abolishing the existing law, received the Royal assent before the session concluded.

Though thus engrossed with schemes of practical legislation, Mr. Gladstone found time-as he has, indeed, throughout the whole of his long career-to interest himself in social and educational questions. One of the most forcible of his speeches upon education was delivered at the opening of the Collegiate Institution of Liverpool. He addressed himself first to the general topic, and after discussing its religious aspect, together with its nature and objects, he continued, 'We believe that if you could erect a system which should present to mankind all branches of knowledge save the one that is essential, you would only be building up a Tower of Babel, which, when you had completed it, would be the more signal in its fall, and which would bury those who had raised it in its ruins. We believe that if you can take a human being in his youth, and if you can make him an accomplished man in natural philosophy, in mathematics, or in the knowledge necessary for the profession of a merchant, a lawyer, or a physician; that if in any, or all of these endowments you could form his mind-yes, if you could endow him with the science and power of a Newton, and so send him forth-and if you had concealed from him, or, rather, had not given him a knowledge and love of the Christian faith-he would go forth into the world, able indeed with reference to those purposes of science, successful with the accumulation of

wealth for the multiplication of more, but "poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked" with reference to everything that constitutes the true and sovereign purposes of our existence-nay, worse, worse-with respect to the sovereign purpose-than if he had still remained in the ignorance which we all commiserate, and which it is the object of this institution to assist in removing.'

In the session of 1844 Mr. Gladstone addressed the House on a variety of topics, including Railways, the Law of Partnership, the Agricultural interest, the Abolition of the Corn Laws, the Dissenters' Chapel Bill, and the Sugar Duties. England was now in the thick of the great Free Trade controversy, and as during this session the question of the Corn Laws was to occupy a prominent position, it will be convenient here to cite some details concerning the progress of the agitation. The Anti-Corn Law League had for its Chairman Mr. George Wilson, an able and energetic man; but the greatest name in connection with the League was that of Richard Cobden. This eminent statesman (the original of Mr. Job Thornberry, in Lord Beaconsfield's novel, 'Endymion') was the son of a Sussex farmer, and was born at Dunford, near Midhurst, on the 3rd of June, 1804. On the death of his father, he went to London and served his apprenticeship in a Manchester-goods warehouse. In the year 1830, in connection with some relatives in Lancashire, he introduced a new kind of business into the cotton-print trade.

upon the original list of members; but they speedily joined, and infused great vigour into the organisation. The country was divided into districts, subscriptions were raised, and lecturers appointed. Mr. Cobden had unsuccessfully contested Stockport in 1837, but at the dissolution in 1841, when Lord Melbourne made his appeal to the country in favour of a fixed duty upon corn, he was successful in being returned for that borough. Not long after Sir Robert Peel's accession to power, his private secretary, Mr. Drummond, was shot by a madman named M'Naghten, in mistake for Sir Robert himself. The Premier was greatly excited by this circumstance, and when, in the course of a Free-Trade debate, Mr. Cobden had warned the Ministers of the personal responsibility they incurred by refusing the free importation of corn, he (Sir Robert) accused Mr. Cobden of inciting to assassination. This was indignantly denied. In the end, the Corn Laws were repealed; and when the struggle was over, a proposal was made to raise £100,000 by way of subscription, in recognition of the services of Mr. Cobden in the cause. The handsome sum of £70,000 was obtained, with a portion of which the small property at Midhurst, on which he had worked when a boy, was purchased for him, while the remainder was invested by Mr. Cobden in American railway stock. When Lord John Russell became Premier, he desired Mr. Cobden to become a member of the Government, but the offer was declined. Mr. Cobden was strongly opposed to the various Governments concerned in

the Crimean War, and he condemned again and again the War with Russia. In 1857 he carried a vote against the Government, condemning the proceedings of Sir John Bowring in China. This step was not popular with his Yorkshire constituents, and Mr. Cobden became a candidate for Huddersfield, instead of the West Riding, but was defeated. For two years he remained out of Parliament; but in 1859 (while he was on a visit to the United States) his friends returned him for Rochdale. Lord Palmerston, the new Premier, offered Mr. Cobden the Presidency of the Board of Trade, but again was the tender of high office declined. Though never a Minister, Mr. Cobden became our special Plenipotentiary at Paris in 1859, for the purpose of negotiating the Commercial Treaty with France. When this great and difficult task was concluded, he declined all reward for his services. Mr. Cobden died on the 2nd of April, 1865, having been in ill health for some years previously. His remains were interred beside those of his only son, in the churchyard of West Lavington, near Dunford. The funeral was attended by Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Villiers, Mr. Milner Gibson, and upwards of fifty other members of Parliament, besides numerous deputations from Manchester, Rochdale, and various other towns.

With regard to the personal characteristics of Mr. Cobden, his manners were gentle and courteous, and while holding firmly to his opinions, he habitually shunned all occasions of giving offence. 'Nature had given him

tastes for both what is correct in design and elegant in language. But his voice had neither great flexibility nor power, and his manner and action were not such as greatly to commend him to turbulent and mixed assemblies. He probably was more at home in the House of Commons than in those large meetings over which he exercised so great and decisive an influence. But though he was scantily endowed with the external gifts and graces of oratory, Mr. Cobden had that within which amply compensated for these defects. His delivery was earnest and impressive, his language was clear, vernacular, and well chosen, his appeals to the reason of his hearers weighty and well directed, his power of argument singularly sustained and elastic. He could impress upon an uncultivated audience long and subtle arguments on matters far removed from ordinary experience, and by the united power of language, vigour of thought, and homeliness of illustration, could convince as well as persuade, and win converts while he was overwhelming adversaries.' Mr. Cobden had a mastery over every part of the great Free Trade controversy such as nobody else could pretend to; and in the number of speeches which he made on the same subject he showed a boundless fertility of illustration, and an inexhaustible ingenuity in varying the arrangement and the form of his arguments. Although not exempt from that inequality which attends even the best public speakers, there is no orator of the present day who was so sure to bring out the facts,

to adduce the arguments, and to make the impression that he desired. Such a man could not fail of great success, especially among the hard heads and shrewd understandings of the North. Year after year he laboured on in the cause of Free Trade, and it might be difficult to say what amount of progress he had made, when suddenly the whole edifice of Protection crumbled away before him, and he found himself victorious in a struggle which many had considered almost as without hope.' No man was probably ever so completely vindicated during his lifetime as Mr. Cobden. Sir Robert Peel, in the course of a speech made on the 29th of June, 1846, said: In proposing our measures of commercial policy, I had no wish to rob others of the credit due to them. The name which ought to be, and will be, associated with those measures is not the name of the noble lord, the organ of the party of which he is the leader, nor is it mine. The name which ought to be, and will be, associated with those measures is that of one who, acting as I believe from pure and disinterested motives, has, with untiring energy, made appeals to our reason, and has enforced those appeals with an eloquence the more to be admired because it was unaffected and unadorned; the name which ought to be chiefly associated with those measures is that of Richard Cobden.' To the admirable private character of Mr. Cobden, another distinguished witness, the Bishop of Oxford, bore testimony. Writing to apologise for his absence from the funeral, on the ground