Richard Cobden

“ But he did not burst, for his dreams were spun out of life's realities, and today are coming true; in fact, many of them came true in his own time. Richard Cobden ceased to be provincial and became universal.
He saw that commerce, instead of being merely a clutch for personal gain, was the chief factor in civilization. He realized that we are educated through our efforts to get food and clothing; and therefore the man who ministers to the material wants of humanity is really the true priest. The development of every animal has come about through its love-emotions and its struggle to exist. ”

“ The seasonable organization, steady progress, and signal triumph of The National Anti-Corn-Law League are attributable in a very large degree to the sagacity, ability, and courage of Richard Cobden. The early career of one who so suddenly acquired a European reputation is not so familiar as to render uninteresting a few incidents of that part of his life.
The leader of the Commercial Revolution of England is the son of a poor yeoman of Sussex. ”

“ A man of the iron integrity of Cobden found himself necessarily in opposition to a man of popularity and self-aggrandizement, like Palmerston. Therefore, when the prime-minister announced his determination to reserve certain seats in his cabinet and ministry "for the leaders of advanced Liberalism," Richard Cobden declined the position appointed to himself, saying to Lord Palmerston, "that he had always regarded him as a most dangerous minister for England, and his views still remained the same." ”

“ He was a fairly prosperous man of business, very happy in his home, and always ready to take part in the social, educational and political life of his native town. He was one of the founders of the Rochdale Literary and Philosophical Society, took a leading part in its debates, and on returning from a holiday journey in the East, gave the society a lecture on his travels. He first met Richard Cobden in 1836 or 1837. Cobden was an alderman of the newly formed Manchester corporation, and Bright went to ask him to speak at an education meeting in Rochdale. ”

“ In 1857 he had been created Earl Cowley and Viscount Dangan; in 1866 he was made a knight of the Garter; and having assisted Richard Cobden to conclude the commercial treaty between Great Britain and France in 1860, he retired in 1867 from a position which he had filled with distinction to himself and with benefit to his country. In 1863 Cowley had inherited the estate of Draycot in Wiltshire from his kinsman the 5th earl of Mornington, and he lived in retirement until his death on the 15th of July 1884. ”

“ He was amiable and kind-hearted, and greatly liked by his neighbours, but not a man of business habits, and he did not succeed in his farming enterprise. He died when his son Richard was a child, and the care of the family devolved upon the mother, who was a woman of strong sense and of great energy of character, and who, after her husband’s death, left Dunford and returned to Midhurst. ”

“ While this pamphlet was in the press, delicate health obliged him to leave England, and for several months, at the end of 1836 and the beginning of 1837, he travelled in Spain, Turkey and Egypt. During his visit to Egypt he had an interview with Mehemet Ali, of whose character as a reforming monarch he did not bring away a very favourable impression. He returned to England in April 1837. From that time Cobden became a conspicuous figure in Manchester, taking a leading part in the local politics of the town and district. ”

“ 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. ”

“ His grave was surrounded by a large crowd of mourners, among whom were Gladstone, Bright, Milner Gibson, Charles Villiers and a host besides from all parts of the country. In 1866 the Cobden Club was founded in London, to promote free-trade economics, and it became a centre for political propaganda on those lines ”

“ Lord Palmerston was again prime minister, and having discovered that the advanced liberal party was not so easily “crushed” as he had apprehended, he made overtures of reconciliation, and invited Cobden and Milner Gibson to become members of his government. In a frank, cordial letter which was delivered to Cobden on his landing in Liverpool, Lord Palmerston offered him the presidency of the Board of Trade, with a seat in the Cabinet. Many of his friends urgently pressed him to accept ”

“ If this country is to be ground down by an oligarchy, we had better at once adopt the system pursued in ancient Venice, where the nobles entered their names in the Golden Book, and took the money directly out of the people's pockets. ”

“ But I would ask, why there should not be corn-merchants as well as tea-merchants? Why should not the corn-merchants be able to bring back, in exchange for other commodities, a cargo of corn, as well as a cargo of sugar or of tea? If something is not done, we shall see our large capitalists struggling against bankruptcy. ”

“ You have, moreover, 10,000,000 people in these islands to feed upon food brought from foreign countries. You get three-fourths of the tea and four-fifths of the silk from China; more than one-half of the tallow and hemp from Russia; there is more cotton, more wheat, more Indian corn, brought to us than to any other country. You, who are so powerful here, and can set the world at defiance in your island home, are, the moment a war of reprisals is made on your commerce, the most vulnerable. ”

“ Cobden was now absent from England for fourteen months, travelling on the Continent. His reception was everywhere that of a great discoverer in a science which interests the bulk of mankind much more keenly than any other, the science of wealth. People looked on him as a man who had found out a momentous secret. He had interviews with the Pope, with three or four kings, with ambassadors, and with all the prominent statesmen. ”

“ However numerous his audience may be at first, they are apt to decline when the folly of the harangue is made patent to the meanest capacity, and when current events everlastingly combine to expose the nature of the imposture. The popularity of Cobden, for some time back, has been terribly on the wane. Few and far between are his present political ovations; and even men of his own class begin to consider him a humbug. ”

“ The young firm gained money with astonishing rapidity, one presiding over the warehouse in London, one remaining in Manchester, and the other free to go wherever the interests of the firm required. Cobden visited France and the United [Pg 200] States. He was here in 1835, when he thought the American people were the vainest in the world of their country. He said it was almost impossible to praise America enough to satisfy the people. He evidently did not think much of us then. American men, he thought, were a most degenerate race. ”

