[RICHARD COBDEN, born, 1804, at Dunford, near Midhurst, Sussex;
died, London, 1865; after grammar school education, entered
mercantile house in London, soon becoming a traveling salesman;
about 1830 became founder of a cotton-printing concern at
Manchester; traveled in Europe and America; wrote pamphlets on
commercial and economic questions; 1838, became an ardent
supporter of the Anti-Corn Law League; 1841, Member of Parliament
for Stockport; advocate of free trade in the House of Commons;
received popular testimonial of £79,000 in recognition of his
services to the free trade cause; 1847-57, Member of Parliament
for West Riding of York; advocate of arbitration and diminished
expense for military purposes; 1849, Member of Parliament for
Rochdale; 1860, negotiated commercial treaty with France.]
The Reform Bill of 1832 invaded the privileges of the landed
aristocracy by destroying in some measure their control of the
House of Commons through the pocket boroughs. Sixteen years
later a second blow was struck at this class through the repeal
of the Corn Laws.
The Corn Laws aimed to secure to English agriculturists a
monopoly of the home market for grain. The wars with Napoleon,
which paralyzed continental industries, stimulated those of
England to abnormal prosperity. Food advanced in price, but labor
was in great demand and well paid. The prospect of approaching
peace in Europe, in 1813, precipitated hard times in Great
Britain. The price of wheat fell and manufactures declined. The
land-owning classes, then supreme in Parliament, enacted the Corn
Law of 1815 for their own protection. By its provisions the
importation of grain from foreign countries was practically
prohibited until the price in England reached eighty shillings
per quarter. Ten members of the House of Lords protested against
the measure on the grounds that all restraint of trade was
improper; that the restraint of trade in food was especially
iniquitous; that the law would not steady or cheapen prices; and
that "such a measure levied a tax on the consumer in order to
give a bounty to the grower of corn,"--principles which have a
modern sound.
England was at that time living under a system of high protective
tariffs upon imported articles of manufacture as well as of food.
But in 1823-25 Mr. Huskisson succeeded in having most of the
tariffs upon raw materials reduced to a fraction of the former
figures, with the result that production was enormously
stimulated and valuable foreign markets were opened to English
commodities. His only modification of the Corn Law (in 1822) was
to reduce by ten shillings the figure at which importations might
begin. Later he and Canning made some progress with a "sliding
scale" bill, a principle which the Duke of Wellington enacted
into law in 1828. This interesting device provided that when the
price in the home market reached sixty-four shillings the quarter
the duty should be 23s 8d. As the price rose the duty fell. When
wheat was 69s, the duty was 16s 8d, and when the price reached
73s, foreign corn might come in on payment of one shilling per
quarter.
As has been shown in a foregoing chapter, the past half-century
had witnessed a great transformation in the industrial complexion
of England--from a nation chiefly agricultural it had become the
center of the world's manufactures. Tens of thousands of families
had removed from the farms to the cities, "following the work" in
the mills and factories, and hundreds of thousands of pounds had
been invested in a great diversity of industrial enterprises. The
manufacturer and the mill-hand were alike interested in low
prices for food. The manufacturer also saw in the high tariff on
grain a barrier against the free exchange of commodities. As his
output increased it became necessary for him to enlarge his
market, but when he attempted to sell his goods to America and
Russia the law interposed to block the bargain by excluding those
grain-producing countries from selling their superfluous food-
stocks in England. Apparently here was a clash between the
interests of manufacturer and agriculturist.
In 1836 a few thoughtful men in London, who were opposed to any
restraint of trade, formed an Anti-Corn Law Association. But the
metropolis was stony soil for such a plant. In 1838 a similar
association was organized in Manchester, one of the new
industrial cities dominated by modern ideas, crowded with
factories, and populous with laboring men and women, a fit center
for such an agitation as was to precede the downfall of the tax
on food. In Manchester, too, in the person of a calico-printer
named Richard Cobden, the agitation found its mainspring and its
clear and persuasive voice.
Richard Cobden sprang from a long line of plain Sussex yeomen.
His father was a farmer who became bankrupt in 1813, and the lad
Richard, one of twelve children, was sent by a well-meaning
relative to a Yorkshire boarding-school--a sort of Dotheboys
Hall. From such a rough school he passed into the rougher one of
life, becoming the lad of all work in the London warehouse of the
same kinsman, later a clerk, and at twenty-one a traveling
salesman, or "drummer," a position for which his untiring energy
and engaging sociability were high qualifications. A great
reader, he was also a superior converser and a "mixer" as the
present-day phrase goes, adapting himself to his company with
unusual facility. John Morley records that all his friends agree
that "they have never known a man in whom this trait of a sound
and rational desire to know and to learn was so strong and so
inexhaustible." "To know the affairs of the world was the master-
passion of his life," and the knowledge which he gained and
assimilated not merely in his early contact with men in his
business, but in the wider journeys of observation to which he
treated himself in later years, contributed much to the
enrichment of his speeches and writings.
