another occasion in Blackwood.
It is the distinctive mishap of the family of the Wrongheads, the
illiterate, one-idea'd class of which he is a member, that they never can
contemplate a friendly act without perpetrating mischief, nor intend
mischief without unconsciously achieving discomfiture and disgrace. For of
the L.1,550,000 colonial overcharge in military expenditure _alone_ of
this shallow, unreflecting, and superficial person, not less certainly
than L1,200,000 must be charged to the account of foreign trade, the
special trade he delights to honour. It will constitute, as he will find,
a material item in the general balance-sheet which we purpose to draw
hereafter between the advantages of foreign and colonial trade.

Sir Robert Peel is not more correct in his so bitterly reproached
"do-nothing" policy about Irish repeal, than in his "do-nothing" emphatic
policy about Corn-law repeal. No man better knows how, left to
themselves, the Brights and Cobdens will turn out to be Marplots. The
dolts cannot see, that however hard the Villierses, and such as them, bid
for popularity against them, in apparently the same cause--they have an
interest diametrically adverse in the general sense, and on the fitting
opportunity will throw them overboard. The most influential part of the
liberal press, both metropolitan and provincial, it is well understood,
concur with the League to some extent in its avowed objects, without at
all liking its leaders, or the means pursued for the end sought, and wait
only for the occasion, which will come, for damaging and finally
overthrowing them in popular estimation. In Manchester, Leeds, and
Birmingham, that is, in the privately known sentiments of the leading
press and other liberal leaders of opinion in each, it is notorious that
this feeling and occult determination prevails. Mr Cobden himself, and
some of his colleagues, are not unaware of the fact, and have, in the
factious and political sense, latterly trimmed their course accordingly.
But, notwithstanding, confidence they have recovered not--never will,
because apostacy or trimming cannot inspire confidence; they are
endured--to be used, and to be laid aside, "steeped in Lethe" and
forgotten, as in time they will be.

In this brief article we have treated only of the salient points of the
colonial slanders of Mr Cobden and the League. We have challenged them
only with carrying to colonial account above one million and a half
sterlin