political cipher, in the absence of Free Trade agitation. “The subject of Free Trade being disposed of, the state of parties would be found exceedingly embarrassing to the old political leaders! The House would not answer the helm; and the question was, how they should take a new tack!”—“I do not think there is anything in the temper of the country which should precipitate any decision on the point”—he had seen the then rapidly-altered aspect of the election returns!—“for with the exception of the feeling as regards [_sic_] Free Trade, I do not think there is much political feeling in the country on any question! There will be, in the House of Commons, no party so strong as to be able to form a Government which can be bargained [!] to stand for three months, if the old rule is to be acted on as to Government majorities. The question then is, _how are parties to be reconstituted_? Consequently our friends of the statesman and functionary class must take counsel to themselves, and SEE WHAT IS TO BE DONE IN ORDER TO INSPIRE SOME FRESH ENTHUSIASM, BY AND BY, IN THE COUNTRY, ON BEHALF OF THE OLD LIBERAL PARTY!” This was the same gentleman who, on attempting to reorganise the League, upon Lord Derby’s accession to power, unwittingly acknowledged, in terms, the extreme difficulty of “keeping up the excitement of the people, on the subject of _Free Trade_, for more than a few weeks!” Mr Cobden then favoured his company with a few of his luminous notions on the subject of “Parliamentary Reform;” being pleased to intimate that “as far as the suffrage was concerned, Lord John Russell had proposed a five-pound rating claim;” but Mr Cobden “would rather have a five-pound renting clause—a franchise which would go, he thought, almost as far as any gentleman in that room practically expected or probably wished—_at present_.” Mr Cobden concluded with coarse and insolent invective against the Chancellor of the Exchequer. “If there is a man in this country—a politician who has suddenly jumped to an elevation which I predict he will not sustain—who may be called a dangerous revolutionist, if he have the opportunity—it is he! The strangest revolution I have seen, was when I found the great territorial party declaring intellectual bankruptcy and proclaiming political suicide, by naming Mr Benjamin Disraeli as their chief! And if it were not for the steadying, ballasting principle of the Manchester school, which would prevent _jugglers, and mountebanks, and unscrupulous incendiary adventurers_ from playing tricks in this country, [!] there is no man so dangerous, because none who seemed less unwilling, at all times, to bend anything like the profession of principle to his own personal and sinister objects, than the present Chancellor of the Exchequer!”[16] Without condescending to characterise the tone and style of this attack upon an absent gentleman, let us see how he was being spoken of elsewhere, at the very same moment, by a _gentleman_—one of the most able,