VI
COBDEN AND FREE TRADE
[RICHARD COBDEN, born, 1804, at Dunford, near Midhurst, Sussex; died, London, 1865; after grammar school education, entered mercantile house in London, soon becoming a traveling salesman; about 1830 became founder of a cotton-printing concern at Manchester; traveled in Europe and America; wrote pamphlets on commercial and economic questions; 1838, became an ardent supporter of the Anti-Corn Law League; 1841, Member of Parliament for Stockport; advocate of free trade in the House of Commons; received popular testimonial of £79,000 in recognition of his services to the free trade cause; 1847-57, Member of Parliament for West Riding of York; advocate of arbitration and diminished expense for military purposes; 1849, Member of Parliament for Rochdale; 1860, negotiated commercial treaty with France.]
The Reform Bill of 1832 invaded the privileges of the landed aristocracy by destroying in some measure their control of the House of Commons through the pocket boroughs. Sixteen years later a second blow was struck at this class through the repeal of the Corn Laws.
The Corn Laws aimed to secure to English agriculturists a monopoly of the home market for grain. The wars with Napoleon, which paralyzed continental industries, stimulated those of England to abnormal prosperity. Food advanced in price, but labor was in great demand and well paid. The prospect of approaching peace in Europe, in 1813, precipitated hard times in Great Britain. The price of wheat fell and manufactures declined. The land-owning classes, then supreme in Parliament, enacted the Corn Law of 1815 for their own protection. By its provisions the importation of grain from foreign countries was practically prohibited until the price in England reached eighty shillings per quarter. Ten members of the House of Lords protested against the measure on the grounds that all restraint of trade was improper; that the restraint of trade in food was especially iniquitous; that the law would not steady or cheapen prices; and that "such a measure levied a tax on the consumer in order to give a bounty to the grower of corn,"—principles which have a modern sound.
England was at that time living under a system of high protective tariffs upon imported articles of manufacture as well as of food. But in 1823-25 Mr. Huskisson succeeded in having most of the tariffs upon raw materials reduced to a fraction of the former figures, with the result that production was enormously stimulated and valuable foreign markets were opened to English commodities. His only modification of the Corn Law (in 1822) was to reduce by ten shillings the figure at which importations might begin. Later he and Canning made some progress with a "sliding scale" bill, a principle which the Duke of Wellington enacted into law in 1828. This interesting device provided that when the price in the home market reached sixty-four shillings the quarter the duty should be 23s 8d. As the price rose the duty fell. When wheat was 69s, the duty was 16s 8d, and when the price reached 73s, foreign corn might come in on payment of one shilling per quarter.
As has been shown in a foregoing chapter, the past half-century had witnessed a great transformation in the industrial complexion of England—from a nation chiefly agricultural it had become the center of the world's manufactures. Tens of thousands of families had removed from the farms to the cities, "following the work" in the mills and factories, and hundreds of thousands of pounds had been invested in a great diversity of industrial enterprises. The manufacturer and the mill-hand were alike interested in low prices for food. The manufacturer also saw in the high tariff on grain a barrier against the free exchange of commodities. As his output increased it became necessary for him to enlarge his market, but when he attempted to sell his goods to America and Russia the law interposed to block the bargain by excluding those grain-producing countries from selling their superfluous food- stocks in England. Apparently here was a clash between the interests of manufacturer and agriculturist.
In 1836 a few thoughtful men in London, who were opposed to any restraint of trade, formed an Anti-Corn Law Association. But the metropolis was stony soil for such a plant. In 1838 a similar association was organized in Manchester, one of the new industrial cities dominated by modern ideas, crowded with factories, and populous with laboring men and women, a fit center for such an agitation as was to precede the downfall of the tax on food. In Manchester, too, in the person of a calico-printer named Richard Cobden, the agitation found its mainspring and its clear and persuasive voice.
Richard Cobden sprang from a long line of plain Sussex yeomen. His father was a farmer who became bankrupt in 1813, and the lad Richard, one of twelve children, was sent by a well-meaning relative to a Yorkshire boarding-school—a sort of Dotheboys Hall. From such a rough school he passed into the rougher one of life, becoming the lad of all work in the London warehouse of the same kinsman, later a clerk, and at twenty-one a traveling salesman, or "drummer," a position for which his untiring energy and engaging sociability were high qualifications. A great reader, he was also a superior converser and a "mixer" as the present-day phrase goes, adapting himself to his company with unusual facility. John Morley records that all his friends agree that "they have never known a man in whom this trait of a sound and rational desire to know and to learn was so strong and so inexhaustible." "To know the affairs of the world was the master- passion of his life," and the knowledge which he gained and assimilated not merely in his early contact with men in his business, but in the wider journeys of observation to which he treated himself in later years, contributed much to the enrichment of his speeches and writings.
