The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface.
• The Life of Richard Cobden
• Chapter I.: Early Life.
• Chapter II.: Commercial and Mental Progress.
• Chapter III.: Travels In West and East.
• Chapter IV.: The Two Pamphlets.
• Chapter V.: Life In Manchester, 1837–9.
• Chapter VI.: The Foundation of the League.
• Chapter VII.: The Corn Laws.
• Chapter VIII.: Cobden Enters Parliament—first Session.
• Chapter IX.: Cobden As an Agitator.
• Chapter X.: The New Corn Law.
• Chapter XI.: Sir Robert Peel’s New Policy.
• Chapter XII.: Renewed Activity of the League—cobden and Sir Robert Peel—rural Campaign.
• Chapter XIII.: The Session of 1844—factory Legislation—the Constituencies.
• Chapter XIV.: Bastiat—new Tactics—activity In Parliament—maynooth Grant—private Affairs.
• Chapter XV.: The Autumn of 1845.
• Chapter XVI.: Repeal of the Corn Laws and Fall of the Government.
• Chapter XVII.: Correspondence With Sir Robert Peel—cessation of the Work of the League.
• Chapter XVIII.: Tour Over Europe.
• Chapter XIX.: Election For the West Riding.—purchase of Dunford.—correspondence.
• Chapter XX.: Miscellaneous Correspondence On Social and Political Movements.
• Chapter XXI.: The Don Pacifico Debate—the Papal Aggression—correspondence With Mr. Bright On Reform—kossuth.
• Chapter XXII.: The Protectionists In Office.
• Chapter XXIII.: The Panic of 1853.
• Chapter XXIV.: The Crimean War.
• Chapter XXV.: Death of His Son.
• Chapter XXVI.: Chinese Affairs—cobden’s Motion—the Dissolution.
• Chapter XXVII.: The Indian Mutiny—private Affairs—second Journey to America.
• Chapter XXVIII.: Return From America.—the New Ministry.
• Chapter XXIX.: The French Treaty.
• Chapter XXX.: Holiday and Return to Paris.
• Chapter XXXI.: The Tariff—the Fortification Scheme.
• Chapter XXXII.: The Policy of the Commercial Treaty.
• Chapter XXXIII.: Miscellaneous Correspondence, 1859–60—paris—return to England.
• Chapter XXXIV.: The American War—fortification Schemes—international Law.
• Chapter XXXV.: Correspondence With Mr. Delane.
• Chapter XXXVI.: The Danish War—last Speeches In Parliament—correspondence.
• Chapter XXXVII.: Speech At Rochdale—the Land Question—correspondence—last Days and Death.
• Chapter XXXVIII.: Conclusion.
• Appendix
• Note A. (see P. 115).
• Cobden to W. C. Hunt On the Hours of Labour.
• Full Text of the Last Letter Written By Mr Cobden
• Bibliography of Richard Cobden, Based On the British Museum Catalogue
• Biography, Criticism Etc

CHAPTER VIII.

cobden enters parliament—first session.

The dissolution of Parliament took place at Midsummer.1841.
Æt. 37. The League went actively into the campaign, though not with that inflexibility in electoral policy which afterwards marked their operations. They had to face the question which always perplexes the thorough-going advocates of any political principle, when they come to deal with political practice. In all such cases a section springs up which is prepared to go half way. The Government had given to this section a cry. They were not prepared for total and immediate repeal, but they would go for a moderate fixed duty. The proposal of a fixed duty furnished the compromisers with a comfortable halting-place. They could thus claim to be Free Traders, without being suspected of the deadly sin of being extreme. The Council of the League were called upon to settle the proper attitude towards the men of the middle course. Were they to offer a fanatical resistance to the men of the middle party, thus shocking timid but reasonable sympathizers, and forfeiting their own character for prudence and discretion, qualities as essential to success as sincerity itself? They answered this question as might have been expected at that time. For themselves, they held to their own demand for the entire liberation of the provision trade. Wherever there was a constituency ripe for carrying a candidate of this colour, every exertion 1841.
Æt. 37.was to be made for securing a good candidate and ensuring his return. Where friends of the League were in a constituency not yet enlightened enough to return a candidate of League principles, them they ought to vote for a candidate who would support the measure of the Government. Considering both the moderate strength of the League at that time, and the state of the question in men’s minds, it seems that this was the natural and judicious course.

