Richard Cobden, (born June 3, 1804, Dunford Farm, near Midhurst, Sussex, Eng.—died April 2, 1865, London), British politician best known for his successful fight for repeal (1846) of the Corn Laws and his defense of free trade.
Cobden was the fourth of 11 children of a poor farmer. Raised by relatives, he attended a second-rate boarding school and then entered his uncle’s warehouse in London. In 1828 he and two other young men set up a calico wholesale business and in 1831 opened a calico-printing mill in industrial Lancashire. He made enough money to enable him to travel abroad, and, between 1833 and 1839, he visited France, Germany, Switzerland, the United States, and the Middle East. During that period he wrote two influential pamphlets—England, Ireland, and America (1835) and Russia (1836)—in which he demanded a new approach to foreign policy, based not on attempts to maintain a balance of power but on the recognition of the prime necessity of promoting international economic expansion through the free movement of men and materials. He continued to advance similar free-trade arguments throughout his life.
Between 1839 and 1846 he became a prominent figure in British politics, devoting most of his energies to the repeal of the British Corn Laws, which he maintained were both economically disastrous and morally wrong. In his view, the only class that benefitted from protection were the landlords, and they were enriched at the expense of the middle classes and working classes alike. He proved himself a brilliant organizer, building up the Anti-Corn Law League, which became a national organization in 1839 and the most efficient and successful of all 19th-century British pressure groups. He entered Parliament in 1841, one year after he had married a Welsh girl, Catherine Williams. Thereafter, he could conduct his political campaign not only by mobilizing public opinion but also by directly confronting Sir Robert Peel, the prime minister, in debate. Cobden played a considerable part in converting Peel to take the momentous and controversial decision to repeal the Corn Laws in 1846. Peel then paid a remarkable tribute to Cobden as the man whose name, above all others, ought to be associated with the measure.
The seven-year struggle established Cobden’s reputation but left him financially ruined. A public subscription was raised for him in 1847, and, with part of the proceeds, he bought the house in Sussex where he had been born and continued to live there for the rest of his life with his wife and five daughters (his only son died suddenly in 1856). Unlike most of the radicals who shared his views, Cobden came from the south of England. Nor was he—as most of them were—a religious dissenter but rather was a member of the Church of England. Yet he and the Quaker John Bright were the acknowledged leaders of what came to be called the Manchester school, which espoused free trade and an economic system free of government interference. He sat in Parliament for the West Riding of Yorkshire from 1847 to 1857 and for Rochdale, Bright’s hometown, from 1859 to his death.
His association with Bright was close. They were at one in believing that free trade would result in the reduction of armaments and the promotion of international peace. They were at one also in demanding a reduction of taxation and a check on imperial expansion. One of Cobden’s most powerful pamphlets, 1793 and 1853, in Three Letters (1853), was a plea to his contemporaries to avoid “past errors” and keep out of war with France. During the next three years, he argued eloquently that Britain should be friendly with Russia, even after the Crimean War had begun. He was bitterly attacked for his opinions during the war, when he and Bright often seemed to be standing alone in face of belligerent public opinion. In 1857 he was successful in rallying members from all sides of the House of Commons to support a motion criticizing the aggressive China policy of Lord Palmerston, the prime minister. At the general election that followed, however, Palmerston won overwhelming national support, and Cobden lost his seat.
The attacks and his defeat strengthened his radicalism on domestic issues, and he was openly scornful of Palmerston’s middle-class supporters. He was ill at ease during the political lull of the early 1860s, when there seemed to be little interest in political reform. Indeed, he asked the working classes in 1861 why they did not have a leader among them who could lead a revolt against their political tormentors. He demanded a system of universal education and, after some initial hesitation, was a staunch supporter of the North during the American Civil War. There was no 19th-century Englishman who had a more confident belief in the future of America than Cobden. His correspondence with Charles Sumner, an American statesman and abolitionist, provided an important unofficial contact between Britain and the United States.
The most important activity of the last years of his life was his successful attempt to improve relations between Britain and France. Despite the differences in their political views, Palmerston had invited Cobden to join his broad-based ministry in 1859 as president of the Board of Trade. Cobden declined, but he worked indefatigably for a commercial treaty with France in 1860. The “most favoured nation” clause incorporated in the treaty, which stipulated that neither party could enforce against the other any prohibition on imports or exports that did not also apply to other nations, was to be duplicated in many later agreements with other nations. Cobden did not live long enough to see the eclipse of his free-trade hopes, which continued to be shared by the Cobden Club, founded to perpetuate his principles. The strain of the protracted Anglo-French negotiations undermined his health, and he had to spend many months outside London. He died in 1865, having made a last effort to leave his sickbed and attend Parliament to vote against new expenditures on national fortifications.