Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century

by James Richard Joy

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first paroxysm of your grief is passed, I would advise you to come with me and we will never rest until the Corn Law is repealed."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.