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Richard Cobden, 1804-1865.
British businessman, politician, pamphleteer and ardent free trade activist, founder of the "Manchester School" of classical liberalism..
Richard Cobden broke into print with a pair of anonymous pamphlets in 1836 denouncing popular calls for British military intervention to defend Turkey against Russian encroachments. Cobden urged British government to pay more attention to international problems closer to home, notably the distress in Ireland and the rise of the United States. Cobden pointed out that Russia was not a threat to British interests, that Russia would likely have no more success in amalgamating Turkish lands than the British had in amalgamating neighboring Ireland (and even if she succeeded, it might not be such a bad thing), and that fears of Russia acquiring a warm-water port in Constantinople should be no more worrisome to Britain than the United States having a warm-water port in New York. While written as a plea for peace in this specific instance, Cobden's tracts expressed wider points about foreign policy in general. He derided nationalism, territorial aggrandizement and "balance of power" reasoning as pointless and dangerous relics of Mercantilist folly. Indeed, Cobden eschewed all foreign policy whatsoever, confident that peace and prosperity would be better secured and maintained by trade and interaction between the private citizens of different countries than high-level diplomacy between governments. He believed this to be the secret of American success, and distilled it into a maxim: "As little intercourse as possible between the governments; as much connection as possible between the nations of the world" (p.33).
Richard Codben, together with John Bright, was the founder of the Manchester-based Anti-Corn Law League in 1838, which was largely responsible for the repeal of the Corn Laws by Peel in 1846.
Cobden was first elected to parliament in August 1841 as an MP for Stockport. After 1846, Cobden concentrated on a campaign against British imperialism. Cobden was also responsible, with Michel Chevalier, for the 1860 "Cobden-Chevalier" trade treaty with France. As Bright would write in his diary, "Lords and diplomatists, spending £15,000 a year, have been in Paris for half a century past, and done nothing: Cobden, a simple citizen, unpaid, unofficial, but earnest and disinterested, has done all." (Jan 25, 1860)
Cobden was instrumental in the creation of Owens College in Manchester, and lent his former home on Quay Street to house the fledgling college. After his death, Owens College created the Cobden Lectureship in his name.
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