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LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.

No. 1184. Fourth Series, No. 45. 9 February, 1867.

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POETRY: Our Norland, 322. Devotional Musings, 373. My Ideal, 384.

NE W BOOKS.

ON THE RELATIONS WHICH ELECTRICITY SUSTAINS TO THE CAUSES OF DISEASE. By S. Littell, M. D., Emeritus Surgeon of Wills Hospital for the Diseases of the Eye and Limb, Philadelphia. Read before the American Medical Association at its mecting in Boston,

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June, 1865, and now reprinted from its Transactions. Collins Philadelphia.

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THE "MISSION" OF RICHARD COBDEN.

From Macmillan's Magazine. | object and idea in the service of which his energies were employed and his life sacrificed-for the true political definition of Cobden is that which the foreigner supplied an international man.

BY LORD HOBART.

It is long since there left the world any one who deserved so well of it as Richard Cobden. To say this is indeed, in one sense, to say but little. For the acts of those who have had it in their power to influence the destinies of mankind, mankind has in general small reason to be grateful. In account with humanity, the public characters have been few indeed who could point with satisfaction to the credit side. But of Cobden's career there are results which none can gainsay. Vast, signal, and comprehensive, they disarm alike both competition and criticism. The two great triumphs of his life were the repeal of the Corn Laws and the Commercial Treaty with France. Of these, the first gave food to starving millions, receivable) that the proposal was met with dressed a gigantic and intolerable abuse of political power, saved an empire from revolutionary convulsion, and imparted new and irresistible impulse to material progress throughout the world; the second carried still further the work which the first had begun, insured, sooner or later, its full consummation, and fixed, amidst the waves of conflicting passions and jarring interests, deep in the tenacious ground of commercial sympathy, a rock for the foot of Peace.

It is strange, but it is true, that there had been no international men of any note before his time. For what is internationalism? Suppose a community which, from whatever cause, was without laws or government of any kind. In such a community every man would be the guardian of his own rights and interests, and compelled to bear arms, offensive and defensive, to maintain them. Bloodshed and every kind of misery, the hideous brood of anarchy, would abound. The state of affairs, even among savages, would be intolerable; and it would not be long before some one would propose the natural and obvious remedy-political institutions. Suppose further (the case is con

But, though Cobden's public life is admired by most Englishmen, its real scope and nature are understood by very few. The prophet was not without honour, but he was almost entirely without comprehension, in his own country. Being asked on one occasion to take part in some project of interest or pleasure he declined on the ground that he had a "mission." What, then, was the "mission" of which he spoke? What was his distinctive character as a public man? The prevalent notion entertained respecting him among well-educated Englishmen is that he was the apostle of Free Trade, with a strong and rather dangerous tendency towards democracy and cheap government, and a disposition to peace at any price on account of the costliness of war. It was reserved for foreigners to appreciate the greatest Englishman of his time, and for a foreigner to describe him justly. He repealed the Corn Laws; he fought and triumphed for Free Trade; he advocated peace; he deprecated national extravagance; and broke a lance, when occasion occurred, for political liberty. But these acts of his were but means to an end; illustrative of and subservient to the great

contempt on account of its alleged impracticability. Suppose that it appeared, or was asserted, that there was such an utter dissimilarity of views and feelings, such an intense individuality, in the different members of the community, that the attempt to unite them under any form of government or any regular system of law was hopeless. Suppose, nevertheless, the author of the proposal to persevere. Suppose him to contend that the alleged objection to it had no foundation in reality, but was the offspring, rightly considered, of mere prejudice and error; that if men were, as they affirmed, thus self-centred, dissimilar, and antago nistic, they ought not to be so; and that, if the evil was real, the remedy rested with themselves. Suppose him to represent that if they were sensible men they would mitigate for the common good the intensity of their individualism; that if they were Christians political intercourse with each other should be a pleasure and not a pain. Imagine him to urge that for the sake of a mere sentiment, puerile, barbarous, and eminently pagan, they were deliberately impoverishing themselves, and leading a life proper to wild beasts rather than to men; that for the sake of a prejudice against each other the result of deep-rooted habit, they were content to live in a condition of constant anxiety and suffering, diversified with occasional outbreaks of violence and bloodshed; and that while they bitterly complained of the cost, physical and mental, of such a state of existence, they were ready to endure it rather than abandon the precious possession of individuality, self-concentration, and self-dependence, handed down