Some of the more dogged, however, among members of the League were hurt by what they took for a Laodicean halting between two opinions, and talked of withdrawing or lessening their subscriptions. Subscriptions are always a very sensitive point in agitations; and Cobden found it worth while, after the elections were over, to write a letter to one of the more important of the protesters, explaining the principle on which the League had acted. “With reference to your complaint,” he says, “that the League did not oppose the measure of the Government, I must remind you that the real governing power, the landed and other monopolists, held fast by the old law; they never attempted to force the fixed duty upon us. We regarded the Government proposal, not as an offer from a party strong enough to concede anything, but merely as a step in advance taken by a portion of the aristocracy. It was not our business to attack them, whilst another party, more powerful than the Government and the people, were resolutely opposed to any concession. To my humble apprehension, it is as unwise as unjust in any kind of political warfare to assail those who are disposed to co-operate, however slightly, in the attempt to overthrow a formidable and uncompromising enemy.”

In the elections in the north of England the repealers were successful against both Whigs and Tories, and among those who succeeded was Cobden himself. “I am afraid,” he wrote to his brother, “you will be vexed1841.
Æt. 37. on landing in England to find me Member for Stockport. I had fully, as you know, determined not to go to Parliament. I stood out. The Bolton and Stockport folks both got requisitions to me insuring my return. I declined. It was then that the Stockport people put the screw upon me, by a large deputation confessing their inability to agree amongst themselves upon any other man who could turn out the Major. They offered me carte blanche as to my attendance in London, and as to the time of my retaining the seat. I was over-persuaded by my Manchester partisans and have yielded, and the election is secure. You must not vex yourself, for I am quite resolved that it shall not be the cause of imposing either additional expense on my mode of living, or any increased call upon my time for public objects. I did not dream of this, as you very well know.”1

“I have a right to expect other men of business,” he wrote to a manufacturer at Warrington, urging a contest in that borough, “for I am doing it myself much against my wish. I offered to give a hundred pounds towards the expenses of another candidate in my stead for Stockport, and to canvass for him for a week; and it was only when the electors declared that they could not agree to another, and would not be able to oust the bread-taxers without me, that I consented to stand.”

The League, in fact, put a strong pressure upon him, and we may perhaps believe that Cobden’s resistance to the urgency of his political friends was not very stubborn. He must have felt by invincible instinct that only through a seat in Parliament could he secure an effective hearing for his arguments. It is uncertain whether the opinion of the constituency which had rejected him in 1837, had really 1841.
Æt. 37.been excited by the Free Trade discussion, or whether the motives of the voters were merely personal. Shrewd electioneerers have a maxim that a candidate is sure to win any given seat in time, if he is only tenacious enough. Cobden was returned by a triumphant majority. “The Stockport affair,” he wrote, “was carried with unexpected éclat. We drubbed the Major so soundly that at one o’clock he resigned. We could have beaten him easily by two to one. My committee worked to admiration. Two hundred electors were up all the night previous to polling, including the mill-owners....who neither changed their clothes nor closed their eyes for thirty-six hours. These men were against me at the former election. Upon the whole the elections will give Peel a majority of thirty or forty. So much the better. We shall do something in opposition.”2

It proved that Sir Robert Peel had a majority, not of thirty or forty, but of more than ninety. Lord Melbourne, however, did not anticipate the practice of our own day by resigning before the meeting of the hostile Parliament. The Ministers put into the Queen’s speech as good an account as they could of their policy, and awaited their fate. Cobden took his seat on the first day of the session. “Yesterday,” he says, “I went down to the House to be sworn to renounce the Pope and the Pretender. Then I went into the Treasury, and heard Lord John deliver his last dying speech and confession to his parliamentary minority. He gave us the substance of the Queen’s speech, which is in the Chronicle to-day. I cannot learn what the Tories intend to do to-night, but I suppose they will try to avoid committing themselves against the Free Trade measures. It is allowed on all sides that they fear discussion as they do death. It is reported that the old Duke advises his party not to force themselves on the Queen, but to let the Whigs go on till the reins fairly drop out of their hands. The Queen seems to1841.
Æt. 37. be more violently opposed than ever to the Tories.”3

