eral party, the latter was on
the whole the stronger; and Bright and Cobden took the views of their
Radical predecessors, and out of airy and ineffectual longings created
solid political facts. "I cannot disguise from myself," wrote Grey to
Elgin in 1850, "that opinion in this country is tending more and more
to the rejection of any burden whatever, on account of our colonies";
and the reason for the tendency was certainly the purely economic views
to which {284} Cobden was accustoming Britain, and the cogency of the
arguments by which he was driving amateur politicians from their
earlier indefensible positions. That trade was all-important, and that
the operations of trade disregarded the irrelevant facts of nationality
and race; that no one community could interfere in the social and
political life of another without disaster to both; that the defence of
colonies was not only dangerous to peace as provoking suspicious
neighbours, but needless expense to the mother country; in short that
_laissez-faire_ was the dominating principle in politics, and that
_laissez-faire_ shattered the earlier dreams of imperial supremacy and
colonial dependency--these were the views introduced by Cobden and
Bright into a newly awakened and imperfectly educated England; and they
played just such havoc with earlier political ideas, as Darwin and
evolution did with pre-existing theological orthodoxy.[56]

It was hardly wonderful then that the Whigs moved steadily onward until
they almost acquiesced in the idea of imperial disruption; and, since
Peel {285} had left his party moved almost wholly by Cobden's economic
propaganda, it was not unnatural that the Peelites should share the
views of their Whig allies. It is indeed possible to find some cold
consolation in Gladstone's Chester speech in 1855, when he predicted
that if only the colonies were left freedom of judgment, it would be
hard to say when the day of separation might come.[57] But Grey had
already suspected Gladstone of pessimism on the point, and we now know
that as an imperialist Gladstone's course from 1855 had a downward
tendency. He could not resist the arguments of his Radical friends and
teachers.

Almost all the important relevant facts and events which concerned the
connection after 1846 assisted these party movements towards belief in
separation.

Grey, whose confidence in the beneficial results of free trade
challenged that of Cobden himself, believed that with