earnestly, solemnly protest against the cause, you are lighting & Firebrand. If your soul sickens at the degradation inflicted by the Lash, your squeamishness must be silent, or you will be raising a Firebrand in the air. If you think you can perceive, on the one hand, the brutalising effects of Capital Punishment, on the other its wretched inefficiency in diminishing crime, you must not utter that conviction, or you will be casting a Firebrand into society. Think what you please, but beware how you utter it, unless you belong to the "right thinking and enlightened class." Sicken, if you will, but dare not to protest. Dare not to tamper with the edifice which Time and the misery of millions has sanctified; dare not to remove even a withered branch from that Tree, under whose branching shade our forefathers grew up, lest, in removing the blighted branch, you peril the stability of the whole. The Tree is a noble tree, with all its tortuous misgrowths, with all its paralysed limbs. You must respect it for what it has been. It has its defects. It has also its great qualities. The defects are inseparable from its greatness, and therefore ought not to be. removed. Attempt to remove them, and you light the Firebrand.

You will be told that there is wrong in the world, there always has been, always will be. Our life is a "mingled yarn"-the evil is inseparably woven in with the good. What, then, is the use of raising seditious cries about particular wrongs? If you protest, you endanger "vested interests. If you endanger these you endanger the welfare of the State, and, as the State is composed of all classes, including the millions, it follows, by a very beautiful deduction, that your protest is a dangerous Firebrand, which, if listened to, will destroy even the millions in whose favour it is made, since their welfare is, of course, bound up with that of the State!

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Is it, then," we hear some sarcastic gentleman observe, "indifferent what sophisms are put forth to gull the credulous people? Shall not a far-seeing man stigmatise the sophism which lies under that Protest? Is not Falsehood always a Firebrand?"

Falsehood is always a Firebrand; but is seldom called so. Falsehood is laughed at, exposed, or disregarded-men know that its empire must be short. Truth, when ruining "vested interests," is endeavoured to be stifled, under the obloquy of a name. Truth alone is crucified !

Let any man rise up and preach against imaginary evils, or in

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favour of inapplicable reforms, and he will meet, indeed, with abundant sarcasms, but the utmost to be said of his opinions are— They are crotchets!" But, let a man arise to utter the thought which is struggling for utterance in the dumb millions-let him preach against a wrong which thousands feel, and which the wrongers know exists-then, when he is uttering a living truth, when his voice is the voice of those who cannot speak, when his word is a spark of unextinguishable fire, that lights up the souls of his hearers, and clears away their doubts-then, opinion is not sneered at as a crotchet, it is vilified as a Firebrand. Then rises the voice of warning and of lamentation; then are the lovers of social order called upon to repress the profligate abuse of Liberty of Thought.

So true it is, as Heinrich Heine strikingly observes," Everywhere, where an earnest spirit speaks out his convictions, there also is Golgotha!"

COBDEN ON THE CONTINENT.

BY ANGUS B. REACH.

RICHARD COBDEN was a commercial traveller once-and although the world may not at first blush think it-Richard Cobden is a commercial traveller still. Sometimes on the road-sometimes on the rail-an active emissary of Manchester; he distributed his patterns-collected his debts-opened up new connections-consolidated old ones-wrote his daily bulletin of the state of tradethe tightness of money or the glut of stock-to the city of the tall chimneys-and then officiated as Mr. Chair, or Mr. Vice, in that hastily-gobbled dinner, which commercial gentlemen always seem to hurry over as a piece of disagreeable necessity, to be got through with as quickly as possible.

And Richard Cobden is a commercial traveller still. True, he shows no patterns-takes no order-duns no customer-represents no firm. His progress is not now from Manchester to Liverpool, or from Nottingham to Derby. His ever-shifting habitation is no longer that big, side-boarded, dreary, bookless, commercial room. He flieth not from shop to shop-signing bills-writing receipts-vaunting a new design in calicos-predicting a rise in cottons. And still, we repeat, he is a commercial traveller.

Yes the greatest-the most remarkable traveller the world has ever seen. Europe is his district-nations are his customers -the memoirs of the League fill his book of patterns-he deals in mighty principles-he distributes vast doetrines-he exhibits new designs which shake the polity of empires-he predicts universal commercial interchange-no land, no city, which he has not filled with the fame and the credit of his great constituent, the mighty firm of Free Trade, throned in the realms of England.

Richard Cobden, literally the commercial traveller-and Richard Cobden, figuratively the commercial traveller! How vast the leap! The Mister Cobden who derived his little weight from his calicomaking constituents-whose name circulated but amongst his own little class the knight-errants of the Ledger-whose talk was naturally of invoices and bills of parcels who was cared for but by mottle-faced landlords and grimy bootses-in fact, Mr. R. Cobden, Bagman.

Study that picture first-then this.