At the age of twenty-four, with two other young men, whose
capital like his own was little more than energy, probity, and
business knowledge, he founded a firm in London for the sale of
Manchester cotton prints on commission. Soon the firm was
printing its own goods in Lancashire, and Mr. Cobden, prospering
greatly from the first, took up his residence in Manchester, to
watch over that end of the business. Though as full of affairs as
any man in that hive of industry, Cobden found time to store his
mind by reading and by reflection upon the knowledge gained by
intercourse with his fellowmen. He visited France, Switzerland,
and in 1835, America, where he foresaw a growing market for his
wares, and where, as he wrote, he fondly hoped "would be realized
some of those dreams of human exaltation if not of perfection"
with which he loved to console himself. In 1836-37 he visited the
Mediterranean countries, and on his return was an unsuccessful
candidate for a seat in the House of Commons.
In May, 1838, Richard Cobden wrote to his brother concerning the
political outlook in the nation, the Chartist agitation, the
Radical demands, and the general disorganization which existed
among the opponents of Tory government. The letter includes these
significant words: "I think the scattered elements may yet be
rallied round the question of the Corn Laws. It appears to me
that a moral, and even a religious, spirit may be infused into
that topic, and if agitated in the same manner that the question
of slavery has been, it will be irresistible."
The purposes of the Manchester Anti-Corn Law Association are thus
stated by Morley: "To obtain by all legal and constitutional
means, such as the formation of local associations, the delivery
of lectures, the distribution of tracts, and the presentation of
petitions to Parliament, the total and immediate repeal of the
Corn and Provision Laws." Mr. Cobden became a member of the
executive committee, and his mind, voice, and pen were active in
the service of the society until its object was attained. In
response to his appeal for a campaign fund ("Let us invest part
of our property in order to save the rest from confiscation") six
thousand pounds poured into the treasury within a month. The
local societies, which sprang up like wildfire in the
manufacturing towns, were affiliated with that at Manchester,
which soon became the headquarters of a far-reaching league.
The leaguers carried political agitation to a point of
thoroughness beyond anything which had yet been reached by
O'Connell or the abolitionists. They issued a newspaper organ
which enunciated its principles and denounced the enemies of free
trade. Vast editions of tracts and leaflets were scattered
broadcast throughout the land, and a staff of carefully
instructed speakers was maintained to itinerate through the rural
districts and preach the gospel of free corn in tavern, market-
place, and town hall.
In Parliament the battle must be won, and the league soon began
its work of capturing seats in the House of Commons. Cobden
himself was chosen, in 1841, as member for Stockport. Almost
immediately he exercised his gift as a speaker, securing at once
the attention of his colleagues by his style of oratory, which,
with little formal eloquence or rhetorical elaboration, was
powerfully persuasive, enriched by many happy illustrations drawn
from life, and infused with a pure and lofty spirit. Whatever the
topic under discussion, he was always able to show its relation
to the obnoxious tariff, and to point out that the only sure
remedy for the prevalent national ills was by way of the repeal
of "the tax on bread." At first the young calico-printer--he was
but thirty-seven--who embodied the opposition to the Corn Laws,
was looked upon as an intruder by the young aristocrats of the
House. They made fun of his classical allusions, and magnified
his lack of education, attempting to laugh down his logic. But
Cobden was not long in proving his ability to take care of
himself on the floor of the House. It was no mere politician who
caught the ear of the country with words like these: "When I go
down to the manufacturing districts, I know that I shall be
returning to a gloomy scene. I know that starvation is stalking
through the land, and that men are perishing for the want of the
merest necessaries of life. When I witness this, and recollect
that there is a law which especially provides for keeping our
population in absolute want, I cannot help attributing murder to
the legislature of this country; and wherever I stand, whether
here or out-of-doors, I will denounce that system of legislative
murder."
Out-of-doors Mr. Cobden had the strong support of the most
eloquent Englishman of his generation, John Bright. The two men
had been drawn together early by a common interest in the welfare
of the manufacturing classes, and especially in popular
education. In September, 1841, Cobden visited his friend in his
house, and found him plunged in sadness by the death of his young
wife. After words of condolence, he said, with great earnestness,
"John, there are thousands of houses in England at this moment
where wives, mothers, and children are dying of hunger. Now when
the first paroxysm of your grief is passed, I would advise you to
come with me and we will never rest until the Corn Law is
repealed."
