Airstrip One

What a man

Mises.org puts in an appreciation of Richard Cobden. I find Cobden's assertion that war can be avoided through free trade suspect partly because free trade is being given far too big a write up and that the idea that war is avoidable is a false reading of human nature. (I still like free trade, I'm just realistic about what it will achieve). But what a man. There are some good quotes in the article. Like this:

England, by calmly directing her undivided energies to the purifying of her own internal institutions, to the emancipation of her commerce...would, by thus serving as it were for the beacon for other nations, aid more effectually the cause of political progression all over the continent, than she could possibly do by plunging herself into the strife of European wars...