The Queen had no choice. An amendment was moved upon the address in both Houses, and carried in the Commons by the irresistible majority of ninety-one. The vote was taken at five in the morning (August 28), and in the afternoon of the same day, Lord Melbourne went down to Windsor to resign his post. Within a few days that great administration was formed which contained not only able Tories like Lord Lyndhurst, but able seceders from the Whigs like Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham; which commanded an immense majority in both Houses; which was led by a chief of consummate sagacity; and which was at last, five years afterwards, slowly broken to pieces by the work of Cobden and the League.

Cobden made his maiden speech in the debate which preceded this great official revolution. “I was induced,” he writes to his brother, “to speak last night at about nine o’clock. We thought the debate would have been brought to a close. The Tories were doggedly resolved from the first not to enter upon any discussion of the main question, and the discussion, if it could be called one, went on as flat as possible. My speech had one good effect. I called up a booby who let fly at the manufacturers, very much to the chagrin, I suspect, of the leader of his party. It is now thought that the Tories must come out and discuss in self-defence the Free Trade question, and if not, they will be damaged by the arguments on the other side. All my friends say I did well. But I feel it very necessary to be cautions in speaking too much. I shall be an observer for some time.”4

We now see that Cobden’s maiden speech was much more than a success in the ordinary sense of attracting the atten tion1841.
Æt. 37. of that most difficult of all audiences. It sounded a new key, and startled men by an accent that was strange in the House of Commons. The thoughtful among them recognized the rare tone of reality, and the note of a man dealing with things and not words. He produced that singular and profound effect which is perceived in English deliberative assemblies, when a speaker leaves party recriminations, abstract argument, and commonplaces of sentiment, in order to inform his hearers of telling facts in the condition of the nation. Cobden reminded the House that it was the condition of the nation, and not the interests of a class, or the abstract doctrines of the economist, that cried for a relief which it was in the power of the legislature to bestow. This was the point of the speech. In spite of the strong wish of everybody on the side of the majority, and of many on the side of the minority, to keep the Corn Law out of the debate, Cobden insisted that the Corn Law was in reality the only matter which at that moment was worth debating at all. The family of a nobleman, he showed the House, paid to the bread tax about one halfpenny on every hundred pounds of income, while the effect of the tax on the family of the labouring man was not less than twenty per cent. A fact of this kind, as they said of Pericles’s speeches, left a sting in the minds of his hearers. The results of the justice were seen in the misery of the population. A great meeting of ministers of religion of all sects had been held in Manchester a few days before, and Cobden told the House something of the destitution throughout the country, to which these men had borne testimony.

“At that meeting,” he said, “most important statements of facts were made relating to the condition of the labouring-classes. He would not trouble the House by reading those statements; but they showed that in every district of the country....the condition of the great body of her1841.
Æt. 37. Majesty’s labouring population had deteriorated woefully within the last ten years, and more especially within the last three years; and that, in proportion as the price of food increased, in the same proportion the comforts of the working-classes had diminished. One word with respect to the manner in which his allusion to this meeting was received. He did not come there to vindicate the conduct of these Christian men in having assembled in order to take this subject into consideration. The people who had to judge them were their own congregations. There were at that meeting members of the Established Church, of the Church of Rome, Independents, Baptists, members of the Church of Scotland and of the Secession Church, Methodists, and indeed ministers of every other denomination; and if he were disposed to impugn the character of those divines, he felt he should be casting a stigma and a reproach upon the great body of professing Christians in his country. He happened to be the only member of the House present at that meeting; and he might be allowed to state that when he heard the tales of misery there described; when he heard these ministers declare that members of their congregations were kept away from places of worship during the morning service, and only crept out under cover of the darkness of night; when they described others as unfit to receive spiritual consolation, because they were sunk so low in physical destitution; that the attendance at Sunday-schools was falling off; when he heard these and such-like statements; when he who believed that the Corn Law, the provision monopoly, was at the bottom of all that was endured, heard those statements, and from such authority, he must say that he rejoiced to see gentlemen of such character come forward, and like Nathan, when he addressed the owner of flocks and herds who had plundered the poor 1841.
Æt. 37.man of his only lamb, say unto the doer of injustice, whoever might be: ‘Thou art the man.’ The people, through their ministers, had protested against the Corn Laws..... When they found so many ministers of religion, without any sectarian differences, joining heart and hand in a great cause, there could be no doubt of their earnestness..... Englishmen had a respect for rank, for wealth—perhaps too much; they felt an attachment to the laws of their country; but there was another attribute in the minds of Englishmen—there was a permanent veneration for sacred things; and when their sympathy and respect and deference were enlisted in what they believed to be a sacred cause, you and yours [addressing the Protectionists] will vanish like chaff before the whirlwind.”

