Truth, like time, is a great leveller—­a fact of which no living man has had proof and reproof administered to him more frequently and severely that Mr Cobden himself.  As culprits, however, harden in heart with each repetition of crime, until from petty larceny, the initiating offence, they ascend unscrupulously to the perpetration of felony without benefit of clergy; so he, with effrontery only the more deeply burnt in, and conscience the more callous from each conviction, will still lie on, so long as lungs are left, and vulgar listeners can be found in the scum of town populations.  How grandiloquent was Mr Cobden with his “new facts,” brand new, as he solemnly assured the House of Commons, which was not convulsed with irrepressible derision on the announcement!  How swelled he, “big with the fate” of corn and colony, as the mighty secret burst from his labouring breast, “that the whole amount of their trade in 1840 was, exports, L.51,000,000; out of that L.16,000,000 was (were) exported to the colonies, including the East Indies; but not one-third went to the colonies.  Take away L.6,000,000 of the export trade that went to the East Indies, and they had L.10,000,000 of exports,” &c.  Oh! rare Cocker; 10 not the third of 16; “take away” one leg and there will only be the other to stand upon.  Cut off, in like manner, the twenty-one millions of exports to Europe, and what becomes of the foreign trade?  “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” is the old lex talionis, and we have no objection to part with a limb on our side on the reciprocal condition that he shall be amputated of another.  We engage to wage air battle with him on the stumps which are left, he with his fourteen millions of foreign against our ten millions of colonial trade, like two razees of first and second rates cut down.  Before next he adventures into conflict again—­better had he so bethought him before his colonial debut in the House last June—­would it not be the part of wisdom to take counsel with his dear friend and neighbour Mr Samuel Brookes, the well-known opulent calico-printer, manufacturer, and exporting merchant of Manchester, who proved, some three or four years ago, as clearly as figures—­made up, like the restaurateur’s pain, at discretion—­can prove any thing, that the larger the foreign trade he carried on, the greater were his losses, in various instances cited of hundreds per cent; from whence, seeing how rotund and robust grows the worthy alderman, deplorable balance-sheets notwithstanding, which would prostrate the Bank of England like the Bank of Manchester, it should result that he, like another Themistocles, might exclaim to his family, clad in purple and fine linen, “My children, had we not been ruined, we should have been undone!”