By a sad coincidence, whilst these discussions were going on, the hand of death was being laid on the statesman who was of all men most competent to represent those who doubted the possibility of defending Canada. Richard Cobden, who declared that it would be just as possible for the United States to sustain Yorkshire in a war with England, as for England to enable Canada to contend against the United States, was sickening with his last illness. On the 2nd of April he died, and with him passed away the purest, most generous, and most chivalrous paladin of English Liberalism in the House of Commons. Men of all parties joined in doing homage to his memory. Mr. Disraeli vied with Mr. Bright in passing an eulogium on his public services. The Emperor of the French sent a letter of condolence to his widow. In the United States he was mourned by the American people as if he had been one of their own citizens. Mr. Bright said in the House, “I little knew how I loved him till I lost him,” and it indeed seemed as if this feeling were universal throughout England. Cobden’s disinterested honesty, the charm of his sweet and sympathetic nature, the fascination of his earnest, persuasive and transparently lucid eloquence, his buoyant courage, and his genuine devotion to the English people, all contributed to build up the fabric of his reputation and his popularity. His mission in life had been to beat down the power of the territorial aristocracy, which, in his youth, ruled England in the interest of a few rival groups of great families. In their place he imagined he could put a new order of merchant princes and Captains of Industry--an order of liberal-minded and highly-cultured men whose fortunes were bound up with the interest of Labour, and whose public spirit and civil capacity might recall the era of the Medici in Italy, and of the De Witts in the Low Countries. The leading ideas of the “Manchester School,” which he was credited with founding, have long since ceased to influence the English mind, though some of them have had enough vitality to survive the caprice of circumstances and the course of time. Cobden’s errors sprang from the fact that he believed that political power was to be finally centred in and wielded by the middle-classes. For example, it was for their interests to narrow as much as possible the Imperial responsibilities of England. Therefore, whilst he advocated Colonial autonomy it was not with a view to facilitate Imperial Federation, but to prepare the colonies for an independent existence, which should at once free us from the expense of defending them, and enrich us by the profits of their trade. On the other hand, the working classes regard the colonies as a heritage to be jealously preserved for their order, and the success of Federalism in the United States has induced them to dream of making a similar experiment within the British Empire. Obviously nothing could be more