One or two simpletons laughed at an appeal to evidence from such a source; but it was felt that, though they might jeer at the speaker as a Methodist parson, and look down upon him as a manufacturer, yet he represented a new force with which the old parties would one day have to deal. In the country his speech excited the deep interest of that great class, who are habitually repelled by the narrow passions and seeming insincerity of ordinary politics.

His friends in the north were delighted by the vigour and alacrity of their champion. With the sanguine assurance of all people who have convinced themselves of the goodness of their cause, and are very earnest in wishing to carry it, they were certain that Cobden’s arguments must speedily convert Parliament and the Ministry. “It is pleasant,” Cobden wrote to his brother, “to learn that my maiden effort has pleased our good friends. I have some letters from Manchester with congratulations. It is very pleasant, but I must be careful not to be carried off my legs. Stanley scowls and Peel smiles at me, both meaning mischief. There is no other man on the other side that I have heard, who is at all for midable. I observe there are a great many busy men of1841.
Æt. 37. our party who like to see their names in print, and who therefore take up small matters continually; they are very little attended to by the House. With these men I shall not interfere, and they will all aid me in obtaining a fair hearing on my great question. We had a curious scene of jealousy and bickering to-day. Sharman Crawford brought on an amendment to the address without consulting anybody.5 Roebuck, who is as wayward and impulsive as he is clever, walked out of the House with a tail of four or five, whilst hearty old Wallace of Greenock cried out, ‘Who cares for you? who cares?’ amidst the roars of the House. I can see that Roebuck will never do any good for our Free Trade party. He does not see the importance of our principle, and therefore cannot feel a proper interest in it. He is a good deal in communication with Brougham, who, by the way, sent word by Sturge to-day that he wants to see me. I find myself beset by cliques, but my abstemious and ruminating turn will make me entirely safe from all such intrigues and influences.”6

“From what I can hear,” he wrote a month later, “it appears that Peel has no plan in view of any kind, with respect to the corn question. The aristocracy and people are gaping at him, wondering what he is going to do, and his head will be at work with no higher ambition than to gull both parties. I am of opinion that there never was a better moment than at present for carrying the question out of doors. If there be determination enough in the minds of the people to make a vigorous demonstration 1841.
Æt. 37.during the recess, he will give way; if not, he will stick to his sliding scale and the aristocracy. There is a rumour very industriously spread in London that we are going to have a better trade. This is one in the chapter of accidents upon which Peel depends for an escape into smooth water.”

Now, as throughout the whole of the struggle, Cobden kept up the closest relations with the local leaders of the movement in the north. One of the most baneful effects of the concentration and intensity of parliamentary life is that members cease to inspire themselves with the more wholesome air of the nation outside. From the beginning to the end of his career, Cobden cared very little about the opinion of the House, and hoped very little from its disinterestedness. He never greatly valued the judgment of parliamentary coteries. It was the mind of the country that he always sought to know and to influence. And though he had proper confidence in the soundness of his own judgment, he was wholly free from the weakness of thinking that his judgment could stand alone. He was invariably eager to collect the opinions of his fellow-workers at Manchester, and not only to collect them, but to be guided by them.

