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| Another reference
to Cobden may be interesting. In 1859 Cobden went to the United States
to investigate and protect a substantial interest he had in an American
railway. During his absence Lord Palmerston was appointed to form
a new Ministry, and without the opportunity of consulting Cobden nominated
him President of the Board of Trade. This was before the days of submarine
telegraphy. In due time Cobden returned to England, when a deputation
from the Political and Financial Reform Association was appointed
to wait on him and present him with a congratulatory address. |
| The deputation
consisted of James Stansfeld, afterwards M. P. for Halifax, and more
than once Cabinet Minister; of Sir Arthur Hayter, afterwards M.P.
and Chairman of Ways and Means; of Samuel Morley, afterwards M. P.
for Bristol, and who subsequently declined a peerage; of James White,
afterwards M.P. for Brighton, and of myself, afterwards M. P. for
Salisbury. Cobden was staying for the day with Charles Gilpin, M.
P., at 10, Bedford Square, where the deputation had appointed to meet
him. When we called he had just returned from an interview with Palmerston.
He gave us a most interesting account of the interview, and among
other things said that when formally offered office he respectfully
declined it; and one reason he gave was that he might not agree with
all his lordship's policy, and if he did not he should resign office,
and thereby probably cause inconvenience. Cobden also said he ventured
to mention the name of the Hon. C. Pelham Villiers, an able man with
considerable Parliamentary experience, and that he also spoke of the
substantial qualities of Charles Gilpin. The result was that both
Villiers and Gilpin were appointed members of the new Government;
and so Cobden, though he declined office himself, promoted others
to office. I may add that some years before, when offered a baronetcy
at the suggestion of Lord John Russell, Cobden declined the honour. |
| I ought not,
even in these scrappy notes, to omit the names of Elihu Burritt and
George Thompson, with whom, in the Press, in committee work, and at
public meetings, I frequently acted. Elihu Burritt was kuown as "the
learned blacksmith," who left the anvil in America and came to
this country in answer to an invitation from Mr. Joseph Sturge. I
worked heartily with Burritt in producing and circulating his Bond
of Brotherhood, and took part in meetings preparatory to holding International
Peace Congresses. He, in fact, was the originator of these Congresses,
and is, or will be, entitled in the years to come to occupy a niche
in the Temple of Peace, when it is built up and established; and it
will most assuredly be built up and established, because it is in
harmony with the deepest and divinest human interests. I also co-operated
with Elihu Burritt in holding and addressing public meetings to establish
an International Penny Postage-a movement which has since made substantial
progress under the able direction of Henniker Heaton, M.P, and which
must, in cousinship with other cosmopolitan ideas, make corresponding
progress in the future. |
| I was also brought
into frequent contact, journalistically and in committees, with George
Thompson, who earned fame during the early part of the last century
as an orator on anti-slavery platforms. When Lloyd Garrison, the distinguished
American anti-slavery advocate, came to this country in 1867, I suggested
that he should be invited to what may now be called a historical breakfast
party in St. James's Hall. The meeting was held and addressed by John
Bright, who occupied the chair, by Lord John Russell, the Duke of
Arglye, J Stuart Mill, Lord Granville, William V. Harcourt, Lloyd
Garrison, and George Thompson. Mr. Bright, in one of the greatest
speeches even he ever delivered, when referring to the anti-slavery
struggle and the anti-slavery war just concluded in America, spoke
of Wendell Phillips as 'the greatest orator that speaks the English
tongue." Mr. Bright was probably not aware that Lord Brougham,
in a speech delivered in Exeter Hall nearly forty years before, applied
almost the same words to George Thompson. It was a singular coincidence
that the greatest English orator of the day should have described
the greatest American orator in almost the same language as was, with
authority, applied to the greatest English orator of a preceding generation,
and who was then on the platform in the eightieth year of his age.
Had George Thompson been a rich or well-to-do man instead of being
a poor man, he might, and no doubt would, have occupied a distinguished
place in our Parliamentary history. As it was, he was returned as
member of our Parliament many years before for the Tower Hamlets,
with the greatest majority then on record. His speech at this meeting
was the last he ever delivered, and the speech of Mr. William Harcourt,
afterwards Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the Liberal party
in the House of Commons, was the first he delivered in London. |
| As reminiscent
of the central years of the last century, I may say I heard Sir Robert
Peel deliver his great speech on the third reading of his Bill for
the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, and the following year I heard
Daniel O'Connell deliver his last speech in the House of Commons;
when his voice was so weak that he could only be heard with difficulty
in the gallery. During those central years I corresponded with Father
Mathew, Robert Owen, Leigh Hunt, Harriet Martineau, Joseph Mazzini,
Mrs. Beecher Stowe, and Sir William Molesworth. I saw Macready in
the character of Hamlet when he left the stage in 1851. I heard Thackeray
deliver his lectures on "The English Humourists of the Eighteenth
Century," and afterwards his lectures on "The Four Georges,"
in the Surrey Gardens Hall; and I also heard Dickens give his first
series of public readings. I was present when Cobden and the Duke
of Wellington shook hands, amid rapturous applause, at the opening
of the first International Exhibition in Hyde Park in 1851. Walter
Savage Landor has somewhere said that he exulted in the thought that
he had shaken hands with Kosciusco, and that fifty years after he
felt equal satisfaction in shaking hands with Kossuth. I felt equal
satisfaction in being present at a meeting in the Hanover Square Rooms
and shaking hands with Kossuth and Mazzini, and felt still more honoured
by a passing call from Garibaldi when he visited London somewhat meteorically
in 1864. I was a member of his Reception Committee. |
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