"For seven years," Mr. Bright afterward said, "the discussion on
that one question--whether it was good for a man to have half a
loaf or a whole loaf--for seven years the discussion was
maintained, I will not say with doubtful result, for the result
was never doubtful and never could be in such a cause; but for
five years or more (1841-46), we devoted ourselves without stint;
every working hour almost was given up to the discussion and to
the movement in connection with this question."
Mr. Morley's description of the two orators and their mission is
memorable: "The public imagination was struck by the figures of
the pair who had given themselves up to a great public cause. The
picture of two plain men leaving their homes and their business
and going over the length and breadth of the land to convert the
nation, had about it something apostolic; it presented something
so far removed from the stereotyped ways of political activity,
that this circumstance alone, apart from the object for which
they were pleading, touched and affected people, and gave a
certain dramatic interest to the long pilgrimages of the two men
who had only become orators because they had something to say
which they were intent on bringing their hearers to believe, and
which happened to be true, wise, and just.....In Cobden, as in
Bright, we feel that there was nothing personal or small, and
that what they cared for so vehemently were great causes. ....
Mr. Bright had all the resources of passion alive within his
breast. He was carried along by vehement political anger, and
deeper than that there glowed a wrath as stern as that of an
ancient prophet. To cling to a mischievous error seemed to him to
savor of moral depravity and corruption of heart. What he saw was
the selfishness of the aristocracy and the landlords and he was
too deeply moved by the hatred of this to care to deal very
patiently with the bad reasoning which their own self-interest
inclined his adversaries to mistake for good. His invective was
not the expression of mere irritation, but a profound and
menacing passion. Hence he dominated his audiences from a height,
while his companion rather drew them along after him as friends
and equals. Cobden was by no means incapable of passion, of
violent feeling, or of vehement expression. His fighting
qualities were in their own way as formidable as Mr.
Bright's..... Still it was not passion to which we must look for
the secret of his oratorical success. In one word, it was
persuasiveness. Cobden made his way to men's hearts by the union
which they saw in him of simplicity, earnestness, and conviction,
with a singular facility of exposition. This facility consisted
in a remarkable power of apt and homely illustration, and a
curious ingenuity in framing the argument that happened to be
wanted.....In such an appeal to popular sentiment and popular
passion as the contemporary agitation of O'Connell for repeal, he
could have played no leading part. Where knowledge and logic were
the proper instruments, Cobden was a master." Nor did his
efficiency cease when the audience dispersed. In council chamber
and work-room his alert and inventive mind and persuasive
conversational eloquence had free scope. His hopeful enthusiasm,
his clever devices for stimulating the jaded interest of the
masses, and his unfailing good humor made him the chief engineer
of the highly complex machinery of the league.
His enthusiasm led to the formation of associations in all the
centers of industry; it redoubled the efforts and efficiency of
the lecturers who carried the doctrines of the league into the
agricultural counties--the enemy's country; it replenished the
treasury of the league with thousands of pounds by subscriptions
and by grand bazaars, one of which netted ten thousand pounds; it
gave life and variety to the newspaper organ of the agitation;
and in Parliament it met the government by a constant fire of
questions, a bombardment of solid fact, and a harassing
recurrence to the necessity of total and immediate repeal as the
only salve for the economic sores of the kingdom.
His parliamentary opponents attacked him fiercely. They accused
him of hypocrisy in carrying on an agitation professedly for the
general good, but really intended to help the cotton
manufacturers at the expense of the landowners and
agriculturists. They laid at Cobden's door the miseries of the
mill-hands of Manchester, crying "Physician, heal thyself." So
strongly intrenched was "monopoly" in the House of Commons that
it was slow work for the Anti-Corn Law League with its weapons of
peaceful agitation to drive it out. Year after year the orators
traveled through the three kingdoms, addressing thousands, tracts
were distributed by the ton, and enormous sums of money were
subscribed (the amount for 1844 being nearly a hundred thousand
pounds). In order that the popular opinion thus carefully
cultivated might be brought effectively to bear at the next
parliamentary election, the league took care that every qualified
free trader was registered on the polling lists. At Cobden's
suggestion large numbers of workingmen qualified by becoming
freeholders.
The eloquence of Bright, the cogent reasoning of Cobden, and the
long campaign of education were steadily doing their work. The
number of professed free traders in Parliament was still small,
but the thoughtful leaders of the great parties, the men who
studied the sentiment of the country, and watched the signs of
the times, and weighed well the masses of evidence which the
league continually brought forward-these men were being converted
to the Manchester idea. What Cobden said in a popular assembly in
the summer of 1845 was truer than even he may have believed.
