IT was once tauntingly remarked by a public speaker that he, for his part, had never seen this British constitution of which it had been his fortune or misfortune to hear so much; and though the circumstance may be thought to tell rather in the way of commendation than of dispar agement, there can be no doubt that the constitution of England is one of those things which it is extremely difficult to see. Was it not Charles Lamb who complained that he could not see the ocean at all, but only some small speck of it from on board. a Margate hoy? Even in mid Atlantic you can see but the space within your own horizon, a space about as large, in proportion to the whole, as a leaf of clover to a twenty-acre field in May. The ocean, the atmosphere, and the constitution of the British empire, are things which can be seen only little by little. But it is pretty certain that, if we look well at what we can see of ocean from cliff or mast, and if we note carefully the sky above our NEW SERIES-VOL. XII., No. 2.

heads, whether it roofs with blue the deep pastoral valley, or is pierced by the

craggy spear" of Andes or Himalaya, we shall form a correct enough idea of what the ocean and the atmosphere are like; and if, from advantageous points of view, such as are afforded us in tracing the career of men who have played an important part in our national affairs, we bring successively under inspection a variety of those laws, influences, contrivances, usages, institutions, which go to make up the general political and social system under which we live, we may arrive at an approximately correct and practically serviceable notion of that vast, indefinite, complex entity called the British constitution. As we watch a Palmerston or a Peel rising, step by step, to a supreme place in the commonwealth, we perceive what may be described as the ordinary, normal, commonplace action of our governmental machinery. The subtler workings-the wheels within wheels-of par

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liamentary government are revealed by glimpses in the questionable manœuvres by which a Phoebus Apollo Lyndhurst, making himself like unto the night, vexed the Whigs. The influence, in Parliament and society, of an individual mass of force and meteoric fire, is illustrated in such a career as Brougham's. Our ecclesiastical politics and political ecclesiasticism, in their confused welter and miserable jargoning, are tragi-comically displayed in the wraths and wranglings of Henry of Exeter. O'Connell's foiled energy and all but fruitless expenditure of magnificent brain-power, enable us to realize that peril of feverish and futile agitation to which our limitless freedom of tongue exposes us.

Many points of view for the advantageous contemplation of constitutional England are afforded by the career of Richard Cobden. "We have lost a man," said Lord Palmerston in the House of Commons at the time of his death, "who may be considered to be peculiarly emblematical of the constitution under which we have the happiness to live, because he rose to great eminence in this House, and rose to acquire an ascendency in the public mind, not by virtue of any family connections, but solely and entirely in consequence of the power and vigor of his mind, that power and vigor being applied to purposes evidently advantageous to his country." On the same occasion Mr. Disraeli pronounced him "without doubt the greatest political character that the pure middle class of this country has yet produced." What a middle-class politician, a citizen and nothing more, may affect in England, can in no way be more fitly shown than in the achievements of Cobden. His public life will teach us also, in expressive characters which he that runs may read, that there are two Parliaments in Great Britain,—the Parliament of the whole people, and the Parliament, a committee of this larger parliament, which sits at Westminster. The problem of influencing the larger Parliament in such wise as to exert a pressure upon the lesser Parliament, was never solved with more striking effect than by Mr. Cobden. If the career of O'Connell illustrates a species of agitation which is distempered and perilous, a mere inflammation of the national lungs and windpipe, the agitation headed by

Cobden presents a fine example of a popular agitation warm with the genial energy of health, animated by sound principles, and tending to salutary ends. The voice of the people, speaking through the lips of Richard Cobden, was very clearly, for once at least, the voice of God.

Cobden came of good farmer people, who had tilled their own land for generations in the weald of Sussex. The farmhouse of Dunford, in the pleasant neighborhood of Midhurst, was the scene of his birth; the time, June 3d, 1804. The first and deepest impressions of his life were derived from the country, and it was at Dunford that the leader of the Manchester school passed his closing years. Though, to a hasty observer, he might seem encased in a shell of hard utilitarian shrewdness, it was known to all who knew Cobden well that the basis of his character was a delicate though masculine simplicity, and that there lay deep in his nature a vein of almost poetic sympathy. His whole life long, he was more of a countryman than a townsman. Mr. Disraeli proved that he thoroughly understood him when he said that "there was in his character a peculiar vein of reverence for tradition," and that he knew, however strongly he might urge improvements, that "this country is still old England." He had a country boy's love for animals and rural sights and sounds, and an Englishman's veneration for his parish church and for religion. "You have no hold of any one," he said, "who has no religious faith." In the heat of the noontide we are apt to have little thought of the dewdrops and the softly-tinted clouds of morning and evening; and as we follow Cobden through the arid noonday of his controversial logic and severe economy, we are apt to forget that he was cradled amid the associations and impressions of a profoundly rural district, and that he died an English farmer.