“It is quite evident,” he wrote to Mr. George Wilson, towards the end of September, “that Peel has made up his mind to prorogue without entering upon the consideration of the Corn Law. The business of the session will now be hurried on and brought to a close probably by the end of the week. Under these circumstances I wish to know the opinion of our friends in Manchester as to the course which it would be advisable for the few Anti-Corn Law members now in London to pursue. Will you be good enough at once to call together the whole of the Council, and consult with as many judicious people as you can, and determine whether you think anything, and what, can be done to promote the cause? The main question for you to decide is whether it be advisable for Mr. Villiers to give notice of a1841.
Æt. 37. motion for discussing the question before the Houses are prorogued. The Tories would shirk the discussion in the same way as heretofore. Do you think under such circumstances that it would advance our cause by persisting in a one-sided debate? I think the general opinion up here is that the way in which Peel has hitherto evaded the question, has done us good service by dissatisfying the public mind with the new Ministry. But we are not good judges of he public feeling, who are actors in a sphere of our own, where we are apt to be acted upon by our own preconceived opinions. You are in a better position for forming a correct judgment as to the state of the public mind. The question for you to decide really is whether the feeling out of doors would back a small party in the House struggling for a hearing of their cause now. Do you think there is a desire for us to make a pertinacious stand now? Be good enough to take the matter into your calm consideration, and give me the result of your deliberation by return. Mr. Villiers, who is now installed as our leader, would, I have no doubt, act upon your well-considered judgment. I would merely add that you would do well to take into consideration the probable amount of public demonstration to be made by memorials to the Queen during the next week. You will be able to form an estimate of the extent to which the example of Manchester will be followed in other places, and which must form a material consideration in deciding upon the course we ought to take in Parliament.”7

Cobden made two other speeches in the course of the autumn session, after the re-election of the Ministers (Sept. 16—Oct. 7). Lord John Russell reproached the new Premier for asking for time to prepare his schemes for repairing the national finances. Peel justly asked him why, 1841.
Æt. 37.if they were so convinced of the urgency of the evils inflicted on the country by the Corn Laws, if they thought that commercial distress was to be attributed to them, and that these laws were at the root of the sufferings of the working class—why they had allowed them to remain an open question, and why they remained in office, allowing Lord Melbourne to hold opposite opinions. Cobden rose to protest against treating the subject as a party question, and against making the House a mere debating club. He insisted on trying to keep the mind of the House fixed on the privation and distress in the manufacturing districts, and he urged the Minister not to postpone the question of the Corn Laws over the coming winter.

“.... I sat through the voting of money, vastly edified and scandalized at the way in which the poor devils of tax-payers are robbed. The sum of 100,000l. for arming and clothing militia in Canada, light-houses in Jamaica, negro education, bishops all over the world, &c., &c., in goodly proportions.... The people are, I am afraid, fit for nothing better. I did not offer an objection, for it would have been ridiculous to do so. It did, however, cost me some efforts to hold my tongue. I am glad that you did not think my second speech too strong. I was not quite satisfied with it myself. It was, however, badly reported. I was rather better pleased with my third on Friday, when I found there was an effort made at first to annoy me, on the part of some young obscures, one of whom followed me with an evidently ‘conned reply,’ in which he had quotations from my speech at Manchester, about the Oxford education, the Ilissus, Scamander, &c. His speech was not reported. It was a mere prize essay oration, which, thanks to the practical turn that has been given to subjects of debate, finds no relish in the House now-a-days. It is quite clear that I am looked upon as a Gothic invader, and the classicals will criticize me unmercifully. But I have vitality enough to1841.
Æt. 37. rise above the little trips which my heels may get at first. Ultimately these attacks will only give me a surer foothold. The part of my last speech that struck home the most was at the close. I had observed an evident disposition on the Tory side to set up as philanthropists. Old Sir Robert Inglis sat with his hands folded ready to sigh, and if needful, to weep over a case of church destitution; he delivered a flaming panegyric upon Lord Ashley the other night, styling him the friend of the unprotected, after he had been canting about the sufferings of lunatics. Added to this, Peel has been professing the utmost anxiety for paupers, and Sir Eardley Wilmot is running after Sturge. When I told them at the close of my speech that I had been quietly observing all this, but it would not all do unless they showed their consistency by untaxing the poor man’s loaf, there was a stillness and attention on the other side very much like the conduct of men looking aghast at the first consciousness of being found out. My style of speaking pleases the gallery people, and has attracted the notice of the Radicals out of doors. But the Tories, especially the young fry, regard me in no other way than as a petard would be viewed by people in a powder-magazine, a thing to be trampled on, kicked about, or put out in any way they can.”8