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to them by their ancestors, with all its train | drenching it with blood and letting loose of selfishness, jealousy, reciprocal animosity, upon it the foulest and fiercest passions, but and mutual misunderstanding, and which by placing between the human mind and by some strange hallucination they were the intellectual and moral improvement reaccustomed to look upon as a good rather sulting from the political and social interthan an evil. Suppose all this, and you course of human beings an impassable barhave supposed a case which actually exists. rier. But instead of being treated as a caFor the community of nations is a commu- lamity of this hideous complexion, it is nity precisely such as has been described; habitually looked upon with complacency internationalism, in its ultimate scope and and self-gratulation. In the opinion of the full development, is the doctrine supposed generality of men, this absence of political to be taught and rejected; and the teacher intercourse between nations is a happy disof that doctrine is the international man. position of Providence, which it would be Is it not strange, then, that Cobden should impious in human creatures to disturb. The have been the first to teach it? still more class of persons in this country who sing strange that he should have been treated "Rule Britannia" experience in doing so by the influential classes in his own country a thrill of conscious virtue, and a comforta as a man who-well-meaning, no doubt, ble sense of duty done which confirms them and eminently successful in his linewas in the practice. The Frenchman with his yet hovering on the verge of lunacy? gloire and his grande nation feels elevated Time out of mind the individuals of which in the moral scale when he sings their praise. the community of nations is composed have That which the world has wept in tears of been willing to live as no other community blood, and but for which it would have could live. without a polity and without worn an aspect, compared with that which laws.* Of the terrible evils which result, it now wears, of perfect felicity, is treated one, though possibly not the greatest, is war. as a subject for honest rejoicing to good cit This evil is so vast and conspicuous that it izens -for British jollification or French shocks and sickens humane men; and noth- fanfarronade. If these men were heathens, ing is more common than to hear discussions there would be more to be said for them; on the question whether or not war is law- though one might have thought that imful. But if war is unlawful, then, in the proved means of education and advancing case just supposed, of a community consisting intelligence would have taught even to paof individual persons, it is unlawful for each ganism, that the self-isolation of nations of them to protect his own rights in the ab- the self-imposed and obstinately-maintained sence of any government to protect them; severance of man from man, because they a doctrine which no one possessed of com- happen to be of a different race, or to have mon sense will be found to maintain. The a different political historynatural and necessary result of international evil to be danced and sung about, but a anarchy is war, just as the natural and ne- calamity to be deplored. Being Christians, cessary result of national anarchy is personal it is difficult to understand their error. violence. But war is not, because interna- Christianity cut the knot which intellectual tional anarchy is not, † an inevitable con- advancement would sooner or later have dition of human affairs. War is, because untied, and if it taught anything, taught international anarchy is, excusable enough this, that simply because they belong to a as between barbarous communities. But different race, or are geographically divided among civilized and enlightened nations war from them, men have no right to treat other is, because anarchy is, a scandal and a men as socially and politically distinct from shame. It is this evil this anarchy of themselves; that the mutual estrangement, nations - which has wrought more misery social and political, of members of the great and prevented more happiness than perhaps human family, is an evil of the same nature any other of the self-inflicted torments of as the mutual estrangement of children born humanity. It is an evil which is as grave of the same parent; and that the exclusive in its negative as in its positive aspect; regard of men for those with whom they which has cursed the world, not only by are classed by the accidents of origin or of soil is a moral delinquency of the gravest kind. Be it remembered by those who meet, as they imagine triumphantly, considerations such as these with the words "Utopian" and "visionary" (words by which it may be remarked that every innovation in any important degree conducive to the gen

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It need hardly be said that "International Law," which there are no established tribunals to administer and no means which can be relied on to enforce, is not law in the ordinary sense of the word.

