g animation as he
describes the bustle of its streets, the quaintness of its dialect, the
abundance of its capital, and the sturdy veterans with a hundred
thousand pounds in each pocket, who might be seen in the evening smoking
clay pipes and calling for brandy-and-water in the bar-parlours of
homely taverns. He prospered rapidly in this congenial atmosphere; but
it is at Sabden, not at Manchester, that we see the first monument of
his public spirit--a little stone school-house, built as the result of
an agitation led by him with as much eager enthusiasm as he ever threw
afterwards into great affairs of state.

Between 1833 and 1836 Cobden's character widened and ripened with
surprising quickness. We pass at a single step from the natural and
wholesome egotism of the young man who has his bread to win to the wide
interests and generous public spirit of the good citizen. His first
motion was towards his own intellectual improvement, and early in life
he perceived that for his purposes no preparation could be so effective
as that of travel. In 1833 and 1834 he visited the Continent; in 1835,
the United States; and in 1836 and 1837 he travelled to Egypt, the
Levant, and Turkey.

In the interval between the two latter journeys he made what was
probably his first public speech, at a meeting to further the demand of
a corporation for Manchester. The speech is described as a signal
failure. "He was nervous," says the chronicler, "confused, and in fact
practically broke down, and the chairman had to apologise for him."

He was much more successful in two pamphlets he published at this time,
"England, Ireland, and America," and "Russia," in which he opened the
long struggle he was to wage against the restriction of commerce, and
the policy of intervention in European feuds. It is no strained
pretension to say that already Richard Cobden, the Manchester
manufacturer, was fully possessed of the philosophic gift of feeling
about society as a whole, and thinking about the problems of society in
an ordered connection.

_II.--The Corn Laws_

In 1837, Cobden was invited to become candidate for the borough of
Stockport. Although he threw himself into the struggle with all his
energy, on the day of election he was found to be at the bottom of the
poll. Four years later he was returned for Stockport by a triumphant
majority. But in 1841 he was no longer a rising young politician; he had
become the leading spirit of a national ag