Richard Cobden

Nations have not yet learnt to bear prosperity, liberty, and peace. They will learn it in a higher state of civilization. We think we are the models for posterity, when we are little better than beacons to help it to avoid the rocks and …

'Tis a great sin for man or woman To steal a goose from off a common; But Who shall plead that man's excuse Who steals the common from the goose!

I believe that the harm which Mill has done to the world by the passage in his book on Political Economy in which he favours the principle of Protection in young communities, has outweighed all the good which may have been caused by his …

[T]he principles of political economy have elevated the working class above the place they ever filled before.

I think we have been the most Conservative. I think that myself, and my friend Mr. Bright, and many I see about me, who have voted for twenty years for what have been considered revolutionary measures, have been the great Conservatives of …

I have told you before that Gladstone has shown much heart in this business. He has a strong aversion to the waste of money on our armaments. He has much more of our sympathies. He has more in common with you and me than any other man of …

It is the universal hope of rising in the social scale which is the key to much of the superiority that is visible in this country. It accounts for the orderly self-respect which is the great characteristic of the masses in the United …

The idea of defending, as integral parts of our Empire, countries 10,000 miles off, like Australia, which neither pay a shilling to our revenue...nor afford us any exclusive trade...is about as quixotic a specimen of national folly as was …

Our only chance as a nation is in knowing in time what is sure to come from the United States.

Our history must be rewritten for the last two centuries before the people will be able to deal out justice to the two aristocratic parties who have done their best to ruin a country so favoured by nature as almost to defy the effort to …

If the United States go wrong what hope have we of the civilized world in our turn?

I say that if England takes due advantage of her insular position, and confines herself to her own affairs, and does not run into needless and rash disputes with other countries, there never was a time when she stood so free from danger of …

What we want before all things is a bold retrenchment of expenditure. I may take a too one-sided view of the matter, but I consider nine-tenths of all our future dangers to be financial, and when I came home from the continent, it was with …

I know that there are many heads which cannot comprehend and master a proposition in political economy. I believe that study is the highest exercise of the human mind.

What, then, is the good of this "protection"? Why, the country have come to regard it, as they regard witchcraft, as a mere sound and a delusion. They no more regard your precautions against free trade, than they regard the horse-shoes …

I believe that if you abolish the Corn-law 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 to follow your example.

Depend upon it, nothing can be got by fraternizing with trades unions. They are founded upon principles of brutal tyranny and monopoly. I would rather live under a Dey of Algiers than a Trades Committee.

...the twelve or fifteen millions in the British Empire, who, while they possess no electoral rights, are yet persuaded they are freemen, and who are mystified into the notion that they are not political bondmen, by that great juggle of …