At the age of twenty-four, with two other young men, whose capital like his own was little more than energy, probity, and business knowledge, he founded a firm in London for the sale of Manchester cotton prints on commission. Soon the firm was printing its own goods in Lancashire, and Mr. Cobden, prospering greatly from the first, took up his residence in Manchester, to watch over that end of the business. Though as full of affairs as any man in that hive of industry, Cobden found time to store his mind by reading and by reflection upon the knowledge gained by intercourse with his fellowmen. He visited France, Switzerland, and in 1835, America, where he foresaw a growing market for his wares, and where, as he wrote, he fondly hoped "would be realized some of those dreams of human exaltation if not of perfection" with which he loved to console himself. In 1836-37 he visited the Mediterranean countries, and on his return was an unsuccessful candidate for a seat in the House of Commons.
In May, 1838, Richard Cobden wrote to his brother concerning the political outlook in the nation, the Chartist agitation, the Radical demands, and the general disorganization which existed among the opponents of Tory government. The letter includes these significant words: "I think the scattered elements may yet be rallied round the question of the Corn Laws. It appears to me that a moral, and even a religious, spirit may be infused into that topic, and if agitated in the same manner that the question of slavery has been, it will be irresistible."
The purposes of the Manchester Anti-Corn Law Association are thus stated by Morley: "To obtain by all legal and constitutional means, such as the formation of local associations, the delivery of lectures, the distribution of tracts, and the presentation of petitions to Parliament, the total and immediate repeal of the Corn and Provision Laws." Mr. Cobden became a member of the executive committee, and his mind, voice, and pen were active in the service of the society until its object was attained. In response to his appeal for a campaign fund ("Let us invest part of our property in order to save the rest from confiscation") six thousand pounds poured into the treasury within a month. The local societies, which sprang up like wildfire in the manufacturing towns, were affiliated with that at Manchester, which soon became the headquarters of a far-reaching league.
The leaguers carried political agitation to a point of thoroughness beyond anything which had yet been reached by O'Connell or the abolitionists. They issued a newspaper organ which enunciated its principles and denounced the enemies of free trade. Vast editions of tracts and leaflets were scattered broadcast throughout the land, and a staff of carefully instructed speakers was maintained to itinerate through the rural districts and preach the gospel of free corn in tavern, market- place, and town hall.
In Parliament the battle must be won, and the league soon began its work of capturing seats in the House of Commons. Cobden himself was chosen, in 1841, as member for Stockport. Almost immediately he exercised his gift as a speaker, securing at once the attention of his colleagues by his style of oratory, which, with little formal eloquence or rhetorical elaboration, was powerfully persuasive, enriched by many happy illustrations drawn from life, and infused with a pure and lofty spirit. Whatever the topic under discussion, he was always able to show its relation to the obnoxious tariff, and to point out that the only sure remedy for the prevalent national ills was by way of the repeal of "the tax on bread." At first the young calico-printer—he was but thirty-seven—who embodied the opposition to the Corn Laws, was looked upon as an intruder by the young aristocrats of the House. They made fun of his classical allusions, and magnified his lack of education, attempting to laugh down his logic. But Cobden was not long in proving his ability to take care of himself on the floor of the House. It was no mere politician who caught the ear of the country with words like these: "When I go down to the manufacturing districts, I know that I shall be returning to a gloomy scene. I know that starvation is stalking through the land, and that men are perishing for the want of the merest necessaries of life. When I witness this, and recollect that there is a law which especially provides for keeping our population in absolute want, I cannot help attributing murder to the legislature of this country; and wherever I stand, whether here or out-of-doors, I will denounce that system of legislative murder."
Out-of-doors Mr. Cobden had the strong support of the most eloquent Englishman of his generation, John Bright. The two men had been drawn together early by a common interest in the welfare of the manufacturing classes, and especially in popular education. In September, 1841, Cobden visited his friend in his house, and found him plunged in sadness by the death of his young wife. After words of condolence, he said, with great earnestness, "John, there are thousands of houses in England at this moment where wives, mothers, and children are dying of hunger. Now when the first paroxysm of your grief is passed, I would advise you to come with me and we will never rest until the Corn Law is repealed."
