RICHARD COBDEN.

COBDEN, RICHARD, English economist and statesman; born near Midhurst, Sussex, England, June 3, 1804; died in London, April 2, 1865. His early educational opportunities were limited, but his thirst for knowledge and his industry in self-cultivation were extraordinary. In 1830 he entered a partnership which acquired a calico-printing business at Manchester, of which city Cobden from that time became a resident. The business rapidly became very profitable; but Cobden's tastes and convictions impelled him to quit it for the career of an agitator for the reform of what he deemed economical and commercial heresies. He visited the United States in 1835; and after a tour in Europe and in Egypt in 1836-37 he became active in local and general political discussions. He was elected to Parliament in 1841. Cobden was the animating genius of the Anti-corn-law League. His energy as organizer, writer, and orator in this warfare was tireless. It is universally conceded that the repeal of the corn-laws in 1846 was due more to him than to any other man. In 1847 he was chosen to Parliament from the West Riding of Yorkshire-declining about this time Lord John Russell's invitation to enter his cabinet. The same year he visited the chief capitals of Europe as an advocate of free trade. In 1859 he again visited the United States; and the same year he was returned to Parliament. In 1860 he visited France and succeeded in bringing that empire into a commercial treaty with Great Britain on the basis of free trade. He favored systematic arbitration of all international disputes. At the time of the war of secession in the United States, he was one of the few men prominent in Great Britain that favored the Union; this gives his name a place in the grateful remembrance of the citizens of this country. As a writer, reasoner, and orator, he had unusual gifts. Even those who must dissent from his conclusions and refuse his logic concede the instinctive skill with which he marshals his arguments and his facts, and the force of his direct and unadorned diction.

FREE TRADE INCOMPATIBLE WITH BLOCKADES.

(From "Political Writings.")

SPEAKING abstractedly, and not in reference to the present blockade for we are precluded from pleading our sufferings

as a ground of grievance against a people whose proposals for the mitigation of the barbarous maritime code we have rejected -I do not hesitate to denounce, as opposed to the principles of natural justice, a system of warfare which inflicts greater injuries on an unoffending neutral community than on a belligerent. And, however sincere the governments of the great maritime powers may be, during a period of general peace, in their professions of adhesion to this system, should any of them as neutrals be subjected to severe sufferings from the maintenance of a blockade, the irritation and sense of injustice which it will occasion to great masses of population, coupled with the consciousness that it is an evil remediable by an appeal to force, will always present a most dangerous incentive to war. Certain I am that such a system is incompatible with the new commercial policy to which we have unreservedly committed ourselves. Free trade, in the widest definition of the term, means only the division of labor, by which the productive powers of the whole earth are brought into mutual co-operation. If this scheme of universal dependence is to be liable to sudden dislocation, whenever two governments choose to go to war, it converts a manufacturing industry, such as ours, into a lottery, in which the lives and fortunes of multitudes of men are at stake. I do not comprehend how any British statesman who consults the interests of his country, and understands the revolution which free trade is effecting in the relations of the world, can advocate the maintenance of commercial blockades. If I shared their view, I should shrink from promoting the infinite growth of a population whose means of subsistence would be liable to be cut off at any moment by a belligerent power, against whom we should have no right of resistance, or even of complaint.

It must be in mere irony that the advocates of such a policy as this ask of what use would our navy be in case of war if commercial blockades were abolished? Surely for a nation that has no access to the rest of the world but by sea, and a large part of whose population is dependent for food on foreign countries, the chief use of a navy should be to keep open its communications, not to close them!

NON-INTERVENTION IN FOREIGN WARS.

(From "Political Writings.")

OUR object, however, in vindicating Russia from the attacks of prejudice and ignorance, has not been to transfer the national hatred to Turkey, but to neutralize public feeling, by showing that our only wise policy - nay, the only course consistent with the instinct of self-preservation is to hold ourselves altogether independent of and aloof from the political relations of both these remote and comparatively barbarous nations. England, with her insular territory, her consolidated and free institutions, and her civilized and artificial condition of society, ought not to be, and cannot be, dependent for safety or prosperity upon the conduct of Russia or Turkey and she will not, provided wisdom governs her counsels, enter into any engagements so obviously to the disadvantage of her people, as to place the peace and happiness of this empire at the mercy of the violence or wickedness of two despotic rulers over savage tribes more than a thousand miles distant from our shores.

"While the Government of England takes peace' for its motto, it is idle to think of supporting Turkey," says one of the most influential and active agitators in favor of the policy of going to war with Russia. In the name of every artisan in the kingdom, to whom war would bring the tidings, once more, of suffering and despair; in behalf of the peasantry of these islands, to whom the first cannon would sound the knell of privation and death; on the part of the capitalists, merchants, manufacturers, and traders, who can reap no other fruits from hostilities but bankruptcy and ruin; in a word, for the sake of the vital interests of these and all other classes of the community, we solemnly protest against Great Britain being plunged into war with Russia, or any other country, in defence of Turkey - a war which, whilst it would inflict disasters upon every portion of the community, could not bestow a permanent benefit upon any class. of it, and one upon our success in which, no part of the civilized world would have cause to rejoice. Having the interests of all orders of society to support our argument in favor of peace, we need not dread war. These, and not the piques of diplomatists, the whims of crowned heads, the intrigues of ambassadresses, or school-boy rhetoric upon the balance of power, will henceforth determine the foreign policy of our government. That policy will be

based upon the bona fide principle (not Lord Palmerston's principle) of non-intervention in the political affairs of other nations; and from the moment this maxim becomes the loadstar by which our government shall steer the vessel of the statefrom that moment the good old ship Britannia will float triumphantly in smooth and deep water, and the rocks, shoals, and hurricanes of foreign war are escaped forever.

THE BALANCE OF POWER.

(From "Political Writings.")

WASHINGTON (who could remember when the national debt of England was under fifty-five millions; who saw it augmented, by the Austrian War of Succession, to seventy-eight millions; and again increased, by the seven years' war, to one hundred and forty-six millions; and who lived to behold the first-fruits of the French revolutionary wars, with probably a presentiment of the harvest of debt and oppression that was to followwhose paternal eye looked abroad only with the patriotic hope of finding, in the conduct of other nations, example or warning for the instruction of his countrymen) - seeing the chimerical objects for which England, although an island, plunged into the contentions of the Continent, with no other result to her suffering people but an enduring and increasing debt — bequeathed, as a legacy to his fellow-citizens, the injunction, that they should never be tempted, by any inducements or provocations, to become parties to the States' system of Europe. And faithfully, zealously, and happily has that testament been obeyed! Down even to our day, the feeling and conviction of the people, and consequently of the Government and the authors of the United States, have constantly increased in favor of a policy from which so much wealth, prosperity and moral greatness have sprung. America, for fifty years at peace, with the exception of two years of defensive war, is a spectacle of the beneficent effects of that policy which may be comprised in the maxim As little intercourse as possible betwixt the Governments, as much connection as possible between the nations, of the world. And when England (without being a republic) shall be governed upon the same principles of regard for the interests of the people, and a like common-sense view of the advantages of its position, we shall adopt a similar motto for our policy; and then we shall hear no more mention of that costly chimera, the balance of power.