†To civil war, which is happily rare, and implies no maintenance of standing armies, this and the following statements are, of course, inapplicable.

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eral warfare has in its turn been stigmatized), that what is here contended for is not the possibility of immediate or proximate remedy, but simply the proposition that the acquiescence in an approval of a state of things so contrary to good sense, to right feeling, and to the most vital interests of the world, is unworthy of intelligent and well-intentioned human beings.

The virtuous self-satisfaction which has just been noticed as attending upon the assertion and display of nationalism, and which opposes so fatal a bar to international concord and union, is based upon confused notions of patriotism, which is of two kinds patriotism the virtue and patriotism

the vice.

Patriotism the virtue is that feeling which, where it exists in a high degree, inclines a man to prefer to his own interests the interests of the country to which he belongs, and which, in however small a degree it exists, leads him to consider himself not as an isolated being with no concern but his own welfare, but as a member of a society whose welfare is his own. Patriotism the virtue makes the general well-being, as distinct from that of the individual in whom it resides, its study and its care. If either the existence or the well-founded claims of his own country as a member of the community of nations is threatened, it devotes itself, at whatever sacrifice, to their defence, just as it would devote itself to ward off any internal calamity of equal magnitude. It admits that, so long as nations remain politically isolated from each other, so long as they are unable by common agreement to terminate the anarchy which afflicts them, force is the sole and legitimate protector of the rights of each; and that to compel a people against its will to submit to a foreign dominion is an injustice which must be resisted to the last. But the very essence of patriotism the virtue is self-sacrifice for the general good. It implies no approval or toleration of the anarchy of nations, or any idea that the interests of the particular country in which the patriot happens to live are paramount to those of the rest of the world. It is ready to sacrifice itself for the community to which it belongs, but it claims no right to decide as to the limits of that community. The boast of nationality is no part of the business of such patriotism. Indeed, the mental disposition in which it is generated is such as would rather incline a man, so, far as is possible, to enlarge the bounds of his country, not by military conquest, but by peaceful amalgamation; for the temper and habit of

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mind which characterize the true patriot as the citizen of a state would find a fuller development and gratification when he became a citizen of the world.

Patriotism the vice is the moral opposite of the former. It is that feeling among citizens which imparts to the nation, considered as one of the component parts of a great community, that very selfishness which is repudiated by patriotism the virtue. It is that feeling which causes a nation habitually to prefer its own to the general interest. The essence of virtuous patriotism is self-sacrifice; the essence of vicious patriotism is self-regard. One is the desire felt by a citizen for his country's advantage, even at the cost of his own; the other is the desire for his country's advantage because that country is his, at the cost of other nations. Patriotism the vice looks upon the life of nations as one long struggle for success at the expense of each other; holds that a state should deprecate, and, if it has the power, prevent, any increase in the wealth and prosperity of other states, lest the "balance of power" should be disturbed; and appears to consider the fact that. the world was not made exclusively for the benefit of one nation as a disposition of affairs to which nothing short of absolute compulsion should induce it to bow.

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It is then by confounding these two kinds of patriotism that men are led to tolerate and approve of the anarchy of nations.. With true patriotism that anarchy has. nothing in common, but, on the contrary, is essentially at issue. If illustration be required of this, it is to be found in the fact that the most devoted and disinterested patriot of our time, -the Liberator of Italy, is also one of the very few distinguished men who have felt and avowed international aspirations. At the close of a campaign unusually arduous and triumphant he gave vent, in a letter which appeared in the public journals of the day and was sneered out of court in the usual manner, to the trouble of his grand and benignant soul. Was war, he said, never to cease from the earth? Were nations to remain for ever disunited, with no thought but their own aggrandizement, and occupied in preparing themselves at an enormous cost to spring on the shortest notice at each other's throats? Was there no chance of a hearing for common sense and humanity, so that men, whether they were Italian, French, English, Austrian, Russian, or Prussian, should at length, after centuries of unwisdom, admit themselves to be members of a common family whose inter

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