"For seven years," Mr. Bright afterward said, "the discussion on that one question—whether it was good for a man to have half a loaf or a whole loaf—for seven years the discussion was maintained, I will not say with doubtful result, for the result was never doubtful and never could be in such a cause; but for five years or more (1841-46), we devoted ourselves without stint; every working hour almost was given up to the discussion and to the movement in connection with this question."
Mr. Morley's description of the two orators and their mission is memorable: "The public imagination was struck by the figures of the pair who had given themselves up to a great public cause. The picture of two plain men leaving their homes and their business and going over the length and breadth of the land to convert the nation, had about it something apostolic; it presented something so far removed from the stereotyped ways of political activity, that this circumstance alone, apart from the object for which they were pleading, touched and affected people, and gave a certain dramatic interest to the long pilgrimages of the two men who had only become orators because they had something to say which they were intent on bringing their hearers to believe, and which happened to be true, wise, and just…..In Cobden, as in Bright, we feel that there was nothing personal or small, and that what they cared for so vehemently were great causes. …. Mr. Bright had all the resources of passion alive within his breast. He was carried along by vehement political anger, and deeper than that there glowed a wrath as stern as that of an ancient prophet. To cling to a mischievous error seemed to him to savor of moral depravity and corruption of heart. What he saw was the selfishness of the aristocracy and the landlords and he was too deeply moved by the hatred of this to care to deal very patiently with the bad reasoning which their own self-interest inclined his adversaries to mistake for good. His invective was not the expression of mere irritation, but a profound and menacing passion. Hence he dominated his audiences from a height, while his companion rather drew them along after him as friends and equals. Cobden was by no means incapable of passion, of violent feeling, or of vehement expression. His fighting qualities were in their own way as formidable as Mr. Bright's….. Still it was not passion to which we must look for the secret of his oratorical success. In one word, it was persuasiveness. Cobden made his way to men's hearts by the union which they saw in him of simplicity, earnestness, and conviction, with a singular facility of exposition. This facility consisted in a remarkable power of apt and homely illustration, and a curious ingenuity in framing the argument that happened to be wanted…..In such an appeal to popular sentiment and popular passion as the contemporary agitation of O'Connell for repeal, he could have played no leading part. Where knowledge and logic were the proper instruments, Cobden was a master." Nor did his efficiency cease when the audience dispersed. In council chamber and work-room his alert and inventive mind and persuasive conversational eloquence had free scope. His hopeful enthusiasm, his clever devices for stimulating the jaded interest of the masses, and his unfailing good humor made him the chief engineer of the highly complex machinery of the league.
His enthusiasm led to the formation of associations in all the centers of industry; it redoubled the efforts and efficiency of the lecturers who carried the doctrines of the league into the agricultural counties—the enemy's country; it replenished the treasury of the league with thousands of pounds by subscriptions and by grand bazaars, one of which netted ten thousand pounds; it gave life and variety to the newspaper organ of the agitation; and in Parliament it met the government by a constant fire of questions, a bombardment of solid fact, and a harassing recurrence to the necessity of total and immediate repeal as the only salve for the economic sores of the kingdom.
His parliamentary opponents attacked him fiercely. They accused him of hypocrisy in carrying on an agitation professedly for the general good, but really intended to help the cotton manufacturers at the expense of the landowners and agriculturists. They laid at Cobden's door the miseries of the mill-hands of Manchester, crying "Physician, heal thyself." So strongly intrenched was "monopoly" in the House of Commons that it was slow work for the Anti-Corn Law League with its weapons of peaceful agitation to drive it out. Year after year the orators traveled through the three kingdoms, addressing thousands, tracts were distributed by the ton, and enormous sums of money were subscribed (the amount for 1844 being nearly a hundred thousand pounds). In order that the popular opinion thus carefully cultivated might be brought effectively to bear at the next parliamentary election, the league took care that every qualified free trader was registered on the polling lists. At Cobden's suggestion large numbers of workingmen qualified by becoming freeholders.
