ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, 315 



Agitation for no o'ood end seems, in Imndreds 



"o 



of cases, to be the Ijlatant food on wliicli some 

 men live. They can't be quiet nor let others 

 be contented, but advocate strikes, leagues, and 

 unions for mischief, of course craving imder false 

 pretences for subscriptions, that they may keep 

 the caldron of cavil boiling, in order that its steam 

 may attract the unwary, and prompt to robbery, 

 hope for food and an impossible comfort which 

 never comes. According to the late Mr. Cobden, — 

 who, I sincerely believe, was a conscientious pleader 

 for impossibilities, — when the law of free trade passed, 

 Russia, Prussia, Austria, and France, were to be 

 '' crumpled up like a sheet of waste paper," if any 

 of those nations dared to disturb the general peace. 

 Swords Avere to be turned, by the action of free 

 trade, into hoes and harrows — bows and arrows 

 would have been far more likely, if we had been in 

 iirnorance of the bettor munitions of war; war- 

 liorses, no longer wanted for the big guns, were to 

 be harnessed to the plough, cannon turned into 

 culverins for sewers, and soldiers into milkmen and 

 mowers for tlie rural harvest of those expected 

 peaceful times. 



If Cobden could look from his grave and see 



