times of analogy with our own,' and obliging us to dispute the logic that infers the character of future international relations from their past type. Eight years before his arguments were sanctioned by a Treaty of Commerce, Mr. Cobden drew public attention to new features of the industrial economy of the world, surely calculated, in his opinion, to render a military policy uncongenial to the great mass of the French people, and a rupture with Great Britain particularly improbable. Those arguments are of course now entitled to additional weight, but they could hardly be more forcibly expressed by Mr. Cobden himself at the present moment than they were in a remarkable pamphlet which he published the year before the Russian War, from which we reproduce the following passage: 'I come to the really solid guarantee which France has given for a desire to preserve peace with England. As a manufacturing country France stands second only to England in the amount of her productions and the value of her exports; but the most important fact in its bearings on the question before us is that she is more dependent than England upon the importation of the raw materials of her industry; and it is obvious how much this must place her at the mercy of a Power having the command over her at sea. This dependence upon foreigners extends even to those right arms of peace, as well as of war, coal and iron. The coal imported into France in 1792, the year before the war, amounted to 80,000 tons only. In 1851, her importation of coal and coke reached the prodigious quantity of 2,841,900 tons. In the article of iron we have another illustration to the same effect. In 1792 pig iron does not figure in the French tariff. In 1851 the importation of pig iron amounted to 33,700 tons. The point to which I wish to draw attention is that so large a quantity of this prime necessary of life of every industry is imported from abroad; and in proportion as the quantity for which she is thus dependent upon foreigners has increased since 1792, in the same ratio has France given a security to keep the peace. Whilst governments are preparing for war, all the tendencies of the age are in the opposite direction; but that which most loudly and constantly thunders in the ears of emperors, kings, and parliaments, the stern command, 'You shall not break the peace,' is the multitude which in every country subsists upon the produce of labour applied to materials brought from abroad. It is the gigantic growth which this manufacturing system has attained that deprives former times of any analogy with our own, and is fast depriving of all reality those pedantic displays of diplomacy, and those traditional demonstrations of armed force, upon which peace or war formerly depended."* We have quoted Mr. Cobden's principal argument, that a war with a state possessing, as Great Britain does, a superior navy, would ruin the staple manufactures of France; but he has also contended that a great military expenditure would entail burdens intolerable to the French people. If it be replied to this latter argument that Government loans produce no immediate or sensible pressure, and are rather popular measures, good authority is not wanting for the rejoinder that this State mine has been so freely worked by French financiers that it must be pretty nearly exhausted-the public debt of France having grown from £134,184,176, in 1818, to £301,662,148 in 1858.+ To this it is added, that, while the Government has become yearly more embarrassed, the nation has become richer, more comfortable, and less ready for military life and pay; and that the very investments which have been so largely made by all classes in the French funds have arrayed interests proportionately strong against any course of public action calculated to depreciate greatly the value of their securities. In short, we are told that the French Emperor is too poor, and that the French people are too rich, for war. These are considerations which deserve much attention; but they are, it seems to us, insufficient to prove that France has passed out of the military into the industrial stage of national development, or that its economical condition is such as to render war very distasteful to the French nation, as a nation; especially as one which endures in time of peace, with the utmost * 1793 and 1853.' Ry Richard Cobden, M.P. Ridgway. + Economist, November 26, 1859. cheerfulness, one of the heaviest inflictions of a great and protracted war. For if we reflect upon the amount of wealth and industrial power withdrawn from production to sustain an army of 600,000 soldiers, besides an enormous fleet, we cannot but admit that this wonderful people bears, not only with constancy, but with pride, one of the chief economical evils of hostilities on a gigantic scale, and that this conspicuous feature of French society suffices to characterize it as warlike and wasteful, rather than as prudent and pacific. The immense increase of the national debt of France in the last forty years, if it shows that the fund of loanable capital has been largely trenched on, shows also the facility with which this financial engine has been worked hitherto; while the admitted augmentation of the general wealth of the people appears to contain an implicit answer to any conjecture that their capacity to lend has been nearly exhausted. Nor is it immaterial to observe, that the debt of France has been contracted mainly for military purposes,' that it has been considerably added to by the Emperor for actual war, and that his popularity appears to be now much greater than at his accession, in a large measure in consequence of the manner in which he has employed the loans he has raised. We have, indeed, only to recollect the amount of debt incurred by our own Government in the last war with France, and the opinion entertained by the highest authorities of its overwhelming magnitude when it was but a seventh of the sum it afterwards reached, to see the fallacy of prophecies of peace based upon the supposition of the impossibility of a country in the condition of France plunging into a great contest, and emerging from it without ruin. Moscow and Waterloo have been followed by Sebastopol and Solferino; and of disasters befalling his country from a foreign enemy the Frenchman is, we fear, inclined to repeat : 'Merses profundo, pulchrior evenit : Luctere, multa proruet integrum Neither can we put unreserved confidence in the pledges * Tooke's History of Prices, vi. pp. 7 and 13. of peace afforded by the trade and manufactures of France, on the value of which the following figures throw a light which has probably escaped Mr. Cobden's notice : EXPORTS FROM FRANCE.* (Expressed in millions sterling and tenths.) We may observe, that the European trade of France with Belgium ranks next in importance to that with England. Now, when it is suggested that France depends upon importation for those prime necessaries of both war and peace, iron and coal, and that this fact, above all others, affords security against French aggression, the reminiscence can hardly fail to excite some inauspicious recollections. Belgium is almost traversed from west to east by beds of coal, from which, in 1850, nearly six million tons were extracted; and in the same year the Belgian mines yielded 472,883 tons of iron. Give Belgium *Tooke's History of Prices, vi, 652-3. then to France, or rather let France take Belgium, and she does not want English coal and iron in time of war for her steam navy and ordnance. Is it towards commercial or warlike enterprise-towards the annexation of the adjoining land of coal and iron, or peace with all her neighbours-that the mind of the French is likely to be tempted by this consideration? Which policy would best consort with some of their longest treasured aspirations, and some of their latest anticipations? Last year a pamphlet, entitled 'L'Avenir de l'Europe,' passed through several editions in Paris. The future sketched for his country by the writer may be conjectured from the following passage :— 'De même que nous déclarons la Hollande puissance germanique, de même aussi n'hésitons-nous pas à regarder la Belgique comme française. Elle vit par nous, et sans la pusillanimité du dernier roi des Français, l'assimilation serait complète depuis 1830.' Perhaps this allusion to the year 1830 may derive illustration from the inspirations of a more celebrated politician. Among the works of Napoleon III. there is a fragment, entitled 'Peace or War,' which expresses a decided opinion upon the policy which became the Sovereign of France in 1830, and by implication upon the policy which becomes its Sovereign in 1860, or whenever moral force is in its favour.' It is in these terms:-'All upright men, all firm and just minds agree, that after 1830 only two courses were open to France-a proud and lofty one, the result of which might be war; or a humble one, but which would reward humility by granting to France all the advantages which peace engenders and brings forth. Our opinion has always been, that in spite of all its dangers, a grand and bold policy was the only one which became our country: and in 1830, when moral force was in our favour, France might easily have regained the rank which is hers by right.' It is not out of place, perhaps, to remark here that the hope of a meek and quiet, but remunerative, policy on the part of France-rather than one grand and bold but perilous-which Mr. Cobden had some reason to form in 1853 from the nature and extent of the maritime commerce of France, has since lost its foundation by a change in the maritime laws of war brought about by Napoleon III. To have crippled by hostilities with a G |