r as thorough-going, as eminently eloquent
and popular a leader, as Mr Cobden himself.

On the present occasion, our business chiefly lies with the gentleman
known as Mr Alderman Richard Cobden, M.P. for the borough of Stockport,
one of the first samples sent up of municipal and representative reform
achievement. Mr Cobden is an example of successful industry when
translated to a proper sphere of action. Fortunate in the maternal
relationship of a Manchester warehouseman, domiciliated in the classic
regions of cotton and Cheapside, he was taken as an "odd lad" into the
establishment. In process of time he was advanced to the more honourable
grade of traveller, in days of yore styled "bagman," to the concern.
Somewhere about 1825 or 1826, we find him transplanted to Manchester, in
partnership with two other persons of the same craft and trading position,
where they enjoyed the patronage of the late Mr Richard Fort, an extensive
calico-printer, at, and in his latter years member for, the borough of
Clitheroe in the north of Lancashire. He leased to them one of his
print-works near Chorley, and such, it is understood, was the success of
the trio, that when, after a partnership of some thirteen or fourteen
years, they separated, the division of fairly won spoil accruing to each
was not less than L.30,000. Within the space of fourteen years say,
industry had created out of nothing the incredible sum of L.90,000.
During his travels, like Jemmy the sandman, for orders, Mr Cobden became
initiated into the science of "spouting;" he became the oracle and orator
of bars and travellers' rooms; the observed of all observers, from the
gentlemen of the road down to waiters, barmaids, and boots. The roadsters
of his, as of these days, were no longer, however, of the same high-toned
class as that of the "bagmen" in times gone by. Tradition tells now only
of the splendid turns-out, the dinner-table luxury, the educated
commercial polish, the "feast of reason and the flow of soul" enjoyment,
of a race defunct; the degenerate crew of Cobden's association, with
wages cut down to short common commissions, dined not at home; tea and
turn-in, with a sleeping draught of whisky toddy, were the staples of
mine host's bill. Such is briefly the report of the rise and progress of
Mr Cobden in the world, as we have it from quarters entitled to regard;
various exaggerated statements about his hundreds of thousands acquired,
are afloat as usual in cases