20 Mr. E. /. Elliott on 



interests of any one class or town — to speak from the experience 

 one gained in going a little about the world, and from this he 

 would try to form a conclusion as to what was best for the people 

 as a whole, without regard to the interests of this or that class or 

 form of employment. Mr. Elliott very properly made the points 

 he did about the food and clothing of the German people, because 

 they were absolutely destructive of Mr. Cobden's point of view. 

 Mr. Cobden and others constantly insisted that if foreign countries 

 adopted protection they would ruin themselves ; therefore Mr. 

 Elliott brought forward these matters, not in any spirit of envy or 

 jealousy, but to prove that Mr. Cobden's prophecy had not been 

 fulfilled. Personally he (the speaker) was brought up in the 

 strictest and straightest sect of Cobdenism, and was taught that 

 this policy was beyond argument. Morley's " Life of Cobden " 

 was the book, above all others, that first shook his belief in 

 Cobdenism, because he there discovered that it was not a matter 

 of free imports simply. It was built up, in the first place, on 

 universal peace ; it was built up on the belief that wars would 

 cease; above all, it was built up on the belief of industrial 

 freedom. Cobden was a strong opponent of trade unions and 

 factory legislation, and the introduction of trades unions and 

 factory legislation had utterly upset the whole balance on which 

 Cobdenism was based. In Morley's ''Life" they would find 

 Cobden's abhorrence of anything like interference between the 

 employer and his workmen. Trades unions must be put down, 

 and anything like industrial legislation was bitterly and even 

 malignantly opposed by him and his friends. What was the whole 

 basis of Cobdenism ? Cobden wished to break down the system 

 of protection which the landowners of England had built up for 

 themselves. He wanted to get free imports, which would cheapen 

 labour, and he believed that England would then become the 

 workshop of the world. Other countries said — " We want to 

 manufacture, too," and they had taken advantage of that law 

 which John Stuart Mill admitted, the law of exceptions. Mill 

 pointed out that there might be certain manufactures which were 

 indispensable to the existence of a nation, and that those manu- 



