Richard Cobden

The man who stirred the nation in the great crusade of the Hungry Forties, and laid the foundations of Free Trade and prosperity for England, lies at West Lavington in a simple grave with nothing but his name cut in granite.

The founder of Free Trade, the pioneer of that great system which built up the prosperity of this country for so long, was a Sussex man, born at the farmhouse of Dunford in Heyshott. The family had been in the neighbourhood as yeomen since the 14th century, but Richard's father was a shiftless man and failed when the boy was ten. The eleven children were dispersed among relatives, Richard being sent to an uncle in London, who despatched him to a wretched school m Yorkshire till he was old enough to return as a clerk in the uncle's warehouse.

There he had at first an unhappy time as a poor relation, but be became conspicuously successful, and when he was 24 he set up with two partners. He prospered, and travelled widely, studying business conditions, and expressing his opinions, practical and economic, in the form of pamphlets and letters to the papers.

The burning question of the time was the repeal of the Corn Laws, and the Anti-Corn-Law League was formed by Manchester merchants. Its work went on for eight years till the Corn Laws were swept away by Sir Robert Peel, a Conservative Prime Minister. During that period Cobden, as he said, "lived in public meetings."

 

Though by this time he was a member of Parliament, commanding the attention of the Commons by his closely reasoned speeches, it was on the public platforms of all the great centres of population that his powerfully persuasive speeches, and the matchless eloquence of his friend John Bright, converted England. When Peel, who him self was one of the converted, brought in his gnat measure he said in the House of Commons:

 

'The name which ought to be, and will be, associated with the success of these measures is the name of a man who, acting, I believe, from pure and disinterested motives, has advocated their cause with untiring energy, and by appeals to reason, expressed by an eloquence the more to be admired because it was unaffected and unadorned - the name of Richard Cobden.'

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Cobden had won his battle for free trade in corn, but he was himself a ruined man. When he began his campaign he was rich, but the campaign exhausted his energy and he handed over the management of his business to his brother Frederick, who muddled it away. Cobden was in debt, and that could not be allowed. A fund was started and it rose to £80,000, which enabled him to free himself from debt and buy Dunford, so that once more Sussex became his home. He recruited his broken health by foreign travel for more than a year, and then resumed activity in politics.

 

His chief aims now were to keep England out of wars by establishing international arbitration on disputed questions, and by refraining from meddling with the quarrels of other nations; to reduce armaments and retrench in national expenditure. He kept up his public life with great energy and at last died while he was attending parliament in very severe weather. He wielded a mighty and beneficent influence. Mr Gladstone said he had never known a man in public life more simple, noble, and unselfish.

 

He had a massive commonsense reinforced by wide practical knowledge, transparent honesty, with the gift of clear expression and power of persuasion, and though he was always engaged in controversy he never made a personal enemy.

They told him once that he would have a monument in the Abbey, and Cobden said,

 

" I hope not; my spirit would not rest among these men of war."

 

Mr Gladstone and John Bright were both at Cobden's funeral, of which Gladstone wrote:

 

" The day was lovely, the scenery most beautiful, the whole sad and impressive. Bright broke down."

 

perhaps never in the history of crusading was a more passionate crusade than Cobden's for Free Trade. It raised England to the heights of unparalleled prosperity.

 

 

 

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