Richard Cobden

English politician

• Born: June 3, 1804
• Birthplace: Heyshott, near Midhurst, Sussex, England
• Died: April 2, 1865
• Place of death: London, England

Cobden was the undoubted champion of free trade in Victorian Britain and a well-known figure in the Manchester school of economic thought. With the Anti-Corn Law League, Cobden led the fight for repeal of the corn and provision laws in 1846. He also negotiated the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty with France in 1860.

Early Life

Born in a tiny hamlet in western Sussex, Richard Cobden was the fourth of eleven children of William Cobden and his wife, Millicent Amber. Cobden’s father was descended from a long line of Sussex yeoman farmers, but he was forced to sell his land in the agricultural crisis at the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars. This experience was undoubtedly traumatic for the young Richard Cobden, for he was unable to speak about it as an adult. Relatives took charge of the Cobden children, and Millicent Cobden’s brother-in-law, a London merchant, sent the ten-year-old boy to an appallingly harsh school in Yorkshire that he was forced to endure for five years. In 1819, young Cobden became a clerk in his uncle’s warehouse. He had an abiding desire to understand the affairs of the world and hoped that by self-education he could improve his situation. To the dismay of his guardians he taught himself French and devoted his spare time to “book learning.”

The youthful Cobden was quite a romantic figure in appearance. His alert face was clean-shaven and dominated by his dark hair and eyes; it revealed the sincerity and curiosity that were the hallmarks of his character. Cobden was imbued with what he himself characterized as a “Bonapartian” feeling that any obstacle could be overcome if confronted with sufficient energy. His confidence was considerable. Contemporaries found Cobden to be intelligent, engaging, and above all practical. He showed interest in theoretical principles, such as the phrenological conceptions of George Combe or the political economy of Adam Smith, but his practical sense grounded him in the actualities of the present. Cobden preferred to deal with specific issues rather than with abstractions; perhaps that is why he was a superb organizer.

Beginning in 1825, Cobden worked as a commercial traveler for his uncle, taking orders on his route for muslins and calicoes and collecting accounts. He learned the workings of the calico trade, and with two friends Cobden determined to set up his own business in 1828. The three raised one thousand pounds, most of it borrowed, and made arrangements with a Manchester calico printer, Fort Brothers and Company, for selling goods on commission. By 1831, the partners were successful enough to lease their own factory at Sabden and expand their trade. Within a year, Cobden was a wealthy man and took up residence in Manchester, where he was soon a prominent citizen and active in the borough incorporation movement.

Financially secure for the moment, Cobden traveled extensively. He went to France and Switzerland. He visited the United States in 1835 and on a lengthy Mediterranean tour visited Greece, Egypt, and Turkey the following year. His visit to Germany in 1838 convinced him of the potential political and economic value of the recently organized customs union of German states, the Zollverein.

Life’s Work

Travel played a considerable role in shaping Cobden’s views. He entered public life with the publication of England, Ireland, and America (1835) under the pseudonym “A Manchester Manufacturer.” The pamphlet advocated free trade, nonintervention in foreign affairs, and substantial domestic reforms, and recognized the potential of the United States as a formidable competitor. The following year, Cobden published Russia and the Eastern Question (1836), in which he urged Great Britain to abandon balance of power and foreign intervention as principles of its foreign policy and to recognize the primacy of commercial interests. Such views came to be called “Cobdenism” in foreign policy.

Cobden became involved in the Manchester Anti-Corn Law Association in late 1838 and was instrumental in transforming it into the National Anti-Corn Law League. The League agitated virtually without interruption for the next seven years for the total and immediate repeal of those laws that restricted, by high import duties, the importation of foreign cereal grains (corn) to Great Britain. With John Bright and others, Cobden organized local anti-Corn Law associations, stumped the country for free trade, lobbied Parliament, and helped the League organize its electoral activities. The League sent out lecturers, collected signatures on petitions, held mass meetings, and published its own newspapers, tracts, pamphlets, and books. Cobden was at the center of all this activity.