The eloquence of Bright, the cogent reasoning of Cobden, and the long campaign of education were steadily doing their work. The number of professed free traders in Parliament was still small, but the thoughtful leaders of the great parties, the men who studied the sentiment of the country, and watched the signs of the times, and weighed well the masses of evidence which the league continually brought forward-these men were being converted to the Manchester idea. What Cobden said in a popular assembly in the summer of 1845 was truer than even he may have believed. "What," he asked, "if you could get at the minds of the people would you find them thinking as to the repeal of the Corn Laws? I know it as well as if I were in their hearts. It is this: they are all afraid that this Corn Law cannot be maintained—no, not a rag of it—during a period of scarcity prices, of a famine season, such as we had in '39, '40, and '41. They know it. They are prepared when such a time comes to abolish the Corn Laws…..They are going to repeal it—mark my words—at a season of distress. That distress may come; aye, three weeks of showery weather, when the wheat is in bloom or ripening, would repeal these Corn Laws." He had already shown the precarious condition of the Irish people, whose only food was the potato, and whom the high price of grain kept on the edge of famine. The autumnal rains of 1845 precipitated the crisis, and fulfilled Cobden's prediction. The failure of the potato harvest plunged Ireland into dire distress for food. The league in crowded meetings denounced the tax on bread while men starved. The government of Sir Robert Peel hesitated as to the proper course. To suspend the food tariff might prove a concession to free trade which could never be regained. While Peel's cabinet hung back Lord John Russell, the leader of the Whigs, issued (November 22) his famous Edinburgh letter to his constituents, declaring that the time had come for the repeal of the baneful legislation. Peel was of the same mind, but some of his Tory colleagues resisted. None were more stubborn than Wellington, whose action at this juncture led Cobden to say, "Let me remind him that, notwithstanding all his victories in the field, he never yet entered into a contest with Englishmen in which he was not beaten." The effort of the Whigs to form a ministry having failed, Peel resumed the premiership which he had resigned. Parliament assembled on January 26, 1846, and the Prime Minister's speech foreshadowed his conversion to the policy of Cobden. The next day he explained his program. The Corn Laws were to be totally repealed by gradual reductions of the duty extending over a period of three years. Despite the mockery of Disraeli and the protectionists the bill passed the Commons by a great majority, and bowing to superior power, the Duke of Wellington helped it to pass the House. On June 26th Cobden carried the news to his wife: "Hurrah! Hurrah! The corn bill is law, and now my work is done!"
Cobden's utter consecration of himself for eight years to the Anti-Corn Law agitation had cost him severely. The constant travel, exposure, and hardship of speaking in the open air had seriously impaired his health. His business had been neglected until he had been only saved from bankruptcy by the generosity of friends. The league into which he had poured his best thought and effort honored him by a popular subscription amounting to nearly eighty thousand pounds as a testimonial to his public-spirited devotion. He might have entered the government, but preferred otherwise. During the twenty years of life which remained to him he was the advocate of numerous reforms. Ever a lover of peace, he was a strong champion of the principle of international arbitration, and of the reduction of armaments. The most conspicuous achievement of his later years was his successful negotiation of more liberal commercial treaties between France and England, a service for which he received the thanks of both governments. During the American Civil War his sympathies were strongly enlisted for the North against the cause of the slave- holders, and his speeches helped to restrain the hostile feeling of the aristocracy. Though sometimes exposing himself to ridicule and obloquy by running counter to the popular current, Mr. Cobden's honesty and sincerity were such that his opponents must admit his purity of motive and nobility of soul. His death, in 1865, was recognized as a national loss.
No eulogium pronounced over his grave by Bright, the companion of his labors and triumphs, or by Disraeli and Gladstone, great converts to his economic doctrines, is so memorable as the brief passage in which Sir Robert Peel, in the last hours of his premiership, gave to the free-trade agitator the credit for the great reform: "In reference to our proposing these measures," he said, "I have no wish to rob any person of the credit which is justly due to him for them. But I may say that neither the gentlemen sitting on the benches opposite, nor myself, nor the gentlemen sitting round me—are the parties who are strictly entitled to the merit…..Sir, the name which ought to be, and which 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 which ought to be, and will be, associated with the success of these measures is the name of Richard Cobden. Without scruple, sir, I attribute the success of these measures to him."
The commercial policy which England inaugurated, in 1846, under the lead of Richard Cobden, continued in force throughout the century. Under its workings the commercial supremacy of England in the markets of the world has been achieved.