Pure-hearted Hero of a bloodless fight!
Clean-handed Captain in a painless war!
Soar, Spirit, to the realm of Truth and Light,
Where the Just are!
If one poor cup of water given shall have
Due recognition in the Day of Dread,
Angels may welcome this one, for he gave
A nation, bread!
His bays are sullied by no crimson stain;
His battles cost no life, no land distressed;
The victory that closed the long campaign,
The vanquished blessed!
No narrow patriot bounded by the strand
Of his own isle – he led a new advance,
And opened, with the olive-branch in hand,
The ports of France.
Charming base hate of centuries to cease,
And laying, upon humble piles of Trade,
Foundation for that teeming Reign of Peace,
For which he prayed.
This, the sole blot on which detraction darts,
Willing to make his rounded frame decrease:
That in his inmost soul and heart of hearts,
He worshipped Peace.
But ONE blessed Peacemakers long years ago;
And since, in common clay or stately vault,
Seldom has a Hero rested, stained by so
Superb a fault!
The Peace of God has found him. He is dead!
Where’er he lie, his monument shall be,
In daily labour wining daily bread
By Trade set free!
-Eulogy for Richard Cobden after his death in 1865
Free Trade has not gotten a good rap in the last decade, but it is in large part thanks to the reduction of duties that the world economy has massively expanded, and the father of this revolution of economics and foreign policy is a journalist and politician by the name of Richard Cobden.
Cobden was born into a middle class family in 1804 and made his way as a businessman during his 20s, becoming quite well off and always having a solid base of capital for what became his great occupation, economics. The free trade doctrine of Adam Smith and the liberal republicanism of Jeremy Bentham were his lodestars, but he believed their ideals needed a charismatic champion to get the working and middle class behind them to fight what he saw as the backward reactionary ruling class of Britain. The main protectionist law, the one Cobden saw as the most destructive, was the tariff on ‘corn’ aka grain of all types, enumerated in the Corn Laws. It was these laws, thought Cobden, more than any other, which impoverished the ruled and enriched the rulers with their giant state-granted farming estates.
The middle-class and economically educated showered Cobden with funding, but the support of the working class, where he whipped them up into passionate fervor with his excellent speeches, were just as important. In Cobden’s day, socialism was not yet the creed of the “working man”. Liberalism’s cousin Radicalism was what most of the politically conscious artisan (factory worker) of the mid-19th century held to, an egalitarian bent on the traditional Smithian/Humeian laissez-faire. Radicalism’s most important focus was land reform [rightly, also a libertarian cause when it seeks justice for those who have had their land taken], and the opening of the food market to the detriment of the landholding aristocracy fit in perfectly with this cause. Most of the 3rd estate could not vote, even after the 1832 Chartist reforms expanded the franchise, but the agitation of the working class for repeal of the Corn Laws still had an effect on the British political system. Cobden controversially blamed the assassination of the Prime Minister’s secretary in 1843 on the allegedly pro-free trade Conservative party’s inactivity on the Laws.
When the Potato famine struck the British Isles in 1845, finally there was an opportunity to win the battle for free grain. Ireland, pauperized by centuries of land theft by its imperial rulers desperately needed humanitarian aid. After much lacrimony from the ruling class, in 1846 the Corn Laws were finally abolished, although this only had a mild effect on relieving the victims of the famine. The Radicals’ point about land reform being the key to justice in Ireland were certainly ignored by the Conservatives and only given lip service by the Liberal party. The consequences of this we discuss in our video on the original Springtime of Nations of 1848 and our one on Irish independence movements.
After his great victory against the protectionists, Cobden spent much of the rest of his life on another great liberal cause: peace. Mr. Cobden argued against the expansion of the British empire during his tenure as a member of parliament, lambasting the Conservatives for their contrived justifications for attacking the Burmese Kingdom and China during the Second Opium War of 1857, losing his seat that year amid a wave of “Patriotic” mania. But it was not only far off realms that Cobden objected to sending the British Navy against: Cobden argued that Britain’s position as an island nation gave it unparalleled security, and most “defense” spending was a wasteful squander. He went as far to say that the war against Napoleon was mostly a waste: “If we go back to the year 1805, when Nelson destroyed the remains of the French navy at Trafalgar, these islands were thenceforth as secure against foreign molestation as though they had formed a portion of the moon’s territory; yet from that time down to 1815 we waged incessant war, and incurred four hundred millions of debt for interests purely continental. Our European commerce yields but a poor set-off against the expenses of the war. The hundred days of Napoleon cost us forty millions, the interest of which at five per cent, is two millions.” Needless to say he also opposed the Crimean War for the same reason, and when some in Parliament were advocating for siding with the Confederacy against the United States in the 1860s he fiercely attacked them as wanting to wage war for slavers.
The most historically significant piece of foreign policy Cobden helped engineer was the normalization of relations between the two great rivals of Western Europe, Britain and France in 1859. In what became known as the Cobden-Chevalier treaty, the long history of economic war between the two countries was ended, tariffs being severely reduced, with french wine and british finished goods streaming over the English Channel like never before. This treaty fundamentally changed the relationship between the UK and France and lasts today, with no war between them since the Treaty was signed. Cobden’s death in 1865 brought national mourning not only in the British Isles, but France as well, in recognition for his services to freedom and peace.
There is no modern peer to Cobden as a proponent of freedom and peace in international politics, especially after the retirement of Ronald Ernest Paul in 2013 from Congress. Protectionism, more and more seen as a necessary corollary to national prosperity, needs to be fought. Crucially, the working class and those political parties that claim to advocate for them, do not understand what the British proletariat did in the 19th century: “Protection” is a transfer from their pocketbook back to their politically connected bosses. Free trade is and always will be a fight against privilege and for freedom for all classes. Rest in peace Richard Cobden, Long live free trade, and may 1000 flowers bloom!