"I ought long ago (Richard Cobden wrote) to have thanked you for having attached my name to a locality in your jurisdiction. It was gratifying to me to find that you had borne an old Parliamentary colleague in remembrance. It was this act of friendly kindness rather than the honour or compliment paid me that made your communication to me exceedingly acceptable and pleasant."I have not been able to watch very closely or continuously the workings of your political institutions. But I suppose, like all new machinery, the action is at first subject to a good deal of friction and irregularity.
"Here our Parliamentary life has been not very satisfactory of late. Our old Premier (if the word 'old' can ever apply to one of such boisterous spirits) is holding office with the aid of the most reactionary section of the Tories, because they find he obstructs reform more effectually than their own leaders could do if they were in power, and spends far more money than a Tory Government would dream of doing.
"The consequence is that all reform is in abeyance, and the old parties are deluding themselves with the idea that the majority of the people have lost all interest in political matters. The truth is they are only waiting for the opportunity when they may claim usurious interest for the long deferred payment of their just claims.—Believe me, yours truly,"R. Cobden."
A Conservative friend took a nearly identical view of the genial Premier.
"About this country (Sir Emerson Tennant wrote me) we have little news to give you. The prosperity is marvellous, the profits of trade fabulous, and consequently the value of land rising beyond belief, as well as the wages of labour and the cost of products.
"As to party politics, party is, if not 'dead,' inanimate; no one dreams of a change of Ministry while Lord Palmerston chooses to hold power or thinks himself equal to wield it. But as his prestige is declining in England, and gone in every constituency in which there is an element that disapproves of what is passing in Italy, I think that the close of the Session will be the end of his official life."
