losses, estimated at twenty thousand pounds. His
courage failed at length, and he went so far as to write to Mr. Bright
that it was his intention to withdraw from the agitation and endeavor to
retrieve his business. Then in turn Mr. Bright went to his friend, in
Manchester, and was successful in urging him to reconsider his
determination. It was agreed among the Free-Traders to bestow eighty
thousand pounds upon Mr. Cobden when the struggle was ended, and he soon
after received this manifest mark of their esteem and gratitude.

His labors to preserve peace, to strengthen the bonds of amity and
weaken the causes for distrust between England and France, were earnest,
unwearying, and fruitful in their results. His endeavors also to stem
the dreadful tide drifting into the Crimean War, and his appeal in the
House of Commons, when war became imminent with China, "that a select
committee be appointed to examine into the state of our commercial
relations with that country," prove his unswerving principles, and his
energetic desire to preserve peace, until war should be declared a
national necessity.

A man of the iron integrity of Cobden found himself necessarily in
opposition to a man of popularity and self-aggrandizement, like
Palmerston. Therefore, when the prime-minister announced his
determination to reserve certain seats in his cabinet and ministry "for
the leaders of advanced Liberalism," Richard Cobden declined the
position appointed to himself, saying to Lord Palmerston, "that he had
always regarded him as a most dangerous minister for England, and his
views still remained the same."

One of Mr. Cobden's last efforts in the House of Commons was for the
repeal of the Paper Duty. He said,--"If I were a young man just fresh
from college, with nothing in the world but a good education, there is
nothing I should work for with so much interest as making perfectly free
the press of this country, by removing all the taxes which tend to
render scarce and dear literary productions." The last time Mr. Cobden
addressed a public audience, he said,--"If I were a rich man, I would
endow a professor's chair at Oxford and Cambridge to instruct the
undergraduates of those universities in American history. I would
undertake to say, and I speak advisedly, that I will take any
undergraduate now at Oxford or Cambridge and ask him to put his finger
on Chicago, and I will undertake to say that he does not go within a
thousand miles of it.