He was still a boy when he lost his father. Proceeding to London, he entered a warehouse. He gave proof of an original cast of mind by an eager thirst for knowledge and voracity in reading. He became acquainted with Smith's "Wealth of Nations," and ardently adopted the principles of the book. From the counting-house he passed to the road, in capacity of commercial traveller. There is no post connected with a mercantile estab

lishment which affords more scope for talent, more opportunities of observation, or a more invigorating and quickening discipline for the mind. In the disputations of the commercial-room young Cobden distinguished himself by the decision of his free-trade principles, by the acuteness of his remarks, and by the urbanity and simple refinement of his manners. Alert and energetic, he was successful in his vocation, and impressed all who knew him with an idea of his superiority. For such a man it is not difficult to rise in England. Cobden had no money; but when an opportunity presented itself for his establishment in business, he obtained from a friend, whose confidence in his probity was absolute, a loan of the necessary capital. The business in which he engaged was that of calico-printing, and he was soon on the highway to fortune as member of a prosperous firm with three establishments, one in London, one at Clitheroe, and one, under the special management of Cobden, in ManchesHe was now twenty-six.

ter.

The man who could thus early find for himself a field, was the man to succeed in it. The experience gained in his journeys as a commercial traveller stood him in good stead when it was his object to supply a salable article for English markets. Fertile in resource, enterprising, skilful to discern what patterns would commend themselves to the general taste, he ventured on a bolder and less tentative policy than had been customary in the trade, anticipating, rather than watch ing, the popular preference, and pushing sales when his more wary neighbors were experimenting by a few samples thrown off in the first instance, upon the probabilities of public favor. The goods which could not be sold at home were shipped for the foreign markets, and Cobden had thus occasion to become a commercial traveller on a larger scale than he had formerly attempted. He journeyed both in Europe and America, seeking markets in both hemispheres. Cobden's prints became famous, and in ten or eleven years after commencing business, he is stated to have been making about £10,000 per annum.

A commonplace character would now have settled into a commonplace moneymaker and cotton-lord, and Richard Cobden would have been known only as one

of a thousand millionaires whom gold has been unable to raise above moral and intellectual insignificance. But there were well-springs in his nature, well-springs of human sympathy, noble intelligence and cosmopolitan tenderness, which not even the perilous atmosphere of monetary success could chill and freeze. As he journeyed over Europe and America, he revolved many thoughts in his mind. His speculations took their start from political economy, which passes with many, not for a warm-blooded, flesh-clothed science, but for a skeleton, gaunt and bare, through whose haggard jaws a barren east-wind of disputation is forever whistling. That there is some reason for believing political economy to be such a thing as this, may, we dare say, be the case; for prevailing persuasions have generally a root in fact; but we have never become acquainted with a political economy, except such as was caricatured by men and women who had failed to comprehend the real science, respecting which the description would be correct. We have looked pretty extensively into the works of political economists, and have found in them as much human feeling and brotherly kindness as in other books. We have found them characterized, also, not only by masterly power, but by a singular absence of pretence or parade, by a modesty of selfestimate on the part of their authors, by a quiet contentment that their science should depend for acceptance, not on rhetorical vaunting of its claims or flourishes of sentimental verbiage, but on the truth of its doctrines. Even, however, by those who are most eloquent in their denunciation of Mill and Ricardo, a glance of favor is cast upon Adam Smith, and at the feet of Adam Smith Cobden sat with the affection, enthusiasm, and reverence of a scholar who had received from the master far nobler lessons than how to grow rich. For England the science of political economy was not only created, but brought practically to completion by Smith. Some few points remained to be adjusted by the errorless logic of Ricardo and the clear, quick sense of Mill; but those grand principles of the science which affect the policy of nations and the duty of statesmen were, once and forever, expounded by Smith. And what is the sum and substance of those principles? Simply this,—that, for nations as for individuals,