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Cobden knew the truth–that by applying himself to business he could become immensely rich. But if he left things to others, he could at the best expect only a moderate income on the capital he had already acquired. Everything is bought with a price–make your choice! Richard Cobden chose knowledge, service to mankind, and an all-round education, rather than money. He spent six months at his print-mill, and again fared forth upon his journeyings.

He visited Spain, Turkey, Greece and Egypt, spending several months in each country, studying the history of the place on the spot. What interested him most was the economic reasons which led to advance and fall of nations. In Eighteen Hundred Thirty-five he started for America on a sailing-vessel, making the passage in just five weeks. One letter to his brother from America contains the following:

I am thus far on my way back again to New York, which city I expect to reach on the Eighth instant, after completing a tour through Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Pittsburgh, Lake Erie to Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Albany (via Auburn, Utica, Schenectady), and the Connecticut Valley to Boston and Lowell. On my return to New York, I propose giving two days to the Hudson River, going up to Albany one day, and returning the next; after which I shall have two or three days for the purpose of taking leave of my good friends in New York, previous to going on board the “Britannia” on the Sixteenth. My journey may be called a pleasure-trip, for without an exception or interruption of any kind I have enjoyed every minute of the too short time allowed me for seeing this truly magnificent country. No writer has yet done justice to America. Her lakes, rivers, forests and cataracts are peculiarly her own, and when I think of their superiority to all that we have in the Old World, and still more, when I recollect that by a mysterious ordinance of their Creator, these were hid from “learned ken” till modern times, I fell into the fanciful belief that the Western continent was brought forth at a second birth, and intended by Nature as a more perfect specimen of her handiwork. But how in the name of breeding must we account for the degeneracy of the human form in this otherwise mammoth-producing soil? The men are but sorry descendants from the noble race that begot their ancestors. And as for the women–my eyes have not found one that deserves to be called a wholesome, blooming, pretty woman since I have been here! One-fourth part of the women look as if they had just recovered from a fit of jaundice; another quarter would in England be termed in a state of decided consumption; and the remainder are fitly likened to our fashionable women, haggard and jaded with the dissipation of a London season. There, now, haven’t I out-Trolloped Mrs. Trollope! But leaving the physical for the moral, my estimate of American character has improved, contrary to my expectations, by this visit. Great as was my previous esteem for the qualities of this people, I find myself in love with their intelligence, their sincerity, and the decorous self-respect that actuates all classes. The very genius of activity seems to have found its fit abode in the souls of this restless and energetic race.

Among other interesting items which Cobden made note of in America was that everywhere wood was used for fuel, “excepting at Brownsville, Virginia, where beds of coal jut out of the hillside, and all the people have to do is to help themselves.” Pittsburgh interested him, and he spent a week there: went to a theater and heard England hissed and Columbia exalted. Pittsburgh burned only wood for fuel, the wood being brought down on flatboats. At Youngstown, Ohio, were three hundred horses used on the many stagecoaches that centered there. There was a steamboat that ran from Cleveland to Buffalo in two days and a night, stopping seven times on the way to take on passengers and goods and wood for fuel. At Buffalo you could hear the roar of Niagara Falls and see the mist. Arriving at the Canada side of the Falls he was shaved by a negro who was a runaway slave, all negroes in Canada being free.