h was as just to the brave old
veteran, after having served his country with honour for fifty-six
years, as it was creditable to the impartiality, temper, and talent of
Sir Robert.

MR. COBDEN'S MOTION FOR REDUCING THE ARMY AND NAVY.

The Whigs were not good financiers. Sir Robert Peel excelled his
contemporaries, and more especially his opponents, in the practicability
of his financial arrangements. The government had been placed in
circumstances of great difficulty by events purely of a providential
nature; but there existed a general impression that they did not
meet the emergency with skill. A society called the Financial Reform
Association grew into existence in consequence of this feeling. Its
head-quarters was at Liverpool. Many important facts were brought to
light by it, and much information extended, but there was a want of
tact in the management which defeated these laudable and enlightened
exertions. The society had a singular fatality for urging particular
measures precisely at the juncture when there was least likelihood of
gaining the ear of either the public or the legislature. Mr. Cobden
made himself conspicuous in this agitation, and began that career of
impracticability which gradually limited his public usefulness, and
at last expelled him from parliament. When the whig budget came on
for discussion, Mr. Cobden was agitating a scheme for returning to the
expenditure of 1835, by which he alleged ten millions annually would
have been saved. The state of Ireland and the continent rendered it
unlikely that the country would consent to any very great reduction in
its military and naval defences, yet it was in these departments Mr.
Cobden contemplated his economical experiments. On the 26th of February
he submitted a motion to the house embodying the principles for which he
had contended at public meetings. The chancellor of the exchequer showed
that no reductions which even Mr. Cobden himself dare submit to the
house would reduce the national expenditure to the proposed extent, and
proved that the defence of the commerce and independence of the country
forbade any such reduction. Mr. Cobden only obtained seventy-seven to
support him, in a house of three hundred and fifty-three members. This
did not arise from any indisposition to reduce the public burdens, but
from a conviction that Mr. Cobden rested his motion upon false data,
and that his scheme was utterly inapplicable to the circumstances of th