Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/271

 Channel Tunnel, than the statement of Sir W. E. Watkin quoted in a former page. I know nothing of the reasons for such a Tunnel which the Prince Consort and Mr. Cobden may have given. From the admitted general benevolence of both, it may be inferred that they considered the Tunnel as likely to have a tendency to produce peace and not to produce war. But it is given to few, very few, if any, of the sons of men, to foresee the proximate far less the distant and remote consequences of human acts. The character of Mr. Cobden was energetic and sanguine. These two qualities were most important in the work he had to do in the Anti-Corn Law battle. I have seen Mr. Cobden, and that too when he was within less than two years of victory, almost inclined to think the struggle hopeless.

But the sanguine character of mind which Mr. Cobden possessed is not altogether a safe guide in such speculations as the Channel Tunnel, nor is it in the large questions of peace and war, of foreign policy, of the principle of non-intervention in which Mr. Cobden engaged after the settlement of the Corn Law question. The editor of his speeches says in the preface, that Mr. Cobden said that war is never desired by a people, but by politicians and military men, whose ambition and cupidity are fired