Cobden, RICHARD, a great English politician, 'the Apostle of Free Trade,' was born at Heyshott, near Midhurst, Sussex, 3d June 1804. His father, a thrifty yeoman, had to sell his farm in 1814, and relations charged themselves with the maintenance of the eleven children; Richard, the fourth, being sent to a 'Dotheboys' school in Yorkshire. After five wretched years there, in 1819 he was received into a wholesale warehouse in London, belonging to his uncle, where he soon showed great aptitude for business, and as a commercial traveller he visited Scotland and Ireland. In 1828 Cobden and two of his friends entered into a partnership for selling calicoes by commission in London. They set up an establishment for calico-printing in Lancashire in 1831, and in 1832 Cobden settled in Manchester, the town with which his name is so closely associated. He wrote a comedy which was rejected by the manager of Covent Garden Theatre. In 1835 he visited the United States, and in 1836-37 travelled in Turkey, Greece, and Egypt. The result of his travels appeared in two pamphlets, England, Ireland, and America (1835), and Russia (1836); the latter intended as an antidote against the 'Russophobia' then prevalent. In these pamphlets he also ridiculed the workings of diplomacy, and asserted England's mission to be the avoidance of war and the extension of commerce. He contested the borough of Stockport unsuccessfully on free-trade principles in 1837. In 1838 he carried in the Manchester Chamber of Commerce a motion to petition parliament for the repeal of all duties on corn. In the same year seven merchants of Manchester formed the association which soon grew into the Anti-Corn-law League. Of this League Cobden was the most energetic and prominent member. His lectures all over the country, and his speeches in parliament (to which he was returned in 1841 by the constituency which had rejected him in 1837), were characterised by clear, quiet persuasiveness; and to them was in great part due, as Sir Robert Peel acknowledged, the abolition of the corn laws at so early a period as 1846.
Cobden's zeal for free trade in corn had, however, to such a degree withdrawn his attention from private business, that he was now a ruined man, and a subscription of £80,000 was raised in recognition of his great services; and with this in 1847 he re-purchased Dunford, the farmhouse in which he was born. As his health, too, had suffered, he re-visited the Continent, and during his absence was elected both for Stockport and the West Riding of Yorkshire. He chose the latter constituency, which he continued to represent till 1857. He shared Mr Bright's unpopularity for opposing the policy that led to the Crimean war; and on an appeal to the country by Lord Palmerston to support him in his Chinese policy, of which Cobden was a strenuous opponent, he retired from the West Riding and contested Huddersfield, where, however, he was defeated. Cobden spent his leisure in a second American tour. During his absence he was elected for Rochdale.
Lord Palmerston, who was at this time forming his ministry of 1859-65, with a just appreciation of Cobden's great services, offered him a seat in the cabinet as President of the Board of Trade; but Cobden, as the uncompromising opponent of Palmerston's policy, felt bound to decline the honour. After his election for Rochdale, the state of his health did not permit him to take any part in parliamentary proceedings, but as Her Majesty's plenipotentiary, he (1859-60) arranged and concluded the treaty of commerce with France. Cobden spoke out strongly in favour of the North during the American civil war, and in 1864 strenuously opposed intervention in favour of Denmark. He died in London, April 2, 1865, and was buried at Lavington, Sussex. Few politicians have had such an honourable record as Cobden. In all the relations of life he was amiable, single-minded, and earnest. In parliament and on the platform he was a master in the art of clear, persuasive, and convincing speech. He may be regarded as the representative man of the Manchester school, and therefore as the most prominent champion of free trade, peace, non-intervention, and economy.
His Speeches on Questions of Public Policy were edited by John Bright and Thorold Rogers (1870). See the articles CORN LAWS and FREE TRADE; the publications of the Cobden Club; his Life by John Morley (2 vols. 1881); Ashworth, Recollections of Cobden (1877); Sir E. Watkin, Alderman Cobden (1891); A. J. Balfour's Essays and Addresses; Mrs Salis-Schwabe, Reminiscences of Cobden (French, 1879; trans. 1895).