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Show Richard Cabden RECENTLY occurred the one hundred and seventh anniversary of the birth of Richard Cabden, the apostle of free trade in England. There can be no doubt of his wisdom as a statesman who was desirous of serving his own country to the utmost. That the prosperity of other countries was a matter of secondary Importance Import-ance to him is equally clear. He knew that with England filled with mines of iron, coal and tin, with ports close to her mines, that with more factories fac-tories at work and more skilled artisans In" the factories than all the rest of the world combined; with more ships to deliver her goodB-and bring back raw material than any other three powers; if he could succeed in establishing free trade among the nations, the world would be England's oyster; that England could make bankrupt the . whole world. Then he knew the capacity of Great Britain to produce food, knew it would not be sufficient with, the increasing factories that would have to be built, and as the idea of steam ever being used on freight ships, he concluded that all the food that might be brought to England Eng-land would not keep pace with her increasing artisans, and could not injure her agriculturists, and so he bent his energies to the task and had . the Corn laws repealed. The result was that in the succeeding twenty years after 1846, Great Britain about made bankrupt every nation that accepted the Cabden theory. Her own colonies were robhed with the same philosophic calmness v ' with which she watched the effect of her legislation legis-lation on outside nations; and as a nation she might be compared to the old sexton who, while at his task of digging graves, contentedly croned the old refrain: "I gather them in, I gather them in." His idea and the legislation at grew out of it, have in the last thirty-fiv ., urs hurt almost irretrievably English agriculturists. When wheat from North Dakota began to be laid down in Liverpool cheaper than it could be from the nearest near-est wheatfleld in England, then her agriculture began to decline, and at the present time the calamity has reached lamentable proportions, for under it the race is degenerating. But with British abuses Parliament still reckons that Great Britain's great wealth has come through her manufactures and trade, and that no legislation must be permitted that will add to the cost of food for her operatives. One thing the "United States may remember Mr. Cabden with gratitude for, when our Civil war burst upon the country, he took the ground that Great Britain could never afford to lend aid to any faction or power that was seeking to create an empire the foundations of which were laid on human glory, and he was the friend of our republic through all that mighty trial. |