e apostle. But beside these public
demonstrations he sought and found access in private to many of the
leading statesmen, in the various countries he visited, with a view to
indoctrinate them with the same principles. During his absence there was
a general election, and he was returned (1847) for Stockport and for the
West Riding of Yorkshire. He chose to sit for the latter.

When Cobden returned from the continent he addressed himself to what
seemed to him the logical complement of free trade, namely, the
promotion of peace and the reduction of naval and military armaments.
His abhorrence of war amounted to a passion. Throughout his long labours
in behalf of unrestricted commerce he never lost sight of this, as being
the most precious result of the work in which he was engaged,--its
tendency to diminish the hazards of war and to bring the nations of the
world into closer and more lasting relations of peace and friendship
with each other. He was not deterred by the fear of ridicule or the
reproach of Utopianism from associating himself openly, and with all the
ardour of his nature, with the peace party in England. In 1849 he
brought forward a proposal in parliament in favour of international
arbitration, and in 1851 a motion for mutual reduction of armaments. He
was not successful in either case, nor did he expect to be. In pursuance
of the same object, he identified himself with a series of remarkable
peace congresses--international assemblies designed to unite the
intelligence and philanthropy of the nations of Christendom in a league
against war--which from 1848 to 1851 were held successively in Brussels,
Paris, Frankfort, London, Manchester and Edinburgh.

On the establishment of the French empire in 1851-1852 a violent panic
took possession of the public mind. The press promulgated the wildest
alarms as to the intentions of Louis Napoleon, who was represented as
contemplating a sudden and piratical descent upon the English coast
without pretext or provocation. By a series of powerful speeches in and
out of parliament, and by the publication of his masterly pamphlet,
_1793 and 1853_, Cobden sought to calm the passions of his countrymen.
By this course he sacrificed the great popularity he had won as the
champion of free trade, and became for a time the best-abused man in
England. Immediately afterwards, owing to the quarrel about the Holy
Places which arose in the east of Europe, public opinion suddenly veered
roun