COBDEN’S EARLY CAREER.

Patea Mail, 20 January 1882, Page 1 (Supplement)

COBDEN’S EARLY CAREER.

“ The Life and Letters of Hi chard Cobden,” edited by John Morley, published by Messrs Chapman and Hall, will prove invaluable to the historical student for the light it throws on the political history of the middle of the 19th century. The story of his early career is very interesting. Richard Cobden was born at Dunford, near Midhurst, in West Sussex, in the summer of 1804. His father, though nothing more than a farmer on a very modest scale at the time of Richard’s birth, belonged to a family of some antiquity and consideration in the county. One Adam de Coppdene was sent to Parliament by the borough of Chichester in 1314. Another ancestor, Thomas Cobden, of Midhurst, contributed £25 to the fund raised for resisting the Spanish Armada. Records of the family are not wanting in the 17th and 18th centuries, and altogether it is evident that the stock of which Richard Cobden came had possessed in its most prosperous days a larger share of civil dignity and a more decided hold upon the world of affairs thau falls to the average yeoman family. It is scarcely fanciful to maintain that the influence of descent, which counts for something even in the most democratic scheme of things, had its share in the formation of a character which, amid purely commercial surroundings, never succumbed to the special temptations of commerce. Richard Cobden’s education, at any rate, as we commonly understand the word, did very little for him. Between the ages of 10 and 15 he was sent to a school in Yorkshire, where, to quote Mr. Morley’s words, “ he was ill-fed, ill-taught, and ill-used.” He learnt little or nothing there, at least from books, and at 16 he was taken into the warehouse of the uncle who had paid his expenses at school, and set to clerk’s work. He was no sooner in London, however, and freed from the tyranny of his school life, thau the quick, inquiring temper of the boy asserted itself. He began to teach himself French in the early mornings, to read poetry, and to puzzle his head about problems of education. He learnt to dance and to box; he had a moderate liking for the theatre; and on Sunday his greatest enjoyment was to walk out to meet his father, then living in very reduced circumstances near Alton, in Surrey, at some rendezvous on the Surrey heaths. His relations with his family, both as boy and man, were peculiarly affectionate and sympathetic, and in all the records of his youth there are visible the same gentleness, the same vivacity, the same quick common sense which brought him influence over men in later years. When he was 21 he was promoted from the office of clerk to that of commercial traveller, to his own great delight. The mere moving about which his new office entailed was peculiarly welcome to one who possessed in no ordinary degree the passion for seeing and knowing; his energy and his pleasantness of manner were employed in pleading the cause

of mu alias and calicoes as successfully as they were afterwards used for greater objects, and he became every year more and more conscious of his own business abilities and increasingly eager to make use of them on a larger scale. At the age of twenty-four, he was a trader on his own account in Manchester, with two other young men as partners, their capital being only a thousand pounds, of which more than half was borrowed. It is thus that Cobden was himself wont to describe his earliest independent venture and to explain its success:—“ We all got on the Peveril of the Peak coach, and went from London to Manchester in the, at that day (September, 1828), marvellously short space of twenty hours. We were literally so ignorant of Manchester houses that we called for a Directory at the hotel, and turned to the list of calico printers, theirs .being the business with which we were acquainted, and they being the people from whom, we felt confident, we could obtain credit. And why ? Because we knew we would be able to satisfy them that we had advantages from our large connections, our knowledge of the best branch of the business in London, and our superior taste in design, which would ensure success. We introduced ourselves to Eort Brothers and Co., a rich house, and we told our tale honestly, concealing nothing. In less than two years from 1830 we owed them forty thousand pounds for goods which they had sent to us in Watling street, upon no , other security than our characters and knowledge of our business. I frequently talked with them in later times upon the great confidence they ’ showed in men who avowed they were not possessed of £2OO each. Their answer was that they would always prefer to trust young men with connections and with a knowledge of their trade if they knew them to possess character and ability to those who started ; with capital without these advantages,; and that they had acted on this principle successfully in all parts of the world.” In 1831 the little firm determined to print their own goods, and were materially assisted in the execution of , their purpose by the taking off of the duty, which had sometimes equalled one-half of the total cost of the cloth. Their business prospered and increased..; Sabden was the name of the village at; which the chief works of the firm were: established, and “ one of Cobdou’s earliest letters on what may fairly be called a public question is a note : making arrangements for the exhibition at Sabden of twenty children from an infant school at Manchester, by way of an example and incentive to more backwark regions.” In 1841 Cobden was returned for the borough of Stockport, which a few years pre-. viously had rejected him. He delivered his maiden speech in the debate which resulted in the overthrow of Lord Melbourne’s Government.