_Richard Cobden, the Apostle of Free Trade: his Political Career and Public Services._ A Biography. By JOHN MCGILCHRIST, Author of "The Life of Lord Dundonald." etc. New York: Harper & Brothers.
This unassuming volume, of small size and plain covers, is strictly what it pretends to be, a simple biography, and therefore, apart from its subject, it is a book to be commended. We do not see the author on every page, we are not forced to stop and listen to his reflections, nor to long digressions into history, too commonly the fault in contemporaneous biography of political men. The writer kindly remembers that the reader's ignorance or knowledge does not rest upon his conscience. Therefore we find in the little book what we wish, the story of Richard Cobden, "the international man"; and it is a noble life-history, of which no American should be ignorant.
His success in business, remarkable as it was, is a greater source of wonder and admiration in England than in America, where the rapid accumulation of a fortune and the creation of a large mercantile house have hitherto been matters of less rare occurrence than in older countries; but the result and use of Richard Cobden's financial success are as unprecedented and surprising at one end of the money-making and money-spending world as the other.
Soon after the establishment of his business house in Manchester, Mr. Cobden interested himself in the public welfare of that city. His labors in behalf of the people attracted John Bright to his side, and at the early age of thirty years he had made a "decided local mark."
The saying, true and old as the fact men call character, that it is what an individual _is_, and not what he _does_, which marks him good or ill among his kind, holds eminently true with regard to Richard Cobden. Not only was the range of his sympathies wide, the aim was sure; "he never lost sight," said Mr. Disraeli, "of the sympathies of those whom he addressed; and so, generally avoiding to drive his arguments to an extremity, he became, as a speaker, both practical and persuasive"; and the same power, brought to bear upon the actions and communications of every day, made him a puissant servant of the Right.