"What," he asked, "if you could get at the minds of the people
would you find them thinking as to the repeal of the Corn Laws? I
know it as well as if I were in their hearts. It is this: they
are all afraid that this Corn Law cannot be maintained--no, not a
rag of it--during a period of scarcity prices, of a famine
season, such as we had in '39, '40, and '41. They know it. They
are prepared when such a time comes to abolish the Corn
Laws.....They are going to repeal it--mark my words--at a season
of distress. That distress may come; aye, three weeks of showery
weather, when the wheat is in bloom or ripening, would repeal
these Corn Laws." He had already shown the precarious condition
of the Irish people, whose only food was the potato, and whom the
high price of grain kept on the edge of famine. The autumnal
rains of 1845 precipitated the crisis, and fulfilled Cobden's
prediction. The failure of the potato harvest plunged Ireland
into dire distress for food. The league in crowded meetings
denounced the tax on bread while men starved. The government of
Sir Robert Peel hesitated as to the proper course. To suspend the
food tariff might prove a concession to free trade which could
never be regained. While Peel's cabinet hung back Lord John
Russell, the leader of the Whigs, issued (November 22) his famous
Edinburgh letter to his constituents, declaring that the time had
come for the repeal of the baneful legislation. Peel was of the
same mind, but some of his Tory colleagues resisted. None were
more stubborn than Wellington, whose action at this juncture led
Cobden to say, "Let me remind him that, notwithstanding all his
victories in the field, he never yet entered into a contest with
Englishmen in which he was not beaten." The effort of the Whigs
to form a ministry having failed, Peel resumed the premiership
which he had resigned. Parliament assembled on January 26, 1846,
and the Prime Minister's speech foreshadowed his conversion to
the policy of Cobden. The next day he explained his program. The
Corn Laws were to be totally repealed by gradual reductions of
the duty extending over a period of three years. Despite the
mockery of Disraeli and the protectionists the bill passed the
Commons by a great majority, and bowing to superior power, the
Duke of Wellington helped it to pass the House. On June 26th
Cobden carried the news to his wife: "Hurrah! Hurrah! The corn
bill is law, and now my work is done!"
Cobden's utter consecration of himself for eight years to the
Anti-Corn Law agitation had cost him severely. The constant
travel, exposure, and hardship of speaking in the open air had
seriously impaired his health. His business had been neglected
until he had been only saved from bankruptcy by the generosity of
friends. The league into which he had poured his best thought and
effort honored him by a popular subscription amounting to nearly
eighty thousand pounds as a testimonial to his public-spirited
devotion. He might have entered the government, but preferred
otherwise. During the twenty years of life which remained to him
he was the advocate of numerous reforms. Ever a lover of peace,
he was a strong champion of the principle of international
arbitration, and of the reduction of armaments. The most
conspicuous achievement of his later years was his successful
negotiation of more liberal commercial treaties between France
and England, a service for which he received the thanks of both
governments. During the American Civil War his sympathies were
strongly enlisted for the North against the cause of the slave-
holders, and his speeches helped to restrain the hostile feeling
of the aristocracy. Though sometimes exposing himself to ridicule
and obloquy by running counter to the popular current, Mr.
Cobden's honesty and sincerity were such that his opponents must
admit his purity of motive and nobility of soul. His death, in
1865, was recognized as a national loss.
No eulogium pronounced over his grave by Bright, the companion of
his labors and triumphs, or by Disraeli and Gladstone, great
converts to his economic doctrines, is so memorable as the brief
passage in which Sir Robert Peel, in the last hours of his
premiership, gave to the free-trade agitator the credit for the
great reform: "In reference to our proposing these measures," he
said, "I have no wish to rob any person of the credit which is
justly due to him for them. But I may say that neither the
gentlemen sitting on the benches opposite, nor myself, nor the
gentlemen sitting round me--are the parties who are strictly
entitled to the merit.....Sir, the name which ought to be, and
which will be, associated with the success of these measures is
the name of a man who, acting, I believe from pure and
disinterested motives, has advocated their cause with untiring
energy, and by appeals to reason, expressed by an eloquence the
more to be admired because it was unaffected and unadorned, the
name which ought to be, and will be, associated with the success
of these measures is the name of Richard Cobden. Without scruple,
sir, I attribute the success of these measures to him."
The commercial policy which England inaugurated, in 1846, under
the lead of Richard Cobden, continued in force throughout the
century. Under its workings the commercial supremacy of England
in the markets of the world has been achieved.