Richard Cobden

Richard Cobden (June 3, 1804 – April 2, 1865) was an a British manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman, associated with John Bright in the formation of the Anti-Corn Law League.

Legacy

Cobden, and what is was called "Cobdenism" and later identified with laissez-faire, was subjected to much criticism from the school of English economists who advocated a national policy, on the ideas of Alexander Hamilton and Friedrich List. However, during much of what remained of the nineteenth century, his success with the free-trade movement was unchallenged, and protectionism came to be heterodox. The tariff reform movement in England started by Joseph Chamberlain brought new opponents of Manchesterism, and the whole subject once more became controversial. The years of reconstruction following World War II saw a renewed fashion for government intervention in international trade but, starting in the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the USA led a revival of laissez-faire that, as of 2004, dominates economic thinking.

Related Topics:
Cobdenism - Laissez-faire - Alexander Hamilton - Friedrich List - Tariff reform - Joseph Chamberlain - Manchesterism - World War II - 1980 - Margaret Thatcher - Ronald Reagan - USA - As of 2004

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Cobden left a deep mark on English history, but he was not himself a "scientific economist," and many of his confident prophecies were completely falsified. As a manufacturer, and with the circumstances of his own day before him, he considered that it was "natural" for Britain to manufacture for the world in exchange for her free admission of the more "natural" agricultural products of other countries. He advocated the repeal of the Corn Laws, not essentially in order to make food cheaper, but because it would develop industry and enable the manufacturers to get labour at low but sufficient wages. He assumed that other countries would be unable to compete with England in manufacture under free trade, at the prices which would be possible for English manufactured products. "We advocate," he said, "nothing but what is agreeable to the highest behests of Christianity—to buy in the cheapest market, and sell in the dearest." He believed that the rest of the world must follow England's example: "if you abolish the corn-laws honestly, and adopt free trade in its simplicity, there will not be a tariff in Europe that will not be changed in less than five years" (January 1846). His cosmopolitanism—which made him in later Imperialists' eyes a "Little Englander"—led him to deplore any survival of the colonial system. It was, in its day, a generous and sincere reaction against popular sentiment, and Cobden was at all events an advocate of an irresistible British navy.

Related Topics:
Christianity - Imperialist - Little Englander

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There were enough inconsistencies in his creed to enable both sides in later controversies to claim him.

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