Free Exchange: Papers on Political and Economical Subjects Including Chapters on the Law of Value and Unearned Increment (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Free Exchange: Papers on Political and Economical Subjects Including Chapters on the Law of Value and Unearned Increment

There may be, no doubt, a certain amount of truth in this View, but far less, I think, than you suppose. Cobden had no time to elaborate a system or trace all his opinions to their logical results, but he Spent his life in talking and writing letters, and those who habitually lived with him or who corresponded with him will, I think, bear me out in saying that I have done little more than put into a connected shape ideas which they have heard from him over and over again. So much was this the case that, among the little set of his intimate friends, there was a kind of freemasonry, which, almost without discussion, ensured an extraordinary degree of political sympathy on nearly all questions.

One of the commonest charges against the so called Manchester school is that, as a party of capitalists, they were unmindful of, if not indeed hostile to, the interests of the labouring classes. Of any such charge as affecting the leaders of the move ment - assuming as it does a necessary antagonism between capital and labour - the whole tenor of these papers is a sufficient refutation - if, indeed, such were needed, in the face of the actual effects of the free trade policy. But personal utterances are always interesting, and the following words show how wide of the mark in my father's case would have been any suggestion of want of sympathy.

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