When Cobden rose on this last occasion there were cries of impatience from the ministerial side of the House, but this did not prevent him from persevering with an argumentative remonstrance against the incredulity or apathy with which the Government treated the distress of the manufacturing towns. The point which he pressed most keenly was the interchange of food and manufactures between England and the United States that would instantly follow repeal. He quoted from a petition to the Congress 1841.
Æt. 37.of the United States. The petitioner argued that if the English landowners would only be satisfied with a moderate duty in lieu of the existing sliding scale, there would then be a constant market for wheat in England, and the whole of the return would be required in British manufactured goods; the consequence of which would be that every spindle, wheel, and hammer in the manufacturing district in this country would be set free.

“Suppose now,” Cobden went on, “that it were but the Thames instead of the Atlantic which separated the two countries—suppose that the people on one side were mechanics and artisans, capable by their industry of producing a vast supply of manufactures; and that the people on the other side were agriculturists, producing infinitely more than they could themselves consume of corn, pork, and beef—fancy these two separate peoples anxious and willing to exchange with each other the produce of their common industries, and fancy a demon rising from the middle of the river—for I cannot imagine anything human in such a position and performing such an office—fancy a demon rising from the river, and holding in his hand an Act of Parliament, and saying, ‘You shall not supply each other’s wants;’ and then in addition to that, let it be supposed that this demon said to his victim with an affected smile, ‘This is for your benefit; I do it entirely for your protection!’ Where was the difference between the Thames and the Atlantic?”

It was after a vigorous and persistent description of the privations of the people in the North, that he turned sharply round upon the men whom he denounced for drawing the attention of Parliament away from the real issues to vague questions of philanthropy. “When I go down to the manufacturing districts,” he said, “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 for1841.
Æt. 37. 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.” He then turned to one member who was a great friend of negro slaves, and to another who was a great friend of Church Establishment, and who had lately complimented Lord Ashley as the great friend of humanity generally, and of factory children in particular. “When I see a disposition among you,” he said, “to trade in humanity, I will not question your motives, but this I will tell you, that if you would give force and grace to your professions of humanity, it must not be confined to the negro at the antipodes, nor to the building of churches, nor to the extension of Church establishments, nor to occasional visits to factories to talk sentiment over factory children—you must untax the people’s bread.”

Cobden’s intervention in debate was more than a parliamentary incident. It was the symbol of a new spirit of self-assertion in a great social order. The Reform Bill had admitted manufacturing towns to a share of representation Cobden lost no time in vindicating the reality of this representation. The conflict of the next five years was not merely a battle about a customs duty; it was a struggle for political influence and social equality between the landed aristocracy and the great industrialists. Of this, an incident in the debates of the following session will furnish us with a sufficiently graphic illustration. It is only by reading the correspondence of that time, and listening to the men who still survive, without having left its passions behind them, that we realize the angry astonishment with which the old society 1841.
Æt. 37.of England beheld the first Serious attempts of a new class to assert it claim to take a foremost place. Many years after the fight began, when Mr. Bright was unseated at Manchester, we shall find that Cobden laid most stress on the ingratitude of the manufacturers of the northern capital in forgetting that Mr. Bright had been the “valiant defender of their order.”

[1]To F. Cobden, June 16, 1841.

[2]To F. Cobden, July 3, 1841.

[3]To F. Cobden, August 24, 1841.

[4]To F. Cobden, August 26, 1841.

[5]When the House met to receive the Report on the Amended Address, Mr. Crawford proposed an amendment, to the effect that the distress deplored in the Speech was to be attributed to the non-representation of the working classes in Parliament. The Radicals were not unanimous, and the amendment was defeated by 283 against 39.

[6]To F. Cobden, August 29, 1841.

[7]To G. Wilson, September, 1841.

[8]To F. Cobden, Sept. 27, 1841.