"Cobden denied that our dependencies oversea needed any protection. Doubtless he would have let our colonies go, in the same spirit in which he would have renounced India, or "thanked his stars that America had broke loose." He indignantly repudiated the argument that ships of war were necessary to protect our colonial trade, and he had so little knowledge of mankind as to believe that wealth and commerce were the real test of a nation's power in the eyes of its enemies. Which is to say that a traveller is safest from a highwayman when he carries most money in his pocket. The disarmament which he advocated was, of course, one-sided, like his free trade; but happily the country which followed him innocently in quest of that costliest commodity, cheap food, was not prepared to disband its army and break up its ships at the bidding of a rival."