The Cobden Club held its annual dinner on Saturday, with
Lord Northbrook in the chair. Lord Northbrook has been bitterly attacked for not sticking to the common-places of Free- trade, instead of venturing to indicate what Cobden, had he been living, and of his old ways of thinking, would have said of the Afghan war. But a Cobden Club and a Free. trade Club are very different things, and it is perfectly legitimate, however wide the differences of various members of the Club may be on the subject, to revive at such an anniversary the memory of Cobden, by considering what his personal attitude in relation to any modern question would be likely to be. Lord Ripon made a remarkable criti- cism ori. the German Chancellor's Protectionism, when he said that Prince Bismarck was inconsistent with himself, in at one and the some time attacking Communism and espousing Protectionism, since the root-idea of Communism, like the
root-idea of Protectionism, was an over-estimate of the power of the State. And finally, Mr. Horace White, of Chicago, made the best speech of the evening, when he pointed out that the United States only endure, as they do, the blunders of a Protective tariff, because the free-trade amongst themselves secures them a larger area of free-trade than that of any other terrestrial State, and has also saved them from the humilia- tion of being converted to a true doctrine, as Englishmen were, not so much by their heads, as by their stomachs.
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