“ But in spite of a most energetic opposition the repealing bill slowly made its way to ultimate triumph. It was on the 26th of June, 1846, that the bill was passed, and that the great reformer’s work was done.
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Until his death in 1865, Cobden continued to exert a powerful influence in behalf of the ideas which from the first he had advocated. His political opponents were among the most hearty to recognize his worth; and his most intimate friend, Mr. Bright, spoke of him in the House of Commons as “the manliest and gentlest spirit that ever quitted or tenanted a human form.” ”

“ He prospered rapidly in this congenial atmosphere; but it is at Sabden, not at Manchester, that we see the first monument of his public spirit--a little stone school-house, built as the result of an agitation led by him with as much eager enthusiasm as he ever threw afterwards into great affairs of state.
Between 1833 and 1836 Cobden's character widened and ripened with surprising quickness. We pass at a single step from the natural and wholesome egotism of the young man who has his bread to win to the wide interests and generous public spirit of the good citizen. ”

“ His connection with the public institutions of this town is part of our modern history, and no man yet ever exercised such influence or did more to advance the intelligence and culture of the people, and, as John Bright once said of Cobden "it was not until we had lost him that we knew how much we loved him." ”

“ Such is briefly the report of the rise and progress of Mr Cobden in the world, as we have it from quarters entitled to regard; various exaggerated statements about his hundreds of thousands acquired, are afloat as usual in cases where men spring from nothing; his trading career has been sufficiently prosperous and extraordinary, not to be rendered incredible by ridiculous inventions of friends or foes. ”

“ 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. Then men were attracted by his mental alacrity, by the instant readiness with which he turned round to grapple with a new objection. ”

“ Certainly not, Mr Cobden. We presume that no one, not even the stupidest operative that used to bellow in your congregation, and who believed every one of the golden promises which you were hardy enough to enunciate, ever dreamed that you were in possession of that power. Several of us, moreover, are of opinion that, upon the whole, you have been rather overrated as a conjurer, and that, having failed in your endeavours to get into an empty quart bottle, you are not a whit more likely to succeed when you come to experiment upon a pint. ”

“ Lamentably astern in economical lore and political knowledge as he is, and as the want of that educational preparation upon which alone the foundation of knowledge and of principles can be raised, has left him, Mr Cobden, it must be conceded, turns the old rags, the cast-off clothes, of other people's crotchets to good account popularly; he succeeds where others fail, not because he is less ignorant but because he is more fearless. ”

“ Let Britain be the first to set the example, and every other nation will follow in her wake. Cannons, by unanimous consent, will be spiked, banners handed over to the respectable fraternity of Odd Fellows, and the soldier condemned to the stiffing walls of the factory, never more to stand at ease. Such are the dreams of Cobden; and if he really believes in them, and in the actual regeneration of human nature by means of free-trade instead of religion, we should like to see him try the experiment on a minor scale. ”

“ Bright, on the other hand, was fervid, fluent, rapid; always ready in thought or word. Mr. Cobden was full of facts and figures, dealing in statistics by the hour. Mr. Bright was full of wit, knowledge, and pathos, and possessed amazing power of expression. One spoke to the cold, calculating side of the British nation, which asks "if the new idea will pay?" The other spoke to the infinite side of human nature—the side which asks, first of all, "Is it right? is it just? is it humane?" Wherever these two great men appeared, the people assembled in thousands. ”

“ As far as he had light, he sought sincerely to regulate his own life by them, and made it the task of his existence to assert, maintain, and render them dominant over the lives of his fellow-men. William Cobbett was always and everywhere a preacher of righteousness. He had, as we have seen, a natural piety. Old age, helpless infancy, suffering poverty, always commanded his ready and reverential sympathy. In all the domestic relations he was admirable—he was a dutiful son, a loving husband, and a tender father both from choice and conviction. ”

“ The hero of the day, Cobden, is a great man in his way, the type of an honest manufacturer, but for the moment all-powerful. I am domiciled with your brother and sister,27 under the same roof, dine daily at their hospitable table, sit over the fire and cose and prose with them, sometimes alone with your sister, who thinks and talks very like you, that is, not only well but very well. ”

“ He thinks that, if we were to dismiss our forces, all the other nations of the earth would follow the example. There is something positively marvellous in the calm audacity of the man who can rise up, as Cobden did at Manchester, on the last day of January, and enunciate to his enraptured audience, that, "notwithstanding all that had been said on that subject, he reiterated there never was a time when Europe was so predisposed to listen to advances made by the people of England, on that subject, as now!" ”

“ We went to breakfast at Mr. Cobden's. Mr. C. is a man of slender frame, rather under than over the middle size, with great ease of manner, and flexibility of movement, and the most frank, fascinating smile. His appearance is a sufficient account of his popularity, for he seems to be one of those men who carry about them an atmosphere of vivacity and social exhilaration. We had a very pleasant and social time, discussing and comparing things in England and America. ”

“ At first I expected an oblique attack on your father, as a dilatory and inconsistent convert, prompted by Cobden's long distrust, by Bright's early denunciations, by the aversion of literal economists, of Equalitarian Democrats, of stubborn unbelievers in those qualities which raise him above the highest level of Liberalism. But I can fancy that you might be impressed by so vigorous, sincere, and complete a system of politics very distinct from his own. ”