executions, which he had, no doubt, received from his foreign correspondents; and actually threw the blame of the apostacy of some of his Polish protegees from the Christian faith upon the Czar! This is a topic upon which we would rather not touch. Men have been known to deny their Saviour for the sake of escaping from the most hideous personal agony, but we never heard before of apostacy committed for such motives as Lord Dudley has assigned. "Some, but very few men, whose lives had been devoted to fighting against Russia, and whose religion seemed to consist in that alone, lured, no doubt, by the hope of entering the Turkish army, and again waging war against their implacable enemies, Russia and Austria, had been induced to accept the offers of the Porte, and to embrace Islamism." We hope it may be long before we shall be again asked to express our sympathy for those wretched renegades from their faith.

Mr Cobden having gathered wind, again started up; and this time he did not confine himself to mere economical prose. We rather think that he felt slightly jealous of the cheering which Lord Dudley Stuart's more animated speech had elicited; for it is a well-known fact that the majority of people would rather listen to the details of an atrocious murder, than to a dissertation upon Adam Smith. Accordingly he came out hot, furious, pugnacious, and withal remarkably irrelevant. Throwing aside all consideration of the Austrian loan, he fell foul of the Czar, whom he facetiously compared to Nebuchadnezzar. Listen to the Apostle of peace! "The man was incapable of appreciating anything but a physical-force argument, and he (Mr Cobden) did not think he was departing from his peace principles, in resorting to a mode of admonition which the nature of the animal was capable of understanding. He surely might be excused from admonishing, if it were possible, a wild bull, that, if he did not take care, he might run his head against something harder even than his own skull. He therefore said, that if the Emperor of Russia attacked us, we might hermetically seal the ports of Russia, and there would be an end of the matter. There could be no fighting between England and Russia. If the question were put to a jury of twelve competent men, belonging to any maritime power, who were perfectly indifferent to the quarrel, they would at once say that as England and Russia could not come to collision by land, the only question was, what naval force would be required by England to blockade Petersburg, Archangel, Odessa and Riga for six months of the year, and that the frost would keep up the blockade for the other six months." But the best is yet to come. Mr Cobden is perfectly aware that the sentiments of such an eminent European personage as himself must have terrible weight on the Continent. When the Czar reads the report of the speeches delivered at the London Tavern, he will burst into a paroxysm of fury, order some hundred serfs to be instantly knouted to death, and send for the minister of marine. When it is known at Vienna that Cobden has declared against the Austrian loan, Francis Joseph will gnash his teeth, and desire Jellachich, Radetsky, and Haynan to concert measures with his brother emperor for taking vengeance for this unparalleled affront. What, then, are we to do? Is there no danger to Great Britain from such a combination? None—for we have a guarantee. A greater than Nicholas has promised to stand between us and peril. People of Great Britain! read the following paragraph, and then lie down in security under the charge of your protecting angel.

"If he (Mr Cobden) were told that he ran the risk of provoking these brutal tyrants to come here and attack this country, HE WOULD REPLY THAT HE WAS PREPARED TO TAKE THE RISK UPON HIMSELF OF ALL THAT THEY COULD DO!"

After this, we have not another word to say. Yes—one. Before Mr Cobden's meeting broke up, the Austrian loan had been subscribed for to more than the required amount.