Concept
Richard Cobden
Overview
Richard Cobden (3 June 1804 – 2 April 1865) was a British Radical and Liberal politician, manufacturer, and a campaigner for free trade and peace. He was associated with the Anti–Corn Law League and the 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 travels convinced him 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.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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In the exportation of their own surplus produce, too, it is only with regard to certain commodities that the colonies of Great Britain are confined to the market of the mother country. These commodities having been enumerated in the act of navigation, and in some other subsequent acts, have upon that account been called _enumerated commodities_.
Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
States what Richard Cobden is; the author is tied to Richard Cobden in the knowledge graph.
That system of laws, therefore, which is connected with the establishment of the bounty, seems to deserve no part of the praise which has been bestowed upon it. The improvement and prosperity of Great Britain, which has been so often ascribed to those laws, may very easily be accounted for by other causes. That security which the laws in Great Britain give to every man, that he shall enjoy the fruits of his own…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
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In her open demonstrations of hostility against the King of Sweden, as well as in the false pretence on which they were founded, England seemed only to follow in the track of Holland, which declaring the confiscation of its ships to be piracy, had issued two proclamations against Sweden in 1714. In one respect, the case of the States-General was the same as that of England. King William had concluded the Defensive…
Karl Marx, Secret Diplomatic History of The Eighteenth Century
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Philosophers who discussed Richard Cobden
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Place in the tradition
Part of Liberalism.