Richard Cobden, the wide world known - the leader of the greatest mercantile confederacy man has ever seen- -the wielder of a power the most pacific-the most pliable-but the most overwhelming probably ever guided by one governing spirit—Richard Cobden who revolutionised an empire-who will revolutionise the world, and who did it without the glitter of a bayonet or the crack of a musket-Richard Cobden who prostrated the proudest oligarchy of Europe-who ruled the man who ruled the Legislature which ruled the empire-Richard Cobden, at once the missionary -the champion the advocate-the embodyment of Free Trade -striding in his triumph over Europe-everywhere welcomed everywhere honoured his health toasted-his name, his principles, and his deeds proclaimed in every language of civilisation -everywhere sowing the good seed-everywhere telling the good tidings everywhere pointing out how protection clogs men's progress-how it isolates them and makes them enemies-how, to the eye of mercantile genius, custom houses show like frowning ramparts, and tariffs like standing armies.

'Tis a wondrous, a promising, a happy phenomenon, the tour of Richard Cobden. It is greater than ever was monarch's progress

will exercise more power than ever did conqueror's march. He sets people thinking. He leaves little Leagues behind him-he consecrates, so to speak, local Villierses, and Brights, and Foxes. He sets many balls rolling. Festal banquets everywhere await

him-oh, may they be the forerunners of that great festal banquet which the world shall sit down to, when, like the guests at a pic-nic, every nation shall bring its share to the setting forth of the table-one offering bread-another wine-a pastoral land its meat—a manufacturing its steel, wherewith to carve the viands! Free trade !-the word is now a household one in many tongues -the idea will soon become as familiar, and then will it be translated into action.

Quick-witted France-thou pleasant and light-hearted land-let the sea be the only and the easily-spanned barrier betwixt us. We can mutually help each the other hear glory in other sounds than the rattle of rolling drums.-Forego your affection for the administration of triangular bayonet-stabs. We want your wine, not your blood-take our cottons, not our lives. Let the channel be dotted with packets, not privateers. Be happy, Monseigneur le Prince du Joinville, without flinging thirteen-inch shells into the marine libraries of Margate-adopt Free Trade, in fine-do not fight with us-deal with us—make drays of your tumbrils-scales of your shakoes--and weights of your bullets.

And thou, Belgium, - remember the old name-the old days of your land. We love its ancient, rather than its modern title: Flanders the Netherlands-the Low Countries,-you were the first to teach Northern Europe the arts of peace-to prove the might the power of honest industry. Glorious old Burghers of Ghent, and Antwerp, and Bruges ;-sleeping amid the pomp of your many-towered cities, you it was who bearded the fierce chivalry of France and Spain-you it was who first taught the nations how the lance could be shivered by the spindle. Did your stout deputies quail before the bluster of Charles of Burgundy? -were their keen minds ever swayed by the craftiness of his well-beloved cousin of France ?-No, gallant burghers of Flanders -you formed the first great commercial league-you harried the robbers' nests of the Rhine-you taught your steel-clad neighbours that the pennon fluttering from knightly lance must yield to the flag hoisted on merchantman's mast. And were you rude, mechanical- -a mere toiling, soulless mass of sweltering artisans or ledger-loving hucksters? Answer for us, the brushes of your painters the chisels of your sculptors. Answer for us, the canvass of Teniers and Rubens the gothic glories of the spire of Antwerp-the Burgher Hall of Ghent !

Spain! You too had your gone commercial glories-you it was

who sent forth the little fleet of three from Palos-you it was whose flag first floated on the Pacific-you it was whose stately argosies and galleons first poured forth the treasures—the gold, the silver, the perfumes, the cinnamon and the spice of the fresh new world-before the eyes of dazzled Europe. But you turned from peace to war-from traffic to combat-you loaded your fleet with shot and shell-a prince commanded it—a pope blessed it-and yet, where in two months was the invincible Armada, and where since has been the happiness and the prosperity of Spain?

Italy-land of commerce as much as of art-land of the merchants who were princes, and the princes who were merchants! In the tideless Adriatic once waved the flags of all nations. It was when the commerce of Italy most flourished, that its art reached its zenith. Glorious above all its days were those in which the merchant galleys of the world crowded the lagoons of Venice, and clustered round the Mole of Genoa-when Italy had its Medicis to encourage its artistic splendour-its Dorias to vindicate its maritime renown.

But now, commerce has flown; its spirit, if not dead, is torpid in Belgium-in Spain-in Italy. The quays of Antwerp are deserted-there is idleness and gloom in the ports from which the Armada sailed, and in which the Bucentaur lies rotting. Civil war and military despotism have ground down commerceless lands. But there is yet hope. When the rail shall clasp Europe in its iron bands-when Custom Houses shall crumble like the relics of outworn things-when sordid monopoly no longer shall stifle industry, hatch wars, and batten on human misery-thenand the time must surely come-then will the League-the great English Anti-Corn-Law League-have fulfilled its ultimate mission, and its Champion and Apostle have reaped the fruits of his long ungrateful toil, in the tributes of admiring historians, and the happiness of friendly, prosperous, and industrious nations.

TO AN APOSTLE OF PROGRESS.

I THINK I hear the Ages say

That Time has ripen'd since their birth,

And Intellect prepared the way

For man to renovate the Earth.