materials of these volumes.

Since the days of those men of renown who lived through the first half
of the seventeenth century, when the liveliest religious feeling was
joined to the loftiest patriotism, and men laboured for their conscience
and their country, England has witnessed no political career like that
of Cobden and Bright. Cobden's death was a great loss to his country,
for it occurred at a time when England could ill spare a conscientious
statesman. Nations, however, cannot be saved by the virtues, nor need
they be lost by the vices, of their public men. But Cobden's death was
an irreparable loss to his friends--most of all to the friend who had
been, in an incessant struggle for public duty and truth, of one heart
and of one purpose with him.

Those who have been familiar with Cobden's mind know how wide was his
knowledge, how true was his judgment of political events. The vast
majority of those who followed his public career had but a scanty
acquaintance with the resources of his sagacity and foresight. He spoke
to the people on a few subjects only. The wisdom of Free Trade; the
necessity of Parliamentary Reform; the dangerous tendency of those laws
which favour the accumulation of land in few hands; the urgent need for
a system of national education; the mischief of the mere military
spirit; the prudence of uniting communities by the multiplication of
international interests; the abandonment of the policy of diplomatic and
military intermeddling; the advocacy, in short, of the common good in
place of a spurious patriotism, of selfish, local, or class aims, formed
the subject of Cobden's public utterances. But his intimate friends, and
in particular his regular correspondents, were aware that his political
criticism was as general as it was accurate. The loss then of his wise
and lucid counsel was the greatest to the survivor of a personal and a