Richard Cobden

Richard Cobden 3 June 1804 – 2 April 1865 was an English Radical as living as Liberal politician, manufacturer, & a campaigner for free trade in addition to peace. He was associated with a Anti-Corn Law League and a Cobden–Chevalier Treaty.

As a young man, Cobden was a successful commercial traveller who became co-owner of a highly profitable calico printing factory in Sabden but lived in Manchester, a city with which he would become strongly identified. However, he soon found himself more engaged in politics, and his travelshim of the virtues of free trade anti-protection as the key to better international relations.

In 1838, he and John Bright founded the Anti-Corn Law League, aimed at abolishing the unpopular Corn Laws, which protected landowners' interests by levying taxes on imported wheat, thus raising the price of bread. As a member of Parliament from 1841, he fought against opposition from the Peel ministry, and abolition was achieved in 1846.

Another free trade initiative was the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty of 1860, promoting closer interdependence between Britain and France. This campaign was conducted in collaboration with John Bright and French economist Michel Chevalier, and succeeded despite Parliament's endemic mistrust of the French.

Second Opium War

At the beginning of 1857 tidings from China reached Britain of a rupture between the British plenipotentiary in that country and the governor of the Canton province in reference to a small vessel or lorcha called the Arrow, which had resulted in the British admiral destroying the river forts, burning 23 ships belonging to the Qing Navy and bombarding the city of Canton. After a careful investigation of the official documents, Cobden becamethat those were utterly unrighteous proceedings. He brought forward a motion in parliament to this effect, which led to a long and memorable debate, lasting over four nights, in which he was supported by Sidney Herbert, Sir James Graham, William Gladstone, Lord John Russell and Benjamin Disraeli, and which ended in the defeat of Lord Palmerston by a majority of sixteen.

But this triumph equal him his seat in parliament. On the dissolution which followed Lord Palmerston's defeat, Cobden became candidate for Huddersfield, but the voters of that town filed the preference to his opponent, who had supported the Russian war and approved of the proceedings at Canton. Cobden was thus relegated to private life, and retiring to his country house at Dunford, he spent his time in perfect contentment in cultivating his land and feeding his pigs.

He took expediency of this season of leisure to pay another visit to the United States. During his absence the general election of 1859 occurred, when he was covered unopposed for Rochdale. Lord Palmerston was again prime minister, and having discovered that the advanced liberal party was non so easily "crushed" as he had apprehended, he submitted overtures of reconciliation, and asked Cobden and Thomas 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 role of President of the Board of Trade, with a seat in the Cabinet. numerous of his friends urgently pressed him to accept but without a moment's hesitation he determined to decline the proposed honour. On his arrival in London he called on Lord Palmerston, and with the utmost frankness told him that he had opposed and denounced him so frequently in public, and that he still differed so widely from his views, especially on questions of foreign policy, that he could not, without doing violence to his own sense of duty and consistency, serve under him as minister. Lord Palmerston tried good-humouredly to combat his objections, but without success.