At first the League concentrated upon what Cobden called “enlightenment of the public mind” on the issue of free trade and upon petitioning, but after 1842 the League increasingly focused upon enrollment of new members, fund-raising by means of subscriptions, and registration of electors to take the campaign for repeal to the hustings. League agitations created the political climate that made repeal of the Corn Laws irresistible to Sir Robert Peel in early 1846, as the effects of the potato famine in Ireland made immediate relief imperative. The prime minister himself acknowledged in the House of Commons that no one had done more to achieve repeal of the Corn Laws than had Richard Cobden.

At Stockport in 1837, Cobden stood for election to Parliament on a broad radical platform that included free trade, suffrage extension, and the secret ballot. He narrowly lost that poll, but with League help he was successfully returned for that constituency in 1841. In Parliament Cobden was noted for his earnestness and command of factual detail, but it was at public meetings of the League that he was most effective. He was a very persuasive public speaker, invariably choosing apt illustrations and presenting his arguments in a fashion which carried the listener to the understanding that he intended. He was always certain of his facts and ready to meet any objection.

Between 1838 and 1846, Cobden devoted nearly all of his attention to League activity, though he married a Welsh schoolmate of his sister, Catherine Anne Williams, in May of 1840. His business, left in the less than capable hands of his brother Frederick, failed, and Cobden’s League friends had to raise a subscription of eighty thousand pounds to relieve his embarrassment and provide him an income. His investments in the Illinois Central Railway showed little return, and a second subscription of forty thousand pounds was raised in 1860.

In 1847, Cobden was returned again for Stockport and by the numerous electors of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Cobden chose to sit for the county and represented that constituency in Parliament for a decade. While he was a member of Parliament for the West Riding, Cobden worked for international arbitration, financial reform, and arms reductions. He attended several Peace Congresses and carried on a lively correspondence with all manner of reformers and Radicals. He opposed the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill in 1851 and supported removal of Jewish disabilities.

Cobden was a consistent supporter of education; he believed that suffrage extension and national education must go hand in hand. Though an Anglican, he had supported the Maynooth Grant to supply public funds to a Roman Catholic seminary in Ireland in 1845 on the grounds that it would educate the teachers of millions of Irishmen. This was the only occasion on which Cobden and his friend and ally, John Bright, differed in the House of Commons in nearly a quarter of a century of public life.

Cobden resented what he perceived as aristocratic control of diplomacy and the military and believed that only landlords benefited from armed conflict and the preparations for it. In a series of pamphlets, 1793 and 1853, in Three Letters (1853), How Wars Are Got Up in India (1854), and What Next? and Next? (1856), Cobden warned of the dangers of what he termed “Palmerstonism” in foreign policy. He opposed the conduct of the Crimean War and was among several proponents of “Cobdenism” to be defeated in the general elections of 1857. This defeat, combined with the recent loss of his son to scarlet fever, Mrs. Cobden’s melancholia, and the temporary disability and exhaustion of his friend Bright caused him to retire from public life for a time. Cobden traveled to the United States once again, where he was astonished at the progress that had been made in two decades.

Cobden returned to Parliament in 1859 as a member of Parliament for Rochdale. He twice declined offers to join the cabinet, but in 1860 on a volunteer mission he successfully negotiated significant reciprocal tariff reductions with France for the Palmerston government. The Cobden-Chevalier Treaty stimulated trade and industry in both nations and improved the strained relations between them as well. For this effort Cobden was offered a baronetcy, but he declined the offer.

Cobden continued to differ with Viscount Palmerston over defense issues during the 1860’s. As an opponent of slavery he expressed support for the federal government in the American Civil War. He differed with Palmerston on the issue of whether Great Britain should oppose Prussia and Austria in the Danish War, and on this occasion nonintervention carried the day.

