o cope
with, and to whose eloquence, indeed, the great statesman in whom they
put their trust was obliged ultimately to surrender. On the 17th of
February 1843 an extraordinary scene took place in the House of Commons.
Cobden had spoken with great fervour of the deplorable suffering and
distress which at that time prevailed in the country, for which, he
added, he held Sir Robert Peel, as the head of the government,
responsible. This remark, when it was spoken, passed unnoticed, being
indeed nothing more than one of the commonplaces of party warfare. But a
few weeks before, Mr Drummond, who was Sir Robert Peel's private
secretary, had been shot dead in the street by a lunatic. In consequence
of this, and the manifold anxieties of the time with which he was
harassed, the mind of the great statesman was no doubt in a moody and
morbid condition, and when he arose to speak later in the evening, he
referred in excited and agitated tones to the remark, as an incitement
to violence against his person. Sir Robert Peel's party, catching at
this hint, threw themselves into a frantic state of excitement, and when
Cobden attempted to explain that he meant official, not personal
responsibility, they drowned his voice with clamorous and insulting
shouts. But Peel lived to make ample and honourable amend for this
unfortunate ebullition, for not only did he "fully and unequivocally
withdraw the imputation which was thrown out in the heat of debate under
an erroneous impression," but when the great free-trade battle had been
won, he took the wreath of victory from his own brow, and placed it on
that of his old opponent, in the following graceful words:--"The name
which ought to be, and will be associated with the success of these
measures, is not mine, or that of the noble Lord (Russell), but the name
of one who, acting I believe from pure and disinterested motives, has,
with untiring energy, made appeals to our reason, and has enforced those
appeals with an eloquence the more to be admired because it was
unaffected and unadorned; the name which ought to be chiefly associated
with the success of these measures is the name of Richard Cobden."
Cobden had, indeed, with unexampled devotion, sacrificed his business,
his domestic comforts and for a time his health to the public interests.
His friends therefore felt, at the close of that long campaign, that the
nation owed him some substantial token of gratitude and admiration for
those sacrific