Cobden fell ill in the autumn of 1864 and died in London from the complications of bronchitis on April 2, 1865. He was buried in the churchyard at Lavington in Sussex. Within a year of Cobden’s death, some of his old Anti-Corn Law League friends founded the Cobden Club as a memorial to the “Apostle of Free Trade” and as a way to advance his principles. The club took Free Trade—Peace—Goodwill Among Nations as its motto and promoted Cobden’s internationalism and economic principles into the next century.

Significance

Richard Cobden was a middle-class manufacturer and a member of Parliament who advocated free trade, nonintervention in foreign affairs, and a variety of Radical political reforms, including suffrage extension and the secret ballot. He saw repeal of the Corn Laws as the keystone in the arch of “aristocratic misrule” and was the best-known lecturer and organizer of the Anti-Corn Law League. He opposed monopoly in all of its forms, economic and political, and advocated the laissez-faire doctrines associated with the Manchester school of economic thought and nineteenth century Liberalism. A free-trade Radical, Cobden believed that adoption of a new commercial policy would bring unprecedented economic growth and political progress.

Bibliography

Cobden, Richard. The Political Writings of Richard Cobden. 2 vols. London: William Ridgway, 1867. A complete collection of Cobden’s pamphlets.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Speeches of Richard Cobden, Esq., M.P., Delivered During 1849. London: James Gilbert, 1849. A series of speeches revised by Cobden himself for publication on the subjects of peace, retrenchment, colonial reform, and other subjects.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Speeches on Questions of Public Policy by Richard Cobden, M.P. Edited by John Bright and J. E. T. Rogers. 2 vols. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1870. A fine collection of Cobden’s speeches in Parliament, on the hustings, for the League, and at public meetings. Topically organized.

Dawson, William Harbutt. Richard Cobden and Foreign Policy. New York: Frank-Maurice, 1927. An examination of Cobden’s views on nonintervention, international peace and arbitration, and arms expenditure, with particular reference to the international problems of the 1920’s. Makes considerable use of excerpts from Cobden’s speeches and correspondence.

Edsall, Nicholas. Richard Cobden: Independent Radical. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986. Credits Cobden with a major role in defining radical Liberalism and reasserts the significance of his thought. Especially good for the post-repeal period.

Gowring, Richard. Richard Cobden. London: Cassell, 1890. A very brief popular biography in the World’s Workers series. Concentrates on the period to 1846 and views Cobden’s life as a watershed in modern history.

Hinde, Wendy. Richard Cobden: A Victorian Outsider. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987. A sympathetic biography that portrays Cobden the man as well as the public figure. Makes extensive use of Cobden’s letters and papers. Illustrated.

McCord, Norman. The Anti-Corn Law League, 1838-1846. London: Allen & Unwin, 1958. An excellent and thoroughly scholarly study that concentrates upon the organizational structure and institutional activities of the League. Outlines the League’s methods of proselytization and propaganda, its modes of fund-raising, and its electoral and parliamentary tactics. Makes good use of League papers and those of its most prominent members.

Morley, John. Life of Richard Cobden. 2 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1879. A lengthy and rather detailed nineteenth century biography by a prominent Liberal quite sympathetic to Cobden. Still the place for the serious student to begin. Dated but quite readable and very useful for its lengthy extracts from Cobden’s correspondence.

Pickering, Paul A., and Alex Tyrell. The People’s Bread: A History of the Anti-Corn Law League. London: Leicester University Press, 2000. Supplements McCord’s book (see above) with new information and a detailed analysis of the League’s members and activities.

Read, Donald. Cobden and Bright: A Victorian Political Partnership. London: Arnold, 1967. An excellent comparative study of the two best-known free-trade Radicals. Drawn from a wide reading of manuscript sources. Read argues that Bright’s Radicalism has been overplayed, that Cobden’s views were not always identical with Bright’s, and that it was Cobden, and not his Quaker friend, who was the more thoroughgoing democratic Radical.

Taylor, Miles, ed. The European Diaries of Richard Cobden, 1846-1849. Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1994. Includes previously unpublished diaries from Cobden’s tour of the continent. The diaries record his observations of European conditions and are the basis for the development of his belief that peaceful economic cooperation is the only way to lasting international stability.